Chapter I: Ice-Plains (2)

On my return, I lie down on the drawing-room sofa, still in my riding-habit.

Martha, as usual, is journeying from pantry to cellar, Janusz has gone to dress for supper; “Grandfather” is probably asleep in some nook. I feel maddened with impatience at the thought of seeing Him again. I tear my hair, sobbing noiselessly and without tears.

My misery is at its height. And now, besides, I feel this: that I am sorry to go away—sorry for Janusz. Something there is within me, tearing at my soul—tearing it to bits, to shreds, to tatters.

I hear Janusz coming, take up an easy recumbent attitude, without rising from the sofa, and arrange my hair.

“What! you here already?” I remark in a peevishly flippant tone of inquiry.

He does not reply, but draws near with noiseless reverent steps, in an attitude of supreme worship, such as an idolator may pay to the idol he distractedly adores. Kneeling down before me, he gently takes my hands and presses them to his brow. I do not withdraw them. I lean forwards instinctively.

“Janka, listen,” he says tenderly, in a voice that trembles with suppressed emotion; “say that you will be my wife; say so, my dear.... You know what you have made of me.... You laughed at me for my sober-mindedness, my shallow outlook upon life, my thoughtless _joie de vivre_. Now I am quite different.... Now I am like you, and like the rest of your set.... Could I ever, in the old days, have thought it possible that I should become like a child—crying my eyes out at the thought of your going away, Janka? I have nothing in the world to console me but you ... Janka, since you told me you were sorry for the hares I had killed, I have not gone out shooting any more.... Oh, I shall not struggle with you, I should not get the mastery; but as your slave, I beg you, I entreat you, be my wife! Oh, my adorable lady, my most sweet one, say but that you will! You will be happy; you will see me do everything, everything to please you.... You will live like a princess.... If you will not give me this assurance, I shall go to ruin, indeed I shall. Janka, I will leave the University without taking my degree.... I will follow you everywhere on earth. Martha, too; does she not love you? And does it matter to you if you say Yes now? Nothing hinders you from saying the word; I even think you love me just a little.... Oh, Janka, Janka!”

He ends with a burst of tears. My head bends down to his, and we both weep together. In turns I am rent by compassion for him and by my longing for Roslawski. I kiss his black silky curls, and we cry like children.

Finally we agree that I shall go to Warsaw “to take counsel with my family and with my own heart”; and I am to give him a definite answer in a month’s time.

By then I shall surely have seen Roslawski—and everything will have been settled: for life or for death.

Every morning, the trees in the park are now white with hoarfrost, and we find the threshing-floor in the barn covered with many a steel-blue swallow, lying frozen to death. The stoves are heated, the windows hermetically closed (for the time being), and, though autumn has but just commenced, we are in winter quarters already.

In the calm white country house, sleep reigns supreme.

The wild wind howls through the sombre shrubberies, and sweeps showers of drifting leaves, green but frost-bitten, along the walls of the park. Through the windows I look out into the cold bleak night, a night of desolation and evil omen: such a night as one might expect to bring us mysterious half-frozen travellers who have lost their way; and on this very night they should come knocking at the door. The old, faithful, superstitious servants should mutter the saying: “Some one has hanged himself, the wind is so high,” and the dogs should howl together mournfully.

There is no light save in one window, by which, through the broad chinks in the shutters, its bright streaks filter out into the park. The maids are there, keeping vigil as usual; Janusz and the old man have gone to bed and have long been asleep.

Around there breathes that stillness and quiet sense of security which a winter night is wont to bring with it—an atmosphere of repose.

I am kneeling by the fire, in a plain dressing-gown, with my hands clasped behind my head, and my eyes fixed upon the flames. Flashes of red light up my dark face and my chestnut hair. Now and then I put big logs on the fire from the heap close at hand; I like to resemble a vestal virgin.

Martha, partly undressed and without her corset, lies dejectedly smoking a cigarette on a rose-coloured couch, not looking in my direction.

She absent-mindedly strokes a cat, which lies close to her and purrs loudly, pretending to be pleased but cross in fact, because she wants to sleep, and Martha prevents her.

“I shall be so bored when you leave us, Janka,” she says. “There will be a sad void all over the place.”

“Then come with me to Warsaw.”

“Somebody must remain to keep house at Klosow; besides, Grandfather cannot be left alone. I shall not be free till after a year’s time, when Janusz has finished his course of agronomy.”

“Do you know, Martha, you remind me of a heroine in an old-fashioned novel and I don’t care for variety. You are too goody-goody. Such a pity as it is to waste a year of one’s youth.... You may quite well leave everything to the steward’s care.... Remember, you will soon be twenty-five, and life never goes back.”

“But I am glad—how glad!—that it does not.”

“That’s a pose, or a mere high-flown mood. You love life in spite of all.”

Turning towards her, I meet her earnest gaze—calm, and yet, oh! how mournful!

“I hate life, Janka!” she replies.

Silence follows. The cat leaps from off the couch, stretches herself, and makes for the fireplace with leisurely velvet tread. She rubs herself against me, lies down in the full glare of the hearth, and instantly falls asleep.

“Once,” Martha continues, “I saw them kill a black sheep, as I had told them to do. A clean-shaven old farm-labourer first tied its legs, and then sharpened his knife on a whetstone for a long time. Finally, he turned its beautiful tapering head on one side, and deliberately, skilfully, drew the knife backwards and forwards across its throat. And the poor animal did not so much as shrink: never did it once bleat, or show the least sign of reluctance. I wanted to run away, or cover my eyes, or at least turn from the sight: but I forced myself to undergo that internal agony, in order to atone for the quiet death of that meek, harmless beast. I asked the labourer afterwards whether he was not sorry for killing it. He answered me: ‘Why should I be? It was my lady’s order. I would cut a man’s throat for her, if she told me to.’

“Once my threshing-machine killed a man. Corn had been stolen, and I had to watch the men by myself, the steward being away at the time. They had stolen it, because I had more than they.... I remember the man leaning forwards incautiously—a horrible cry—a dull grinding sound—and a sudden silence. The machine had stopped; out of it they took only a bleeding mass. I made the dead man’s widow a life-pension, and saw to the bringing up of the children. And because of that, they call me benefactress and angel!

“Or again. A woman of seventeen died in childbed. Three days and three nights she lay howling in the farm-servants’ quarters, howling like a wounded beast, so that I could hear her even in my own room. Well, she died at last; but the boy survived. He is now three years old, he laughs in the sunshine, cuts earthworms to pieces for a pastime, and tears off cockchafers’ legs.

“Kosa, a peasant here, had a son who was dying slowly of consumption. The priest was sent for, and brought him the last sacraments. Outside the hut, he had to bargain with Kosa about the burial fees.

“Once, in our pond, the loathsome swollen corpse of a new-born child came floating to the surface. What harm had it ever done? Possibly it was put to death because its life of a day or two had made it the instrument of some wrong done!

“Janka, I hate life!”

“Listen,” I say, casting my eyes down. “I—I don’t know how to begin; that is, I wanted to tell you that it may be I am leaving you only for a short time. In a few weeks, I shall perhaps be here again.”

“I wish you would,” she replies. “Janusz is in a pitiful state.”

Another pause ensues. I am thinking how far indeed I am from such a wish; and I feel something rising in my throat. Suddenly I decide to speak now.

“Martha,” I say, “tell me the reason why you refused Imszanski.” She starts, and stares at me with eyes like a frightened deer’s.

“Fear nothing,” I say, reassuringly. “You must not think I shall inflict compassion on you; I am only calmly and objectively interested. Tell me: can you possibly not be in love with so amazingly handsome a man?”

She is silent a while, debating with herself; and then:

“Yes, I was in love with him,” she replies, in a calm low voice.

“Well, and have you sacrificed your happiness to that abstract theory of yours?”

Another pause.

“Not exactly.... The fact is that I simply could not bear to think I had not been his only love.”

There she stops, but I feel she is only waiting for me to question her further: this is the moment when she must lay bare to me what she has hitherto, with her wonted secretiveness, concealed from every eye. Yet I refrain from questions.

Again she speaks, slowly and as one that looks back on memories that are still fresh: “We often spent the winter evenings together. His soul was the thing nearest and dearest to me on earth, but I loved him yet more because his eyes were so mournful and his lips so fine.

“He may have been too outspoken: he desired I should know all about him, before I plighted my troth. I wish I had known nothing; there is bliss only where there is ignorance.... For there have been some instants of forgetfulness; and these have given me an inkling of what my happiness would have been—how immense, how incredible—had I been his only love in the past, as I am (it yet may be) his only love in the present.

“It was on a most beautiful winter’s night, silvery in the moonbeams, that I saw it pass before me, that long procession of women, fair as the flowers of spring: ‘a connoisseur in women’ is what they call him. A whole garden of red flowers sprang up in the snowy wilderness, shining afar like a great pool of gore. I closed my eyes with the torture of the sight.

“If it be true that love consists of happiness and delight, then all this delight ought to have been mine: and Life had taken it from me: not to give it to others, but just to throw it away (ah! the crime of it!) to fritter it away amongst a multitude of delights _that might have been_. For indeed, what would have made my bliss was a wrong inflicted upon others, in the form of compulsion and shame, the torment of humiliation, the infringement of their right to live, hurling them into an abyss of misery and abandonment, and closing the gates against their return to a happier state:—all these deeds of wrong-doing were acts that might have given me bliss!...

“Now, it came that in one of those moments of oblivion, when I felt I was happy, I told him I would be his affianced wife.

“Then he gathered me in his arms—Oh, with what a movement, admirable in its tenderness—and pressed me gently to his heart, that he might kiss my lips.

“And then came the most astonishing instant in all my life. I had, to put it simply, a vision. Upon his lips I saw blood—clotted, dried blood—the ashes as it were of thousands and thousands of kisses. It was neither loathing nor hatred that I felt; only an exceeding horror for what is as much against Nature as was any elaborate excruciating torture of Mediæval times—as a crime committed in secret and hidden under flowers to conceal its every trace. And from beneath those flowers—a sea of them there was—I seemed to hear the groans as it were of those slain at some banquet of Heliogabalus: or rather I heard laughter, artificial, forced, metallic laughter—the laughter which ‘women of that sort’ always utter, it being the paid merriment to which they are bound:—such a laugh as breaks off suddenly, abruptly, as though startled at its own sound. And I saw my white lilies plunged in that sea of tainted blood!

“So I repulsed him, as I would have repulsed a foe. And here,” she concluded suddenly, in a falsetto of spasmodic laughter, “here my little idyll comes to an end.”

“But do you love the man still?”

“I do.”

From the farmyard comes the crowing of a cock: as a key that grates in a rusty lock, it grates on our ears. Dawn is here.

I like the man; or it may be that I rather like his surroundings, inseparably connected in thought with him. I like those rooms of severe aspect, with their high ceilings, and shelves which are nearly as high filled with books, all in regular order and bound in black. I like the great table in the centre, lit up with bright lamps, and strewn with periodicals in every language. I like, too, those heavy, comfortable, leather-covered arm-chairs which stand round it. Obojanski also I like, who in this environment is a handsome man, with grey hair and eyes dark and youthful.

Formerly my professor, Obojanski has been extremely useful to me in my studies. The profit I have derived from him is, however, chiefly negative, from the critical side of his teaching. It still pleases him, in our mutual relations, to take up the attitude of a master.

Generally I come to him late in the evening, dressed in black, in the style of “la dame voilée.” If he is working, I sit with him, and set to reading some interesting book: but we mostly converse together, and invariably of serious things.

Obojanski is an old bachelor, and objects to women as a rule. “The idea of emancipation, possibly not quite unreasonable in principle, has been misunderstood and warped from its true meaning by the women themselves. For instance, they are not content with equality in the field of economics; they want to have the same freedom in their conduct as is enjoyed by men. A fine place the world would be, if they had! And, as concerns the admission of women to the higher studies, this is absolutely superfluous: a woman’s brain is not able to think with the logical accuracy which these require.”

“As to this last,” I reply, “a census of the sexes would not, I think, be desirable. It may well be doubted, not only whether all males, but whether all learned men, are capable of accurate logical reasoning.”

“Oh, of course, exceptions are everywhere to be found,” he answers gravely, with his own peculiar directness of mental association.

To his mind, I am among women one of those exceptions. He is never scandalized at my late visits; perhaps only for the reason that my visits are made to him. He is withal full of respect for my intellectual capacity, which he thinks due to him. For him, I am the one woman who can talk reasonably.

For my own part, I do not consider myself to be clever merely for being able to draw a logical conclusion from two premises. What I call cleverness is the faculty of understanding all things, and of wondering at none; that of setting aside all preconceived ideas and doctrines, by reason of which men have set up “categories,” and of giving up accepted forms of thinking, that seem to be, but are not, necessary to thought; the faculty of getting out of oneself, and viewing both oneself and everything else from without and objectively.

I sit down in one of the high-backed arm-chairs, and begin to talk about some abstruse subject or other, but making every endeavour to lead the conversation round to Roslawski.

“Do you know London?” I ask.

“Oh, yes; I was there; a long time ago, when I had just finished my University studies.”

“I think Roslawski went there for about six months.”

“Yes, and he is there still.”

My strength has just been put to the test, and I am satisfied. The news I hear neither makes my lips tremble, nor dims my dark-golden eyes with the slightest mist. But I am careful not to pretend either indifference or special good humour. Obojanski, in spite of his weak points, is no mean expert in the knowledge of human nature.

“Indeed! Why, I was informed he had returned to Warsaw already.”

“No. I am expecting him about the middle of this month. He is a nice fellow, is he not? We three got on very well together.”

“I hope you don’t mean that we two do not get on well,” I answer, smiling amiably.

He shows me a post-card that he has got from Roslawski: water, some shipping, and an ugly building ashore, with innumerable windows. I for the first time see his handwriting: sloping, not very legible; nothing much out of the ordinary. I should like to press it to my lips, which would be a piece of highly unjustifiable sentimentalism.

Greatly as I want to go home, and—like a child—have “a good cry” all by myself, I stay on there for some time. Obojanski offers me several books, dealing mostly with matters zoölogical. I of course try to excuse myself as best I can. At last, he lectures me on the way I am wasting my talents, and says that my mind, “if deprived of intellectual nourishment, will pine away.”

“But, Professor,” I point out, not without a touch of pride, “I really am not at all naturally fitted to be a woman of scientific attainments.”

“Ah, but have a little faith in yourself; you ought to. Truly, science is your exclusive vocation; but you must work; you need to work a good deal. With your abilities....”

I go home, taking the books with me. My room is dark and dreary and solitary. I am most bitterly disappointed.

I have done a silly thing to-day.

A girl named Nierwiska works in the office with me. I like her best of all, because she is the prettiest. Both her looks and her getup are in rather consistent Japanese style; a style that makes her look limp and drooping under the burden of her own hair. Now, on my return from the holidays, I had noticed that she was much changed and extremely dejected.

To-day, contrary to my custom, I left the office with her, and it turned out that our way home was the same for a good distance.

Our conversation runs at first on indifferent matters. Nierwiska answers briefly, in low tones, now and then casting a somewhat suspicious glance towards me. Women have intuition; and she, less cultured than Martha, is averse to purely objective curiosity. I feel that, at any question too bluntly put, she will shut her lips fast, shrink back into herself, and close up like a mimosa leaf; and this makes me doubly cautious. Our talk turns upon the general lot of women who earn their bread.

“Those who are forced to work for their livelihood,” she says in musical tones, “are apt to fall into a chronic state of dreariness, even when no real and tangible cause is there.”

“You are right. Certainly, there are people who cannot understand how it is possible to feel sad, so long as no harm is done them. But for us, life itself is an evil; it harms us.”

“Because of the work we have to do.”

“Then don’t you like your work?”

“On the contrary. I should like it, but....”

“Well, but what?”

“In general, I can work with a pretty good will; but just now I am so weary and so upset....”

We are now in front of the house where Nierwiska is living. As we take leave of each other, I draw her into the doorway, and ask her in a whisper:

“You are in love, are you not?”

She starts away from me in a flutter of shyness. I stroke her hand soothingly.

“And things don’t go smoothly, eh? Tell me.”

She hangs her head, and replies, in an earnest childlike tone:

“No, they do not.”

“What! does he not love you?”

“Perhaps he does—just a little. But I must tell you, with me, self-respect comes first of all.... I cannot.... Even should I be forced to break it all off, I will have nothing to blush for.”

I look at her attentively, not without surprise: till now, I had not known her to be of this stamp.

“As for me,” I suddenly burst out, “as for me,—if the man who ruined my life, and took his leave without even a smile or a kind word of farewell, were only to beckon me to him to-day, I would at once follow him like a lamb!”

Then, in the rough, free and easy way of comrades at work, I bid her good-bye with a hand-shake, and walk swiftly away from her door, depressed and uncomfortable; humbled, in a word.

And now, I am in a most vile humour. She has shown herself far more clear-headed than I have. By means of a few commonplaces, she has forced from me an avowal that I never would have made, no, not even to Martha herself!... A pose,—in part at least,—that prodigious self-respect of hers. All the same, she is sacrificing her love to it.

Strange creatures they are! Take Martha’s case: purity! why, she was raving about it.

Nothing should stand in my way, if I loved; and therefore no doubt I cannot meet with love anywhere.

I often call upon Obojanski now, in the dim semi-conscious hope that I may meet him there. And each of my visits is only a fresh disappointment.

This “hope deferred” is working me up beyond all bearing; and the bitterness of my suffering makes me long for him yet more impatiently and more fondly. Really, I begin to believe that I love the man.

I care no longer for songs, for dances, for flowers. I dream of a strange life, a cold out-of-the-way life,—he and I together,—nay, a life from which kisses should be shut out. I cannot tell why, but I somehow fancy I could not bring myself to kiss that hard, firm-set mouth. Nothing binds me to him—nothing but the sway of his keen, icy glance. And yet, I live in the belief that he is destined to be mine, that no one else shall be my husband.

I went to Obojanski to-day, in order to return to him (unread) a monograph about some species of insect.

From the ante-room I could hear a man’s voice.

My heart gave a bound of joy, mingled with trepidation; it was stilled again at once.

It was, as I presently found out, the voice of Smilowicz, a former pupil of Obojanski: an ugly little man, who makes people laugh a great deal, not by his wit, but by his queer, comical grimaces.

“I must begin by telling you quite frankly,” he says, turning to me, “that at first sight I thought you hateful; you had all the outward appearance of a fine lady. It was only when the Professor had explained to me that you were an accountant and worked for your living, that my hatred changed into sympathy for you.”

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 æsthetic 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 semi-conscious 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 ante-room, 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 any one 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 terror comes over me, such as one feels when about to faint. I clench my teeth, expectant.

After a while, my nervousness passes away, and I can hear myself asking him about his voyage, about England, about the sea; the calm indifference of my own voice is a surprise to me.

The first coherent thought which strikes me is—that I am a handsome woman: that I _must_ be handsome. Roslawski is talking to Obojanski; it is a long time since they met, and they must be left to themselves a little while. I get up from my arm-chair and go towards Smilowicz, who stands silently by, looking at a new book on one of the shelves. Cool, majestic, with head erect and bright eyes shining serenely in the gas-light, I walk by, close to Roslawski. I see myself as from without, clad in a clinging black dress, wearing a great soft and quaintly designed autumn hat; with outlines that form a graceful silhouette, slow movements, picturesque in their indolence, the outcome of a superfluity of latent vital force, kept down and subdued by the will.

For the first time now I cast my eyes upon him, and meet that cold, critical glance of his. No one but myself has ever hitherto been able to look at me in such wise.

I am standing by Smilowicz, and stoop down with a motion full of elegance and grace, to read the title of the book he is perusing. And all the time I know that the other’s cold glance is fixed on me.

“You have changed very considerably during the vacation, Miss Dernowicz,” Roslawski says to me, in an undertone audible in the quiet room.

“Have I?” This I say with a smile, raising my head.

“Yes, you seem taller now, and more like a ‘grown-up.’ Last year there was still something of the schoolgirl in your appearance.”

I protest, laughingly, and try to talk with Smilowicz. But instead of listening to him, I am thinking.

Roslawski is to my mind not so much a man as a mechanical power, something of a nature that is hostile and full of hatred; something dangerous; a mesmeric influence. This tall, well-dressed, well-informed gentleman in glasses is not to my mind a living man: rather a sort of abstract idea. At times I can scarce believe him to have any personal existence at all.

I have somehow the impression that I am standing upon a railway track, in a whirlwind of frozen snow. Above the howling of the blast, I hear the thunder of an approaching train; but I remain rooted to the spot, my eyes fixed upon the cold unfeeling glare from the lamps of the engine rushing on and going to crush me:—rooted there as in a dreadful nightmare, and unable to take my eyes away from those calm and ever-dazzling lights. There I stand, waiting, powerless, full of hostility yet of self-abasement.

Tea is brought, and the conversation becomes general. To the atmosphere that always reigns at Obojanski’s, Roslawski now brings a newly imported stock of British iciness and rigidity. We all are sensible of the bonds of I know not what invisible etiquette, enveloping and wrapping us up like subtle, unbreakable cobwebs: we no longer venture to laugh out loud; everything is suppressed and stiff and grey.

“So then,” he says, without for a second taking his eyes off me during the whole of our conversation, “so then, you can manage to look at everything in life as an object of observation and severe minute analysis?”

“Yes, I can. Predominance of the thinking over the emotional faculties is a characteristic of my brain.”

“Don’t you consider this a disadvantage to you? Such constant vigilance must deprive you of all directness in feeling.”

“To some extent, yes. But this want of directness is fully compensated by the very process of observation and analysis, which are a source of intense pleasure to me. Besides, in the place of mere intensity of impression, I attain a far wider range; for my mind has the pleasure of perceiving and discriminating certain nice shades, which escape the notice of others.”

A smile rises to Roslawski’s lips, and I feel my soul freezing within me.

And now, summer is dead and gone: withered with suffering and desire, the flame-red flower of Life has fallen to the ground. Now once more the infinite ice-plains are stretching all around me. Behold the sun quenched in the black sky, and the greenish Northern Lights rising above the horizon. And my ice-cold dreams, that had died, now come to life again. And see! that Soul of mine, which trampled my flowers beneath her feet, girds up her loins and goes forth into the snowy Infinite, priding herself upon her sorry triumph, and singing joyously her lofty and sublime hymn to Death!

Oh, how terrible it is, when the Soul is victorious! How terrible!

The weather has changed very suddenly; it is nearly as warm as in summer, and the leaves seem to have turned yellow with heat.

I am coming home from the office, alone and forsaken by all.

I am dreaming (like a dream indeed it is) of the boundless fields, the picturesque ridges, the dark forests and fragrant meadows of Klosow. I see the park, too, with its neatly-trimmed shrubberies and lofty trees; their bare trunks and leafy tops forming a canopy high overhead under the sky, and the foliage turning yellow or red in the sunny glare. The pond, too, do I see—so large that it may be called a lake—the pond, bleak and desolate in the moonless, starless night; that night, when I broke away from the magic spell of Life, and slew my own felicity with my own hands.

Before my eyes, people are walking along the avenues, strewn with dry dead leaves. The slightest breath of air brings down from the trees these tatters and strips, once a purple kingly mantle: but men go on, pitilessly trampling down the rustling leaves.

Now I am in a strange humour—a sort of Pantheistic mood. My Ego is multiplying, growing into countless gods, and penetrating the whole world, wherein there is no room for aught save Me. And, therefore, prodigious amazement takes hold of me, when I think how all these crowds of people can tread upon my golden autumnal leaves, or glance at me, because I have a noticeable face and a hat _à la diable m’enporte_. Can I think that they live? There is no life but mine only.

No, they have not life.

And there,—an immense way off, on the farther shore of the Ocean of Infinity,—there he stands, he, the only foe worthy of me: and he waits that I should go onward to meet him!

And I—I stand in fear. For a week I have not been at Obojanski’s, where he goes pretty nearly every night.

When the thought comes to me of the splendid sorrel mount I had, and of Janusz whose lips were so sweet, I have a mind to burst out crying. But I shall not go back there, unless.... Oh, if I could help going back!

I have an irresistible inclination to seek for types amongst people. I do not like things accidental, either without logical connection, or without connection with the special nature of a given mind. If it depended upon me, I would, like a scientist at work in his laboratory, remove from every character whatever is unnecessary and unessential, lest this should render its reactions with others too complicated and obscure. For example, I should like to make of Obojanski a sage of ancient Greece, and eliminate from him everything that disagreed with this type. Smilowicz should be a narrow-minded Socialist: as matters stand, he is too clever for his type, and most needlessly cleverer than Obojanski. Roslawski is almost perfect. I should only desire—and this, too, for purely personal motives—that he might look upon marriage from a less absolutely ideal standpoint.

What my own type is, I do not know. Very likely I have none; and this has troubled my mind for ever so many a year. I am unable to find anything general in myself, or to define my own nature in one word and make an abstraction of it. For that, I am far too complex.

My father was a bricklayer; and yet there is nothing vulgar in my face or postures or motions. I sweep my floor and clean my own shoes: yet my hands are as soft as velvet. During the whole of my childhood, I used either to go barefoot, or in cheap, clumsy boots; yet my feet are white and bear no mark that I ever went so. My work for the greater part of the day—the adding up of innumerable columns of figures—is such as might benumb most brains, and yet I am quite able to think keenly. Though I neither write poetry, nor sing, nor paint, I have a thoroughly artistic mind. My way of living borders on the penurious; yet I have all the epicurean instincts of those who live at another’s expense. After all, I am (as I am perfectly well aware) nothing extraordinary; and yet, to be the little that I am, I have not undergone one twinge of conscience; in all that is Me, there is not one atom of harm done to any one, and no one single tear of any being alive.

A post-card from Martha, with a “Decadent” figure of a woman, all covered over with microscopic handwriting.

“Grandfather is dangerously ill. I have not had a wink of sleep for a week, and am almost light-headed in consequence. Nervous energy alone has sustained me till now: I cannot answer for the morrow. I continually feel as if my brain were swelling, and would presently fly to pieces. I am tormented with the horrible uselessness of undeserved pain. I don’t want to think what the end of all this is to be. I only know that something within me is giving way. Never yet has my spirit been so broken down: I am now paying the score of the Past, and with usurious interest besides. The autumn of life has come upon me, taking me unawares: nor is it relieved by any reminiscence of a springtime that never was mine. Every night, and all night long, I am sitting by poor Grandfather’s bed, going over my interminable litany of sorrow, and shedding my heart’s blood drop by drop.—M.”

And about Janusz not one word!

As I am going home from the office to-day, I come across Smilowicz, with a big parcel of books under his arm. In spite of his ridiculous smile, the man impresses me: the life he leads is in such strict conformity with the doctrines which he professes. Obojanski tells me he is a very able teacher of Natural Science; but he loses all his lessons, because he cannot reconcile his advanced opinions with what the school superintendents require. For some time past, he has had nothing, or nearly nothing, to eat: he spends his mornings in the University Library, and his evenings at Obojanski’s.

As we pass along by the “Philharmonia” building, he informs me that he has never been inside it.

“Do you object to going there?”

“Most certainly. I am against music, fine costumes, everything that represents satisfaction and amusement. To me all that only suggests extortion, wrong-doing, and injustice: for but a few are able to go there, and that only at the expense of others.”

“But you forget that wrong-doing and injustice are by no means essentials of the Beautiful, of Art, and of artistic delight, though at the present time they happen to exist in connection with these. Your theory seems to me to make far too much of what actually _is_. Try to deliver yourself from the fetters of the Temporal; look upon the present day, as being yourself outside of it and soaring above it: do you see what I mean?—I also resent whatever is unjust, but I can separate the Beautiful therefrom and love it, both in Art and in life.”

“Well, you may be right, but I cannot take up so objective a point of view. In me indignation overbears any gentler artistic sentiment. Yet more: I think it is not now the time to enjoy Art, or to plunge into the deep and subtle analyses of Estheticism. What we want at the present time is Action.”

“But, for myself, I quiet my conscience with the fact, which I know to be true, that I am living now just as I should live in that future when, as Ferri says, all are from the very outset to have equal opportunities for their development.”

Smilowicz is pleased.

“Ah, then you understand.... I was afraid you had been surprised at my friendship for Obojanski, seeing the way I am accustomed to talk. But, you know, if scientific work were properly remunerated, Obojanski’s monographs would bring him in enough money to live as sumptuously as he is doing now. So he arrives at the very same result, though by different roads. Yet that, unfortunately, is paltering with principles.”

Oh, I should not object, so far as I am concerned, to any such “paltering!” As things stand, I am working too much: I might work less and do something better.... All my talent is quite thrown away on those everlasting accounts.

My dream is now, how to make more money. And this renders me somewhat uneasy; perhaps it is on account of pecuniary circumstances that I am now considering the possibility of marriage with Janusz, in case Roslawski....

This I should not like. Not because it would show my character in an ignoble light. That’s nonsense. No, but it would mark how little I care for the creature I could take on such terms.

I am of those whose sin is greater than the sin of Eve and Adam: I have eaten of the fruit of the knowledge that there is neither good nor evil.

Yes, for I have gone on—on to the very end. Every one has something he can call his own. Sufferers magnify in their mind the power of suffering; those who have abandoned everything make a god of their strength of will to do so. But I have nothing left, nothing absolutely. Of beauty I have not enough to love that beauty in myself. Wisdom is wisdom from one standpoint only: that lost, its very idea ceases to exist. I have too much mind to be artful and mysterious, so I strike no one as being uncommon. I have all the shortcomings of a perfect sage; for I believe in nothing, and am indifferent to all things. But I am not, as sages are, encyclopædic, nor do I love knowledge, nor have I any. At the same time, I do not, like a typical Decadent, hug myself at the thought of my doubts and of my indifference. Quite the contrary—to others, nay, even to myself, I play the part of one that is blithe, well-favoured, happy, and quite satisfied with being what I am. This is not because I deliberately try to keep my secret to myself, but because merriment is to my mind less wearisome than the apathy of doubt. And I have not as my own even what I say here, for I am not sure that it is true....

Roslawski...? Well, say I am attracted by the interest of an experiment.

Out of which I am making a grave and important affair, simply because of my love for some pathos in life....

Why, Janusz himself can be “distinguished” on certain occasions.

Madame, (he writes),

May I venture to remind you that the period chosen by you, within which to give me a definite answer, will have come to an end on Monday next?

I beg to remain, Madame,

Most respectfully yours,
Janusz.

Yes, the time has come. I shall go to Obojanski’s to-night.

Here I have come, with fevered lips and ice-cold heart, only to find that Roslawski went away but a quarter of an hour ago, having to dine with some friends this evening.

I still can smell in the air the brand of cigars that he smokes.... My eyebrows and lids are twitching as if agitated by some witch’s spell.

Yet I experience not the least disappointment at not finding him here: rather a sense of relief, that I can put the affair off a little longer.

Obojanski tells me what a favourite of Roslawski I am, and goes so far as to hint—in jest—that he is in love with me. This very evening he was asking why I have paid no visit to my old Professor for such a length of time. This, for a man of his sort, must mean a great deal.

In the main, however, Obojanski is this evening in a pessimistic and quarrelsome mood. He blames me for too readily taking up with new trends of thought: which does me great harm. There is no contemporary poet equal to Homer: I ought therefore to be somewhat more deeply read in the works of the old classics, which reflect such a healthy feeling of harmony between body and mind.

“You are,” he says, “daily less mindful of the admirable maxim, ‘Mens sana in corpore sano.’”

“Why, no; I decidedly uphold proper care of the body, to make it hardy and healthy, and able to resist the wear and tear of our now over-subtle and over-sensitive minds.”

“Yes, but nowadays our very minds are diseased.”

“Well, then, let my motto be: ‘In a sound body, a diseased mind!’”

Or what people may choose to call diseased.

Scholars and thinkers, though they surely must have made some studies in logic, yet reason thus by analogy: Disease of the body is any departure from its normal state: _consequently_, any but an average mind is diseased. But if they start from the premise that mind and body are identical, then why reason at all on the matter?

Now I would burst into song, to run about in the open country, flooded with the white low sunbeams, and to utter cries of joy.

Why? Because the old Professor has said: “He is in love with you!” And because I believe he has spoken the truth.

Yes, and I shall continue to believe it till sundown, and I still am dreaming of a joyful triumph. I had one before, but it was far from joyful.

To-morrow evening I shall go to see Obojanski once more; and I shall tremble with great fear.

I am sure my answer to Janusz will be delayed. To-night Smilowicz and Roslawski accompanied me home together. I cannot say whether I shall get any opportunity for a private talk with him. Perhaps it is better so: but, then, Janusz is waiting for his answer down in Klosow.

Roslawski is the one man in the world before whose gaze my eyes must droop. That alone can throw me off my balance, rob me of my customary untroubled assurance; for it is the only force able to master mine.

Towards the end, our talk turns to love and marriage.

The latter Smilowicz looks upon from an economic standpoint, and thinks it is, in our present conditions of life, a necessary evil. All the same, he informs Obojanski that a certain mutual acquaintance of theirs, who married not long ago, is perfectly happy with his wife.

“Ah, yes,” Obojanski guardedly observes, “in the first months, even such a thing is not impossible.”

Roslawski’s face puts on a cold smile. Indeed, he is in favour of marriage, as is quite natural with a man who has sown his wild oats, and is desirous of love that is lawful. The fastest men I ever knew were theoretically in favour of monogamy. Imszanski, too, always told Martha that, were it not for the fickleness of women and various other untoward conditions, he would be happiest with one woman and one alone.

On this point, Obojanski is a sceptic; this is the only subject on which he can speak wittily.

“And you,—do you intend to marry for love?” Roslawski asks me suddenly, with a subtle tinge of flippancy in his tone, such as men of his kind always use in speaking to women: an attitude with him quite instinctive and unreasoned, since he is very far from sharing Obojanski’s prejudice concerning the inferiority of our sex.

A sudden qualm of terror seizes me, but I master it, and say with a tranquil smile: “Your question makes me feel as if under examination. Confess now that you are at present wanting to know what my reply will be, not what I really intend to do.”

There is an ironical gleam in his eyes.

“You may take my word for it that I am not,” he answers emphatically.

“In that case, I’ll tell you as much as I myself know. If I marry for love, it will not last very long; if, on the contrary, I do so with judgment and out of a conscious conviction that the man is destined for me, then I shall be faithful to my husband all my life.”

“And which of these alternatives do you prefer?”

“The second,” I reply; and add truthfully, “for there are certain classes of feeling in which I object to changes.”

“Really? But you would have the same result, even if you married for love.”

“I am afraid I cannot bring myself to believe in the eternal duration of mere feeling. Love in marriage, as a rule, becomes in time a sort of mutuality of habit, a sense of solidarity, as it were, and now and then even a brotherhood of minds. It is just in such cases that divorce would be advisable.”

“And when it is a marriage of reason?”

“Why, then the question is correctly stated from the first; at the outset, suitability of characters and of individualities are taken into consideration, so as to prevent any possibility of future disagreement.”

“And yet it is possible to obtain the continuance of love by incessantly watching over it, by not unfrequently putting on a mask, and by keeping private certain emotions and states of mind which might prejudice one party in the eyes of the other.”

How the remembrance of Janusz comes back to me as I listen! Of all this, _he_ knew nothing at all.

“I doubt whether so much trouble is very profitable,” I return. “The game is hardly worth the candle.”

“And yet some there are,” he goes on to say, “for whom present bliss has no value, if they know beforehand that the morrow will take it away. And they often prefer to renounce it entirely.”

The words are spoken calmly, without any apparent significance; yet there is in their tone, I fancy, an under-current of ominous import.

“Well,” I say, repressing my irrational dread, “then let all such take care to marry with judgment.”

“Nevertheless, to give love and get in its place only intellectuality is not a good bargain, I fear.”