Kobiety (Women): A Novel of Polish Life

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.

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

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.

“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.

“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.”