The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [153]
‘We’ll see how she gets on in her new surroundings,’ Wokulski said to himself, and took to his reading again.
At one o’clock that afternoon, Wokulski set off to call on Baron Krzeszowski, reproaching himself on the way that he had procrastinated so in visiting his former antagonist. ‘Never mind,’ he consoled himself, ‘after all, I could not intrude when he was ill. And I sent in a visiting-card.’
As he approached the house in which the Baron was lodging, Wokulski could not help noticing that the walls of the house were as unhealthily greenish as Maruszewicz was unhealthily yellowish, and that the blinds were up in Krzeszowski’s apartment. ‘Evidently he has recovered,’ he thought, ‘all the same, it won’t do to ask about his debts right away. I’ll mention them on my second or third visit; then I’ll pay off the usurers and the poor Baron will be able to breathe again. I cannot be indifferent towards a man who has apologised to Izabela.’
He went up to the second floor, and rang the bell. Steps were audible inside the apartment, but there was evidently no urgency about opening the door. He rang again. The footsteps and even the moving about of objects went on inside, but still no one came. In his impatience, he pulled the door-bell so hard he nearly wrenched it off. Only then did someone come to the door and start unfastening the chain in a phlegmatic manner, then turned the key and pulled back the bolt, muttering: ‘One of us, obviously…No Jew would ring like that…’
Finally the door opened and the footman Konstanty appeared.
Seeing Wokulski, he blinked, thrust out his lower lip and asked: ‘Well?’ Wokulski guessed he was not in the faithful servant’s good books, as the latter had been present at the duel.
‘Is the Baron at home?’ he asked.
‘The Baron’s in bed, poorly and is not receiving anyone because the doctor is with him.’
Wokulski produced his card and two roubles: ‘When will it be possible, more or less, to call?’
‘Not at present, not at all,’ Konstanty replied, somewhat more mildly, ‘my master is ill of a bullet wound, and the doctors have told him to go to warm countries, or leave town today or tomorrow.’
‘So it will not be possible to see him before he goes?’
‘Not at all. The doctors have forbidden him to see anyone. He’s feverish all the time.’
Two card tables, one with a broken leg and the other with a thickly bescribbled cloth, as well as two candlesticks with the stumps of wax candles, made Wokulski doubt the accuracy of Konstanty’s diagnosis. Nevertheless, he added another rouble and left, not at all pleased with his reception: ‘Perhaps the Baron simply didn’t want me to call? Then let him pay off the usurers himself, and keep them out by chaining, locking and bolting the door…’
He went home.
The Baron really intended to leave for the countryside and was not well, though he was not so poorly either. The wound in his cheek was very slow in healing: not because it was serious, but because the Baron’s health was very much undermined.
During Wokulski’s call, the Baron had been wrapped up like an old woman against the cold, but was not in bed, sitting instead in an armchair while with him, was not the doctor, but Count Liciński. He was just complaining to the Count of his state of health: ‘May the devil take this wretched way of life,’ he said, ‘my father left me nearly half a million roubles, but four diseases too, each worth a million. How inconvenient it is to be without eye-glasses! And just think, Count—the money has all gone but I still have the diseases. And as I have caught a few more diseases myself, and made new debts—the situation is clear. I’d have to send for the notary and for a coffin if I even scratched myself…’
‘Dear me, yes,’ the Count exclaimed, ‘though I don’t think you should waste money on notaries in such a situation.’
‘It’s the rent collectors who are really the ruin of me…’
The Baron irritably overheard the echoes reaching him from the hall as he talked, but could not make out who it was. Not until he heard the door close,