His hearty laugh infects me with a gaiety so artificial that it almost gives me pain.
“Your compliment, paid in so negative a form, I cannot doubt to be sincere; as such it is a novelty. But I have not the least wish to make my appearance symbolize the dreary lot of a woman who works.”
Obojanski, somewhat annoyed, remarks: “Alas! that even the cleverest of her sex should have this little bit of vanity!”
I glance at his form, gracefully leaning back in his easy-chair, clad in a fine suit of black cloth; at his trousers, beautifully creased, his nicely-tied cravat, and his silvery beard in perfect trim; and I smile silently. I shall not tell him what comes to my mind: he would directly begin to protest that his clothing is as unpretentious as can be; neither dirty nor untidy, but nothing more. Now all these half-conscious, but innumerable, little insincerities, are distasteful to me: there is something unmanly about them.
“Vanity is nothing but the aesthetic feeling in its maturity. Undoubtedly it contains an element of coquetry, but the latter has its source in the reproductive instinct.” This I say, seriously, but speaking quickly, to hide what I feel; adding, “It is by a woman’s clothing that her individuality and degree of artistic culture are made known.”
“Individuality? In the fetters of fashion? Bah!”
“Well, what is fashion after all? It only expresses variations in the preferences of human beings: just like the various periods in literature and art and history.”
Smilowicz interferes. “Yes, but these variations of preference should be free, not enforced.”
“There is no help for that. In every sphere of life we meet with individuals who have happy thoughts, and with crowds who imitate them. No one orders them to imitate: they do so willingly, driven by the force of other people’s opinions, because they neither think nor act for themselves. Besides, is the following of fashion necessarily a spirit of imitation? It is very often, as it were, something infectious in the air we breathe. Short sleeves succeed to long ones, sleeves puffed about the wrists, to sleeves puffed at the shoulders: just as Idealism comes after Realism, and as Mysticism reigns where Positivism reigned once.”
“Tut, tut, tut,” says the Professor, “there is some difference between literature and dress.”
“Oh, surely. … Now, every general trend should allow particular tendencies to come into play, and it is just in these that individuality is manifested. And that’s why I simply cannot bear male attire, with its never-changing stiffness and lifelessness of form.”
“Ah, but do you not see that this fixed standard is the ‘great leveller of classes,’ which annihilates inequalities in social standing? Attired as I am, there is no difference between me and a shoemaker in his Sunday suit.”
Once again, the insincerity, the cheap semiconscious coquetry of these words, is disagreeable to me. No one looking at him could help seeing that a shoemaker, were he clad in those very garments, would be otherwise attired than he. And this Obojanski is perfectly well aware of.
“That,” I make answer, “is just what is wrong with men’s clothing; it excludes the manifestation of what in reality exists, and, by removing the outward show of an evil, it helps us to forget its presence. I do not think that to be at all right.”
“Yes,” Smilowicz chimes in with his funny smile, “its result for you, Professor, would be that people, taking you for a shoemaker, might fancy you to be an honest man who gets his bread by his work alone.”
The notes of Grieg’s “Der Frühling” just now recur to my mind: they so strongly recall those evenings I spent with Martha. I was happier then: every present good is always greatly magnified, when past. I now look back on Klosow as on a Paradise—to which I shall never return!
Something grievous is awaiting me here. And, meanwhile, he does not come—he does not come!
“There are times when I doubt whether I am doing well to awake your mind so early, and raise doubts on all the points you were accustomed to believe in. I fear you may find such views an intolerable weight upon your mind, and lose yourself in the maze of my own sceptical musings.”
With these words, Obojanski winds up a long lecture that tends to prove there is no such thing as a God, and that the soul is but a function of the body. I smile at his fears, which (I assure him) are quite groundless: I am not in danger of any doubt whatever on things fundamental.
“I now see that I look upon you as a friend, and talk to you about everything. I forget that you are a woman—and as yet all but a little girl.”
And here the electric bell rings; its tinkle announces nothing out of the common to me!
“Who has come so late?” I ask, trembling all over.
“Roslawski, very likely. … He arrived yesterday, and wrote that he would be here; but I was not expecting him any longer.”
I hear the servant’s steps in the anteroom, and the door as it opens. Obojanski leaves the room, and presently I recognize that voice—his voice! He is explaining the cause of his delay in coming.
“Have you anyone with you?” he asks, evidently averse to seeing strangers now.
“No, no; only Smilowicz and Miss Dernowicz, whom you know. … Come along.”
This time my self-control has quite forsaken me, and I feel my face on fire. … My first impulse is to jump up from my chair and welcome him; fortunately, I have not the strength to rise.
I keep silence, hanging down my head, so as to conceal the working of my features. Smilowicz says something to me, but I cannot make out what.
In comes Roslawski; I bow without looking him in the face; indeed, I scarce raise my head at all.
I am terribly afraid I shall do some unexpected thing. A wild unaccountable
