Part 6

The Frenchwoman at the neighbouring table was just putting on her gloves, while the actor paid the bill. I should very willingly have told Imszanski not to mind about us, but go on to his acquaintances, who we could see were expecting him. But I refrained, not wishing to lay on his shoulders a burden of gratitude for keeping this matter concealed from Martha, which might later have proved irksome to him.

Stephen, too, understood.

“We are here,” he presently said, “waiting for Madame Wildenhoff, Owinski with his intended, and Czolhanski. It is rather late now: I doubt whether they are going to turn up.”

Imszanski turned aside to say something to a waiter, when he noted with satisfaction that the actors had left the saloon.

He then said he hoped and trusted that we would not look upon him as an intruder, though he had thrust himself on us in such a way.

Czolhanski, a journalist, arrived at about one o’clock, together with Owinski and his fiancée, Miss Gina Wartoslawska, whom I had seen several times previously at Imszanski’s.

Her real name is Regina; but she is called Gina. In the movements of her lithe elastic figure is a sort of snake-like suppleness, which tells us of a nervous nature, burning with a passion almost painfully suppressed. She is like a tame panther. Her eyes, long, narrow, partly concealed beneath thin lids, wander hither and thither about the floor with a drooping, apathetic look. Her lips are broad, flattened as it were by many kisses, moist and crimson as if they bled. And, with all that, there is in her something of the type of a priestess.

She came in, drawing black gloves off her slender hands, greeted us with an unsmiling face, and at once called out to a waiter who was passing by:

“A glass of water!”

She drank the whole glass at one draught, and sat down at some distance from the table, with her head bent forward, and her hands clasped over her knees. Owinski took a seat close beside her.

“Czolhanski,” he told us, “has only just got through his critique of the leading actress in to-night’s play. We had to stay for him in the editor’s waiting-room.”

“Ah,” grumbled the critic, “it’s beastly, this work all done to order and at railway speed! Such a piece as that ought to be thought over till it is possible to form a definite judgment upon it. As it is, we are forced to save the situation by means of a lot of sententious generalities.”

At last, Madame Wildenhoff arrived with her husband. At the unexpected sight of Imszanski in our company, a deep blush mantled her face. She seated herself next to Gina, and burst into a fit of chuckling, shading her eyes with beautiful hands that carried many a ring. All this was rather unusual and disquieting. Imszanski flushed slightly; a warm haze, so thin that it could scarce be seen, bedimmed his eyes, and his long lashes drooped over them.

Wildenhoff, an unpleasant cut-and-dried sort of man, whose humour inclined to sarcastic silence, proposed that we should pass into a private room. She protested.

“Oh, no! I dearly love noise and music and an uproar all about me. We had better stay here, hadn’t we?”

Wildenhoff smiled at his wife and was presently deep in study of the bill of fare.

She again set to laughing without any cause: a disquieting sort of chuckle, with something like a sob now and then.

I glanced at the two couples, feeling a twinge of envy. “There is love between _them_.” ...

Oh, but all that was so very, very long ago!

I wish Stephen would fall in love with me. But he is always running after some theory or other. At times he is as droll as a boarding school girl. I do believe his friendship for me to be absolutely disinterested. He, on his side, declares that a handsome woman, as such, means nothing to him. The type he loves is uncultured, shallow-brained animality.

He is as yet too youthful. Men’s taste for women more spiritualized, more cultured, more quick-witted, is only a reaction: it shows a decline in the vital forces, and tells of old age about to set in.

All the time of our return home, he, rather in the clouds, holds forth with artificial animation.

“With you, Janka, I could well live alone in a wilderness, were you even twice as beautiful as you are—and never remember that I was in presence of a being of the other sex. And, indeed, this is the most natural thing in the world: if such a thought ever entered my brain, I should feel humiliated that a woman was mentally my equal.”

“But is it with perfect disinterestedness that you have chosen a pretty young woman for your best friend?”

“Why should I not do so? That gives me the advantage of a double pleasure: not only can I enjoy your conversation; I can enjoy your appearance as well.”

“You might just as easily take a handsome man for your friend.”

“Yes, but then beauty in a woman generally accompanies intelligence; whereas good-looking men are, as a rule, rather foolish. Moreover, however objectively I strive to judge of things, I must confess that a woman’s body is more handsome than a man’s.”

“And what of her mind?”

“Why, she has none: I mean there is no such thing as a feminine mind. Though, look you, it is not unlikely that women also have minds. There is nothing sexual about the brain, either way.”

“Yet you have always said I had the mind of a man.”

“I was wrong; as a friend, you are neither male nor female. You are something that I set in a class apart; and I want you to do the same by me.”

At our door, I take leave of the whole company. Imszanski desires to go on with “the ladies” a little farther, but he is back at once. I can guess why....

The Imszanskis are, as they have given out, “At Home” on Sundays. From three till dinner-time, the door is practically open to all. These “At Homes” are formal, tedious, and rather pretentious affairs. There are, besides, but few people who come; for Imszanski has no acquaintances with whom he is on really cordial terms.

But I like these Sundays: they soothe my nerves as warm baths do. With the people who come, I need not attempt to keep up any appearance of truthfulness. On the contrary, I say very far-fetched and most fantastic things—things, besides, that I know not to be likely to interest any one present.

But here is the field wherein Imszanski bears away the palm. Never are his movements more elegant, his smiles more cordial, his glances more winning. No one can better than he deal out the small change of social amenities in his looks, his superficial judgments on literature and on art; none, when addressing a compliment to a woman, can more subtly envelope what he means in a mist of allusions.

Both husband and wife appear to advantage. He, with the perfect culture of his ancient and noble descent, is simply enchanting. Martha is a contrast to him, as standing for something newer, but deeper: the culture given by unassuageable sorrow, the concentrated reverie seen in the sad looks of those dark-blue eyes, albeit a kind smile always flutters on her parched red lips.

Now and again, the Wildenhoffs come here on Sundays. They produce a most interesting effect. Everybody is saying that Madame has an intrigue with Imszanski. Martha knows that, and every one knows that Martha knows: and she feigns ignorance, though aware that no one believes her. So here is being piled up an immense heap of lies: which is a curious situation, and as such not unpleasing to me.

Of Madame Wildenhoff, Lombroso would have said that she belonged to the class of courtesans “by right of birth.” Her snowy flesh, her golden hair, her brows, blackly looming above azure eyes, her rosy cheeks and scarlet mouth,—the whole of this fairy colouring gives an appearance of complete artificiality; and her wonderful shape and inborn talent for coquetry make one regret that such gifts should have been lost on such a very unsuitable field of action. For I myself have not the least doubt that need of money is but a secondary motive with those who join the “frail sisterhood.” Were it, as is generally supposed, the chief inducement, what should force men to lead lives so similar to the lives of demi-mondaines?

I like to watch Imszanski with her, playing the part of the host. Nothing, it would seem, nothing in the whole world can possibly throw him off his balance. He greets her just as he would any other visitor, with a set “So-pleased-to-meet-you” sort of smile; gives her as much of his time as he does to any of the women there; and converses with her, partly flirting, partly freezing her with the haughty consciousness of his preëminence as a drawing-room “lion.” He makes no endeavour to conceal his liking for her, but shows just as much as it becomes him to have for any young and handsome woman. It would be a breach of the laws of hospitality, if he had not for each of these a few discreet compliments, and for each a look of warm admiration, beaming from those ever half-curtained almond eyes.

Orcio is sometimes called in from the nursery; and in he comes—a little fair-haired boy in black velvet, with a superb collar of yellowish lace. The ladies talk to him in French, in order to praise his accent.

To-day the following conversation took place:

“_Qui aimes-tu davantage, Georges,—papa ou maman?_” was the question put to him by Madame Wildenhoff, who, her hand in a white glove of Danish leather, was stroking the boy’s curls with a blandishing smile.

“_C’est papa_,” was Orcio’s reply.

“_Et pourquoi donc?_”

“_Parce que maman ne rit jamais._”

Whereupon everybody set hurriedly to expatiate upon the accomplishments of Orcio,—who is not yet four! This they did, wishing to hide a certain confusion felt: that _enfant terrible_ had so unconsciously touched on a matter that every one knew, but no one talked about.

Madame Wildenhoff, who no doubt expected the boy’s answer, and had perhaps elicited it purposely, was the only person to underline its meaning; she let her long eye-lashes droop over her rosy cheeks, pretending to be shocked at the unseemly associations that it had by her means called up.

Martha laughed in merry contradiction of what Orcio had just said; then, kissing his fair brow, she told him to make a nice bow to the company and go back to the nursery with the maid.

Society is irksome to Martha now. We two often went together formerly to the theatre or to a concert: at present she cares no more to go.

I mostly spend my evenings with her, in interminable conversations. She either relates something to me, or else she “gives sorrow words.” I listen.

She is just now much grieved that her husband Witold has for nearly a fortnight hardly ever been at home. Some days we even dine without him.

“It is surely so,” she was saying yesterday. “He enjoys his manhood to the full: everything is his. There, he has ‘Bohemian’ society, revelling, fast people, singing, champagne, flowers, and forgetfulness: here, he finds the pure and quiet light of the domestic fireside, the delights of fatherhood, the love of a faithful wife. When he is tired of one sort of pleasure, why then he tries the other.... And _we_—we are all crippled, helpless things—all!”

Silence for a moment.

“There he gets his amusement at the expense of those poor weaklings, whose souls have been wrenched away from them, who have lost the feeling of their human dignity, the consciousness of their right to live, even the very sense of pleasure; who groan under that most unjust burden, their own self-contempt; who feel the continual oppression of a guilt which does not exist, and for whom the first wrinkle is as a sentence of death.

“But on his domestic hearth there beams another fire, and beams on another kind of weakling; a strange creature, now no longer able to descend into Life’s hurly-burly; for whom certain deeds, for many a century regarded with scorn, have through long heredity of atavistic feelings become really loathsome....

“Our duty is to amuse _them_—the lords of life and death—with the effects of contrast; that _they_ may have the assurance of having experienced the whole gamut of emotions, that they may enjoy their manhood to the full.”

When Witold came home to-day from the club (which was at about noon) Martha received him in a beautiful white _peignoir_, trimmed with Angora fur, and asked him whether he had yet breakfasted. He thanked her graciously, kissed her hand and brow, and desired to see Orcio.

Martha changed colour. She is not so jealous, even of women, as she is of her beautiful little boy, perhaps because he is with her constantly.

The nursemaid brought Orcio, who at once jumped on to his father’s knee, and began talking at the top of his voice about a number of things which had happened to interest him since the day before.

Imszanski was enchanted with the little one, and kissed his rosy face.

For men like him, there is something incomparably sublime and public-spirited in the fact of being a father; this they hold to be the only thing that compensates and atones for the life they lead.

Martha shrank away; standing at a distance, fury in her heart and a smile on her face, she looked on at the father caressing his boy.

“Look, you,” she whispered to me, “this—this is my vocation, this the mission of my life; all the pain I have undergone, all the rage of my never-ending and vain revolt, all my disappointed existence; all these have been, only that they two should sit here thus, forgetting me entirely; and that all the wrong done to me by the father should come to life again in that son of his!”

But Witold, having caressed Orcio, went to bed. Not until the evening did he wake up, fresh and hearty-looking, to dine with us, kiss Martha’s hand, retail with lively wit several stories then going the round of the town, and make his way to the club once more.

In his love-affairs, Wiazewski is just as fickle and as insatiable as Imszanski; but their “spheres of influence” are different. Wiazewski has a liking for seamstresses, shop-assistants, and so forth; whereas Imszanski is specially interested in cocottes (even his intrigue with Madame Wildenhoff is a case in point). Neither of the two has any great liking for the other, in spite of their mutually courteous bearing at all times. Imszanski has against my friend that he is too democratic: whereas Wiazewski looks on Imszanski as a fool.

The latter explains his dislike for _demi-mondaines_ thus:

“I have a great liking for misdeeds, but not when committed by professional criminals.”

The art of playing with his victims has been brought by him to the acme of perfection. To this end, he employs what naturalists call “mimicry.” His features being rather common, he has no trouble in putting a girl off her guard; he makes up as a commercial man, or a lackey, or a waiter; and in such parts he expresses himself most eloquently in the slang of those classes, which he has picked up to perfection.

He is a thorough expert in the art of getting into touch with the minds of such people; and the ease with which he finds his way through a labyrinth of ideas quite unknown to us is truly admirable.

On principle, he is for continual change; but latterly he has been making an exception, and declares he has hit upon the right sort, or nearly so. For some time he has been “keeping company” with a girl, whom he has, on account of her exceptional qualities, distinguished from the common herd. I once saw her at his lodgings and was struck with her good looks.

He has been reading a letter from her to-day. I asked him to give it to me as a “document,” which he very readily consented to do.

It runs thus:

“Dear Stephen I must tell you about something that is Roman the intended husband of Genka came to see me at the shop yesterday evening and he set a-talking to me this way don’t I have no notion where Genka is so I answer back what business of mine is that and he just says don’t you make believe for Genka is in Krucza with that there mechanic and he keeps her I hear is in love with her but I’ll pay him out for it, only the street and the number where he lives are gone clean out of my head can you tell me I know his name is Stephen and I answer this way don’t you go worriting an honest fellow for he don’t have nothing to say to no girls let alone such hussies as Genka he asked me where you lived and I said Krucza number 129 fourth floor and Stephen Tworkowski is your name and he said thankee and hooked it and he says he’ll ask the porter in Wspolna and I said don’t you poke your nose in or you’ll get your head punched as you did once before when you flung dirt at me so if he comes you tell him so and give the beast a talking to.... And something else my dear darling ideal I write this I love you to distraction I am regularly off my head with thinking of you and I have your photo before me and kiss it night and day. O God how I love him more than my life more than my faith I can’t tell what sin I have sinned that I have to pay so dear and you dearest you are so cold and you’ll bring me to my grave with your coldness and in no time too I don’t know but it seems to me you told Elizabeth I slept in Hoza and she makes a mock of me and I don’t care a fig for I am daft for your love no one won’t cure me and no one can’t it’s too late I loved you when I saw you first and shall till my life ends and so long as I don’t put an end to it and who will make me do that but you Stephen my dearest pet and sweetheart.

“I end this scrawl of mine throwing away my pen crying my eyes out and dying of hunger for that blessed Sunday.

“Your unhappy or rather love-sick

HELA.”

Quite aware that I am doing wrong, I let Martha look back into her past; and I even question her myself so as to bring before her eyes the long dismal perspective of her wounded love, I listen in the manner she likes best, calmly and without any show of compassion. Nor have I any for her, any more than for a fish that must needs live in cold water, or for a bat that cannot bear the sunlight. Martha likes to suffer, and—perhaps for this very reason—she is compelled to suffer. Indeed, she is something of a Sybarite in her almost abnormal sensitiveness to pain. She is fond of telling me all the petty foolish troubles of an injured wife; and this procures her an odd sense of what may be called a sort of enjoyment.

“But, all the same, there was a time once when he loved you, did he not?”

“Oh, Witold declares that up to now he has loved none but me!”

“Well, well; but then at what time did _this_—the present phase begin? For some time at least, he must have been faithful to you.”

“Oh, yes, for a few months. Quite at the beginning. Though I myself was never happy.... First of all, during the six weeks before our wedding, I was constantly a prey to such mystic terrors that I came near losing my senses. You know that I do not admit any of those hackneyed maxims of morality—and yet I continually felt that some evil thing was afoot, and a day of reckoning close at hand. And besides, how intolerable then was the thought that now I _had_ to marry him, however averse I might feel to the act; that now I had more at stake upon my side than he on his!”

“And afterwards, by the seaside?”

“Oh, then it was entrancing! I almost felt happy. But it lasted so short a time! Shortly after our arrival I fell sick, and grew unwieldy and weakly and plain. And then, if you can believe me, surrounded with all those marvels of nature and of art, I was always longing for Klosow, my own place!”

After a silence of a few minutes, she went on:

“I saw a drawing by Brenner. It was always in my thoughts; a woman who had died after an operation, stretched on a table, stark and stiff. There was a man bending over her, mourning; his hair was like Witold’s. And another picture, showing the tragedy of motherhood: a young mother has just breathed her last; on her bosom sits a naked child, a loathsome idiot, looking out at life with wide open, bewildered, lack-lustre eyes. I can’t help fancying that Orcio resembles that child.”

With a sudden abrupt movement, she rang for the man-servant.

“Ask the nurse why the child is not in bed yet. I hear it making a noise. Tell her she must put it to bed. Or else take it farther away from this room.”

When the servant had gone out, I said to her:

“Why, what made you speak so angrily to him.”

“Really, I cannot recognize myself any more: my nerves are so horribly unstrung.”... And she sank into a sombre reverie.

“Tell me more,” I said, to draw her out.

“More? Well, I was not so badly off then. We took delight in the blue sky, in the murmuring green sea, and in our all but absolute solitude. Witold was ever by my side, tender and kind—masking with his exquisite courtesy the disgust I must have made him feel. Why, for myself I myself often felt pity and aversion; I who had never before been other than graceful all my life.

“Then things went worse.... Listen; but it is too much for me just now.”

“Then don’t talk of it, Martha.”

“Ah! what does it matter after all? If I could forget ... but I can’t.

“A few weeks before George’s birth, Witold for the first time spent the night away from home. I sat up all the time, and looked out through the window over the sea. Ah, that night!

“The servants had gone to bed long before. There was a great storm, with boisterous gusts of wind: and I gave ear to the never-ceasing roar of the waves. You know what a visionary I am. I at once fancied Witold must have been sailing in a boat to the farther shore of the bay, and gone down to the bottom of the sea. I was horribly alarmed for his sake; and for a time, not an inkling of the truth flashed upon my mind. The horror of my fancy came over me so strongly that I quite forgot all about his past.... For I believed with faith unbounded in his immense love for me, and should have scouted, as a ridiculous notion, the idea of his possibly being unfaithful. I was out of my mind with terror. I counted the hours that went by, in agonized expectation, surrounded with the dark cloudy night, and hearing the terrific howling and rolling of the winds and waves.... Ah, that night!

“In the morning he came in.

“With the mien of a youthful page, he doffed his hat to the ground in a courtly bow, and stood motionless in my presence, humble, clasping his hands: then, in a soft sweet voice somewhat broken by emotion, he said, in an accent of dismay:

“‘Ah! my lady, I am afraid, greatly afraid!’

“I did not rush to welcome him, nor did I cry out aloud: I felt too weak for any display of joy. But at that first instant, in the sole knowledge that he was living, an infinite intensity of quiet and fathomless and endless bliss flooded my heart: and I was minded to exclaim, like Mary Magdalene at the Sepulchre, ‘Rabboni: which is to say, Master!’

“And then up rose the sun!

“He had never before appeared so admirable to me, as in that attitude of a page of Mediæval times, and with the playful humility of his bright smile; he had never yet been so loved by me, so dear beyond all measure. No, I had never been so glad in all my life as in this one short instant of consolation!

“And yet they say that women have intuitive minds!

“I was as it were caught and suspended in an aërial cobweb that stretched over an abyss of waters; and there I gazed upon the golden glitter of the morning landscape now that the tempest was over—gazed into the blue and shimmering stillness. Beneath me, under the bridge of hanging gossamer, rolled the sombre sea of dread and death; before me rose the sea of life, crimson and blood-red in hue. But I—I saw nothing there, save the dawn and the sunshine.”

Here she broke off, closed her eyes, and, resting her head on the arm of her easy-chair, remained some time plunged in the contemplation of that past scenery, all azure and gold. I let her rest so for a while, and then, rousing her:

“Well, and what then?” said I.

She knit her brows slightly.