The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [134]
Moreover, the Duchess was obviously lending him her support with her friend the Countess and her niece Izabela. Those hour-long strolls with her aunt in the Łazienki park were terribly tedious, and the gossip about fashions, charities and the marriages forthcoming in society was so trying that Izabela was even rather sorry Wokulski did not come up to her during the strolls and talk for fifteen minutes or so. For it is interesting for people in society to talk to that kind of person, and to Izabela even peasants, for example, looked as if they might be amusing, with their different way of speaking and thinking.
Of course, a haberdashery salesman, and one who had his own carriage, would not be as amusing as a peasant…
Be that as it may, Izabela was not disagreeably surprised to hear one day from the Duchess that she was to go with her and the Countess to the Łazienki park, and that she was going to stop Wokulski. ‘We are bored, let him amuse us,’ the old lady said.
And as they were driving to the park at one o’clock, the Duchess said to Izabela, with a meaningful smile: ‘I have a premonition we shall meet him somewhere here…’
Izabela blushed a little, and decided not to speak to Wokulski at all, or at least to treat him haughtily, so he would not imagine things. Of course there could be no mention of love in those ‘imagining things’. Izabela did not even wish to appear affable, however, ‘Fire is all very well, especially in winter,’ she thought, ‘but only at a distance.’
However, Wokulski was not in the park. ‘Can it be,’ Izabela said to herself, ‘that he didn’t wait? Or is he ill?’ She did not suppose that Wokulski had any more urgent business in the world than to meet her; if he were late, she decided not only to treat him haughtily, but even to show her displeasure. ‘If punctuality is the politeness of kings,’ she thought, ‘then it should be at least the obligation of a tradesman.’
Half an hour passed, an hour, then two…It was time to go home, but Wokulski had not appeared. Finally the ladies got into their carriage; the Countess, cold as always, the Duchess rather thoughtful, and Izabela vexed. Her indignation did not diminish when her father told her that evening that he had attended a meeting in the afternoon at the Prince’s, where Wokulski had put forward his plan for a vast commercial partnership, and aroused something very close to enthusiasm among the blasé magnates.
‘I have been feeling for a long time,’ Mr Łęcki concluded, ‘that this man’s help will free me from the tender care of my relatives, and I shall take my rightful place in society again.’
‘For the partnership, father,’ said Izabela, shrugging slightly, ‘money is required…’
‘That is why I am having my house put up for auction; I know my debts will consume some sixty thousand roubles, but even so, I will have at least forty thousand left.’
‘Aunt says that no one will pay more than sixty thousand for the house.’
‘Oh, your aunt…’ Tomasz was cross, ‘she always says things to hurt or humiliate me. Krzeszowska, who doesn’t care two bits for us, will give sixty thousand—that middle-class creature! But naturally your aunt agrees with her, because it is a matter touching my house, my position…’
He flushed and began breathing heavily; but as he did not want to lose his temper in his daughter’s presence, he kissed her on the brow and went to his study.
‘Perhaps my father is right,’ Izabela thought, ‘perhaps he really is more practical than all the people who judge him so harshly. After all, it was father who first made the acquaintance of that…Wokulski. But what a boor he is! He didn’t come to the Łazienki, though the Duchess must have engaged him to do so. Still, perhaps it was better so: we should have made a picture, if an acquaintance had seen us walking about with a haberdashery salesman…’
During the next few days, Izabela