The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [294]
But — he didn’t; he lowered his head and fell into his usual brooding. I’d have given half my annual wages to know what he was thinking about then just. Of Miss Łęcka, perhaps? Ah, my age is telling again … What of Miss Łęcka? She can’t hold a candle to Stawska!
After a few minutes’ silence, Wokulski asked: ‘Do you ladies like your neighbours?’
‘Depends which ones you mean,’ Mrs Misiewicz said.
‘Of course we do, very much,’ Mrs Stawska interposed. As she spoke, she glanced at Wokulski and blushed.
‘Is Baroness Krzeszowska a pleasant neighbour?’ Wokulski asked.
‘Oh, sir! …’ Mrs Misiewicz cried, raising a finger.
‘She’s an unfortunate woman,’ Mrs Stawska interposed, ‘she has lost her daughter …’
Saying this, she twisted a corner of her handkerchief and tried to glance from beneath those magnificent eyelashes — not at me at all. But her eyelids must have been heavy as lead, for she blushed still more and became increasingly serious, as though one of us had vexed her.
‘And who might that Mr Maruszewicz be?’ Wokulski went on, as though not thinking of the two ladies present at all.
‘A ne’er-do-well, a scamp,’ Mrs Misiewicz replied hastily.
‘No, mama, he’s only eccentric in his ways,’ her daughter corrected her. At this moment her eyes were wide open, and their pupils enlarged as never before.
‘Those students are said to be very ill-behaved,’ said Wokulski, staring at the piano.
‘Like all young men,’ Mrs Misiewicz replied, blowing her nose loudly.
‘Mind, Helena, your bow has come undone again,’ said Mrs Stawska, leaning forward to her little daughter, perhaps to hide her embarrassment at the mere mention of the students’ misbehaviour.
By this time, Wokulski had irritated me with his conversation. A man must be either a half-wit or badly brought up to ask such a pretty woman about the other tenants! So I stopped listening to him, and began looking around the yard mechanically. And this is what I saw: in one of Maruszewicz’s windows, the blind had been moved aside, and through the gap someone was looking in our direction: ‘The confounded man is spying on us,’ thought I. I turned my gaze to the second-floor front. Goodness me! In the furthest room of the Baroness Krzeszowska’s apartment, both windows were open and in the depths could be seen … she herself in person, gazing at Mrs Stawska’s apartment through opera-glasses.
‘May God have mercy on the serpent!’ said I to myself, certain that scandal would result from all this peeping.
I did not pray in vain. Heavenly punishment was already suspended over the meddler’s head, in the shape of a herring dangling from a window on the third floor. A mysterious hand, attired in a navy-blue sleeve with a silver band, was holding the herring: beyond it, a thin face wearing a malicious smile kept appearing every few moments. My insight wasn’t needed to guess that this was one of the non-paying students, waiting for the Baroness to appear in her window so he could drop the herring on her. But the Baroness was more cautious, and the student grew bored. He shifted the providential herring from one hand to the other, and, no doubt to kill time, made very unpleasant grimaces at the girls in the Parisian laundry.
Just as I was deciding that the attack on the Baroness would come to nothing, Wokulski rose and began bidding the ladies goodbye.
‘Are you gentlemen leaving so soon?’ Mrs Stawska murmured, and at that moment she grew exceedingly embarrassed.
‘Perhaps you gentlemen will call more often …’ Mrs Misiewicz added. But that milksop, Staś, instead of asking the ladies to let him call every day or to let him board there (which I would certainly have done in his place), this … this eccentric asked if they needed any repairs done in the apartment!
‘Oh, everything necessary has been done by kind