The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [110]
‘In other words?’
‘Eight hundred roubles,’ the young man replied, looking away.
‘Where is the horse?’
‘At Miller’s stables.’
‘And the papers?’
‘Here they are,’ the young man replied more cheerfully, taking a packet of papers from his coat-pocket.
‘Perhaps we can finish the transaction at once?’ Wokulski asked, glancing through them.
‘Immediately…’
‘And after lunch we might go and have a look at the horse.’
‘Oh, by all means…’
‘Please sign this receipt,’ Wokulski said, and took money out of his desk.
‘Eight hundred? Of course…’ the young man said. He took a sheet of paper and began writing. Wokulski noticed that the hands of the young man were trembling slightly and that his expression had altered. The receipt was written out formally. Wokulski laid down eight hundred roubles and put away the papers.
A little later the young man, still embarrassed, left the study. As he ran downstairs he thought, ‘I am a wretch, a wretch…But in a few days I’ll give the old woman the two hundred roubles and say Wokulski added them when he saw the qualities of the horse. After all, he’ll never meet—either the Baron or his wife, not that…tradesman. He told me to write the receipt myself—capital! How easy it is to recognise a tradesman and a parvenu. Oh, I am being cruelly punished for all my foolishness…’
At eleven, Wokulski went out, intending to call on his lawyer. But scarcely had he emerged from the gate than three droshky drivers whipped up their horses at the sight of his light-coloured topcoat and white hat. One was driving a hackney-cab, another an open droshky, while the third, as he tried to pass them, almost knocked over a porter carrying a heavy cupboard. An uproar started, a fight with whips, the whistling of policemen, people ran up, and in consequence, the two most spirited drivers were taken off in their own droshkies to the police-station. ‘A bad omen…’ Wokulski thought, then suddenly clapped a hand to his forehead. ‘A fine business,’ he said to himself, ‘I’m on the way to see the lawyer and buy a house without knowing what the house looks like, or even where it is.’
He went back to his apartment and, with his hat on and walking stick under his arm, began to go through the street-directory. Fortunately he had heard that the Łęckis’ house was somewhere in the vicinity of Aleje Jerozolimskie; nevertheless, several minutes passed before he found the street and number. ‘I should have looked well,’ he thought, going downstairs, ‘one day I am persuading people to entrust their money to me, and on the next buying a pig in a poke. Of course I would at once have embarrassed either myself—or Izabela.’
He jumped into a passing droshky and told the driver to go towards Aleje Jerozolimskie. He got out on a corner and walked down one of the side-streets.
The day was fine, the sky almost cloudless, the pavements free of dust. The windows of houses were open, some just washed: a lively breeze teased the skirts of servant girls, making it plain to see that the servant-girls of Warsaw find it easier to clean windows on the third floor than to wash their own feet. In many apartments pianos were playing; in many yards barrel-organs or the monotonous cries of sand-vendors, sweepers, rag-and-bone men and other street traders were to be heard. Here and there a door-keeper in a blue blouse was yawning in a gateway; several dogs trotted down the street (there was no traffic); little children were playing at pulling the bark off the chestnut trees, whose bright green leaves had not yet darkened.
All in all, the street looked clean, peaceful and gay. At the far end a fragment of the horizon and a clump of trees could even