Chapter III: A Canticle of Love (3)

Here I set to explain to him at great length that life is in reality an evil, and not worth regretting when it goes from us, that in its track it leaves a bitterness still greater than the bitterness of self-denial and self-control, and evokes a yet stronger reaction....

To that he said: “Yes, the reaction which life brings is directed against life, and makes it easier to die. All the better.”

“It is well,” he added. “It is not after all life itself that I wish for. I wish only to be convinced—convinced by experience that life is an evil thing. This is all that I would have.”

When he left me, I presented him with a great many flowers, begging him, as a pretext, to carry them to his wife from me.

Looking out of the window, I saw him going his way, clad in a fur, notwithstanding the mildness of the weather, and pressing my flowers to his heart.

In the evening, I sent to Wiazewski, asking him to step in. I thought he would be some consolation to me; but though he made visible endeavours to show good humour, he had none. I therefore proposed we should take a walk.

It was a splendid night, fine and breezy, and steeped in the sweet, drowsy, dizzying perfume of coming spring. The lamplights twinkled away, far into the distance, like innumerable strings of diamonds; the streets were deserted, but brightly lit. The white moon was now and then visible above the irregular line of the housetops. All was picturesquely calm and cold—a condition that I especially like.

Our way led us down a great thoroughfare, along which a few belated carriages were passing.

Stephen was jesting; but it went against the grain. He was telling me about the tragical fate of some disappointed suitor.

Just in front of us, at the very corner of the street, and opposite the doorway of a large hotel, a brilliantly elegant equipage, coming at full speed, suddenly pulled up.

A servant ran to open the carriage-door. Witold jumped out nimbly, and helped a woman to descend.

Springing lightly from the step, and walking by his side at a rapid pace, magnificent in billowy furbelows and lace, and spreading around her an atmosphere of dainty odours, Iseult Lermeaux went in.

Witold’s eye caught mine at the very moment when, helping her out of the carriage, he was about to take her arm. In the glare of the electric lamps, I saw him turn deadly pale. He bowed instinctively; his arms dropped to his side: he was at a loss what to do. Wiazewski’s presence embarrassed him, and he stood like one transfixed. She turned round and also glanced at us.

And thus they disappeared as we walked down the long bright vista of the street, and we saw them no more. “No laggard, that man!” I thought. “The very next day!”

“As I don’t wish you to feel sorry for me, Stephen, I will inform you that I have already broken with that gentleman; so that his doings do not concern me in the least now.”

At my words, Wiazewski slackened his pace.

“Why, in that case, Janka ...” he began.

“Pray, Stephen, don’t. I begged you once before——”

He said nothing further then, and walked on for a considerable time with head bent down; finally, he said to me in an undertone:

“May we not think of marriage, merely as a bond of friendship?”

“No, no!... Can you not see that a wife never has the disinterestedness of a friend? How can she be at one with her husband in everything? In many cases, she would be wronging herself. For instance, what interests me most in you—your scorn both for things ethical and emotional—would, if I were your wife, become hateful to me; and your close acquaintance with feminine psychology and the art of love-making, would either be dangerous to me, or, as recalling past times, unpleasant at the least. And you, you would have to become insincere; to gain a wife, you would necessarily lose a friend: and surely a friend is worth more....”

He walked along in silence, listening to me.

“And besides,” I concluded, “let me tell you that you have come too late. A year ago, at the time when you never would treat me but as a friend, it would have been possible. Then I was not unfrequently vexed with you, calling you (I remember) a boarding school miss, when you extolled friendship and poured your love-theory into my ears. To-day I am not for love any more. Not because Fate has dealt me any crushing blow. Nothing of the sort; but merely because it has all been most fearfully boring to me. And at present I am taking my revenge for it upon you, in the proverbial phrase: ‘Let us remain friends.’”

I had quickened my pace. Wiazewski said not a word. I felt as if I was hastening towards a dark chasm which ever drew back before me, fleeing as I advanced.... I want all to be over—to lie there, at the bottom of that murky chasm; and, do what I may, I cannot arrive at the brink. And my teeth are clenched with pain.

“If you knew how madly I love the exceeding sweetness of his mouth!” The words flashed then through my mind: a reminiscence of the far-off, far-off Past!

“I cannot understand you in the least. Never, never, should I have acted so in your place.”

“Well, Gina, it is over. Tell me now what remedy you would advise me to take. How do you yourself manage to bear life? To remain passive, doing nothing—that were surely impossible. Work? But work is of no avail. Unless something happens to rescue me, I shall have to leave the office; I fear I am about to go mad.... Are you still interested in art? You paint very little now; I cannot make out why.”

Gina shook her head with a drowsy air. “I always preferred Life to Art.”

“Why,” I said, noticing that she was in evening dress, “you are going out to-night!” The thought of staying by myself all the evening made me shudder. At the same time, I felt my cheeks colouring, for I feared there was a mortification in store for me which I could not understand. “I trust you will tell me quite frankly.”

For a few seconds she knit her brows and reflected. Then, “I think,” she said, “that it will not be impossible.... I have for a long time wished to make you the proposal; but, in such a matter, one cannot be too cautious.... Yet, after all, we too have something in common. And I have learned to know you.”

Abruptly she came to a decision.

“Then—yes, I can recommend something to you. If you hold out, it is only by its means.”

“Give it me, quick!”

“Wait a little. I must in the first place demand of you to keep this a profound secret. I hide nothing else that I do: yet this I hide. Secondly: it is something that, for effects and surroundings’ sake, we do in conclave. I shall take you there.”

We went.

Radlowski came to open the door. When he saw me, he was taken aback, though he tried to carry it off under a show of courtesy.

“We have a neophyte here,” Gina explained.

But the explanation rather increased than removed his trouble, though he at once pretended lively satisfaction. He said aside to Gina: “But something must be done: Emma is here.”

Gina laughed. “Oh, all the better! If you have nothing but that to make you uneasy!”

Radlowski was now more at ease. He ushered us into his bedchamber, beyond the studio, and left us there together. Now and then we could hear a confused sound of talking, though the voices were low, in the next room.

“And Emma, who is she?” I asked.

“Oh, a most beautiful woman, though not exactly admissible into society. One of the celebrated _étoiles_ of beauty, formerly a model of Radlowski’s.”

Gina, picking up a small phial from the toilet table, took some of the contents herself, and then gave me directions how the narcotic was to be taken.

We went into the studio, where a wealth of carpets, hangings, bits of tapestry, and wide low Ottomans was scattered about. Nothing here revealed the artistic disorder of the typical _atelier_. In a corner, however, there stood an easel, with a half-finished canvas—a portrait; and several paintings hung from the walls.

By the delicate radiance of several glass and paper patterns of artistic design, I perceived some men and women, who all rose to greet us as we came in.

Emma I recognized at the first glance. She got up and walked slowly towards Gina, looking all the time straight at us, out of wonderfully bright and unnaturally dilated pupils. She wore what was not so much a dress as a veil, beneath whose light clinging folds, of a steely blue tint, the shape of her body, not covered by any other garment, was discernible; and a broad Venetian girdle, gold-wrought and ponderous, dangled from the wide hips round which it passed.

Many a fair woman have I seen in my life; but, at her sight, I overflowed with admiration. As soon as I beheld her, I had a desire to laugh aloud, and kneel down, and thank her for that she was so marvellously fair.

All that had hitherto fascinated me now seemed to be effete and colourless. I would never have believed that any being so majestical, so like a classical antique, so royally more than beautiful, could exist in the real world. All there was of pure nature in her was—that she _lived_; the rest appeared like a masterpiece of painting, of sculpture, of poetry. She was indeed fairer than anything in nature—whether in the azure heavens, or in the meadows, or in the forests—fairer than a Midsummer night!

She kissed Gina as she went forward to welcome her. To me she gave her hand only, with a courteous but frigid mien. Her eyes, looking into mine, expressed distrust and scrutiny, though she strove to appear icily serene.

The other woman present belonged without question to “good society”; a pleasant, handsome, dreamy blonde. Radlowski, when he introduced us to each other, artfully found means to avoid uttering her name. She was one of the _irréprochables_, come here incognito. All the men were already known to me by name: two painters, a few literary men, and a poet. Like Emma, they too had unnaturally dilated pupils; Radlowski, Gina, and the irreproachable unknown lady were all alike in this respect.

On making acquaintance with these people, I remarked, not without a pleasant surprise, that all the collars were immaculate, and none turned down; that not one tie was eccentric, not one head of hair superabundant. On the contrary, their dress was in good taste, their behaviour unaffected, their bearing quietly refined. Seen in the midst of this company, Emma was a far greater anachronism—twice as striking, twice as fantastic.

They all speak under their breath; no one contradicts, no one is excited. There is no general conversation, only a few utterances here and there. They talk neither of literature, nor of painting; life, and the present day, is all they speak of. They hold discourse about frivolous or ordinary matters, with elaborate elegance; and their fashion of taking things, their tone and temper, shows at once what manner of men they are. They are of those who have now left behind them the Past—the stress and storm of finally triumphant Decadentism—and have arrived at some sort of fragmentary synthesis, which they have set up as their standard. Their mental equilibrium has bestowed upon them an amazing excellence of form, a philosophical calm in their way of looking upon the world, and an ecstatic cult of life, which, from their standpoint, becomes all but synonymous with the Beautiful. They are all characterized by great enlightenment, mental distinction, contempt for all unsightly mediocrity, picturesque in their life, and a moderation inexpressibly artistic and reposeful—something like the Greek soul.

One of the painters exclaimed: “I should like to remind Emma of the promise she made us last night, which was so gratifying to us all.”

“Ah, yes: we are all expectant.”

“Emma is something of a _littérateur_, and writes poetry,” a slender fair-haired young man beside me explained.

An exception to the universal custom took place. She made no bashful excuses.

“As you like,” she said.

With exquisite grace in every movement, she rose from the sofa, and traversed the studio slowly, that we might feast our enchanted eyes on the spectacle of that fairy-like beauty.

Enamoured, not unlike Narcissus, of her own goodly form, and radiant with her lofty queen-like head, her shoulders moulded as perfectly as a Greek statue, her cream-hued limbs just visible beneath the clinging tissue that she wore—she came to a standstill opposite me. With a motion as harmoniously entrancing as a strain of music, she adjusted the golden fillet on her superbly chiselled Pagan brow, and began her recitation:

“She is in love, the Ice-Queen,—charmed and spell-bound;
Strings of cold pearls fall from her iced cascades;
Flowers in her frozen cisterns weirdly blossom;
Flowers in her chilly grottoes flame like gold.

“I have this night guessed the stars’ Runic riddle: ...
There, on the verdant banks of Life,—alas!
Some one hath rent in twain the shroud sepulchral....
Under that shroud sepulchral Sleep lies dead.

“Why should I yearn impatient for the morning,
Since it is writ that I expire at dawn?
Oh,—for my heart distraught still loves Life madly,—
I will my true love call to me to-day!

“Come to me, dear one! greet me, but in silence,
Lest thou shouldst wake sad Memory’s sleeping ghosts;
Quietly let them down, the ice-cold curtains:
Quietly draw the silken veils aside.

“Come to my tent, though dark it is around us:
Fear not; the stars are twinkling soft above;
(Fain would my wings of silver soar to join them!):
Cover thine eyes, love, from the dread black night!

“Wilt thou two clusters—grapes with warm blood swelling?
Lay twixt my breasts, O lay thy golden head!
Me let thine arms, mighty with youth’s keen transport,
Clasp in embraces like the serpent’s coil.

“Here is no skiey vault unfathomable;
Here are no stars that gleam athwart the blue.—
They are a silken tent, my silky tresses;
Stars, too, shine bright:—naught but mine eyes are they!

“Take thou my blood, take all that is my being:
Give me my memories, my sleep of yore!—
I had a dream that froze my founts of gladness—
I had a dream, ... dim ghosts with muffled sobs!

“Dreams are but dreams!—Seest thou the sun’s red circle;
Huge, tinged with gore o’ the early dawn?—Thy lips,—
Oh, how I love them—they are crimson roses,
Roses of kingly purple, ... and are mine!

“Broken my wings are: at thy feet I lay them
(Soaring aloft i’ the airy void, they broke):
Oh, how I love thee! Thou’rt a golden garland
Glinting resplendent in my silky hair!”

The recitation over, she waved us a salute, and a gold bracelet flashed above the elbow of her bare arm. Then she sank on to the nearest sofa, covered with carpeting of a rich pattern. She received no thanks, nor did she expect any. There she lay, her hands clasped beneath her head, and the black diamonds of her eyes gazing steadfastly up to the ceiling.

“Oh, what heavenly bliss I am beginning to feel now!” was the thought that flashed upon me all at once.

Yes, the narcotic was acting already. Everything in me that was evil, or pained, or imperfect, had vanished away. I was filled with light—a chilly splendour, supremely contemptuous of all things, supremely blissful.

The chill had spread around me. There was,—in the wide-open, quiescent eyes of all those men, gazing as in a hypnotic trance upon the miracle of female beauty which they beheld,—the uncanny greenish light which certain gases in slow combustion give out. We were in an atmosphere of superhuman delight; a delight that was not earthly; the sempiternally fascinating delight of Non-Existence.

There was a hearkening to the silence, and a listening with riveted and petrified attention. The least little murmur of life gave pain. No one was allowed into the studio; black coffee was poured out by Radlowski and Gina, and brought to each of us by them. And soft and low fell slowly from our lips words as of silken tissue, containing thoughts of delicate essence, recondite and shrouded in mystery.

The unknown blonde was saying to Emma:

“At such moments as these, I never give one thought to my lover.... I wish to feel no love for him, in order that I may dream of Love itself.... I see a land such as on earth there is none: where a Not-sun shines, and where Not-flowers have fragrance! A vision!... I behold a lover who is not of the earth, and him alone I love.... In a vision.... In my slumbers!”

“There is nothing in the world,” said Emma, “so beautiful as that which is not in it.... Oh, how sweet is the craving after the love that is nowhere to be found!”

We were all experiencing an extraordinary and ecstatic glow: and in our state nothing appeared too naïve or too _exalté_.

I felt full of kindly inclination towards these people, and of deep gratitude as well, because they were all in such harmony with one another. It was almost pure ideal friendship, based on community of admirations and disdains, and mutually uniting all those of the same caste: the cool and egotistical friendship which one demigod may feel for another.

The slenderly built young man whom I have mentioned leant forward to me:

“Pray tell me something of love.”

“Love? I know one kind only.”

“And what is that?”

“The fanatical, the Pagan love of Self.”

I clasped my hands, and rested my head upon them. Looking forth into that infinite distance where all is rigid, where no motion is possible, and partly unconscious of what I was saying, I spoke thus:

“Oh! how I love myself in all my manifestations! In all my loves and abhorrences; in all my dreamings and scornings; in all those most mournful victories of my own unconquerable strength!—Ah! how willingly would I die this very night, this wonderful night of the blossoming and perishing of my desires!”

From one instant to the next, my feelings were growing stranger and stranger. Something akin to dread was now taking hold upon me. Somewhere—far, far away, as it were down at the very bottom of the gulf of Life,—I heard a carriage clatter past, and a shudder of unutterable dismay then shook me. Unwittingly, I drew closer to my next neighbour.... Presently, I was aware of the soothing, almost spiritual caress of some one’s cool white hand, passing over my forehead. As I felt it stroke me so gently, my alarms were dispelled; and again I was steeped in that phosphorescent zodiacal luminosity, as of gases in slow combustion.

And now it returned, that vision, that majestic long-forgotten vision. Once more I saw around me the endless stretches of the icy plains. The sun was not seen in the jet-black sky; and above the horizon rose the cold greenish glimmer of the Northern Lights. And lo, those cold dead dreams of mine had come to life again!

There is no more any Ego of mine.... I am beyond existence and beyond nothingness—in that world wherein dies the immemorial conflict between dream and vigil, where Wrong, robed in her queenly purple, is no longer shadowed by Vengeance, attired in pallid green; where stony Hatred no longer hugs in her fierce embrace the weeping god of love; where the marble statue of Pride no more does homage to the grim spectre, Fear; wherein there are no more wretched victories, nor the portentous delights of worshipping Self and the Power of Self!

And I am in such bliss—bliss so celestial, so divine!

That?—Oh, _that_?... It has passed away. Only ... from time to time....

Yes, from time to time, I cast away all traces of kisses in the Past—put aside my wreath of purple velvet flowers—and go, walking tranquilly and slowly, by the cold light of the moon, to kneel at the grave where my dreams lie buried, and press my brow to the base of the tombstone that covers them, ... and muse.

Once, I hung up a wreath of snow-white lilies there; now, I do so no more. I never carry any flowers to that tomb now.

Nor do I ever strive to roll away the grey stone from the sepulcher—that stone, with its black fretwork of ferns graven upon it of old.

Then I go home, and again array myself in my purple velvet flowers....

Fragrance, beyond words, wild and fatal perfume of withered roses! Sweet, most sweet and ardent lips—lips now lost for ever!... Ah, that houri, with arms like pale dead gold!

All this—I can no longer say whether it was a dream or not....

Ah! but what is this? Have the cool white lilies blossomed once again in my deserted garden?

A dream!—A dream!

That hand, of pure white tint,
Full fain a bell would swing
That nevermore may ring,
For the long rift within’t.

But why then am I so immensely, so divinely happy?

Those eyes, dim, sweet, and sad, of him who once was mine!—I can no longer say whether it was all a dream, or not. My ice-plains once more, my ice-plains!—No—before these—still farther back!... still farther! Another, and a far different, sweet smell: a fresh delicious perfume—of meadows in flower, of willow catkins, of the lilacs in blossom.—Yellow marigolds! (O heavens, those strange far-off memories!) ... O sunshine, O green fields, O adorable bygone days!... O my childhood!

Tears flow in torrents—tears for the sunshine, for life, for happiness.—Do not wipe my eyes, for they are dropping pearls! Why brush those pearls away?

That hand, of pure white tint,
Oh, let it never swing
The bell which cannot ring
For the deep rift that’s in’t.

I awoke long after daybreak.

Gina was bending over me.

“Let us leave the place,” she said; “you are a little shaken. A usual thing the first time. You must accustom yourself.”

A tall woman, draped from head to foot in a long mantle of white fur, was waiting for us. Her complexion was of a muddy yellowish hue; her eyes were dull and sodden. It took me more than one glance to make sure who she was.

We were accompanied to the carriage by a grey-haired gentleman whom—so far as I could remember—I had never seen before.

I put up my hands to my eyes, unwilling now to look upon the world any more.

And with this my canticle of love comes to an end.

I had asked Smilowicz to let the Professor know I was going to call upon him: and I have been there to-day.

What a curious feeling I had in beholding once more those solemn-looking apartments, lined all round with books up to the very ceiling and the same beautiful old man, now a little older!

He welcomed me with joy.

“My prodigal daughter,” he said, “is ever so much dearer to me now than before!”

To have kept complete silence about the rupture which had taken place, would not have satisfied his kindness.

“You must not fancy I am quite disinterested in wishing you back again,” he said. “I have something special in view.”

“What may that be, Professor?”

“I have just received permission from the Russian Government to publish a scientific journal, and it has confirmed me in my status as editor. As my secretary, you would be useful, and I ask you to accept the position.”

“I should do so with pleasure, but my occupation prevents me.”

“Your office? You will give it up: it is no fitting situation for you. I have been thinking it over: this is just what will serve most to bring your abilities into full play. You will have to do the ‘Intelligence’ columns, make summaries, and write translations—at first. And it will be necessary to read very, very much. I have by me a great number of new and highly interesting works, which I must show you.—Well, what do you say?”

I said yes.

During our conversation, I was under the same impression that I had, when I went to see Mme. Smilowicz. I was no longer ‘up-to-date,’ for I had long given up reading.—Obojanski talked at length to me about various changes that had latterly taken place in his field of science.

Those last years had been lost for me. My abandonment of the “Ice-plains” had cost me dear. I had learned nothing by having become acquainted with Life; I was not capable of forming any synthetic views about it. The more we know of it, the less is it possible to comprehend it in any systematized generalization.—Everything in Life contradicts everything else: Science is by far more consistent.

“But,” Obojanski asked, “to what am I to ascribe your return?”

“To Smilowicz.”

“I don’t mean that. There must have been something deeper down—some change in your mind and views, eh?”

He no doubt expected to hear some romantic phrases about the barrenness of life spent as in those years, and of its failure to give me happiness.

Instead of which, I made him this unforeseen reply:

“Well, on the whole, it is because I prefer to return to you whom I have left, rather than to the Church!”

And Obojanski eyed me in bewilderment.

THE END.

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_A Selection from the Catalogue of_

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

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The

Rose of Jericho

By

Ruth Holt Boucicault

It is a remarkable fact that stories of the stage seldom reflect its romance and glamour. This story has caught both and at the same time is faithful to that mimic world. We have here lifelike character portrayal, a heroine of courage and fascination, and that struggle against odds, new and unusual, which is indispensable to any vital story.

The Comédienne

By

Wladyslaw Reymont

“The Comédienne” is the tale of a Polish girl who rebels against her drab existence in a remote hamlet, and joins a company of provincial players. Against the colorful background of this theatrical life her tragic story is woven.

The character and development of this strange young Slavic woman and the settings and personalities of her environment are described with graphic strength by Wladyslaw Reymont.

THE STRANGENESS

OF NOEL CARTON

By

WILLIAM CAINE

Noel Carton, driven to desperation by his vulgar little wife who, in buying his position, is forced to accept him with it, determines to bury himself in the writing of a novel, in the vain hope of forgetting. At the same time he elects to keep a secret journal. In his novel he subconsciously draws the portraits of the living people surrounding him.

How this novel becomes inextricably entangled with his own journal is the basis for this extraordinarily original story which leads to an astounding climax.

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G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
New York London

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Transcriber’s note:

1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.

2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.

3. The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the
public domain.