The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [214]
‘Hm …’ the agent muttered, ‘well, announce us to the old lady.’
We went into the kitchen, where a pail filled with soap suds and children’s underclothing stood. A child’s drawers, blouses and stockings were hanging up to dry on a line near the hearth. (It is always obvious when there’s a child in the house.)
We heard the voice of an elderly lady through the half-open door: ‘With the agent? …Some gentleman?’ said the invisible lady, ‘perhaps it is Ludwik, for I was just dreaming …’
‘Come in, if you please,’ said the servant, opening the door to a little drawing-room.
It was a small, pearly-coloured room, with emerald-green furniture, a piano, both windows full of pink and white flowers, prizes of the Fine Arts Society on the walls, a lamp with tulip-shaped glass on the table. After the tomb-like drawing-room of the Baroness Krzeszowska with its furniture done up in dark covering, it seemed more cheerful here. The room looked as if a guest was expected. But the chairs, too symmetrically placed around the table, showed that the guest had not yet arrived.
After a moment, a lady advanced in years came in, wearing an ash-coloured dress. I was struck by the almost white colour of her hair around a thin face which was not, however, too old, and very regular. The lady’s features were somehow familiar.
Meanwhile, the agent had undone two buttons on his stained frock-coat and, having bowed with the elegance of a true gentleman, said: ‘May I present Mr Rzecki, the plenipotentiary of our landlord, and my colleague …’
We glanced at each other. I admit I was somewhat startled by our suddenly being ‘colleagues’. Wirski noticed this and added, with a smile: ‘I say “colleague” because we have both been abroad and seen interesting things …’
‘So you have been abroad? Fancy that!’ the old lady exclaimed.
‘In 1849, and somewhat later,’ I interposed.
‘And did you ever come across Ludwik Stawski, by any chance?’
‘Come, madam,’ Wirski exclaimed, smiling and bowing, ‘Mr Rzecki was abroad thirty years ago, and your son-in-law left only four years ago …’
The old lady made a gesture as if to chase away a fly: ‘That’s so,’ she said, ‘whatever am I talking about? But I keep on thinking about Ludwik.…Pray be seated.’
We did so, while the former landowner bowed again to the imposing old lady, and she to him. Not until now did I observe that the ash-coloured dress was darned in many places, and a strange melancholy came upon me at the sight of these two people, one in a stained frock-coat, the other in a darned dress, behaving like princes. The levelling plough of time had passed over them both …
‘I expect you know about our trouble,’ said the imposing lady, turning to me, ‘my son-in-law was involved in a very terrible matter four years ago …Most unjustly …Some dreadful woman was murdered …Oh, dear, I don’t like to speak of it …Enough that someone close warned him he was suspected. Most unjustly, Mr …’
‘Rzecki,’ the former landowner put in.
‘Most unjustly, Mr Rzecki …Well, and the poor fellow fled abroad. Last year the real murderer was found out, Ludwik’s innocence established, but what of that, when he hasn’t written to us for two years?’
Here she leaned towards me and whispered: ‘Helena, my daughter, Mr …’
‘Rzecki,’ the agent exclaimed.
‘My daughter, Mr Rzecki, is being ruined …frankly, she is ruining herself by advertising in foreign newspapers, but nothing ever comes of it…She’s still a young woman, Mr …’
‘Rzecki,’ Wirski prompted.
‘A young woman, Mr Rzecki, not at all plain …’
‘Perfectly lovely,’ the agent interrupted warmly.
‘I was quite like her,’ the elderly lady went on with a sigh, nodding to the former landowner, ‘here’s my daughter, sir, not at all plain, still young, with a little child …and perhaps longing for others. Although, Mr Wirski, I vow I have never heard a word of complaint from her …She suffers in silence, but I understand how she suffers …I too was thirty when …’
‘Which of us wasn’t, once?’ the agent sighed deeply.
The door squeaked and in ran