Quite aware that I am doing wrong, I let Martha look back into her past;
and I even question her myself so as to bring before her eyes the long
dismal perspective of her wounded love, I listen in the manner she likes
best, calmly and without any show of compassion. Nor have I any for her,
any more than for a fish that must needs live in cold water, or for a
bat that cannot bear the sunlight. Martha likes to suffer, and—perhaps
for this very reason—she is compelled to suffer. Indeed, she is
something of a Sybarite in her almost abnormal sensitiveness to pain.
She is fond of telling me all the petty foolish troubles of an injured
wife; and this procures her an odd sense of what may be called a sort of
enjoyment.
“But, all the same, there was a time once when he loved you, did he
not?”
“Oh, Witold declares that up to now he has loved none but me!”
“Well, well; but then at what time did _this_—the present phase begin?
For some time at least, he must have been faithful to you.”
“Oh, yes, for a few months. Quite at the beginning. Though I myself was
never happy.... First of all, during the six weeks before our wedding, I
was constantly a prey to such mystic terrors that I came near losing my
senses. You know that I do not admit any of those hackneyed maxims of
morality—and yet I continually felt that some evil thing was afoot, and
a day of reckoning close at hand. And besides, how intolerable then was
the thought that now I _had_ to marry him, however averse I might feel
to the act; that now I had more at stake upon my side than he on his!”
“And afterwards, by the seaside?”
“Oh, then it was entrancing! I almost felt happy. But it lasted so short
a time! Shortly after our arrival I fell sick, and grew unwieldy and
weakly and plain. And then, if you can believe me, surrounded with all
those marvels of nature and of art, I was always longing for Klosow, my
own place!”
After a silence of a few minutes, she went on:
“I saw a drawing by Brenner. It was always in my thoughts; a woman who
had died after an operation, stretched on a table, stark and stiff.
There was a man bending over her, mourning; his hair was like Witold’s.
And another picture, showing the tragedy of motherhood: a young mother
has just breathed her last; on her bosom sits a naked child, a loathsome
idiot, looking out at life with wide open, bewildered, lack-lustre eyes.
I can’t help fancying that Orcio resembles that child.”
With a sudden abrupt movement, she rang for the man-servant.
“Ask the nurse why the child is not in bed yet. I hear it making a
noise. Tell her she must put it to bed. Or else take it farther away
from this room.”
When the servant had gone out, I said to her:
“Why, what made you speak so angrily to him.”
“Really, I cannot recognize myself any more: my nerves are so horribly
unstrung.”... And she sank into a sombre reverie.
“Tell me more,” I said, to draw her out.
“More? Well, I was not so badly off then. We took delight in the blue
sky, in the murmuring green sea, and in our all but absolute solitude.
Witold was ever by my side, tender and kind—masking with his exquisite
courtesy the disgust I must have made him feel. Why, for myself I myself
often felt pity and aversion; I who had never before been other than
graceful all my life.
“Then things went worse.... Listen; but it is too much for me just now.”
“Then don’t talk of it, Martha.”
“Ah! what does it matter after all? If I could forget ... but I can’t.
“A few weeks before George’s birth, Witold for the first time spent the
night away from home. I sat up all the time, and looked out through the
window over the sea. Ah, that night!
“The servants had gone to bed long before. There was a great storm, with
boisterous gusts of wind: and I gave ear to the never-ceasing roar of
the waves. You know what a visionary I am. I at once fancied Witold must
have been sailing in a boat to the farther shore of the bay, and gone
down to the bottom of the sea. I was horribly alarmed for his sake; and
for a time, not an inkling of the truth flashed upon my mind. The horror
of my fancy came over me so strongly that I quite forgot all about his
past.... For I believed with faith unbounded in his immense love for me,
and should have scouted, as a ridiculous notion, the idea of his
possibly being unfaithful. I was out of my mind with terror. I counted
the hours that went by, in agonized expectation, surrounded with the
dark cloudy night, and hearing the terrific howling and rolling of the
winds and waves.... Ah, that night!
“In the morning he came in.
“With the mien of a youthful page, he doffed his hat to the ground in a
courtly bow, and stood motionless in my presence, humble, clasping his
hands: then, in a soft sweet voice somewhat broken by emotion, he said,
in an accent of dismay:
“‘Ah! my lady, I am afraid, greatly afraid!’
“I did not rush to welcome him, nor did I cry out aloud: I felt too weak
for any display of joy. But at that first instant, in the sole knowledge
that he was living, an infinite intensity of quiet and fathomless and
endless bliss flooded my heart: and I was minded to exclaim, like Mary
Magdalene at the Sepulchre, ‘Rabboni: which is to say, Master!’
“And then up rose the sun!
“He had never before appeared so admirable to me, as in that attitude of
a page of Mediæval times, and with the playful humility of his bright
smile; he had never yet been so loved by me, so dear beyond all measure.
No, I had never been so glad in all my life as in this one short instant
of consolation!
“And yet they say that women have intuitive minds!
“I was as it were caught and suspended in an aërial cobweb that
stretched over an abyss of waters; and there I gazed upon the golden
glitter of the morning landscape now that the tempest was over—gazed
into the blue and shimmering stillness. Beneath me, under the bridge of
hanging gossamer, rolled the sombre sea of dread and death; before me
rose the sea of life, crimson and blood-red in hue. But I—I saw nothing
there, save the dawn and the sunshine.”
Here she broke off, closed her eyes, and, resting her head on the arm of
her easy-chair, remained some time plunged in the contemplation of that
past scenery, all azure and gold. I let her rest so for a while, and
then, rousing her:
“Well, and what then?” said I.
She knit her brows slightly.
“Then, ah! then! It was a mere idle question, for I troubled about
nothing now that I had him again; but I asked him what he had been doing
all night.
“‘Oh, but I am in fear, in such fear of you,’ he said, smiling, kneeling
down before me, and clasping his hand—so! You know the gesture well; it
is almost the embodiment of childlike humility.
“‘Oh, what?’
“‘I want you to promise you will not be angry with me.’
“I was suddenly torn with a sharp misgiving.
“‘No, do not tell me, Witold,’ I whispered.
“But he was unable to conceal anything from me. All he said in excuse
was that I ought to pardon everything, by reason of his great love; that
no woman could ever snatch from me the place which I held in his heart.
That he had not been truly unfaithful, since his true and only love had
always been with me; I was the only woman that his soul loved, and not
his senses.... It is ever the same: stretch out your hands for life, and
Death will come to you!”
“And what did you do?”
“In the first moments I did not understand all. He again and again said
he loved me a hundred times more than ever before; I was the only woman,
so pure, so ideal ... and I could not make out what he meant. But my
hands, when touched by his lips, grew cold as ice.
“He was frightened, and tried to soothe me; said he would never do it
any more; it was not properly his fault, he had been overtaken with
wine: and besides, she—she was indeed most beautiful.
“At the bare memory, I saw his eyes flash bright. Oh, he is a
_connoisseur_ in women!
“And then, at last, I understood it all; and I thought (believe me, with
the utmost sincerity): ‘Why, rather than this, has he not been drowned
in the depths of the sea?’
“A mist came before my eyes: I rubbed them to see clear. Then a sudden
pain clutched at my heart and made me writhe with torture. I fainted;
when I came to, I was seized with fits of hysteria. In short, I made all
the scenes that the typical ‘injured wife’ is wont to make.
“Then, at the time when George came, I was dangerously ill. Witold did
not admit that he had done me wrong, nor did he come near me all the
time. Later, he justified himself by saying that he could have been of
no use, and was himself far too sensitive to bear the sight of
suffering.
“Finally, when all danger was over, and Orcio was making the house ring
with the noise he made, there was the same night over again; and he was
again ‘a little flushed with wine,’ and ‘guilty of no offense’; again I
was ‘his only love.’ And later, the same scene was repeated over and
over, and at shorter intervals. And this day ... it is just as usual....
“And now I am looking into the very bottom of my soul. Have you ever
seen it? An open coffin, in which there are no worms, there is no
corruption. Only patches of colour, continually fading and changing and
reviving, and forming lovely, lovely stars—just as in a kaleidoscope.
And these hues glisten like the scales of a serpent which rolls and
coils itself in ecstasy.”
A smile passed over her face. Then she gave a long shudder and closed
her eyes fast.
Starting up on a sudden, she joined her hands behind her bare and
shapely neck.
“If you knew, Janka,” she whispered, “if you only knew how I love him!
If you knew how I am longing for him every moment when he is away! If
you knew how fondly, how wildly, how madly I love the exceeding
sweetness of his mouth!”
Madame Wildenhoff does not belong to the class of women that Martha was
speaking of. I think that, were it not for her intrigue with Imszanski,
even Martha herself might acknowledge her as a “complete woman.” One
may, however, be a complete woman, and yet not a complete human being.
We are not yet in the habit of distinguishing these two ideas, as we
distinguish between “human being” and “man.” The part of a human being
is one so seldom played by a woman—they have so few opportunities of
doing so—that _we expect their womanliness to comprise the whole of
humanity_. Nor do we realize how much we lower woman by such an
expectation.
Now, as a woman, Madame Wildenhoff is complete, although her human
nature cannot be said to be rich.
Her life, which she told me with the utmost frankness, has not been
wanting in colour. The daughter of a rich land-owner, she was not yet
sixteen when she crossed the frontier to elope with a neighbour over
forty, and with whom she was not even in love! The whole affair came
about quite by chance. She was the friend of his daughter, whom (though
he was not in favour of religious education for women) he had decided to
send to a convent in France: and the parents of Lola had asked him,
since the two girls had made their studies together from the very
beginning, to take their daughter with him as well. This man, having put
his own daughter into the care of the nuns, asked Lola whether, instead
of poring over books in a convent, she would not like to go with him to
Italy. She very readily agreed to what she considered as a most natural
plan. After a few months had elapsed, she threw him over for a very
handsome Italian, who afterwards turned out to be a Parisian Jew. After
a good many other such experiences, her parents, as a last resort, took
legal measures to find her. This time they actually placed her in a
convent: and there, during three years of penance, her outlook upon life
took definite shape.
Her father at length relented, and allowed her to return home, for the
family had given up country life altogether, and now resided in town.
There, before the year was out, she entered the married state.
Her first lover was Wartoslawski, who died some time ago; Gina
Wartoslawska, whom I have mentioned, is his daughter.
No long period elapsed ere Madame Wildenhoff became unfaithful to her
husband: but he, from the height of his silent scepticism, looks down
with scornful amenity upon her “flirtation.” It may even be that he does
not dislike this state of things.
One child, a daughter, has been born of the marriage. She is two years
older than Orcio; and Madame Wildenhoff has for her the greatest care
and the tenderest maternal love.
I went to call upon her to-day, in the place of Martha, who is
constantly unwell. She was by herself; for Wildenhoff, of course, like
all husbands of his kind, either was no longer at home, or had not yet
come back.
She tried to interest me by talking, as her custom is, about herself.
“My outward appearance, when all is said in its favour that can be said,
is insufficient to explain the extraordinary success I have all my life
had with men. My only ability—call it an art if you like—consists in
influencing men by an appeal to their lower natures. That is the only
way to succeed with them: for all of them are mere animals—all!”
She offered me some fruit, taking up the vase containing it with the
gesture of a “hetaira” of old days, presenting a goblet of golden wine.
“You see,” she said, “I am an epicure. I want to get as much as I can
out of life, and I know how to get it. With nothing but champagne and
songs and flowers life would pall upon me very soon; so I like now and
then to get the atmosphere of an ‘At Home’: for instance, with the
Imszanskis. As to her, I don’t know whether she is really purer than the
atmosphere of a private supper-room: at all events, her style of
corruption is peculiar—more Gothic—and the virus is more skilfully
inoculated. I like to take a rest, and spend some quiet evenings in my
family circle, teach little Sophy her alphabet, or pass sleepless nights
in penance and vigil and sombre meditations. After which, I may perform
a sudden ‘pirouette’, Paris style, and blow from afar a farewell kiss to
husband, Sophy, mamma, grandmamma—and virtue!”
She laughed merrily.
“The future of the nations is not what I am looking forward to. No, I am
resolved to get for myself the greatest possible amount of happiness,
under the circumstances in which I am placed.... You will say I am a
mere product of environment; well, let it be so. But mind: the way I
live harms no one. If I am contented, so is my husband, and so are my
admirers as well.”
“And their wives too?” I hazarded.
“Well, but is it my fault if they are fools? Now, I’ll tell you what.
Never have I taken a man from a woman he loved. I am not of those whose
sole aim is to make difficult conquests.”
She added, after a pause:
“For ever so long (and that you must surely know) Imszanski has been
quite indifferent to his wife.”
Just then the bell rang in the ante-chamber. Madame Wildenhoff gave a
start, then burst into a fit of laughter. In that laugh of hers, I find
something peculiarly interesting; but I cannot guess what.