The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [354]
‘Show your preparedness, then.’
‘Sir! This is not the way to speak to a man on the brink of the grave. If I came here, it was only to prove to you that despite the error of my ways, I have a noble heart.’
‘And why are you standing on the brink of the grave, pray?’
‘To preserve my honour, which you wish to strip me of?’
‘Come, preserve that valuable treasure,’ replied Wokulski, and he produced the fatal documents from his desk. ‘Are these the papers you’re worried about?’
‘How can you ask? You are making mock of my despair.’
‘Look here, Mr Maruszewicz,’ said Wokulski, glancing over the papers, ‘I might at this moment tell you a few home truths, or leave you in uncertainty for a while. But as we are both grown men…’
He ripped up the papers and handed the pieces to Maruszewicz: ‘Keep these as a souvenir.’
Maruszewicz fell on his knees before him. ‘Sir!’ he cried, ‘you have saved my life…My gratitude…’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Wokulski interrupted, ‘I was perfectly at rest regarding your life, just as I am certain that sooner or later you’ll end up in prison. The point is that I don’t want to facilitate that journey for you.’
‘Sir, you are merciless,’ Maruszewicz replied, mechanically dusting down his trousers. ‘A single cordial word, a single affectionate handclasp might have set me on a new path. But you can’t bring yourself to do it.’
‘Well, good-day, Mr Maruszewicz. All I ask is that you don’t hit on the idea of signing my name, for if you do…’
Maruszewicz left in a huff.
‘It was for you, my dearest, that one prisoner has been spared. It’s a terrible thing to imprison anyone, even a criminal and fraud,’ Wokulski thought. For a while, a struggle went on within him. First he reproached himself because, having been in a position to rid the world of a scoundrel, he had failed to do so; then again he wondered what would happen to him, if he himself were imprisoned, torn away from Izabela for months, perhaps years: ‘How dreadful never to see her again! Who knows that mercy isn’t the best justice?…How sentimental I’m becoming!’
XXXIV
Tempus Fugit, Aeternitas Manet
ALTHOUGH the business with Maruszewicz had been settled in private, news of it spread. Wokulski told Rzecki, and asked him to cancel the Baron’s supposed debt from the ledgers. Maruszewicz told the Baron, adding that the Baron ought not to be angry with him, since the debt had been cancelled and he, Maruszewicz, intended to turn over a new leaf. ‘I feel,’ he said with a sigh, ‘that I’d be another man, if only I had three thousand a year. Vile world, in which men such as I have to be wasted…’
‘Come now, calm yourself,’ the Baron pacified him, ‘I like you, but everyone knows very well that you’re a scoundrel.’
‘Have you looked into my heart, Baron? Do you know what feelings are there? Oh, if only there were some tribunal that could read a man’s soul, you’d all see which of us is the better: I—or those who judge and condemn me.’
As a result, both Rzecki and the Baron, as well as the Prince and several counts, learned of Maruszewicz’s ‘latest prank’. All admitted that Wokulski had behaved nobly, though not like a man. ‘It was a very beautiful deed,’ said the Prince, ‘but not in Wokulski’s style. He looked to me like one of those men who constitute a force in society for creating good and punishing scoundrels. Any priest would have behaved the way Wokulski did with Maruszewicz…I’m afraid the man is losing his energy.’
As a matter of fact, Wokulski was not losing his energy, though he had changed in many respects. He did not, for instance, work at the store, even felt a dislike of it, because the name of a haberdashery tradesman lowered him in Izabela’s eyes. On the other hand, he began working more earnestly with the company for trade with the Empire, because it was bringing in enormous profits, and this increased the fortune he hoped to offer Izabela.
Ever since the time when he had proposed and been accepted, he had been dominated by a strange wistfulness and sympathy. It seemed to him that he couldn’t have done anyone