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Whose Fault?
by
JADWIGA. It seemed to me that you ought to know. Pray believe that I would not be as frank with any one else as I am with you. And then, I do not complain. I try to surround myself with youths who pretend they are in love with me. There is not a penny-worth of truth in all of it–they all lie, but the form of the lie is beautiful because they are all well-bred people. The Count Skorzewski visits me also–you must have heard of him, I am sure. I recommend him to you as a model for Adonis. Ha! ha! You do not recognize the wild-flower of Kalinowice?
LEON.No, I do not recognize it.
JADWIGA. No! But the life flower.
LEON.As a joke–
JADWIGA. At which one cannot laugh always. If our century was not sceptical I should think myself wild, romantic, trying to drown despair. But the romantic times have passed away, therefore, frankly speaking, I only try to fill up a great nothing. I also spin out my ball, although not always with pleasure. Sometimes I seem to myself so miserable and my life so empty that I rush to my prayer-desk, left by my mother. I weep, I pray–and then I laugh again at my prayers and tears. And so it goes on–round and round. Do you know that they gossip about me?
LEON.I do not listen to the gossip.
JADWIGA. How good you are! I will tell you then why they gossip. A missionary asked a negro what, according to his ideas, constituted evil? The negro thought a while, and then said: “Evil is if some one were to steal my wife.” “And what is good?” asked the missionary. “Good is when I steal from some one else.” My husband’s friends are of the negro’s opinion. Every one of them would like to do a good deed and steal some one’s wife.
LEON.It depends on the wife.
JADWIGA. Yes, but every word and every look is a bait. If the fish passes the bait, the fisherman’s self-love is wounded. That is why they slander me (after a while). You great people–you are filled with simplicity. Then you think it depends on the wife?
LEON.Yes, it does.
JADWIGA. Morbleu! as my husband says, and if the wife is weary?
LEON.I bid you good-bye.
JADWIGA. Why? Does what I say offend you?
LEON.It does more than offend me. It hurts me. Maybe it will seem strange to you, but here in my breast I am carrying some flowers–although they are withered–dead for a long time. But they are dear to me and just now you are trampling on them.
JADWIGA(with an outburst).–Oh, if those flowers had not died!
LEON.They are in my heart–and there is a tomb. Let us leave the past alone.
JADWIGA. Yes, you are right. Leave it alone. What is dead cannot be resuscitated. I wish to speak calmly. Look at my situation. What defends me–what helps me–what protects me? I am a young woman, and it seems not ugly, and therefore no one approaches me with an honest, simple heart, but with a trap in eyes and mouth. What opposition have I to make? Weariness? Grief? Emptiness? In life even a man must lean on something, and I, a feeble woman, I am like a boat without a helm, without oar and without light toward which to sail. And the heart longs for happiness. You must understand that a woman must be loved and must love some one in the world, and if she lacks true love she seizes the first pretext of it–the first shadow.