Whirlpools

From Pani Otocka he went to Gronski, regarding him as the only person with whom he could speak frankly and whose mediation would be effective. And here disappointment awaited him. Gronski had suffered for several days with his eyes and was not allowed to read; this put him into a bad humor, and for this reason he received Ladislaus more indifferently than usual. Ladislaus became convinced that it was difficult to speak of the rupture not only with Pani Otocka and his mother, but even with a man and old friend who knew of his former relations with Hanka. A feeling of shame plainly choked the words in his throat, and he began to beat about the bush and palliate things, talk in empty phrases about a misunderstanding and the necessity of a friendly mediation, so that Gronski at last asked, with a shade of impatience:

"Tell me plainly about what you had a falling out, and then I can tell whether I will undertake to bring you together again."

And evidently he did not attach much importance to the matter for he waved his hand and said:

"It would be best if you made it up between yourselves."

"No," replied Ladislaus; "this is more serious than you think, and we ourselves cannot come to any agreement."

"Well, finally, what was it about?"

Shame, exertion, and constraint were depicted upon Ladislaus' face.

"In a moment of forgetfulness and ecstasy," he said, "I passed-that is-I wanted to pass-certain limits-"

And he stopped abruptly.

Gronski began to look at him with amazed eyes and asked:

"And she?"

"Why, if anything had happened there would not have been any rupture and I surely would not speak of it now. She ordered me to the door and not to show myself there any more."

"May God bless her," exclaimed Gronski.

Silence ensued. Gronski walked with big paces over the room repeating every little while, "It is unbelievable!" and again, "An unheard-of thing!" and in addition his face became more and more severe and cold.

After which he sat down and, looking at Ladislaus, began to speak deliberately:

"I have known many people even among our aristocracy, in whom beneath the veneer of society, beneath high descent and all the pretensions of elegant breeding were concealed the ordinary coarse, low, peasant instincts. If this observation can be applied to you as a comfort, accept it, for I have no other for you."

A sudden wave of anger swept over Ladislaus' heart and brain. For a while he struggled with himself in order not to explode and answer insult with insult; in the end he subdued himself and replied in a hollow voice:

"I deserve it."

But Gronski, not disarmed by this confession, continued:

"No, my dear sir, I will not undertake your defence, for I should act contrary to my convictions. To you less than to any one else was it allowable to indulge yourself, even out of regard for the past. And your fiancée must have so understood it, and besides she did not forget her extraction. To you it was less permissible! She was a hundred times right in showing you the door. The matter is really more serious than I thought, and so serious that I do not see any help for it. You did not respect Hanka, your future wife, and therefore yourself and your own honor. In view of this how can she honor you and what can she think of you?"

"I know," said Ladislaus in the same hollow voice, "and I have said all this to myself in almost the same words. I wrote a letter to her this morning, begging for forgiveness-there was no answer. I went to her personally-I was not received. So I came to you as the last refuge-for-for me there pleads only one thing-I acted badly, brutally, and scurvily, but I have not ceased to love her. There is no life for me without her, and though you may not believe it, nevertheless it is so that under the frenzy which possessed me, under that froth which blinded me and under which I to-day sink, lies the feeling not only deep but pure-"

Gronski again began to measure with great steps the room for he was somewhat touched by Ladislaus' words.

While the latter continued:

"If she will not read my letters and will not receive me, then I will not be able to tell her that. Hence it is imperative that some one should speak to her in my name. I cannot apply either to Mother or Pani Zosia in this. I thought that you, sir-but since you decline, I now have no one."

"Look, however, into the eyes of reality," said Gronski more gently, "for it may be that her love for you was at once torn into shreds. In such case from where will she take it when she no longer possesses it?"

"Let her tell me so; that at least is yet due to me."

Again silence fell.

"Listen," Gronski finally said, "I always was a friend of yours and of your mother, but this mission which you want to intrust to me I cannot undertake. I cannot among other reasons, because if your fiancée does not reply to you, so likewise she may not reply to me. One look, one word, will close my mouth and with this it would end. But try another method. Panna Hanka comes quite often with Marynia to the rehearsals, at which I am always present, and afterwards I escort both home. Come with me. You may find an opportunity to speak with her. During the return home I will take Marynia and you will remain with her. I think that she will not repel you even though out of regard for Marynia, to whom she would not wish to divulge what had passed between you. – Then tell her what you have said to me and also beg her for an interview, which, if it cannot be otherwise-will be final. It will be necessary somehow to give to the world some plausible excuse for your rupture; so I presume she will agree to that. If not, we will think of something else."

Ladislaus began to wring his hands and said:

"Perhaps through Zosia we could ascertain whether this is forever."

"You understand that she may not have wished to discuss the cause of your rupture even with Pani Zosia."

"I understand, I understand."

"But you now have a fever," said Gronski, "your hands are burning. Go, try to cool off and calm yourself."

XII

Laskowicz now beheld Marynia, indeed from a distance, but daily. Even on rainy days, when she did not walk to the rehearsals, but rode, he lay in wait on the stairway of the edifice, in order to see her alight from the carriage. On fair days he usually waited near her home, and afterwards followed after her to the hall. As among the employees in the building were found a few "associates," these facilitated his admittance to the rehearsals. To hide in the boxes or in the seats at the end of the rows was easy, as during the rehearsals only the stage was fully lit up and in the auditorium itself the dusk was illumined by only a few lamps, which were lit in order that the handful of privileged lovers of music, who occupied the seats behind the orchestra, might not be plunged in complete darkness. Amidst these privileged ones, Laskowicz often recognized acquaintances, – Gronski, Pani Otocka, the old notary. Miss Anney, sometimes Krzycki, and two or three times, Dr. Szremski. But notwithstanding his hatred of Ladislaus and dislike of the doctor and Gronski, he was little occupied by them and thought of them very little, as his eyes could not even for a moment be torn from Marynia. He encompassed with his gaze her girlish form, standing out on the edge of the stage, bathed in a lustre of electricity, luminous of her own accord, and involuntarily she reminded him of that alabaster statuette, which the venerable canon deemed his greatest treasure. Laskowicz was not an educated man. His one-sided study of physics had contracted his intellectual horizon and he was incapable of rendering to himself a clear account of certain impressions. Nevertheless, when he gazed on that maid, with violin in hand, on her pure calm countenance, on the elongated outlines of her figure and dress, there awakened in him a half conscious feeling that in her there was something of poetry, and something of the church. She seemed to him an artless supernal vision, to which one might pray.

Accordingly he deified her in his wild, fanatical soul. But there raged within him a revolt against all divinities, therefore he fought with his own feelings and struggled to depress and weed them out to the last extremity. Intentionally he plucked off the wings of his own thoughts: intentionally he imposed fetters upon his vagaries and unchained his concupiscence. He discomfited himself, tortured himself, and suffered.

Often he stood on the brink of madness-and in such cases he was ready to annihilate, slaughter, and set fire to the whole city in order to seize, amidst the bloodshed and conflagration, this silvery maid and possess her, – and afterward perish with her and all others. He imagined that during the revolutionary storm, which the waves of the proletariat would stir up, such an universal hour of annihilation might strike. But when reality scattered these dreams, when moments occurred in which it became plain that the people themselves put a muzzle upon the jaws of the revolutionary dragon, then the gory vision evaporated into vacuous smoke, and only exhaustion and confusion remained, for this gloomy proletaire felt that as long as he had strength the storm would rage, and that when it passed away he would sink into complete nothingness.

Hence, in his heart bitterness and jealousy accumulated more and more. He loved Marynia and at the same time he hated her, for he thought that she looked upon him as a worm which squirms at her feet, unworthy of a glance. He was confirmed in this conviction by the fact that his letters evidently did not make the slightest impression upon her and did not disturb her usual tranquillity. Laskowicz had given his word to Pauly that he would see Marynia only from a distance, and he could not approach her, because she was never out alone. But in reality he could not conjecture that those letters were received and burnt by Pani Otocka and that Marynia knew nothing about them. It appeared to him that his passionate appeals in which the words, "Beloved! beloved!" were repeated every little while, and those fiery outbursts in which he prostrated himself in humility at her adored feet must have represented him to her as the ruling king-soul shoving the human wave into the unknown future, and ought to have evoked some result. "Let it be anger, let it be hatred," he said to himself in his soul, "but here there is nothing! She passes by me as if I was a street cur; she does not see me; she does not deign to recognize me."

In fact it was so. In the moments when they passed each other on the street, Marynia did not and could not recognize Laskowicz, for after his departure from Jastrzeb he allowed his youthful beard to grow, and afterwards, Swidwicki, in order to disguise him in the eyes of the police, bleached his beard, together with his mustache and the hair on his head, a light yellow. His clothes and spectacles also changed his appearance but he forgot about that, and he fretted with the supposition that her eyes do not see him or do not recognize him, firstly, because a recollection of him never comes to her mind, and again because she belongs to some kind of social Olympus and he to the "proletarian garbage-box."

Under such impressions his anguish changed into fury. With savage satisfaction, he thought of this: that there might come a time when the fate of this "sacred doll" and all her kin would be in his hands. He persuaded himself that that moment would be a triumph for himself personally and for the "good cause," and therefore he rejoiced at this conjunction. He pictured to himself what would happen when Marynia came to him to beg for a favor for herself and her relatives. Whether, at that time, he would prostrate himself on the ground before her and tell her to plant her foot on his head, or whether he would seize her in his arms and afterwards pass time away shamelessly-he did not know. He only had a feeling that he could do one or the other.

In the meantime he often said to himself that he ought not to see her any more, and decided to seek her no more, but on the following day he rushed to the place where he could meet her. He struggled with himself, he was torn inwardly, and became exhausted to such an extent that he began to fail in health. Want of such air as he breathed in Jastrzeb, the necessity of hiding from the police, uneasiness, lack of sleep, sudden and painful spiritual changes sapped his strength. He became haggard, swarthy, and at times he thought that death threatened not on the gallows but in a hospital.

In such a disposition was he found by Pauly, who after her scene with Hanka, dashed like a whirlwind into his little garret room.

Her face was so changed, so pale, so sickly and malignant, and her eyes glittered so feverishly that at the first glance he knew that she was driven to him by some extraordinary accident and he asked:

"What has happened?"

"I am no longer with that low peasant."

And she remained silent for she could not catch her breath, and only her face was twitching nervously.

Laskowicz understood only that she had abandoned her employment and looked at her with a questioning gaze, awaiting further explanations.

"Then, sir, you do not know," she broke out after a while, "then you do not know that he is to marry her? And that she is no Englishwoman, but only a low peasant! And such a one I served! He is to marry her-a low peasant! – a low peasant! – he!"

And her voice changed into a shrill nervous hiccough. Laskowicz was frightened at her transports, but at the same time breathed easily. Howsoever he might long since have conjectured that Krzycki's affections were directed towards Miss Anney and not towards Marynia, he was nevertheless pleased in his soul that reality corroborated those conjectures.

Living, however, in a world which no echoes of the higher social sphere reach, and knowing nothing of the transformation of Miss Anney into a Polish peasant woman, he began to interrogate Pauly minutely because the affair aroused his curiosity; he wished also to give time to the excited girl to calm herself. But this last was not an easy matter, and he long had to put questions to her to elicit the news which Swidwicki had first told her that Miss Anney was a simple peasant woman, but which, however, she did not at first believe, as he said it while under the influence of intoxicants. Only from the conversations which she overheard did she become convinced not only of the truth of the statement but also that Krzycki was to wed Miss Anney. Afterwards she peeped through the keyhole and saw him kneel before her and kiss her hands. Then she could not restrain herself any longer and at the first opportunity flung at the feet of her mistress her "linen frock," and, reviling her as a base peasant, left her service.