4 July.
To-day, returning from the Wandelbahn, I met Aniela on the bridge opposite the Cascades. She stopped suddenly and said something, but the roar of the water drowned her voice. This irritated me, for at present everything irritates me. Whereupon, leading her across the bridge towards our villa, I said impatiently: “I could not hear what you were saying.”
“I wanted to ask you,” she said, with emotion, “why you are so different to me now? Why have you no pity upon me?”
All my blood rushed to my heart at these words.
“Can you not see,” I said quickly, “that I love you more than words can tell? and you treat it as if it were a mere nothing. Listen! I do not want anything from you. Only tell me that you love me, surrender your heart to me, and I will bear anything, suffer anything, and will give my whole life to you and serve you to the last breath. Aniela, you love me! Tell me, is it not true? You will save me by that one word; say it!”
Aniela had grown as pale as the foam on the cascade. It seemed as if she had turned to ice. For a moment she could not utter a word; then making a great effort, she replied: —
“You must not speak to me in that way.”
“Then you will never say it?”
“Never!”
“Then you have not the least—” I broke off. It suddenly whirled across my brain that if Kromitzki asked her, she would not refuse him; and at this thought rage and despair deprived me of all consciousness. I heard the rushing of waters in my ear, and everything grew dark before my eyes. I only remember that I hurled a few horrible, cynical words at her, such as no man should use against a defenceless woman, and which I dare not put down in this diary. I remember as in a dream that she looked at me with dilated eyes, took me by the sleeve, then shook my shoulder, and said, anxiously: —
“Leon, what is the matter with you, — what ails you?”
What ailed me was that I was losing my senses. I tore my hand away and rushed off in the opposite direction. After a moment I retraced my steps; but she was gone. Then I understood only one thing: the time had come to put an end to life. The thought seemed to me like a rift in the dark clouds that weighed upon me. It was a strange state of consciousness, in one direction. For the moment all thoughts about myself, about Aniela, were wiped from my memory; but I contemplated the thought of death with the greatest self-possession. I knew, for instance, perfectly well that if I threw myself from the rocks it would be considered an accident, and if I shot myself in my own room my aunt would not survive the shock. It was still stranger that, in spite of this consciousness, I did not feel called upon to make any choice, as if the connection between my reasoning and my will and its consequent action had been severed. With a perfectly clear understanding that it would be better to throw myself from the rocks, I yet went back to the villa for my revolver. Why? I cannot explain it. I only remember that I ran faster and faster, at last went up the stairs into my room, and began to search for the key of my portmanteau, where the revolver was. Presently I heard steps approaching my door. This roused me, and the thought flashed through my mind that it was Aniela, that she had guessed my intention, and came to prevent it. The door was flung open, and there was my aunt, who called out in a breathless voice: —
“Leon, go quick for the doctor! Aniela has been taken ill.”
Hearing that, I forgot all else, and without hat I rushed forth, and in a quarter of an hour brought a doctor from the Straubinger hotel. The doctor went to see Aniela, and I remained with my aunt on the veranda. I asked her what had happened to Aniela.
“Half an hour ago,” said my aunt, “Aniela came back with such a feverishly burning face that both Celina and I asked whether anything had happened to her. She replied, ‘Nothing, nothing,’ almost impatiently; and when Celina insisted upon knowing what was the matter with her, Aniela, for the first time since I have known her, lost her temper and cried out, ‘Why are you all bent upon tormenting me?’ Then she became quite hysterical, and laughed and cried. We were terribly frightened, and then I came and asked you to fetch the doctor. Thank God, she is calmer now. How she wept, poor child, and asked us to forgive her for having spoken unkindly to us.”
I remained silent; my heart was too full for words.
My aunt paced up and down the veranda, and presently, her arms akimbo, stopped before me and said, —
“Do you know, my boy, what I am thinking? It is this: We somehow do not like Kromitzki, — even Celina is not fond of him; and Aniela sees it, and it hurts her feelings. It is a strange thing; he does his best to make himself pleasant, and yet he always seems like an outsider. It is not right, and it grieves Aniela.”
“Do you think, aunty, that she loves him so very much?”
“I did not say very much. He is her husband, and so she loves him, and feels hurt that we treat him badly.”
“But who treats him badly? I think she is not happy with him, — that is all.”
“God forbid that you should be right. I do not say but she might have done better; but after all there is nothing to be said against him. He evidently loves her very much. Celina cannot quite forgive him the sale of Gluchow; but as to Aniela, she defends him, and does not allow anybody to say a word against him.”
“Perhaps against her own conviction?”
“It proves all the more that she loves him. As to his affairs, the worst is that nobody knows how he stands; and this is a great source of trouble to Celina. But after all, wealth is not everything; besides, as I told you before, I will not forget to provide for Aniela, and you agree with me, do you not? We both owe her a kind of duty, not to mention that she is a dear, affectionate creature, and deserves everything we can do for her.”
“With all my heart, dear aunt; she will be always as a sister to me, and shall not be in want of anything as long as I live.”
“I count upon my dear boy, and can die in peace.”
Thereupon she embraced me. The doctor, coming towards us, interrupted our conversation. In a few words he set our minds at rest, —
“A little nervous agitation; it often appears after the first baths. Leave off bathing for a few days, plenty of air and exercise, — that is all that is wanted. The constitution is sound; strengthen the system, and all will be well.”
I paid him so liberally that he bowed, and did not put on his hat till he was beyond the railings of the villa. I would have given anything if I could have gone immediately to Aniela, kissed her feet, and begged her forgiveness for all the wrong I had done her. I vowed to myself that I would be different, more patient, with Kromitzki, — not revolt any more, nor grumble. Contrition, contrition deep and sincere, permeated my whole being. How unspeakably I love her!
Close upon noon I met Kromitzki coming back from a long walk on the Kaiserweg. I put my good resolutions at once to the test, and was more friendly with him. He thought it was sympathy because of his wife’s illness, and as such accepted it in a grateful spirit. He and Pani Celina spent the remainder of the day with Aniela. She had expressed a wish to dress and go out; but they did not let her. I did not permit myself even to chafe at that. I do not remember that I ever subdued myself to the same extent. “It is all for you, dearest,” I said inwardly. I was very stupid all the day, and felt an irresistible desire to cry like a child. Even now tears fill my eyes. If I have sinned greatly, I bear a heavy punishment.
5 July.
After yesterday’s commotion a calm has set in. The clouds have discharged their electricity, and the storm is over. I feel exhausted morally and physically. Aniela is better. This morning we met alone on the veranda. I put her on a rocking-chair, wrapped a shawl around her shoulders, as the morning was rather chilly, and said: —
“Aniela dear, I beg your pardon from my whole heart for what I said yesterday. Forgive and forget if you can, though I shall never forgive myself.”
She put out her hand at once, and I clung to it with my lips. I could have groaned aloud; there is such a gulf between my love and my misery. Aniela se
emed to feel it too, for she did not withdraw her hand at once. She too tried to control her emotion, and the feeling which urged her towards me. Her neck and breast heaved as if she were strangling the sobs that rose to her throat. She feels that I love her beyond everything; that a love like mine is not to be met with every day; and that it might have been a treasure of happiness to last our whole life. Presently she grew more composed and her face became serene. There was nothing but resignation there, and angelic goodness.
“There is peace between us, is there not?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“And forever?”
“How can I tell, dearest? You know best how things stand with me.”
Her eyes again grew misty, and again she recovered herself.
“All will be well,” she said, “you are so good.”
“I, good?” I exclaimed with real indignation; “do you not know that if you had not fallen ill yesterday I should—”
I did not finish. I suddenly remembered that it would be mean and cowardly to use such a weapon against her. I felt all the more ashamed of my rashness as I saw the troubled eyes looking anxiously into mine.
“What did you want to say?”
“I was going to say words unworthy of myself; besides, they have no meaning now.”
“Leon! I must know what you meant, else I shall have no peace.”
Suddenly a breath of wind blew a lock of her hair into her eyes. I rose, and with the light, tender touch of a mother, put it back into its place.
“Dear Aniela, do not force me to tell what I ought to forget. If it be a question of your peace of mind I pledge you my word that you need not have any fear for the future.”
“You promise this?” she asked, still looking intently at me.
“Yes, most solemnly and emphatically; will that satisfy you, and drive out any foolish notions from the little head?”
The postman coming in with a parcel of letters interrupted our conversation. There was the usual budget from the East for Kromitzki; only one letter for Aniela, from Sniatynski (I recognized his handwriting on the envelope), and one for me from Clara. The latter does not say much about herself, but inquires most minutely what I am doing. I told Aniela who it was that had written, and she, to show me that all ill-feeling and constraint had gone, began to tease me. I paid her back in the same coin, and pointing to Sniatynski’s letter said there was another poor man who had succumbed to little Aniela’s wiles. We laughed and bandied jests for a little time.
The human soul, like the bee, extracts sweetness even from bitter herbs. The most unhappy wretch still tries to squeeze out a little happiness from his woes, and the merest shadow and pretext will serve his turn. Sometimes I think that this intense longing for happiness is one proof more that happiness is awaiting us in another world. I am convinced also that pessimism was invented as a comfort to satisfy a want, sum up all human misery, and put it into a philosophic formula. It satisfies our thirst for truth and knowledge, and happiness itself is nothing but satisfied craving. Perhaps love in itself is such a source of happiness that even a clouded love like ours is interwoven with golden rays. Such a ray fell on our path to-day. I had not expected it, as I had not expected that a man whose desires are without limits could be satisfied with so little.
We had scarcely read our letters when Pani Celina, who is now able to walk without help, came towards us with a footstool for Aniela.
“Oh mamma!” cried out Aniela, in a shocked voice; “You ought not to do that.”
“And did you not yourself nurse me night and day when I was ill?”
I took the footstool from Pani Celina’s hands, and kneeling down before Aniela, I waited until she had put her little feet upon it; and kneeling thus before her for a second filled me with happiness for the whole day. It is a fact. A very poor man lives upon crumbs, and smiles gratefully — through tears.
6 July.
I have a crippled heart, but it is capable of love. It is only now I fully understand what Sniatynski meant. If I were not a man out of joint, without an even-balanced mind, poisoned by scepticism, criticism of myself, and criticism of criticism, if my love were in harmony with law and principles, I should have found in Aniela the dogma of my life, and other dogmas, other beliefs, would have come to me in course of time. Yet I do not know; perhaps I could not love otherwise than crookedly; and in this lies my incapacity for life. In short, that which ought to have been my health and salvation has become my disease and damnation. Strange to say, there was no lack of warnings. It almost seems as if people had foreseen what would befall me. I remember constantly the words Sniatynski wrote to me when I was with the Davises at Peli: “Something must always be growing within us; beware lest something should grow in you which would cause your unhappiness, and the unhappiness of those near and dear to you.” I laughed then at the words, yet how true they were. My father, too, spoke several times as if he had pierced the veil that hides the future. To-day the remembrance is too late. I know it is useless to rake up the ashes of the past, but I cannot help it. I am sorry for myself, but more sorry still for Aniela. She would have been a hundred times happier with me than with Kromitzki. Supposing even I should have subjected her at first to analysis, and discovered various faults, I should have loved her all the same. She would have been mine, and as such she would have become part of me and entered into the sphere of my egoism. Her faults would have been my weaknesses, and we are always ready to make allowance for ourselves, and though we criticise self we do not cease to care for its well-being. Thus she would have been dear to me; and as she is infinitely better than I, in time she would have become my pride, the noblest part of my soul; I should have found out that criticism, as far as she was concerned, was out of place; gradually she would have won me over to her pure faith and wrought my salvation. All that has been wasted, spoiled, and transmuted into a tragedy for her, — into evil and a tragedy for me.
7 July.
I have been reading what I wrote yesterday, and am struck by what I said at the end, namely: that the love which might have been my salvation has become a source of evil. I cannot quite agree with the thought. How can love for a pure woman like Aniela bring forth evil? One word explains it, — it is a crooked love. I must own the truth. If two years ago somebody had told me that I, a civilized man, a man with aesthetic nerves, and living in peace with the penal code, should meditate for nights and days how to put out of the world, even by murder, a man who would be in my way, I should have taken that somebody for an escaped lunatic. Yet it is true; I have come to that. Kromitzki shuts out from me the world; he takes from me the earth, water, and air. I cannot live because he lives; and for that reason I incessantly think of his death. What a simple and complete solution of all the difficulties and entanglements his death would be. I thought more than once that since the hypnotizer can send his medium to sleep, a more concentrated power would be able to put him to sleep forever. I have sent for all the newest books about hypnotism. In the mean while with every glance I say to Kromitzki, “Die!” and if such a suggestion were sufficient, he would have been dead some time ago. But the whole result of it is that he is as well as ever, is Aniela’s husband, and I remain with the consciousness that my intention is equally criminal and foolish, ridiculous, and unworthy of an active man; and it makes me lose my self-respect more and more. Yet it does not prevent my trying to hypnotize Kromitzki.
It is the old story again of the intelligent man who, given up by the doctors, goes for advice to quacks and wise women. I want to kill my enemy by hypnotism; and as it only shows my own worthlessness, it is I who suffer by it. I must also confess that as often as I am alone, I begin to think of all possible means in human power to put the hateful man out of the way. For some time I nursed the thought of killing him in a duel; but this would not lead to anything. Aniela would never marry the man who had killed her husband; then, like a common criminal, I began to think of other ways. And what is the strangest thing of all, I discovered
ways which human justice would not be able to detect. Foolishness! vain thoughts! pure theory!
Kromitzki need have no fear for his life; thoughts like these will never be acted upon. I should not kill him if I could do it without more responsibility than is incurred in crushing a spider; should not kill him if we two were alone together on a desert island. If one could divide the human brain as one cuts in two an apple, and lay bare its thoughts, it would be found that mine is honeycombed with murderous thoughts. What is more, I am well aware that if I refrain from killing Kromitzki it is not by reason of any moral principle contained in the law “Thou shalt do no murder.” This law I have already violated morally. I refrain from killing him because some remnants of chivalric tradition bar my way; because my refined nerves would not permit me to commit a brutal deed; in short, I am too far removed from primitive man to be physically competent to the task, though morally I slay him every day. And now I ask myself whether, in presence of a higher judgment, I should be held responsible, as if I had committed the deed.
It may be that if one could lay open the human brain, as I said before, in the most virtuous individual thoughts would be found to make our hair stand on end. I remember that, when a little boy, there came upon me a period of such religious fervor that I prayed from morning until night; and at the same time, in the midst of my pious transports, there came into my mind blasphemous thoughts, as if an evil wind had blown them thither, or a demon whispered them into my ear. In the same way I had irreverent thoughts about persons whom I loved with all my heart and for whom I would have given my life without a moment’s hesitation. I remember that this, which I might call a tragedy of childhood, cost me a great deal of anguish. But I will not dwell upon that now. Going back to blasphemous or criminal thoughts, I do not think we are responsible for them, as they come from the knowledge of evil, not from an evil growing within the organism itself; and for the very reason that it is outward to ourselves we fancy an evil spirit suggesting the thoughts. Man listens to it, and being averse to evil, spurns it; and there may be some merit in this. But with me it is different. The thought of getting rid of Kromitzki does not come from the outside, but springs from me and exists within me. I have come down to that morally, and if I do not commit the deed it is a mere matter of nerves. The part of my inward Mephistopheles is confined to mocking and whispering into my ear that the deed would only prove my energy, and not be much of a crime.
Complete Works of Henryk Sienkiewicz Page 333