“To what place?”
“To St. Petersburg. I have business there; I will stay about two weeks.”
“I will give my answer on thy return.”
“Very well; to-day I will send thee the estimate of my oak in three sizes. To save the instalment!”
“And the conditions on which I will buy it.”
Here Mashko took leave and went out. Pan Stanislav hastened to his office. After a conversation with Bigiel, he decided, if the affair should seem practicable and profitable, to buy the oak alone. He could not account to himself why he felt a certain wonderful desire to be connected with Kremen. After business hours he thought also of what Mashko had said of Panna Plavitski. He felt that the man had told the truth, and that, with a woman of this kind, life might be not only safe and peaceful, but full of charm; he noticed, however, that in those meditations he rendered justice rather to the type of which Marynia was a specimen, than to Marynia in person. He observed also in himself a thousand inconsistencies; he saw that he felt a certain repugnance, and even anger, at the thought of loving any one or anything, or letting his heart go into bonds and knots, usually fastened so firmly that they were painful. At the very thought of this he was enraged, and repeated in spirit, “I will not; I have had enough of this! It is an unwholesome exuberance, which leads people only to errors and suffering.” At the same time he took it ill,—for example, that she did not love him with a certain exuberant and absolute love, and opened her heart to him only when duty commanded. Afterward, when he did not want love, he was astonished that it began to pall on him so easily, and that he desired Marynia far more when she was opposed, than now, when she was altogether inclined to him.
“All leads to this at last,” thought he: “that man himself does not know what he wants, or what he must hold to; that is his position. May a thunderbolt split it! Panna Plavitski has more good qualities than she herself suspects. She is dutiful, just, calm, attractive; my thoughts draw me toward her; and still I feel that Panna Plavitski is not for me what she once was, and that the devils have taken something that was in me. But what is it? As to the capacity for loving,” continued Pan Stanislav, in his monologue, “I have come to the conclusion that loving is most frequently folly, and loving too much folly at all times; hence I should now be content, but I am not.”
After a while it came to his mind that this was merely a species of weakness,—such, for example, as follows an operation in surgery, or an illness that a man has passed through,—and that positive life will fill out in time that void which he feels. For him positive life was his mercantile house. When he went to dine, he found Vaskovski and two servants, who winked at each other when they saw how the old man at times held motionless an uplifted fork with a morsel of meat on it, and fell to thinking of death, or talking to himself. Professor Vaskovski had for some time been holding these monologues, and spoke to himself on the street so distinctly that people looked around at him. His blue eyes were turned on Pan Stanislav for a while vacantly; then he roused himself, as if from sleep, and finished the thought which had risen in his head. “She says that this will bring her near the child.”
“Who says?” inquired Pan Stanislav.
“Pani Emilia.”