I
ICE-PLAINS
Girt with a girdle of morning-glory and vetches in full blossom, and
twining a great wreath of heavy corn-flowers round my head, I lie upon
my back in the forest glade.
It is a fine summer afternoon, and sultry. In the pines overhead there
is a faint murmur, continuous, a little sad; the birches, with their
slender waving boughs, utter a quiet whisper, but no breeze is to be
felt.
As I lie here, I presently fall to crooning a sing-song chant—not any
known air, but one made up of many tunes, heard long ago, or never heard
at all. The words, too, are either remembered, or they spring up as I
sing. If the rhyme fails me, I do not break off the tune to find one,
but make an assonance do just as well. So I sing of a dream I have
dreamt, and then of love—hot, burning love,—and I end with an invocation
to the Faun of the wood; for my desire is toward him.
It is warm and still. By fits and starts birds chirp—so softly that they
seem to be whispering. I half expect to see a chamois, with long horns
curling back from its brow, peep out wistfully from between the
birch-trunks.
The sun, shining athwart the leaves that quiver, flings mobile twinkling
rounds of light upon the pine-needles. I close my eyes. A great bright
stain appears, followed by a succession of rainbow hues, ending in a
spot of scarlet flame.
It is warm and still. The scent of wild thyme is in my nostrils. Behold
me, a woodland nymph, awaiting the Faun of the woods!
I have left my vast ice-plains, my Northern Lights, my cold silvery
dreams among the stalactites of my grottoes, and have come to bask in
the strong sunshine of life.
And I welcome life with a peal of laughter, the outcome of many a day of
tortured thought and fruitless pondering. I yield myself up to it, not
from any internal weakness, but submitting to its brutality with a
supreme effort that crushes down all repulsion, all revolt.
Upon the ruins of my mystic dreams there has grown up a lush rank
flower—the worship of Life and its delights.
And my resignation is ungrudging, royally complete: for I do love life,
in spite of all.
My mind—my cruel, insatiable, gloomy mind—would have put happiness to
death; but I now trample it down. To-day I will pluck the flame-red
blossom of Life: and my song shall call upon the Faun!
No Faun comes to my call; but instead of his hoofs, I hear the gallop of
a horse in the distance. Laying my ear to the ground, I make sure.
Yes, I know: it is Janusz, coming after me. So I cease from singing, and
lie silent and without motion; he is riding along the forest pathway,
and I hope he may miss me, hidden here among the pines. And yet I am not
unaware that, should he ride past and not discover me, I should feel
disappointed. Notwithstanding, I make no movement. The only deceit I
care to shun is self-deceit.
Janusz, who has seen me afar amongst the birches and the pines, urges
his horse forward, and approaches behind me, so that I cannot catch
sight of him. He means (so I guess) to come upon me suddenly with a
rush, and frighten or flutter me, or in some way or other throw me off
my balance. On which account, I take care not to make the least
movement, lying with my hands clasped underneath my head, and looking up
at the sky.
He rides at me with a swift run, and reins in his horse only two paces
away from me. He at once realizes that my attitude is a challenge; it
annoys him. There is a pause. In order to make me turn my head in his
direction, he keeps his horse standing in the same place: this is hard
to do.
But I too remain motionless, repressing a desire to laugh. Janusz is, I
know, too good a rider to let his beast tread upon me. I can hear it
snorting impatiently, and its hoofs pawing the ground.
The flies in the wood torment it so much that presently it is unable to
restrain itself, and frets forward a few paces, to my side. And so I can
see Janusz. A handsome man, in a light-coloured jockey’s cap,
tight-fitting trousers, and long patent leather boots; just now so vexed
that his nostrils are quivering.
Bowing stiffly, he takes his right foot out of the stirrup, and prepares
to dismount.
“You might have failed to see me, and ridden farther. I thought you
would,” I remark, with a faint uninterested smile.
“As it happened, I did not fail.”
“So I see.”
“Did you want me to fail?”
“I did.”
“For what reason, pray?”
“I was in a very pleasant mood—a sort of pantheistic mingling with
Nature, that requires solitude to be enjoyed.”
“All the same, I am going to stay,” he says with a determined air, and
carefully ties his horse’s reins to a pine-branch.
A silence follows. Janusz brushes a few pine-cones out of his way, and
then seats himself by my side. I sit up likewise, arrange the wreath of
corn-flowers on my head, and lean back against a trunk.
“Do you not see that we are at odds?” he asks at length.
“That may very well be,” I answer with some disdain. “And how did you
find out where I was?”
“I followed you.”
“Did you, indeed?”
“My balcony commands an extensive view. Your rose-coloured dress was
plainly to be seen, as you went along the meadows and fields. You
followed the path that skirts the ditch, did you not? And so on to the
wood, where you disappeared. I followed on horseback along the highroad:
a far shorter way.”
“Yes, your way; straight on, but less picturesque than mine.”
“Am I to see some hidden meaning in this?”
“Oh, no, you need not—as you choose.”
Janusz is of those who love “intellectual” talk; I put forth all the
social tact that I have, and do my best to keep down to his level. I
strive to attract him, not with my good looks, but with my mental
charms, which I have now enlisted in the service of my physical self. My
coquetry varies in quality as does the psychical character of its
object; and thus it never fails in artistry. Here I am guided by the Law
of Contrast. For instance, when I first flirted with Roslawski, I
brought into play the primitive elemental sides of my nature; though
indeed I had later to change all my tactics. And it is my quality as a
woman—with my womanly wisdom and wit and originality—that I am acting
upon Janusz; should I lose half my good looks, I should still, as a
woman, be not less lovable in his eyes. In the psychology of
contemporary love, this is a significant fact.
Over his handsome clean-cut face, a glow passes now and again. His eyes
are fixed upon my features. I meanwhile, swift in change as a chameleon,
and bright with radiant looks and glances, am watching him with artistic
and quite impersonal interest: with those quivering sensitive nostrils,
he makes me think of some beautiful high-bred animal. His eyes, which
usually beam and glisten, are at present dimmed and glazed over, as if
their fire had been extinguished, burned out by the passion within him.
Now and then his eyes fall before mine, and he attempts to call up a
pleasant smile; but in the attempt his white teeth glitter dangerously.
A gnat has settled on his forehead, and I tell him so. He waves it away
listlessly.
“Let it bite,” he says with a smile; “it matters little. I have blood
enough and to spare.”
There is a touch of self-satisfaction in his voice as he says this. It
was then a mistake of mine to have supposed him unaware of the nature of
his strength. Knowledge of one’s strong points makes for happiness; he
is enviable.
Now he takes up some pine-cones, with which he pelts his horse
playfully. It begins to kick and stamp. Instead of teasing the poor
brute to no purpose, he ought (I say) to take one of the trees for his
mark; and with that I go up to the horse. It gives me a distrustful look
out of its beautiful eyes, while I stroke and pat its neck.
“Miss Janina, do not go so near my beast; it may hurt you.”
“You were not afraid when it was but now standing close to my head,” I
reply laughingly.
“But I was holding it in then,” he mutters between his set teeth.
Up he comes, stretching out his hand to pull me away by force; but I
flash him a quick glance of surprise, and at once he is subdued.
“I beg you,” he says in a voice half-strangled with emotion, “I beg you
to let me kiss your hand.”
He is quite close to me. One instant I am hot as fire; but I do not draw
away from him, nor put my hands behind me. Standing motionless, with my
half-averted head bent down close to the horse’s mane, I answer calmly:
“I will not.”
Janusz, with dog-like obedience, shrinks back, and stands a few paces
away.
“Let us go home now,” I say after a short silence; “but you must let me
ride your horse.”
“With the utmost pleasure; but then, how will you manage for a saddle?”
“Oh, that’s all right. Even on your saddle, I can contrive to ride
woman-fashion. Only you will have to arrange the stirrup.”
I leap into the saddle, my foot just touching his hand. Janusz himself
settles it in the stirrup, which he shortens for me. As he does so, I
once more see a glow sweep over his face.
“Pray allow me to lead the horse. It is restive, and may throw you.”
“No, thanks; I am not in the least afraid.”
On a sudden, with an unexpected movement, he catches hold of me, and
presses his face hard against my knees.
At the same instant nearly, I give the horse a smart blow with my whip,
and gallop away, not looking behind me; it is not easy to keep my
balance on that saddle.
This I have done, not to escape from him, nor as being in any sort of
fear. It was only that he should not perceive my flushed face—flushed
neither with indignation nor with shame.
Janusz has gone to L. for some days. I am alone with Martha, with whom I
enjoy myself very much. There is no one else on earth with whom I can
share the delight of reading together wise and beautiful books. As we
read, we become lost in mutual admiration at the depth and subtlety of
the remarks we make: whence arises a delightful state of mind in which
each loses consciousness of the other being present. Our impressions are
equally instantaneous, equally immediate; a look, a gesture, suffices
for one to understand the other. We are growing absolutely similar, all
but identical. Set apart from all that surrounds us, our minds meet on
dizzy heights, spanned by aërial bridges which bring our souls together,
over the tremendous gulfs that stretch beneath us; thereon few can walk,
for the bridges are of gossamer threads. In the valleys of the mind it
is not hard for two souls to come together; but as one reaches the
mountain-tops, each is farther and farther apart, and the chasm between
them becomes more and more profound; besides, at the tread of the first
ponderous foot, those bridges of cunning workmanship, running from peak
to peak, are broken and fall to pieces.
Nevertheless, there is no love, nor even much liking, between Martha and
myself. We do not so much as call each other friends. We both agree
that, between one woman and another, no true love is possible; and so we
do not try to cheat ourselves with a counterfeit. But, though we do not
say everything openly and in words, still we know and understand one
another to perfection.
The one thing that could drive us apart would be mutual rivalry in love
for a man. Happily, however, Martha holds this to be out of the
question. Ascetically disposed, she prides herself on the fact that no
one has ever loved her. She likes as a rule to play the part of one that
the world and that men misunderstand and fail to appreciate. This part,
moreover, she plays very gracefully, she being a pretty girl, and no one
taking her too much in earnest.
“My life,” she is wont to say, “is as pure as a blank page; no thrill is
recorded there, no kiss, no blush. I have no faith save in this crystal
transparency of my being; save in the knowledge that Life passes close
to me, touches me, grazes me, and yet by some miracle never leaves upon
my long white robe one streak from the golden pollen of the flowers she
bears; no faith save in the immaculateness of this my soul, that can
travel through a coal-mine, and yet come out white as snow. The only
article of my faith, the sole thing I care for, is the conviction that I
shall go through life nobly and beautifully, in sweetness and
tranquillity infinite; that my passage upon earth will be all sunshine
and loveliness: the blossoming of a rare and goodly flower. So may I
die! Even though love could give me happiness, I still would stand aloof
from it....”
Yes, but now and then in the dim blue twilight, she plays _Der Frühling_
of Grieg: and then I feel that what she says is not the truth. In her
notes there is a tone of longing unspeakable, that begs, with gentle
half-audible entreaty ... for _something_. And that fair white soul of
her is always sobbing with pain, and dreaming—ever dreaming—of love.
When all is said, I am clever, young, and good-looking: so I want to
live my life. Nietzsche will not have us forget the law: _For a woman, a
stick_. Amiel declares she must love one only, and obey a sex-morality
that has been made for her alone. Garborg tells us that she ought not to
go anywhere without a governess, so that her future husband may find
suspicion impossible. In spite of all which, I am resolved to live my
own woman’s life.
Hitherto I have not found out what femininity essentially is. In the
Roslawski period, I piously believed æsthetic feeling to be the great
typical quality of womanliness. But now—Ellen Key asserts that the woman
always shapes herself as the man desires. If then he, the Only One, be a
primitive, masterful, despotic man, am I to season his siesta and cigar
with witty conversation, and bind my hair and dance and sound the
timbrel for him, whilst to all others my eyes alone are to be visible,
my face hidden under a veil? I want to live my woman’s life ... nothing
more. Until, perhaps....
Oh, how hard it is for a girl to bear, upon her white and shapely
shoulders, the awful burden of conscious humanity!
At times, Janusz is as gentle as a tame young wolf, and that ravenous
look has faded from his eyes. Then I permit him to kiss my hands and lay
them to his sunburnt cheeks. When the wild beast within him has for a
while fallen asleep, he has all the kindness, all the sweetness of a
child. Yet even then I feel the presence of a latent force which may
break out at any time: a force which—I cannot tell why—seems to me
antagonistic.
“How I wish you would allow me to call you my darling!” he said to-day,
when sitting at my feet on a bank of turf, and touching the border of my
skirt caressingly, like a favourite cat.
I looked from above at the long lashes of his downcast eyes, at his
scarlet lips, at his beautifully chiselled nose, and said within myself:
“Why don’t you then? I should only just set one long loving kiss—two
perhaps—upon those lips of yours and leave you without one word of
regret.”
“Are you offended then?” he asked, looking up at me.
I knitted my brows slightly, but could not keep the corners of my mouth
still.
“Yes, I am.”
“But you are smiling. Why do you smile so strangely?”
And his eyes gaze at me from under his thick brows—gaze slyly and
sweetly, while the hot blood burns in my cheeks. Never, in the days of
Roslawski and our long-learned conversations about literature, did I
feel such a sensation as this.
An evening party at the Sedniewski’s, Topolow: somebody’s name-day. All
four of us go, Martha and I, the grandfather, and Janusz. Rather a large
gathering: girls like flowers, fresh and bright-hued. Some of the young
men have been brought for the occasion from as far as Lodz.
I go in, with my cheeks fresh and ruddy from our drive along the windy
road: my dress is of a beautiful sea-green hue. The party is quaintly
and prettily framed in a large low-ceilinged drawing-room, lighted from
above by an antique chandelier, with tiers of branches that shed
sparkling many-coloured light around. Along the walls stand many fine
old pieces of furniture, and on the veranda outside an orchestra is
softly tuning up.
As I enter, I make an impression—the usual one. For a time, whilst every
glance is turned in my direction, I feel as if pitted against them all.
But, though I scarce know any one here, I am not embarrassed even for
one instant. The sensation of unfriendliness, borne in upon me from
those around, the feeling of my loneliness in this throng, only produces
in me a reaction of haughty defiance. I should feel more embarrassed if
I did not make this impression, and should come in without attracting
any attention at all.
As Madame Sedniewska welcomes me, I overhear a whispered remark on my
left. “Dressed like a third-rate actress.”
This interests me, and I turn round; for I think the observation, though
quite beside the mark, rather neatly expressed. A tall girl, dressed in
white, English style from head to foot, meets my eyes, and silently
gives me back glance for glance. Beyond question it is she. After all
the introductions have been made, I proceed by choice to converse with
her.
Her name is Imszanska; she has an ugly _fiancé_ and a handsome brother;
the most interesting (I think) of all the young men present. He asks me
politely how I like the country-side here, and then goes on talking to
Martha, who in her evening dress looks less comely than her wont, her
face being pale and wearing an expression of unnatural constraint.
We take tea; after which dancing begins.
Dancing is to me a pastime as pleasant as riding; and I dance
splendidly. Again and again, in one of the long mirrors that reach to
the floor, I see myself and the black arms which encircle me, my
listless form thrown backwards indolently, sleepily as it were, my red
lips contrasting with the white of my set teeth, and sea-green gauze
floating round me in loose watery undulations; while about my figure
twine the elastic snake-like stalks of great white nenuphar blossoms.
I am soon aware that I have made an impression—an impression so palpable
that the women themselves pretend to be, not only unconcerned, but
pleased at my success. One of them is so kind as to set a hairpin
straight for me. At such an entertainment, the struggle to be first,
though depriving it of some of the pleasure which it should directly
give, affords us the interest of a game in which, the harder it is to
win, the more intoxicating the victory becomes.
After the cotillon, which I danced with Imszanski, I stood up with
Janusz for the “Oberek.” He is a perfect master of ceremonies, and as
such he is _sans peur et sans reproche_.
I like to dance with him most of all. He bears me along like a runaway
steed. Careering in a tiny orbit, towards the centre of which we lean
all the time, we turn round and round with vertiginous speed, like two
planets run mad. Locked in each other’s arms, carried onward by our own
impetus, we glide along with half-closed eyes, involuntarily, all but
unconsciously, with a passive motion, as if by ourselves unable to keep
so tremendous a pace. Around us we perceive only a confused mass of
thick clotted brightness; the lights, the mirrors, the brilliant circle
of lookers-on, are no longer distinguishable as they fly round us: all
is merged in one maze of colours.
A wild flame is gleaming in my partner’s eyes, and their pupils are
sparkling like sunlit diamonds. Our maddening pace, together with that
dancing tune, boisterous with its musically monotonous din, are acting
upon him as a war-dance acts upon a primitive race.
As for me, though his hot breath is on me like a flame, I feel quite
calm. Tired out, almost fainting, I meekly let his wild “ravishing
strides” carry me along as he chooses.
At last I go back to my seat; a deafening thunder of applause greets us
both; I bow my head to thank them, but can for some time distinguish
nothing. Meanwhile I hear Janusz, who has regained his self-control, and
is now ordering the orchestra to play the “Mazur.”
Miss Imszanska, coming up and seating herself by my side, says to me:
“You dance with all the grace of a swan; my brother says he never saw
anything like it.”
In the intervals between the dances, we walk in the garden, which is
extensive and full of trees. The white flowers of the tobacco-plants,
just visible at night against the blackness of the sward, breathe forth
their strange and intense aroma. A sort of drowsy hallucination takes
possession of me: I fancy I am on earth no longer, but in some Hades of
flowers, of sweet sounds, of beautiful things, and of Night triumphant.
I lean heavily on Janusz, almost nestling in his arms. My smile gleams
white in the dusk, and my long eye-lashes quiver as with sleep. Janusz
bends over me, and his gaze seeks to meet mine.
“Look at me!” he whispers, glowing with impatience.
I too am all aglow; yet I turn my head away, and look stubbornly at some
cluster of bushes at a distance. But all the time my heart is beseeching
him, and saying over and over: “Kiss me, kiss me—now—now—now!”
A moment before, a dress was still looming in the dark in front of us;
now we are quite alone. Our eyes have begun to make out the shapes of
things; we can discern the trees, and the long narrow strip of pathway
where we are walking between two hedges of quickset. Black cloudlike
shadows seem now to flee away, now to gather and close upon us.
Suddenly a spasm of horrible unearthly dread clutches at my heart.
“Good God! Look there!” I cry.
“What—what of it?”
I raise my hand to my eyes, and shudder all over with fear, and press
close to him.
“There—just beneath us, far, horribly far down—there is water!”
“Well, what of that? There is nothing to be frightened at. I know the
garden; it is only a brook which feeds the pond.”
“Let us go away—away at once. I saw it glitter through the leaves in the
dark: it was so strange! And so deep down: an abyss where I never
dreamed the ground sloped at all.”
“But we could not fall in: there is a stone barrier.”
“No matter,” I whisper, half-frantic with dread. “Let us go!”
We make the best of our way back. Janusz is silent, but I feel, as I am
holding to his arm, that he too is trembling. He might have quieted me
with the words: “Fear nothing by my side!” For but a minute ago, I had
boundless confidence in him. Now I know that he can be frightened.
We hear the sounds of the harp and the violin, and a row of lit windows
shines on the pitch-black trees.
Janusz breaks the silence. “I have no fear in a forest at night; I fear
neither robbers nor wild beasts: but things one cannot explain are not
to my liking.”
Yes, I quite understand, and share the same dislike: but somehow I had a
fancy that....
We dance merrily till morning; my painful impression has quite faded.
As we return, we change places; Martha goes with her grandfather, and I
am with Janusz. Daybreak shows us a lovely landscape: hills covered with
dark woods, fields white with stubble. The sky grows rosy, and we catch
ever new glimpses of dim heights, of solitary pear-trees scattered in
the fields, of tall sombre poplars in rows, marking the highways in the
plain.
We travel long by a road full of deep holes; we climb the heights, we go
down into the valleys. All the country round is enchantingly beautiful.
Up comes the sun, casting upon the road distinct mobile shadows,
lengthened out monstrously, of our two equipages and of our own figures.
I feel stupefied after this sleepless night; my face is hot, my lips are
burning. Yet, and in spite of my plaid and the rugs, I shiver with cold,
I close my eyes and lean my head against the back of the carriage,
listening to the screaking wheels, to the trot of the snorting horses,
and to the timid chirruping of the birds, just roused by daylight.
Though awake, I am dreaming.
Janusz bends over me, and touches my lips with his in a gentle kiss, as
if he meant not to wake me.
I do not move at all, and pretend to sleep on, though well aware that
Janusz knows I am awake.
And now my golden morning—here it is!
On one of the last warm summer days, Martha and I go and bathe together
outside the park. When undressed, she is very pleasant to look upon. She
pretends to object, but puts on her bathing-dress so deliberately that I
can gaze quite at my ease. After having bathed in the clear cool water,
we return and lie down on the lush grass in the park. We are surrounded
by tall trunks, bare to a great height; far above us their branches form
a canopy of bright green verdure under the blue sky.
“I wonder,” say I to her, “how plain people feel about themselves. With
us, comeliness is such a matter of course!... If I were to lose my good
looks, or even my knowledge that I am good-looking, I really think I
could not bear life.... It is that alone which gives me strength in
presence of others. I go out in the full glare of day without a
sunshade; in company, I sit with my face turned straight to the
lamplight; I walk in the crowd, with head erect, fearing no one, abashed
by no one—simply because I know that the sight of me must cause
pleasure.... If I am good-natured, it is because of my good looks. I
hate nobody, envy nobody, and am filled with a sort of Pagan, sunshiny,
royal love for all.”
“And which of us two do you think is prettier?” asks Martha.
“I don’t know.... In reality, each of us thinks herself prettier; but we
are both too cultured ever to have tried conclusions on that subject.”
Strictly speaking, I am not so fair as she: but then, she is less
graceful than I. Besides, my eyes have a golden tint, such as no other
girls have, so far as I know.
I often walk a few versts with Martha, as far as the “Kirkut,” or Jewish
cemetery.
There they stand, the hewn gravestones, in long parallel upright rows.
Upon them you may see cabalistic signs and symbols; a lion, a broken
taper, or a shelf of books; and certain embellishments that might almost
be styled “decadent.” The graves, overgrown with moss, heather, and wild
thyme, are nearly level with the rest of the ground. The wooden
inclosure, over which we always have to climb, is lost in the woods
among the pine-trunks; and those long regular rows of stones raise their
heads in a forest elsewhere untouched by man. Here, I feel as though I
had gone far back into the dim immemorial Past.
I love that burial-ground; I love to contemplate Life trampling upon
Death; and as I gaze, I cease to fear Death any more. Death makes away
with the individual only, with the accidental manifestations of Life:
Life itself remains. I see myself standing for the whole of mankind, and
identical with Life. I always was; I shall be everlasting.... Death is
slumbering quietly beneath my feet.
And with that a delightful sense, as it were of infinite might, comes
over me. To my power, to my continuance, I can find no limit. I am not
of the earth, I am not Janka Dernowicz; I am eternal, unsleeping
consciousness; I am the Universe! In this burial-ground, Janusz grows
dismal, and holds forth on the evanescence of all earthly things. A
beautiful animal which lives in fear of Death!
What if it be true that animals have no souls?
At times I experience the pangs of an entirely unjustified longing for
the man who came into my life and went out of it like a hurricane. Yes,
now and again I long for my ice-plains and my Northern Lights!
Once he asked me whether I should never wish to feel and think and
strive along with some companion in life.
Then I burst into laughter; for I hate sentiment—hate to mix up love and
“brotherhood of souls.”
Now I am near thinking that this man, whom I never loved, may be the
only one fit to become my husband.
Often of nights, lying awake and staring into the darkness with
wide-open eyes, I feel burning lips, lips famished with hunger, that are
pressed to mine....
And when I seize the kiss upon those lips, I know that they are the
lips, not of Roslawski, but of Janusz.
And then I am full of terror lest an evil thing has been done that never
can be undone—lest something may have fallen away for ever out of my
life.
Then do I no longer feel any desire for any one; and I weep in the dark,
but silently, not to awaken Martha.
In the morning, I look upon Janusz with hatred and with loathing; and I
treat him harshly, though he is indeed in no wise to blame. I merely use
him ill, because my soul is a-wandering alone over those ice-plains of
mine, is still dreaming cold silvery dreams, is seeking in vain for a
fraternal soul.
Is it then really an impossibility to be in love _without loving also_?
While out shooting to-day, Janusz had just such a gleam in his eyes as
he has when he gloats on me.
He is a typical primitive man of a nomad race of hunters, in whom the
instinct of conservation manifests itself as vehemently when procuring
his own subsistence as when acting for the preservation of the race.
Game is to him a vital necessity; so is woman.
I was sorry for the hares he had killed and lectured him with great
unction on man’s cruelty in taking the lives of such defenceless
innocent creatures.
Just now I was thinking how I should like to lock Janusz up in a nice
cage, and have him all to myself. I should give him plenty of food, but
neither let him read (that prohibition he would not find very hard) nor
talk to any one; so that he, with all his treasures of vitality, might
be mine alone. And occasionally I should enter the cage.
I should then be far more spiritually disposed than I am now. At
present, my splendid, primitive, untamed beast is hungry and howling,
and mars the divine symphony I listen to in my dreams of light.
I should appease it, and go out to walk in my sacred grove, along the
margin of the dark abysmal lake which is in my soul.
And I should willingly have Roslawski to walk with me there!
Janusz has asked me if I would consent to become his wife.
“If only for a month or two, I would with pleasure,” was my truthful
reply, which I afterwards turned into a jest: not a nice one, I must
say.
Janusz darted one or two angry looks at me, and gave vent to this
aphorism: “There are things one should never jest about.”
Most certainly he is right. And all this begins to worry me just a
little.
I might perhaps fancy myself playing the part of his seductress; of his
wife, never. And what to do with him now, I can’t tell.
I should like to go away now. Oh, why has all this come about so
suddenly?
Out boating late in the evening, on the great pond beyond the park.
I have consented to come here, for I am so wretched, I want to die. And
I know that Janusz, whom I have been tormenting all day long, can no
longer control himself.
His nerves are racked to the very utmost; it is my doing. He clutches me
by the shoulders and holds me down to the side of the boat with an iron
grip. To get the better of his mad fit, I keep myself very passive and
cool.
“Hear me, Janka!” he growls between his teeth, his face close to mine,
“you! listen: I am speaking for the last time. Say Yes!”
I could disarm him with a single cry of pain or fear: but I remain mute.
I must have strong sensations to-night.
“I’ll kill—I’ll kill you! Do you hear? I hate you as much as I love you,
and more. Speak instantly—speak!”
His rage is suffocating him; the words stick in his throat. His knee is
pressed hard upon my bosom; his nails dig deep into my flesh. With all
my strength I stifle a groan, and wait. The boat is careening over more
and more, and begins to be water-logged.
“I shall drown you! See, the boat is about to go down! Say Yes!”
Quietly, silently, I look into his wild burning eyes, of which the
whites gleam through the darkness and fascinate me.
For an instant I have a desire to close my eyelids and disappear,
sinking noiselessly into the dark water. My eyes nevertheless
instinctively encounter his.
Suddenly I feel that the grip of his clenched hands is growing weaker.
Now sure of victory, I whisper, “No!” with a smile.
Janusz, uttering a cry of pain, falls back into the boat. He presses his
forehead hard against my feet which he covers with kisses, and is swept
by a storm of convulsive sobs. The boat recovers her balance, and rocks
up and down violently.
But I am the reverse of elated by my victory. For now I can no longer
believe in the omnipotence of mere physical strength, which has just
shown itself less mighty than the power of Mind.
Had Janusz continued to grapple with me thus for a few seconds more, I
think I might have given way to him. And now I envy him the incomparable
joy of acknowledging my predominance.
The warrior does not delight in triumphing over one less strong, but in
confessing the power of him that has been found stronger, and by whom he
has been overcome.
Over this writhing figure, shaken with sobs that grow fainter and
fainter with fatigue, I look out far into the night. No moon, not a
star. And the rushes along the shore keep up an incessant rustling.
And the dark lake, my soul, is looking up with unseeing eyes to the dark
sky.
All around is dead: no life anywhere. Nothing remains but my
loneliness—the unbounded loneliness of my strength, self-centred and
unparalleled.
Never yet have I felt my power so strongly, and never yet has it made me
so sad.
The black sky bends its lowering vault above me; under its clouds the
black pond lifts up swelling waves. Between the Infinite and my soul,
there is nowhere any room for strength.
Oh, “_I am so weary, weary of these heights!_” How I desire to meet with
a force able to subdue mine!
“Pray, Janusz, pray get up,” I say, gently stroking his hair; “I beg
you, rise; it must be very late. Where are the oars?”
I am lying in the hollow between two rows of graves, breathing the
perfume of the white forest gilliflowers, abloom in the “Kirkut,” and
thinking of life—of this most admirable and most beautiful marvel, life.
I am explaining to Martha how my worship of life is really the outcome
of resignation.
“But in me resignation has taken a form that it has not in you. ‘If I
cannot have all, I refuse to have anything;’ such is the creed of
despairing pride, held by slaves and wretched men. My belief in Azoism
is nothing but the creed of a proud woman, who is reconciled to her
slavery, and will take up no spurious imitations of freedom. Such a
withdrawal from the vortex we live in, enabling me to look on all things
as Garborg does, from above them, and with a smile of dignified
amenity—this is what I love. It often seems to me, so little I feel
adapted for my life on earth, that I have somehow wandered hither by a
mischance, a blunder.”
“It is well,” says Martha. “Adaptation to environment is of avail only
to brute animals: man can make his own world by viewing it in his own
special way.
“I,” she goes on to say sadly, “believe in nothing. And yet women in
general are inclined to have faith in an existence after death. It is
simply an outcome of sympathy with suffering, and of an instinct of
justice. You know how the thought of useless suffering in nature makes
me beside myself. Think of all those silent agonies which never will be
known; of those tortures endured throughout the world by multitudes that
leave no trace behind them.... When but a little boy, Janusz once
focussed the sun’s rays on a little insect he had fastened by its wing,
and which was writhing in impotent throes. I can still see those poor
limbs, red in the glow, quivering in excruciating pain, until I snatched
the lens away from Janusz, and set the half-roasted creature free....
Those were its last impressions of life: after them came—Nothingness! I
can see all the tiny invisible beings that I slay by hundreds in my
daily walks, trampling them down in the long grass or under the
pine-needles, and unwittingly leaving them to expire in the most
dreadful torments, perhaps drawn out for many an hour.... I know, too,
of the pain which fishes undergo, often kept living in the air for whole
days, and seen to move convulsively, even when on the fire.... All this
pain, and nothing to justify, nothing to compensate it! This I know; for
beyond death there is nothing!”
“But did it never strike you that, if there is nothing beyond death, it
is impossible for _nothingness_ to be there?”
She looks at me inquiringly.
“The ideas of justice, of vengeance, of compensation, are purely of this
earth, though they once formed a religious ideal in the worship of
Jehovah. I put them in the same category as the concept of mercy, now
prevailing amongst Christians. Some other idea will spring up later,
equally foreign to that of existence beyond the grave.”
“Well, and what do you infer from that?”
“My belief is, that the phenomenon called death consists in our losing
all sensations, ‘categories,’ concepts and all projections (so to speak)
of this our world; and in our finding _other_ sensations in the next.
Perhaps not even that. For in the next world, just as there will be no
idea of justice, so there may be none of sensations. Do you follow me?”
“So you think you shall continue to exist _then_?”
“I cannot say—I cannot say.”
For a few minutes I listen to the undertone of the pine-trees, sounding
far above us in the sky.
“You see,” I continue, “there, it may well be, we shall have no idea of
an Ego which excludes and contradicts the Non-Ego. The distinction
between them has arisen from the fact of our existence upon earth: it is
a form into which we mould our impressions; something purely accidental,
depending upon the quality and mechanism of the brain.... There, too,
the idea of Time may be wanting; also that of Space. Of course, from our
earthly point of view, it is nonsense to say that the world is
boundless: that which the brain calls ‘the Infinite’ cannot be
represented in imagination as space. Truly, there are times when I
simply feel admiration for a God who has created so great and endlessly
complicated a scheme of beings.”
Martha’s disappointment is plain to perceive.
“So then you believe in God?”
“I do not know, and do not trouble about it. It is not likely the ideas
of creation out of nothing, of sovereignty as opposed to subjection, of
volition as opposed to passiveness, have any counterpart out of our
minds.... Notice, Martha, that in my view the expression,
‘Transcendental Being,’ implies a contradiction. Our very idea of Being
is a mere outcome of experience: and I go so far beyond Nature, I leap
so completely out of my human skin, that I can force myself to the
contemplation of an unimaginable world, in which there is no
contradiction between Being and Non-Being....
“Therefore, I do not trouble whether I shall in that world be myself or
not myself: nor even whether I shall be or not be....”
She gazes at me, her eyes wide open, and says under her breath:
“Yes, I see.”
“And, do you know, the capacity of thus abstracting one’s thought itself
from its outward form, of looking upon the universe and one’s very
thought from such a standpoint, sets one on heights incomprehensibly
sublime, and gives the purest, the most unearthly delight.”
... There is a black cat here, with eyes like emeralds; it ranges
noiselessly amongst the rows of gravestones. A singularly sociable
creature; it follows us everywhere in our walks, like a dog.... When I
look at it, I cannot help believing in Metempsychosis: there must dwell
within this cat some very refined aristocratic soul, one that looks upon
everything with supreme scepticism.
“What is the matter, Martha?”
“Nothing. I have only dropped a hairpin.”
A tortoise-shell pin has fallen out of her thick black tresses, and
dropped on to the earth with a faint sound.
Martha is just now in a very lofty mood. This real world of ours strikes
her as a contrast, ridiculous in its littleness, to the world we are
speaking of. So she does not wish me to pick up that pin, though it has
dropped quite close to me on the heather. To my mind this is too
high-flown, too girlish. After all, the realities of life are paramount,
and we ought to have so much intellectual culture as never to forget it.
Wherefore I give her the pin, smiling very sarcastically.
“After all,” I conclude, rising from the hollow ridge and preparing to
walk home, “I quite understand that what I have said amounts to the same
as belief in nothing. It is all the same to me whether I shall cease to
be after death, or be transferred to a world wherein there is no idea of
being, or of any Ego, conditioning my self-consciousness. I understand,
too, that a world in which Being does not contradict Non-Being, is to
our minds equivalent to no world at all. So that my faith is similar to
your unfaith, but inferred and formulated otherwise.”
Janusz is very humble and wretched now. Sometimes, when we sit long
together of an evening, he will fall asleep with his head in my lap,
worn out with nervous exhaustion. And then I am face to face with
something very strange.
I feel a mysterious dread of the torment of an everlasting vigil,
together with a sense of responsibility beyond my strength. Yet I do not
wake him, although I am shuddering with dread; I will not let him know
that I am afraid!... There are certain things one should not speak about
to children.... That I love solitude when alone, but that the feeling of
solitude when some one is by me, fills me with unspeakable dread, for
then I hear my soul uttering her triumphant laugh: this I would never
confess to him.
Vigorous I am, and able to struggle for a long time. But even for
warriors there come moments when they trustfully lay their tired heads
on some one’s lap; when they feel secure in the knowledge of some one
above them, watching over them, standing between them and their foes,
between them and the Infinite, the Unknown.
Is there any man in the world who could thus lull my watchfulness to
sleep? There is one, only one. But the price I should pay would be all
that makes life charming.
When Janusz is sleeping on my lap, I then _invariably_ think
of—Roslawski.
As a rule, it is from a novelist’s or an artist’s standpoint—from
without and objectively—that I view whatever happens in my life;
consciously throwing all my impressions into the form of sentences,
rounded and complete, often affected and unnatural; and in everything I
say, think, or do, seeking for dramatic, literary, or picturesque
effects. This peculiarity I hold for one of the tragic sides of my life,
since it almost entirely robs my impressions of their directness.
People sometimes blame me for being mannered, for attitudinizing, for
performing everything with artifice, whether I make a bow or do my hair.
And I fully admit they are right. But then, artificiality comes
naturally to me. Every motion, every smile of mine is present to me
before it is elicited: it is scrutinized and judged by me, as though I
were some one else. For me, there is no present; I look at all things
from out of the Future: there are no involuntary bursts of thought, no
inarticulate words or mechanical gestures for me. And should I try to
behave with apparent artlessness, I should then be artificial twice
over.
This afternoon a carriage, covered with mud, and drawn by a couple of
splendid sorrel horses, pulls up in front of our terrace. Imszanski
jumps out, throwing the reins to the groom, who sits behind. Janusz
welcomes him, and he slowly comes up the steps. He has driven
thirty-five miles, but his impassive features bear not the slightest
trace of fatigue.
He improves upon acquaintance. Beyond all doubt, he is the handsomest
man I know: a great point in his favour. His movements, characterized by
a certain graceful languor, betray his noble descent; in his bright eyes
there is to be seen continual concentrated thought and tranquil,
half-forgotten sorrow. He has every accomplishment, talks interestingly,
elegantly, with literary turns and expressions; he has at his call every
variety of smile but never laughs outright. Considerate restraint is his
speciality.
His first words on entering are: “My sister sends you her greetings: she
wanted to come with me, but I was afraid to take her. It is so long a
journey, and the roads are in so bad a state now.”
He pays court both to Martha and to myself with equal politeness; with
her he is more serious, with me more gallant. Which is the proper thing,
as I am a visitor in the neighbourhood.
I am all but enchanted, and my eyes are continually fixed on him. And
yet at the same time I know that this paragon of a man could never
succeed in winning my love. From a physical point of view, I care even
less for him than for Roslawski. This, I suppose, is precisely on
account of his marvellous beauty, which may draw off my attention from
him as a man and an intelligent being. I could gaze with just as much
enthusiasm on his portrait.
We go out to inspect some new kinds of ornamental shrubs which Martha
has recently had planted in the park. Janusz walks with me; Imszanski
with Martha, a few paces before us.
These two make a pretty picture, on which I like to gaze. In this grand
old park, they remind me of the days of yore, and the knights and their
lady-loves. Martha, I remark, has a style and breeding that I lack. To
help her over a plash of water, Imszanski gives her his hand. She
gathers up her dress, just revealing her neat and shapely ankles. The
pair are just like dancers in a minuet, and so handsome that I cannot
find it in my heart to envy them.
Janusz walks at my side like a shadow, and follows my glances with eyes
ablaze.
“A fine man, Imszanski: you like him, don’t you?” he asks. “But,” he
goes on to say, “I don’t advise you to try your hand on him: he is
another’s. Has loved long and hopelessly.”
“Has he?”
“When in Warsaw, he went the length of attempting
suicide—unsuccessfully, I need not say.”
“But this love of his, is it not only hopeless, but unrequited too?”
“Well, he proposed—and was refused. But that’s no wonder. Such a man
should never marry; a whole seraglio would not be enough for him.”
“H’m, yes; that would be quite in his line. Who is the girl? Does she
live near?”
“Yes, she does.”
“And who may she be? Please tell me. Was she at the Sedniewski party?”
“Don’t ask; I must not tell. It has been kept secret.”
“But did anybody confide in you?”
“Why, no.”
“Then I have as much right to know as you have. I am awfully curious,
and wonder at the girl’s taste.... Do I know her?”
He holds out for some time, but in the end I disarm him: though in the
way I dislike most and very seldom employ, ... by wheedling and coaxing
him. The secret shall go down to the grave with me, I promise him. He
hesitates awhile; then says in an undertone:
“Martha.”
I do my best to conceal my unbounded astonishment under some commonplace
expressions of faint surprise. I obviously have not the slightest
intention to keep my word: I will ask Martha about the whole business.
Can she possibly not be in love with such a Phœnix? Can she too have
found him undesirable because of that beauty of his?
During supper I watch her closely, and see in her face that very same
pallor, that very look of weariness and constraint that she was wearing
in Topolow. No, his love is certainly not unrequited.
I have no fondness, and consequently no fellow-feeling, for the girl:
but now I am more interested than before in her theory of “Azoism.” I
formerly thought she had taken it up as an apology for her life; now I
see that her life itself compels her to profess it.
Imszanski himself is always the same, courteous and languidly
good-humoured. He is talking with Martha’s grandfather about this year’s
crops, and looking quite interested in the subject.
It is a cool windy autumn day. Clouds are floating close to the earth,
rain is in the air, and no birds are seen. Along the woods stretch the
fields, either already harrowed, or covered with dingy whitish stubble.
Something has gone out of my life forever: I cannot get rid of the
thought.
We three are riding together over the desolate plain. Janusz rides in
front of us, playing acrobatic tricks on horseback, and really
performing wonderful feats of agility.
But it is now ebb-tide with me. Those tight trousers, those raw leather
boots of his—I hate them, and scorn myself for having let that sort of
thing ever make any impression on me; assuredly there is nothing in all
this that is worthy of scorn.
Autumn has come. That is all.
We come abreast upon the muddy highway, all three strangely sick at
heart. In silence we ride on.
Latterly Janusz has altered very much. His face is pale; it is the face
of a man lost in troubled thought. When we are by ourselves, he scarcely
ever raises his eyes to mine; and his outbursts of energy resemble the
frenzy of delirium. After the equestrian evolutions just performed, he
looks wearied and gloomy, and his lips are closed fast as he rides.
Why is each of us thus? I alone can tell. Because Martha is thinking of
Imszanski, and Janusz of me, and I am thinking of Roslawski. It is just
like a novel: each of us as remote as one star is from another.
I got a post-card from Obojanski yesterday, saying he had come back; so
I shall have to be off in four days. I must then see Roslawski, who has
no doubt returned to Warsaw by now. A fever of impatience possesses me.
On my return, I lie down on the drawing-room sofa, still in my
riding-habit.
Martha, as usual, is journeying from pantry to cellar, Janusz has gone
to dress for supper; “Grandfather” is probably asleep in some nook. I
feel maddened with impatience at the thought of seeing Him again. I tear
my hair, sobbing noiselessly and without tears.
My misery is at its height. And now, besides, I feel this: that I am
sorry to go away—sorry for Janusz. Something there is within me, tearing
at my soul—tearing it to bits, to shreds, to tatters.
I hear Janusz coming, take up an easy recumbent attitude, without rising
from the sofa, and arrange my hair.
“What! you here already?” I remark in a peevishly flippant tone of
inquiry.
He does not reply, but draws near with noiseless reverent steps, in an
attitude of supreme worship, such as an idolator may pay to the idol he
distractedly adores. Kneeling down before me, he gently takes my hands
and presses them to his brow. I do not withdraw them. I lean forwards
instinctively.
“Janka, listen,” he says tenderly, in a voice that trembles with
suppressed emotion; “say that you will be my wife; say so, my dear....
You know what you have made of me.... You laughed at me for my
sober-mindedness, my shallow outlook upon life, my thoughtless _joie de
vivre_. Now I am quite different.... Now I am like you, and like the
rest of your set.... Could I ever, in the old days, have thought it
possible that I should become like a child—crying my eyes out at the
thought of your going away, Janka? I have nothing in the world to
console me but you ... Janka, since you told me you were sorry for the
hares I had killed, I have not gone out shooting any more.... Oh, I
shall not struggle with you, I should not get the mastery; but as your
slave, I beg you, I entreat you, be my wife! Oh, my adorable lady, my
most sweet one, say but that you will! You will be happy; you will see
me do everything, everything to please you.... You will live like a
princess.... If you will not give me this assurance, I shall go to ruin,
indeed I shall. Janka, I will leave the University without taking my
degree.... I will follow you everywhere on earth. Martha, too; does she
not love you? And does it matter to you if you say Yes now? Nothing
hinders you from saying the word; I even think you love me just a
little.... Oh, Janka, Janka!”
He ends with a burst of tears. My head bends down to his, and we both
weep together. In turns I am rent by compassion for him and by my
longing for Roslawski. I kiss his black silky curls, and we cry like
children.
Finally we agree that I shall go to Warsaw “to take counsel with my
family and with my own heart”; and I am to give him a definite answer in
a month’s time.
By then I shall surely have seen Roslawski—and everything will have been
settled: for life or for death.
Every morning, the trees in the park are now white with hoarfrost, and
we find the threshing-floor in the barn covered with many a steel-blue
swallow, lying frozen to death. The stoves are heated, the windows
hermetically closed (for the time being), and, though autumn has but
just commenced, we are in winter quarters already.
In the calm white country house, sleep reigns supreme.
The wild wind howls through the sombre shrubberies, and sweeps showers
of drifting leaves, green but frost-bitten, along the walls of the park.
Through the windows I look out into the cold bleak night, a night of
desolation and evil omen: such a night as one might expect to bring us
mysterious half-frozen travellers who have lost their way; and on this
very night they should come knocking at the door. The old, faithful,
superstitious servants should mutter the saying: “Some one has hanged
himself, the wind is so high,” and the dogs should howl together
mournfully.
There is no light save in one window, by which, through the broad chinks
in the shutters, its bright streaks filter out into the park. The maids
are there, keeping vigil as usual; Janusz and the old man have gone to
bed and have long been asleep.
Around there breathes that stillness and quiet sense of security which a
winter night is wont to bring with it—an atmosphere of repose.
I am kneeling by the fire, in a plain dressing-gown, with my hands
clasped behind my head, and my eyes fixed upon the flames. Flashes of
red light up my dark face and my chestnut hair. Now and then I put big
logs on the fire from the heap close at hand; I like to resemble a
vestal virgin.
Martha, partly undressed and without her corset, lies dejectedly smoking
a cigarette on a rose-coloured couch, not looking in my direction.
She absent-mindedly strokes a cat, which lies close to her and purrs
loudly, pretending to be pleased but cross in fact, because she wants to
sleep, and Martha prevents her.
“I shall be so bored when you leave us, Janka,” she says. “There will be
a sad void all over the place.”
“Then come with me to Warsaw.”
“Somebody must remain to keep house at Klosow; besides, Grandfather
cannot be left alone. I shall not be free till after a year’s time, when
Janusz has finished his course of agronomy.”
“Do you know, Martha, you remind me of a heroine in an old-fashioned
novel and I don’t care for variety. You are too goody-goody. Such a pity
as it is to waste a year of one’s youth.... You may quite well leave
everything to the steward’s care.... Remember, you will soon be
twenty-five, and life never goes back.”
“But I am glad—how glad!—that it does not.”
“That’s a pose, or a mere high-flown mood. You love life in spite of
all.”
Turning towards her, I meet her earnest gaze—calm, and yet, oh! how
mournful!
“I hate life, Janka!” she replies.
Silence follows. The cat leaps from off the couch, stretches herself,
and makes for the fireplace with leisurely velvet tread. She rubs
herself against me, lies down in the full glare of the hearth, and
instantly falls asleep.
“Once,” Martha continues, “I saw them kill a black sheep, as I had told
them to do. A clean-shaven old farm-labourer first tied its legs, and
then sharpened his knife on a whetstone for a long time. Finally, he
turned its beautiful tapering head on one side, and deliberately,
skilfully, drew the knife backwards and forwards across its throat. And
the poor animal did not so much as shrink: never did it once bleat, or
show the least sign of reluctance. I wanted to run away, or cover my
eyes, or at least turn from the sight: but I forced myself to undergo
that internal agony, in order to atone for the quiet death of that meek,
harmless beast. I asked the labourer afterwards whether he was not sorry
for killing it. He answered me: ‘Why should I be? It was my lady’s
order. I would cut a man’s throat for her, if she told me to.’
“Once my threshing-machine killed a man. Corn had been stolen, and I had
to watch the men by myself, the steward being away at the time. They had
stolen it, because I had more than they.... I remember the man leaning
forwards incautiously—a horrible cry—a dull grinding sound—and a sudden
silence. The machine had stopped; out of it they took only a bleeding
mass. I made the dead man’s widow a life-pension, and saw to the
bringing up of the children. And because of that, they call me
benefactress and angel!
“Or again. A woman of seventeen died in childbed. Three days and three
nights she lay howling in the farm-servants’ quarters, howling like a
wounded beast, so that I could hear her even in my own room. Well, she
died at last; but the boy survived. He is now three years old, he laughs
in the sunshine, cuts earthworms to pieces for a pastime, and tears off
cockchafers’ legs.
“Kosa, a peasant here, had a son who was dying slowly of consumption.
The priest was sent for, and brought him the last sacraments. Outside
the hut, he had to bargain with Kosa about the burial fees.
“Once, in our pond, the loathsome swollen corpse of a new-born child
came floating to the surface. What harm had it ever done? Possibly it
was put to death because its life of a day or two had made it the
instrument of some wrong done!
“Janka, I hate life!”
“Listen,” I say, casting my eyes down. “I—I don’t know how to begin;
that is, I wanted to tell you that it may be I am leaving you only for a
short time. In a few weeks, I shall perhaps be here again.”
“I wish you would,” she replies. “Janusz is in a pitiful state.”
Another pause ensues. I am thinking how far indeed I am from such a
wish; and I feel something rising in my throat. Suddenly I decide to
speak now.
“Martha,” I say, “tell me the reason why you refused Imszanski.” She
starts, and stares at me with eyes like a frightened deer’s.
“Fear nothing,” I say, reassuringly. “You must not think I shall inflict
compassion on you; I am only calmly and objectively interested. Tell me:
can you possibly not be in love with so amazingly handsome a man?”
She is silent a while, debating with herself; and then:
“Yes, I was in love with him,” she replies, in a calm low voice.
“Well, and have you sacrificed your happiness to that abstract theory of
yours?”
Another pause.
“Not exactly.... The fact is that I simply could not bear to think I had
not been his only love.”
There she stops, but I feel she is only waiting for me to question her
further: this is the moment when she must lay bare to me what she has
hitherto, with her wonted secretiveness, concealed from every eye. Yet I
refrain from questions.
Again she speaks, slowly and as one that looks back on memories that are
still fresh: “We often spent the winter evenings together. His soul was
the thing nearest and dearest to me on earth, but I loved him yet more
because his eyes were so mournful and his lips so fine.
“He may have been too outspoken: he desired I should know all about him,
before I plighted my troth. I wish I had known nothing; there is bliss
only where there is ignorance.... For there have been some instants of
forgetfulness; and these have given me an inkling of what my happiness
would have been—how immense, how incredible—had I been his only love in
the past, as I am (it yet may be) his only love in the present.
“It was on a most beautiful winter’s night, silvery in the moonbeams,
that I saw it pass before me, that long procession of women, fair as the
flowers of spring: ‘a connoisseur in women’ is what they call him. A
whole garden of red flowers sprang up in the snowy wilderness, shining
afar like a great pool of gore. I closed my eyes with the torture of the
sight.
“If it be true that love consists of happiness and delight, then all
this delight ought to have been mine: and Life had taken it from me: not
to give it to others, but just to throw it away (ah! the crime of it!)
to fritter it away amongst a multitude of delights _that might have
been_. For indeed, what would have made my bliss was a wrong inflicted
upon others, in the form of compulsion and shame, the torment of
humiliation, the infringement of their right to live, hurling them into
an abyss of misery and abandonment, and closing the gates against their
return to a happier state:—all these deeds of wrong-doing were acts that
might have given me bliss!...
“Now, it came that in one of those moments of oblivion, when I felt I
was happy, I told him I would be his affianced wife.
“Then he gathered me in his arms—Oh, with what a movement, admirable in
its tenderness—and pressed me gently to his heart, that he might kiss my
lips.
“And then came the most astonishing instant in all my life. I had, to
put it simply, a vision. Upon his lips I saw blood—clotted, dried
blood—the ashes as it were of thousands and thousands of kisses. It was
neither loathing nor hatred that I felt; only an exceeding horror for
what is as much against Nature as was any elaborate excruciating torture
of Mediæval times—as a crime committed in secret and hidden under
flowers to conceal its every trace. And from beneath those flowers—a sea
of them there was—I seemed to hear the groans as it were of those slain
at some banquet of Heliogabalus: or rather I heard laughter, artificial,
forced, metallic laughter—the laughter which ‘women of that sort’ always
utter, it being the paid merriment to which they are bound:—such a laugh
as breaks off suddenly, abruptly, as though startled at its own sound.
And I saw my white lilies plunged in that sea of tainted blood!
“So I repulsed him, as I would have repulsed a foe. And here,” she
concluded suddenly, in a falsetto of spasmodic laughter, “here my little
idyll comes to an end.”
“But do you love the man still?”
“I do.”
From the farmyard comes the crowing of a cock: as a key that grates in a
rusty lock, it grates on our ears. Dawn is here.
I like the man; or it may be that I rather like his surroundings,
inseparably connected in thought with him. I like those rooms of severe
aspect, with their high ceilings, and shelves which are nearly as high
filled with books, all in regular order and bound in black. I like the
great table in the centre, lit up with bright lamps, and strewn with
periodicals in every language. I like, too, those heavy, comfortable,
leather-covered arm-chairs which stand round it. Obojanski also I like,
who in this environment is a handsome man, with grey hair and eyes dark
and youthful.
Formerly my professor, Obojanski has been extremely useful to me in my
studies. The profit I have derived from him is, however, chiefly
negative, from the critical side of his teaching. It still pleases him,
in our mutual relations, to take up the attitude of a master.
Generally I come to him late in the evening, dressed in black, in the
style of “la dame voilée.” If he is working, I sit with him, and set to
reading some interesting book: but we mostly converse together, and
invariably of serious things.
Obojanski is an old bachelor, and objects to women as a rule. “The idea
of emancipation, possibly not quite unreasonable in principle, has been
misunderstood and warped from its true meaning by the women themselves.
For instance, they are not content with equality in the field of
economics; they want to have the same freedom in their conduct as is
enjoyed by men. A fine place the world would be, if they had! And, as
concerns the admission of women to the higher studies, this is
absolutely superfluous: a woman’s brain is not able to think with the
logical accuracy which these require.”
“As to this last,” I reply, “a census of the sexes would not, I think,
be desirable. It may well be doubted, not only whether all males, but
whether all learned men, are capable of accurate logical reasoning.”
“Oh, of course, exceptions are everywhere to be found,” he answers
gravely, with his own peculiar directness of mental association.
To his mind, I am among women one of those exceptions. He is never
scandalized at my late visits; perhaps only for the reason that my
visits are made to him. He is withal full of respect for my intellectual
capacity, which he thinks due to him. For him, I am the one woman who
can talk reasonably.
For my own part, I do not consider myself to be clever merely for being
able to draw a logical conclusion from two premises. What I call
cleverness is the faculty of understanding all things, and of wondering
at none; that of setting aside all preconceived ideas and doctrines, by
reason of which men have set up “categories,” and of giving up accepted
forms of thinking, that seem to be, but are not, necessary to thought;
the faculty of getting out of oneself, and viewing both oneself and
everything else from without and objectively.
I sit down in one of the high-backed arm-chairs, and begin to talk about
some abstruse subject or other, but making every endeavour to lead the
conversation round to Roslawski.
“Do you know London?” I ask.
“Oh, yes; I was there; a long time ago, when I had just finished my
University studies.”
“I think Roslawski went there for about six months.”
“Yes, and he is there still.”
My strength has just been put to the test, and I am satisfied. The news
I hear neither makes my lips tremble, nor dims my dark-golden eyes with
the slightest mist. But I am careful not to pretend either indifference
or special good humour. Obojanski, in spite of his weak points, is no
mean expert in the knowledge of human nature.
“Indeed! Why, I was informed he had returned to Warsaw already.”
“No. I am expecting him about the middle of this month. He is a nice
fellow, is he not? We three got on very well together.”
“I hope you don’t mean that we two do not get on well,” I answer,
smiling amiably.
He shows me a post-card that he has got from Roslawski: water, some
shipping, and an ugly building ashore, with innumerable windows. I for
the first time see his handwriting: sloping, not very legible; nothing
much out of the ordinary. I should like to press it to my lips, which
would be a piece of highly unjustifiable sentimentalism.
Greatly as I want to go home, and—like a child—have “a good cry” all by
myself, I stay on there for some time. Obojanski offers me several
books, dealing mostly with matters zoölogical. I of course try to excuse
myself as best I can. At last, he lectures me on the way I am wasting my
talents, and says that my mind, “if deprived of intellectual
nourishment, will pine away.”
“But, Professor,” I point out, not without a touch of pride, “I really
am not at all naturally fitted to be a woman of scientific attainments.”
“Ah, but have a little faith in yourself; you ought to. Truly, science
is your exclusive vocation; but you must work; you need to work a good
deal. With your abilities....”
I go home, taking the books with me. My room is dark and dreary and
solitary. I am most bitterly disappointed.