The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [300]
To Mrs Stawska’s timid inquiry as to why she didn’t live with her relatives, the Baroness replied: ‘Whom with, my dear lady? I have none, and even if I had, I wouldn’t receive such greedy and vulgar people in my house. My husband’s family won’t have anything to do with me, because I am not genteel: though this has not prevented them, all the same, from squeezing two hundred thousand roubles out of me. They were civil enough as long as I kept lending them money on permanent loan: but when I grew sick of it, they broke off relations, and they even persuaded my unhappy husband to place my estate under constraint. Oh, what I went through on account of those people …’ she added, weeping.
The only room (says Mrs Stawska) in which the Baroness spends the whole day, is the little room of her late daughter. This must be a very mournful and strange corner, for everything has been left as it was when the little girl died. So there’s her bed, on which the linen is changed every few days, a closet with her clothes, which are also brushed and cleaned in the drawing-room, for the Baroness won’t let these sacred relics be taken into the yard. There’s a little table, with books and an exercise book open at the page on which the poor little child wrote for the last time: ‘Holy Virgin, form …’ And, last of all, there’s a little shelf, full of large and small dolls, little beds and dolls’ garments.
In this room, Mrs Stawska darns laces or silks, of which the Baroness has a great deal. Mrs Stawska cannot divine whether she is ever likely to wear them again.
One day, the Baroness asked Mrs Stawska if she knew Wokulski. But, although she got the answer that Mrs Stawska hardly knows him, she began: ‘You’d be doing me a great favour, dear madam, a real charity, if you’d go and see that gentleman regarding a matter of great importance to me. I want to buy this house and will pay him ninety-five thousand roubles, but he, out of sheer obstinacy and nothing more, is asking a hundred thousand. That man wants to ruin me … Pray tell him he’s killing me … That he will draw down Heavenly punishment on himself for such greed!’ the Baroness shrieked and cried.
Mrs Stawska, very embarrassed, told the Baroness she couldn’t possibly speak to Wokulski of this: ‘I don’t know him … He’s only called on us once … Besides, would it be proper for me to interfere in such matters?’
‘Oh, you can make him do anything you choose,’ the Baroness retorted, ‘but if you don’t want to save me from death … God’s will be done. Pray do your Christian duty at least, and tell that man I am well disposed towards you.’
Hearing this, Mrs Stawska rose to leave. But the Baroness hastily embraced her, and begged her forgiveness, so that tears flowed from the excellent Mrs Stawska’s eyes and she stayed.
When she had told me all this, Mrs Stawska ended with a question that had the tone of a request: ‘So Mr Wokulski doesn’t want to sell this house?’
‘Of course he does,’ I replied, vexed, ‘he’s selling the house, the store, everything …’
A bright blush spread over Mrs Stawska’s face: she turned her chair back to the lamp, and quietly asked: ‘Why?’
‘As if I knew!’ I said, feeling that terrible pleasure caused by tormenting our dear ones, ‘as if I knew! They say he wants to get married’
‘Aha,’ Mrs Misiewicz interposed, ‘people are saying it’s Miss Łęcka.’
‘Is this true?’ Mrs Stawska whispered. Suddenly she pressed one hand to her bosom as if breathless, and went into the other room.
‘Here’s a fine to-do,’ thought I, ‘she sets eyes on him once, and here she is swooning away …’
‘I don’t know why he should get married,’ I told Mrs Misiewicz, ‘because he isn’t even lucky with women.’
‘Get along with you, Mr Rzecki,’ the old lady cried, ‘he not lucky with the ladies?’
‘After all, he isn’t handsome.’
‘He? … But he’s a perfectly handsome