The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [104]
They went to the hillock from where the round well can be seen. Strollers surrounded them on all sides, but Ochocki did not mind them and, indicating a bench with his hat, said: ‘I have often read that a man with great aspirations is happy. I myself have unusual aspirations which only make me ludicrous and offend my nearest and dearest. Look at this bench…Here, at the beginning of June, I was sitting with my cousin and Flora. Some moon or other was shining, and even some nightingales were singing. I was thinking of something else. Suddenly my cousin said: ‘Do you know anything about astronomy, cousin?’
‘A little…’
‘Well then, tell me what star that is…’
‘I don’t know,’ I told her, ‘but one thing is certain—we shall never reach it. Man is fastened to the earth like an oyster to a rock. At this moment,’ Ochocki went on, ‘an idea or notion came to me. I forgot my beautiful cousin and began thinking about flying machines. And because I have to walk about when thinking, I got up and left my cousin without a word…Next day Flora called me impertinent; Mr Łęcki said I was eccentric and my cousin refused to speak to me for a week…And if only I had thought of something! But nothing came, nothing at all, though I could have sworn that before I reached the well a general sketch of the flying machine would come to me…Stupid, wasn’t it?’
‘So they spend evenings here by moonlight and with nightingales singing?’ Wokulski thought, and felt a terrible anguish in his heart. Izabela is already in love with this Ochocki, or if she isn’t, it is only on account of his eccentricities. Well, she is right—he is a handsome man, and an unusual one.
‘Of course,’ Ochocki went on, ‘I said not a word of this to my aunt who, whenever she sews a button on my shirt, says: “Julian dear, please try to please Izabela, she is exactly the wife for you…Clever and beautiful: she alone can cure you of your visions.” But I wonder what sort of wife she would make me? If at least she could help me, then it would not be so bad…But as if she could leave a drawing-room for my laboratory! She is right, that is her proper environment: a bird needs air, a fish water…What a fine evening it is,’ he added after a moment, ‘I am excited tonight as rarely happens. But what is wrong, Mr Wokulski?’
‘I am rather tired,’ Wokulski replied dully. ‘We might sit down over there…’
They did so on the slope of the hillock, near the edge of the park. Ochocki leaned his chin on his knees and began pondering. Wokulski eyed him with a feeling in which admiration mingled with hatred: is he stupid or cunning? Why has he told me all this? Wokulski thought. But he had to admit that Ochocki’s talk had the same frankness and extravagance as his gestures and all his person. They had just met for the first time, yet already Ochocki was talking to him as if they had known one another since childhood.
‘I’ll get this over with,’ said Wokulski to himself, and he asked aloud, with a deep sigh: ‘So you are going to marry her, Mr Ochocki?’
‘I’d be insane if I did…’ the young man muttered with a shrug.
‘How so? After all, you like your cousin.’
‘Very much indeed, but that is not all. I’d marry her if I were certain that I would never achieve anything in science.’
In addition to hatred and admiration, joy now radiated within Wokulski’s heart. At this moment Ochocki rubbed his forehead as if waking up, looked at Wokulski and suddenly exclaimed: ‘But there…I was forgetting I had an important question to ask you.’
‘What does he want?’ Wokulski thought, privately admiring the wise look of his rival and his sudden change of tone. It was as though another man were speaking now.
‘I want to ask you a question—no, two questions, very personal, perhaps