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 other parts
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.
Goslawski is at the lathe, turning a large steel cylinder; the work
must be done exactly to the thousandth of an inch! But somehow
Goslawski is off his work. There had been so much to do that day that
he had not been able to leave the workshop 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 Goslawski, 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 Goslawski, "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, Goslawski 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.
Goslawski 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 Goslawski 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....
Goslawski'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: the blood 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 Goslawski
fell heavily to the floor.
All this happened within a few seconds.
"Stop the engine!" shouted Goslawski'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!" Goslawski 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
Goslawski--"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
Goslawski 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?"
"Goslawski 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 was returning 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?"
"Goslawski has had his hand torn off."
"Goslawski? 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 Goslawski'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 Goslawska!"
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
Goslawski'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
Goslawski's cottage, for hardly anyone had gone to church. They all
wanted to know the details of Goslawski'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; the doctor 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 Goslawski, 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?... Remember the 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 Goslawska. 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 wake her
husband again, she gave a terrible shriek and fainted.
* * * * *
Goslawski'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 Goslawski 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 Goslawski, 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. "The worst 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 the first wave. Then
you reduced the workmen's pay--that was the second. Goslawski'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 Goslawski!"
"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?...