Mme. Smilowicz received us in a tiny room—bachelor’s lodgings on the
fourth floor—amongst a confused medley of boxes and mattresses and
lumber of various kinds. She began by asking us to speak low, not to
disturb Andy, who was then asleep: then she showed him to me: a
one-year-old baby, asleep in a cradle. It had a tilted Mongolian nose,
the result, no doubt, of the mother’s having so often seen the type.
I paid it several compliments, of the What-a-fine-baby sort, and had not
the least fear of being suspected of irony.
For the rest, Mme. Smilowicz has not the appearance of a “youthful
mother”; she is a thin black-avised little woman in a dark gown, with a
double eye-glass on her nose.
She poured some spirits of wine into the little pan for heating the
kettle, and while it was burning itself out, she said, very low:
“My dear Madame, people say that women are weaker than men. But they do
not in the least take into account all the strength that we expend over
the children; just as if it were uselessly wasted! But furthermore, and
setting this aside, let any one of them try to go through what I have
undergone. With a child one year old, my dear Madame! in that bleak
ice-bound land! and then, on our way home, having to do everything, my
husband in wretched health.... And here again, look you! notwithstanding
all this work on my hands, I have managed to translate thus much: and
now we shall be able to sell it somewhere. Joseph dear, have you been
able to see the publisher to-day?”
She pointed to a heap of papers, written in a fine female hand. Her
husband smiled at me proudly.
As soon as the spirits were burnt out, Mme. Smilowicz worked the piston
with swift strokes, pumping up a stream of gas, while her husband held a
match to light it as it issued forth. A loud droning sound was heard,
and a slight smell of naphtha was discernible.
“Won’t the noise wake little Andy?” I queried, with sham solicitude.
“No, no, he is accustomed to it now.”
We took tea, discussing abstract topics the while. I had not read any of
the books which they mentioned; and I found this a hard thing to
acknowledge. I had the impression of being spirited away on to some
other planet, and felt all the time out of countenance and like an
intruder. Also, my new dress was in such glaring and unpleasant contrast
with its environment here: and I had it borne in upon me that my life,
too, was in the same contrast.
After the machine had been put out and droned no more, there was heard a
noise of children from beyond the partition wall: a hubbub as of many
voices, now and then interrupted by the thin sound of a piercing female
voice. On the fourth floor, a lot of youngsters were making merry.
“Do you hear that, Madame? And it is just the same, every day almost.
They are dreadfully in the way of my work. Why are the walls made so
thin?”
I was amazed, and could not help rather envying her; the contrast
between us was so very glaring, and yet she had not even remarked it!
She was thinking only of this annoyance; made no comparison, drew no
parallel whatever!
Andy in his cradle now set up a loud and lusty wailing.
She jumped up from the table, jostling me in her haste, and rocked the
child to sleep again, crooning low an inarticulate lullaby, tuneless,
wordless, and not unlike that broken croaking which frogs utter. And
again and again she would say:
“Little son of mine, my only one, my beautiful one!”
And then, sitting down to tea again, she spoke in a most interesting way
about one of the books she had recently translated. It was from the
English—essays on Economics.
“Joseph encourages me to write something as well; but for that one must
have one’s mind more at ease.”
Then, with a tender look that she cast on her husband:
“I think,” she said, “that Joseph will soon be better in our climate;
when he was sent away from Poland, he was in perfect health. Do you
remember how he looked in those days?”
“Certainly I do; very well indeed.”
And I proceeded to tell her of the expeditions we both used to make to
Obojanski’s.
“But,” I observed, “you have worked a miracle; he was always absolutely
insensible to the charms of womankind.” This I said out of kindness,
fearing lest I might otherwise give occasion to thoughts of jealousy and
suspicion.
I soon felt, however, that such delicacy was out of place and lost upon
her; she was impervious to any fancies of that kind.
“When at the High School,” she told me, “I made it my purpose in life to
reconcile my duties toward society with those that I owed to myself.
People who are against women’s emancipation say that no woman can at the
same time go in for book-learning and be a good wife and mother. That is
their strongest argument. But, if only women themselves would recognize
that this is possible, and that everything can be made to agree! I
myself, my dear Madame, finished my course of Sociology in Brussels,
where I even published a short paper in French. Since then I have
followed the onward march of science, so as to be always up-to-date: I
am reading continually, and am occupied in translating at present....
Sometimes, too, I am able to help Joseph with facts and information. And
now I ask you, my dear Madame, could the most stolid _bourgeoise_, if
placed in my circumstances, give herself more to her child than I do!
Consider, I have no nursemaid, nor any of the aids which those much
belauded ‘good mothers’ enjoy. I suckle the baby myself, I tidy the
room, I do the cooking, the porteress brings me provisions from the
market, and that is all. Oh, how I wish some of those keen-witted
gentlemen could come here and see!”
“Yes,” Smilowicz put in here, “if a working woman is out of doors all
day long, leaving her children uncared for, that is in order and
reasonable and right! But let a woman consecrate a few hours to her
studies in the evening, they will say this is emancipation, and
incompatible with her duties as a mother.”