Part 8

“Souls that pine in loneliness,” he went on, as sarcastic as before, “ought to comfort each other, I think: don’t you?”

There was a pause, as we walked side by side.

“But why knit those fair eyebrows so? Oh, really, you frighten me.... Such malignant eyes! Come, come, I shall do you no harm; why be so cantankerous?”

In a rage and turning my back on him, I walked swiftly away. He made no attempt to follow. On arriving at the gate, where I was safe at last, I looked round. He was standing where he had stood before, and from afar waving me with bared head a graceful farewell.

The incident mortified and abashed me. I had behaved like a silly goose, narrow-minded and ill-tempered; I had spoiled a situation that might have had pleasant or curious developments. Why on earth had I done so?

Was this, again, only a matter of form? The necessity of that regular introduction, so dear to the _bourgeoisie_, in a drawing-room where two persons are made acquainted with each other by a third? Or was it not rather that dread—now a part of our life—the instinctive dread of things as they are, the eternal need of playing the part of a besieged fort, which defends itself stubbornly in order to surrender on the best terms possible?

As I came out of the park, a carriage driven at full speed passed by me; I saw a couple of feathers and a good deal of fur. Suddenly the coachman pulled up, and Mme. Wildenhoff jumped out and came towards me.

“Ah! how delighted I am to meet you! You won’t get away from me this time. Pray step in: I must make a regular woman of you.”

“With pleasure: but what’s the matter?”

“You shall hear.”

We got in. Mme. Wildenhoff gave the man orders to drive slowly.

“Quite a warm day!” she observed.... “Well, you see, I have one _idée fixe_, at least that’s what my husband calls it.”

“And that is?...”

“Ah, what a coincidence to have met you, of whom I was just thinking!”

“Very good, but what do you want me for?”

“Wait a bit; I must begin at the beginning.

“Let me tell you that I consider it a most important point that we should, in the cause of Woman, meet and come to an understanding with women of so-called ‘loose character.’ And, in particular, enter into social relations with them. It is indeed an eccentricity on my part; but I enjoy stemming and making head against the current.”

“It may lead to curious developments,” I said.

“You are perfectly right. In the first place, we must all of us get to understand our community of interests. The social boycott which the whole _demi-monde_ has to undergo, is a real civil war waged by women against one another; a weakening of our powers, to which men not only do not object, but which they also tend to aggravate. It is they who make ‘those dreadful creatures, bereft of a conscience,’ responsible for all the transgressions which they themselves commit: so that the fury of jealousy which their mothers and their wives, actual or intended, would otherwise pour out upon their heads, is all transformed into a feeling of hatred against such women. It is undoubtedly a very clever bit of tactics on their part; but we ought not to let ourselves be taken in so easily; we should all close our ranks and join shoulder to shoulder to fight the common foe.”

“But what if those women hate us more than we do them?”

“That they do, is true; but it is only because they believe us to be happier than they are. We have to dispel this egregious delusion; we must let them know that we feel our wrongs as keenly as they do theirs; that we recognize them as our companions in womanhood, as sharers in our common humanity.... It is because we do nothing that such a falsehood has been able to take such strong root.

“We should join with them, for they are our necessary complement: not only so, but mingle with them without endeavouring to intensify the difference between us and them by trying, in so far as we can, to deprive our souls of those immense fields of womanliness, and renounce to our own detriment the glamour of frivolity and of frailty. There must be a thorough fusion; and it is only by such levelling down that we shall arrive at the synthesis of womanhood: a new type, a complete type, in which the only difference observable will be those of individuals, not of avocations.”

“All that’s very fine, but where are you taking me?”

“I am coming to that. I am just paying a formal visit to an ex-courtesan, a Mme. Wieloleska—formerly Mary _tout court_, for I don’t know her family name. And I absolutely want you to come along with me.”

“But ... is she possible?”

“Quite; you may believe me. She takes everything as a matter of course, and will be much pleased to receive you.... Only you will have to behave exactly as if she were Wieloleski’s real wife.”

“What? then they are not married?”

“The idea! The man has a wife and five children somewhere down in the country.... And that woman has got such a hold on him that he won’t stir so much as one step from her side.... You must take a look at their place.... She was formerly quite a common _demi-mondaine_, though well spoken of.”

“And how did you get to know her?”

“Oh, she’s an old acquaintance, made by means of Imszanski.”

The carriage had stopped in front of an ornamental gateway, leading to a handsome suburban villa, screened from view to some extent by a tracery of branches and tree-trunks, and in a frame of towering fir-trees.

As I went up the broad white steps at the entrance, I felt my heart beat, and could not tell exactly why. Perhaps at the fancy which then came to me, that I might, within those very doors, come face to face with the naked, dark, and horrible mystery of Life!

An elderly and very stylish footman raised the door-hanging to usher us into a large sitting-room, conventionally furnished _à la sécession_.

In a few minutes there entered a very tall, slim, lady-like person, quietly dressed in a clinging morning gown, somewhat like a riding-habit, and followed by a little white lamb, which came treading stiffly and sometimes funnily sliding along the polished floor.

Mme. Mary welcomed Mme. Wildenhoff with smiling effusion.

“I have come to call upon you with a friend of mine: Miss Dernowicz, Mme. Wieloleska,” she said, introducing me. “I trust you will have no objection; I wanted to show her your greenhouse very much.”

“Indeed, my dear Madame, but you are doing me a pleasure. I feel so bored in this solitude, where I see nobody at all. All day long, my husband is in the greenhouse or pottering about the hotbeds; he has engaged a new gardener from Haarlem, and it is quite out of the question getting him anywhere out of doors. If you care, we shall have a look at the greenhouse at once. I tell you, if it were not for my books and studies, I really might be tempted to make away with myself.”

“And why should you not take a walk sometimes? The weather is splendid just now.”

“Oh, no! My husband won’t go out; and it would not be proper for a woman to go out alone. You know how uncharitable people are.”

“And what may you be studying, Madame?” I asked.

“Pretty nearly everything possible,” she replied, laughing. “I take at least five hours of lessons daily. One of my professors only just left the house: he is giving me a course of University lessons on the ancient literature of India. Since a week, too, I have been learning to read hieroglyphics.... Haven’t you made a study of them?... They are very interesting.... One is carried away—other lands, other times.... And I am so curious about everything in the world.... But I am best in languages. It is so extremely important to be able to read every writer in the original.”

“For you must know,” put in Mme. Wildenhoff, “that Mme. Mary is a well-known linguist.”

“Indeed?”

“Ah,” she said, smiling modestly, “it all comes to me so easily. At the present time, I am proficient in French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Dutch, and Russian. This year I am learning the Finnish and Japanese languages. I have, moreover, read Homer and Virgil in the original Greek and Latin. Not one hundredth part of their marvellous beauties can be rendered in a translation: and I am so sensitive to the Beautiful...!”

“Do you know?” she broke off, turning towards Mme. Wildenhoff, “I have at last managed to satisfy my husband that we must positively take a trip to Algeria. And that will have to be in a few weeks: it is too hot there in summer.... Ah! you can’t think how hard it is to get him away from those flowers of his; he loves them so dearly!”

I examined Mme. Wieloleska with careful scrutiny. Her face is pale and surrounded with scanty locks of fair hair; her eyes, small, greyish and expressionless, and bordered with a faint pink hue, are continually in motion to and fro; she has a tiny nose with rounded nostrils, and a full, rather bloodless mouth, now and then moving with a quick twitch, like a child making a wry face; and with all that she is attractive. Her talkativeness, her tuneless voice, and a certain carelessness in her manner, correct one’s first impression that she is pretentious, and give the effect of a schoolgirl _désinvolture_, rather than the effrontery of a _bona-roba_.

She stooped to caress her pet lamb, which had lain down at her feet in a posture that suggested careful training. Then she rose, saying: “Perhaps we may now go and look at the place.”

On our way to the conservatory, we had to pass through several rooms and galleries full of pictures. On the right, we saw a workroom, with bright jets of gas burning, though the night had not yet fallen. Several girls were there, busily bending over tambour frames.

“These are my little ones,” said Mme. Wieloleska, smiling at them. “Unfortunately, I have no children myself, so I have undertaken to bring up these girls.”

“What are they about here?”

“They are learning embroidery, under the tuition of a German instructress. I am particularly anxious that my philanthropic plans may not do them more harm than good; for my husband very wisely says that ‘it is not hard to give, but to give judiciously....’”

“Well, but what do you do with the embroidered work afterwards?”

“Oh, you see, I don’t like to wear lace upon my linen—besides, it is not the fashion nowadays—so I have everything covered over with embroidery. Linen is far more beautiful so. I—I might perhaps show you—yes, I think it’s all right here—only women present....”

She laughed, winking significantly, and took us farther down the passage, where, with a swift twist and twirl, like a ballet-dancer, she raised her dress above her knees, showing several tiers of cambric flounces beyond her silk stockings. At no other time of our visit was there anything to recall what she had once been.

“You, I fancy,” she said, turning to me, “wear a petticoat; I am not sure you had not better give it up. A well-flounced undergarment makes the dress look quite sufficiently wide; a petticoat altogether effaces the outlines of the hips.” Then passing her hand down my waist: “It is a pity,” she said; “for you have a splendid shape—hips like a Spanish woman’s.”

We have found Wieloleski standing at the very end of the conservatory, and carefully watching his gardener at work. He is a tall man, something over forty, rather stout; very elegant-mannered, and courteous, but distant and abstracted. He has an extensive bald place, with long thin wisps combed over it from the left, though without any attempt at concealment; and an abundant black beard.

As he was taking us about his greenhouse, he observed: “It is only at present, and since I have been living here, that I have learned to understand Tolstoi properly. It is only by a close acquaintance with nature and with manual work, that we discover all the emptiness of society life and its form and prejudices, and all the futility of social dissensions and hatreds.”

I am not so well able to maintain my position as a cool observer, as Mme. Wildenhoff is: and here I could not refrain from presenting an objection to him.

“And nevertheless, your being able to stand thus aside in social struggles, proceeds from the fact that you possess property; and property itself lies within the sphere of these struggles, since they make an object of it. So the very land you own brings you back into these classes of society from which you flee.”

Wieloleski, rather surprised, offered me a few white kalia flowers, just gathered, before he replied, in a calm but very dogmatic tone.

“On this point, I cannot agree with you. Those who dispute the right of property take no account of the reality of things. Immemorial custom has made the right of property as much a ‘category of thought,’ as Space is, or Time.”

Mary, who was just behind us, interrupted him: “Oh, Edmund is reading you a lecture already, I hear. My dear, you had better come and flirt with Mme. Lola, and I’ll take Miss Janina with me.”

She came and put her arm round my waist, saying that she liked me very much indeed. This I answered with an indulgent smile, always suitable when women pay compliments to women.

She felt that this was not the way to win me, so she set to talk about literature.

“There are some books,” she said, “in which I find a rest, and which enable me to escape from reality altogether. And that’s why I can’t bear such authors—Zola, for instance—as bring dirt which ought to revolt any delicate mind, into a sphere where poetry alone should reign supreme.”

I hazarded another objection here.

“Do you not think that the first step towards healing the ulcers of society is to lay them bare?”

“Ugh! why write about them? We all know them too well! In life itself, there is, I tell you, quite enough of sorrow and of miasma. You, so young, may possibly not have as yet had any opportunity of coming into contact with them.... No, no: why should we ourselves spoil the short sweet moments when it is possible to dream?”

She then proposed that we should take a rest on a seat of bamboo-work, ensconced amongst exotic plants and shrubs in large green tubs. As soon as we had sat down, her trained pet lamb came and lay down on the skirt of her dress.

“Every one ought to have some sacred book—some Bible or other—ought he not?” she asked, after a short silence. “Alas! there is no one, with ever so little knowledge of philosophy, who can possibly believe in the existence of God—and all the rest of it.

“But we can at any rate respect the poetry which religion contains, and the feelings of those who have not as yet lost their faith: is it not so?”

“Certainly,” I replied with the utmost gravity.

“Well, the Bible which I could not go to sleep without reading, and out of which I read portions daily instead of my prayers, is that book of legends by Voragine.... Do you know it?”

“Oh, yes,” I assented, “the _Golden Legend_.”

“Oh, what a world of poetry there is in it! What treasures of freshness and simplicity of feeling!”

“Well, I say! if they are all of her kidney!” was all I remarked to Mme. Wildenhoff, as I returned with her after our half-hour’s call at Wieloleski’s. I felt a good deal bored, and mused over the meaning of the well-known aphorism:

_Dans la bête assouvie un ange se réveille._[1]

Footnote 1:

When the brute’s gorged, an angel wakes within it.

For some time Imszanski has been spending his evenings at home! He either goes out later in the evening, or not at all, and Martha’s hopes are reviving within her; but I do not take this conversion of his very seriously.

We three sit together frequently; now and then Czolhanski and Owinski, or Rosuchowski drop in.

One peculiarity about Owinski is the continual vague absent look in his eyes, caused by his extremely short sight. He cannot see two paces in front of him, and distinguishes people by their voices only. His facial muscles are in constant play; and he never smiles but with set teeth. He is very far indeed from being good-looking; yet I do not wonder at Gina’s loving him to distraction.

Witold has been pleased to take me as his confidante now. He is probably feeling compunction for his recent behaviour, somewhat late in the day.

Life, taken in general, is a barren waste. His theory of love does not permit him to hold innocent those delusions of the senses which are usually termed “bits of love-making,” though in reality, they and love have nothing in common. They are then evil; but they have become necessary evils, to which men have in the course of ages completely accustomed themselves; evils from which women—he means of course those of the better classes—are free, and against which they ought to be guarded with the utmost care. By means of this reasoning, he considers his relations with Martha to be all they should be; for he always endeavoured to spare her, and to preserve her high ideals, and her feelings of purity.

I could not help smiling as he said this, knowing as I did how little his intention had been realized.

But now he too seems to be tiring of the life he leads—this howling wilderness of a life. “These women are so shallow, so mindless, so fatuous! Their own looseness of morals is the keynote which decides every one of their acts.”

I could now shrewdly guess what his drift was.

“Take, for instance, Mme. Wildenhoff. She enjoys a change of—affections—once a month. That’s her business: but why the devil does she bring in Philosophy and Sociology, and Emancipation? The thing she does is as old as the hills, and why trouble about her and women like her?”

I had long ago made the remark that men object to women who argue. On the other hand, they rate their souls very high indeed. Now, Witold confesses, it is the soul—the soul alone, the soul at any price—that he wants to have.

Who knows whether he will not again become a faithful husband to Martha?

I dislike all colourless people. And I dislike myself along with them, since I find I am growing more and more colourless day by day. I feel out of sympathy with my own type of character: I am ordinary. I have had enough of my life; more than enough of it.

How terribly I am craving now for some one who shall tell me—and tell me incessantly—that I am good-looking and clever and original in mind, that I dress nicely and move gracefully.

For though at this moment I am quite satisfied that none of these things are so: yet, if I were told so this day, I should at once believe it to be true.

I am in pain. At times I feel a special need of saying all that I think. At times it is so hard to wear a mask.... And I want some sympathy....

I was at the Wildenhoff’s to-day, and had a talk with Witold. I cannot conceive how it came about, but on a sudden I found I was saying too much—or rather, speaking too much to the point.

Finding the position I had taken up was too advanced and too much exposed, I decided to beat a retreat.

“But can you conceive in what the tragedy of my life consists in reality?” I asked.

On which, in mute questioning, he raised his beautiful mournful eyes to mine.

“In that all I have told you is untrue ... and all I have not told you is untrue likewise. It is my style to talk of my sadness one day, and the next to tell of my life’s cloudless philosophy.”

“And to whom of all men do you tell the truth? To Wiazewski? I don’t know. Perhaps to no one. When I have taken off, one after another, all the styles I wear, there is nothing more left of me.”

At this juncture, Mme. Wildenhoff, dressed in a very low-cut black velvet gown, came up to us.

“Why has not Martha been here to-day?” she asked. “We have not seen her for ever so long.”

“She meant to come but she is continually a victim to sick headaches.”

“Ah, yes, those sick headaches,” she remarked sympathizingly. “They are so very hard to get rid of!”

Presently she asked if I would come and look at a beautiful screen, a birthday gift for her, painted by Gina. Imszanski remained where he was.

I asked Mme. Wildenhoff why Owinski was not present.

“Really, I cannot say,” was her answer. “He was to come: but it is rather late.”

“I noticed that Gina was very much out of sorts to-day.”

“Yes, and I must say that I feel rather uneasy about her. There is something here that I cannot at all understand, and I love the girl.... Owinski is perpetually wool-gathering; he is a man you cannot rely upon.... He strikes me as one who would be deaf to any remonstrances, any reproaches.... He is a typical poet....”

“Then it may be that Gina is wrong in holding off from marriage with the man.”

“Marriage? A fine thing that would be! She is surely wealthy enough to do without it.... Marriage!” she added, not without a touch of pride. “Of what use was it in Imszanski’s case, I beg?”

She just looked into a mirror, hanging opposite her bed, and then swiftly glanced over me from head to foot. The comparison between us must have been not unpleasant, for she at once became more cheerful and friendly.

“My dear Miss Janina, Gina’s is a nature far too artistic for marriage. No one who can paint like that would ever make a husband of her sweetheart. Pardon me; the thing is absolutely out of the question.... Look at those flowers; with what grace she has dashed them off!”

“They are certainly exquisite. But did you notice how extraordinary an interest Owinski took in what you were saying about marriage last Thursday?”

“Yes, oh, yes; I remember.... But I can’t suppose he is thinking of marrying any one else.... No, that is surely impossible.”

She was at once in a state of great excitement.

“Look here. Now that marriage is no more than a contract, assuring to the wife board and lodging for self and offspring, and to the husband a woman in permanency, always at home and on the _qui vive_; now that a bachelor cannot marry until he has achieved a position in the world, so that a marrying man who is not bald sounds like a _contradictio in adjecto_,—marriage amounts in principle to the same as prostitution, whereas its every particular is yet more shocking.”

“I am afraid I don’t quite follow you.”