II THE “GARDEN OF RED FLOWERS” (continued 2)

Gina took his arm, with a gesture of famished and baffled desire. Laying her head on the sleeve of his great-coat, she brushed a wisp of hair from her cheek.

“No,” she said to me in an undertone; “no, I cannot tell; I myself am ignorant of the end for which suffering exists; why must there always be suffering?”

Still Owinski heard not a word we said; so we could converse quite freely. For my part, I could not love a man so continually lost in thought.

“Seldom have I happened upon a type in such sharp contrast to all that I am,” she continued, 187alluding to the woman we had just seen.

Far down in Gina’s eyes, whose nervous energy was tired and worn out,—somewhere very deep down,—there shone a livid gleam of disquiet.

She gazed searchingly at her fiancé, but there was no change in the expression of his face. After a time, he was aware that her glance was upon him; then he bent forward to her, and, stroking her glove, said smiling:

“What is the matter with you, Gina?”

“Nothing—only love for you,” she whispered.

Afterwards, we sat with Mme. Wildenhoff almost till dawn.

“What’s to be done? If he loves her no longer, he cannot be forced to stay with her,” said Mme. Lola to me, speaking of Owinski, of course. “Changes in feeling have nothing in common with ethics and the sense of duty.” ... And so on, and so on.

Gina approached us presently.

“To-morrow I shall be living by myself,” she told us. “I am now in such a state that I can’t bear any one, not even so amiable a person as Idalia. She will live in my studio, 188which she likes very much, and the room that she rented formerly will now be let. I should greatly like to find another tenant for her.”

Mme. Wildenhoff turned upon me directly with these unexpected words:

“Wouldn’t you like to lodge with Idalia? She plays so beautifully; and that family life must, I fancy, bore you by now.”

It then occurred to me that Mme. Wildenhoff’s intention was to get me away from Imszanski! Was I right? Possibly.

“I shall think it over,” I answered in a pleasant tone. “Though indeed I like just as much to hear Martha play.”

This staying up all night long nearly once every forty-eight hours or so fatigues me beyond measure. They—that is, all the others—have nothing to do; they rise at noon, and enjoy plenty of money and leisure; and their greatest enjoyment is talking interminably about the deepest problems of existence. But for me, what with having battle with sleep in the morning, to walk so very far to my office through mud and slush, and to sit motionless at my desk for so many hours, those nights charge me with a burden very hard to bear. 189I have, it is true, a frame of iron: but such a life would wear it out at length.

I am weary and miserable, and from time to time I feel almost distracted. My state is that of one who has an appointment, and waits, waits, waits, through the hours and through the years, although the time allotted to keep it has long since passed by. I experience the same fever of impatience, the same clutching at my heart, when in my delusion I think I can at last hear his footsteps; the same chill of terror, when for an instant I think he will never come.

All this is very banal, very “missish.” Yes, I know, I know. But now and then it is simply beyond my power to keep down, simply overwhelming. For the time assigned to me, the wonderful time of meeting with one whom I love, fled into the past so long, so long ago!

Ah, it has come, that time! It came yesterday. I had already felt it in the air for many a day; it was in Martha’s eyes; my own heart told me. And while I yearned for it constantly, yet did I fear it like a sentence of death.

Having returned long after Martha had 190fallen asleep, he noticed that there was a light in my room, and tapped gently. I did not answer: nevertheless he came in.

“How late you have stayed up reading!” he said in a whisper. And then, seating himself on the couch beside me, he remained silent.

Covering my eyes with my hands, I let my head droop as low as to his knees, and in an instant was possessed with a mad, frenzied effervescence of expectancy. I shivered all over as with the ague; then shook all over with soundless laughter. Something was leaping up in my breast, palpitating in my very throat, in my brain, in my hands that were covering my eyes.... Had this unparalleled excitement lasted but one moment more I should have cried out aloud with terror and agony.

Then in an instant I grew quiet, overwhelmed with a sense of sudden numbness: and I let my head droop yet lower. Witold bent over me, and kissed my hair and shoulders. And then he raised up my head, and showered kisses on my eyes and mouth and throat.

Not one word of love did we speak. Already, 191long before, we had understood one another. But there were a thousand thoughts rushing through my brain.

He bent his marvellously beautiful head down to my knees, and whispered low some few strange inaudible words—words of incantation, words of magic: he could afford to be humble, for he was like a king who knows how mighty he is and how supreme. And then his lips were very red, as on fire....

All at once I shook myself free with a hissing intake of the breath, and gently extricated myself from his embrace.

“What, my Queen of the Icy Caverns!” he said in sport, with his eyes fixed upon mine. “Has some thought of death come to make you afraid?”

“No; I was thinking of Martha.”

His bantering humour left him at once.

“Oh! for once in our lives surely we might learn to think only of ourselves,” he said, and his tone showed that he was vexed with me.

“And have you found that lesson so very hard to learn?”

“That’s unkind of you,” he whispered, and closed my mouth with a kiss....

192“And now I have no more love left, not even for my husband. Not that I love another, not that Witold has made me suffer torments beyond endurance. No: I am merely unable to feel anything else in the world save pain. The very thought of him is a torture.”

As she spoke, I bowed my head very low.

“It may be that there is some world in which Kant’s ‘categories’ do not hold, where we are out of Space, out of Time. I believe it is so. Sometimes space does not exist for me: I have the power to see all those he has loved with him in one place. There are moments, too, when time does not exist for me: I can see them all together in one instant—both those that have been and those that are to be; yes, those that are to be, Janka.”

From under her brows she threw me a questioning glance, and went on:

“But I can see, I can fancy nothing, save under the mental form of Pain. Yes, and I have thus discovered a new ‘category’!”

It were difficult to say why, just at that moment, I remembered Wieloleski and his discovery that land-owning was also a “category,” 193and this put me in a humour of pleasantry that it was not easy to shake off.

“Looked at through this prism of Pain,” she continued, “the sun itself is black, the most superb flowers in the Red Garden turn to tongues of flame, and the cistern filled with flowers of bliss changes into an infinite, infinite ocean of blood.”

She looked round, and shuddered.

“Pray, Janka, do not go to bed to-night; do not leave me alone during the dark hours. Truly, I cannot remember when he went out. I think he was not at all at home to-day.”

“Yes, he was; he dined with us.”

She passed her hand over her brow.

“You are right, but it doesn’t matter. At any rate, he will not be here till morning. Janka, do not sleep in your room!”

By this time it is impossible for me to endure the sight of Martha. She fills me with such mystic awe that I am ready to shriek aloud with dread of her. I feel as though I were the cause of all her afflictions, as if it were I who have marred her life. Her eyes hurt me—those great dark-blue, sorrowful 194eyes. But all the same it must make no difference to her; to her who—

On returning from the office, I stepped in to Mme. Wildenhoff’s, to see about the room Gina spoke of. At any price, I must get away from here. I want never to see either her or him any more.

Mme. Wildenhoff was a little paler than her wont; she looked out of sorts, and complained that her head ached. I understood that something had gone wrong between him and her. And again my heart was crushed with fear. Only when I looked at her did I remember that she likewise—... I had for the time being entirely forgotten that fact. My first impulse was to flee her; but Mme. Wildenhoff retained me against my will. She, I think, has not made any definite guess; but the other!

“I must confess to you,” she began, “that all I have made you think of me is untrue—a mask of mine, a mannerism, an empty theory. All women are at their heart’s core exactly alike; during all their life they follow one thing alone, and perish in pursuit of it.”

“You mean love?” I questioned, trying clumsily to feign indifference.

195“Yes. That is the one thing. It is our fate; if not the first thing that we pursue, it is always the last that we give up. There is no help for it—none. We may be all our life forcing upon ourselves the conviction that we have the same rights as men, and are capable of bearing the same amount of liberty as they; but there must come a moment when, for that one true love, we most willingly give up all its counterfeits.”

“But you have, Madame, the comfort to know that men too are liable to a similar reaction. When quite sated with freedom, the very greatest profligates will settle down to a married life.”

“Only for a short while, and then they begin all over again, and return to their favourite pastime.... Why, take Imszanski, for instance; you surely know him well....”

My face flushed up as red as fire, but I undauntedly raised my eyes to hers. She, on encountering my gaze, blushed, too. Once more I felt an uneasy flutter at my heart.

She burst into a sudden transport.

“I love, I love, and without any return!—Oh, how unlike me, is it not?”

Whereupon she laughed hysterically, and 196then shed tears, tearing at her handkerchief with her teeth. She was waiting for me to put her some questions, that she might be able to confide her sorrows to me. I thought I should soon be likely to go mad.

At last Gina came in. She took me to Idalia, a fairly well-known pianist, who returned here from Paris a year since.

The room was very much to my taste; so was Idalia. There, all is tranquil and artistic. There I find nothing of that monstrous life which hurts me so—that lie which I feel here in my eyes as they look, in my mouth as it speaks!

Now I have left the Imszanski’s for good. Even for my nature, life with them was too exquisite a torment.

Martha, according to her custom, has understood everything but let nothing come to her as a surprise. Nor has she in any way altered her behaviour towards me.

When I told her it was too far for me to go from her house to the office, she never asked why, during close upon three years, I had not noticed the distance. She appears not to know that I am aware she has no more trust in me.

When, for the last time, I entered my room, 197in which there was but little change (for only a few of my things had been brought to their flat) I burst out crying. Martha stood by my side, grave and mournful.

Later, too, at the moment of my departure, there came to me a horrible pain of unbounded bewilderment, that took me, so to speak, suddenly by the throat. All this was, I thought, so heart-rending, so incomprehensible!

Imszanski was speaking to the porter who helped the man-servant to take my things downstairs. Then I asked Martha: “Don’t you—don’t you think it were better for me to die now, this instant?”

A smile dawned in her face, which she averted to hide it.

“No,” she said; “there is no need. Nothing comes to me unexpectedly now.... And latterly I have found an enemy—in myself besides.”

Quietly, daintily, she kissed me on the lips, and then, with a gracious gesture, gave her hand to Imszanski, who was going out to take me to my new abode.

I sit for a long time, spending the evening with Imszanski. And I enjoy myself. Although 198I do not for one instant forget her, that graceful melancholy woman, who now is wandering through the magnificent apartments of her lonely dwelling, always awaiting him, though she knows he will not come, and at the slightest noise rushing to the ante-chamber, listening with her ear close against the door, and her brain on fire with excitement. But the billows of undisturbed stillness are beating all around her.... And then she goes back to her rooms, and seats herself upon an easy-chair, and again upon a lounge, trying to fall asleep; and to keep herself from sobbing aloud, she bites her fingers hard.... And in a little while she goes once again and listens at the ante-chamber door. For now I am no longer by her side; now she is quite, quite alone; and so cruelly abandoned!

Not for an instant do I forget all this; and yet I enjoy myself. The faint bitterness of this tragedy gives, I suppose, an additional flavour to our amorous and delightful dalliance.

Witold would prefer not to speak of the subject, which I nevertheless bring forward again and again.

199“But tell me now, how could you behave with such abominable baseness, forcing yourself into Martha’s life so? For you married her under downright compulsion: I well remember that she resisted with all her might. Were you at the time really in love with her?”

“She attracted me extremely, and I was puzzled by her great love for virginity. Never before had I found any woman with the instinct developed to such a degree. And I was then in a romantic, an idealistic, a Platonic mood, with which Martha harmonized to perfection.”

“Well, and how was it that this mood of yours came to alter so quickly?”

“I found Martha just a little disappointing: and even at the time when I married her I was quite sure that she could not satisfy me for long. All that alluring mystery of her ascetic philosophy of life merely proceeded from anæmia and poverty of temperament.”

“Witold! Witold! do go back to her again. For remember; I shall never love you as she does.”

“No, I will not; I will not,” and he gathered me in his arms: “I will not leave you, nor would I, even if you came to hate me. 200Besides: what, in this whole affair, has pained Martha most? Why, it is your leaving us. She is always sitting in your room; and she very often talks of you, and wonders why you don’t come.”

I had reached the conclusion that all Witold had said was but of a piece with the rest of Martha’s behaviour, studiously correct in regard of him: but I have got a letter from her to-day.

“Come to me, Janka, come! Do not bear me more ill-will than I bear to you. Remember that everything in our relations is still just as it was before. The memories are too deep-rooted; I cannot—— Once I loved you even more than——

“I await you. M.”

I shall go to her to-morrow.

She received me, clad in a black dressing-gown, with grey borders and a silver fringe. I found it hard to conceal the painful impression that I felt. We talked together in a friendly way for about an hour.

With some air of mystery, she explained to me the idea she had of fitting up a boudoir 201entirely in mourning. “It might be made quite ornamental. The walls hung with crêpe, the furniture of black wood, upholstered with white plush, crosses of silver and of ebony, standing and suspended chandeliers of silver, a profusion of such flowers as are used to dress a catafalque, a large table in the centre, covered with a black cloth. And the boudoir lit with wax tapers only.”

She then showed me an album bound in black leather, with a silver cross that stood out in relief on the cover.

With an embarrassed smile, she explained its contents to me.

“Here I have placed all Witold’s loves, in chronological order,” she said, and the very sound of his name made her blush hotly. “The number looks very great indeed, but this is because I have in many cases several portraits of the same person.”

I looked it over for a time, enthralled and captivated by these faces, each of a different type, some laughing, some grave, some pathetic, others comical or exotic or commonplace, these full of fire, those ethereal-looking; many attired in the strangest raiment, or posing in voluptuous attitudes, and stretching 202out their half-nude limbs with serpent-like grace,—all these surrounded with Oriental magnificence: and again exquisite women, very lady-like in their British stiffness, and the sexless elegance of their tailor-made dresses simple but striking. A multitudinous chaotic assembly of many a style and many a nationality, down to one monstrously sensual negress, no doubt a singer in some music-hall.

“Since you have been away,” she said, “it has been a custom with me to pore over this album. Those different faces remind me of the different periods of my life. I possess but few belonging to the old times of Witold’s love-making; but of those he loved since he married, not one is wanting here. Some of them I purchased myself.”

“That,” I observed, “was of old a custom of yours. I remember well how as a girl the collections you liked best to make were post-cards with photographs of handsome actresses.”

“Oh, but that was quite different,” she replied with a shake of the head. “I feel such a pleasure in gloating over this collection!”

“Yes, the pleasure you take in self-inflicted torture!”

203“No, not even that. You see, I gaze at those beautiful faces, those full red voluptuous mouths, those white rounded shoulders, so pleasantly smooth and soft; I look through the garments and see the colour of the flesh beneath: and each of these women I fancy delirious, swooning in his arms; and so I feed my mind with the thought of their delight in him—or perhaps (I am not quite sure which) of his delight in them!”

Her nostrils were quivering. She settled herself in her soft-cushioned seat, and closed her eyelids; they were red with tears.

On one of the first pages of the album I found Mary Wieloleska, clad as an Algerian girl, blithe and blandishing, and far better-looking than in reality. Towards the end there were about a dozen photographs of Mme. Wildenhoff, and one—a small one—of that French actress whom we had seen at Lipka’s restaurant. The thought flashed upon me—a very unflattering one assuredly—that she had already placed me there too; but, sitting as I was by Martha’s side, I could not possibly look at the last page. Besides, she herself held the album, and showed me no 204photographs after those of Mme. Wildenhoff and of the French actress.

The same thought occurred to us both at once, and it cast over us the shadow of a moody silence.

She laid her head on my bosom, and closed her eyes with an expression of the utmost fatigue.

“Don’t go on like that,” I said to her soothingly. “That way madness lies, and you might easily get there.”

“Oh, that is very likely. Indeed I wish I may. Oh, to lose memory, and consciousness, and all feeling!” And then: “For I am everlastingly wringing my own heart, Janka!” she added, very sorrowfully.

Silently, I stroked her long dishevelled hair, and all the while, with tender craving and emotional entrancement, my mind was reverting to Witold.

“Are you my husband’s paramour by now?”

It was with some surprise that I was aware the question evoked in me a reaction of outraged dignity. But I choked down the feeling, and unembarrassed, though with downcast eyes, I answered, in a low voice:

“No, not as yet.”

205“That is better. You may then presently become his wife.”

Her mouth was slightly twitching. She has that most unpleasant habit of melting with compassion over her own woes.

“Only, please, Martha, not death! Don’t let us hear about death!”

“I am in a very bad way.”

“The idea! You always have been so terribly afraid to die; you told me so. Do you remember?”

“Oh, but it’s quite another thing now!—Afraid of death, I?—No, I desire it with all the desire of my wretched heart. Yes, I desire it that you may become his wife, that you may yourself fathom the depths of the tortures I have gone through, and bask (as I am doing) in the beams of the bliss they give; that you, like me, may taste the delight of them by cupfuls brimming over!—Yet more, yet more!—May you quaff your fill of wormwood, till you overflow with it!—be suffocated with the mortal scent of those flowers of his—drink in their odoriferous delight and the poisonous steam of them, even to agony, even to death!—May I be avenged, when you are forced to yield him up to another! And may the knowledge 206that even death itself is no sufficient expiation, make the bitterness of your last hour bitterer still.... Oh, God!”

She hid her face in her hands; she was trembling all over with the violence of her spasmodic outburst. Finally, she fell on her knees before me, covering my hands with kisses that I felt burning hot.

“No, Janka, these words of mine are not true: they are lies,—lies! There is no longer any hatred at all, nor any thirst for vengeance: there is none—I love you!... I shall die, that you may be happy—in his Red Garden—and that he too may be happy by your side. Don’t you believe me? Won’t you look into my heart? My only wish is for your happiness: beyond this, I have no wish whatsoever.... I humble myself at your feet thus, see! and bless you that in your turn you have taken away from me what to me is dearer than life itself; that you have poured into the cistern of my bliss the last drop of that nectar which inebriates unto death. I love you: it was Christ, was it not? who gave the command that we ought to love our enemies.... Hear me!—I am dying that you may be happy with him. I wish you all happiness. I want to receive 207death at your hands,—your beautiful hands, so soft to caress. I would not have you feel any twinge of remorse: I would you could kill me, and yet not know that my death has cleared the way for your triumphal chariot.—Oh, Janka! be happy!”

Her head fell back; her eyes closed fast, and her teeth were clenched, showing between her half-open lips.

“Slay me, Oh, slay me!”

Now she has fainted. I lift her up, and lay her limp and lifeless body on a couch.

The purple chamber grows dark in the gathering twilight.

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