The Enemies of Women Part 57

"She asked me to see you, Prince; that is her last wish as she leaves the world. She begs you to forget her, never to seek her out, and above all to forgive her for the harm she has done you involuntarily.

Forgiveness is what she most ardently yearns for. When I tell her that you don't hate her, it will restore the serenity she needs for her new life."

Michael had been absorbed in deep thought. Forgive her? Alicia had not done him any harm. From himself, from his own desires and disillusionments, his sufferings had come. If he had remained faithful to the principles he had announced some months before when he hated women, he would not have suffered the slightest change in the sensible life he had been leading. Besides, where was she? Could he not see her?

This flood of questions was interrupted by Lady Lewis. She continued to smile sweetly, but her voice revealed the firmness of an unalterable will.

"The d.u.c.h.ess is no longer living in Monte Carlo; I have arranged everything in regard to her trip. I am the only one who knows where she is, and I shall never tell. Do not look for her; let her go away in peace in her quest for truth; think of her as dead ... as others have died, as thousands of beings are dying and will continue to die in this period of ours, with each day's sun. Forgive and forget. Poor woman! She is so unhappy."

Lubimoff understood how futile all his questions would be. His curiosity, no matter how strong and subtle, would fail in contact with that impenetrable reserve. Alicia had disappeared forever ... forever!

He now felt sadder and lonelier than ever before. As he sat there beside this Amazon of human sorrow, he had a feeling of confidence similar to that which the d.u.c.h.ess must have felt during those last few days. It was a desire to make a confession to her, an instinctive impulse to bare his soul, as though from that woman who brought to death beds the light-hearted merriment of a bird, might come the supreme counsel of wisdom.

The Prince nodded his head, murmuring his a.s.sent: "Yes, I forgive her."

He did not wish the other woman to bear the slightest burden of grief on his account. He would shoulder all that, himself. But immediately afterward he could not resist the impulse of that anguish to express itself. He was himself astonished at the words which, overriding all restraint, escaped from his lips.

"I, too, Lady Lewis, am very unhappy."

The nurse did not show any surprise at such a burst of confidence. She simply continued to smile, and said laconically:

"I know."

Her smile was changing to a look of sweet pity, of beneficent compa.s.sion, as though the Prince were a child in need of her advice.

She had guessed his unhappiness long before the d.u.c.h.ess had talked to her in the hours of despairing confession. He believed he was unhappy through being crossed in love; but actually, this sorrow was only the outer sh.e.l.l of another which was deeper and more real, and which depended on himself alone.

He had tried to live apart from his fellow-beings, ignoring their troubles, selfishly withdrawing into a sh.e.l.l. He had wished, by loitering on the margin of humanity which was suffering the greatest crisis in all its history, to prolong the pleasures of peace into a time of war. One could understand such aloofness in a coward, dominated by the instinct of self-preservation; but _he_ was a brave man. One could tolerate it in a man who was burdened with children, who constantly felt the imperious duty of supporting them, and was afraid on that account; but he was alone in the world.

"We are all unhappy, Prince. Who doesn't know grief and death these days?"

And she talked in monotonous tones of her own misfortune, as though she were reciting a prayer. Her smile, the smile that animated the anaemic homeliness of her features with a vaporous light of dawn, gradually faded.

Six of her brothers had been killed in one afternoon. They belonged to the same battalion and she had received the news of the six deaths at the same time. Thirty-two of her relatives were now beneath the ground and very few of them had been soldiers in the beginning. Before the war they had lived lives of pleasure. They enjoyed great wealth and t.i.tles: Life had been as sweet to them as to Prince Lubimoff.... But when they heard the call of duty!... "No one chooses the spot where he is born; no one can decide which his country shall be and what his lineage. We come into the world according to the whims of chance, in the upper or the lower stories of society, and we mold our lives according to the place designated by fate. Neither can any one choose the times he will live in. Happy they who are born in peace times, when humanity is wrapped in calm, and its prehistoric savagery is slumbering within the sh.e.l.l formed by civilization; happy also they who are born into a powerful family and find themselves exempted from the struggle of life."

"But when we are born into a period of madness," she continued, "we have to resign ourselves and adapt ourselves to it, without seeking to avoid the painful burden that falls on our shoulders. It is our duty to suffer so that others later on may be happy as our forefathers suffered for our sakes."

What grief she had felt on receiving at a single stroke the news of the death of all her brothers! She did not consider herself an extraordinary being; she was simply a woman like any other. She had wept. She had abandoned herself to her despair. Then, an idea kept drifting through her mind joyously refreshing her drooping spirits. Supposing men were immortal in this life! Then despair would be horrible indeed. If you considered that the dead might have saved their lives by keeping far from every danger! But no one was immortal.

"Whether you die from a bullet wound or from microbes, makes little difference. Only the external circ.u.mstances vary, and for many people there is a greater fascination in returning to dust in a lightning-like manner in the full intoxication of battle, with a generous idea in one's mind, than in slowly fading away in confinement between two sheets, defiled and degraded by the filth of a material nature beginning to disintegrate.

"It is a sort of holy fear necessary, for that matter, to the preservation of human life, and it troubles people and makes them hide from themselves the terrible truth that waits at the end of every life.

Sensible people consider it madness to go out in quest of death. It is all very well if death is something motionless which sets hands only on those who draw near it of their own accord. But if man does not go forward to meet death, death, with its hundred-league boots, runs in search of man. Who can guess the moment of the meeting? The best thing, then, is to scorn it; and not pay it the tribute of constant thought which engenders anxiety and fear.

"Besides, death in bed is an unfruitful and sterile death. To whom could it be of use, except one's heirs? The other kind of death, death for an idea, even for an erroneous idea, means something positive. It is an act of energy and faith and the aggregate of such acts makes up the n.o.blest history of humanity."

The Prince admired the simplicity with which this woman, who was almost in a dying condition, exalted the heroism of life and scorned death.

She had placed her ideal very high beyond the selfish desires which form the warp and woof of ordinary lives. If every one were to suit merely his own convenience, humanity as a whole would have no reason to consider itself superior to animals.

The n.o.blewoman possessed an ideal: to sacrifice herself for her fellow beings; to serve them even at the cost of her own life. She was almost glad of the war, which had helped her to find her true path. In peace times she would have done the same as every woman, linking her lot with that of a man, bearing children and building up a family.

"Amorous affection reduces the world to two beings; a mother's love finds nothing of interest beyond her own progeny. Only when old age is reached and the illusory perspectives of life have faded away, is the great truth apparent that people must be interested in every living being, ready to sacrifice themselves for every living being. But the exalted sympathy of old age is unfruitful and brief."

Mary Lewis considered herself fortunate in having rushed forward in the right direction from the first moment, without the long evasions of other people, who are late in reaching the truth.

"I have had my romance, like every one else."

She said this simply, but at the same time what blood was left in her veins animated her features with a faint blush, as though she were confessing something extraordinary.

She had been loved by a scholarly man, a former secretary of her father, the Colonial Governor. Only once had they confessed their love.

Afterwards their life continued as before, both of them keeping the secret, postponing the realization of their dreams to an indefinite future.... But the war came.

He had hastened, among the first, to enlist as a volunteer: "Mary, I am a soldier." And Mary had replied: "That is right." They wrote short letters to each other at long intervals. They had more important things to do. He did not have the handsome features and the strength of a hero, like Lady Lewis' brothers. He even suspected that his bearing was scarcely military because of the ungainliness that comes from a sedentary life, spent in bending over a writing table. But he did his duty, and more than once he had been cited for his cool audacity.

Their desires would now never be fulfilled. Even though she might succeed in surviving the war, she would continue her present existence in civilian hospitals, in far-off countries scourged by plagues. He perhaps would marry another, or perhaps would remain faithful to her memory, devoting himself for his part to relieving the pain and sorrows of his fellow beings. But they would live apart, going where duty called them, thinking constantly of each other, but without meeting, like the cultivated monks and pa.s.sionate nuns of other centuries, who filled their lives with spiritual friendships maintained in widely separated monasteries and convents.

Once more Michael admired her abnegation. Lady Lewis belonged to that small group of the elect, who do not know what selfishness is and long to sacrifice themselves for what is good. She was one of that immortal line of saintly women who existed before the birth of religion and who will continue to flourish just the same when skepticism has finally ruined all our present beliefs.

"You are an angel," said the Prince.

"No," she protested; "I am a lover, a great lover."

Lubimoff smiled with a certain air of pity.

"You a lover?"

She went on talking as though her listener's surprise annoyed her. What was other women's love compared to hers? They fixed their tenderness, their desire for self-sacrifice, on one man only. Beyond him they found nothing worthy of interest. She loved all men, all of them, even the soldiers of the enemy whom she had often cared for in the ambulances at the front. They were mistaken, and if they really were guilty souls and wished to continue being so, all she could see in them was their physical condition as, threatened by death, they lay stretched out on their beds, with their flesh mangled. They were simply unfortunate beings, and this was enough to make her forget their nationality.

She wanted her own side to triumph because the other represented the exaltation of brute strength, the glorification of war, and it was her desire that there should be no more wars. She longed for the time when love would rule the whole world!... It was bad enough that men could not suppress with like facility, poverty, pain and death, the black divinities which seize us at our birth and with whom we struggle up to the last moment.

"I love everything that is alive: People, animals, and flowers. Beside such love, what is the affection between a man and a woman, which people consider the only love and is simply the selfishness of two beings setting themselves apart from their fellow beings, and living only for themselves? My love is likewise a kind of selfishness. I realize it; perhaps it is something worse: pride. If you only knew how gay I feel when I have saved from death one of my 'flirts,' one of those poor wounded men whom I shall never see again!... No, don't admire me, Prince, and don't feel sorry for me. I am merely a poor woman! by no means an angel! Moreover, I am very bad; I have my repentances, like every one else."

"You, Lady Mary!" the Prince exclaimed again with a look of incredulity.

That he should have no doubts about it she hastened to relate the great sin of her life. Traveling through Andalusia she had seen some boys on a river bank who were trying to drown a stray dog, throwing stones at it.

Mary fell upon them, mad with rage, striking them with her parasol. One of the little fellows wept, and blood spurted from his nostrils. This unhappy memory had often troubled her in the night. Now she could not see a child without caressing it with all the ardor occasioned by remorse.

Also she had had quarrels in various countries with drivers who were whipping their work animals and with hotel keepers who would not allow her to keep in her room lost dogs and cats she found in the streets.

Before the war, her pity had been entirely for animals. Humanity was able to defend itself. But now, the butchery of beings in uniforms had turned her sweet tenderness toward mankind. They needed love and protection more than the poor brutes.

The mention of her "flirts" suddenly brought her back to her duty. At that very moment they were tossing, covered with bandages, in their beds, and anxiously calling for her presence. Or else they were sitting on a bench with motionless eyes turned toward the sun, refusing to take a walk until they could feel the gentle support of her arm. "Good-by, Prince!" She must go! Her lovers were waiting for her.

As she stood up, she thought again of the reason for her visit and spoke once more in the tone that revealed the firmness of her will.

It was useless for him to seek the d.u.c.h.ess. The poor woman after entering so many blind alleys in her life, had finally found the true path, the one she herself, more fortunate, had discovered while still in her youth. The Virgin Dolorosa spoke in a simple, natural way of Alicia's past. She knew it all. In the silence of Villa Rosa, the other woman had confessed it in despair, without the nurse feeling either scandalized or amazed. What did the moral capacity of a mere individual mean, when at every moment the world was beholding the most unheard of crimes.

"She left this morning and is a long way off--a long way!" said the gentle woman. "It is possible that you will never see each other again.

I will write her that you forgive her. That will afford her the peace of mind she needs in her new life."