“If you wish, you may come. J. D.”
It breathed the spite—the unavailing and very plebeian spite—of my
humiliation. I fully recognized this: and yet I chose to send the note,
thus styled.
I expected that he would come like a conqueror, triumphant and
self-assured; and thinking so, I for the time being ceased to love him
at all.
As it happened, he has belied my expectations.
On my return from the office, I found him already here. He was quite
childishly delighted, and for a long while I could not free myself from
his rapturous embrace.
“Janka, Janka! how cruel, how cruel you have been!” he cried out in
broken words amongst his kisses. “You are a monster of barbarity! And of
stubbornness too! For you know so well how much I love you!... You
should have had trust in me, as I have trust in you.... Have I ever
given you any cause for mistrust? I hide nothing from you, nothing
whatsoever!... Oh, my dearest, my only one, my darling!... I know that
you will be mine one day—mine! It must be so.... Could I ever have
exposed myself to the danger of losing your love? Think of that. Think
how different you are from all other women.... I know you could never
have forgiven me, if....”
So handsome, so kindly, so affectionate! I knew how intensely I loved
him. And then, in the secret depths of my heart of hearts, I was aware
that I could forgive him anything in the world.
Yet I said: “My love for you would then instantly turn to hate, as it
did for the last few days....”
He feigned to be horribly frightened. We were both of us in ecstasies of
joy.
Long, long, did we speak together of our love. We should love each other
forever and forever: and with what intensity!... Only we were to have
more of mutual trust, and to be more tolerant one for the other: there
would be no more of those former bickerings which had been so painful to
both of us.
Closer and closer we drew. Hallucinated with rapture, I was almost out
of my mind. The air around me grew rosy, and the walls had a purple
glow, and the lamp was burning—how can I express it? Black, quite black!
Bending down his head, he fixed his eyes on me.
“Janka!” he said, with low but clear-cut articulation; “Janka!” His
voice was changed; it was strangled and seething with emotion. There was
in it just a touch of surprise—surprise at the victory which he now
foresaw.
I was startled, and a shiver ran through me. A noise as of a whirlwind
murmured confusedly in my ears; my throat was filled with a hot
suffocating fragrance, and I felt as if the air I breathed had grown
solid and came in morsels.
“Janka, Janka,” he whispered again, as if struggling with his deep
perturbation; for he was greatly moved.
In a sort of hypnotic trance, I stared hard into his dimly glistening
eyes. I kissed his mouth.... All my soul, with all its faculties,
transported from the infinitely distant confines of the world of
thought, was concentrated and poured out in that one kiss of mine!
Ah! I cannot understand what it was that at such a moment held me back,
since I and all that was mine had now been transformed and had passed
into one desire alone. It was no longer thirst, it was hunger—raging,
ravenous hunger. I clung to him with all my might, and whispered and
stammered a string of broken incoherent words; and, in a delirium of
mingled agony and bliss, I sighed under my breath:
“Oh, my only one; oh, my own!”
And afterwards—afterwards, when he had left my side, ungratified and
disappointed, as he ever had been—then, with a burst of heart-rending
tears, I threw myself down upon the floor near the door which had just
closed on him, and listened to the sound of his footsteps, and murmured
imploringly:
“Oh, come—come—come back! I am yours!”
But had he come back—I knew it well—I should have resisted then, as
always.
And perhaps it is true to say that such a thirst as mine was cannot
possibly be quenched by any delight on earth!
All is once more as it was of old. I am much in love, happy (to some
extent), and slightly sarcastic about things in general. Witold comes
daily; he is good and tender to me beyond words.
Sometimes our conversation flags. Then we read together—novels and poems
only; for Witold, scientific literature is non-existent. A volume of
Owinski’s poems, just published, has given us many a pleasant hour.
She is right, Idalia: I had taken all things—and that also—too much in
earnest. At present, I am trying to live more practically than I ever
did.
Of the present situation, nothing can come—neither marriage nor anything
else. So, as I reckon, it may last at the most one year more. I have to
be prepared for that, and let the parting come by degrees and as easily
as possible; so I am looking beforehand for some rock or other to which
I may cling when wrecked. Now and then, when I think of my ideals once
cherished in the past, the notion still comes to me (though rarely) of a
love both _deep_ and _wise_.
Better seek something far other than love—an “aim in life”—some
idea—asceticism—even such as a nunnery can provide! “_Dans la bête
assouvie un ange se réveille!_” Yes, but—is it “_assouvie_”? Well, I am
rather tired, not only of love, but of the whole atmosphere I am living
in.
In truth, disdain of all things is best of all. Yet again, disdain
itself would be one of the things to be disdained!
I am curiously entangled at present, and can scarcely recognize myself
as “Her of the Ice-Plains.” In this continual struggle with myself, my
strength has been exhausted.
Ah, yes; another incident. Czolhanski has proposed to me in the most
naïve fashion imaginable. Although I am a woman of “advanced” ideas (and
they say such a one hardly can make a good wife), still he is not
alarmed; he trusts in me! Besides, he could not live with any woman
unable to understand him.... Also, he gets two hundred roubles a month,
which, together with my office salary, ... And so on.
I have refused him categorically, hopelessly, irrevocably. And—which is
much more strange—I have done so without the shadow of a smile.
When I am very weary and out of sorts, I go and call up Wiazewski. There
are people who resemble those ships which were formerly used by slave
traders to convey their human freight: these had a double hold. And
Wiazewski is one of such men.
He allows any one to overhaul his soul on the asking, freely and
frankly. Only he does not like them, when they come to the hold, to
knock too hard: the hollow sound underneath would betray his secret.
Beneath the false bottom, there is a dark den into which he smuggles
those he has enslaved to his will, never to go out free into the world
again. The knowledge of this would spoil his reputation in society as an
estimable man.
“Do you know, Stephen, you look like a man who has a bit of a tragedy
upon his conscience, and is concealing it.”
He laughed. “Since when has Janka begun to grow romantic?”
“Since I fell in love, of course!”
“You!!” Astounded, he stared at me.
“My dear friend, what can there be to surprise you in that?”
“I really ... no, really I do not know. I was only taken aback.
Certainly, on your side, it is but a natural thing. Don’t you see? I had
grown so accustomed to look on you as belonging to a third sex.”
“There now, how unjust you have been! I on my own part have always
looked on you as a man.”
“But come, tell me with whom you are in love, and whether your bliss is
all that fancy painted it.”