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.

Here again indignation began to seize her so that Laskowicz from fear

that she might have an attack of convulsions, said:

"We will consult together about this, but only let the lady be

pacified."

But she replied with increasing irritation:

"I did not come here for you to pacify me. You, sir, have prated about

our mutual wrongs and now you order me to be pacified. I want help and

not your chatter."

"You are anxious that he should not marry her?"

"And what else do you suppose?"

In any case Laskowicz would have sided with the girl for he was

obligated to do that by gratitude to her for saving his life, by the

similarity of their lot, and those "joint wrongs" of which he himself

had previously spoken to Pauly, and of which she now reminded him. But

the existence of Krzycki at present ceased to stand in his way and Miss

Anney's existence less so. Only one thing he could not forgive in her:

"She was a peasant woman, she was a wage-earner, and afterwards became

a female bourgeois. In this is the crime."

"In it or not in it, it is now I or she! Do you understand, sir?"

"I understand, but what is to be done?"

"When you ran away from the police, I did not ask what was to be done."

"I remember."

"And you said at Swidwicki's that your people could accomplish

everything."

"For it is so."

"So if he only does not marry her, then even let the world end."

Laskowicz began to look at her with his closely set eyes and after a

moment commenced to speak slowly and with emphasis:

"Krzycki was once already condemned and lives, thanks to you, lady, but

if he gets a bullet in his head, then he will marry no one."

But she, hearing this, turned pale as a corpse; in the same moment she

sprang at him with her finger-nails!

"What!" she cried in a hoarse voice; "what! he! Let but a hair fall

from his head, then, I will have you all--"

Laskowicz's patience, however, was exhausted. He was irritated, torn

internally and sick; hence, after her threat, a wave of bitterness and

rage flooded his brains. He started up and, glaring in her eyes,

shouted!

"Do not threaten with betrayal, for that is death!"

"Death?" she screamed. "Death! this is what life is to me!"

And shoving her palm close to his face, she blew on it so that her

breath moistened him, and repeated:

"Look! This is what life is to me."

"And to me," exclaimed Laskowicz.

For an interval they stared in each other's eyes like two odious and

despairing souls. He recovered his wits first, and clasping his head

with both hands, said:

"Oh, how unfortunate we are! oh!"

"Yes! yes!" reiterated Panna Pauly.

And she began to sob hysterically.

Then he commenced to quiet her. He promised her that nothing should

befall Krzycki and that his marriage would not under any circumstances

take place. He said that at that moment he could not indeed disclose to

her what measures would be adopted, but he assured her that neither he

nor his party would show any consideration to a mere female bourgeois,

as here was involved a higher social justice, which does not need to

take into account any particular individual. Pauly only understood that

that "low peasant" would not wed the young master of Jastrzeb, and

became appeased in some measure: and afterwards, both, from necessity,

became occupied with other matters. It was imperative that some kind of

shelter be found for the young girl: so Laskowicz placed her with "a

female associate" residing in the neighborhood, who immediately went

for her wages and belongings. He himself returned to his own rooms and

began to revolve in his mind how he could repay Panna Pauly for saving

his life.

And in this feeling of gratitude lay the first reason why he took the

matter to heart. A second reason was his own ill-luck and ill-fated

love for Marynia which made him sensitive to similar strifes; and the

third was that "social justice" which he mentioned to Pauly. As to the

third reason he felt, however, the necessity of deliberating with his

own soul in order that when the time for action arrived his hands would

be untied, and under the pressure of this necessity he began to reason

in the following fashion:

"On the background of the general concern of the proletariat, personal

affairs will appear. It might be said that the general concern is the

sum-total of them all. In this respect whoever stands in defence of the

personal affair of a proletaire by that act alone defends universal

principles. But here comes the question of ethics. Whither are we

tending? To universal justice. Ergo, our principle is moral for it is

only the sum-total of personal affairs: therefore these personal

affairs also must be moral. From this it follows that the proletaire,

who is in the wrong in a controversy with a bourgeois, nevertheless has

justice on his side simply because he is a proletaire. In this world

everything is relative. A soldier, slaying his opponent in a war,

commits manslaughter; therefore the act itself is not ethical. But as

he commits it in defense of Fatherland, therefore, from the viewpoint

of national welfare he acts ethically. If in addition thereto he has

the spur of personal hatred to an antagonist, his act would gain in

energy and would not lose its additional significance for Fatherland.

For us, the Polish proletariat is the nation and the idea of their

emancipation, the Fatherland. For this we wage war and if there is war,

then murder and injuries are inflicted upon the antagonists; and even

though the motives for them might be personal, they nevertheless are

not only justifiable but are covered a hundred-fold by the universal

welfare."

"Besides,"--he reasoned further--, "the quintessence of our existence

is unhappiness; and from unhappiness as well as, inversely, from

happiness must blossom corresponding deeds. This is a necessity flowing

from the nature of things; and with this ethics have nothing to do. I

and that rabid girl are luckless, like homeless dogs; in view of which

it is all one whether a wrong was perpetrated upon us intentionally or

unintentionally; just as it is all one to the wolf whether the forester

who shoots him in the head, hunted him purposely or whether they met by

chance. The wolf has teeth to defend himself. That is his right. The

moment has come when our fangs have grown; therefore we have the right

to mangle.

"As to that girl, she is mangled by despair which can only be assuaged

by revenge. Is it just? Will it be beneficial to the girl? That is all

one. The wage-earners without work and bread drown their woes in

alcohol; the bourgeois in case of pain injects morphine into himself,

and for her, revenge will be alcohol and morphine. Whatever may be the

consequences, she will destroy the happiness of the pampered; she will

change their joy into tears; she will break their lives and raze a

particle of that world, which lies heavily, like a nightmare, upon the

breasts of the proletariat. So it is necessary to aid that revenge, for

so does gratitude for saving life command; likewise common wrong, also

the good of the cause."

In view of this, it already seemed to Laskowicz a matter of minor

importance whether in that aid a role would be played by a knife, or by

a revolver, or by casting upon Hanka some ignominy, after which nothing

would remain for her to do but to fly and hide herself forever from

human eyes. Neither opportunity nor willing hands were wanting. It was

only necessary to deliberate upon the choice: and afterwards to act

promptly and decisively.

With this he went to Pauly who agreed to everything. As a compensation

he demanded that she should release him from his promise to see Marynia

only from a distance, and he secured that with ease. He evidently

wanted to have his hands untied also in that regard.