He placed the lamp on the writing-table, lighted a cigar, and began to write on a large sheet of paper: first a long heading, then he continued quickly and evenly. Adler felt sure that the judge was writing his will.
Ferdinand had already fought several duels, considering them a kind of dangerous amusement. But now he became conscious that a duel could also be a very serious affair, for which one ought to be properly prepared. But how?
There was this man writing a will!
He lay down on his sofa. While he was distinctly conscious of all the noises going on in the corridor, the remembrance of an incident in his early boyhood, when the mill had not long been started, came back vividly to him. He had noticed a small door fastened with a nail in the engine-room. This door used to interest and alarm him. One day he took courage, pressed the bent nail aside, and opened the door. He looked into a small recess; there were a few copper pipes, a coil of rope and a broom.
The memory of this little adventure came back to him whenever he was going to fight a duel, usually at the moment when the seconds had measured the distance and he saw the barrel of his adversary's pistol pointed at him and felt the trigger under his own finger. The mysterious door of Destiny, which is sometimes opened by a bullet, had so far not revealed anything remarkable to him—merely a wounded adversary or else a score of champagne bottles emptied with jolly companions. But what had these duels amounted to? One shot on either side, for the sake of a prima-donna, or a bet at the races, or a jostle in the streets.
To-morrow's affair was of a different kind. Here was he, the son of an unpopular father, coming forward to fight a man respected by everybody, and as it were the representative of an offended community. On the side of his adversary were all those who had the courage to stand up against Adler, all the workpeople and most of the officials at the factory. And who was on his side?
Not his father, for he would not have allowed him to fight; not the companions of his dissipations, for they felt uncomfortable, and were only waiting for an opportunity to desert him. Should he wound Zapora, he would give his enemies fresh cause for indignation; should he be wounded himself, people would say it was a just punishment on him and his father.
What was the meaning of it all? He only wanted to enjoy life along with everybody else. He had been used to being treated with exquisite manners by his companions; people had been indulgent, timid with him. This man, who flung impertinences in his face—where did he spring from so suddenly? Why had there been no one to warn him? Why should the follies of his youth come to such a tragic end?
The mysterious door assumed a sinister aspect. He had a presentiment that this time it would not conceal pipes, ropes and a broom, but a notice on a coffin, which he had once seen in an undertaker's shop in Warsaw: "Lodgings for a single person."
"The undertaker must have been a wag," Ferdinand thought.