The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [182]
Izabela felt breathless and there was a pain in her heart. However, she mastered herself: ‘You know my father is to get thirty thousand roubles… Apart from that (she said this without thinking) we shall be getting ten thousand a year. Your small sum will not disappear — surely you understand that?’
‘How ten thousand?’ the Jew asked, and raised his head impudently.
‘What do you mean — “how”?’ she replied indignantly, ‘interest on our fortune…’
‘From thirty thousand?’ the Jew interrupted a smile, thinking she wanted to trick him.
‘Yes.’
‘My apologies, miss,’ Spigelman replied ironically, ‘I have been making money a long time but I never heard of no such interest. On thirty thousand His Excellency may get three thousand, even then on a very dubious mortgage. But what’s it to me? My business is to get my money back. For when the rest come tomorrow, they will be better than David Spigelman, and when His Excellency pays off the rest at interest, I’ll have to wait a year …’
Izabela rose: ‘I assure you you will get your money tomorrow,’ she exclaimed, eyeing him contemptuously.
‘Word of honour?’ asked the Jew, relishing her beauty.
‘On my word, you will all be paid off tomorrow. All of you, down to the last penny.’
The Jew bowed low and retreated backwards as he left the study: ‘I’ll see if your ladyship keeps her word,’ he said as he left. Old Mikołaj was in the hall again and opened the door for Spigelman with such grace that the latter shouted at him from the stairs: ‘What are you falling over yourself for, Mr Butler?’
Pale with fury, Izabela hurried to her father’s bedroom. Flora stopped her. ‘Leave him alone, Bela,’ she said imploringly, ‘your father is so ill …’
‘I assured that man all our debts will be paid and they must be. Even if it prevents us from going to Paris …’
Tomasz, in slippers and without his frock-coat, was just walking about in his bedroom when his daughter entered. She observed that her father looked very poorly, his shoulders were bowed, his grey whiskers drooping, even his eyelids bowed, and he was as bent as an old man, but these observations only prevented her from an outburst of anger, not from settling the matter.
‘I apologise, Bela, for being in this undress … What has happened?’
‘Nothing, father,’ she replied, controlling herself, ‘some Jew was here …’
‘It must have been Spigelman … He’s as troublesome as a mosquito …’ Tomasz exclaimed, clutching his forehead, ‘let him come back tomorrow …’
‘That is precisely what he is going to do — he and the other …’
‘Good … very good … I have long been thinking of settling with them. Well, thank Heaven it has cooled off somewhat …’
Izabela was astounded by her father’s tranquillity and wretched appearance. It was as though he had gained several years in age since that afternoon. She sat and looking around the bedroom asked, as if reluctantly: ‘Do you owe them a great deal, papa?’
‘Not much … a trifle … a few thousand roubles.’
‘Are these the promissory notes which my aunt mentioned that someone had bought up last March?’
Mr Łęcki stopped in the middle of the room, cracked his fingers and exclaimed: ‘O goodness! I had quite forgotten them!’
‘So we have debts of more than a few thousand?’
‘Yes, yes … a little more. I think it must be from five to six thousand. I’ll ask that honest fellow Wokulski, he’ll see to it for me …’
Despite herself, Izabela was shocked: ‘Spigelman says,’ she went on after a moment, ‘that it is impossible to get ten thousand interest on our fortune. Three thousand at the most, and then on a dubious mortgage …’
‘He’s right — on a mortgage, but commerce is not mortgages. Commerce can provide thirty per cent … But how does Spigelman know about our interest rate?’ Tomasz asked, wondering a little.
‘I told him without meaning to,’ Izabela explained, blushing.
‘That was a pity … a great pity … it is better not to mention such matters.’
‘Is it anything bad?’ she whispered.
‘Bad?