“Why, what are you running away for? It is only Gina. I like to see two
clever, handsome women together; a thing which, I must tell you, very
seldom happens.”
Gina came in with her customary smileless greeting, and as usual called
for a glass of water. Then she set to look through certain albums,
scattered about the table. Her figure, perfectly faultless in style,
stood out like a sort of anachronism on the background of that florid
middle-class drawing-room. In the light one could see that her eyebrows
and lashes were golden, and her wavy hair of a dark auburn hue, falling
in a dishevelled mass on to her shoulders as she bent forward.
Madame Wildenhoff attempted to lead the conversation towards topics of
general interest.
She began by the rights of women, and their failure to understand what
emancipation really signifies. Gina speaks little, but belongs, like
Madame Wildenhoff, to the category of those that are emancipated in
every sense of the word. As a matter of fact, her intended husband is
her paramour, and she has not the slightest intention ever to become his
wife.
I have for some time noticed that she is possessed with a spirit of
contradiction. In presence of people who have some certain definite
convictions, she always takes the opposite side: this possibly in order
to produce a more striking effect by the sharp contrast of tones. This
attitude called up in my mind certain reminiscences from out of
atavistic past. I began to talk about the gradual extinction of
individual monogamistic women, of the eroticism which has soaked our
democracies through and through, of the necessity for a class of
courtesans, that the type of those women who care for something besides
love intrigues may be preserved, and other nonsense of similar nature.
Gina only looked at me with a drowsy smile; but Madame Wildenhoff took
up the cudgels with a sort of enthusiasm. A curious thing: her talk is
not unlike Martha’s, though their natures are very far asunder indeed.
“Men are endowed by nature with a sense of equilibrium: so long as they
are in the prime of life, they live and love and laugh at plain and
virtuous women. _Car il faut que jeunesse se passe_. They therefore
require what may be called the ‘brute-woman’; a woman who laughs and
glitters and shines for a few years, till she ages: then of course she
withdraws from the arena, regretting that ‘she ever followed such a
path.’ It is only after men have sown their wild oats that the animal
dies out of them, and there wakes up—a plebeian, or a thinker, or a
father, or a citizen; and then he stretches out his hands towards what
we may call the ‘human woman.’ Then comes the triumph of her who
respects herself; her day of victory has dawned, she is at last
‘appreciated,’ which is to say remunerated for her virtue with that
famous respect which is never given to those of the other class. True,
the intellectuals may complain sometimes that men will not acknowledge
them as mentally their equals; but the foolish ones will be honoured by
their husbands’ friendship and confidence; and the good mothers will
have no aim or happiness in life beyond the bringing up of children:
while they each and all either look down upon the ‘brute-woman’ or
regard them with philanthropic compassion.”
“Poor things!” Gina exclaimed; “they do not know that the tragic
excitement of a single night may be perhaps worth more than a whole
existence passed in such torpid apathy as theirs.”
To-day there is some festival or other. I have not gone to the office,
and have been sitting all the morning at Martha’s bedside, who is not to
get up until the afternoon. She is as usual always complaining, her sad
eyes gazing into mine.
“Janka, I can no longer sleep a wink. Last night it was twelve before I
ceased tossing on my pillow. Like a child, I cried myself to sleep at
last: and when I woke, it was no later than three o’clock.”
She crossed behind her head her lace-decked arms, and looked out into
space with infinite wistfulness.
Then she continued in a low voice: “I cannot imagine why my former life
in Klosow now comes back to me so very vividly. I remember how sometimes
I used to rise early on a winter morning, when it was still dark, and
how I dressed by lamplight, shivering with cold, and fighting down my
longing to go back to my warm bed. Then I would put on a huge fur, and
take the keys, and go to the farm with a lantern in my hand. Do you
know, all this is present to me now, just like a vision? And then I
remember the far-off fields, lying fallow beneath the snow, and
stretching away even to the verge of the horizon, under the sky in which
the stars were beginning to grow pale. I remember the farm buildings,
vague dark spots upon the landscape, the forests like streaks of violet,
the grey fences, and the delicate tracery of the leafless garden trees.
And now through the darkness there come sounds: the clattering of tin
pails, and the faint drowsy calling of the maids to one another. Oh, and
I remember well the cold, the lusty, fresh, piercing cold, making the
teeth clatter in one’s head. And then, the close warmth of the
cow-byres, and the low black-raftered ceiling overhead; the outlines of
the solemn-looking cows and sleepy milkmaids, the bright circles of the
lanterns on the floor, and the quaint broken shadows on the beams and
girders above; the milk stream rhythmically into the pails, the indolent
lowing of the kine, and the jingling sound of the chain that bound the
savage steer to the crib.... You remember the cat, too—our cat? Don’t
you: so sharp of wit, following us everywhere like a dog? All that’s so
far off, so irrevocably gone! Oh, I tell you, I would give more than my
life, if I could but see one such morning return—only one such bleak and
dark and frosty morning, and I were now as I was then!...”
She turned her cheek to the pillow, and shed tears.
“Martha, your nerves are again in a very poor state. If you like, I
shall go with you to Klosow; and we shall spend Christmas there
together, and enjoy a few idyllic days as of old.”
“Oh, no, Janka; they would only be the miserable ghosts of times that
are past for ever. That stupid, clubby-faced woman, Janusz’s wife, would
get on my nerves so; besides, the thought that Witold would be staying
here with Madame Wildenhoff, and glad I was away!
“But,” she added with a sudden revival of spirits, “do you know, I fancy
her triumph will be over pretty soon? It is true that Witold was never
very much attached to her: but now it would seem that his affections are
strongly engaged elsewhere.”
“Are they?” I asked, much interested: for I recalled Lipka and my
unexpected meeting with Imszanski there.
“Did he tell you anything?”
“Oh, he is simply ridiculous—so hopelessly frank with me. He never will
spare me any details, and holds it in some sort as a duty to conceal
nothing from me....”
She laughed bitterly, and at once looked sullen again.
“Yesterday, before you came home from the office, I asked Witold all
about her. She is some star of the Parisian _demi-monde_, who has made
up her mind to get an engagement at any price on the stage here: and
Witold is expected, on account of his influence in Warsaw, to obtain a
fixed situation for her. It appears that her voice is tolerable, and her
outward appearance marvellous: he has described her to me in every
particular. It was, I assure you, one of the most emotional experiences
I ever went through.”
She closed her eyes, to intensify the image that she was forming in her
mind.
“The woman is tall, and seemingly of spare proportions: but only
seemingly so. Her bony framework is exceedingly slight and reed-like: so
you see, Janka, on close inquiry she is found not to be really thin.”
As she spoke, she turned upon her pillow, tearing at its satin covering
with her nails, and striving to swallow down her tears of rage.