Part 2

We travel long by a road full of deep holes; we climb the heights, we go down into the valleys. All the country round is enchantingly beautiful.

Up comes the sun, casting upon the road distinct mobile shadows, lengthened out monstrously, of our two equipages and of our own figures.

I feel stupefied after this sleepless night; my face is hot, my lips are burning. Yet, and in spite of my plaid and the rugs, I shiver with cold, I close my eyes and lean my head against the back of the carriage, listening to the screaking wheels, to the trot of the snorting horses, and to the timid chirruping of the birds, just roused by daylight. Though awake, I am dreaming.

Janusz bends over me, and touches my lips with his in a gentle kiss, as if he meant not to wake me.

I do not move at all, and pretend to sleep on, though well aware that Janusz knows I am awake.

And now my golden morning—here it is!

On one of the last warm summer days, Martha and I go and bathe together outside the park. When undressed, she is very pleasant to look upon. She pretends to object, but puts on her bathing-dress so deliberately that I can gaze quite at my ease. After having bathed in the clear cool water, we return and lie down on the lush grass in the park. We are surrounded by tall trunks, bare to a great height; far above us their branches form a canopy of bright green verdure under the blue sky.

“I wonder,” say I to her, “how plain people feel about themselves. With us, comeliness is such a matter of course!... If I were to lose my good looks, or even my knowledge that I am good-looking, I really think I could not bear life.... It is that alone which gives me strength in presence of others. I go out in the full glare of day without a sunshade; in company, I sit with my face turned straight to the lamplight; I walk in the crowd, with head erect, fearing no one, abashed by no one—simply because I know that the sight of me must cause pleasure.... If I am good-natured, it is because of my good looks. I hate nobody, envy nobody, and am filled with a sort of Pagan, sunshiny, royal love for all.”

“And which of us two do you think is prettier?” asks Martha.

“I don’t know.... In reality, each of us thinks herself prettier; but we are both too cultured ever to have tried conclusions on that subject.”

Strictly speaking, I am not so fair as she: but then, she is less graceful than I. Besides, my eyes have a golden tint, such as no other girls have, so far as I know.

I often walk a few versts with Martha, as far as the “Kirkut,” or Jewish cemetery.

There they stand, the hewn gravestones, in long parallel upright rows. Upon them you may see cabalistic signs and symbols; a lion, a broken taper, or a shelf of books; and certain embellishments that might almost be styled “decadent.” The graves, overgrown with moss, heather, and wild thyme, are nearly level with the rest of the ground. The wooden inclosure, over which we always have to climb, is lost in the woods among the pine-trunks; and those long regular rows of stones raise their heads in a forest elsewhere untouched by man. Here, I feel as though I had gone far back into the dim immemorial Past.

I love that burial-ground; I love to contemplate Life trampling upon Death; and as I gaze, I cease to fear Death any more. Death makes away with the individual only, with the accidental manifestations of Life: Life itself remains. I see myself standing for the whole of mankind, and identical with Life. I always was; I shall be everlasting.... Death is slumbering quietly beneath my feet.

And with that a delightful sense, as it were of infinite might, comes over me. To my power, to my continuance, I can find no limit. I am not of the earth, I am not Janka Dernowicz; I am eternal, unsleeping consciousness; I am the Universe! In this burial-ground, Janusz grows dismal, and holds forth on the evanescence of all earthly things. A beautiful animal which lives in fear of Death!

What if it be true that animals have no souls?

At times I experience the pangs of an entirely unjustified longing for the man who came into my life and went out of it like a hurricane. Yes, now and again I long for my ice-plains and my Northern Lights!

Once he asked me whether I should never wish to feel and think and strive along with some companion in life.

Then I burst into laughter; for I hate sentiment—hate to mix up love and “brotherhood of souls.”

Now I am near thinking that this man, whom I never loved, may be the only one fit to become my husband.

Often of nights, lying awake and staring into the darkness with wide-open eyes, I feel burning lips, lips famished with hunger, that are pressed to mine....

And when I seize the kiss upon those lips, I know that they are the lips, not of Roslawski, but of Janusz.

And then I am full of terror lest an evil thing has been done that never can be undone—lest something may have fallen away for ever out of my life.

Then do I no longer feel any desire for any one; and I weep in the dark, but silently, not to awaken Martha.

In the morning, I look upon Janusz with hatred and with loathing; and I treat him harshly, though he is indeed in no wise to blame. I merely use him ill, because my soul is a-wandering alone over those ice-plains of mine, is still dreaming cold silvery dreams, is seeking in vain for a fraternal soul.

Is it then really an impossibility to be in love _without loving also_?

While out shooting to-day, Janusz had just such a gleam in his eyes as he has when he gloats on me.

He is a typical primitive man of a nomad race of hunters, in whom the instinct of conservation manifests itself as vehemently when procuring his own subsistence as when acting for the preservation of the race. Game is to him a vital necessity; so is woman.

I was sorry for the hares he had killed and lectured him with great unction on man’s cruelty in taking the lives of such defenceless innocent creatures.

Just now I was thinking how I should like to lock Janusz up in a nice cage, and have him all to myself. I should give him plenty of food, but neither let him read (that prohibition he would not find very hard) nor talk to any one; so that he, with all his treasures of vitality, might be mine alone. And occasionally I should enter the cage.

I should then be far more spiritually disposed than I am now. At present, my splendid, primitive, untamed beast is hungry and howling, and mars the divine symphony I listen to in my dreams of light.

I should appease it, and go out to walk in my sacred grove, along the margin of the dark abysmal lake which is in my soul.

And I should willingly have Roslawski to walk with me there!

Janusz has asked me if I would consent to become his wife.

“If only for a month or two, I would with pleasure,” was my truthful reply, which I afterwards turned into a jest: not a nice one, I must say.

Janusz darted one or two angry looks at me, and gave vent to this aphorism: “There are things one should never jest about.”

Most certainly he is right. And all this begins to worry me just a little.

I might perhaps fancy myself playing the part of his seductress; of his wife, never. And what to do with him now, I can’t tell.

I should like to go away now. Oh, why has all this come about so suddenly?

Out boating late in the evening, on the great pond beyond the park.

I have consented to come here, for I am so wretched, I want to die. And I know that Janusz, whom I have been tormenting all day long, can no longer control himself.

His nerves are racked to the very utmost; it is my doing. He clutches me by the shoulders and holds me down to the side of the boat with an iron grip. To get the better of his mad fit, I keep myself very passive and cool.

“Hear me, Janka!” he growls between his teeth, his face close to mine, “you! listen: I am speaking for the last time. Say Yes!”

I could disarm him with a single cry of pain or fear: but I remain mute. I must have strong sensations to-night.

“I’ll kill—I’ll kill you! Do you hear? I hate you as much as I love you, and more. Speak instantly—speak!”

His rage is suffocating him; the words stick in his throat. His knee is pressed hard upon my bosom; his nails dig deep into my flesh. With all my strength I stifle a groan, and wait. The boat is careening over more and more, and begins to be water-logged.

“I shall drown you! See, the boat is about to go down! Say Yes!”

Quietly, silently, I look into his wild burning eyes, of which the whites gleam through the darkness and fascinate me.

For an instant I have a desire to close my eyelids and disappear, sinking noiselessly into the dark water. My eyes nevertheless instinctively encounter his.

Suddenly I feel that the grip of his clenched hands is growing weaker.

Now sure of victory, I whisper, “No!” with a smile.

Janusz, uttering a cry of pain, falls back into the boat. He presses his forehead hard against my feet which he covers with kisses, and is swept by a storm of convulsive sobs. The boat recovers her balance, and rocks up and down violently.

But I am the reverse of elated by my victory. For now I can no longer believe in the omnipotence of mere physical strength, which has just shown itself less mighty than the power of Mind.

Had Janusz continued to grapple with me thus for a few seconds more, I think I might have given way to him. And now I envy him the incomparable joy of acknowledging my predominance.

The warrior does not delight in triumphing over one less strong, but in confessing the power of him that has been found stronger, and by whom he has been overcome.

Over this writhing figure, shaken with sobs that grow fainter and fainter with fatigue, I look out far into the night. No moon, not a star. And the rushes along the shore keep up an incessant rustling.

And the dark lake, my soul, is looking up with unseeing eyes to the dark sky.

All around is dead: no life anywhere. Nothing remains but my loneliness—the unbounded loneliness of my strength, self-centred and unparalleled.

Never yet have I felt my power so strongly, and never yet has it made me so sad.

The black sky bends its lowering vault above me; under its clouds the black pond lifts up swelling waves. Between the Infinite and my soul, there is nowhere any room for strength.

Oh, “_I am so weary, weary of these heights!_” How I desire to meet with a force able to subdue mine!

“Pray, Janusz, pray get up,” I say, gently stroking his hair; “I beg you, rise; it must be very late. Where are the oars?”

I am lying in the hollow between two rows of graves, breathing the perfume of the white forest gilliflowers, abloom in the “Kirkut,” and thinking of life—of this most admirable and most beautiful marvel, life. I am explaining to Martha how my worship of life is really the outcome of resignation.

“But in me resignation has taken a form that it has not in you. ‘If I cannot have all, I refuse to have anything;’ such is the creed of despairing pride, held by slaves and wretched men. My belief in Azoism is nothing but the creed of a proud woman, who is reconciled to her slavery, and will take up no spurious imitations of freedom. Such a withdrawal from the vortex we live in, enabling me to look on all things as Garborg does, from above them, and with a smile of dignified amenity—this is what I love. It often seems to me, so little I feel adapted for my life on earth, that I have somehow wandered hither by a mischance, a blunder.”

“It is well,” says Martha. “Adaptation to environment is of avail only to brute animals: man can make his own world by viewing it in his own special way.

“I,” she goes on to say sadly, “believe in nothing. And yet women in general are inclined to have faith in an existence after death. It is simply an outcome of sympathy with suffering, and of an instinct of justice. You know how the thought of useless suffering in nature makes me beside myself. Think of all those silent agonies which never will be known; of those tortures endured throughout the world by multitudes that leave no trace behind them.... When but a little boy, Janusz once focussed the sun’s rays on a little insect he had fastened by its wing, and which was writhing in impotent throes. I can still see those poor limbs, red in the glow, quivering in excruciating pain, until I snatched the lens away from Janusz, and set the half-roasted creature free.... Those were its last impressions of life: after them came—Nothingness! I can see all the tiny invisible beings that I slay by hundreds in my daily walks, trampling them down in the long grass or under the pine-needles, and unwittingly leaving them to expire in the most dreadful torments, perhaps drawn out for many an hour.... I know, too, of the pain which fishes undergo, often kept living in the air for whole days, and seen to move convulsively, even when on the fire.... All this pain, and nothing to justify, nothing to compensate it! This I know; for beyond death there is nothing!”

“But did it never strike you that, if there is nothing beyond death, it is impossible for _nothingness_ to be there?”

She looks at me inquiringly.

“The ideas of justice, of vengeance, of compensation, are purely of this earth, though they once formed a religious ideal in the worship of Jehovah. I put them in the same category as the concept of mercy, now prevailing amongst Christians. Some other idea will spring up later, equally foreign to that of existence beyond the grave.”

“Well, and what do you infer from that?”

“My belief is, that the phenomenon called death consists in our losing all sensations, ‘categories,’ concepts and all projections (so to speak) of this our world; and in our finding _other_ sensations in the next. Perhaps not even that. For in the next world, just as there will be no idea of justice, so there may be none of sensations. Do you follow me?”

“So you think you shall continue to exist _then_?”

“I cannot say—I cannot say.”

For a few minutes I listen to the undertone of the pine-trees, sounding far above us in the sky.

“You see,” I continue, “there, it may well be, we shall have no idea of an Ego which excludes and contradicts the Non-Ego. The distinction between them has arisen from the fact of our existence upon earth: it is a form into which we mould our impressions; something purely accidental, depending upon the quality and mechanism of the brain.... There, too, the idea of Time may be wanting; also that of Space. Of course, from our earthly point of view, it is nonsense to say that the world is boundless: that which the brain calls ‘the Infinite’ cannot be represented in imagination as space. Truly, there are times when I simply feel admiration for a God who has created so great and endlessly complicated a scheme of beings.”

Martha’s disappointment is plain to perceive.

“So then you believe in God?”

“I do not know, and do not trouble about it. It is not likely the ideas of creation out of nothing, of sovereignty as opposed to subjection, of volition as opposed to passiveness, have any counterpart out of our minds.... Notice, Martha, that in my view the expression, ‘Transcendental Being,’ implies a contradiction. Our very idea of Being is a mere outcome of experience: and I go so far beyond Nature, I leap so completely out of my human skin, that I can force myself to the contemplation of an unimaginable world, in which there is no contradiction between Being and Non-Being....

“Therefore, I do not trouble whether I shall in that world be myself or not myself: nor even whether I shall be or not be....”

She gazes at me, her eyes wide open, and says under her breath:

“Yes, I see.”

“And, do you know, the capacity of thus abstracting one’s thought itself from its outward form, of looking upon the universe and one’s very thought from such a standpoint, sets one on heights incomprehensibly sublime, and gives the purest, the most unearthly delight.”

... There is a black cat here, with eyes like emeralds; it ranges noiselessly amongst the rows of gravestones. A singularly sociable creature; it follows us everywhere in our walks, like a dog.... When I look at it, I cannot help believing in Metempsychosis: there must dwell within this cat some very refined aristocratic soul, one that looks upon everything with supreme scepticism.

“What is the matter, Martha?”

“Nothing. I have only dropped a hairpin.”

A tortoise-shell pin has fallen out of her thick black tresses, and dropped on to the earth with a faint sound.

Martha is just now in a very lofty mood. This real world of ours strikes her as a contrast, ridiculous in its littleness, to the world we are speaking of. So she does not wish me to pick up that pin, though it has dropped quite close to me on the heather. To my mind this is too high-flown, too girlish. After all, the realities of life are paramount, and we ought to have so much intellectual culture as never to forget it.

Wherefore I give her the pin, smiling very sarcastically.

“After all,” I conclude, rising from the hollow ridge and preparing to walk home, “I quite understand that what I have said amounts to the same as belief in nothing. It is all the same to me whether I shall cease to be after death, or be transferred to a world wherein there is no idea of being, or of any Ego, conditioning my self-consciousness. I understand, too, that a world in which Being does not contradict Non-Being, is to our minds equivalent to no world at all. So that my faith is similar to your unfaith, but inferred and formulated otherwise.”

Janusz is very humble and wretched now. Sometimes, when we sit long together of an evening, he will fall asleep with his head in my lap, worn out with nervous exhaustion. And then I am face to face with something very strange.

I feel a mysterious dread of the torment of an everlasting vigil, together with a sense of responsibility beyond my strength. Yet I do not wake him, although I am shuddering with dread; I will not let him know that I am afraid!... There are certain things one should not speak about to children.... That I love solitude when alone, but that the feeling of solitude when some one is by me, fills me with unspeakable dread, for then I hear my soul uttering her triumphant laugh: this I would never confess to him.

Vigorous I am, and able to struggle for a long time. But even for warriors there come moments when they trustfully lay their tired heads on some one’s lap; when they feel secure in the knowledge of some one above them, watching over them, standing between them and their foes, between them and the Infinite, the Unknown.

Is there any man in the world who could thus lull my watchfulness to sleep? There is one, only one. But the price I should pay would be all that makes life charming.

When Janusz is sleeping on my lap, I then _invariably_ think of—Roslawski.

As a rule, it is from a novelist’s or an artist’s standpoint—from without and objectively—that I view whatever happens in my life; consciously throwing all my impressions into the form of sentences, rounded and complete, often affected and unnatural; and in everything I say, think, or do, seeking for dramatic, literary, or picturesque effects. This peculiarity I hold for one of the tragic sides of my life, since it almost entirely robs my impressions of their directness.

People sometimes blame me for being mannered, for attitudinizing, for performing everything with artifice, whether I make a bow or do my hair. And I fully admit they are right. But then, artificiality comes naturally to me. Every motion, every smile of mine is present to me before it is elicited: it is scrutinized and judged by me, as though I were some one else. For me, there is no present; I look at all things from out of the Future: there are no involuntary bursts of thought, no inarticulate words or mechanical gestures for me. And should I try to behave with apparent artlessness, I should then be artificial twice over.

This afternoon a carriage, covered with mud, and drawn by a couple of splendid sorrel horses, pulls up in front of our terrace. Imszanski jumps out, throwing the reins to the groom, who sits behind. Janusz welcomes him, and he slowly comes up the steps. He has driven thirty-five miles, but his impassive features bear not the slightest trace of fatigue.

He improves upon acquaintance. Beyond all doubt, he is the handsomest man I know: a great point in his favour. His movements, characterized by a certain graceful languor, betray his noble descent; in his bright eyes there is to be seen continual concentrated thought and tranquil, half-forgotten sorrow. He has every accomplishment, talks interestingly, elegantly, with literary turns and expressions; he has at his call every variety of smile but never laughs outright. Considerate restraint is his speciality.

His first words on entering are: “My sister sends you her greetings: she wanted to come with me, but I was afraid to take her. It is so long a journey, and the roads are in so bad a state now.”

He pays court both to Martha and to myself with equal politeness; with her he is more serious, with me more gallant. Which is the proper thing, as I am a visitor in the neighbourhood.

I am all but enchanted, and my eyes are continually fixed on him. And yet at the same time I know that this paragon of a man could never succeed in winning my love. From a physical point of view, I care even less for him than for Roslawski. This, I suppose, is precisely on account of his marvellous beauty, which may draw off my attention from him as a man and an intelligent being. I could gaze with just as much enthusiasm on his portrait.

We go out to inspect some new kinds of ornamental shrubs which Martha has recently had planted in the park. Janusz walks with me; Imszanski with Martha, a few paces before us.

These two make a pretty picture, on which I like to gaze. In this grand old park, they remind me of the days of yore, and the knights and their lady-loves. Martha, I remark, has a style and breeding that I lack. To help her over a plash of water, Imszanski gives her his hand. She gathers up her dress, just revealing her neat and shapely ankles. The pair are just like dancers in a minuet, and so handsome that I cannot find it in my heart to envy them.

Janusz walks at my side like a shadow, and follows my glances with eyes ablaze.

“A fine man, Imszanski: you like him, don’t you?” he asks. “But,” he goes on to say, “I don’t advise you to try your hand on him: he is another’s. Has loved long and hopelessly.”

“Has he?”

“When in Warsaw, he went the length of attempting suicide—unsuccessfully, I need not say.”

“But this love of his, is it not only hopeless, but unrequited too?”

“Well, he proposed—and was refused. But that’s no wonder. Such a man should never marry; a whole seraglio would not be enough for him.”

“H’m, yes; that would be quite in his line. Who is the girl? Does she live near?”

“Yes, she does.”

“And who may she be? Please tell me. Was she at the Sedniewski party?”

“Don’t ask; I must not tell. It has been kept secret.”

“But did anybody confide in you?”

“Why, no.”

“Then I have as much right to know as you have. I am awfully curious, and wonder at the girl’s taste.... Do I know her?”

He holds out for some time, but in the end I disarm him: though in the way I dislike most and very seldom employ, ... by wheedling and coaxing him. The secret shall go down to the grave with me, I promise him. He hesitates awhile; then says in an undertone:

“Martha.”

I do my best to conceal my unbounded astonishment under some commonplace expressions of faint surprise. I obviously have not the slightest intention to keep my word: I will ask Martha about the whole business. Can she possibly not be in love with such a Phœnix? Can she too have found him undesirable because of that beauty of his?