The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [266]
Learning Izabela was to arrive that day, Mrs Wąsowska forced Wokulski to come riding. When she saw a dust-cloud on the high-road near the woods, raised by her rival’s carriage, she turned aside into the fields and there made a great scene over her saddle, which failed.
Meanwhile, Izabela drove up to the palace. All the guests received her on the porch, and greeted her in almost identical terms: ‘You know,’ the Duchess whispered, ‘Wokulski is here.’
‘All we wanted was you,’ cried the Baron, ‘for Zasławek to be a perfect paradise. For we already have a very agreeable companion and eminent guest …’
Felicja Janocka took Izabela aside and, with tears in her voice, began: ‘You know, Wokulski is here. Ah, if only you knew what sort of man he is … But I’d sooner say nothing, or you too will think I’m interested in him … Well, just fancy, Mrs Wąsowska told him to go riding with her, just the two of them … If you’d seen how the poor man blushed! So did I. For I went fishing with him too, though only as far as the pond, and Julian was with us. As for going out riding with him! Not for anything in the world! I’d sooner die …’
Having evaded these greetings, Izabela went to the room appointed her. ‘That Wokulski aggravates me,’ she murmured.
It was not really aggravation, but something else. On the way here, Izabela had felt dislike towards the Duchess for her urgent invitation, towards her aunt for ordering her to leave at once, and above all towards Wokulski. ‘So do they really want to give me to this parvenu?’ she asked herself. ‘Ah, he will see what comes of this!’
She had been certain that the first person to welcome her would be Wokulski, and had decided to treat him with the utmost scorn. Yet Wokulski did not hasten to greet her, but had instead gone riding with Mrs Wąsowska. This affected Izabela in a disagreeable way, and she thought: ‘She’s still a flirt, even though she’s thirty.’
When the Baron called Wokulski an eminent guest, Izabela felt something like pride, but it was very fleeting. When Felicja, in a pointed way, betrayed she was jealous of Wokulski, something like alarm seized Izabela, though only for a moment. ‘Fela is a simpleton,’ she told herself.
In a word: the contempt she had planned throughout her journey to demonstrate for Wokulski disappeared entirely in the face of such mixed feelings as slight anger, slight satisfaction and slight alarm. At this moment, Wokulski seemed to Izabela to be different from hitherto. He was not merely a haberdashery merchant, but a man who had just come back from Paris, who had a huge fortune and social contacts, whom the Baron admired and with whom Mrs Wąsowska flirted.
Hardly had Izabela time to change when the Duchess entered her room. ‘Bela, my dear,’ said the old lady, after kissing her again, ‘why doesn’t Joanna come to see me?’
‘Papa is poorly, she doesn’t want to leave him.’
‘Pray don’t say that. She won’t come because she doesn’t want to meet Wokulski, that’s the secret,’ said the Duchess, in some agitation. ‘She likes him when he pours out money for her orphanages … I must tell you, Bela, that your aunt will never have any sense.’
Her former spleen arose in Izabela. ‘Perhaps my aunt doesn’t think it the thing to show such consideration for a tradesman,’ she said, blushing.
‘A tradesman! … A tradesman!’ cried the Duchess, ‘the Wokulskis are as genteel as the Starskis, or even the Zasławskis. As for being in trade … Bela, Wokulski has never sold what your aunt’s grandfather sold … You can tell her so, when the opportunity arises. I prefer an honest tradesman to a dozen Austrian counts. I know perfectly well what their titles are worth.’
‘But you will grant that birth …’
The Duchess smiled ironically: