Part 7

“Then, ah! then! It was a mere idle question, for I troubled about nothing now that I had him again; but I asked him what he had been doing all night.

“‘Oh, but I am in fear, in such fear of you,’ he said, smiling, kneeling down before me, and clasping his hand—so! You know the gesture well; it is almost the embodiment of childlike humility.

“‘Oh, what?’

“‘I want you to promise you will not be angry with me.’

“I was suddenly torn with a sharp misgiving.

“‘No, do not tell me, Witold,’ I whispered.

“But he was unable to conceal anything from me. All he said in excuse was that I ought to pardon everything, by reason of his great love; that no woman could ever snatch from me the place which I held in his heart. That he had not been truly unfaithful, since his true and only love had always been with me; I was the only woman that his soul loved, and not his senses.... It is ever the same: stretch out your hands for life, and Death will come to you!”

“And what did you do?”

“In the first moments I did not understand all. He again and again said he loved me a hundred times more than ever before; I was the only woman, so pure, so ideal ... and I could not make out what he meant. But my hands, when touched by his lips, grew cold as ice.

“He was frightened, and tried to soothe me; said he would never do it any more; it was not properly his fault, he had been overtaken with wine: and besides, she—she was indeed most beautiful.

“At the bare memory, I saw his eyes flash bright. Oh, he is a _connoisseur_ in women!

“And then, at last, I understood it all; and I thought (believe me, with the utmost sincerity): ‘Why, rather than this, has he not been drowned in the depths of the sea?’

“A mist came before my eyes: I rubbed them to see clear. Then a sudden pain clutched at my heart and made me writhe with torture. I fainted; when I came to, I was seized with fits of hysteria. In short, I made all the scenes that the typical ‘injured wife’ is wont to make.

“Then, at the time when George came, I was dangerously ill. Witold did not admit that he had done me wrong, nor did he come near me all the time. Later, he justified himself by saying that he could have been of no use, and was himself far too sensitive to bear the sight of suffering.

“Finally, when all danger was over, and Orcio was making the house ring with the noise he made, there was the same night over again; and he was again ‘a little flushed with wine,’ and ‘guilty of no offense’; again I was ‘his only love.’ And later, the same scene was repeated over and over, and at shorter intervals. And this day ... it is just as usual....

“And now I am looking into the very bottom of my soul. Have you ever seen it? An open coffin, in which there are no worms, there is no corruption. Only patches of colour, continually fading and changing and reviving, and forming lovely, lovely stars—just as in a kaleidoscope. And these hues glisten like the scales of a serpent which rolls and coils itself in ecstasy.”

A smile passed over her face. Then she gave a long shudder and closed her eyes fast.

Starting up on a sudden, she joined her hands behind her bare and shapely neck.

“If you knew, Janka,” she whispered, “if you only knew how I love him! If you knew how I am longing for him every moment when he is away! If you knew how fondly, how wildly, how madly I love the exceeding sweetness of his mouth!”

Madame Wildenhoff does not belong to the class of women that Martha was speaking of. I think that, were it not for her intrigue with Imszanski, even Martha herself might acknowledge her as a “complete woman.” One may, however, be a complete woman, and yet not a complete human being. We are not yet in the habit of distinguishing these two ideas, as we distinguish between “human being” and “man.” The part of a human being is one so seldom played by a woman—they have so few opportunities of doing so—that _we expect their womanliness to comprise the whole of humanity_. Nor do we realize how much we lower woman by such an expectation.

Now, as a woman, Madame Wildenhoff is complete, although her human nature cannot be said to be rich.

Her life, which she told me with the utmost frankness, has not been wanting in colour. The daughter of a rich land-owner, she was not yet sixteen when she crossed the frontier to elope with a neighbour over forty, and with whom she was not even in love! The whole affair came about quite by chance. She was the friend of his daughter, whom (though he was not in favour of religious education for women) he had decided to send to a convent in France: and the parents of Lola had asked him, since the two girls had made their studies together from the very beginning, to take their daughter with him as well. This man, having put his own daughter into the care of the nuns, asked Lola whether, instead of poring over books in a convent, she would not like to go with him to Italy. She very readily agreed to what she considered as a most natural plan. After a few months had elapsed, she threw him over for a very handsome Italian, who afterwards turned out to be a Parisian Jew. After a good many other such experiences, her parents, as a last resort, took legal measures to find her. This time they actually placed her in a convent: and there, during three years of penance, her outlook upon life took definite shape.

Her father at length relented, and allowed her to return home, for the family had given up country life altogether, and now resided in town. There, before the year was out, she entered the married state.

Her first lover was Wartoslawski, who died some time ago; Gina Wartoslawska, whom I have mentioned, is his daughter.

No long period elapsed ere Madame Wildenhoff became unfaithful to her husband: but he, from the height of his silent scepticism, looks down with scornful amenity upon her “flirtation.” It may even be that he does not dislike this state of things.

One child, a daughter, has been born of the marriage. She is two years older than Orcio; and Madame Wildenhoff has for her the greatest care and the tenderest maternal love.

I went to call upon her to-day, in the place of Martha, who is constantly unwell. She was by herself; for Wildenhoff, of course, like all husbands of his kind, either was no longer at home, or had not yet come back.

She tried to interest me by talking, as her custom is, about herself.

“My outward appearance, when all is said in its favour that can be said, is insufficient to explain the extraordinary success I have all my life had with men. My only ability—call it an art if you like—consists in influencing men by an appeal to their lower natures. That is the only way to succeed with them: for all of them are mere animals—all!”

She offered me some fruit, taking up the vase containing it with the gesture of a “hetaira” of old days, presenting a goblet of golden wine.

“You see,” she said, “I am an epicure. I want to get as much as I can out of life, and I know how to get it. With nothing but champagne and songs and flowers life would pall upon me very soon; so I like now and then to get the atmosphere of an ‘At Home’: for instance, with the Imszanskis. As to her, I don’t know whether she is really purer than the atmosphere of a private supper-room: at all events, her style of corruption is peculiar—more Gothic—and the virus is more skilfully inoculated. I like to take a rest, and spend some quiet evenings in my family circle, teach little Sophy her alphabet, or pass sleepless nights in penance and vigil and sombre meditations. After which, I may perform a sudden ‘pirouette’, Paris style, and blow from afar a farewell kiss to husband, Sophy, mamma, grandmamma—and virtue!”

She laughed merrily.

“The future of the nations is not what I am looking forward to. No, I am resolved to get for myself the greatest possible amount of happiness, under the circumstances in which I am placed.... You will say I am a mere product of environment; well, let it be so. But mind: the way I live harms no one. If I am contented, so is my husband, and so are my admirers as well.”

“And their wives too?” I hazarded.

“Well, but is it my fault if they are fools? Now, I’ll tell you what. Never have I taken a man from a woman he loved. I am not of those whose sole aim is to make difficult conquests.”

She added, after a pause:

“For ever so long (and that you must surely know) Imszanski has been quite indifferent to his wife.”

Just then the bell rang in the ante-chamber. Madame Wildenhoff gave a start, then burst into a fit of laughter. In that laugh of hers, I find something peculiarly interesting; but I cannot guess what.

I rose to bid her farewell.

“Why, what are you running away for? It is only Gina. I like to see two clever, handsome women together; a thing which, I must tell you, very seldom happens.”

Gina came in with her customary smileless greeting, and as usual called for a glass of water. Then she set to look through certain albums, scattered about the table. Her figure, perfectly faultless in style, stood out like a sort of anachronism on the background of that florid middle-class drawing-room. In the light one could see that her eyebrows and lashes were golden, and her wavy hair of a dark auburn hue, falling in a dishevelled mass on to her shoulders as she bent forward.

Madame Wildenhoff attempted to lead the conversation towards topics of general interest.

She began by the rights of women, and their failure to understand what emancipation really signifies. Gina speaks little, but belongs, like Madame Wildenhoff, to the category of those that are emancipated in every sense of the word. As a matter of fact, her intended husband is her paramour, and she has not the slightest intention ever to become his wife.

I have for some time noticed that she is possessed with a spirit of contradiction. In presence of people who have some certain definite convictions, she always takes the opposite side: this possibly in order to produce a more striking effect by the sharp contrast of tones. This attitude called up in my mind certain reminiscences from out of atavistic past. I began to talk about the gradual extinction of individual monogamistic women, of the eroticism which has soaked our democracies through and through, of the necessity for a class of courtesans, that the type of those women who care for something besides love intrigues may be preserved, and other nonsense of similar nature.

Gina only looked at me with a drowsy smile; but Madame Wildenhoff took up the cudgels with a sort of enthusiasm. A curious thing: her talk is not unlike Martha’s, though their natures are very far asunder indeed.

“Men are endowed by nature with a sense of equilibrium: so long as they are in the prime of life, they live and love and laugh at plain and virtuous women. _Car il faut que jeunesse se passe_. They therefore require what may be called the ‘brute-woman’; a woman who laughs and glitters and shines for a few years, till she ages: then of course she withdraws from the arena, regretting that ‘she ever followed such a path.’ It is only after men have sown their wild oats that the animal dies out of them, and there wakes up—a plebeian, or a thinker, or a father, or a citizen; and then he stretches out his hands towards what we may call the ‘human woman.’ Then comes the triumph of her who respects herself; her day of victory has dawned, she is at last ‘appreciated,’ which is to say remunerated for her virtue with that famous respect which is never given to those of the other class. True, the intellectuals may complain sometimes that men will not acknowledge them as mentally their equals; but the foolish ones will be honoured by their husbands’ friendship and confidence; and the good mothers will have no aim or happiness in life beyond the bringing up of children: while they each and all either look down upon the ‘brute-woman’ or regard them with philanthropic compassion.”

“Poor things!” Gina exclaimed; “they do not know that the tragic excitement of a single night may be perhaps worth more than a whole existence passed in such torpid apathy as theirs.”

To-day there is some festival or other. I have not gone to the office, and have been sitting all the morning at Martha’s bedside, who is not to get up until the afternoon. She is as usual always complaining, her sad eyes gazing into mine.

“Janka, I can no longer sleep a wink. Last night it was twelve before I ceased tossing on my pillow. Like a child, I cried myself to sleep at last: and when I woke, it was no later than three o’clock.”

She crossed behind her head her lace-decked arms, and looked out into space with infinite wistfulness.

Then she continued in a low voice: “I cannot imagine why my former life in Klosow now comes back to me so very vividly. I remember how sometimes I used to rise early on a winter morning, when it was still dark, and how I dressed by lamplight, shivering with cold, and fighting down my longing to go back to my warm bed. Then I would put on a huge fur, and take the keys, and go to the farm with a lantern in my hand. Do you know, all this is present to me now, just like a vision? And then I remember the far-off fields, lying fallow beneath the snow, and stretching away even to the verge of the horizon, under the sky in which the stars were beginning to grow pale. I remember the farm buildings, vague dark spots upon the landscape, the forests like streaks of violet, the grey fences, and the delicate tracery of the leafless garden trees. And now through the darkness there come sounds: the clattering of tin pails, and the faint drowsy calling of the maids to one another. Oh, and I remember well the cold, the lusty, fresh, piercing cold, making the teeth clatter in one’s head. And then, the close warmth of the cow-byres, and the low black-raftered ceiling overhead; the outlines of the solemn-looking cows and sleepy milkmaids, the bright circles of the lanterns on the floor, and the quaint broken shadows on the beams and girders above; the milk stream rhythmically into the pails, the indolent lowing of the kine, and the jingling sound of the chain that bound the savage steer to the crib.... You remember the cat, too—our cat? Don’t you: so sharp of wit, following us everywhere like a dog? All that’s so far off, so irrevocably gone! Oh, I tell you, I would give more than my life, if I could but see one such morning return—only one such bleak and dark and frosty morning, and I were now as I was then!...”

She turned her cheek to the pillow, and shed tears.

“Martha, your nerves are again in a very poor state. If you like, I shall go with you to Klosow; and we shall spend Christmas there together, and enjoy a few idyllic days as of old.”

“Oh, no, Janka; they would only be the miserable ghosts of times that are past for ever. That stupid, clubby-faced woman, Janusz’s wife, would get on my nerves so; besides, the thought that Witold would be staying here with Madame Wildenhoff, and glad I was away!

“But,” she added with a sudden revival of spirits, “do you know, I fancy her triumph will be over pretty soon? It is true that Witold was never very much attached to her: but now it would seem that his affections are strongly engaged elsewhere.”

“Are they?” I asked, much interested: for I recalled Lipka and my unexpected meeting with Imszanski there.

“Did he tell you anything?”

“Oh, he is simply ridiculous—so hopelessly frank with me. He never will spare me any details, and holds it in some sort as a duty to conceal nothing from me....”

She laughed bitterly, and at once looked sullen again.

“Yesterday, before you came home from the office, I asked Witold all about her. She is some star of the Parisian _demi-monde_, who has made up her mind to get an engagement at any price on the stage here: and Witold is expected, on account of his influence in Warsaw, to obtain a fixed situation for her. It appears that her voice is tolerable, and her outward appearance marvellous: he has described her to me in every particular. It was, I assure you, one of the most emotional experiences I ever went through.”

She closed her eyes, to intensify the image that she was forming in her mind.

“The woman is tall, and seemingly of spare proportions: but only seemingly so. Her bony framework is exceedingly slight and reed-like: so you see, Janka, on close inquiry she is found not to be really thin.”

As she spoke, she turned upon her pillow, tearing at its satin covering with her nails, and striving to swallow down her tears of rage.

I could not contain myself.

“Why on earth does he tell you about such things? He must be a monster.”

“There are a great many things that he never can understand—what I told you seems but the merest trifle to him.”

She took a spoonful of bromide, and continued:

“You must know that he tells me she has large oval-shaped eyes, with extremely long lashes—eyes of an unfathomable black, in very striking contrast with her voluptuous mouth; always sorrowful, dreamy, and with a far-away look, like the beggar-maid loved by King Cophetua. She has also much originality, something like an odalisque, and uniting the primitiveness of a mountain goat with all the cultured grace of a maid of honour at a royal court.”

This, after the elimination of certain exaggerated points, was easily recognizable as the description of that fair Frenchwoman whom I had seen at Lipka’s. And now I understood why Imszanski had shown himself so very full of courtesy toward Czolhanski. The latter, as a theatrical critic, may be useful to him.

“She dresses, it appears, most superbly, with all the magnificence of Babylonian times: golden combs and strings of pearls in her hair; in her ears, rings of the greatest price. Moreover, she is a very miracle of depravity. Witold smiled as he told me so, with an inward look, as though recalling some particular.

“As he told me so, he smiled; and I too smiled, listening with the blandest interest. He looked at me attentively, kissed my hand, and said:

“‘Your nerves are better now, I see. How glad I am! You have no idea. You have at last realized that to feel jealous of a _cocotte_ would be unworthy of you.’

“‘Why, of course. Yes, yes; I am all right now.’ And yet, Janka, I never felt it so deeply; I never saw things with such awful clearness of vision. And alas! I never, never yet loved Witold with such passionate love.

“But, more than him, I love that pain which I feel....”

She rose in bed, as if to repel something that was weighing her down; then she sat propped up by her cushions and pillows.

“Do you imagine that in all this I had any idea of revengeful pleasure at Mme. Wildenhoff’s disappointment, and for that reason made him tell me what he did? Not in the least. I wanted to drink my fill of pain; as in Spain they wave a red flag in bull-fights before the bloodshot eyes of the poor brute, to make him yet madder with rage and despair, so I wished to excite myself to the same delirious state.

“I do not wish for anything that can diminish the intensity of my anguish, I hate whatever could mitigate or deaden it. I love to gloat over the raw bleeding wounds, bare and unbandaged....”

At that moment, the nurse tapped at the door, to ask whether Orcio might not come in to bid his mother good morning.

“No—no! shut the door! I will have no one here! Janka, you have not the least idea how I _hate_ my son.”

At Lipka’s to-night: and this time in a private room. Mme. Wildenhoff talked at great length, somewhat to the following effect:

“There is in reality only one kind of perfect love—that of the brute creation; indeliberate, irreflective love, wherein victory is to the strongest and most beautiful; the pure reproductive instinct, unalloyed by any culture or mental analysis whatsoever. But we—we, who are civilized—unfortunately look down upon this sort of love. For we have reckoned, with quasi-mathematical exactitude, how much of love should be taken, and how much rejected, in order to get the greatest possible sum of quintessential delight. And thence has sprung quite a new type of love: instinct which has emancipated itself from obedience to the laws of nature—love with its chief motive, preservation of the species, eliminated. Now love of the kind I have spoken of generally receives the epithet of bestial; whereas on the contrary it is most specially the outcome of refinement.”

“It appears among nations at the epoch of their highest development, and is the harbinger of their speedy decline,” remarked Czolhanski, with solemn dignity.

“What does it matter? _Après nous le déluge!_”

“And to what class would you assign conjugal love?” asked Owinski. Gina, who had silently disposed her lithe, snake-like, supple figure on a little sofa, looked round with astonishment at her _fiancé_.

“Oh, we may call it love of a third type,” answered Madame Wildenhoff: “love sanctioned by law, the union of two souls in friendship, and the bringing forth of rachitic offspring: an abnormal combination of brute and human love.”

“Do you then, Madame,” urged Owinski, “perceive no good points in marriage?”

“None whatever,” she replied with a bland smile, “because—and this reason alone would suffice me—because I hate marriage with all my heart. It has been and is the aim of my life to blast marriage, whenever I can succeed in doing so. Between the happiest and most moral couples—those in which one of the two, the husband or the wife, leads a profligate life, and the other knows nothing of it—I bring the dissolving element, enlightenment, and rejoice when I see the couples fall apart.”

Here she bent aside toward her husband’s chair, and said to him in an affectionate and audible whisper:

“But we are a pattern couple, are we not?”

This time, Imszanski went home with me. I overheard Czolhanski say, on taking leave of him: “You may rely upon me absolutely; I will manage everything.”

It has been terribly cold, and now there is a thaw. At such times, I love to wander up and down the avenues in the park, which then are completely deserted.

My nostrils inhale that peculiar scent of bare moist earth, and the effluvium from the buds as yet invisible; and I muse upon those incomparable and marvellously beautiful things that have never been realized.

On the yellow background of dry dead grass, there appeared in the distance a young man to whom, as to myself, loneliness was no doubt pleasant, and who enjoyed walking along the avenues oversprinkled with last year’s fallen leaves.

He came up with me, and on passing by, looked keenly into my eyes, and with something of astonishment.

I did not return his glance, but walked more slowly, so as to lag behind him.

The young man stopped presently, and waited until I came up; then he passed by me again with a protracted stare.

This manœuvre was repeated several times. Presently I was seized with an unaccountable desire to burst into a fit of nervous laughter, which I smothered down as best I could. At any rate, I had the full control of my eyes, the expression of which was mere indifference and disdain. Presently I looked him steadily in the face, to stare him out of countenance; so that he could see my attitude to be unmistakably hostile.

“But why,” I was thinking all the time, “why should I look upon him—this handsome slender stripling—as my foe? He certainly does not mean to harm me in any way; his interest is simply aroused in finding a person who has the same taste for solitude as himself, whilst he naturally has a friendly feeling towards a good-looking woman.”

The young fellow, at first kindly disposed, was nettled by the look of hostility in my eyes. He came up close to me, with a flippant laugh, and said in an ironical tone of sympathy:

“I would give anything in reason to know what sorrows of the heart have driven you to take so very romantic a walk as this.”

I was silent, and knit my brows.