The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [109]
‘Goodnight, sir, thank you kindly.’ The servant went out.
Wokulski felt completely sober. Ochocki and his flying-machine had lost their significance. Once again he felt an influx of the energy he had felt before leaving for Bulgaria. Then he had been going to make his fortune, but today he had the opportunity of throwing away his share for Izabela’s sake. Mrs Meliton’s phrase stuck in his memory: ‘…caught between poverty and marriage to the marshal…’ No, she would never find herself in that situation…And she would not be elevated by some Ochocki or other, with the help of a machine, but by himself…He felt such strength within him that had the ceiling started to collapse, he could have kept it in place with his own two hands.
He took his notebook out of the desk and began reckoning: ‘A race-horse—nothing to it…I’ll spend a thousand roubles at most, of which at least part will return…The house is sixty thousand, Izabela’s dowry thirty thousand, making a total of ninety thousand. A trifle…almost a third of my fortune. Still, I’ll get back sixty thousand roubles for the house, if not more. Well! I must persuade Łęcki to entrust me with the thirty thousand, I’ll pay him five thousand a year interest. Surely that will be sufficient for him? I’ll put the horse out to stables, they can enter it for the race. Maruszewicz will be here at ten, at eleven I’ll go to the lawyer…I’ll get the money at eight per cent—seven thousand two hundred a year: and will certainly get fifteen per cent. Yes, and the house will bring in some income…But what will my partners say? As if that mattered! I have forty-five thousand a year, which will decrease by twelve or thirteen thousand, leaving thirty-two thousand roubles. My wife need never be bored…During the year I’ll dispose of the house again, even if I lose thirty thousand—which in any case will not be a loss, but her dowry…’
Midnight. Wokulski began undressing. Influenced by this clearly defined aim, his tense nerves calmed down. He turned off the light, lay down and looked at the curtains, which were stirred by a breeze passing through the open windows, then fell asleep like a log.
He rose at seven, so brisk and cheerful that the servant noticed it as he began moving about the room. ‘What is it?’ Wokulski asked.
‘Nothing, sir…only, if you please, the porter—he don’t dare trouble you to be godfather to his child at the christening.’
‘Ah! Did he ever ask if I wanted him to have the child?’
‘He never asked because you was at the war then.’
‘Very well, I’ll be godfather.’
‘Perhaps then sir, you’ll give me that old frock-coat, otherwise how can I go to the christening?’
‘Very well, take the frock-coat…’
‘And the mending of it, sir?’
‘Oh, don’t bother me…have it done, though I don’t know what…’
‘You see, sir, I want a velvet collar…’
‘Then have a velvet collar put on it, and go to the devil…’
‘You don’t have to be angry, sir, it’s in your honour not mine,’ the servant replied, and slammed the door as he went out. He felt that his master was in an exceptionally good humour.
Dressed, Wokulski sat down to his accounts and drank tea. When he had finished, he wrote a telegram to Moscow for a bill for a hundred thousand roubles, and another to his agent in Vienna, instructing him to postpone certain purchases.
A few minutes before ten Maruszewicz came in. The young man looked still more run-down and bashful than the day before. ‘Allow me’, said Maruszewicz after a few words of greeting, ‘to lay my cards on the table. This is concerned with an original proposition.’
‘I am prepared to listen to even the most original…’
‘Madame the Baroness Krzeszowska (I am a friend of both her and the Baron)’, said the run-down young man, ‘wishes to dispose of a race-horse. I at once guessed that you, with your social life, may wish to own a good horse. There’s an excellent chance of winning, for only two other horses, much weaker, are running in the race.’
‘Why does not the Baroness race the horse herself?’
‘She?…She’s a mortal enemy of racing!’
‘Why did she buy the horse, then?’
‘For two reasons,