The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [125]
At seven, Konstanty and Maruszewicz could hardly wake him. The Baron simply would not get up, muttering that he preferred disgrace and dishonour to getting out of bed so early. Only a carafe of cold water brought him to his senses.
The Baron jumped out of bed, boxed Konstanty’s ears, cursed Maruszewicz and vowed inwardly to kill Wokulski. But when he was dressed, he went out into the street, saw the beautiful weather and imagined he was seeing the sunrise—then his hatred for Wokulski diminished, and he decided only to shoot him in the leg.
‘That’s it,’ he added after a moment, ‘I’ll graze him, and he will limp for the rest of his life and tell people he got his mortal wound in a duel with Baron Krzeszowski! That would take care of me…What have my dear seconds made of all this? If some merchant or other gets it into his head that he must shoot at me, at least let him do so when I am out for a walk, not in a duel…What a frightful position to be in! I can imagine my dear wife will tell everyone I fight duels with the tradesmen…’
The carriages drove up. The Baron and the ‘English’ Count got into one, the silent Egyptologist with the pistols and a surgeon into the second. They set off for Bielany, and a few minutes later were overtaken by the Baron’s valet, Konstanty, in a droshky. The faithful servant swore by heaven and earth, and promised he would charge his master double the expense of this jaunt. Yet he was uneasy.
In the Bielany woods, the Baron and his three companions found the other party already there, and they set off in two groups towards the thickets immediately overlooking the Vistula bank. Dr Szuman was irritable, Rzecki stiff, Wokulski gloomy. The Baron stroked his thin beard, eyed him attentively, and thought: ‘He must eat well, that tradesman fellow…Compared to him, I look like an Austrian cigar beside a bull. May the devil take me, though, if I don’t shoot over the fool’s head, or even not at all…That would be best.’
Then he suddenly recollected that the duel was for first blood, fell into a rage and decided to kill Wokulski on the spot, without more ado: ‘Let these Philistines learn once and for all not to challenge the likes of us to duels,’ he said to himself.
Some dozen paces away, Wokulski was walking to and fro between the pine-trees, like a pendulum. He was not thinking of Izabela now: he could hear the twittering birds which crowded the whole wood, and the splashing of the Vistula along its bank. Against the background of nature’s tranquil serenity, the rattle of the pistols and snap of drawn bolts resounded strangely. A ferocious animal had awakened in Wokulski: the whole world disappeared from before his eyes, all that remained was this one man, the Baron, whose corpse he was to drag to the feet of the insulted Izabela.
They took up their stand. The Baron was still troubled by uncertainty about what to do to this tradesman fellow, and finally decided to shoot him in the hand.
Such wild fury was depicted on Wokulski’s face that the ‘English’ Count thought in surprise: ‘This is more than a question of the mare, or even of a push at the races!’ The Egyptologist, hitherto silent, gave the word. The antagonists moved off, their pistols levelled. The Baron aimed at Wokulski’s left elbow, lowered his pistol and lightly touched the trigger. In the last moment his pince-nez slipped, the pistol shifted a hair’s breadth, went off—and the bullet flew several centimetres wide of Wokulski’s arm. The Baron covered his face with the barrel of his pistol, and looking around it, thought: ‘The fool will miss…He is aiming at my head.’
Suddenly he felt a powerful blow on his temple: there was a roaring in his ears, black dots flickered before his eyes. He dropped his pistol