These few last years, which have not told at all upon Witold, have changed Janusz beyond recognition. He has married “a young lady from the country,” and grown fat and rubicund and common; he has four sons, of whom he is excessively proud: Witold brings me news that he is expecting a fifth shortly. The former wild primitiveness of his nature only shows itself now on his occasional visits to town, when he carouses and revels furiously, in company with Witold.
As to his sister Martha, she has been in Germany for about six months, staying at a sanatorium for nervous patients. She is allowed neither to receive any letters nor to write any. We only now and then get news from the doctor, saying that she is better, and will soon be able to return to her home. She is, as the kindly German has the politeness to add, always pining after her husband and her son. The latter is being brought up with Janusz’s boys, and the country air must have a very salutary influence upon his system.
I took but a very short leave this summer, spending nearly all the time in town with Witold, and leading something like a domestic life; for he shows himself in my case very particular about keeping up appearances. I wonder why, in his former relations with Mme. Wildenhoff, he never cared a fig for them! Perhaps he means, by taking such care, to show how much he esteems me.
He read my letter through, but made no comments on it; he suddenly remembered some incident at the shooting party, telling it to me. And then he set about caressing and kissing me: he had been wanting me so very, very badly!
“But answer my question, Witold,” I said.
“How can I? I don’t know,” was his answer, as he ardently kissed my inquisitorial eyes.
“Janka, is not this the best answer of all?”
He is always like that. My looks set us apart, his kisses unite us together.
But I am wrestling, held in the grip of my love, as a kite that soars above the clouds wrestles with the string held by a boy at play!
Idalia is not averse to having company at her lodgings, where I have met several characters in the artistic world.
Wiazewski cannot hear “Bohemianism.” Yet in spite of this he not unwillingly comes, too, to see us, and to “observe.”
“Look well at all those men,” he says. “For the most part ill-shaped, ill-favoured, sitting in corners and smoking cigarettes, and paying no attention whether ladies are present or not. All of them sceptical and pessimistic, taking no interest in any but exaggerated views, and in most deadly earnest about all their convictions. That is the type of men I most abhor. If intelligent, they grow narrow-minded; and, if dull, utterly impossible in society. You have surely noticed that the greatest fool, so long as he has no convictions of his own, may be a very nice gentlemanly fellow.”
“And what about the women?”
“They are less unendurable. They don’t talk of feminism, they don’t approve of women’s emancipation, and (best of all) they practise it very effectively indeed. They have a great deal of intuition, but for all that—and luckily so—not a grain of conscious experience.”
“Whom do you like best of all?”
“Miss Janina Dernowicz.”
“I was asking about artists; I am not one.”
“Ah, I see.—Artists? The prettiest is Miss Wartoslawska, whom I have known for a good long space of time. But just now she is far from looking as well as usual.—Why does not Owinski come here with her now?”
“Owinski?” I hesitated for a moment. Then: “Well, the engagement has been broken off for a month,” I said.
“Has it? Yes, I had heard something about his being affianced to someone, but fancied it was only gossip. … Why, he seemed to be a very passive sort of fellow, and bore the yoke meekly enough.”
“I don’t know who is responsible for what has taken place.”
“Oh, you have but to look at her, and you can’t help guessing. … Besides, women always love longer and more deeply. It is through love that they attain their highest degree of culture; and I must acknowledge that, so far as culture goes, they have outstripped men; a woman’s instinct stands higher than the wisdom of a man.”
“Why, Stephen, from where have you got this attitude of benevolent optimism towards woman?”
“Of tragical pessimism, I should say,” he answered, gayly, but then was lost in a brown study.
How am I to know? Very likely this also is love. And a good thing, too, that it came to me: I was so lonely then and so crushed with longing!
Now and then I enjoy emotions of superhuman delight, of ecstatic bewilderment. And then again there flutter about me, like black moths, certain bitter self-reproaches for the past, and maddening apprehensions as to the future—Really, it is too ridiculous! … As if there could be anything worse than the sepulchral monotony of my life, as it formerly was!
And yet I know—I know!—that this is not happiness: that this romantic adventure of mine will have no morrow.
Put an end to it? I cannot; for just now the man is as necessary to me as the air I breathe. But some time or other I shall not love him any more; and then I shall hold it as a sacred duty to pay him for his deeds in the past by my future conduct.
And she, this my poor love! stands here, gazing with eyes full of frantic terror at her end, that will and must come some day!
The keynote in the tragedy of woman’s life is the
