ChapterV
On a certain Saturday night in August the engineering workshop was in a ferment of rush and work.
It was a large building covered with glass like a hothouse; along one wall was the power-engine, along the other two forges. There was also a small hammer worked by a hand-wheel, several vices, a lathe, drilling machinery and a number of hand tools. Midnight was approaching, the lights had long been put out in all the otherparts of the mill; the tired weavers were asleep in their homes.
But here the great rush goes on. The hurried breath of the engine, the throb of the pumps, the din of the hammer, the rattle of the lathe, the grating of the files increase more and more. The air is soaked with steam, coal-dust and fine iron filings; the flames of the gas-lamps flicker through the heavy atmosphere like will-o'-the-wisps. Outside there is the stillness of night as a background to the mill; the moon peeps in through the glass which quivers incessantly from the noise.
There is hardly any talking in the room; the work is urgent, the hour late, so the men hurry on in silence. Here a group of grimy blacksmiths are dragging a huge white-hot iron bar to be hammered; there a row of them bend and raise themselves as under a command over their vices. Opposite them the turners bend to watch the revolving work in the machines. Sparks fly from under the hammer. From time to time an order or a curse is heard. Sometimes the hammering and filing slackens down, and then the mournful groan of the bellows blowing on to the furnaces begins.
Gosławski is at the lathe, turning a large steel cylinder; the work must be done exactly to the thousandth of an inch! But somehow Gosławski is off his work. There had been so much to do that day that he had not been able to leave theworkshop during the evening recess; he is even more than usually tired therefore. A light fever torments him, streams of perspiration flow down his body, at moments he has hallucinations, and then he imagines that he is somewhere else, far away. But he quickly rouses himself, rubs his eyes with his grimy hands to shake off the lassitude, and looks anxiously to see whether the cutting tool has not taken away too much of the cylinder.
"I am dead-beat," said his neighbour to him.
"So am I," replied Gosławski, sitting down on a stool.
"It's the heat," said the other. "The engine is red-hot, the blacksmiths are working with both forges; besides, it is getting late. Take a pinch of snuff."
"No, thank you," replied Gosławski, "I should like a pipe, but not snuff. I would rather have a drink of water."
He stepped away and dipped a rusty mug into a barrel of water. But the water was warm, and instead of being refreshed, Gosławski felt the perspiration breaking out still more. He was losing his strength.
"What's the time?" he asked his neighbour.
"A quarter to twelve. Will you finish work to-day?"
"Yes, I think so. I must still take a hair's-breadth off the cylinder; but, damn it! I see everything double."
"It's the heat—the heat!" repeated the neighbour, taking another pinch of snuff and moving away.
Gosławski measured the diameter of the cylinder, moved the cutting tool, clamped it with the screws, and once more set the machine in motion. After the momentary strain of attention there followed a reaction in him, and he began to doze standing, his eyes fixed on the shining surface of the cylinder, on which drops of water were falling.
"Did you speak?" he suddenly asked his neighbour.
But the man, bending over his work, did not hear the question.
At that moment Gosławski fancied that he was at home: his wife and children are asleep; the lamp, turned low, is burning on the chest of drawers; his bed is ready for him.... Yes, here is the table, there is the chair! Worn out with fatigue, he wants to sit down on the chair; he leans his heavy arm on the edge of the table....
The lathe made a strange noise. Something cracked in it and began to go to pieces, and a dreadful human shriek resounded through the workroom....
Gosławski's right hand had been caught between the cogwheels; in the twinkling of an eye he was hung up as though welded to the machinery, which had got hold first of the fingers, then of the hand, then of the bone up to the elbow: theblood gushed out. The wretched man saw what had happened and tore himself away; the crushed and broken bones and torn muscles were not able to bear the load, they broke, and Gosławski fell heavily to the floor.
All this happened within a few seconds.
"Stop the engine!" shouted Gosławski's neighbour.
The engine was stopped, and all the men left their work and came running up to the wounded man. Someone poured a can of water over him; one young man had a fit when he saw the blood; others ran out of the workshop without knowing why.
"Fetch the doctor!" Gosławski cried in a changed voice.
"A horse ... hurry up! ... run to the town!" shouted the workmen, as if they were out of their senses.
"Oh, the blood, the blood!" groaned the wounded man.
The bystanders did not know what he meant.
"For God's sake, stop the blood! Tie up my arm!"
Nobody moved; they did not know how to stop the blood, and were paralyzed with fright.
"What a place this is!" cried the man who had been working next to Gosławski—"no doctor, no bone-setter!... Where is Schmidt? Run for Schmidt!"
Some ran for Schmidt. Meanwhile one of the old blacksmiths showed more presence of mind than the others, knelt down, and compressed the arm above the elbow with his hands. The blood began to flow more slowly. It was a terrible injury; part of the arm and two fingers were left, the rest had been torn away. At last, after a quarter of an hour, Schmidt, who took the doctor's place in the factory, appeared. He was just as terrified as the rest, and bandaged the wounded arm with rags, which instantly became soaked with blood. He ordered the men to carry Gosławski home. They laid him on some boards; two men carried him, two supported his head, the rest crowded round, and they all moved away in a body.
There was no one in the offices, and no light showed in Adler's house. The dogs, scenting blood, began to howl; the night watchman took off his cap and looked with pale face after the procession moving along the highroad, which was flooded by the moonlight.
A factory hand appeared at an open window in his shirt-sleeves, and called out:
"Hallo! What's the matter?"
"Gosławski has had his hand torn off!"
The wounded man uttered low groans. Suddenly the clatter of hoofs was heard, and a carriage with a pair of greys and a coachman in livery appeared on the highroad. Ferdinand, who wasreturning from a drinking bout, was lolling inside.
"Out of the way!" shouted the coachman.
"Out of the way yourself! We are carrying a wounded man!"
The procession drew near to the carriage. Ferdinand Adler roused himself, looked out of the carriage, and asked:
"What's the matter there?"
"Gosławski has had his hand torn off."
"Gosławski? Is that the fellow who has the pretty wife?" said Ferdinand.
There was a momentary silence. Then somebody murmured:
"How sharp he is!"
Ferdinand regained his senses, and asked, changing his voice:
"Has the doctor dressed his wounds?"
"There is no doctor in the factory."
"Ah, true.... Has the bone-setter seen to it?"
"There is no bone-setter either, now."
"Very well then: horses must be sent to fetch the doctor from the town."
"Perhaps, sir, you would order your coachman to turn round?" one of the men suggested.
"My horses are tired," said Ferdinand; "I will send others." And the carriage moved on.
"What a fellow!" said the workmen; "we can wear ourselves out, and he does not think of giving us rest; but his horses must be rested!"
"Oh, well ... you have got to pay for horses, and workpeople can be had for nothing," another replied.
The crowd was approaching Gosławski's cottage. A lamp was burning in the window. One of the workmen gently knocked at the door.
"Who is there?"
"Open the door, Pani Gosławska!"
In a moment a woman appeared half dressed in the doorway.
"What is it?" she asked, looking terrified at the crowd.
"Your husband has had a slight accident, so we brought him home."
"Jesus!" she cried, and ran up to the stretcher. "Oh, Kazio, what has happened to you?"
"Don't wake the children," whispered her husband.
"What a lot of blood—Mother of Mercy!"
"Be quiet!" murmured the wounded man. "My hand has been torn off, but that is nothing; send for the doctor."
The woman trembled and began to sob. Two workmen took her by the arms and led her into the room; others carried the wounded man inside. His face was distorted with pain, and he bit his lips to suppress the groans that might have waked the children.
In the morning Adler was informed of the accident. He listened in silence, and asked:
"Has the doctor been?"
"We sent for the doctor and for the bone-setter, but they were both out, attending to other patients."
"Fetch another doctor. Telegraph to Warsaw for a locksmith in Gosławski's place."
About ten o'clock Adler went to the workshop to have a look at the damaged lathe. Near the machine he stepped by accident into a pool of blood and shuddered, but soon recovered himself. He carefully examined the cogwheel, to which bits of flesh and of the torn shirt still adhered. There were a few notches in the wheel.
"Have we got another wheel like that?" he asked the head-mechanic.
"Yes," whispered the pale German, who was sick at the sight of the blood.
"Has the doctor come?"
"Not yet."
Adler whistled through his teeth with impatience. The absence of the doctor made a very unpleasant impression on him. At last, about noon, he was informed that the doctor had arrived. The old man quickly left the house. In passing the room where Ferdinand was still sleeping off the effects of his drinking bout, he beat a tattoo on the door with his stick, but got no answer. There was a large crowd outside Gosławski's cottage, for hardly anyone had gone to church. They all wanted to know the detailsof Gosławski's accident. A neighbour had taken his wife and children to her house.
All conversation was stopped when the crowd caught sight of Adler. Only the most timid took off their caps, the others turned their heads away, and the boldest looked at him without raising their hands to their caps.
The mill-owner was struck. "What do they want of me?" he thought.
He spoke to one of the workmen, a German, and asked how the sick man was.
"They can't tell," the man answered sullenly. "They say his whole arm had to be taken off."
Adler sent someone to ask the doctor to come out to him.
"Well, how is he?" inquired the mill-owner.
"Dying," answered the doctor.
Adler was staggered, and exclaimed, raising his voice:
"What nonsense! People sometimes lose both hands or both legs and don't die of it."
"The dressing was bad; there had been enormous loss of blood. Besides, the man had been overworked."
This answer soon made the round of the crowd, and a murmur arose.
"I will pay you well if you will look carefully after him. It cannot be true that people die from such an injury as that."
At this moment the sick man cried out; thedoctor ran back into the house, and the mill-owner turned to go home.
"If there had been a doctor at the factory this would not have happened!" someone in the crowd called out.
"We shall all come to this if they go on keeping us at work till midnight," cried another.
Curses and threats were uttered here and there. But the old giant held his head erect, put his hands in his pockets, and passed through the thickest crowd. Only he half closed his eyes and was pale down to his neck. He did not seem to hear what those on the edge of the crowd were saying, and those near him gave way, guessing instinctively that this man was afraid neither of curses nor even of an open attack.
Towards evening Gosławski, whom the doctor had not left for a moment, called for his wife. She came in on tiptoe, staggering and keeping back the tears that dimmed her eyes. The wounded man looked strangely haggard, and his eyes were fixed. In the dusk his face seemed to have the colour of earth.
"Where are you, Magdzia?" he asked indistinctly, and then said, with long pauses: "Nothing will come of our workshop now ... I have no arm ... I am going to follow after it ... why should I eat my bread for nothing?"
His wife began to sob.
"Are you there, Magdzia?... Rememberthe children. The money for my funeral is in the drawer—you know.... What a lot of flies there are ... such a buzzing...."
He began to toss about restlessly, and breathed heavily, like a man going off into a deep sleep. The doctor made a sign, and somebody took the wife away almost by force and led her into the friendly neighbour's cottage. In a few minutes the doctor followed her there; the poor woman looked into his eyes and knelt down on the floor weeping bitterly.
"Oh, sir, why have you left him? Is he so ill? Perhaps——"
"The Lord will comfort you," said the doctor.
The women crowded round to try and quiet her.
"Don't cry, Pani Gosławska. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Get up and don't cry—the children will hear you!"
The widow was almost choked with sobs.
"Let me be on the floor; I feel better here," she whispered. "May the Lord give you all the good, since He has given me all the bad. I have lost my Kazio! Oh, my beloved! why did you work so hard and suffer so much? Only yesterday he said that we should be on our own in October, and now he has gone to his grave instead of to his workshop!"
When the workmen entered into the dead man's home and began to move the furniture about, and she realized that no noise would wakeher husband again, she gave a terrible shriek and fainted.
Gosławski's death subsequently became the cause of much disturbance at the factory and of much trouble to Adler. A deputation waited upon him on the Tuesday to ask permission for all the hands to go to the funeral. Adler was furious, and would only allow a few delegates from each room to go, announcing at the same time that every workman who should leave the factory of his own accord would be fined. In spite of this most of the hands left the mill, and Adler posted up a notice that every workman who had absented himself would have his daily pay halved and would be fined a rouble in addition. Whereupon the more spirited among the hands urged their mates to strike, and one of the stokers suggested the blowing up of the boiler. Adler would have taken no notice of such talk at another time, but now he was beside himself. He called their grumbling mutiny, demanded police from the town, drove the leaders out of the mill and brought an action against the stoker.
When the workpeople saw these drastic measures, they were cowed into submission. They ceased to threaten a strike, but asked for the reinstatement of all the hands, and that at least a bone-setter should be engaged with the money extorted by the fines.
To this Adler replied that he would do what he liked, when he liked, and refused to listen at all to the demand for reinstatement of those he had dismissed.
By the following Monday things had calmed down at the factory. Pastor Boehme came to see Adler, with the intention of inducing him to give way to some of the reasonable demands of the workpeople. But he encountered an unexpected resistance; the mill-owner declared that, if he had ever had intentions of giving way to his workpeople's demands, he no longer had any, that he would rather close the factory than give in.
"Do you know, Martin," he said, "that they have got us talked about in the newspapers? The comic papers have ridiculed Ferdinand, and it has been said that Gosławski died from overwork and because there was no doctor."
"There is some truth in that," answered Boehme.
"There is no truth whatsoever in it," shouted the mill-owner. "I have worked much harder than Gosławski, every German workman works harder; and as for the doctor, he might just as well have been absent from the factory to visit a patient, as he was from town at that particular moment."
"The bone-setter might have been there at any rate," observed the pastor.
Adler gave no answer. He walked up and down the room with long strides, breathing hard.
"Let us go into the garden," he proposed. "Johann, take a bottle of hock into the summer-house."
The pleasant coolness in the summer-house near the pond, the freshness of the wind rustling in the trees, and perhaps the glass of good wine, gradually soothed Adler. Pastor Boehme looked at him over the rim of his gold spectacles, and seeing him in a better mood, resolved to return to the attack.
"Well," he said, clinking his glass against Adler's, "a man who keeps such excellent wine as this cannot have a bad heart. Let them off their fines, Gottlieb, take them all on again, and install a doctor.... Your health!"
"I will drink your health, Martin, but I promise nothing of the sort," repeated the mill-owner, although his anger had somewhat cooled.
The pastor shook his head, and muttered:
"H'm! it's a pity you are so obstinate!"
"I cannot sacrifice my interest to sentiments. If I give them a thousand roubles to-day, they will want a million to-morrow."
"You exaggerate," said Boehme, annoyed; "my advice is that, if you can settle this business for ten thousand roubles, give fifteen thousand rather, and make an end of it."
"It is at an end already," said Adler. "Theworst of them are gone, and the rest know that there is discipline here. If I were as soft-hearted as you, they would trample me under foot."
The pastor said nothing, but began to throw things on to the surface of the pond—first a cork, then bits of wood broken off from a stick.
"My dear Martin, what are you throwing rubbish on the water for?" asked Adler.
The pastor pointed towards the pond, where the things he had thrown upon the water were making circles that grew larger and larger.
"Do you see how the waves are getting farther and farther away from the middle?" he asked.
"They are always doing that. What is there peculiar in it?"
"You are quite right," said the pastor; "it is always like that—everywhere, on the pond and in our lives. When something good happens in the world, waves are produced by it; they grow larger and larger and extend farther and farther."
"I don't understand you," said Adler indifferently, sipping his wine.
"I will explain it to you, if you will not be angry with me."
"I am never angry with you."
"Very well. You see, it is like this: you have brought your son up badly and have turned him loose upon the world, as I threw that stick into the water. He has incurred debts—that was thefirst wave. Then you reduced the workmen's pay—that was the second. Gosławski's death was the third; the troubles in the factory and the newspaper scandals were the fourth; and so on with the dismissal of the hands and the lawsuit. What will the tenth wave be?"
"That does not concern me," said Adler. "Let your waves go out into the world and frighten fools; I am not interested in them."
The pastor pointed to a cork he had just thrown on to the surface.
"Look, Gottlieb, sometimes it is the tenth wave which rebounds on the shore and returns to where it came from."
The old mill-owner reflected for a while on this demonstration, which was quite clear, and for a brief moment it seemed as if he were hesitating, as if an indefinable fear had sprung up in him. But it was only for a moment. Adler had too little imagination and reasoned too obstinately to foresee remote possibilities. He convinced himself that the pastor was talking drivel and preaching one of his sermons, so he laughed and replied in his thick voice:
"No, no, Martin; I have taken proper precautions to prevent your waves from returning to me."
"How can you tell?"
"The doctor will not come back, nor the leaders of the strike, nor the fines, nor even Gosławski!"
"But misfortune may return."
"No, no, no, it will not return! ... or if it does it will break against my fists, against the factory, the insurance, the police ... and above all against my money...."
It was late when the friends parted.
"What a fool Martin is!" thought Adler; "he means to frighten me."
The pastor, driving home in his little cart and looking upwards to the starlit sky, asked anxiously: "Which of the waves will return?" The comparison had come into his head unexpectedly, and he looked upon it as a sort of revelation. He believed firmly that the wave of wrong would turn; but when? ... which of them would it be?...
ChapterVI
Generally, good or bad actions only assume their proper significance in people's opinion when they are reported in print. It had been known for a long time that old Adler was an egoist and a sweater, and his son an egoist and a debauchee. But public opinion had not been raised against them before the articles on Gosławski's death had been published. After that the whole neighbourhood became interested in what was going on at the mill. Everybody knew the extent of Ferdinand's debts, the sums which old Adler sweated out of his workmen by reducing their pay, etc.Gosławski was considered to have been a victim of the father's greed and the son's debauchery.
Public opinion made itself felt in people's relations to Ferdinand. A few young men had cut him dead at the request of their parents; others preserved only the outward forms of politeness. Even from the friends that stuck to him, and these were not of the best sort, he often heard remarks which sounded like a provocation.
Nor was this all. In hotels and restaurants, wineshops and cafés, though they had made much money out of Ferdinand, newspapers containing correspondence about Gosławski's death were purposely put on his table; and when, surrounded by his friends, he once called for wine and wished to know if a good kind of red wine were to be had, he got the answer:
"Yes, sir, red as blood."
Another man might have been impressed by these manifestations of general ill-will, and might have gone away for a time, or even changed his mode of living and exercised some influence over his father. Not so Ferdinand. He had no desire to work and no intention of giving up his amusements. Public opinion not only did not distress him—he liked to provoke it. He judged people's standard by that of the companions of his revels, and felt sure that sooner or later everybody would crawl to him. The silent struggle between him and the public excited him pleasurably, andhe saw possibilities of future triumphs in it; for he was determined to quarrel with the first person who should get in his way. He felt in desperate need of a quarrel to revive his jaded nerves and to establish his reputation as a dangerous adversary. In his own way he delighted in breaking down obstacles, for he was his father's true son.
He had a great dislike to a certain Pan Zapora, a landowner and a judge. This man was of severe and unprepossessing appearance, of medium height, thick-set, and with overhanging brows. He talked little, but in a decided way, made no ceremonies with anybody, and called a spade a spade. But behind his rough exterior he possessed great intelligence and a wide knowledge, a noble heart and a loyal character. It was impossible to ingratiate oneself with him either by politeness, position, or the propounding of theories. With him only actions counted. He would listen indifferently to talk, looking sullenly at the speaker and taking his measure all the while. But if he found a man to be honest he would become his friend for good or ill. For people with bad character or no character at all he had a profound contempt.
Young Adler had met this formidable judge several times, but had never talked to him, as there had been no opportunity. Zapora neither sought nor avoided him; his friends knew, however, that when he spoke of "that fool," hemeant Ferdinand, and the more experienced felt sure that the two men would meet sooner or later in the narrow sphere of provincial life, and that Adler would then hear a few bitter home-truths. Ferdinand instinctively felt Zapora's dislike for him; more than that, he suspected him of being the author of the newspaper articles. He was in no hurry to make his acquaintance, but he had made up his mind to pay him out at the first opportunity that offered.
In the beginning of September the usual fair took place in the little town, and the noblemen from the surrounding districts were in the habit of meeting on this occasion. Zapora, who had an office in the town, settled some pressing affairs, purchased what he needed, and went to have dinner at the hotel at two o'clock in the afternoon.
He found a crowd of acquaintances in the dining-room; the tables were set in one long row and lavishly provided with bottles of wine, mostly champagne, and the preparations seemed to promise a drinking bout.
"What is this?" asked Zapora. "Is someone giving a dinner?"
Among the acquaintances who greeted him was a friend of young Adler's.
"Just fancy," he said. "Adler is paying for all the dinners to-day, and anyone who comes is invited. I hope you will not refuse us the pleasure of your company?"
Zapora looked at him from the corner of his eye.
"I do refuse," he replied.
The young man, who was not remarkable for excessive tact, asked:
"Why?"
"Because only old Adler would have the right to ask me to a dinner paid for with his money, and even if he did ask me I should refuse."
Another of Ferdinand's friends joined in the conversation.
"What do you have to throw in the Adlers' teeth?"
"Not much; only that the father is a sweater and the son a loafer, and that between the two they do more harm than good."
Public opinion seemed to be summed up in these words from a man of personal courage. Adler's friends were silent, the other guests embarrassed, and the more sensitive took their hats to leave the room. At that moment the door was flung wide open and Ferdinand hurried in, accompanied by one of his friends. He noticed the judge at once, and not knowing what had happened, asked his companion to introduce him.
"Right you are!" said the friend, advancing towards the judge.
"What a lucky chance!" he exclaimed. "Adler is just going to give a dinner here, and as you have fallen into the trap, we will not let you go. But you don't know one another?"
There was a general silence in the room during the introduction.
"Pan Adler—Pan Zapora."
Ferdinand held out his hand.
"I have long wished to make your acquaintance."
"Delighted," said Zapora, without moving.
Some of the guests smiled maliciously. Ferdinand grew pale; for a moment he was confused. But he pulled himself together at once and changed his tactics.
"I have wished to make your acquaintance," he continued, "in order to thank you for the correspondence about my father in the newspapers."
Zapora fixed him with a severe look.
"About your father?" he asked. "I have written only one letter about your father, and that was to the village mayor about the summons."
Adler was boiling with rage.
"It was myself, then, you wrote about in the comic papers?"
Zapora did not lose his calmness for an instant. He only gripped his stick tighter, and said:
"You are quite mistaken. I leave correspondence in the comic papers to young men of no occupation who wish to become notorious by any means at their disposal."
Adler lost his self-control.
"You are insulting me!" he shouted.
"On the contrary, I will not even retract my last statement in order not to offend you."
The excited young man was on the point of throwing himself upon Zapora.
"You shall give me satisfaction!" he panted.
"With pleasure."
"At once!"
"Well, I must have my dinner first; I am hungry," said Zapora coolly. "It does not take me more than an hour; after that I shall be at your disposal in my house."
And nodding to his acquaintances, he slowly left the room.
Ferdinand's banquet was not a success. Many of the guests left before dinner; others shammed gaiety. But Ferdinand himself was in excellent spirits. His first glass of wine soothed him; the second gave his excitement a pleasant flavour. He was delighted at the prospect of a duel, especially of a duel with Zapora, and he had not the slightest doubt of his success.
"I shall give him a lesson in shooting," he whispered to one of his seconds, "and that will be the end of it."
And he thought: "That will do more to put my position right than any amount of dinners."
The more experienced adventurers, of whom there was no lack in the room, had to admit, when they looked at him, that he had grit and pluck of a certain kind.
"Thank Heaven!" said one of them, "our newspapers will at last have something sensational to talk about."
"I am only sorry...." said another.
"For what?"
"Those bottles that we may see no more."
"Oh, I hope we shall give them decent burial."
"I hope we shan't have to do the same with one of the principals."
"I doubt it. What are the conditions?"
"Pistols, and to fight till blood flows."
"Damn it! Whose idea was that?"
"Adler's."
"Is he so sure of himself?"
"He is an excellent shot."
Towards the end of the dinner it became known that Zapora had accepted the conditions, and that the duel was to take place the next morning.
"Gentlemen," said Adler, "I invite you all. We will drink all night."
"Is that wise?"
"I always do it before a contre-dance. This is my fourth," said Ferdinand.
In another and more respectable restaurant, Zapora's friends were also discussing what had happened.
"It is a shame," said one of them, "that a respectable man like Zapora should have to fight with such a senseless fool."
"Zapora had no business to fall into the trap."
"He fell into it by accident, but after that there was no way out of it."
"It is a strange thing," said an old nobleman, "that such a good-for-nothing young fellow as Adler should not only be admitted into society, but also be at liberty to force a quarrel of this kind upon a man like Zapora. Formerly that sort of thing would have been impossible. It is because public opinion is getting slack that respectable men have to stake their lives. Nevertheless I am sorry for Zapora."
"Isn't he a good shot?"
"Quite fair, but the other is more—he is a real virtuoso."
At about six o'clock Ferdinand retired to his room in the hotel. He wanted a little rest between his dinner-party and his night orgy; but he could not sleep, and began pacing up and down. Then he noticed that the windows opposite were those of Zapora's office.
The street was narrow; the office was on the ground floor, and his own room on the first floor; Ferdinand could therefore closely observe what was going on. The judge was talking to his clerk and to a barrister, and showing them some papers. After some time the barrister took his leave and the clerk went out of the room. The judge was left alone.
He placed the lamp on the writing-table, lighted a cigar, and began to write on a large sheet ofpaper: first a long heading, then he continued quickly and evenly. Adler felt sure that the judge was writing his will.
Ferdinand had already fought several duels, considering them a kind of dangerous amusement. But now he became conscious that a duel could also be a very serious affair, for which one ought to be properly prepared. But how?
There was this man writing a will!
He lay down on his sofa. While he was distinctly conscious of all the noises going on in the corridor, the remembrance of an incident in his early boyhood, when the mill had not long been started, came back vividly to him. He had noticed a small door fastened with a nail in the engine-room. This door used to interest and alarm him. One day he took courage, pressed the bent nail aside, and opened the door. He looked into a small recess; there were a few copper pipes, a coil of rope and a broom.
The memory of this little adventure came back to him whenever he was going to fight a duel, usually at the moment when the seconds had measured the distance and he saw the barrel of his adversary's pistol pointed at him and felt the trigger under his own finger. The mysterious door of Destiny, which is sometimes opened by a bullet, had so far not revealed anything remarkable to him—merely a wounded adversary or else a score of champagne bottles emptied withjolly companions. But what had these duels amounted to? One shot on either side, for the sake of a prima-donna, or a bet at the races, or a jostle in the streets.
To-morrow's affair was of a different kind. Here was he, the son of an unpopular father, coming forward to fight a man respected by everybody, and as it were the representative of an offended community. On the side of his adversary were all those who had the courage to stand up against Adler, all the workpeople and most of the officials at the factory. And who was on his side?
Not his father, for he would not have allowed him to fight; not the companions of his dissipations, for they felt uncomfortable, and were only waiting for an opportunity to desert him. Should he wound Zapora, he would give his enemies fresh cause for indignation; should he be wounded himself, people would say it was a just punishment on him and his father.
What was the meaning of it all? He only wanted to enjoy life along with everybody else. He had been used to being treated with exquisite manners by his companions; people had been indulgent, timid with him. This man, who flung impertinences in his face—where did he spring from so suddenly? Why had there been no one to warn him? Why should the follies of his youth come to such a tragic end?
The mysterious door assumed a sinister aspect. He had a presentiment that this time it would not conceal pipes, ropes and a broom, but a notice on a coffin, which he had once seen in an undertaker's shop in Warsaw: "Lodgings for a single person."
"The undertaker must have been a wag," Ferdinand thought.
The hotel sofa was not remarkable for its softness; when Ferdinand leant his head against its arm, he was reminded of his midnight drives home in his carriage. For a man in a sitting posture that was extremely comfortable, but when you lay down it was as uncomfortable as this sofa. He had the sensation of driving home in it—of the gentle jostling, the clatter of the horses' hoofs: it is midnight; the moon, standing high in the sky, lights up the road. The carriage quivers and then stops.
"What is the matter?" asks Ferdinand in his dream.
"Gosławski's arm has been torn off," answers a low voice.
"Is that the man with the pretty wife?"
"How sharp he is!" says the same low voice.
"Sharp? Who is sharp?" says Ferdinand to himself, turning round on the sofa, away from the scene. But the phantoms do not vanish; he again sees the crowd of men round the stretcher, and the wounded man, his arm in blood-soakedwrappings laid on his chest. He can even see the foreshortening of the shadows on the road.
"How the man suffers!" whispers Ferdinand. "And he must die—must die!" He has the sensation of being the man on the stretcher, tortured with pain, his arm shattered, and of seeing his own face in the cold, cruel moonlight.
Whatever had happened? Champagne had never had this effect on him before. Something entirely new was overpowering, oppressing him—tearing his heart—boring into his brain; he felt as if he must shout, run away, hide somewhere.
Ferdinand jumped up. Dusk was filling the room.
"What the devil! I seem to be afraid ... afraid!... I?..."
With difficulty he found the matches, scattered them on the floor, picked one up, struck it—it went out—struck another, and lighted the candle.
He looked at himself in the glass; his face was ashen, and there were dark circles round his eyes; his pupils were much enlarged.
"Am I afraid?" he repeated.
The candle was trembling in his hand.
"If the pistol is going to jump like that to-morrow, I shall be in a nice mess!" he thought.
He looked out of the window. There was Zapora, still sitting at his desk on the ground floor across the street, writing quietly and evenly. The sight made Ferdinand shake off hisnervousness. His vivacious temperament got the better of the phantoms.
"Go on writing, my dear, and I will put the full-stop to it!"
Steps approached in the corridor, and there was a knock at the door.
"Get up, Ferdinand, we are ready for the bout!" called a familiar voice.
Ferdinand was himself again. If he had had to jump into a precipice bristling with bayonets, he would not have flinched. When he opened the door to his friend he greeted him with a hearty laugh. He laughed at his momentary nervousness, at the phantoms, at the question: "Am I afraid?"
No, he was not afraid. He felt again the strength of a lion and the reckless courage of youth, which fears no danger and has no limits.
The carouse went on till break of day. The windows of the hotel shook with the laughter and noise, and the cellars ran empty, so that wine had to be fetched from elsewhere....
At six o'clock four carriages left the town.