Such a _No_ as does not contradict _Yes_, but means what _No_ means,
taken together with _Yes_.
Such a _No_ as Roslawski said to me.
And if I suffer nothing, it is because I belong to a world wherein joy
and sorrow are the same.
II
THE “GARDEN OF RED FLOWERS”
Imszanski was patient and persevering, and determined to take no repulse
as final. In the end he had the good luck to come at the right time,
when Martha was in a favourable mood: whereupon she relented, gave up
all her objections, and married him very willingly.
For close on a year after their marriage, I had no sight of them. They
were travelling about Europe, and Martha had never been abroad. Every
two or three days I would get a post-card from her, which I of course
“read between the lines.” Plunged though she was in an atmosphere of
intense bliss, she was continually revolving the thought of death in her
mind. But that is probably no unfrequent phenomenon in such cases.
She returned, bringing with her a son a few months of age—returned very
pale, and like a shadow, yet prettier than she had ever been before.
Having grown much thinner, she seems to be taller now. She wears her
dark plaited hair round her tiny head, like a crown. Her age is thirty
or thereabouts. Imszanski, though considerably older, seems of that age
too.
They have rented a flat in Warsaw, and insisted on my sharing it with
them. But I spend the best part of my day in the office, just as in
former times.
To me, life brings nothing new; my memories are mostly colourless or
grey. Truly, I am disappointed with myself, since I belong to the class
of those who “give great promise” all their life.
All the same, though I cannot overcome this, my “tristesse de vivre,” I
daily look upon it with more indifferent serenity.
You at first look straight in front of you. Then, when a certain point
has been passed, you begin to look behind you. Now, this point is by no
means the instant when happiness passes you by, or you are struck some
awful blow, waking you up from a sweet illusion; it is a moment which
may, like every other, go by in laughter or in tears: it may even be
slept through; and you do not know when it comes, but you know well
enough when it has passed.
For me, it has passed: and now I look behind me. Though I should prefer
to look nowhere at all. I look back, and I think all that was perhaps
not worth such a fuss.... And yet!...
In any case, I have learned some wisdom, and wisdom is eternal. There
remains of it enough for me to smile in my solitude. And there remains
some pride, too,—the pride of knowing that I am what I am.
On returning from a concert, I went with my friend, Wiazewski, to Lipka,
to meet the company we usually see there.
I take some interest in the atmosphere, reeking and tainted though it
is, of a high-class restaurant, crowded with “gilded youth,” old
financiers, beautiful actresses, and _demi-mondaines_. The saloon is a
large one, lit with wide-branched chandeliers. The air is thick with
tobacco-smoke, through which the sparkles of a thousand lights and the
brilliant notes of the merry orchestra assail both eye and ear. The
ceiling is painted in antique style. The background is all speckled with
bright stains—blots of white napery on the tables, and candles shaded
with glass “lampions” of various tints, forming spots of many a colour.
There is a twinkling mingled with a tinkling: the rays of electric
blossoms over our heads, and around us the jingling of cups and glasses,
join together in a seething tumult.
This is a life apart. Not the daily round of appearances—the mere mask
which hides life,—but life immediate, naked, real. You see here that in
spite of all it is possible to be merry and to care for nothing. Here
are no unsightly garments, no clumsy inartistic motions; no children
(that most objectionable element in life!); no “respectable” women, who
are to be recognized by their ugliness, their want of style and charm,
their tediousness and stupidity, and the fact that, when they think at
all, they are always hopelessly depressed. This is a very good
illustration of the “Law of Selection”: in marriage, the qualities of
virtue and fidelity are of more account as guarantees of felicity than
such endowments as beauty and health. Beautiful women of a lively
temperament are set aside as too knowing, too exacting, and of doubtful
trustworthiness: and so they go to swell the ranks of the fallen.
For my own part, did I not fear the accusation of anti-social
tendencies, I would, from the height of my cheerless philosophical
eminence, declare that I view the “frail sisterhood,” as an institution,
without intolerance. Therein breathes something that tells of times gone
by: something existing, but of which men do not speak. There exist human
beings, scorned as a class, whatever their personal endowments may be,
with whom no other class is allowed to come in contact, under pain of
defilement:—not unlike pariahs. These beings are to be bartered for
precious metals by means of a secret contract—bought as the slaves of
ancient times were bought. Their existence is kept a secret quite
disinterestedly, for the mere sake of the secret itself: every one knows
all about them. In our days, so hyper-civilized, so deprived of all
poetry by reason of excessive culture, this is a most astonishing state
of things.
Nearly every man here present has a wife, actual or intended: but these
are not permitted to enter: they would be by far too much out of place.
No doubt, their wives, having put the children to bed, had some words
with the servant over the daily account of money spent, and put on a
clean night-gown (of a wretchedly bad cut, by the way), say their
prayers and lay themselves down to sleep under the red woolen coverlet,
thinking all the time: “How late he always returns after these
meetings!” or else she may bite her nails with fury, revolving in her
mind the idea of another angry scene with her husband—a scene foredoomed
as heretofore to be without effect. Or again, in agonized resignation,
she may bend over the baby’s cradle, and murmur mournfully, with naïve
pathos: “For your sake, my child!” And the girls whose troths are
plighted have long ago gone to sleep under the wing of their domestic
guardians, lulled to slumber with some such sweet fancies as: “Most men
have intrigues before they marry: he, and he alone, has surely none.”
And so forth....
They are foolish—but fortunate, because not allowed to come in here.
Ah! once upon a time, in the days of my childish marvellings, how
bitterly did I weep over all these things!
“Stephen, how late is it?” I asked Wiazewski.
“It will soon be midnight. Our friends are not coming, it would seem.
Are you in a hurry to get home?”
“I never am; I have got a latch-key, and so wake nobody when I come in.
But are you not yourself sometimes engaged of an evening?”
He shook his head, his teeth shining good-humouredly in a friendly
smile.
“You know perfectly well that there is not an assignation I would not
set aside to spend an evening with you. To me, friendship is a boon far
rarer and far more precious than love.”
“I do not hold with you at all. I have enough of the cold consideration
granted me by the world.”
Stephen smiled again.
“There is no help for it, Janka,” he said. “Men of our times are too
weakly to love an all-around woman: the very thought of one gives them
an unpleasant shock. The day for types of women so extremely complex as
you are has now gone by; at present women are preferred who display some
very distinct and special characteristic: especially either primitive
natures, or such as have been depraved by civilization; or types of
spirituality or of sensuality; women either of very well-balanced minds,
or nervous even to hysteria; or, again, those in whom warmth of heart or
a distinguished bearing prevails. And that is why the monogamic instinct
is now dying out completely: in a few years’ time, it will be no more.”
Wiazewski was on the war-path, the topic being a favourite one of his.
“For how can a man be true to his wife, if he takes her ‘for better, for
worse, ... till death do them part,’ only, let us say, to kiss a mole
that she has on her neck, just under her left ear? Monogamy requires
exceedingly strong, rich, abundant natures.”
“Then it would follow that our near future would witness our return to
the hetairism of primæval times?”
“No doubt; for both the primitive instincts of the senses, and their
ultra-refined activity, have identically the same result.”
A handsome woman, with strikingly original features, accompanied by an
elderly man, clean-shaven (an actor probably) went by near our table.
She too had the look of an actress.
Wiazewski’s eyes followed her with keen scrutiny.
“A fine woman,” I remarked.
He turned his eyes away from her.
“She is not my sort,” he replied. “Far too cultured for my taste.”
Then he again returned to the subject.
“Hetairism, yes. Yes, undoubtedly. But if it all depended upon me, I
should wish for one slight restriction.... You see, one of the most
genial types of womanhood is the _wifely_ type: that of a woman
faithful, trustworthy, absolutely your own.... It were desirable that
such a type should not perish entirely. But I should wish her only as a
class to contrast with others, and as a haven of rest, when wearied with
those.”
I was gazing at the pretty Frenchwoman; suddenly I saw a delighted
expression flash over her striking and reposeful face, somewhat
harem-like in its beauty. I instinctively followed her glance, and—not
without somewhat of embarrassed astonishment—discovered Imszanski. He
was just entering from the doorway, and going through the saloon,
distributing on all sides bows or smiles, as a beautiful woman does
flowers. His wonderfully sweet and dreamy eyes were seeking some one in
the room.
A sudden flash lit them up, as they met the gaze of the handsome
Frenchwoman.
Imszanski, on his way to them, happened to see me, and Wiazewski in my
company.
Directly, and without showing the least surprise or embarrassment, he
changed his expression and saluted us with urbane cordiality, and though
he had just gone past our table, he returned, shook hands, and begged
leave to sit down beside us.
The Frenchwoman at the neighbouring table was just putting on her
gloves, while the actor paid the bill. I should very willingly have told
Imszanski not to mind about us, but go on to his acquaintances, who we
could see were expecting him. But I refrained, not wishing to lay on his
shoulders a burden of gratitude for keeping this matter concealed from
Martha, which might later have proved irksome to him.
Stephen, too, understood.
“We are here,” he presently said, “waiting for Madame Wildenhoff,
Owinski with his intended, and Czolhanski. It is rather late now: I
doubt whether they are going to turn up.”
Imszanski turned aside to say something to a waiter, when he noted with
satisfaction that the actors had left the saloon.
He then said he hoped and trusted that we would not look upon him as an
intruder, though he had thrust himself on us in such a way.
Czolhanski, a journalist, arrived at about one o’clock, together with
Owinski and his fiancée, Miss Gina Wartoslawska, whom I had seen several
times previously at Imszanski’s.
Her real name is Regina; but she is called Gina. In the movements of her
lithe elastic figure is a sort of snake-like suppleness, which tells us
of a nervous nature, burning with a passion almost painfully suppressed.
She is like a tame panther. Her eyes, long, narrow, partly concealed
beneath thin lids, wander hither and thither about the floor with a
drooping, apathetic look. Her lips are broad, flattened as it were by
many kisses, moist and crimson as if they bled. And, with all that,
there is in her something of the type of a priestess.
She came in, drawing black gloves off her slender hands, greeted us with
an unsmiling face, and at once called out to a waiter who was passing
by:
“A glass of water!”
She drank the whole glass at one draught, and sat down at some distance
from the table, with her head bent forward, and her hands clasped over
her knees. Owinski took a seat close beside her.
“Czolhanski,” he told us, “has only just got through his critique of the
leading actress in to-night’s play. We had to stay for him in the
editor’s waiting-room.”
“Ah,” grumbled the critic, “it’s beastly, this work all done to order
and at railway speed! Such a piece as that ought to be thought over till
it is possible to form a definite judgment upon it. As it is, we are
forced to save the situation by means of a lot of sententious
generalities.”
At last, Madame Wildenhoff arrived with her husband. At the unexpected
sight of Imszanski in our company, a deep blush mantled her face. She
seated herself next to Gina, and burst into a fit of chuckling, shading
her eyes with beautiful hands that carried many a ring. All this was
rather unusual and disquieting. Imszanski flushed slightly; a warm haze,
so thin that it could scarce be seen, bedimmed his eyes, and his long
lashes drooped over them.
Wildenhoff, an unpleasant cut-and-dried sort of man, whose humour
inclined to sarcastic silence, proposed that we should pass into a
private room. She protested.
“Oh, no! I dearly love noise and music and an uproar all about me. We
had better stay here, hadn’t we?”
Wildenhoff smiled at his wife and was presently deep in study of the
bill of fare.
She again set to laughing without any cause: a disquieting sort of
chuckle, with something like a sob now and then.
I glanced at the two couples, feeling a twinge of envy. “There is love
between _them_.” ...
Oh, but all that was so very, very long ago!
I wish Stephen would fall in love with me. But he is always running
after some theory or other. At times he is as droll as a boarding school
girl. I do believe his friendship for me to be absolutely disinterested.
He, on his side, declares that a handsome woman, as such, means nothing
to him. The type he loves is uncultured, shallow-brained animality.
He is as yet too youthful. Men’s taste for women more spiritualized,
more cultured, more quick-witted, is only a reaction: it shows a decline
in the vital forces, and tells of old age about to set in.
All the time of our return home, he, rather in the clouds, holds forth
with artificial animation.
“With you, Janka, I could well live alone in a wilderness, were you even
twice as beautiful as you are—and never remember that I was in presence
of a being of the other sex. And, indeed, this is the most natural thing
in the world: if such a thought ever entered my brain, I should feel
humiliated that a woman was mentally my equal.”
“But is it with perfect disinterestedness that you have chosen a pretty
young woman for your best friend?”
“Why should I not do so? That gives me the advantage of a double
pleasure: not only can I enjoy your conversation; I can enjoy your
appearance as well.”
“You might just as easily take a handsome man for your friend.”
“Yes, but then beauty in a woman generally accompanies intelligence;
whereas good-looking men are, as a rule, rather foolish. Moreover,
however objectively I strive to judge of things, I must confess that a
woman’s body is more handsome than a man’s.”
“And what of her mind?”
“Why, she has none: I mean there is no such thing as a feminine mind.
Though, look you, it is not unlikely that women also have minds. There
is nothing sexual about the brain, either way.”
“Yet you have always said I had the mind of a man.”
“I was wrong; as a friend, you are neither male nor female. You are
something that I set in a class apart; and I want you to do the same by
me.”
At our door, I take leave of the whole company. Imszanski desires to go
on with “the ladies” a little farther, but he is back at once. I can
guess why....
The Imszanskis are, as they have given out, “At Home” on Sundays. From
three till dinner-time, the door is practically open to all. These “At
Homes” are formal, tedious, and rather pretentious affairs. There are,
besides, but few people who come; for Imszanski has no acquaintances
with whom he is on really cordial terms.
But I like these Sundays: they soothe my nerves as warm baths do. With
the people who come, I need not attempt to keep up any appearance of
truthfulness. On the contrary, I say very far-fetched and most fantastic
things—things, besides, that I know not to be likely to interest any one
present.
But here is the field wherein Imszanski bears away the palm. Never are
his movements more elegant, his smiles more cordial, his glances more
winning. No one can better than he deal out the small change of social
amenities in his looks, his superficial judgments on literature and on
art; none, when addressing a compliment to a woman, can more subtly
envelope what he means in a mist of allusions.
Both husband and wife appear to advantage. He, with the perfect culture
of his ancient and noble descent, is simply enchanting. Martha is a
contrast to him, as standing for something newer, but deeper: the
culture given by unassuageable sorrow, the concentrated reverie seen in
the sad looks of those dark-blue eyes, albeit a kind smile always
flutters on her parched red lips.
Now and again, the Wildenhoffs come here on Sundays. They produce a most
interesting effect. Everybody is saying that Madame has an intrigue with
Imszanski. Martha knows that, and every one knows that Martha knows: and
she feigns ignorance, though aware that no one believes her. So here is
being piled up an immense heap of lies: which is a curious situation,
and as such not unpleasing to me.
Of Madame Wildenhoff, Lombroso would have said that she belonged to the
class of courtesans “by right of birth.” Her snowy flesh, her golden
hair, her brows, blackly looming above azure eyes, her rosy cheeks and
scarlet mouth,—the whole of this fairy colouring gives an appearance of
complete artificiality; and her wonderful shape and inborn talent for
coquetry make one regret that such gifts should have been lost on such a
very unsuitable field of action. For I myself have not the least doubt
that need of money is but a secondary motive with those who join the
“frail sisterhood.” Were it, as is generally supposed, the chief
inducement, what should force men to lead lives so similar to the lives
of demi-mondaines?
I like to watch Imszanski with her, playing the part of the host.
Nothing, it would seem, nothing in the whole world can possibly throw
him off his balance. He greets her just as he would any other visitor,
with a set “So-pleased-to-meet-you” sort of smile; gives her as much of
his time as he does to any of the women there; and converses with her,
partly flirting, partly freezing her with the haughty consciousness of
his preëminence as a drawing-room “lion.” He makes no endeavour to
conceal his liking for her, but shows just as much as it becomes him to
have for any young and handsome woman. It would be a breach of the laws
of hospitality, if he had not for each of these a few discreet
compliments, and for each a look of warm admiration, beaming from those
ever half-curtained almond eyes.
Orcio is sometimes called in from the nursery; and in he comes—a little
fair-haired boy in black velvet, with a superb collar of yellowish lace.
The ladies talk to him in French, in order to praise his accent.
To-day the following conversation took place:
“_Qui aimes-tu davantage, Georges,—papa ou maman?_” was the question put
to him by Madame Wildenhoff, who, her hand in a white glove of Danish
leather, was stroking the boy’s curls with a blandishing smile.
“_C’est papa_,” was Orcio’s reply.
“_Et pourquoi donc?_”
“_Parce que maman ne rit jamais._”
Whereupon everybody set hurriedly to expatiate upon the accomplishments
of Orcio,—who is not yet four! This they did, wishing to hide a certain
confusion felt: that _enfant terrible_ had so unconsciously touched on a
matter that every one knew, but no one talked about.
Madame Wildenhoff, who no doubt expected the boy’s answer, and had
perhaps elicited it purposely, was the only person to underline its
meaning; she let her long eye-lashes droop over her rosy cheeks,
pretending to be shocked at the unseemly associations that it had by her
means called up.
Martha laughed in merry contradiction of what Orcio had just said; then,
kissing his fair brow, she told him to make a nice bow to the company
and go back to the nursery with the maid.
Society is irksome to Martha now. We two often went together formerly to
the theatre or to a concert: at present she cares no more to go.
I mostly spend my evenings with her, in interminable conversations. She
either relates something to me, or else she “gives sorrow words.” I
listen.
She is just now much grieved that her husband Witold has for nearly a
fortnight hardly ever been at home. Some days we even dine without him.
“It is surely so,” she was saying yesterday. “He enjoys his manhood to
the full: everything is his. There, he has ‘Bohemian’ society,
revelling, fast people, singing, champagne, flowers, and forgetfulness:
here, he finds the pure and quiet light of the domestic fireside, the
delights of fatherhood, the love of a faithful wife. When he is tired of
one sort of pleasure, why then he tries the other.... And _we_—we are
all crippled, helpless things—all!”
Silence for a moment.
“There he gets his amusement at the expense of those poor weaklings,
whose souls have been wrenched away from them, who have lost the feeling
of their human dignity, the consciousness of their right to live, even
the very sense of pleasure; who groan under that most unjust burden,
their own self-contempt; who feel the continual oppression of a guilt
which does not exist, and for whom the first wrinkle is as a sentence of
death.
“But on his domestic hearth there beams another fire, and beams on
another kind of weakling; a strange creature, now no longer able to
descend into Life’s hurly-burly; for whom certain deeds, for many a
century regarded with scorn, have through long heredity of atavistic
feelings become really loathsome....
“Our duty is to amuse _them_—the lords of life and death—with the
effects of contrast; that _they_ may have the assurance of having
experienced the whole gamut of emotions, that they may enjoy their
manhood to the full.”
When Witold came home to-day from the club (which was at about noon)
Martha received him in a beautiful white _peignoir_, trimmed with Angora
fur, and asked him whether he had yet breakfasted. He thanked her
graciously, kissed her hand and brow, and desired to see Orcio.
Martha changed colour. She is not so jealous, even of women, as she is
of her beautiful little boy, perhaps because he is with her constantly.
The nursemaid brought Orcio, who at once jumped on to his father’s knee,
and began talking at the top of his voice about a number of things which
had happened to interest him since the day before.
Imszanski was enchanted with the little one, and kissed his rosy face.
For men like him, there is something incomparably sublime and
public-spirited in the fact of being a father; this they hold to be the
only thing that compensates and atones for the life they lead.
Martha shrank away; standing at a distance, fury in her heart and a
smile on her face, she looked on at the father caressing his boy.
“Look, you,” she whispered to me, “this—this is my vocation, this the
mission of my life; all the pain I have undergone, all the rage of my
never-ending and vain revolt, all my disappointed existence; all these
have been, only that they two should sit here thus, forgetting me
entirely; and that all the wrong done to me by the father should come to
life again in that son of his!”
But Witold, having caressed Orcio, went to bed. Not until the evening
did he wake up, fresh and hearty-looking, to dine with us, kiss Martha’s
hand, retail with lively wit several stories then going the round of the
town, and make his way to the club once more.
In his love-affairs, Wiazewski is just as fickle and as insatiable as
Imszanski; but their “spheres of influence” are different. Wiazewski has
a liking for seamstresses, shop-assistants, and so forth; whereas
Imszanski is specially interested in cocottes (even his intrigue with
Madame Wildenhoff is a case in point). Neither of the two has any great
liking for the other, in spite of their mutually courteous bearing at
all times. Imszanski has against my friend that he is too democratic:
whereas Wiazewski looks on Imszanski as a fool.
The latter explains his dislike for _demi-mondaines_ thus:
“I have a great liking for misdeeds, but not when committed by
professional criminals.”
The art of playing with his victims has been brought by him to the acme
of perfection. To this end, he employs what naturalists call “mimicry.”
His features being rather common, he has no trouble in putting a girl
off her guard; he makes up as a commercial man, or a lackey, or a
waiter; and in such parts he expresses himself most eloquently in the
slang of those classes, which he has picked up to perfection.
He is a thorough expert in the art of getting into touch with the minds
of such people; and the ease with which he finds his way through a
labyrinth of ideas quite unknown to us is truly admirable.
On principle, he is for continual change; but latterly he has been
making an exception, and declares he has hit upon the right sort, or
nearly so. For some time he has been “keeping company” with a girl, whom
he has, on account of her exceptional qualities, distinguished from the
common herd. I once saw her at his lodgings and was struck with her good
looks.
He has been reading a letter from her to-day. I asked him to give it to
me as a “document,” which he very readily consented to do.
It runs thus:
“Dear Stephen I must tell you about something that is Roman the
intended husband of Genka came to see me at the shop yesterday
evening and he set a-talking to me this way don’t I have no notion
where Genka is so I answer back what business of mine is that and he
just says don’t you make believe for Genka is in Krucza with that
there mechanic and he keeps her I hear is in love with her but I’ll
pay him out for it, only the street and the number where he lives
are gone clean out of my head can you tell me I know his name is
Stephen and I answer this way don’t you go worriting an honest
fellow for he don’t have nothing to say to no girls let alone such
hussies as Genka he asked me where you lived and I said Krucza
number 129 fourth floor and Stephen Tworkowski is your name and he
said thankee and hooked it and he says he’ll ask the porter in
Wspolna and I said don’t you poke your nose in or you’ll get your
head punched as you did once before when you flung dirt at me so if
he comes you tell him so and give the beast a talking to.... And
something else my dear darling ideal I write this I love you to
distraction I am regularly off my head with thinking of you and I
have your photo before me and kiss it night and day. O God how I
love him more than my life more than my faith I can’t tell what sin
I have sinned that I have to pay so dear and you dearest you are so
cold and you’ll bring me to my grave with your coldness and in no
time too I don’t know but it seems to me you told Elizabeth I slept
in Hoza and she makes a mock of me and I don’t care a fig for I am
daft for your love no one won’t cure me and no one can’t it’s too
late I loved you when I saw you first and shall till my life ends
and so long as I don’t put an end to it and who will make me do that
but you Stephen my dearest pet and sweetheart.
“I end this scrawl of mine throwing away my pen crying my eyes out
and dying of hunger for that blessed Sunday.
“Your unhappy or rather love-sick