In Stockholm she did not show the womanly side of her character to any one, least of all to Professor Mittag-Leffler, with whom she was on terms of the most cordial friendship. She found herself in very uncongenial surroundings, in a society where life was conducted on the strictest utilitarian principles. It was the worst time of her life, and one from which her impressionable nature never entirely recovered.
Before this, however, while she was in Paris, she had an experience which was truly characteristic of her.
In the interval which elapsed between her separation from her husband and his death, she made the acquaintance of a young Pole, who was, as Fru Leffler tells us, “a revolutionary, a mathematician, a poet, with a soul aglow with enthusiasm like her own. It was the first time that she had met any one who really understood her, who shared her varying moods, and sympathized with all her thoughts and dreams as he did. They were nearly always together, and the short hours when they were apart were spent in writing long effusions to each other. They were wild about the idea that human beings were created in couples, and that men and women are only half beings until they have found their other half....” He was with her by night and day, for he could seldom make up his mind to go before two o’clock in the morning, when he would climb over the garden wall, quite regardless of what people would think. Fru Leffler, who had passed the twenty years of her first marriage in the outer courts of the temple of Hymen, and only learned to know love and the joys of motherhood at the age of forty, alludes to this incident as being “very curious.” Because the two did nothing but talk, talk, talk, revelling in each other’s conversation, and assuring one another that they “could never be united,” because “he was going to keep himself pure” for the girl who was wandering about on this or another planet, and keeping herself for him.
One would imagine that this was childish nonsense, and that a woman of Sonia’s intelligence, with her position in the world, must surely have sent the silly boy about his business as soon as he began to talk in this strain. But no! her soul melted into his “like two flames which unite in one common glow.” And there they sat, nervous and excited, unable to tear themselves away from each other, flinging endless chains of words backwards and forwards across the table, and pouring streams of witticism into Danaïde’s barrel, talking as though life depended upon it, for there must not be any pauses,—anything was better than those dreadful pauses, when one seems to hear nothing but the beating of one’s own pulse, when shy eyes meet another’s, and cold damp hands seek for a corner in which to hide themselves.
We do not know what pleasure the “pure” young mathematician, poet, and Pole could find in this, nor do we care; we leave that to those who take an interest in the ebullitions of model young men of his class. The only part of the situation with which we are concerned is Sonia herself, and she is extremely interesting. In the first place, such a situation as this is never brought about by the man, or, at any rate, not more than once; and a woman cannot be entrapped into it against her will. The silliest schoolgirl knows how to get rid of a troublesome man when she wishes; they all do it brilliantly. It is quite a different matter when she wants him to stay, when she is trembling with excitement, and dreads the moment when he will rise to go. Who is not well acquainted with the situation, especially when the parties concerned are an intelligent girl and a dilettante man? In this case Sonia was the intelligent girl. Her behavior was that of a young lady who is painfully conscious of her own inexperience. A married woman who knows what love is can be calm in the presence of the warmest passion. She knows so well the path which leads astray that she no longer fears the unknown, and uncertainty has no attraction for her.
I shall probably be told that it is the married women who enjoy these situations most. That is quite true. There are many married women for whom marriage is neither l’amour goût, nor l’amour passion, nor l’amour savant, nor yet any other love, but a mere mechanical transaction. If the husband is indifferent he cannot rouse his wife’s love. Not motherhood, but the lover’s kiss, awakes the Sleeping Beauty. And in the Madonna’s immaculate conception the Church has incarnated the virgin mother in a profound symbol, which only needs a psychological interpretation to make it applicable to thousands of every-day cases.
Extraordinary though it may seem, Sonia was on this occasion, as on many other occasions in later life, a woman who experienced desire without being in the least aware of it. She was like a virgin mother who had borne a child without knowing man’s love. Valdemar Kovalevsky, who seems to me to have been incapable of filling any position in life, was certainly not the husband for Sonia, who, as a woman of genius, cannot be judged by the same standard as ordinary women. The average man is certainly not suited to be the husband of an exceptional woman with an original mind and sensitive temperament. But they do not know themselves; for it is in the nature of great talents to remain hidden from their owners, who have a long way to go before they attain to the full realization of their own powers. Only those geniuses whose talents have little or no connection with their individuality are sufficiently alive to their own claims not to fall short in life, and not to allow themselves to be hindered by any natural modesty.
Modesty comes only too naturally to great geniuses. They are conscious of being different from other people, yet when they are compelled to come forward they only do so under protest, and then beg every one’s pardon. The richest natures are the least conscious of their own powers; they are ashamed because they think that they are offering a copper, when in reality they are giving away kingdoms. This is doubly true of the woman who knows nothing of her own powers until the man comes to reveal them to her.
It was the same with Sonia. She was always giving away handfuls,—her mind, her learning, her social gifts; she placed them all at the disposal of others; yet when she, who felt the eternal loneliness which accompanies genius, asked for the entire affection of another, she was told that she asked too much. There can be no agreement between that which genius has the right to ask, and mediocrity the power to give. It was not a very strong affection that she had for the young Pole, and, such as it was, it did but intensify her sense of loneliness. It was at Paris that she received the news of her husband’s suicide; and she, who suffered so acutely from every successive death in her family, seemed doomed to receive one blow after another at the hand of fate. She had scarcely recovered from a nervous fever, resulting from the shock, when she was called to Stockholm by the supporters of women’s rights,—to Stockholm, where her soul congealed, her mind was unsatisfied, and where her body was to die.