CHAPTER III.
NEXT morning the artist woke with a heavy head, as if after a night spent in drinking, and, moreover, with great alarm in his heart. When light falls in the daytime on theatrical decorations, that which seemed magic the night before looks a daub. In life, the same thing takes place. Nothing unexpected had happened to Svirski. He knew that he had been going toward this, that he must go to it; but now, when the latch had fallen, he had a feeling of incomprehensible fear. He understood that as late as yesterday he might have withdrawn; and regret took possession of him. In vain did he repeat to himself that it was not the time for reasoning. Various reproaches which formerly he had made to himself regarding Pani Elzen, and above all regarding marriage with her, returned to him with renewed force. The voice which formerly had whispered unceasingly in his ear, "Do not be a fool!" began to cry, "Thou art a fool!" And he could not put down this voice either by arguments, or by repeating, "It has happened!" for reason told him that the folly had become a fact, and that the cause lay in his own weakness.
At that thought shame possessed him. For had he been young, he would have had youth as his excuse. Had he made the acquaintance of that lady on the Riviera, had he heard nothing of her before, his ignorance of her character and her past would have justified him; but he had met her before. He had seen her rarely, it is true; but he had heard enough, when people in Warsaw spoke more of her than of any one else. She was called there the "Wonder woman," and humorists had sharpened their wits on her, as a knife is sharpened on a grindstone; this, however, had not prevented men from crowding to her salon. Women, though less favorable, received her also out of regard for the remoter or nearer relationship which connected her with the society of the city. Some, especially those whose interest it was that opinion in general should not be too strict, even rose in defence of the beautiful widow. Others, less yielding, still did not dare to close their doors against her, for the reason that they had not courage to take this course earlier than others. Once a local comedy writer, on hearing some one reckon Pani Elzen among the "demi-monde," answered, "She is neither the half world nor the whole world, she is rather three-quarters."
But since everything in great cities is effaced, Pani Elzen's position was effaced in time. Her friends said, "We cannot, of course, ask too much of Helena; but she has her own really good traits." And, without noting it, they conceded greater freedom to her than to other women. At one time it was stated by some one that for a period before the death of her husband, she had not lived with him; at another it was whispered that she was rearing Romulus and Remus like jesters, or that she had no thought for them of any kind; but to such malevolent statements attention would have been turned only if Pani Elzen had been a woman of less beauty and less wealth, or had kept a less hospitable house. Among themselves, men had not been backward in speaking of the "Wonder woman,"—not even those who were in love with her; they talked of her through jealousy; only those were silent who, at the given moment, were fortunate, or who wished to pass as more fortunate than others. In general, malice was such that according to report Pani Helena had one man for the winter in the city, and another for the summer.
Svirski knew all this. He knew it better than other men, for an acquaintance of his in Warsaw, a certain Pani Bronich, a near relative of the beautiful widow, told him of an event painful to Pani Elzen, which ended in a grievous illness. "What that poor Helena suffered, God alone knows; but perhaps in His mercy He brought it about before the time, so as to save her from greater moral suffering." Svirski, however, admitted that this "event before the time" might be a pure invention; still it was less possible for him than for others to be deceived as to Pani Elzen's past, and least of all was it possible for him to believe that she was a woman to whom he could confide his peace with safety.
Still, all these facts roused his curiosity, and drew him to her specially. When he heard of her presence at Monte Carlo, he desired, with intentions not entirely honest, perhaps, to approach her and know her better. He wanted also, as an artist, to analyze the charm exercised on men by that woman, who was talked of everywhere.
But he met only disenchantment from the first. She was beautiful and physically attractive; but he saw that she lacked goodness and kindness toward people. In her eyes a man was of value only in so far as he was useful to her in some way. Beyond that, she was as indifferent as a stone. Svirski did not note in her either any feeling for mental life, art, or literature. She took from them what she needed, giving nothing in return. He, as an artist and a man of thought, understood perfectly that such a relation betrays at the basis of things a nature which, despite all elegant semblances, is vain, rude, and barbarous. But to him women of that kind had been known from of old. He knew that they impose on the world by a certain force which position and a mighty merciless egotism confers. Of that sort of creature, it had been said often in his presence, "A cold, but clever woman." He had always thought of such persons without respect and with contempt. They were to his mind devoid not only of lofty spiritual finish, but of intellect. Beasts have the mind which snatches everything for itself, and leaves nothing to others.
In Pani Elzen, as in Romulus and Remus, he saw a type in which there is no culture below the surface; beneath is an unknown plebeian depth. Beyond that, he was struck by her cosmopolitan character. She was like a coin, so worn that one could hardly discover to what country it belonged. And he was penetrated by disgust, not only as a man of qualities opposite to hers, but also as a man of a society really higher, and who knew that in England, for instance, or France or Italy, people would not deny the soil from which they had grown and would look with contempt on cosmopolitan twigs without a root.
Vyadrovski was right when he said that Romulus and Remus were reared like commercial travellers, or like porters in a great hotel. It was known universally that Pani Elzen's father possessed a title, that was true; but her grandfather was the manager of an estate; and Svirski, who had a high sense of humor, thought it ridiculous that these great-grandsons of a farm bailiff not only did not know Polish well, but like genuine Parisians could not pronounce r. They offended him too in his character of an artist. The boys were good-looking, even beautiful; Svirski, however, felt, with his subtle artistic sense, that in those two bird skulls, which resembled each other, and in those faces, the beauty was not inherited through a series of generations, but was as if by accident, by physical chance, which had come from their twinship. In vain did he say to himself that their mother too was beautiful; the feeling adhered to him always that that beauty did not belong to the mother or the sons, and that in this, as in the question of property, they were parvenus. It was only after long intercourse with them that this impression was weakened.