"Where are you, Magdzia?" he asked indistinctly, and then said, with
long pauses: "Nothing will come of our workshop now ... I have no
arm ... I am going to follow after it ... why should I eat my bread
for nothing?"
His wife began to sob.
"Are you there, Magdzia?... Remember the children. The money for my
funeral is in the drawer--you know.... What a lot of flies there
are ... such a buzzing...."
He began to toss about restlessly, and breathed heavily, like a man
going off into a deep sleep. The doctor made a sign, and somebody took
the wife away almost by force and led her into the friendly
neighbour's cottage. In a few minutes the doctor followed her there;
the poor woman looked into his eyes and knelt down on the floor
weeping bitterly.
"Oh, sir, why have you left him? Is he so ill? Perhaps----"
"The Lord will comfort you," said the doctor.
The women crowded round to try and quiet her.
"Don't cry, Pani Gosławska. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.
Get up and don't cry--the children will hear you!"
The widow was almost choked with sobs.
"Let me be on the floor; I feel better here," she whispered. "May the
Lord give you all the good, since He has given me all the bad. I have
lost my Kazio! Oh, my beloved! why did you work so hard and suffer so
much? Only yesterday he said that we should be on our own in October,
and now he has gone to his grave instead of to his workshop!"
When the workmen entered into the dead man's home and began to move
the furniture about, and she realized that no noise would wake her
husband again, she gave a terrible shriek and fainted.
* * * * *
Gosławski's death subsequently became the cause of much disturbance at
the factory and of much trouble to Adler. A deputation waited upon him
on the Tuesday to ask permission for all the hands to go to the
funeral. Adler was furious, and would only allow a few delegates from
each room to go, announcing at the same time that every workman who
should leave the factory of his own accord would be fined. In spite of
this most of the hands left the mill, and Adler posted up a notice
that every workman who had absented himself would have his daily pay
halved and would be fined a rouble in addition. Whereupon the more
spirited among the hands urged their mates to strike, and one of the
stokers suggested the blowing up of the boiler. Adler would have taken
no notice of such talk at another time, but now he was beside himself.
He called their grumbling mutiny, demanded police from the town, drove
the leaders out of the mill and brought an action against the stoker.
When the workpeople saw these drastic measures, they were cowed into
submission. They ceased to threaten a strike, but asked for the
reinstatement of all the hands, and that at least a bone-setter should
be engaged with the money extorted by the fines.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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