The Doll (104 page)

‘Yet the Baroness has called us swindlers.'

The Baron rose. ‘Forgive me, sir,' he said, ‘in my wife's name I solemnly beg your pardon, and apart from any satisfaction you gentlemen may require, I will do all I can to redress the wrong done to Mr Wokulski…Yes, sir. I will pay visits to all my friends and tell them that Mr Wokulski is a gentleman, that he paid eight hundred for the mare, and that we have both been the victims of the intrigues of that scoundrel Maruszewicz. The Krzeszowskis, sir…Mr—?'

‘Rzecki.'

‘My dear Mr Rzecki, the Krzeszowskis never blackened anyone's reputation. They may have erred, but in good faith, Mr—?'

‘Rzecki.'

‘My dear Mr Rzecki…'

On this, the conversation ended; for the old clerk, despite the Baron's insistence, did not want and indeed refused to listen to any excuses, or even to see the Baroness. After showing Rzecki to the door, the Baron, unable to restrain himself, exclaimed to Leon: ‘Those tradesmen are honest folk, all the same…'

‘They have the cash, Your Excellency, and the credit,' Leon replied.

‘You fool!…Don't we have honour, because we've no credit?'

‘We do, Your Excellency, but of a different sort.'

‘Not a tradesman's sort, I hope.'

And he ordered his going-out clothes.

Rzecki went straight to Wokulski from the Baron and told him of Maruszewicz's machinations, of the Baron's contrition and finally handed him the forged papers, advising him to start a lawsuit. Wokulski listened gravely, even nodded his head, but was looking goodness knows where and thinking goodness knows what. The old clerk, noticing there was nothing to detain him, said goodbye to his Staś and remarked as he left: ‘I see you are infernally busy, so you'll do best if you put the matter in the hands of your lawyer at once.'

‘Very well…very well…' Wokulski replied, not realising what Ignacy had said. At this precise moment, he was thinking of the castle ruins at Zasław, where he had seen tears in Izabela's eyes for the first time: ‘How noble she is!…What delicacy of feeling! It will be long before I can get to know all the treasures of that beautiful soul.'

He called on Mr Łęcki twice a day, or at least went into society where he was likely to find Izabela, to gaze at her and exchange a few words. At present this sufficed him, but he dared not think of the future. ‘It seems to me I'll die at her feet,' he told himself, ‘well, and what of it? I'll die gazing at her, and will perhaps be able to see her for all eternity. Who knows whether the life to come doesn't close in a man's last feeling?' And he recited Mickiewicz:

A few days later, Baron Krzeszowski called on him. ‘I've been here twice,' he cried, fidgeting with his eye-glasses which were apparently his only care in life.

‘Have you?' asked Wokulski. Suddenly he recollected Rzecki's tale, and that he'd found two of the Baron's visiting cards on the table only the day before.

‘Can you guess why I'm here, sir?' said the Baron. ‘Mr Wokulski, am I to apologise to you for an involuntary injustice?'

‘Say no more, Baron,' Wokulski interrupted, embracing him, ‘it's nothing. In any case, even if I made two hundred roubles by bargaining over your mare, would I need to hide the fact?'

‘That's so!' replied the Baron, clutching his forehead, ‘fancy my not thinking of that earlier…Apropos profit, couldn't you show me some way to get rich fast? I urgently need a hundred thousand roubles within a year.'

Wokulski smiled.

‘You smile, cousin (I suppose I may begin to call you that?)—you smile, yet you yourself have made millions in the course of two years, and honestly too.'

‘Not quite so much,' Wokulski added, ‘but in any case, that fortune was not worked for—it was won. I won a dozen or more times by doubling my stakes each time like a card-player, and my only virtue was that I played with unmarked cards.'

‘Luck again!' cried the Baron, plucking off his eye-glasses. ‘I, cousin, don't have a pennyworth of luck. I gambled away half my fortune, ladies of easy virtue devoured the other half—there's nothing left but to put a bullet through my brains. No, I definitely have no luck! Look, now…I thought Maruszewicz would seduce the Baroness. Then I might have had some peace and quiet at home. How tolerant she would be towards my own little misdemeanours! But what happened? The Baroness wouldn't dream of deceiving me, while a prison cell awaits that fool. Pray ensure that he's locked up, for his rascally ways are beginning to bore even me. So,' he concluded, ‘we're in agreement. I'd only add that I have visited all my acquaintances whom those incautious remarks of mine about the mare may have reached, and have explained the matter in the utmost detail…Let Maruszewicz go to prison; it's the most appropriate place for him, and his absence will mean a few thousand roubles a year to me…I also visited Mr Tomasz and Miss Izabela, and explained our misunderstanding to them. It's dreadful, the way that scoundrel could squeeze money out of me! Although I haven't had a penny for a year, he was always borrowing from me. A scoundrel with genius! I feel that if they don't put him to hard labour, I'll never rid myself of him. Au revoir, cousin!'

Less than ten minutes had elapsed after the Baron's departure when the servant announced to Wokulski some gentleman who wished urgently to see him, but refused to give his name. ‘Can it be Maruszewicz?' Wokulski thought.

In fact Maruszewicz entered, pale, with glittering eyes. ‘Sir!' he said in a gloomy voice, closing the study door, ‘you see before you a man who has made up his mind…'

‘What have you decided?'

‘To end it all. This is a difficult moment, but there's no help for it. My honour…' he paused, then went on indignantly, ‘I could kill you first, of course, as you are the cause of my misfortunes.'

‘Well, don't stand on ceremony,' said Wokulski.

‘You joke, but I really do have a gun, and am prepared…'

‘Show your preparedness, then.'

‘Sir! This is not the way to speak to a man on the brink of the grave. If I came here, it was only to prove to you that despite the error of my ways, I have a noble heart.'

‘And why are you standing on the brink of the grave, pray?'

‘To preserve my honour, which you wish to strip me of?'

‘Come, preserve that valuable treasure,' replied Wokulski, and he produced the fatal documents from his desk. ‘Are these the papers you're worried about?'

‘How can you ask? You are making mock of my despair.'

‘Look here, Mr Maruszewicz,' said Wokulski, glancing over the papers, ‘I might at this moment tell you a few home truths, or leave you in uncertainty for a while. But as we are both grown men…'

He ripped up the papers and handed the pieces to Maruszewicz: ‘Keep these as a souvenir.'

Maruszewicz fell on his knees before him. ‘Sir!' he cried, ‘you have saved my life…My gratitude…'

‘Don't be silly,' Wokulski interrupted, ‘I was perfectly at rest regarding your life, just as I am certain that sooner or later you'll end up in prison. The point is that I don't want to facilitate that journey for you.'

‘Sir, you are merciless,' Maruszewicz replied, mechanically dusting down his trousers. ‘A single cordial word, a single affectionate handclasp might have set me on a new path. But you can't bring yourself to do it.'

‘Well, good-day, Mr Maruszewicz. All I ask is that you don't hit on the idea of signing my name, for if you do…'

Maruszewicz left in a huff.

‘It was for you, my dearest, that one prisoner has been spared. It's a terrible thing to imprison anyone, even a criminal and fraud,' Wokulski thought. For a while, a struggle went on within him. First he reproached himself because, having been in a position to rid the world of a scoundrel, he had failed to do so; then again he wondered what would happen to him, if he himself were imprisoned, torn away from Izabela for months, perhaps years: ‘How dreadful never to see her again! Who knows that mercy isn't the best justice?…How sentimental I'm becoming!'

A
LTHOUGH
the business with Maruszewicz had been settled in private, news of it spread. Wokulski told Rzecki, and asked him to cancel the Baron's supposed debt from the ledgers. Maruszewicz told the Baron, adding that the Baron ought not to be angry with him, since the debt had been cancelled and he, Maruszewicz, intended to turn over a new leaf. ‘I feel,' he said with a sigh, ‘that I'd be another man, if only I had three thousand a year. Vile world, in which men such as I have to be wasted…'

‘Come now, calm yourself,' the Baron pacified him, ‘I like you, but everyone knows very well that you're a scoundrel.'

‘Have you looked into my heart, Baron? Do you know what feelings are there? Oh, if only there were some tribunal that could read a man's soul, you'd all see which of us is the better: I—or those who judge and condemn me.'

As a result, both Rzecki and the Baron, as well as the Prince and several counts, learned of Maruszewicz's ‘latest prank'. All admitted that Wokulski had behaved nobly, though not like a man. ‘It was a very beautiful deed,' said the Prince, ‘but not in Wokulski's style. He looked to me like one of those men who constitute a force in society for creating good and punishing scoundrels. Any priest would have behaved the way Wokulski did with Maruszewicz…I'm afraid the man is losing his energy.'

As a matter of fact, Wokulski was not losing his energy, though he had changed in many respects. He did not, for instance, work at the store, even felt a dislike of it, because the name of a haberdashery tradesman lowered him in Izabela's eyes. On the other hand, he began working more earnestly with the company for trade with the Empire, because it was bringing in enormous profits, and this increased the fortune he hoped to offer Izabela.

Ever since the time when he had proposed and been accepted, he had been dominated by a strange wistfulness and sympathy. It seemed to him that he couldn't have done anyone any harm, and even that he couldn't have protected himself from injustice, providing it didn't affect Izabela. He felt an ungovernable need to do good to others. In addition to a bequest for Rzecki, he intended to give his former clerks Lisiecki and Klein four thousand roubles apiece, as compensation for the harm he had done them by selling the store to Szlangbaum. He also set aside some twelve thousand roubles as bonuses for the employees, janitors, labourers and drivers. He not only saw to it that Węgiełek had a riotous wedding, but added several hundred roubles to the sum promised the young couple. Because a daughter was born at this time to the carrier Wysocki, he stood as her godfather; and when the crafty father gave the child the name Izabela, Wokulski put away five hundred roubles for a dowry.

This name was very dear to him. Sometimes, when he was sitting alone, he took paper and pencil, and would write endlessly: ‘Izabela…Iza…Bela…' and then burn it, lest the name of his beloved fall into someone else's hands. He meant to buy a small estate outside Warsaw, to build a villa and call it ‘Izabelino'. He remembered how, during his travels in the Urals, a certain scholar who had discovered a new mineral sought his advice: how to name it? And he reproached himself that, though he had then not yet made Izabela's acquaintance, still it had not occurred to him to call it ‘izabelite'. Finally, reading in the newspapers of the discovery of a new planetoid, the naming of which was also the cause of some concern to its discoverer, he wanted to put up a huge prize for the astronomer who would discover a new heavenly body and call it: Izabela.

His overwhelming attachment to one woman did not, however, exclude thoughts of another. Sometimes he recalled Mrs Stawska who, as he knew, had been prepared to sacrifice everything for his sake, and he felt a sort of pang of conscience. ‘Well, what could I do?' he said. ‘Is it my fault I love one, while the other…If only she could forget me, and be happy.' In any case, he decided to ensure her future, and find out about her husband: ‘Let her not have to worry about tomorrow, at least. Let her have a dowry for the child.'

Every few days he saw Izabela in society, surrounded by young, middle-aged and old men. But he was no longer irritated by the men flirting, nor by her glances and smiles. ‘It's her nature,' he thought, ‘she can't look or smile differently. She's like a flower, or the sun, which involuntarily makes everyone happy, is beautiful in everyone's eyes.'

One day he received a telegram from Zasławek, summoning him to the Duchess's funeral. ‘She's dead, then…' he murmured, ‘what a pity about that fine woman…Why wasn't I present when she died?'

He was sorry, grew sad—but didn't go to the funeral of the old lady who had shown him so much kindness. He dared not part from Izabela even for a few days.

He knew very well, now, that he didn't belong to himself, that all his thoughts, feelings and longings, all his plans and hopes were anchored in this one woman. If she were to die, he would not need to do away with himself; his soul would fly after her of its own accord, like a bird that rests only a moment on a branch. Besides, he did not even speak to her of love, any more than we speak of the weight of our bodies, or of the air that surrounds and fills a man. If, during the course of a day, he happened to think of anything except her, then he would shake his head in amazement, like a man who has miraculously discovered himself to be in some unknown region. This wasn't love, it was ecstasy.