The Doll (39 page)

‘May I not even do that?' Wokulski interrupted.

‘Of course, of course,' the eminent lawyer agreed, affably, ‘you may indeed, but in doing so, you are only repeating former sins, which in any case are better committed by others. But that was not why I and the Prince and these Counts appealed to you, merely to warm up old dishes—but so that you should show us new ways.'

‘Let them quit the partnership, then,' Wokulski muttered, ‘I am not forcing them…'

‘They will do so,' said the lawyer, with a gesture, ‘if you make just one more mistake…'

‘Anyone would think I had already committed so many…'

‘Upon my word, you take the biscuit,' the lawyer said angrily, striking his knee, ‘do you know what Count Liciński, that wouldbe Englishman, with his “Dear me, yes,” is saying? He says: “Wokulski is a perfect gentleman, he shoots like Nimrod—but he is no director for commercial enterprises. One day he throws millions into industry, but tomorrow or the next day he will challenge someone to a duel, and risk everything…”'

Wokulski almost pushed his chair back. This charge had not even occurred to him. The lawyer saw the effect of his own words and decided to strike while the iron was hot: ‘So, my dear Stanisław, if you don't want to spoil such a promising beginning, pray do not go on like this. Above all—do not buy the Łęcki property. If you invest ninety thousand roubles in it, then the partnership will melt away like smoke. If people see you investing a large sum at six or seven per cent, they will lose confidence in the interest you promised them, and even…you understand me…they are ready to suspect…'

Wokulski jumped up from the desk: ‘I want no partnerships,' he cried, ‘I want no favours from anyone, it is I who grant them to others. If anyone does not trust me, let him check the entire business. He will find out I have not deceived him—but he will be no partner of mine. Counts and Princes have no monopoly of dreams…I have mine too, and do not like anyone interrupting them…'

‘Hush, hush, pray calm yourself, my dear Stanisław,' the lawyer implored, replacing him in his chair, ‘but you will not refrain from making the purchase?'

‘No, that property is of more value to me than any partnership with all the gentlemen in the world…'

‘Very well, very well…Then perhaps you will let someone else act for you? In the last resort I could even recommend an agent to you, so there would be no risk in securing the property. Most important, though, is not to discourage people. Once the aristocracy have gained an appetite for public affairs, they may become attached to them—and in a year or six months, you may become the nominal owner of the property too. Do you agree?'

‘So be it,' Wokulski replied.

‘Yes,' said the lawyer, ‘that will be best. If you buy the property yourself, you would even find yourself in an awkward position
vis-à-vis
the Łęckis. As a rule, we dislike those who are going to inherit anything from us—that's one thing. Then again—who would take his oath that various notions haven't begun taking shape in his heir's head? Suppose they thought he paid too much or too little for it? If too much—how dare he patronise us? If too little—he has insulted us…'

Wokulski scarcely heard the lawyer's last words, for he was absorbed by other thoughts, which dominated him still more strongly after the lawyer's departure. ‘So that's it,' he said to himself, ‘the lawyer is right. People are judging me, even passing sentence upon me; but they are doing it behind my back. I know nothing of it. Not until today have many details come to light. For a week already the merchants associated with me have had sour looks, and my opponents are triumphant. Something is amiss in the store, too—Ignacy walks about looking miserable, Szlangbaum is preoccupied. Lisiecki has grown more impertinent than ever before, as if he expects to leave soon. Klein has a wretched expression (a Socialist! He's angry on account of the races and the duel…), while that nincompoop Zięba is already beginning to fawn upon Szlangbaum…Perhaps he divines the future owner of the store in him? Oh, charming people, indeed…'

He stopped on the threshold of the office and beckoned to Rzecki; the old clerk was indeed somewhat abstracted, and did not look his master in the eye. Wokulski gave him a chair and after sitting a while in the cramped little room, he said: ‘Old fellow! Tell me frankly—what are people saying about me?'

Rzecki folded his arms: ‘Oh my, what aren't they saying?…'

‘Tell me outright,' Wokulski encouraged him.

‘Outright? Very well. Some say you are going out of your mind…'

‘Bravo!'

‘Others, that…others that you are about to commit a swindle…'

‘What the devil?…'

‘And everyone agrees you are going bankrupt, and very soon, too.'

‘As always,' Wokulski interrupted, ‘but what about you, Ignacy, what do you yourself think?'

‘I think,' he replied unhesitatingly, ‘that you have got yourself involved in some terrible trouble, from which you will not escape whole—unless you retreat in time, which, after all, you have enough sense to do…'

Wokulski burst out: ‘I will not retreat!' he exclaimed, ‘a thirsty man does not draw back from a well. If I am to perish, let me at least perish drinking…In any case, what is it you all want from me? Since childhood I have lived like a caged bird—in service, in prison, even in that unhappy marriage I sold myself into. But today, when my wings are opening, you all begin to hoot after me, like domestic geese at a wild one which has taken flight…What is some stupid shop or partnership to me? I want to live, I want…'

At this moment there was a knock at the study door. Łęcki's butler Mikołaj appeared with a letter. Wokulski seized it feverishly, tore the envelope open and read:

Wokulski felt so shaken he had to sit down. He read the note a second, third, fourth time…Finally he came to his senses. He replied to Mr Łęcki, and gave Mikołaj five roubles.

Ignacy had hurried into the shop for a few minutes, but when Mikołaj had gone, he returned to Wokulski and said, as if to start the conversation again: ‘All the same, dear Staś, consider the situation, and perhaps you will yourself draw back…'

Whistling softly to himself, Wokulski put on his hat and, with one hand on his old friend's arm: said, ‘Listen. Even if the earth were to give way before my feet—do you understand? Even if the heavens collapsed—I shall not draw back, do you understand? I would give my life for such happiness…'

‘What happiness?' Ignacy asked.

But Wokulski had already left by the back door.

S
INCE
Easter, Izabela had often thought about Wokulski, and in all her ponderings, one unusual feature had impressed her: this man kept appearing in an ever different light.

Izabela had many acquaintances and possessed a good deal of wit at characterising people. All her acquaintances, hitherto, had had the quality of being definable in a single word. The Prince was a patriot; his lawyer shrewd; Count Liciński posed as an Englishman; her aunt was proud; the Duchess was good; Ochocki was an eccentric, and Krzeszowski a card-player. In a word: a man was a talent or a vice, sometimes a merit, more often a title or fortune—which had a head, arms and legs, and dressed itself more or less fashionably.

On meeting Wokulski, she had for the first time made the acquaintance, not only of a new personality, but also of an unexpected phenomenon. It was impossible to define him in a single word, or even in several hundred words. He was unlike everyone else, and if it was at all possible to compare him to anything, then perhaps it was to a place through which one travels all day, and where valleys and mountains, woods and lakes, water and desert, villages and towns are to be found. And where too, beyond the mists of the horizon, some vague landscapes appear, unlike anything known before. She was amazed and wondered whether this was the play of an excited imagination—or was he really a supernatural being, or at least a super-drawing-room one.

Then she began to enumerate her experiences with him.

The first time she had not seen him at all, had only felt the approach of some immense shadow. He was someone who threw away a few thousand roubles for her aunt's charities and orphanages; then someone who played cards with her father at the club, and lost every day; then someone who bought up her father's promissory notes (perhaps that wasn't Wokulski, though?), then her dinner-service, and had then provided various items to decorate Christ's Grave at Easter.

This ‘someone' was a bold parvenu, who had pursued her for a year, staring at her in theatres and at concerts. He was a cynical brute who had made a fortune in dubious speculation in order to purchase a reputation for himself in society, and buy her, Miss Izabela Łęcka, from her father.

Of this period, she only recalled his coarse looks, red hands and brusque manners, which had seemed insufferable in comparison with the civility of other tradespeople, and simply laughable against that background of fans, travelling-bags, parasols, canes and haberdashery. He was a cunning, insolent tradesman who posed as a fallen minister in that shop of his. He was hateful, unspeakably hateful, for he had presumed to help them by buying the dinner-service and providing her father with money at cards.

Thinking of this today, Izabela plucked nervously at her dress. Sometimes she would throw herself upon the sofa and beat it with her fists, murmuring: ‘Scoundrel! Scoundrel!'

It filled her with despair to confront the poverty into which her house was now plunged. And to make matters worse, someone had torn the veil from her most intimate secrets, and had dared tend the wounds she would sooner have kept hidden from God Himself. She could have forgiven anything but this blow to her pride.

Now came a change of scene. A different man appeared, and told her frankly, without a shade of ambiguity, that he had bought the dinner-service to make money. In other words, he felt he had no right to support Izabela Łęcka, and if he did, it was not to seek fame or gratitude, or even to dare to think of the matter.

The same man had driven Mraczewski from his shop because he had ventured to speak maliciously of her. In vain had Izabela's enemies (Baron and Baroness Krzeszowski) set themselves up behind this young man; in vain had her aunt, the Countess, spoken for him—she, who rarely even said ‘Thank you' and still more rarely asked for anything! Wokulski had not yielded…But one little word from her, Izabela, had vanquished this inflexible man: not only did he yield, but he even gave Mraczewski a better post. Such submission is made not to a woman if she is not honoured…

All the same, it was a pity that at almost the same time a conceited parvenu had revealed himself in her admirer, when he tossed down that roll of imperials at the collection. How very mercantile that was! He did not understand English, either; he had no conception of a language that was fashionable!

Now—the third phase. She had seen Wokulski in her aunt's drawing-room on the first day of Easter, and noticed that he stood a whole head and shoulders above the rest of the company. The most aristocratic persons had sought his acquaintance, while he, that brutal parvenu, had actually avoided them. He had moved clumsily yet boldly, as if the drawing-room were his unquestioned property, and listened gloomily to compliments bestowed upon him. Then the Duchess, that most respectable of matrons, had summoned him to her and, after a few minutes of conversation, had burst into floods of tears…Could that have been the same parvenu, with the red hands?

Only now had Izabela noticed that Wokulski's face was unusual. He had clear and decisive features, hair that seemed to stand angrily on end, a small moustache and beard, the figure of a statue, a clear and penetrating look…Had this man possessed a large estate, instead of a shop, then he would have been very handsome: had he been born a prince, he would have been tremendously handsome. As it was, he reminded her of Trosti, of the colonel in the Rifle Brigade and—truly!—of her statue of the victorious gladiator.

By this time, almost everyone had drawn away from Izabela.

Admittedly, elderly gentlemen still heaped compliments upon her for her beauty and elegance, but the young men, particularly those with titles, or the rich, treated her very coldly and brusquely; and when she grew tired of solitude and banal phrases, and spoke to anyone in a more lively fashion, then he would glance at her with evident alarm, as if afraid she was about to seize him by the scruff of the neck and drag him to the altar there and then.

Izabela loved the world of drawing-rooms to distraction; she could only quit it for the grave, but as each year and month passed by, she despised people more and more: she found it inconceivable that a woman as beautiful, virtuous and well-bred as herself could be deserted by that world, simply because she had no money.

‘Dear God, such people!' she sometimes whispered, looking through the curtains at the passing carriages of dandies who turned away their heads from her windows on various pretexts, so as not to bow. Did they think, then, that she was awaiting them? Well, admittedly, she was…But then, hot tears came into her eyes: she bit her beautiful lips in fury and wrenched at the cords to pull the curtains across. ‘Dear God, such people!' she repeated, reluctant nevertheless to call them anything worse because, after all, they belonged to the great world. In her opinion, only Wokulski could properly be called a base wretch.

To intensify the mockery of Fate, only two admirers were now left of all her former suitors. She had no illusions about Ochocki: he was more interested in some flying-machine or other (what folly!) than in her. It was the marshal and the Baron who danced attendance upon her, though without intruding excessively. The marshal reminded her of a pig's carcass, such as she had sometimes seen in butchers' wagons in the street; while the Baron resembled some sort of untanned animal hide, great heaps of which might also be seen in carts. These two constituted her suite, perhaps even her wings if, as was said, she was an angel…