The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [327]
Mr Szatalski had no money invested in the firm, nor did he have a position on the railways. But since his two friends Messrs Niwiński and Malborg resented Wokulski, he too resented him, and expressed his resentment when he sighed to Izabela: ‘There are lucky people, who …’
What these lucky people looked like was something Izabela never found out. The only thing was that at the word ‘who …’ Wokulski came into her mind. Then she would clench her tiny fists, and say to herself: ‘Despot … Tyrant …’
Yet Wokulski never revealed the slightest tendency to despotise or tyrannise. He just kept gazing at her, and wondering: ‘Are you she … Or aren’t you?’
Sometimes, catching sight of young and elderly dandies besieging Izabela, whose eyes glittered like diamonds or stars in the sky, a cloud would float across the firmament of his admiration and cast a shadow of ill-defined doubts on his soul. But Wokulski refused to look at the shadow. Izabela was his life, his happiness, his sun — which no fleeting clouds could eclipse, not even imaginary ones.
Sometimes he thought of Geist, the eccentric sage, with his tremendous inventions, who had shown him a purpose in life other than Izabela. Then one glance from Izabela sufficed to bring Wokulski back from his fantasies: ‘What’s humanity to me?’ he said, with a shrug. ‘I wouldn’t give away one of her kisses for all humanity, for all the world’s future, for my own eternal life …’
And at the thought of this kiss, something strange happened to him. His will-power weakened, he felt he was losing his senses and that to regain them, he must see Izabela again, in the company of dandies. Only when he heard her clear laughter and decisive phrases, only when he saw the fiery glances she bestowed on Messrs Niwiński, Malborg and Szatalski, did it seem to him for a moment that a curtain had risen for him, beyond which he could see another world, and a different Izabela. Then, goodness knows why, his own youth, full of titanic efforts, blazed forth before him. He saw his own labours at extricating himself from poverty, heard the whistle of bullets that had flown past his head, saw Geist’s laboratory where tremendous things were being created, and, looking at Messrs Niwiński, Malborg and Szatalski, he thought: ‘What am I doing here? How comes it that I am worshipping at the same altar as they?’
He wanted to burst out laughing, then again he fell a prey to illusion, and it seemed to him that a life such as his was worth placing at the feet of a woman like Izabela.
Be this as it may, a change began coming about within Izabela in favour of Wokulski, under the influence of Mrs de Gins Upadalska’s incautious mot. She eavesdropped attentively on the conversation of gentlemen who visited her father and saw, in consequence, that each of them had a little capital he wanted to invest with Wokulski ‘at fifteen per cent, let’s hope’, or a cousin for whom he wanted a position, or that he sought to make Wokulski’s acquaintance for some other purpose. As for the ladies, they too either wanted to push someone, or had eligible daughters and did not conceal that they wanted to get Wokulski away from Izabela or even, if they were not too mature, would be glad to make him happy themselves.
‘To be the wife of such a man!’ said Mrs de Fertalski Wywrotnicka. ‘And not necessarily his wife, either!’ replied with a smile Baroness von Ples, whose husband had been paralysed for five years.
‘Tyrant … despot …’ Izabela kept repeating, feeling that the merchant she despised was attracting many glances, much hope and much jealousy.
Despite the vestiges of contempt and loathing which lurked within her, she had to admit that this brusque and gloomy man meant more, and looked better, than either the marshal or Baron Dalski, or even Messrs Niwiński, Malborg and Szatalski.
But the greatest effect on her attitude was made by