Part 5

I am sure my answer to Janusz will be delayed. To-night Smilowicz and Roslawski accompanied me home together. I cannot say whether I shall get any opportunity for a private talk with him. Perhaps it is better so: but, then, Janusz is waiting for his answer down in Klosow.

Roslawski is the one man in the world before whose gaze my eyes must droop. That alone can throw me off my balance, rob me of my customary untroubled assurance; for it is the only force able to master mine.

Towards the end, our talk turns to love and marriage.

The latter Smilowicz looks upon from an economic standpoint, and thinks it is, in our present conditions of life, a necessary evil. All the same, he informs Obojanski that a certain mutual acquaintance of theirs, who married not long ago, is perfectly happy with his wife.

“Ah, yes,” Obojanski guardedly observes, “in the first months, even such a thing is not impossible.”

Roslawski’s face puts on a cold smile. Indeed, he is in favour of marriage, as is quite natural with a man who has sown his wild oats, and is desirous of love that is lawful. The fastest men I ever knew were theoretically in favour of monogamy. Imszanski, too, always told Martha that, were it not for the fickleness of women and various other untoward conditions, he would be happiest with one woman and one alone.

On this point, Obojanski is a sceptic; this is the only subject on which he can speak wittily.

“And you,—do you intend to marry for love?” Roslawski asks me suddenly, with a subtle tinge of flippancy in his tone, such as men of his kind always use in speaking to women: an attitude with him quite instinctive and unreasoned, since he is very far from sharing Obojanski’s prejudice concerning the inferiority of our sex.

A sudden qualm of terror seizes me, but I master it, and say with a tranquil smile: “Your question makes me feel as if under examination. Confess now that you are at present wanting to know what my reply will be, not what I really intend to do.”

There is an ironical gleam in his eyes.

“You may take my word for it that I am not,” he answers emphatically.

“In that case, I’ll tell you as much as I myself know. If I marry for love, it will not last very long; if, on the contrary, I do so with judgment and out of a conscious conviction that the man is destined for me, then I shall be faithful to my husband all my life.”

“And which of these alternatives do you prefer?”

“The second,” I reply; and add truthfully, “for there are certain classes of feeling in which I object to changes.”

“Really? But you would have the same result, even if you married for love.”

“I am afraid I cannot bring myself to believe in the eternal duration of mere feeling. Love in marriage, as a rule, becomes in time a sort of mutuality of habit, a sense of solidarity, as it were, and now and then even a brotherhood of minds. It is just in such cases that divorce would be advisable.”

“And when it is a marriage of reason?”

“Why, then the question is correctly stated from the first; at the outset, suitability of characters and of individualities are taken into consideration, so as to prevent any possibility of future disagreement.”

“And yet it is possible to obtain the continuance of love by incessantly watching over it, by not unfrequently putting on a mask, and by keeping private certain emotions and states of mind which might prejudice one party in the eyes of the other.”

How the remembrance of Janusz comes back to me as I listen! Of all this, _he_ knew nothing at all.

“I doubt whether so much trouble is very profitable,” I return. “The game is hardly worth the candle.”

“And yet some there are,” he goes on to say, “for whom present bliss has no value, if they know beforehand that the morrow will take it away. And they often prefer to renounce it entirely.”

The words are spoken calmly, without any apparent significance; yet there is in their tone, I fancy, an under-current of ominous import.

“Well,” I say, repressing my irrational dread, “then let all such take care to marry with judgment.”

“Nevertheless, to give love and get in its place only intellectuality is not a good bargain, I fear.”

Now—_now I understand_—and I almost feel hatred for the man. Yes, I may throw myself under the wheels of a locomotive, but never will I say I do that out of love for it!

“Reasonable people should remember that ‘the heart is no servant,’ and that, beyond intellectual and conscious resolve, we can find nothing on which we can safely count.” This I say, as light-heartedly and as smilingly as I can, feeling meanwhile the dismay of a horrible misgiving—almost a certitude—clutching at my heart.

And now at last I am alone with Roslawski and Obojanski. I remain in my corner all the evening, saying little, overwhelmed with dread of the coming decisive moment. That tall, red-haired gentleman in glasses,—I simply detest him!

Roslawski sets to playing Wagner,—stiffly, correctly, like an automaton. His playing grates strongly upon my nerves: each of the notes taps on my heart-strings.

Obojanski is enchanted. He goes about the room on tiptoe, making the floor creak as he walks; he fetches music from the book-shelves for Roslawski, and lays them in heaps on the piano. Now and again he glances at me, and whispers, almost aloud: “How very beautiful!” He finally brings me a volume of some German encyclopædia, and opens it at the article “Wagner,” which he expects me to read.

I am so upset that I nearly break down. Resting my head on the back of the sofa, I look up at the ceiling to swallow down my tears as they well up. And I begin to weave fancies.

A wonderful immemorial forest, through which, clad in armour, knights are riding on white steeds. Most lofty oaks, strong-limbed and gnarled, with black trunks and dark-blue foliage, strike their roots deep into the ground. Amid mosses in hue like malachite, ferns put forth their sprays of sea-green lace. Fairies dance merrily among the trees, and scatter round them pearls of ringing laughter. And far away, lost in reverie, upon a dark, enchanted lake there floats a swan. A strange, clear, chilly splendour illuminates the twilight.

All at once a thunderbolt, a red thunderbolt falls: and the oak forest and the lake vanish into the depths of the earth.... Yet thunderstorms only take place on sultry summer days.

No, no, all this was but a dream.

Now there comes before me the infinite wilderness of my own ice-plains, hard-frozen beneath the cold and glassy skies. I am afraid, I am horribly afraid, I cannot breathe, seeing those endless plains of ice, under that canopy of green and frosty light: it is the kingdom of my soul!

But far away, at the sky-line, where without warmth the Aurora Borealis beams, there stands a huge statue, a basalt-hewn statue. This recks not of the unbounded wilderness, nor of the chilly gleams of the Northern Lights, nor of the stars, those silver eyes of Time. Tranquil and undismayed it stands. That is Roslawski.

On I march towards him, plodding through the deep and drifting snow; at his feet, I fall upon my knees.

And I beseech him to hide the boundless wilderness from my sight; to protect me from the icy air of death, so that I may dwell in this land of my soul, and yet not die. “For behold, this day I am weak exceedingly, this day I stand in fear of the plains of ice.”

But he says: “Here in the snows around me, you must first lay out a garden as of the tropics; and yourself must blossom into a flame-red and purple rose.”

And I make answer: “My lord, without the light of the sun, how is any rose to blow?”

Once more a thunderclap resounds. He is gone. I am all alone amid my ice-plains: and I live yet.

Bound I am, with fetters made of ice. The silvery wings of my soul are glittering under the canopy of heaven, and in the greenish splendour of the Northern Lights. She would not share with me my years of burning heat, and now she will not have me share this realm of hers. A snake is lying on my bosom, and, coiled about my neck, sucks the warm blood thence....

We bid good-night to Obojanski, and go out into the street together.

“I have to tell you something; or, rather, I have one question, only one, to put to you.” These are my first words.

“I am quite at your service.”

From the instant when I begin to speak, the sense of dread passes away from me, and an immense quietude takes its place.

“I must, however, lay down one condition. I will have from you no other answer save the word _Yes_ or _No_. I do not wish—and this is of consequence to me—to hear any comments whatever. Do you agree?”

“Most willingly,” he returns, with a smile; “the condition that you lay down I certainly shall keep.”

“You must know then,” I go on, “that, since I became acquainted with you, I have known you for the only man who could make me happy. Some time ago, another man, one who deserves my sympathy and whom I trust, asked me to marry him. Being of opinion that, in the last resort, the knowledge that one is greatly loved may serve as a substitute for happiness, I have taken a month to think the matter over. My decision depends upon your answer. I ought perhaps to add that I can foresee what this is likely to be; but that I am very anxious to get absolute certainty on this point, lest I should at some future time have to reproach myself with having let my chance of happiness go by.”

There is a silence.

“May I venture to ask you to put your question in a more definite form?”

“Are you, or are you not, willing to marry me?”

Another silence.

“No: and yet, supposing that....”

“Remember my condition.”

No more is said.

In front of my lodgings we bid each other a calm and friendly farewell.

The next morning, on my way to my office, I put a long scented envelope into a post-box. It is addressed to Janusz.

Nevertheless, the decision which it contains is—not to marry him.

Yes, I am now the bond-slave of my soul: these my ice-plains, it is no longer mine to leave them.

I have done with suffering.... During all these long days and nights, I have not shed one tear. I do not suffer now: the agony-delirium has passed those limits, beyond which no difference is felt between joy and misery, beyond which there is no night of woe, that contrasts with day.

In the still autumn twilight, I am shut up in my dark and lonely room. Lest I should awake my soul, that has fallen asleep, I am pacing the soft carpet with noiseless steps.

I am in terror of the very movements which I myself make. Trembling with cold—or is it with my own emptiness of heart?—and leaning against my doorway in the darkness, wrapped in the folds of my soft shaggy portière, I open my swooning lips to utter a soundless cry, and look staring into the mobile fluttering dark with tired and quiet gaze.

I do not suffer; I exist—in a world wherein the night of woe no longer is a contrast with day, wherein there prevails a tranquil dusk, without sun and without stars.

There is no Ego of mine. I am beyond existence and beyond nothingness—in that world wherein dies the immemorial conflict between dream and vigil; where Wrong, robed in her queenly purple, is no longer shadowed by Vengeance, in her pallid green attire; where stony Hatred no longer hugs in her fierce embrace the weeping god of love; where the marble statue of Pride no longer renders homage to the grim spectre, Fear; wherein there are no more wretched victories, nor the portentous delights of worshipping oneself and the Power of Self!

No, there is no more any Ego of mine.... I am in a world to which even the unlimited fields of Infinity cannot reach, for it was everlastingly beyond all limits. I am in a world in which Duration neither flows nor stands still; wherein Solitude is not, though neither are there spirits to commune with; where there is only no solitude, because there is no Me.

Do I suffer? No. I am in a world where I have no being.

I could well die, if I chose: but my body, well-favoured as it is, would fain not part from my bright, though mournful soul. Therefore am I willing to live.

But there is nought for which I can any longer care; I dwell in a world which my soul is never to behold: for when Death comes, my soul’s existence will be over.

Yet not because nothingness is _there_. To believe that _there_ is nothingness, one must indeed have an intense power of faith. I cannot bring myself to accept the creed of nothingness. For in the world where I am now, neither Being is, nor Non-Being; there is neither the Ego nor the Non-Ego; nor has the soul ever laid her icy hand upon the body: I am in a world wherein there is no soul of mine.

My soul will end its being at the instant of Death, not because that world is a world of nothingness, but because therein is no such thing as indestructibility of substance.

I might, if I chose, die; but death matters nothing to me. To solve the riddle of life, I do not require death. For now I know all. I know that, in that other world, knowledge and ignorance are not incompatible, nor is there in that world any desire to know. And therefore I shall never solve the riddle of life, because I have solved it now.

I know that which no man knows: that to read the riddle, I need not know all things. For there is no Me!

And I am indeed in a world which contradicts our world, but with a contradiction in which negation and assertion are the same.

But in one thing I do believe—the only thing that is.

And that thing is: _No!_

Such a _No_ as does not contradict _Yes_, but means what _No_ means, taken together with _Yes_.

Such a _No_ as Roslawski said to me.

And if I suffer nothing, it is because I belong to a world wherein joy and sorrow are the same.

II THE “GARDEN OF RED FLOWERS”

Imszanski was patient and persevering, and determined to take no repulse as final. In the end he had the good luck to come at the right time, when Martha was in a favourable mood: whereupon she relented, gave up all her objections, and married him very willingly.

For close on a year after their marriage, I had no sight of them. They were travelling about Europe, and Martha had never been abroad. Every two or three days I would get a post-card from her, which I of course “read between the lines.” Plunged though she was in an atmosphere of intense bliss, she was continually revolving the thought of death in her mind. But that is probably no unfrequent phenomenon in such cases.

She returned, bringing with her a son a few months of age—returned very pale, and like a shadow, yet prettier than she had ever been before.

Having grown much thinner, she seems to be taller now. She wears her dark plaited hair round her tiny head, like a crown. Her age is thirty or thereabouts. Imszanski, though considerably older, seems of that age too.

They have rented a flat in Warsaw, and insisted on my sharing it with them. But I spend the best part of my day in the office, just as in former times.

To me, life brings nothing new; my memories are mostly colourless or grey. Truly, I am disappointed with myself, since I belong to the class of those who “give great promise” all their life.

All the same, though I cannot overcome this, my “tristesse de vivre,” I daily look upon it with more indifferent serenity.

You at first look straight in front of you. Then, when a certain point has been passed, you begin to look behind you. Now, this point is by no means the instant when happiness passes you by, or you are struck some awful blow, waking you up from a sweet illusion; it is a moment which may, like every other, go by in laughter or in tears: it may even be slept through; and you do not know when it comes, but you know well enough when it has passed.

For me, it has passed: and now I look behind me. Though I should prefer to look nowhere at all. I look back, and I think all that was perhaps not worth such a fuss.... And yet!...

In any case, I have learned some wisdom, and wisdom is eternal. There remains of it enough for me to smile in my solitude. And there remains some pride, too,—the pride of knowing that I am what I am.

On returning from a concert, I went with my friend, Wiazewski, to Lipka, to meet the company we usually see there.

I take some interest in the atmosphere, reeking and tainted though it is, of a high-class restaurant, crowded with “gilded youth,” old financiers, beautiful actresses, and _demi-mondaines_. The saloon is a large one, lit with wide-branched chandeliers. The air is thick with tobacco-smoke, through which the sparkles of a thousand lights and the brilliant notes of the merry orchestra assail both eye and ear. The ceiling is painted in antique style. The background is all speckled with bright stains—blots of white napery on the tables, and candles shaded with glass “lampions” of various tints, forming spots of many a colour. There is a twinkling mingled with a tinkling: the rays of electric blossoms over our heads, and around us the jingling of cups and glasses, join together in a seething tumult.

This is a life apart. Not the daily round of appearances—the mere mask which hides life,—but life immediate, naked, real. You see here that in spite of all it is possible to be merry and to care for nothing. Here are no unsightly garments, no clumsy inartistic motions; no children (that most objectionable element in life!); no “respectable” women, who are to be recognized by their ugliness, their want of style and charm, their tediousness and stupidity, and the fact that, when they think at all, they are always hopelessly depressed. This is a very good illustration of the “Law of Selection”: in marriage, the qualities of virtue and fidelity are of more account as guarantees of felicity than such endowments as beauty and health. Beautiful women of a lively temperament are set aside as too knowing, too exacting, and of doubtful trustworthiness: and so they go to swell the ranks of the fallen.

For my own part, did I not fear the accusation of anti-social tendencies, I would, from the height of my cheerless philosophical eminence, declare that I view the “frail sisterhood,” as an institution, without intolerance. Therein breathes something that tells of times gone by: something existing, but of which men do not speak. There exist human beings, scorned as a class, whatever their personal endowments may be, with whom no other class is allowed to come in contact, under pain of defilement:—not unlike pariahs. These beings are to be bartered for precious metals by means of a secret contract—bought as the slaves of ancient times were bought. Their existence is kept a secret quite disinterestedly, for the mere sake of the secret itself: every one knows all about them. In our days, so hyper-civilized, so deprived of all poetry by reason of excessive culture, this is a most astonishing state of things.

Nearly every man here present has a wife, actual or intended: but these are not permitted to enter: they would be by far too much out of place.

No doubt, their wives, having put the children to bed, had some words with the servant over the daily account of money spent, and put on a clean night-gown (of a wretchedly bad cut, by the way), say their prayers and lay themselves down to sleep under the red woolen coverlet, thinking all the time: “How late he always returns after these meetings!” or else she may bite her nails with fury, revolving in her mind the idea of another angry scene with her husband—a scene foredoomed as heretofore to be without effect. Or again, in agonized resignation, she may bend over the baby’s cradle, and murmur mournfully, with naïve pathos: “For your sake, my child!” And the girls whose troths are plighted have long ago gone to sleep under the wing of their domestic guardians, lulled to slumber with some such sweet fancies as: “Most men have intrigues before they marry: he, and he alone, has surely none.” And so forth....

They are foolish—but fortunate, because not allowed to come in here.

Ah! once upon a time, in the days of my childish marvellings, how bitterly did I weep over all these things!

“Stephen, how late is it?” I asked Wiazewski.

“It will soon be midnight. Our friends are not coming, it would seem. Are you in a hurry to get home?”

“I never am; I have got a latch-key, and so wake nobody when I come in. But are you not yourself sometimes engaged of an evening?”

He shook his head, his teeth shining good-humouredly in a friendly smile.

“You know perfectly well that there is not an assignation I would not set aside to spend an evening with you. To me, friendship is a boon far rarer and far more precious than love.”

“I do not hold with you at all. I have enough of the cold consideration granted me by the world.”

Stephen smiled again.

“There is no help for it, Janka,” he said. “Men of our times are too weakly to love an all-around woman: the very thought of one gives them an unpleasant shock. The day for types of women so extremely complex as you are has now gone by; at present women are preferred who display some very distinct and special characteristic: especially either primitive natures, or such as have been depraved by civilization; or types of spirituality or of sensuality; women either of very well-balanced minds, or nervous even to hysteria; or, again, those in whom warmth of heart or a distinguished bearing prevails. And that is why the monogamic instinct is now dying out completely: in a few years’ time, it will be no more.”

Wiazewski was on the war-path, the topic being a favourite one of his.

“For how can a man be true to his wife, if he takes her ‘for better, for worse, ... till death do them part,’ only, let us say, to kiss a mole that she has on her neck, just under her left ear? Monogamy requires exceedingly strong, rich, abundant natures.”

“Then it would follow that our near future would witness our return to the hetairism of primæval times?”

“No doubt; for both the primitive instincts of the senses, and their ultra-refined activity, have identically the same result.”

A handsome woman, with strikingly original features, accompanied by an elderly man, clean-shaven (an actor probably) went by near our table. She too had the look of an actress.

Wiazewski’s eyes followed her with keen scrutiny.

“A fine woman,” I remarked.

He turned his eyes away from her.

“She is not my sort,” he replied. “Far too cultured for my taste.”

Then he again returned to the subject.

“Hetairism, yes. Yes, undoubtedly. But if it all depended upon me, I should wish for one slight restriction.... You see, one of the most genial types of womanhood is the _wifely_ type: that of a woman faithful, trustworthy, absolutely your own.... It were desirable that such a type should not perish entirely. But I should wish her only as a class to contrast with others, and as a haven of rest, when wearied with those.”

I was gazing at the pretty Frenchwoman; suddenly I saw a delighted expression flash over her striking and reposeful face, somewhat harem-like in its beauty. I instinctively followed her glance, and—not without somewhat of embarrassed astonishment—discovered Imszanski. He was just entering from the doorway, and going through the saloon, distributing on all sides bows or smiles, as a beautiful woman does flowers. His wonderfully sweet and dreamy eyes were seeking some one in the room.

A sudden flash lit them up, as they met the gaze of the handsome Frenchwoman.

Imszanski, on his way to them, happened to see me, and Wiazewski in my company.

Directly, and without showing the least surprise or embarrassment, he changed his expression and saluted us with urbane cordiality, and though he had just gone past our table, he returned, shook hands, and begged leave to sit down beside us.