The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [148]
Wokulski was so curious about what she was going to tell him and had lost so much control over himself, that he would certainly have killed anyone who interrupted them at this moment. He looked at Izabela in silence, and waited.
Izabela was confused; for a long time she had not experienced such chaotic feelings as now. Phrases ran through her mind: ‘He bought the dinner service…He deliberately lost at cards to my father…He insulted me …’ and then ‘He loves me…He bought the race-horse…He had a duel…He has eaten mutton with peers of the realm …’ Contempt, anger, admiration, liking—all created a turmoil in her soul, like drops of heavy rain: at the heart of this storm, however, there was the need for confiding her daily cares and her various doubts and her tragic love for the great actor to somebody else.
‘Yes, he could be—he will be—my confidant,’ thought Izabela, plunging a sweet look into Wokulski’s startled eyes and leaning forward slightly as if to kiss him on the brow. Then she was seized by irrational shame; she retreated into the depths of her armchair, blushed and slowly let her eyelashes sink, as if sleep were coming upon her. Watching the play of her features, Wokulski was reminded of the miraculous waves of a northern dawn, and of those strange melodies without words or music which sometimes resound in the human soul like echoes from a better world. Dreaming, he listened to the feverish tick of the grandfather clock and to the throbbing of his own pulses, and was surprised that two such rapid phenomena nevertheless dragged in comparison with the speed of his own thoughts.
‘If there is such a place as Heaven,’ he told himself, ‘then even the blessed cannot know greater happiness than I do at this moment.’
The silence persisted so long that it began to be improper. Izabela came to herself first: ‘You had a misunderstanding,’ she said, ‘with Baron Krzeszowski?’
‘About the races,’ Wokulski said hastily, ‘the Baron could not forgive me for buying his mare.’
She looked at him for a moment with a kindly smile: ‘After that, you had a duel which…made us very anxious,’ she added more softly, ‘and then the Baron apologised to me,’ she concluded quickly, looking away. ‘In the letter he wrote me on that occasion, the Baron spoke of you with great respect and friendship …’
‘I am very…very gratified …’ Wokulski stammered.
‘Why so, pray?’
‘That the circumstances should work out in such a manner…The Baron is a distinguished person.’
Izabela stretched out one hand and placed it for an instant in Wokulski’s feverish palm: ‘Despite the Baron’s unquestioned virtues, it is you alone I have to thank…Thank you…There are services which are not soon forgotten, and in truth,’ (here she began speaking more slowly and softly), ‘in truth, you would relieve my conscience by asking me for something that might compensate for your…civility.’
Wokulski let her hand go and straightened his back. He was so confused that he did not pay attention to the word ‘civility’.
‘Very well,’ he replied, ‘if you so wish, I’ll admit even to…services. But might I in return, make a request of you?’
‘Yes …’
‘Well, then,’ he said in a state of fever, ‘I ask for one thing—to serve you as long as my strength permits. Always, in everything…’
‘Oh come,’ Izabela interrupted, with a laugh, ‘that really is a stratagem. I want to repay one favour, you want to make me incur others. Is that right?’
‘What is wrong in it? Do you not, after all, accept services from servants?’
‘They are paid for it,’ she replied, looking