Paul Kamarowsky appeared not to notice it. He continued to speak
agitatedly, holding my unwilling hand in his.
"I know, Mura, that you have done many unworthy things in the course of
your life; I know that you are not what I would have you be; but my pity
for your misfortunes is far greater than my resentment at your faults. I
know that you are ill; I know that you have had none but rakes and
reprobates around you; it shall be my duty to strengthen you and uphold
you with my love. I will help you, Mura, whether you wish it or not; I
will save you in spite of yourself."
Ah, miserable creature that I was, why did I not throw myself upon his
mercy and confide my doubts and my despair to his generous heart? Why
did I not surrender my poor sick soul to his keeping? This was indeed
the last time that salvation opened its haven to my shipwrecked soul;
but I knew it not, and like a boat adrift in the darkness I swept on
towards the storm.
He continued to speak. "If I have not wanted to know about your past, it
has not been from cowardice nor from the fear of any man; but from
distrust of my own heart, Mura, for fear lest my love for you should
wane. Whereas it is my duty and my mission to love you, Marie
Nicolaevna, to love and save you from your own weakness and the iniquity
of the world. You are still so young--hardly less of a child than little
Tioka--notwithstanding the storms of passion and sin that have passed
over your head. All you need is to live among right-minded people who
will love you. I shall love you, Mura; and my mother, gentle soul that
she is, will take you to her heart; and so will my sisters. Then when
you find yourself surrounded by such pure, kind and simple affections,
you, too, will become simple, kind and pure again."
His voice broke. "We shall be so happy; and Tioka and Grania will be
happy; and so will your good old father. He shall come and live with us.
How is it you never think of your father, Mura? The generous,
broken-hearted old man in that desolate house of Otrada?"
Hot tears rushed to my eyes. My father! My stately father, with his
venerable white hair, and his proud blue eyes--the "terrible O'Rourke,"
living in that deserted house, widowed, desolate and alone. There was no
one to coax him out of his grief or his anger; no arms went round his
neck, no laughing voices cried to him: "Father, don't be the terrible
O'Rourke!" I covered my face with my hands.
Kamarowsky bent over me. "Is it not wickedness, Mura, to throw away
one's life as you do? To rush from place to place, from emotion to
emotion, from misery to despair? Is it not more than wickedness--is it
not madness?"
"Madness!" As if the word had rent a veil before my eyes, I looked my
calamity full in the face. Yes, it was madness; it was the hereditary
curse of my mother's people. I was like my mother's two wild-faced,
frenzied sisters, whom we used to run away from and laugh at when we
were children, Olga and I.... Madness! In my delicate blue veins it had
taken root again, and now its monstrous flower opened its crashing
petals in my brain. I was mad, there was no doubt of it and no help for
it. _I was mad._
I spoke the words softly to myself, and the very sound of them made me
laugh. It amused me to think that no one knew my thoughts. I felt like a
naughty little girl hiding in a dark cupboard while everybody is looking
for her. The dark cupboard was my mind, and I had discovered madness
there.
Undoubtedly I was bereft of reason; and my mother's sisters, now for so
many years entombed in an asylum at Warsaw, were assuredly not more mad
than I. The thought of this, also, made me laugh. I whispered to myself:
"I am cleverer than they. I am as mad as they are, but no one shall ever
know it!"
I have no other explanation to give, no other justification. I was
demented, and I knew it. Sometimes in the night I started up wide awake,
and the horror of the thought that I was alone with myself--with myself
who was mad!--froze me into a statue of ice. As soon as I could stir a
limb I would creep from my bed, steal out into the silent corridors of
the hotel, and run with chattering teeth along the red-carpeted passages
between the long double rows of boots, which to my eyes appeared like
little monsters crouching at the thresholds; then up the great
staircase, turning round every moment to look behind me, until I reached
the fourth floor and the room of Elise and the children.