When he entered his lodgings and saw Litka’s photograph, he exclaimed, “My dearest kitten!” Up to the moment of sleeping he thought of Marynia with pleasure, and with the calmness of a man who feels that some great problem of life has been settled decisively, and settled well. For, in spite of Bukatski’s words, he was convinced that, since he was going to marry, all would be decided and ended by that one act.
CHAPTER XXX.
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.”