The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [133]
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…
The terrible combination of these two old men haunted Izabela night and day. Sometimes it seemed to her she was doomed, and that Hell had opened up for her while she was still alive.
At such times Izabela thought of Wokulski much as a drowning man looks towards a light on the distant shore. And in her unutterable bitterness, she felt a touch of relief to know that an unusual man, much spoken of in society, was, after all, mad about her. Then she recalled famous travellers, or wealthy American industrialists who had laboured years in mines and had sometimes been pointed out to her at a distance in Parisian drawing-rooms.
‘Look there,’ some Countess or other, recently let out of a convent school, would twitter, tipping her fan in a certain direction, ‘do you see that man who looks just like an omnibus conductor? He’s said to be a great man who discovered something or other, though I don’t know what—a gold mine, or the North Pole…I don’t recollect his name, but a margrave from the Academy assures me that this man lived ten years at the Pole—or no, he lived underground. A terrible man! In his shoes I’d have died of fright, I assure you! Wouldn’t you?’
If only Wokulski had been such a traveller, or at least a miner who had made millions by living underground for ten years! But he was only a tradesman, and in haberdashery at that! He did not even know English; the parvenu in him was continually being shown up, and as a youth he had served food to restaurant customers. Such a man might at best be a good adviser, perhaps an invaluable friend (in private, when there were no visitors). Perhaps even…a husband, for people do suffer the most terrible misfortunes. But as a lover—that was simply absurd. If necessary, even the most aristocratic of ladies will take a mud-bath: but only a madman would enjoy it.
The fourth phase. Izabela met Wokulski several times in the Łazienki park, and had even deigned to return his bow. Amidst the greenery and beside the statues, this coarse man seemed yet again different from the man behind a shop counter. Suppose he had an estate, with a park, palace, and lake? Admittedly he was a parvenu, but he was supposed