The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [295]
On the stairs I couldn’t control myself any longer, and cried: ‘If you were to come here more often, you’d have seen for yourself what improvements are needed in the house. But what’s the house to you, or even such a pretty woman!’
Wokulski stopped in the passage and muttered, gazing at a gutter: ‘Hm! If I’d met her earlier, perhaps I’d have married her.’
Hearing this, I had a strange feeling: I was pleased, but it was also as though someone had stuck a pin in my heart: ‘So you’re not going to get married, then?’ I asked.
‘Who knows?’ he replied, ‘maybe I will … But not to her.’
Hearing this, I experienced an even stranger feeling: I was sorry Mrs Stawska wouldn’t get Staś as her husband, but at the same time, a burden seemed to have been lifted from my chest.
Hardly had we entered the yard when I looked up, and there was the Baroness, leaning out of her window and calling to us: ‘You, sir! … I beg …’
Suddenly she shrieked in a heartrending voice: ‘Ah! Nihilists!’ and retreated into the depths of her room. At that moment, a herring fell into the yard a few feet from us, whereupon the caretaker hurled himself upon it with such voracity that he didn’t even notice me.
‘Won’t you call on the Baroness?’ I asked Staś, ‘she seems anxious to see you about something.’
‘Why doesn’t she leave me alone, for goodness sake,’ he replied with a shrug. In the street he hailed a droshky and we went back to the store without speaking, but I am positive he was thinking of Mrs Stawska, and if it hadn’t been for those confounded cauliflowers …
I was so on edge, so vexed, that on closing the store I went out for a beer. There I met Councillor Węgrowicz, who was still busy tearing Wokulski’s reputation to shreds, but who has very happy political notions … and I argued with him until midnight.
Well, now — what did I set out to write about? Ah! Three or perhaps four days after our visit to Mrs Stawska, Staś comes into the store and hands me a letter addressed to himself: ‘Just read this,’ said he, with a smile. I opened it and read:
‘Mr Wokulski! Forgive me not addressing you as Dear sir, but I cannot bring myself to use such a form to a man from whom everyone is turning away in disgust. Unfortunate man! You have not yet rehabilitated yourself from your earlier misdeeds, but you are already disgracing yourself by new ones. Today the whole town is talking of nothing but your visits to a woman of bad reputation, Stawska. You have rendezvous with her in Town, you creep into her apartment nights, which might suggest you have not entirely lost all sense of shame, but you even visit her by broad daylight, in the presence of servants, young men and the respectable lodgers in that ill-famed apartment house.
‘Do not deceive yourself, wretched man, that you are alone in carrying on an intrigue with her. You are being helped by your manager, that wretch Wirski, and by your plenipotentiary, Rzecki, who has turned grey with dissipation.
‘I must add that not only is Rzecki deceiving you with your mistress, but is also robbing you of income from the house, for he had lowered the rents of certain tenants, firstly that Stawska. As a result, your house is worthless, you stand on the brink of ruin and, indeed, a noble benefactor would do you a great favour by buying that ruin of the Łęckis at a small loss to yourself.
‘If, therefore, such a benefactor could be found, then dispose of your burden, take what you can get, be grateful and flee the country before human justice chains you and throws you into a dungeon. Be on your guard! Beware! And take the advice of a well-wisher.’
‘Quite a woman, what?’ asked Wokulski, seeing I had finished.
‘May the devil take her!’ I exclaimed, guessing he meant the author of the letter. ‘So I have turned grey with