“I am only sorry for those who do not know what exceeding happiness is
to be found in marriage, if there is but mutual understanding and
sympathy.” And she glanced at her husband with extreme tenderness.
Meanwhile, there was a continual noise on the other side of the
partition, and there came a curiously disturbing sound of women’s
voices, cackling with a sort of scandalized laughter—something between
giggling and sobbing.
Smilowicz’s attention was drawn off by it.
“What beasts they are!” he said at last, to relieve his feelings.
“They are not malicious, but unhappy,” she said. “For them too, I feel
sorry.”
Smilowicz made no reply. Presently he was trying to persuade me to go
over and see Obojanski one of these days.
“Always plunged in those books of his—overhead and ears in
them—indifferent to everything else that goes on throughout the wide
world. His study seems to me now such a haven as one might dream for....
Yes, let us go one day and visit him, Miss Janina.”
Really, no bad notion, that. As to Smilowicz’s surroundings, they do not
agree with me. Since I have got rid of all such associations, I do not
care to return to them. And then, that woman! Willingly would I throw
her out of the window to the Idealistic dreamer of the noble New Woman,
equal to Man; and I should cry _Ecce femina!_ Like Diogenes throwing the
plucked cock to Plato.
Yes; for the vision of the Idealist is realized—thus!
But Obojanski, the venerable, grey-bearded Master, with his mien of a
Greek sage; and his never-ending, shallow sophistries and cheap disputes
upon matters of the highest import; and even his many volumes of
monographs on insects—all this has something that to me is singularly
attracting!
To-day, tenderness and mutual vows once more.... Ay, we shall love,
love, love each other till....
“Listen, Witold; for how long are we to be in love so?” I asked; a
question I myself had not expected to put.
“Forever,” he answered with absolute assurance.
“And how long is this ‘forever’ to last?”
“Ah, well—of course—as long as we live. Do you believe in love beyond
the grave?”
“Decidedly not!”
“Then, until death. And as I shall surely be the first to drop off, I
shall have the best of it.” And he bowed as a courtier in Versailles,
two centuries ago.
I concentrated my thoughts for a time. Behold me, sitting, clad in the
raiments of ancient Greece, upon a bench of stone, my bare and shapely
elbow resting on a balustrade.... Bending over the marble barrier, I
look down, coldly, scrutinizingly, into the depths beyond—the depths of
my soul. And behold, it is an abyss more than of infinite depth.—Alas!
my ponderings, imaged thus, tell me but that in such an attitude, and
thus arrayed, I look very handsome!
The sun is glaring high in heaven. Floating on the bright sea-waves is a
light bark, with the prow shaped like a swan’s neck; and Witold is
sitting in the bark. He smiles as he floats so lightly—floats on the sea
of life. And I—I remain aimlessly gazing into those depths of my own
being....
“Witold, you know that all this sort of thing must, sooner or later,
come to an end?”
“How should I know that?”
“Not by experience?”
“Ah! Janka, my dearest, how often have I entreated you!” Then, in a
gayer tone: “I am not an experimentalist in any sense of the word. And
it is thus that I know to-day just as much as I did yesterday; and I
cling to my illusions as I did of old times.”
“But why will you never consider this question with your eyes open and
face to face? Why are you for ever afraid of it? Why must the dreadful
burden of seeing things clearly always be borne by me? Oh, Witold!”
He did not answer me, but walked nervously up and down the apartment.
Then, coming to a stop at a small table, with his face turned away from
me, he lit a cigarette.
A short silence followed. Then I went on.
“It’s not that I want anyone to lean upon. Understand me. I am not in
need of any sustaining or protecting power. I only wish for some power
able to counterbalance my own. I want to be helped by strength
equivalent to that which I myself put forth: I would only have an equal
weight in each scale.... Oh, if you but knew how terrified I am, when my
scale, becoming heavier, sinks down, down, into the very lowest depths
of my sad unfathomable pride!”
Here I paused for a time, awaiting some reply.
Unexpectedly, he began to speak, quietly, in smooth tones, and without
looking in my direction.
“Let me tell you, Janka—I never yet spoke to you about this, but to-day
I must: it weighs upon me too heavily, too insupportably.
Straightforward I am, it may be, but I am not a man who enjoys telling
the truth; I simply don’t like it. Well, there’s one point....”
He broke off, to continue presently in yet smoother tones.
“There’s one point—I must tell you, my dearest love, that you make me
suffer extreme tortures. Yes, you do. You sometimes torture me to such
an extent that I lose all self-command, all patience.... I am in
torments, to put it plainly—I beseech you, believe what I am saying now.
I cannot break myself in to accept your theories. I am unable; besides,
I will not.... You make no sacrifice, you. Have you ever given anything
up for my sake? No. If not, you have no right to lay down conditions.
You must take me as I am; try to understand me and to adapt yourself to
me, rather than me to yourself. Remember, I have no sympathy whatever
with high-flown sentiments; I cannot walk on stilts. I cannot, no, I
cannot! All that is such a trial to me that I am often longing to get
away—away—as far as I possibly can go! And so I concoct untruths, invent
mythical shooting and supper-parties, and go to imaginary
meetings—simply because I have to breathe now and then. You can see that
I am at present speaking the truth! Not that I do not love you! Oh, no!
who is it—if I did not love you so deeply, so intensely as I do—who is
it that could make me bear this even for one instant?... Truly, you have
not the slightest idea to what lengths of despotism your strong
individuality drives you. Your demands on me are endless, Janka; you put
me in fetters, with your exactions, and those tastes of yours that I
have to follow. Have I ever, in anything whatever, interfered with you?
No; never have I brought forward the slightest claim to anything; nay, I
have preferred that you should feel yourself in some respect to be in
arrears with me, for I reverence the liberty of others. Why can you not
have the same toleration for me?... And then, for the life of me, I
cannot make out why you are, all of you, of such jealous dispositions;
nor why you all go on everlastingly philosophizing in that way!”
His outbreak having exhausted him, he sat down on an arm-chair at some
distance from me, and proceeded to light another cigarette.
For many minutes, I was dumbstruck, trying to dig my way out of the
ruins of that building which had fallen upon me so suddenly and in a way
so unforeseen. Who would have expected this from this page of mine, with
his sweet, tawny eye-lashes.
At first, I was unable to realize it.
“But I see, Witold, that you have not the least love for me—that is, for
what is most essential in me; I have at last found it out.”