The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [289]
‘Balloons?’ asked Ochocki with a fiery look.
‘Something better. Goodnight.’
Next day, towards noon, Wokulski bade goodbye to the Duchess’s household. A few hours later he was in Zasław. He called on the priest, and told Węgiełek to be ready to set off for Warsaw. Having done this, he went to the castle ruins.
The four lines were already engraved on the stone. Wokulski read them several times, and his gaze rested on the words: ‘… always, everywhere I shall be with you …’
‘And if not?’ he murmured.
Despair gripped him at this thought. Just then he only had one longing — that the earth might give way and swallow him up, along with these ruins, this stone and this inscription.
When he went back to the village, the horses had been fed, Węgiełek was standing by the carriage with his green trunk. ‘Do you know when you’ll be coming back?’ Wokulski asked.
‘In God’s good time, sir,’ Węgiełek replied.
‘Get up.’
He threw himself upon the cushions and they moved off. An old woman made a sign of the Cross to them from a distance. Węgiełek caught sight of her and took off his cap: ‘Take care of yourself, mama!’ he called from the box.
XXVIII
The Journal of the Old Clerk
SO HERE we are in 1879. If I were superstitious, or didn’t know that bad times are followed by better, I’d be afraid of this year 1879. For whereas its predecessor ended badly, it has started off even worse. For example — England went to war- with Afghanistan at the end of last year, and in December things went badly for her. Austria had a great deal of trouble with Bosnia, and an insurrection broke out in Macedonia. In October and November, there were attempts on the lives of King Alfonso of Spain and King Umberto of Italy. Both escaped unharmed. Also in October, Prince Jósef Zamoyski, a great friend of Wokulski’s, died. I think his death interfered in more than one way with Wokulski’s plans.
Scarcely has 1879 started than — may the devil take it! — the English, still not yet disentangled from Afghanistan, have a war in Africa, down in the Cape of Good Hope, against some Zulus or other. Here in Europe we have nothing less than an outbreak of typhus in the Astrakhan district, and it may reach us any day.
What a lot of trouble this typhus creates! Everyone I meet says: ‘Well now, serve you right for importing calico from Moscow. You’ll see, you’ll bring the plague with it!’ And the anonymous letters, roundly cursing us! I fancy, however, that their writers are mostly our rivals, or Lodz manufacturers of calico. The latter would be only too glad to see us break our necks, even if there were no plague. Of course, I don’t repeat even a hundredth part of these insults to Wokulski: but I think he hears and reads them more than I.
Strictly speaking, I intended to set down in these pages the story of an amazing court case, a criminal case, which Baroness Krzeszowska has brought against none other than the pretty, virtuous, adorable Mrs Helena Stawska. But such rage overcomes me that I cannot collect my thoughts. So to distract my attention, I write about other things …
She brought a criminal case against Mrs Stawska for theft! Theft! Her! … Of course we emerged victorious from the mud. But at what a cost … I, for instance, couldn’t sleep for well nigh two months. And if today I go out for a beer in the evenings, a thing I never used to do, and even sit in saloons till midnight, I do so from sheer mortification. To bring a charge of theft against that divine creature! Goodness knows, only a half-crazy woman like the Baroness would do such a thing.
Because of it, the ferocious harpy paid us ten thousand roubles … Ah, if it depended on me, I’d have squeezed out a hundred thousand. Let her weep, let her have spasms, let her die even. Vile woman! But let’s think of something other than human iniquities.
Strictly speaking, who knows whether honest Staś wasn’t the involuntary cause of Mrs Stawska’s misfortunes: or perhaps not so much he, as I myself … I introduced him to her by force, I advised Staś not to call on that