The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [33]
‘Those women who seem to seek God so feverishly, are sometimes unhappy beings whose hearts are shattered by passion. They attend church to adore a man there,’ says Father Jouve.
‘The good priest wanted so much to calm poor Helene,’ thought Izabela, and suddenly threw the book aside. Father Jouve has reminded her that for two months she has been embroidering a sash for a church bell, and has not yet finished it. She rises and draws a small table with embroidery frame and box of silks to the window, unwinds the sash and begins feverishly to embroider it with roses and crosses. Calmed by her work, she feels more courageous. No one who serves the Church as she does will be forgotten at the Easter collection. She chooses silks, threads, needles, and continues to sew. Her eye goes from pattern to material, her hands rise and fall, but in her thoughts the question of her dress for the collection and her toilette for Easter begins to arise. This question soon fills her attention entirely, she blinds her eyes and stops her hand. Her dress, hat, cloak and parasol must all be new, but there is so little time left, they are not even ordered, let alone chosen!
Here she recalls that her dinner-service and the silver are already at the jewellers, already a buyer may be considering them and today or tomorrow they will be sold. Izabela feels a constriction of the heart for her dinner-service and the silver, but gains some relief at the thought of the Easter collection and her new toilette. She will wear a very splendid one, no doubt, but what is it to be?
She pushes the embroidery frame aside and takes Le Moniteur de la Mode from a little table on which lie Shakespeare, Dante, an album of European celebrities and several journals, and begins to look through it attentively. Here is a dinner gown: here spring outfits for young girls, unmarried ladies, wives and their mothers; here there are afternoon gowns, dinner dresses, walking-out dresses; half a dozen new hat designs, a dozen different materials and dozens of different colours … Which is she to choose? It is impossible to make her choice without the advice of Flora and the modiste …
Izabela, frustrated, lets the fashion magazine fall and reclines on the chaise-longue. Her hands, clasped as if in prayer, rest on the arm and she looks at the sky dreamily. The Easter collection, the new toilette, the clouds — all blend together in her mind’s eye against a background of remorse for the dinner-service and a slight feeling of shame at having sold it.
‘Oh, never mind …’ she tells herself, and again she wishes the clouds would part, even if only for a while. But the clouds thicken and within her heart remorse, shame and uneasiness increase. Her gaze falls on the little table by the chaise-longue, and on a prayer-book bound in ivory. Izabela picks it up and slowly, page by page, seeks the ‘Acte de resignation’ and when she has found it, she begins to read: ‘Que votre nom soit béni à jamais, bien qui avez voulu m’éprouver par cette peine.’ As she reads, the grey sky lightens and at the last words ‘et d’attendre en paix votre divin secours …’ the clouds break asunder, a fragment of bright blue appears. Izabela’s boudoir fills with light and her soul with tranquillity. Now she is certain that her prayers have been heard, that she will have the most splendid toilette and smartest church for the Easter collection.
At this moment the boudoir door softly opens: Flora appears, tall, in black, timid, holding a letter between two fingers and saying softly: ‘From Countess Karolowa.’
‘Ah, about the collection,’ Izabela replies with a charming smile. ‘You haven’t been to see me all day, Flora.’
‘I didn’t want to interrupt.’
‘My boredom?’ Izabela