These are the crossways on which I never dreamed of finding myself. I look into the depths of my own self with amazement. I do not know whether my exceptional troubles will partly atone for my errors, but one thing I know, namely: that he whose life cannot find room in the simple code Aniela and others like her cling to, if his soul is brimming over and breaks its bounds it must mix with dust and be polluted in the mud.
9 July.
To-day in the reading-room Kromitzki pointed out to me an Englishman accompanied by a very beautiful woman, and told me their story. The beauty is a Roumanian by birth and married a Wallachian bankrupt Boyar, from whom the Englishman simply bought her at Ostend. I have heard of similar transactions at least a dozen times. Kromitzki even mentioned the sum the Englishman had given for her. The story made a strange impression upon me. I thought to myself, “This is one way, however disgraceful for the seller and buyer; it is a simple method of obtaining a desired result. The woman concerned in it need not know anything about the transaction, and the agreement could be concealed under decent appearances.” Involuntarily I began to apply the idea to our own situation. Suppose it answered. The whole thing presented itself to me under two aspects: in regard to Aniela as a horrible profanation; in regard to Kromitzki, not only as feasible, but at the same time gratifying my scorn and hatred for him. If he agreed to it, he would prove himself a villain, and show what kind of man he is, and what a monstrous thing has been done in giving Aniela to him. I should then be quite justified in all my endeavors to take her from him. But would he agree? I said to myself: “You hate him, and consequently believe him capable of any evil.” But thinking of him objectively, I remembered that the man had sold his wife’s property, had deceived her and Pani Celina, and also that the ruling passion of his life was greed for gain. It was not I alone who considered him as one wholly possessed by the gold fever. Sniatynski thought the same, and so do my aunt and Pani Celina. This kind of moral disease always leads into pitfalls. I understand that much will depend upon the state of his affairs. How they stand nobody seems to know, unless it be his agent Chwastowski. It suddenly struck me that I might get some information from this same Chwastowski, but that would take some time. Perhaps I will run over to Vienna and see his brother the doctor, who is working in the Vienna hospitals; the brothers are sure to correspond with each other. My aunt thinks that he is not doing as well as he wants us to believe, and I imagine that he has sunk all his money in some speculation from which he expects a great profit. Will he succeed? — that is the question. He himself does not know; hence his restlessness, and the multitude of letters he sends to young Chwastowski. In the mean while I will sound him cautiously, lest I should rouse his suspicions, as to what he thinks of the Boyar who sold his wife to the Englishman. I do not suppose for a moment that he will be quite sincere, but I will help him and guess the rest. The whole sum and substance of this is, that it has put a little more life into me. There is nothing more horrible than to suffer passively; and anything that rouses me from my apathy is acceptable. I repeat to myself, “At least to-morrow and the day after, you will have something to do to further your plans;” and that promises a transition from utter passiveness to a feverish activity. I must be doing something; it is a question of not losing control over my senses. I pledged my word to Aniela not to attempt my life, and I cannot go on living as I do. If the road I am taking be ignominious, the ignominy will be for Kromitzki more than for me. I must and will separate them, not only for my own sake but also for Aniela’s sake. I am really feverish. Everybody seems to derive some benefit from the bathing except me.
10 July.
There are some hot days even in Gastein. What heat! Aniela is dressed in white soft flannel, such as English girls wear for lawn-tennis. We have our breakfast in the open air. She comes from her bath as bright and fresh as the snow at sunrise. The supple figure shows to great advantage in the graceful dress. The morning light falls upon her and shows distinctly every hair on the eyebrows, lashes, and the delicate down on either side of her face. The hair is glistening with moisture and looks fairer in this light, and the eyelids are almost transparent. How young she is, and how intoxicating her appearance! In her, then, is my life, in her everything I want. I will not go away, I cannot. Looking at her I seem to lose my senses from intoxication, and at the same time from pain; for close by her side sits he who is her husband. It cannot continue thus; let her belong to no one provided she be not his. She understands to a certain extent what I suffer, but not altogether. She does not love her husband, but considers it her duty to live with him. I gnash my teeth at the very thought, for in admitting his rights she degrades herself; and that is not allowed, even to her. Far better she were dead. Then she will be mine; because the lawful husband will remain behind, but not I. By this token I am more lawfully hers than he is.
There is something very strange going on within me at times. For instance, when I am very tired or when my mind is concentrated upon one point I seem to look into the future, into far-away space which remains invisible to me in a normal state. Then there comes to me such a conviction that Aniela belongs to me — that in some way she is or will be mine — that when I wake up I have to remind myself that there exists such a man as Kromitzki. Maybe in moments like those I cross the boundary which separates the living from the dead, and have a vision of things more perfect, such as the ideals we dream about, as they might shape themselves in outward form. Why is it these two worlds are not more in touch with each other? As often as I try to solve this problem I lose myself; I cannot understand this want of harmony, but feel dimly that therein lie our imperfection and our misery. The thought comforts me, for in the ideal world Aniela could not belong to a man like Kromitzki.
11 July.
Another disappointment, another plan shattered, but I have still hope that all is not lost. I spoke to-day with Kromitzki about the Boyar who sold his wife, and invented a whole story in order to discover his real feelings. We met the Englishman with his purchased wife near the Cascades. I began by praising her beauty, and then remarked: —
“The doctor here told me something about the transaction, and I think you are a little hard upon the Boyar.”
“Hard upon him? not a bit; he amuses me intensely,” he replied.
“There are extenuating circumstances in the case. He is not only a Boyar, but the owner of extensive tannery works. Suddenly, because of the infection, the importation of skins from Roumania was forbidden. The man recognized that unless he could tide over the time until the law was repealed he would be ruined, and with him hundreds of families to whom he gave employment. My dear fellow, he looked at it from a business point of view; perhaps business morality is a little different from general morality, and as he had once entered into that—”
“He had a right to sell his wife? To fulfil one part of his duties he had no right to trample upon another and perhaps more binding duty.”
Kromitzki could not have disappointed me more thoroughly than by thus showing some decent feeling. But I did not give up my hope at once. I know that even the meanest person has still at his disposition high-sounding words wherewith to mask his real character. Therefore I went on: —
“You do not take into account one thing, namely, that the man would have dragged his wife with him into poverty. Confess it is a singular idea of duty that it should lead us to deprive those dependent on us of their daily bread.”
“Do you know, I had no idea you were so deucedly sober-minded.”
“You fool!” I thought to myself; “don’t you understand that these are not my views, but views I want you to adopt?” Aloud I said: —
“I only try to put myself into the place of this business man. Besides, you do not consider that the woman probably did not love her husband, and that the other man was aware of it.”
“In such a case they were worthy of each other.”
“That is another question altogether. Looking a little deeper into the affair, and supposing that being
in love with the Englishman, she nevertheless remained faithful to her husband, she may be worthier than you think. As to the Boyar, he may be a villain for anything I know, but what can he do, I ask you, in case somebody comes to him and says: ‘You are a bankrupt twice over; you have debts you cannot pay, and a wife that does not love you. Divorce that woman, and I will take care of her future, and will also take upon me all your liabilities.’ It is a way of speaking, to say the man ‘sold’ his wife; but can a transaction like this be called a sale? Consider that the merchant who agreed to this proposition by one stroke saved his wife from poverty, — and possibly this is the right way to look upon duty, — and saved all those who depended upon him!”
Kromitzki thought a little, then dropped his eyeglass and said: —
“My dear fellow, as to business I flatter myself that I know a great deal more about it than you; but as to arguments, I confess that you would soon drive me into a corner. If you had not inherited millions from your father, you would be able to amass a fortune as a barrister. You have put the whole thing in such a light that I do not know what to think of that Roumanian chap. All I know about it is that some kind of transaction about his wife had occurred, and that, put it in whatever light you will, is always a disreputable thing. Besides, as I am somewhat of a merchant myself, I will tell you another thing: a bankrupt can always find a way out of his difficulties: he either makes another fortune and then pays his debts, or he blows out his brains and pays with his life; and at the same time, if he is married, he sets his wife free and gives her another chance.”
I fumed and raged inwardly, and would have given anything if I could have shouted out to him: “You are a bankrupt already in one thing, for your wife does not love you. You see the Cascades; jump in, set her free, and give her the chance of some happiness.” But I remained silent, chewing the bitter cud of my reflections. Kromitzki, however commonplace he might be, though capable of selling Gluchow and taking advantage of his wife’s trust in him, was not the villain I took him for. It was a disappointment and destroyed the plan to which for the moment I had clung as to a plank of safety. Again I felt powerless, and saw looming up before me the vast solitude. Nevertheless, I held fast to that purpose because I understood that unless I could do something, I should go mad. “It will at least prepare the ground for anything that may turn up, and accustom Kromitzki to the thought of parting with Aniela,” I said to myself. As I said before, nobody knows in what state Kromitzki’s affairs are, but I suppose that a man who speculates is liable to losses as well as to gains. I said to him: —
“I do not know whether your principles are, strictly speaking, business principles, but at any rate they are the sentiments of an honorable man, and I respect you for them. You said, if I understood you, that a man has no right to drag his wife with him into poverty.”
“No, I did not say that; I only said that to sell one’s wife is a villany; the wife ought to share her husband’s fate. I think but little of a fair-weather wife, who wants to break her marriage vows because her husband cannot give her the comforts of life.”
“Suppose she did not agree, he might set her free against her will. Besides, if she knew that by submitting to a divorce, she could save her husband, duty well understood would bid her to yield.”
“It is unpleasant even to talk about such things.”
“Why? are you sorry for the Boyar?”
“Not I; I shall always hold him for a blackguard.”
“Because you do not look at things from an objective point of view. But that is not astonishing. A man like you, with whom everything is prospering, cannot enter into the psychology of a bankrupt unless he be a philosopher; and philosophy has nothing to do with making millions.”
I did not wish to prolong the conversation, so utterly disgusted was I with my own perversity. I had sown the seed, — a very small and pitiable seed to produce anything; and yet I clung to it tenaciously. One thing revived my hope. At the moment when I tried to make him believe that a ruined man ought to set his wife free, there was a certain constraint and trouble in his expression. I also noticed that when I spoke about his millions a slight sigh escaped him. To infer from this that he is on the brink of ruin, would be jumping at conclusions; but I may fairly conjecture that his affairs are in a precarious state. I resolved to get at the truth as quickly as possible.
In the mean while my own self seemed to be divided in two parts. The one said: “If you waver ever so little, I will push you downward if it should cost me my whole fortune. I will work your ruin, and when I come to deal with a broken man, it remains to be seen whether for certain transactions you do not find a gentler word than, ‘villany.’” Yet I was conscious at the same time that these were not my thoughts nor my ways of dealing; that they had been suggested to me by somebody else, and that but for my desperate position they would never have found room in me, as they are averse to my nature and repulsive to me. Money never played any part in my life, either as means or as aim. I consider myself incapable of using such a weapon, and I felt what a degradation it would be for me and Aniela to introduce that element into our relations to each other. The thought of it was so repulsive to me that I said to myself: “Will you not spare yourself? Must you even drink from such a bowl? See how you are degenerating step by step. Formerly thoughts like these would never have crossed your mind; and what is more, schemes like these are utterly useless, and will only lower you in your own eyes.”
In fact, formerly, when my aunt spoke of Kromitzki’s affairs in a doubting spirit, it had always caused me some uneasiness. The prospect that at some time or other he might want me to assist him or take a share in his transactions had made me consider what I should do in such a case; and I always vowed that I would decline and have nothing to do with any of his affairs; so repugnant to me was the thought of mingling money matters with my relations to Aniela. I remember that I saw in this another proof of the nobility and refinement of my feelings. To-day I grasp that weapon as if I were a banker and had lived by money transactions all my life.
I perceive with absolute certainty that my thoughts and deeds are worse than myself, and I ask myself how that can be. Most probably because I cannot find the way out of the labyrinth. I love a noble woman; my love is very great; and yet, putting the two together, the net result is crookedness, and enchanted circles where my character loses itself and even my nerves grow less sensitive. When, in former times, I erred and strayed from the right path there still remained something, some aesthetic feeling, by the help of which I still distinguished good from evil. At present I have none of that feeling, or if it still exists it is powerless. If I had only at the same time lost the consciousness of what is ugly and offensive! But no; I have it still, only it does not serve me as a curb, and is of no effect except to aggravate my troubles. Beside my love for Aniela there is no room for anything; but consciousness does not require space. I absorb love, hatred, and sorrow as a cancer breeds in a diseased organism.
He who has never been in a position similar to mine cannot understand it. I knew that from love’s entanglements spring various sufferings, but I did not appreciate those sufferings. I did not believe they were so real and so difficult to bear. Only now I understand the difference between “knowing” and “believing,” and the meaning of the French thinker’s words: “We know we must die, but we do not believe it.”
12 July.
To-day my pulses are beating wildly, and there is a singing in my ears; for something has occurred the memory of which thrills every nerve as in a fever. The day was very beautiful, the evening more lovely still, and there was a full moon. We resolved to make an excursion to Hofgastein, — all but Pani Celina, who preferred to remain at home. My aunt, Kromitzki, and I went down together to the villa gate, whence Kromitzki sped towards Straubinger’s to order a carriage, my aunt and I waiting for Aniela, who lingered behind. As she did not come I went back and saw her descending the winding staircase leading from the second floor into the garden.
“Aniela is coming, coming.”
Nothing remained for her now but to come down again, which she could do safely, as I had remained near the gate. At the same moment Kromitzki arrived with the carriage. Aniela coming up to us said: —
“I came to ask you, aunty, to let me stop at home. I would rather not leave mamma alone. You can go, and I will wait for you with the tea.”
“But Celina is quite well,” replied my aunt, with a shade of annoyance in her voice, “it was she who proposed the excursion, mainly for your sake.”
“Yes, but—” began Aniela.
Kromitzki came up, and hearing what was the matter, said sharply: “Please do not raise any difficulties.” And Aniela, without saying a word, took her seat in the carriage.
Complete Works of Henryk Sienkiewicz Page 334