Venus in Furs (P.VIII)

It seems she has completely forgotten the contract, my slavehood. Or was it actually only stubbornness? And she gave up her whole plan as soon as I no longer opposed her and submitted to her imperial whim?

How kind she is to me, how tender, how loving! We are spending marvellously happy days.

To-day she had me read to her the scene between Faust and Mephistopheles, in which the latter appears as a wandering scholar. Her glance hung on me with strange pleasure.

"I don't understand," she said when I had finished, "how a man who can read such great and beautiful thoughts with such expression, and interpret them so clearly, concisely, and intelligently, can at the same time be such a visionary and supersensual ninny as you are."

"Were you pleased," said I, and kissed her forehead.

She gently stroked my brow. "I love you, Severin," she whispered. "I don't believe I could ever love any one more than you. Let us be sensible, what do you say?"

Instead of replying I folded her in my arms; a deep inward, yet vaguely sad happiness filled my breast, my eyes grew moist, and a tear fell upon her hand.

"How can you cry!" she exclaimed, "you are a child!"

On a pleasure drive we met the Russian prince in his carriage. He seemed to be unpleasantly surprised to see me by Wanda's side, and looked as if he wanted to pierce her through and through with his electric gray eyes. She, however, did not seem to notice him. I felt at that moment like kneeling down before her and kissing her feet. She let her glance glide over him indifferently as though he were an inanimate object, a tree, for instance, and turned to me with her gracious smile.

When I said good-night to her to-day she seemed suddenly unaccountably distracted and moody. What was occupying her?

"I am sorry you are going," she said when I was already standing on the threshold.

"It is entirely in your hands to shorten the hard period of my trial, to cease tormenting me—" I pleaded.

"Do you imagine that this compulsion isn't a torment for me, too," Wanda interjected.

"Then end it," I exclaimed, embracing her, "be my wife."

"Never, Severin," she said gently, but with great firmness.

"What do you mean?"

I was frightened in my innermost soul.

"You are not the man for me."

I looked at her, and slowly withdrew my arm which was still about her waist; then I left the room, and she—she did not call me back.

A sleepless night; I made countless decisions, only to toss them aside again. In the morning I wrote her a letter in which I declared our relationship dissolved. My hand trembled when I put on the seal, and I burned my fingers.

As I went upstairs to hand it to the maid, my knees threatened to give way.

The door opened, and Wanda thrust forth her head full of curling- papers.

"I haven't had my hair dressed yet," she said, smiling. "What have you there?"

"A letter—"

"For me?"

I nodded.

"Ah, you want to break with me," she exclaimed, mockingly.

"Didn't you tell me yesterday that I wasn't the man for you?"

"I repeat it now!"

"Very well, then." My whole body was trembling, my voice failed me, and I handed her the letter.

"Keep it," she said, measuring me coldly. "You forget that is no longer a question as to whether you satisfy me as a man; as a slave you will doubtless do well enough."

"Madame!" I exclaimed, aghast.

"That is what you will call me in the future," replied Wanda, throwing back her head with a movement of unutterable contempt. "Put your affairs in order within the next twenty-four hours. The day after to-morrow I shall start for Italy, and you will accompany me as my servant."

"Wanda—"

"I forbid any sort of familiarity," she said, cutting my words short, "likewise you are not to come in unless I call or ring for you, and you are not to speak to me until you are spoken to. From now on your name is no longer Severin, but Gregor."

I trembled with rage, and yet, unfortunately, I cannot deny it, I also felt a strange pleasure and stimulation.

"But, madame, you know my circumstances," I began in my confusion. "I am dependent on my father, and I doubt whether he will give me the large sum of money needed for this journey—"

"That means you have no money, Gregor," said Wanda, delightedly, "so much the better, you are then entirely dependent on me, and in fact my slave."

"You don't consider," I tried to object, "that as man of honor it is impossible for me—"

"I have indeed considered it," she replied almost with a tone of command. "As a man of honor you must keep your oath and redeem your promise to follow me as slave whithersoever I demand and to obey whatever I command. Now leave me, Gregor!"

I turned toward the door.

"Not yet—you may first kiss my hand." She held it out to me with a certain proud indifference, and I the dilettante, the donkey, the miserable slave pressed it with intense tenderness against my lips which were dry and hot with excitement.

There was another gracious nod of the head.

Then I was dismissed.

Though it was late in the evening my light was still lit, and a fire was burning in the large green stove. There were still many things among my letters and documents to be put in order. Autumn, as is usually the case with us, had fallen with all its power.

Suddenly she knocked at my window with the handle of her whip.

I opened and saw her standing outside in her ermine-lined jacket and in a high round Cossack cap of ermine of the kind which the great Catherine favored.

"Are you ready, Gregor?" she asked darkly.

"Not yet, mistress," I replied.

"I like that word," she said then, "you are always to call me mistress, do you understand? We leave here to-morrow morning at nine o'clock. As far as the district capital you will be my companion and friend, but from the moment that we enter the railway-coach you are my slave, my servant. Now close the window, and open the door."

After I had done as she had demanded, and after she had entered, she asked, contracting her brows ironically, "well, how do you like me."

"Wanda, you—"

"Who gave you permission?" She gave me a blow with the whip.

"You are very beautiful, mistress."

Wanda smiled and sat down in the arm-chair. "Kneel down—here beside my chair."

I obeyed.

"Kiss my hand."

I seized her small cold hand and kissed it.

"And the mouth—"

In a surge of passion I threw my arms around the beautiful cruel woman, and covered her face, arms, and breast with glowing kisses. She returned them with equal fervor—the eyelids closed as in a dream. It was after midnight when she left.

At nine o'clock sharp in the morning everything was ready for departure, as she had ordered. We left the little Carpathian health- resort in a comfortable light carriage. The most interesting drama of my life had reached a point of development whose denouement it was then impossible to foretell.

So far everything went well. I sat beside Wanda, and she chatted very graciously and intelligently with me, as with a good friend, concerning Italy, Pisemski's new novel, and Wagner's music. She wore a sort of Amazonesque travelling-dress of black cloth with a short jacket of the same material, set with dark fur. It fitted closely and showed her figure to best advantage. Over it she wore dark furs. Her hair wound into an antique knot, lay beneath a small dark fur-hat from which a black veil hung. Wanda was in very good humor; she fed me candies, played with my hair, loosened my neck cloth and made a pretty cockade of it; she covered my knees with her furs and stealthily pressed the fingers of my hand. When our Jewish driver persistently went on nodding to himself, she even gave me a kiss, and her cold lips had the fresh frosty fragrance of a young autumnal rose, which blossoms alone amid bare stalks and yellow leaves and upon whose calyx the first frost has hung tiny diamonds of ice.

We are at the district capital. We get out at the railway station. Wanda throws off her furs and places them over my arm, and goes to secure the tickets.

When she returns she has completely changed.

"Here is your ticket, Gregor," she says in a tone which supercilious ladies use to their servants.

"A third-class ticket," I reply with comic horror.

"Of course," she continues, "but now be careful. You won't get on until I am settled in my compartment and don't need you any longer. At each station you will hurry to my car and ask for my orders. Don't forget. And now give me my furs."

After I had helped her into them, humbly like a slave, she went to find an empty first-class coupe. I followed. Supporting herself on my shoulder, she got on and I wrapped her feet in bear-skins and placed them on the warming bottle.

Then she nodded to me, and dismissed me. I slowly ascended a third- class carriage, which was filled with abominable tobacco-smoke that seemed like the fogs of Acheron at the entrance to Hades. I now had the leisure to muse about the riddle of human existence, and about its greatest riddle of all—woman.

Whenever the train stops, I jump off, run to her carriage, and with drawn cap await her orders. She wants coffee and then a glass of water, at another time a bowl of warm water to wash her hands, and thus it goes on. She lets several men who have entered her compartment pay court to her. I am dying of jealousy and have to leap about like an antelope so as to secure what she wants quickly and not miss the train.

In this way the night passes. I haven't had time to eat a mouthful and I can't sleep, I have to breathe the same oniony air with Polish peasants, Jewish peddlers, and common soldiers.

When I mount the steps of her coupe, she is lying stretched out on cushions in her comfortable furs, covered up with the skins of animals. She is like an oriental despot, and the men sit like Indian deities, straight upright against the walls and scarcely dare to breathe.