The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [140]
‘Father, I think it would be proper to invite this gentleman to dinner…I should like to be better acquainted with him…
‘For some days I have been wanting to ask you the same thing,’ Tomasz replied, gratified, ‘it is not right to stick too closely to etiquette with such a useful man.’
‘Naturally,’ Izabela put in, ‘after all, we admit faithful servants to some degree of intimacy…’
‘I adore your common sense and tact, Bela,’ Tomasz exclaimed, and in his delight he kissed her, first on the hand, then on the brow.
XV
How a Human Soul is Devastated by Passion and by Common Sense
AFTER Wokulski received Łęcki’s invitation to dinner, he hurried out into the street.
The little office had stifled him, and the conversation with Rzecki, in which the clerk warned him and commented, seemed perfectly fatuous: for was it not fatuous that a frigid old bachelor, who believed in nothing but the shop and the Bonapartes, should accuse him of madness? ‘Am I wrong, then,’ Wokulski thought, ‘in loving her? Perhaps it has come a little too late, but I have never allowed myself such a luxury in my life. Millions of other people fall in love, the whole sensate world loves, why should I alone be forbidden this? And if this is justified, then surely so is everything I do. Any man who wants to marry must have a fortune, so I have acquired one. A man must draw close to the woman he has chosen; I have done so. He must be concerned for her material well-being, and protect her from enemies; I am doing both. Have I harmed anyone in this fight for happiness? Have I neglected my duties to society or my neighbours? Those well-beloved neighbours of mine are also society—which has never concerned itself with me, but has put up all sorts of obstacles, and keeps demanding sacrifices from me…
‘But it is precisely what they call ‘madness’ that makes me carry out these otherwise imaginary duties. Were it not for this, I’d be wrapped up in my books like a worm, and several hundred people would have less income. So what do they expect of me?’
Walking in the open air calmed him; he reached Aleje Jerozolimskie and turned towards the Vistula. The brisk east wind enveloped him and aroused certain indefinable feelings reminiscent of childhood. Walking along Nowy Świat he felt he was a child again, and could feel the surging pulse of youthful blood. He smiled to see a sand-carter and his load weighing down a wretched nag and its long cart, while a spectre begging seemed to him a very pleasant old lady. He enjoyed the whistle of a factory, and would have liked to talk to a crowd of delightful little boys who were throwing stones at passing Jews from a roadside hill.
He stubbornly pushed away any thoughts of the letter and tomorrow’s visit to the Łęckis; he wanted to stay level-headed, yet his passion overwhelmed him: ‘Why have they invited me?’ he wondered, feeling a slight inward uneasiness. ‘Izabela wants to get to know me better…But surely what they are doing is making it clear that I may marry her! They would be blind or idiots if they hadn’t noticed what my feelings are towards her.’
He began to shiver so that his teeth chattered: but then common sense stirred within him: ‘Just a moment, pray! It’s a long way from one dinner-party and one visit to a close acquaintance. After all, less than one close acquaintance in a thousand leads to a proposal of marriage: and less than one proposal in ten is accepted, and of these only half end in marriage. A man would therefore have to be an out-and-out lunatic to think, even during close acquaintance with a woman, of marriage, when there is only one chance in twenty thousand of it coming off. Is that clear, or not?’
Wokulski had to admit it was. If every acquaintance led to marriage, then every woman would have some dozen husbands, every man some dozen wives, priests would not be able to handle the ceremonies, and the whole world would become a lunatic asylum. Whereas he, Wokulski,