III
A CANTICLE OF LOVE
“I expect you will be here in a day or two; so this letter will never be sent. I am writing only to be alone with you this evening; and if I write it, it is but for my own sake.
“It is an autumn evening, most marvellously fine. I want to be with you. For I do love you, my dear, my only one!
“The earth is black, the sky is blue, the gloom is deepening. A little while since, Idalia handed me a letter from you; and now I am in a vein of tenderness. I will not even chide you for excess of openness in your naturalistic way of expressing your desires. There are moments when I can pardon everything.... I want to show that I love you, very truly and very much. The days of my ill-humour, the days of my dark misgivings, have passed away now, and the days of bright vision are come. This very morning I was saying to Idalia that I should advise her not to fall in love, for I am so far gone that I cannot fancy myself capable of loving anybody but you....
“I should be a hundred times better to you than I am, if I were not afraid. For now, since you made your confession, I feel afraid lest you should get the upper hand: and in love, I do not believe that two can both be on an equal footing. And if I but yield up to you one jot of my rights—anything whatever—you show no generous feeling at all, but triumph over my self-abasement, as if it were abjection. Witold, have some little generous feeling; allow me to rest for a moment from this eternal watch I must keep over myself; let me love you in peace, were it only for a short while.
“Again and again, the painful thought is borne in upon me, that—this time as well as the last—the pleasure of meeting you will not compensate for the pain of longing when apart. My mind misgives me, too, that you might have come to-day, but did not: ‘Why? you really didn’t know,’ as once before. I make no reproaches, but am a little piqued, and may once more go off, as I did last spring, in order to get away from you, so that you may learn better how genial, how clever, how incomparable I am.
“There is no doubt about it: you love me more than I love you. And if I say this so frankly, that is only because it is not absolutely true. Now I am going to tell you a most important thing, which I never yet pointed out to you quite clearly, and to which you have to give a direct answer. So, attention!—We might love each other equally, but I love you less: why?—Because you do not make yourself in the least uneasy about my love, neither as to what you confess you have done, nor (which is far more important) as to the disposition you may be in at the time. You have done what you have done, and you feel as you feel; and you find frankness a more convenient thing than concealment. And so I must constantly keep your love at high pressure, forcing my disposition, and not showing what I really feel. Now this is unjust. Once you said to me: ‘Never allow me to get the upper hand, for I should make a slave of you: as soon as Martha became my slave, I ceased to love her.’ I then resolved to hold my position of superiority, became more secret, less natural; and all that is in me of feebleness, abasement, poverty of spirit,—the ewig Weibliches—I most carefully locked up and kept to myself alone, in order to provide our love with a longer existence, which surely concerns you as much as myself. If now I told you not to press your cheek against my dress, nor humble yourself before me, because I cannot love where I do not honour—you would begin to sulk and to tell me, with the air of a cross sullen child, that you are the one of us two who loves most, and that I have shown myself a selfish girl.—In my opinion, the preservation of our mutual love is the affair of us both, and like an altar on which we should both of us sacrifice absolute sincerity, especially as concerns passing dispositions, and more especially such as imply self-abasement; we must play a part, wear a mask, and keep strictly to ourselves all such grievances as might lower one in the eyes of the other. So I ask you, who know this well by the experience of your own life: am I right or not? If I am, then: Do you intend to make me love you as much as you love me, or would you lower the level of your love to that of mine? That is: will you bear the burden of constant watchfulness with me, or do you deliberately consent that I should set it aside?—Answer me that. And do not forget all about it in ten minutes.—And, in spite of all, I love you very much.
Witold returned only yesterday. He was at a great shooting party in Klosow, where he was obliged to go, as a proof of his friendly relations with Janusz, and so put a stop to rumours rife among the neighbouring gentry that Martha and he were separated. Once I forbade Janusz to shoot hares; all that has long ago been forgotten, and now he astonishes everybody by his skill as a marksman. The Past—is the Past!
These few last years, which have not told at all upon Witold, have changed Janusz beyond recognition. He has married “a young lady from the country,” and grown fat and rubicund and common; he has four sons, of whom he is excessively proud: Witold brings me news that he is expecting a fifth shortly. The former wild primitiveness of his nature only shows itself now on his occasional visits to town, when he carouses and revels furiously, in company with Witold.
As to his sister Martha, she has been in Germany for about six months, staying at a sanatorium for nervous patients. She is allowed neither to receive any letters nor to write any. We only now and then get news from the doctor, saying that she is better, and will soon be able to return to her home. She is, as the kindly German has the politeness to add, always pining after her husband and her son. The latter is being brought up with Janusz’s boys, and the country air must have a very salutary influence upon his system.
I took but a very short leave this summer, spending nearly all the time in town with Witold, and leading something like a domestic life; for he shows himself in my case very particular about keeping up appearances. I wonder why, in his former relations with Mme. Wildenhoff, he never cared a fig for them! Perhaps he means, by taking such care, to show how much he esteems me.
He read my letter through, but made no comments on it; he suddenly remembered some incident at the shooting party, telling it to me. And then he set about caressing and kissing me: he had been wanting me so very, very badly!
“But answer my question, Witold,” I said.
“How can I? I don’t know,” was his answer, as he ardently kissed my inquisitorial eyes.
“Janka, is not this the best answer of all?”
He is always like that. My looks set us apart, his kisses unite us together.
But I am wrestling, held in the grip of my love, as a kite that soars above the clouds wrestles with the string held by a boy at play!
Idalia is not averse to having company at her lodgings, where I have met several characters in the artistic world.
Wiazewski cannot hear “Bohemianism.” Yet in spite of this he not unwillingly comes, too, to see us, and to “observe.”
“Look well at all those men,” he says. “For the most part ill-shaped, ill-favoured, sitting in corners and smoking cigarettes, and paying no attention whether ladies are present or not. All of them sceptical and pessimistic, taking no interest in any but exaggerated views, and in most deadly earnest about all their convictions. That is the type of men I most abhor. If intelligent, they grow narrow-minded; and, if dull, utterly impossible in society. You have surely noticed that the greatest fool, so long as he has no convictions of his own, may be a very nice gentlemanly fellow.”
“And what about the women?”
“They are less unendurable. They don’t talk of feminism, they don’t approve of women’s emancipation, and (best of all) they practise it very effectively indeed. They have a great deal of intuition, but for all that—and luckily so—not a grain of conscious experience.”
“Whom do you like best of all?”
“Miss Janina Dernowicz.”
“I was asking about artists; I am not one.”
“Ah, I see.—Artists? The prettiest is Miss Wartoslawska, whom I have known for a good long space of time. But just now she is far from looking as well as usual.—Why does not Owinski come here with her now?”
“Owinski?” I hesitated for a moment. Then: “Well, the engagement has been broken off for a month,” I said.
“Has it? Yes, I had heard something about his being affianced to some one, but fancied it was only gossip.... Why, he seemed to be a very passive sort of fellow, and bore the yoke meekly enough.”
“I don’t know who is responsible for what has taken place.”
“Oh, you have but to look at her, and you can’t help guessing.... Besides, women always love longer and more deeply. It is through love that they attain their highest degree of culture; and I must acknowledge that, so far as culture goes, they have outstripped men; a woman’s instinct stands higher than the wisdom of a man.”
“Why, Stephen, from where have you got this attitude of benevolent optimism towards woman?”
“Of tragical pessimism, I should say,” he answered, gayly, but then was lost in a brown study.
How am I to know? Very likely this also is love. And a good thing, too, that it came to me: I was so lonely then and so crushed with longing!
Now and then I enjoy emotions of superhuman delight, of ecstatic bewilderment. And then again there flutter about me, like black moths, certain bitter self-reproaches for the past, and maddening apprehensions as to the future,—Really, it is too ridiculous!... As if there could be anything worse than the sepulchral monotony of my life, as it formerly was!
And yet I know—I know!—that this is not happiness: that this romantic adventure of mine will have no morrow.
Put an end to it? I cannot; for just now the man is as necessary to me as the air I breathe. But some time or other I shall not love him any more; and then I shall hold it as a sacred duty to pay him for his deeds in the past by my future conduct.
And she, this my poor love! stands here, gazing with eyes full of frantic terror at her end, that will and must come some day!
The keynote in the tragedy of woman’s life is the fact that her need for permanent love stands in contradiction with men’s instincts and with their interests. Wiazewski calls this her “higher culture.” I think that Schopenhauer’s justification of this need as simply a case of design in nature is far more convincing. For how can we see any superiority in an instinct that we find equally developed in the most refined inamorata with her deep emotions, and in the average middle-class woman, all given up to passivity and routine?
After Owinski had engaged himself to a new fiancée, he would still, in the beginning, come at times and call upon Gina.
She would receive him with a smiling face and serene looks, and endeavour to delude him into thinking that no change had taken place, and that, if he said he had come back to her, she would be neither surprised nor dismayed.... She would talk about things which had interested them both; about her paintings and his poems. Together they read books, treating of the Beautiful, and Life, and Love. Once he said that he could not come to see her the next day, as his intended was to arrive in town; she took it as quietly as if he had announced his mother’s or his sister’s arrival. But, though they still called each other by their Christian names, they no longer kissed, not even at parting.
On one occasion, she asked him to read her one of his poems; a thing he was always willing to do. She listened, adapting to each changing phrase of his mind as she had used to do, and following every flash of his eye.—Now, there were many works of his with which she was not acquainted: formerly, she had been the first to read anything he wrote With a composed and tranquil mien, she listened even to the love-song, written for “the other.” Of course, they were the output of the reaction which had set in: the magic power of innocence; the first confession of love from the untouched lips of one ignorant of life; the return of his springtime, of his youth, of his ideals.... Gina had great self-control. At the end of one such poem, she handed him a love-song of the old times, written three years before, and under her enchantment. And this too he read aloud as he had read the others; and, roused to enthusiasm by the very music of the lines, showed a fire too evidently, alas! out of all connection with the object which had once inspired them.
Like a tune sunk deep in memory in bygone days, the words at once brought all the past before her: it rose up, plainly visible to her mind’s eye. The vision was agonizing, and the dismay of it made her raise her hands to her throat, as if to prevent the outburst of lamentation that now tore her bosom, as if she had been a feeble child, long and unjustly ill-treated. For she knew not how long, she wept like one distraught, even forgetting that he was present and only aware that all her universe had given way, was broken to pieces, crumbled to dust, annihilated.
Some one took her tenderly in his arms, smoothed her hair, kissed those moist, red, tear-swollen eyes of hers.
She felt it, and this act, meant to comfort her, seemed to her harder than all to bear. It was a kiss of pure sympathy for suffering, of mere humanity, a last farewell kiss.
The anguish she felt stifled her; she could not breathe,—till her pain tore its way out of her breast in a tempest of weeping.
Then, as in a nightmare, she heard his steps farther, farther away, and the sound of the door closing upon him. She knew it was closing upon him for ever; she knew that he would not return.
And then there came a time when she crept to his feet, like some poor beast that its master has driven away; and when, no longer admitted to his house, she loitered about for him in coffee-houses and in the street, and importuned him with letters incessantly. Whichever way he went, he was doomed to behold that face, pale as a spectre, and those eyes, so reproachful and so full of entreaty!
At present Owinski salutes her distantly, as he would salute some slight acquaintance; but he gives no answer at all to any of her letters. Nor does he any longer call on people at whose houses there is any chance of meeting her.
When I look at Gina, Martha recurs to my mind directly.
Once I thought I had eaten of the fruit of the knowledge that there is neither good nor evil.
And nevertheless, there is a feeling here, in my heart,—a silly persistent feeling,—that all that has happened is evil, most evil, whereas it might just as well have been good.—An adventitious otherness; circumstances, or possibly dispositions, make all the difference....
Yes, but I constantly see those eyes,—those pure dark-blue eyes, which had not merited for her such pangs as she has suffered—and the curve of that mouth, her tiny crimson mouth, set hard with pain, and always ready to burst out into lamentations.
She sometimes appears to me as a fiend, whom I hate for her obstinate will to suffer, for the childish and insensate whim of posing as a victim, for her attitudes and her love to gloat over herself. She comes with black wings and fluttering white hands; with a beggar’s impudence, she opens out her mourning weeds and shows me her bosom; beneath her white transparent flesh, I can see her purple-coloured heart. And she points to it. It is misery that has stained it so deep a red, filling it with red fire; for there is not a single drop of blood in it any more.
And she strokes that heart with dainty relish, and smiles on me malignantly.
I—am suffering remorse!
To differentiate between good and evil is far from wise. This is why my ethical principles are of such primitive simplicity. All my culture exists only in my brain; what is emotional in me remains elemental and primitive, full of stupid sentiment and of scruples.
And therefore it is that I am so unlike other women, whose great characteristic is that their feelings are cultured.
At times, when I see him afar, standing out from amongst the crowd, splendid in shape and wonderful in beauty, I have a sense of pride that he is mine—my own! Neither a pet cat nor a dog, neither a parrot nor a canary: a man of the world, tall, refined, in life’s prime. And this marvellous creature belongs to me. It is truly hard to realize this; and my brain whirls with pleasure at the very thought of such a possession.
When sitting by my side, he loses that charm of his, so extremely rare and of no less value,—the charm of aloofness. He is mine assuredly, my Witold. I know him well, I know him by heart. Never anything but by fits and starts; incorrigible in his defects, which are exceedingly hard to bear; obstinate and childish; his mind consisting of two or at most three strata, the uppermost of which alone contains a little gold; and under this you may root and dig all your life long, and never find anything but sand, and sand, and sand for ever!—But why do I always want to find things out, and go deeper and deeper?
When he kisses, it is as if he were drinking the blood out of me. I turn pale, and am weak and inert—ever more and more inert. In his arms I melt, or am like a flower drooping and dying in the sunbeams. I have not the strength even to raise my eyelids; it is as though the lashes had grown together.
But—and this is an odd thing—I never yield beyond a certain point, not determined by any resolve or will of mine, but by instinct and instinct alone. A moment comes when there surges up within me as it were a cold and ironically smiling energy; with one gesture, I repulse that creature full of intemperate desire, enchanting though he is in his thoughtless waywardness.
He always goes away humbled, vanquished, and concealing under the hearty kindness of a farewell kiss the gathering hostility of an everlasting antagonism.
For indeed I have never yet been his “paramour,” in any sense of the word used by Martha, when she questioned me.
Yet, when victorious, I at times wish that I had been defeated. Truly, I cannot understand myself. But I do not so much as attempt to strive against this something within me that can even overcome the natural bent of my temperament.
It is conceivably the instinct of self-preservation, which has in woman, through the immemorial working of heredity, been turned in one and only one special direction, antagonistic to unchastity. The ideal woman would prefer death to what is called shame, would she not?
And I also possess this involuntary and automatic tendency, instinctive yet purposeful; and in me it is only very partially blunted by the force of sober reason. But this explains well why my bias towards emancipation has its source and finds its scope chiefly in the intellectual sphere.
Last evening I spent some time in Gina’s studio. I was glad she had asked me to come, for last night there was something or other on at Witold’s club, and I do not like to pass my evenings alone now. I fear my own thoughts, which are never so profound as in solitude and by night. This activity of my mind sometimes exceeds my limited strength to bear it. And when I note that there is in this some resemblance between myself and Martha, I again hear her prediction of vengeance ringing in my ears.—There are moments when oh, how weak, how very weak I feel!
Although I have known Gina for a long time, our relations are always on a strictly formal footing. When we meet at a common friend’s, her behaviour is almost distant; when she is playing the part of hostess, she is not only courteous, but eager to show courtesy; and this difference in her bearing is very marked. At home, she is seldom gloomy, will not let the conversation flag for an instant, shows me her paintings, her albums, new periodicals and books; makes me most delicious black coffee; and is incessantly moving about, light-footed and supple, with lithe and snake-like motion, dressed in a long dark gown with trailing skirts, glittering with her gold ear-rings and her metallic belt, amid the easels and canvasses and stools of every shape, and all the admired disorder of her studio. And she tactfully avoids talking about herself, as she does not wish the least shade of gloom to enter our conversation.
“Are you quite comfortable?” she inquires, kindly. “Please don’t stand on ceremony, but sit down on this ottoman: very cosy, believe me. Let me put this skin under your head—the softest fur; as soft as silk. Now isn’t it nice to rest on?”
She fetches me a tiny stand, and places a cup of coffee upon its lower shelf, with teacakes and a tiny glass, so that I have everything close at hand.
“Now, a little drop of liqueur; that will do nicely, won’t it?”
In her studio a beautiful soft red twilight prevails. The lamp, well shaded, glows in a corner upon a low table. The easels throw black lines, long-drawn, big and grotesque, upon the upper parts of the walls. A glazed roof, which forms the greater part of the ceiling, looks like black velvet, framed in white with pink flowers along the frames.
Gina is to some extent an imitator of Costenoble. The last sketch made by her for a very large painting represents a man, with head thrown back in a pose of fatuous triumph, while at his feet a woman, instinct with subtle delicacy, suggests by her attitude the coils of a writhing serpent.
The sketch, as a whole, is melodramatic, and not very convincing. I prefer Gina as Gina to Gina as an artist.
I love to look at her, sitting close to me, reclining in that big easy-chair, with her long white hands carelessly dangling from the arms of her chair, forming as beautiful and as dainty a picture as any artist could create.
“Won’t you come with me to a concert on Thursday next?” she asks. “Ileska is to recite a poem by my ex-fiancé. He will certainly be there—and she too. I have not yet seen her, and should like to do so. There will also be piano and vocal music. Not a bad programme.”
“Of course I shall be much pleased, but—have you considered...?”
“Oh, don’t worry, I shall manage all right.... It can surely make no great impression upon me.”
She smiled.
“I should not have forced myself on you; but since Lola Wildenhoff’s departure, I have no one but you to do me this service. I am now so very easy to upset; and any want of tact jars upon me so!”
“I fancied that you were on pretty intimate terms with Idalia.”
“Not at present. True, she is still, as she always was, as discreet as can possibly be. But she has too much sentiment and sympathy—far too much; and that is annoying and mortifying. You, so tranquil, so quiet, so entirely unmoved, act on my nerves as a sedative. I can talk with you even more openly than with Lola.”
“Oh, have you heard from her?”
“Yes; I received one letter. She has left the Riviera, and is in Paris now, where she intends to winter along with her husband. Wildenhoff has won a good deal of money, playing at Monte Carlo; and both of them are now spending it, each of them apart.”
“And her nerves, how are they?”
“In perfect condition. She has left all her tears in the sea behind her.... That woman has an uncommonly happy disposition——”
Here followed a short but mournful pause, broken by the entrance of Radlowski, a painter who had been her fellow-student in Munich.
He noticed that my complexion was strikingly out of the common, and begged I would sit for my portrait.
Witold thinks that, of all the women he ever knew, I am the most intelligent. Before he made my acquaintance, he had been climbing up a regular ladder of emotions, of which Martha had formed the topmost rung. I, it appears, form a sort of synthesis of all his loves; I am at the same time the most beloved humanly speaking, and as a woman the most desired of all. He would not have me other than I am in any way.—As to this last, I wish I could say the same of him.
And yet I would not exactly have him changed—rather transformed and become another person. It seems that to be as lack-brained as an animal is not sufficient: one must besides have some primitive instincts, one must have some vigour.... What I need now, perforce and irresistibly, is matchless strength—the strength of a hurricane, of a cyclone, of some great natural force let loose.
He loves to talk with me on intellectual matters. “No one can understand his soul so well as I.”
Silent and with eyes cast down, I listen for some time to his commonplaces, uttered indeed in elaborately chosen words, and in a manner not commonplace. And I ponder. I gaze on him—on that mouth so perfectly shaped, so intensely sweet, just a little faded, it seems; and on those eyes which, beneath the tawny lashes that shade them, are so bright with the fever and the melancholy of lassitude, so full of the irresistible charm which surrounds all that is coming to an end, though you would have it remain as beautiful as only youth’s dream can be. And it is then—when he has not the slightest inkling of what I feel—that I love him most of all.
To-day I was sorry for him—sorry for all those desires of his, doomed to burn themselves out, never any more to be kindled.
Acting on an impulse, I went up to him, knelt with one knee upon his, put my hands round his head, wonderfully soft and velvet-like to feel, and then, turning his face up, I gazed into those enchanting, nebulous eyes, and said laughingly:
“Oh! in Heaven’s name, Witold, why must you talk about everything? You know well enough that this is not what you were made for, don’t you? Pray remember that your one strong point is love.”
And then, for the first time, I kissed him upon the lips, not waiting to be kissed by him.
He kissed me back again, but the kiss was cool, brotherly.
“I regret,” he observed, “that you show me so little of your beautiful soul, and refuse to acknowledge mine to be of a kindred nature. Yet I understand so well your dreams of the Arctic plains that you possess, of your grottoes, glimmering green in the Northern Lights; of your boundless and ever peacefully slumbering ocean! I am for ever very near to you....”
“That may be; but I am always very far away from you,” I retorted, with an attempt at pleasantry. Then I whispered in his ear:
“Love my snows: for there are volcanoes seething beneath them.”
At the words, his mouth fastened on to my neck, and he bit into my flesh with a kiss that gave me exquisite pain together with maddening delight.
My eyelids closed, my lips parted; I was about to faint. And I felt his mouth upon mine, and it was most sweet, with the savour of withered roses. And I drank of the crimson wine of his kisses, and it was strong as death.
And the crimson wine inebriated me.
But there came an evil moment. Was it Death, or was it Life, that then laid its cold hand upon my heart, and looked upon me with the eyes of wisdom?
The revulsion frees me, tearing me from his close embrace.—And I hated him, for he did not understand, and was unwilling to leave me. Yet, had he indeed left me thus, I should have resented it and longed for him!
No, never I shall be won by the graces of a young page with tawny eye-lashes, nor by the refined softness and subtlety of any art whatever. Strength alone can win me. As the cat carries off its little ones in its jaws, so let Him carry me away; and whithersoever he may take me, thither I shall go.
When we entered the concert-hall, it was already full. Gina was looking like a ghost.
We saw a good many people we knew, and several gentlemen came to present their respects. They were rather surprised to see Gina there, looked at her not without some tender interest, and seemed to scent a quarry.
Czolhanski, who as representative of his paper was sitting in the first row, also perceived us.
“Where is Mr. Witold?” he asked, looking round the hall. “I have been waiting for him, but he does not come.”
“Unfortunately,” I answered in a rather dry tone, “I am not in a position to enlighten you. However, if he has made an appointment with you, he may be expected to come.”
In reality, however, I was quite sure that Witold would be absent. He had even advised me not to go to the concert, for he particularly wished me to be at home and with him. But I would not disappoint Gina.
“He has promised to be here for sure,” repeated Czolhanski, as he went away.
I soon perceived Owinski walking up the central passage by the side of a lady in black attire, and no longer young. He was holding some tickets and endeavouring (in vain, shortsighted as he was) to find the corresponding numbers of the chairs. A pretty girl walked by the side of the lady in black; her dark eyes sparkled, and she was evidently much impressed by the important nature of the present performance. She spoke in a low tone to her fiancé, seeming to banter him on his embarrassment, and found the seats herself. They sat down at no great distance from us, on the farther side of the central passage.
Owinski left the ladies by themselves, and was returning to seek for something or other, when he happened to perceive us, as he passed by.
He changed colour slightly, and then approached to present his respects, kissing Gina’s hand in silence. She, too, neither spoke a word nor lifted her eyes.
I congratulated him on having got so first-rate an artiste as Ileska to recite his poem; he answered in a few polite words, and withdrew.
There was a pause.
From his shapely tapering fingers, a tall young musician shook some heavy drops of mingled sounds, then sprinkled them about, and they grew ever more and more beautiful; now daintily rounded off—musical pearls, as it were—now broken and hard and angular like stones. Now thunder was heard; the hail pattered and rattled; and someone set up a low murmured wailing, and Gina hung down her head; then sunrise was triumphantly ushered in to the pealing of bells. And the slender artist in black evening dress went on, as before, slowly, drowsily, letting his blossom-like hands fall dropping upon the piano keys, soft as velvet under their touch, and suddenly, with a gesture too rapid to be seen, he shed a perfect shower of pearls round us, from the inexhaustible treasury of his kingly munificence.
Never yet have I at any concert been able to fall under the spell of music.
I listen, and I look. I may even feel dazzled. But, to be spell-bound! That requires seclusion, concentration.... There are times when I prefer a barrel-organ to a concert!
I coldly admired the astonishing technique of the young virtuoso, now playing in public for the first time, and the extraordinary charm he possessed, which was like hypnotism or magic. Gina sat enthralled and following each motion of his hands. She no longer cast any glances in the direction of her victorious rival; but sombre clouds were passing over her face, and she knit her golden brows and frowned heavily.
I glanced towards Owinski; but on the way my glance and a look from two black and most observant eyes crossed each other. So! She was scrutinizing Gina!
Silence came; and then a clapping of hands: the first-rate actress, who was thin and unattractive, had appeared upon the platform. She bent her head slightly in a formal bow, and looked round the hall from under gloomy brows. The audience waited, expectant and agitated.
A clear, distinct, cold voice was heard vibrating through the brilliantly lighted hall.
Then, as if preparing for a surprise, it gradually grew mysterious, soft, and low. You thought of marble terraces, leading to subterranean vaults. The words seemed to take a sculptured form from her diction and utterance; their tones went lower, lower, lower still, became the muttering of a hushed lamentation, the rumbling sounds of a scarce audible curse, and the profoundest depths of the agony of death.
At intervals, Ileska would pause to cast her eyes down, and—in an ecstatic concentration of self-suggested rapture—wait while her wonderful voice, reverberated from the white and lofty walls, would echo back and fill her attentive ears....
And then she would again open her great sombre eyes, and continue her recitation, inspired as it were by the sound of that strange voice of hers.
Indeed, she gave so much of her own special individuality to the poem she was so admirably reciting, that I did not at first recognize it as the work of Owinski. Gina, wrung with anguish, cast up her eyes and threw back her head, looking steadfastly into the glare of the electric candelabra, and blinking now and then, while a couple of tears were sparkling in each outer corner of her eyes. She was trying to force them back into her heart by that means. Ah, yes; I know that trick, I do, how well!... But it was unsuccessful: indeed, it does fail from time to time. Once two translucent pearls trickled slowly on to her temples, and were lost in the tresses of her brown hair.
After Ileska, Mlle. Iseult Lermeaux, a singer who would, according to Czolhanski, be the great attraction of the concert, came forward on the platform. Her figure, as soon as I saw it, struck me as like some person strangely familiar. Could it—could it be?... No, the thing was incredible. I drew my brows together, that I might concentrate my attention and make sure. No, no; only a fearful unaccountable pain had taken possession of me for an instant. It was Gina’s own pain that I felt, reflected within myself.—An inexplicable bewitchment, that perhaps has its reason in the drawn-out, lazy, lascivious, dreamy notes of that song of a Southern land, which she is singing: yes, it may be that.
No. No. NO.—It is she, none but she ... she beyond all doubt. Now I know; and my knowledge is hell to me. Yes, I know all.
Ah! but she is fair, divinely fair! All the potency of the senses, all the exquisite refinements of art have come together to create this irresistible glamour that she spreads around her. No, no,—not a word! Those eyes, so amazing in their fairy-like beauty, and the long lashes that fringe them—those drowsy yet unfathomable eyes, like those of her whom King Cophetua loved so well! Yes, and it is her mouth, too—that wondrous, wondrous mouth, now pale and wan through excess of delights, either felt or known in dreams only.—But, Heavens! I can see this mouth pressed close to that other mouth, sweet beyond all sweetness,—that mouth fragrant with its terrible death-bringing scent, its scent as of withered roses!...
This—this is death!
Not so. Oh, no, it is not death: this is Life! Understand the truth.—It is life; behold it now: life in very deed.
You see now?—All is clear. It was for that reason that Czolhanski was awaiting him here. It was for that reason that he wished you not to come, and that, because you came, he stayed away.
Is—is not this yet Death?
No. It is Life: Life that, out of the accents of that voice, supremely melodious, drowsy, sleepy, yet replete with fire from an unfathomable abyss, out of the lazy, lascivious snaky curves of those limbs of hers; out of those glossy shoulders, so shapely, so slenderly fashioned, and of those outstretched naked arms, in hue like pale dead gold, has come forth towards you in all its hostile might!
Gina, lost in dreary amazement, was staring at me.
“What ails you?... Had we not better get away from here?”
We were both of us presently standing, frantic with pain, in the street which, lit up by the flaring windows of the great hall, was as bright as day.
“Let us go away—away!—Home? On no account.—Get drunk somewhere—lose my senses—shed some one’s blood....”
I was raving like one in a delirium.
“I beg you, Gina, come, come along—I can’t bear any more!” I stammered.
She hesitated. “Unescorted and alone—to a night-restaurant?”
“What does it matter?”
“Better have made an appointment—somewhere—with Mr. Imszanski....”
Then I burst into laughter. “Unescorted? Ha, ha, ha!” I roared, as we got into a four-wheeler. “Forgive me, but even so,—I fancy neither of us has much to lose!
“To Lipka’s? I will not. No, I entreat you. No memories of things gone by—A hotel, any hotel!—or a first-rate night-restaurant.—Fast! As fast as horses can go! Faster, faster!”
Off they went, the great black half-starved horses. A few street-lamps flashed by in the dark night. A few jolts from the rubber-tired wheels made us sway about: and again it is all bright around. Oh! how I am tortured!
A cold blast blows, muddy pools splash, a drizzling rain sets in.... Oh, yes, yes; all this is very real: fact, not fiction.
Now a brilliantly lit doorway is before us; now a staircase, adorned with flowers and mirrors....
Gina was eyeing me in astonishment, but she said not one word. She no doubt could not guess what had come over me; but, in her state of mind, the strangest occurrence must have seemed quite commonplace. And then, she no longer felt so much alone in her distress; beside my madness her state of tearful dejection seemed but a small matter.
The great saloon was filled as usual with specimens of the jeunesse dorée, with financiers, and with courtesans. We attracted a good deal of attention. I had assumed the gay mien of a girl desperately bent on fun, and looked about on all sides, with lively glances at everybody.—Several men spoke to me.
In the passage on to which the doors of the private supper-rooms opened, we were met by a young but full-grown satyr, who slipped his arm under mine, and looked into my face. And yet I did not cease to laugh. It was revenge I craved—debauch—oblivion of all!
Gina’s terrified looks were expostulating with me.
“We have nothing to lose,” I returned to their speechless appeal. And thereupon she too fell a-laughing strangely.
The creature whose arm was in mine kept chattering incessantly ... about I know not what. A waiter respectfully opened the door of a small private room, and we all three went in.
“I presume, ladies, you have been at the play?” our gentleman inquired, having remarked the dresses we wore.
“Ha, ha!” I answered. “Right you are. Been at one play, and come to another.” There was not less coarse ribaldry in my tones than in my words.
“That’s first-rate.—The bill of fare, waiter!—What will you take?”
“To eat, nothing. We want to drink, to drink, to drink!”
“Very good!” he exclaimed, in a tone of pleased surprise. “Coffee and liqueur—cognac—champagne?”
“All right: anything and everything, my dear man!”
Several bottles were standing on the table. Our companion, having leisurely prepared a mayonnaise, set to munching the lobster with great relish, showing his white teeth in a grin.—Gina drank, but was mute.—I babbled incessantly, endeavouring to pass for a cocotte. We were a puzzle to the young man nevertheless, and his behaviour towards us was lacking in assurance.
“Do you know, Madame,” he at last blurted out, addressing me, “it will be better fun if we make a quartette.... I have an acquaintance in the saloon here: a capital fellow he is.”
Then, turning to Gina: “You also, Madame,” he said, “should have a little diversion.”
I protested very strongly.
“Not the least need for him; let him stay where he is. You are what we want.”
I held him back, putting my hands upon his shoulders, and my face close to the animal face of that unknown man.
He smiled, much flattered: his white teeth gleamed.
“We shall not keep you long, if you wish to leave us. But for the present, you have to stay with us.”
Some one—who could it be?—filled my liqueur-glass with cognac again and again. Presently, a crimson blood-red smoke began to float from corner to corner of the small cabinet, papered with red and gold, and filled with the sound of his loud voice and the reek of tobacco. All round me, everything was afire and aflame.
He was drawing near; in every limb of mine I felt his approach. His jaws, chewing still, though his supper was over; his tiny eyes, to which expectancy gave a phosphorescent glow; and the hot fulsome breath from his gaping chops, embellished with splendidly shining fangs and incisors; and that blond upstanding moustache of his:—I had all these close to my face. He was unsteadily leaning over, tilting his chair towards the sofa, touching and fingering the gauze trimming of my bodice, and seeking my lips with his.
My brain, intensely excited, showed me things as they were. But I half closed my eyes, and looked at him through the lids as though about to faint.
All would not do.... My mind was sober: its powers came into full play.
At that instant I drew back, and—with all the force of my rage, hate, despair, and revenge—revenge for everything and for us all—I dealt him a furious blow with my clenched fist, right between those phosphorescent greenish lustful eyes!
He reeled, and fell along with his chair on to the floor. Gina was at the door in a flash.
I flung down upon the table all the money I had by me, and, slamming the door behind us, rushed out in Gina’s company.
No one was in the passage. I walked out of the saloon, my face by this time wearing an unconcerned expression. In the cloakroom we put on the hooded mantles we had taken to the concert. I went home, shorn of all my strength, and in a state of complete collapse.
An astonishing woman, that Gina! She never asked me for any sort of explanation.
“This explosion scene has done me good,” was her indifferent and only comment.
From this day, I am her friend.
I have told Gina all about the whole business, from beginning to end. She said I was terribly naïve. “Things could not possibly have turned out otherwise.” She advised me to forgive Witold. It was only if he had loved another that I could have had any cause for complaint. But such a passing connection as that!... Besides, I had no rights over him; and moreover, he was a man!... Owinski, too, had been several times unfaithful to her; and yet, though their relations had been very different from ours, she had always forgiven him: though indeed not without difficulty.... It was only now that the inwardness of suffering had come home to her.... Had he been willing, she would have agreed to his having a dozen others besides his wife!
“Never would I agree to such a thing as that,” I replied. “If Witold gave me up for the love of some other woman, then I should at least be sure that my misery was of some service to others, and that there was on both sides equality of rights, since I too might have just as well fallen in love with another.... But if he is false to me for a mere plaything and to amuse himself with what does not mean any more to him than a good cigar, then I am absolutely unable to act, and quite defenceless against him. I shall never, never be able to do the same. And, between the measure of his guilt and of my retaliation for it, there is such huge disproportion as makes me ridiculous in my own eyes.... Why, when Roslawski forsook me, I was also most miserable: but in his behaviour at least there never was anything one whit so mean, so dirty, as this.”
“I have not the slightest wish,” returned Gina, “to impose my philosophy of life upon you.”
He has excused himself; has assured me, even sworn that I am in error. I have refused to believe him. Women are hugely credulous, credulous in the extreme.
I have not seen him this whole week. He came here twice, but was denied entrance, as I ordered. I don’t care for the forgiving system. I don’t care to become like Martha....
However, if I act thus, it is on principle only; in reality, I am tortured by his absence. My feelings incline me to believe that he says true.... Surely he cannot possibly be thus false to me.
I fear greatly lest, if he should come again....
No, no.—I am going to call on Wiazewski, who has of late been quite neglectful.
I started by complaining of things in general, and with but little of personal feeling. He has hitherto known nothing about my relations with Witold. And I am also ashamed of this love, in which I have been playing so ludicrous a part.
“... And to think of the years, the golden years of youth, gliding, gliding, gliding by, beautiful, but empty as some marble bath of ancient days!...”
“But I told you once that men of modern times do not care to bathe in those waters. They are too clear, too cold; they run with too swift a stream, and with too many, oh! far too many an eddy and deep hollow. Janka, they fail to attract.”
“Let me say, Stephen, that I am unhappy, and therefore come to you. You, as a friend, have some responsibilities toward me; you can’t get out of them. All that I am is going to pieces at this time; and I do not know whether life or death will come of the change which is taking place.”
I had never yet yearned for Witold as at that moment, though I knew perfectly well that no one had done me the wrong which he had done.
“What about Helen?” I asked, with friendly interest.
“There again! I have been disappointed in her.”
“What, she! Unfaithful to you? Can that be?”
“Ah, no! I, rather than she, have been at fault in that respect.”
“Well then?”
“Well, what shall I say? I have broken with her.”
Forsaken! She too had then come to swell the list, after Martha, Gina, and myself!
“That’s horrible. She was so very much in love with you.”
“Whereas I, alas! have a preference for women who care for nothing very much.”
“Yet I know you have been moody of late.”
“And you are right: yes, I have.”
“Well, what was it that troubled your Olympian calm? The parting scene—tears—upbraiding?”
“Pas le moins du monte. She went away without uttering a word.”
“Then what was it?”
“That I have simply lost my belief in the last dogma left to me from childhood. Everybody complains that women are too devoid of heart and brains and soul; and I now find that it is in vain I have sought for a woman bereft of those superfluous appendages.”
“But Helen, as I understood, answered your ideal of a woman to perfection?”
“I fondly thought she did. Oh, you cannot imagine what I would give to meet a woman really soulless, primitive: you know,—a creature absolutely and bewilderingly unenlightened.”
“Really, I quite dislike you to-day, Stephen. You are positively in bad form!”
“Please forgive me.”
“What special mark of her culture has Helen given you?”
“Culture? That would have been by far too bad. Besides, it was something perhaps even worse: a mark of character, firm conviction.”
“Up to now,” he continued, “I had been quite satisfied with the girl; so, a few days ago, I proposed that she should give up her employment and come to live with me. Would you believe it? I met with a point-blank refusal. You fancy, perhaps, it was marriage she wanted, or something of that kind; and, word of honour! If she had, I would have taken her willingly.... Not at all. She told me sententiously that ‘although she recognized free love, she never would be a kept woman!’ What do you think of that, eh? Ha, ha! It’s something astounding, isn’t it?”
But I could not laugh. I sat silent, thinking of many things, far more pained than amused.
Stephen continued: “A girl with such splendidly expressionless eyes of a bright azure, like a piece of water! No shadow of any yearning for the Beyond, no shadow of anything like intellect or brightness of thought!... By day they reflected the sun, her lamp in the evening, and my own eyes at night. They had the beautiful dead gleam of pearls. She might have been less pretty: with such eyes, she was pretty enough for me. And then, that slow, sleepy, brainless voluptuousness in her glance! And her white flashing teeth, too! I tell you, there is not a single spot or flaw in any one of them; her molars are like the molars of a ruminant, large and flat. She did, it is true, write me letters without necessity; but, through my influence and under my direction, she had come even to forget her alphabet. She truly gave me the impression (false as I know now) that she never thought at all.
“And that girl ‘recognizes free love’! Such a surprise may well make one throw all the beliefs of one’s life on the dustheap!”
All this talk of his seemed to me decidedly shallow and foolish. Why on earth was he trying, by means of that far-fetched theory of his, to justify the fact that the woman simply bored him?
He has now made up his mind to seek for his future Dulcineas amongst kitchen-maids.
“Dressmakers have decidedly too much culture for my taste,” he said.
“I sincerely hope you may be successful,” was my parting wish.
Witold, contrary to my expectations, has not yet called again. There is something going on that is beyond me, incomprehensible.
I am assailed by innumerable thoughts which make me turn pale with fear.
He, too, is possibly “seeking oblivion,” as I was; but he is scarce likely to stop in time, like me. Moreover, his vengeance will not, like mine, be a more horrible pain than the injury itself.
He has a supremely great advantage over me, and the conditions of the struggle are the most unequal possible.
Will he delay coming for long? Is it conceivable that he has given me up for ever?
I was in tears all this evening.
Idalia felt it her duty to try and comfort me. A kind, lovable girl she is. And she knows how to deal skilfully with “semi-tones” of every description. Her eyes are gentle, her face a little faded and careworn; there is something maternal about her.
“We take everything so very seriously, so very much au tragique,” she says. “And that, you see, puts us more in their power. We should analyse things less, and learn rather to glide over them. Analysis is a two-edged weapon: it easily turns and wounds you. Do endeavour to pass along with a cursory look about you, even with half-closed eyes; things will seem different at once. Don’t cry any more: and if he should come, the servant is to let him in, is she not?”
“On no account; on no account;” I cried, in a fury.
“But why?” she murmured, gently stroking my hair. “Why? To let him in—that does not bind you in any way: you are free to act as you like. And why not hear what he has to say?”
“Because I have heard him already.”
“And you would not believe him? You were not right in that. It is so easy to believe!... And whether the thing is true or not, what does it matter to you? What is true in some part of time may be false in some part of space; and vice versa. A fact is true, but only for the day. When he is beside you, and assures you of his love, you will have the greatest of all truths: the indubitable truth in the present. What took place before?... What is to come later?... Never mind: it is all the same!”
And I think she is in the right.
Every now and then Czolhanski comes and calls upon me. He came yesterday, too. This, I think, is rather too much. God! how I detest that man!... He enters, sits down, stays for three mortal hours, pays me a few compliments, lets out a few commonplaces about the lamentable position of a journalist: a man untidy, unshaven, rather dirty in his ways, and very pretentious: his finger-nails are in mourning and his hands always moist. No use to take up a newspaper, even to be more uncivil to him still: he will not take the hint and go. Once he wrote a sonnet to me! Journalism has evidently been the death of his poetical talent. But, Lord! what does it all matter after all? He will kiss my hands, though I always beg him not to, he disgusts me so. If I were in his place, I should go and hang myself! And he—he is quite unaware of my feelings, and very much self-satisfied.
Yesterday Radlowski came as well, and for the first time, under the pretext of a message from Gina. His company would be most pleasant, for he is so very extremely young; and his eyes sparkle like a diamond in the sun, with a sort of delectation so lively that it seems unnatural; painfully so. He has again asked me to sit for my portrait.
I have promised: but I cannot—I cannot as yet.
What is the reason of Idalia’s playing so very poorly to-day? She writhes and twists herself to and fro at the piano, with more than sensual affectation; she suddenly and convulsively coils and uncoils herself like a snake, during the more brilliant passages: and she goes on playing interminably, from dusk till far, far into the deep, dark, never-ending night.
And why is she doing so, this day of all others, when all my strength to bear it has left me?
The longing, the pain I feel, is stifling, is strangling me: it bites at my throat, and I shudder to feel it cling round my feet like ivy, together with the thought of my blighted joys.
These I see lying on heaps of tropical flowers—lying in long rows, naked, asleep, and beautiful as dreams of what is past forever.... Over them there blows a gentle breeze, scattering the flower-petals upon their fairy-like forms; but it does not wake them from slumber. Only, from time to time, do their long black eye-lashes open and shut, slowly and rhythmically, as the silken wings of a fluttering butterfly. They are dreaming of their delights.
Say, O say! why does all this give me such infinite pain?
And then there always come to me haunting visions, which are my childhood! A dark outline of forest-trees; a perspective fading into infinite, infinite distance, and the clear waters wherein life lay hidden once upon a time. The vision stands, I know not how, for the times of my childhood. Music always renders concrete even the most abstract of things.
Something is tearing my soul; it is the impossibility of any delusion about....
Ah, do not, do not bite thus at my throat!... I cannot weep!... And do not make the sharp-edged music of the violin soft by the dark velvet touch of your smooth hand!... And do not, do not press my bosom so; my heart will burst!... And do not hug my body with that tender embrace, that Lesbian caress!... Nor twine like ivy round my feet, uttering that awful moan for blighted joys!...
Witold, O Witold! behold, I return to you! O sleep, O life! Yes, I return....
I have written the following short note to Witold to-day:
“If you wish, you may come. J. D.”
It breathed the spite—the unavailing and very plebeian spite—of my humiliation. I fully recognized this: and yet I chose to send the note, thus styled.
I expected that he would come like a conqueror, triumphant and self-assured; and thinking so, I for the time being ceased to love him at all.
As it happened, he has belied my expectations.
On my return from the office, I found him already here. He was quite childishly delighted, and for a long while I could not free myself from his rapturous embrace.
“Janka, Janka! how cruel, how cruel you have been!” he cried out in broken words amongst his kisses. “You are a monster of barbarity! And of stubbornness too! For you know so well how much I love you!... You should have had trust in me, as I have trust in you.... Have I ever given you any cause for mistrust? I hide nothing from you, nothing whatsoever!... Oh, my dearest, my only one, my darling!... I know that you will be mine one day—mine! It must be so.... Could I ever have exposed myself to the danger of losing your love? Think of that. Think how different you are from all other women.... I know you could never have forgiven me, if....”
So handsome, so kindly, so affectionate! I knew how intensely I loved him. And then, in the secret depths of my heart of hearts, I was aware that I could forgive him anything in the world.
Yet I said: “My love for you would then instantly turn to hate, as it did for the last few days....”
He feigned to be horribly frightened. We were both of us in ecstasies of joy.
Long, long, did we speak together of our love. We should love each other forever and forever: and with what intensity!... Only we were to have more of mutual trust, and to be more tolerant one for the other: there would be no more of those former bickerings which had been so painful to both of us.
Closer and closer we drew. Hallucinated with rapture, I was almost out of my mind. The air around me grew rosy, and the walls had a purple glow, and the lamp was burning—how can I express it? Black, quite black! Bending down his head, he fixed his eyes on me.
“Janka!” he said, with low but clear-cut articulation; “Janka!” His voice was changed; it was strangled and seething with emotion. There was in it just a touch of surprise—surprise at the victory which he now foresaw.
I was startled, and a shiver ran through me. A noise as of a whirlwind murmured confusedly in my ears; my throat was filled with a hot suffocating fragrance, and I felt as if the air I breathed had grown solid and came in morsels.
“Janka, Janka,” he whispered again, as if struggling with his deep perturbation; for he was greatly moved.
In a sort of hypnotic trance, I stared hard into his dimly glistening eyes. I kissed his mouth.... All my soul, with all its faculties, transported from the infinitely distant confines of the world of thought, was concentrated and poured out in that one kiss of mine!
Ah! I cannot understand what it was that at such a moment held me back, since I and all that was mine had now been transformed and had passed into one desire alone. It was no longer thirst, it was hunger—raging, ravenous hunger. I clung to him with all my might, and whispered and stammered a string of broken incoherent words; and, in a delirium of mingled agony and bliss, I sighed under my breath:
“Oh, my only one; oh, my own!”
And afterwards—afterwards, when he had left my side, ungratified and disappointed, as he ever had been—then, with a burst of heart-rending tears, I threw myself down upon the floor near the door which had just closed on him, and listened to the sound of his footsteps, and murmured imploringly:
“Oh, come—come—come back! I am yours!”
But had he come back—I knew it well—I should have resisted then, as always.
And perhaps it is true to say that such a thirst as mine was cannot possibly be quenched by any delight on earth!
All is once more as it was of old. I am much in love, happy (to some extent), and slightly sarcastic about things in general. Witold comes daily; he is good and tender to me beyond words.
Sometimes our conversation flags. Then we read together—novels and poems only; for Witold, scientific literature is non-existent. A volume of Owinski’s poems, just published, has given us many a pleasant hour.
She is right, Idalia: I had taken all things—and that also—too much in earnest. At present, I am trying to live more practically than I ever did.
Of the present situation, nothing can come—neither marriage nor anything else. So, as I reckon, it may last at the most one year more. I have to be prepared for that, and let the parting come by degrees and as easily as possible; so I am looking beforehand for some rock or other to which I may cling when wrecked. Now and then, when I think of my ideals once cherished in the past, the notion still comes to me (though rarely) of a love both deep and wise.
Better seek something far other than love—an “aim in life”—some idea—asceticism—even such as a nunnery can provide! “Dans la bête assouvie un ange se réveille!” Yes, but—is it “assouvie”? Well, I am rather tired, not only of love, but of the whole atmosphere I am living in.
In truth, disdain of all things is best of all. Yet again, disdain itself would be one of the things to be disdained!
I am curiously entangled at present, and can scarcely recognize myself as “Her of the Ice-Plains.” In this continual struggle with myself, my strength has been exhausted.
Ah, yes; another incident. Czolhanski has proposed to me in the most naïve fashion imaginable. Although I am a woman of “advanced” ideas (and they say such a one hardly can make a good wife), still he is not alarmed; he trusts in me! Besides, he could not live with any woman unable to understand him.... Also, he gets two hundred roubles a month, which, together with my office salary, ... And so on.
I have refused him categorically, hopelessly, irrevocably. And—which is much more strange—I have done so without the shadow of a smile.
When I am very weary and out of sorts, I go and call up Wiazewski. There are people who resemble those ships which were formerly used by slave traders to convey their human freight: these had a double hold. And Wiazewski is one of such men.
He allows any one to overhaul his soul on the asking, freely and frankly. Only he does not like them, when they come to the hold, to knock too hard: the hollow sound underneath would betray his secret. Beneath the false bottom, there is a dark den into which he smuggles those he has enslaved to his will, never to go out free into the world again. The knowledge of this would spoil his reputation in society as an estimable man.