The "catastrophe," as Bukatski called it, came at last. Pan Stanislav
learned by experience that if in life there are many days in which a
man cannot seize his own thoughts, to such belong above all the day
of his marriage. At times a number of these thoughts circled in his
brain at one moment, and were so indefinite, that, speaking accurately,
they were rather unconscious impressions than thoughts. He felt
that a new epoch in life was beginning, that he was assuming great
obligations which he ought to fulfil conscientiously and seriously;
and at the same time, but exactly at the same time, he wondered that
the carriage wasn't coming yet, and expressed his astonishment in the
form of a threat: "If those scoundrels are late, I'll break their
necks for them." At moments a solemn, and, as it were, noble fear of
that future for which he had assumed responsibility was mastering
him; he felt within him a certain elevation, and in this feeling of
elevation he began to lather his beard, and he thought whether on such
an exceptional day it would not be exceptionally worth while to bring
in a barber to his somewhat dishevelled hair. Marynia at the same time
was at the basis of all his impressions. He saw her, as if present.
He thought: "At this moment, she too is dressing, she is standing in
her chamber in front of the mirror, she is talking to her maid, her
soul is flying toward me, and her heart beats unquietly." That instant
tenderness seized him and he said to himself, "But have no fear, honest
soul, for, as God lives, I will not wrong thee;" and he saw himself in
the future, kind, considerate, so that he began to look with a certain
emotion at the patent-leather boots standing near the armchair, on
which his wedding-suit was lying. He repeated from time to time too,
"If to marry, then marry!" He said to himself that he was stupid to
hesitate, for another such Marynia there was not on earth; he felt
that he loved her, and thought at the same time that the weather was
not bad, but that perhaps rain might fall; that it might be cold in
the Church of the Visitation; that in an hour he would be kneeling
by Marynia, that a white necktie is safer knotted than pinned; that
marriage is indeed the most important ceremony in life; that there is
in it something sacred, and that one must not lose one's head anyhow,
for in an hour it will be over; to-morrow they will depart, and then
the normal quiet life of husband and wife will begin.
These thoughts, however, flew away at moments like a flock of sparrows,
into which some one has fired from behind a hedge suddenly, and it grew
empty in Pan Stanislav's head. Then phrases of this kind came to his
lips mechanically: "The eighth of April--to-morrow will be Wednesday!
to-morrow will be Wednesday! my watch! to-morrow will be Wednesday!"
Later he roused himself, repeated, "One must be an idiot!" and the
scattered birds flew back again in a whole flock to his head, and began
to whirl around in it.
Meanwhile Abdulski, the agent of the house of Polanyetski, Bigiel, and
Company came in. He was to be the second groomsman, with Bukatski as
first. Being a Tartar by origin and a man of dark complexion, though
good-looking, he seemed so handsome in the dress-coat and white cravat
that Pan Stanislav expressed the hope that surely he would marry soon.
Abdulski answered,--
"The soul would to paradise;" then he commenced a pantomime, intended
to represent the counting of money, and began to speak of the Bigiels.
All their children wanted to be at the marriage. The Bigiels decided
to take only the two elder ones; from this arose disagreements and
difference of opinion, expressed on Pani Bigiel's side by means of
slaps. Pan Stanislav, who was a great children's man, was exceedingly
indignant at this, and said,--
"I'll play a trick on the Bigiels. Have they gone already?"
"They were just going."
"That is well; I will run in there on the way to Plavitski's, take all
the children, and pour them out before Pani Bigiel and my affianced."
Abdulski expressed the conviction that Pan Stanislav would not do so;
but he merely confirmed him thereby in his plan all the more. In fact,
when he entered the carriage, they drove for the children directly. The
governess, knowing Pan Stanislav's relations with the family, dared
not oppose him; and half an hour later, Pan Stanislav, to the great
consternation of Pani Bigiel, entered Plavitski's lodgings at the head
of a whole flock of little Bigiels, in their every-day clothing, with
collars awry, hair disarranged for the greater part, and faces half
happy, half frightened, and, hurrying up to Marynia, he said, kissing
her hands already enclosed in white gloves,--
"They wanted to wrong the children. Say that I did well."
This proof of his kind heart entertained and pleased Marynia; hence
she was glad from her whole soul to see the children, and even glad
of this,--that the assembled guests considered her future husband an
original,--and glad because Pani Bigiel, straightening the crooked
collars hurriedly, said in her worry,--
"What's to be done with such a madman?"
Somewhat of this opinion too was old Plavitski. But Pan Stanislav and
Marynia were occupied for the moment with each other so exclusively
that everything else vanished from their eyes. The hearts of both
beat a little unquietly. He looked at her with a certain admiration.
All in white, from her slippers to her gloves, with a green wreath on
her head, and a long veil, she seemed to him other than usual. There
was in her something uncommonly solemn, as in the dead Litka. Pan
Stanislav did not make, it is true, that comparison; but he felt that
this white Marynia, if not more remote from him, made him hesitate more
than she of yesterday, arrayed in her ordinary costume. Withal she
seemed less comely than usual, for the wedding wreath is becoming to
women only exceptionally, and, besides, disquiet and emotion reddened
her face; which, with the white robe, seemed still redder than it
was in reality. But a wonderful thing! Just this circumstance moved
Pan Stanislav. In his heart, rather kind by its nature, there rose a
certain feeling resembling compassion or tenderness. He understood
that Marynia's heart must be panting then like a captive bird, and he
began to calm her; to speak to her with such good and kind words that
he was astonished himself where he could find them in such numbers,
and how they came to him so easily. But they came to him easily just
because of Marynia. It was to be seen that she gave herself to him
with a panting of the heart, but also with confidence; that she gave
him her heart, her soul, and her whole being, her whole life, and that
not only for good, but for every moment of her life--and to the end
of it. In this regard no shadow rose in Pan Stanislav's mind, and
that certainty made him better at that moment, more sensitive and
eloquent, than he was ordinarily. At last they held each the other's
hand and looked into each other's eyes, not only with love, but with
the greatest friendship and confidence. Both felt the double reality.
Yet a few moments, and that future will begin. But now the thoughts
of both began to grow clear; and that internal disquiet, from which
they had not been free, yielded more and more and turned into a solemn
concentration of thought, as the religious ceremony drew near. Pan
Stanislav's thoughts did not fly apart like sparrows; there remained
to him only a certain astonishment, as it were, that he with all his
scepticism had such a feeling even of the religious significance of the
act which was about to be accomplished. At heart he was not a sceptic.
In his soul there was hidden even a certain yearning for religious
sensations; and if he had not returned to them it was only through a
loss of habit and through spiritual negligence. Scepticism, at most,
had shaken the surface of his thoughts, just as wind roughens the
surface of water; the depths of which are still calm. He had lost, too,
familiarity with forms; but to regain it was a work for the future and
Marynia. Meanwhile this ceremony to which he must yield seemed to him
so important, so full of solemnity and sacredness, that he was ready to
proceed to it with bowed head.
But first he had another ceremony, which, equally solemn in itself,
was disagreeable enough to Pan Stanislav; namely, to kneel before Pan
Plavitski, whom he considered a fool, receive his blessing and hear
an exhortation, which, as was known, Plavitski would not omit. Pan
Stanislav had said in his mind, however, "Since I am to marry, I must
pass through all which precedes it, and with a good face; little do I
care what expression that monkey, Bukatski, will have at such moments."
Therefore he knelt with all readiness at Marynia's side before her
father, and listened to his blessing with an exhortation, which, by the
way, was not long. Plavitski himself was moved really; his voice and
his hands trembled; he was barely able to pronounce something in the
nature of an adjuration to Pan Stanislav, not to prevent Marynia from
coming even occasionally to pray at his grave before it was grown over
completely with grass.
Finally, the solemnity of the moment affected Yozio Bigiel. Seeing Pan
Plavitski's tears, seeing Marynia and Pan Stanislav on their knees
(kneeling at Bigiel's house was not only a punishment, but frequently
the beginning of more vigorous instruction), Yozio gave expression
to his sympathy and fear by closing his eyes, opening his mouth, and
breaking into as piercing a wail as he could utter. When the rest of
the little Bigiels followed his example in great part, and all began
to move, for the time to pass to the church had arrived, the grave of
Pan Plavitski grown over with grass could not call forth an impression
sufficiently elegiac.
Sitting in the carriage between Abdulski and Bukatski, Pan Stanislav
hardly answered their questions in half words; he took no part in
the conversation, but kept up a monologue with himself. He thought
that in a couple of minutes that would come to pass of which he had
been dreaming whole months; and which till the death of Litka he had
desired with the greatest earnestness of his life. Here for the last
time he was roused by a feeling of the difference between that past
which not long since had vanished, and the present moment; but there
was a difference. Formerly he strove and desired; to-day he only wished
and consented. That thought pierced him like a shudder, for it shot
through his head that perhaps there was lacking in his own personality
that basis on which one may build. But he was a man able to keep
his alarms in close bonds, and to scatter them to the four winds at
a given moment. He said to himself, therefore: "First, there is no
time to think of this; and second, reality does not answer always to
imaginings; this is a simple thing." Then what Bukatski had said pushed
again into his memory: "It is not enough to take, a man must give;" but
he thought this a fabric of such fine threads that it had no existence
whatever, and that life should be taken more simply, that there is
no obligation to come to terms with preconceived theories. Here he
repeated what he had said to himself frequently, "I marry, and that is
the end." Then reality embraced him, or rather the present moment; he
had nothing in his head but Marynia, the church, and the ceremony.
She on the way meanwhile implored God in silence to help her to make
her husband happy; for herself she begged also a little happiness,
being certain, moreover, that her dead mother would obtain that for her.
Then they went arm in arm between the lines of invited and curious
people, seeing somewhat as through a mist lights gleaming in the
distance on the altar, and at the sides faces known and unknown.
Both saw more distinctly the face of Pani Emilia, who wore the white
veil of a Sister of Charity, her eyes at once smiling and filled with
tears. Litka came to the minds of both; and it occurred to them that it
was precisely she who was conducting them to the altar. After a while
they knelt down; before them was the priest, higher up the gleaming of
the candles, the glitter of gold, and the holy face of the principal
image. The ceremony commenced. They repeated after the priest the usual
phrases of the marriage vow; and Pan Stanislav, holding Marynia's hand,
was seized suddenly by emotion such as he had not expected, and such as
he had not felt since his mother had brought him to first communion. He
felt that that was not a mere every-day legal act, in virtue of which
a man receives the right to a woman; but in that binding of hands,
in that vow, there is present a certain mysterious power from beyond
this world,--that it is simply God before whom the soul inclines and
the heart trembles. The ears of both were struck then in the midst of
silence by the solemn words, "_Quod Deus junxit, homo non disjungat_;"
but Pan Stanislav felt that that Marynia whom he had taken becomes his
body and blood, and a part of his soul, and that for her too he must
be the same. That moment a chorus of voices in the choir burst out
with "_Veni Creator_," and a few moments after the Polanyetskis went
forth from the church. On the way out, the arms of Pani Emilia embraced
Marynia once again: "May God bless you!" and when they drove to the
wedding reception, she went to the cemetery to tell Litka the news,
that Pan Stas was married that day to Marynia.