The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [368]
Either I am quite mistaken, or we are on the eve of extraordinary events. One day in May, Wokulski travelled with Mr and Miss Łęcki to Cracow, and told me clearly that he didn’t know when he would be back — perhaps not for a month.
Yet he returned, not within a month, but on the very next day, so wretched-looking that he was pitiful to see. It was terrible to see what had come over this man in the course of twenty-four hours. When I asked him what had happened, and why he’d come back, he first of all hesitated, then said he’d received a telegram from Suzin and was leaving for Moscow. But within the next twenty-four hours he changed his mind and declared he wasn’t going.
‘But if it’s important business?’ I asked.
‘May the devil take business,’ he muttered and shrugged.
Now he doesn’t leave his house for whole days at a time, and for the most part he lies down. I visited him, but he received me irritably; I learned from the butler that he refuses to see anyone. I sent Szuman to him, but Staś wouldn’t even talk to Szuman, and merely told him he needed no doctors. This didn’t satisfy Szuman; as he is something of a busybody he began inquiries on his own account, and learned strange things.
He said that Wokulski had left the train around midnight, at Skierniewice, pretending he’d received a telegram, that afterwards he’d disappeared from the station and didn’t return until dawn, covered with mud, apparently tipsy. At the station, they think he got drunk and spent the night in a field. This explanation didn’t convince either Szuman or me. The doctor declares that Staś must have broken with Miss Łécka, and perhaps even attempted something preposterous … But I think he really did have a telegram from Suzin. In any case, I must travel for my health’s sake. I am not yet an invalid, and cannot renounce my future on account of a temporary enfeeblement.
Mraczewski is here and is staying with me. The lad looks like a Bernardine Father, has grown manly, sunburnt, plump. And how much of the world he’s seen in the last few months! He went to Paris, then Lyons; from Lyons he went to Częstochowa, to Mrs Stawska, and they came to Warsaw together. Then he took her back to Częstochowa, stayed a week and apparently helped her arrange the store. Then he went to Moscow, from where he returned to Częstochowa and Mrs Stawska, stayed a while and at present is with me.
Mraczewski declares that Suzin did not telegraph to Wokulski, and in addition he is certain that Wokulski has broken with Miss Łęcka. He must even have said something to Mrs Stawska, since that angelic woman, while in Warsaw a few weeks ago, was kind enough to visit me and inquire very sincerely about Staś: ‘Is he well? Is he very changed and sad? Will he never recover from his despair?’
Despair? Even if he’s broken with Miss Łęcka, thank God there are still plenty of other women, and if he wants to, Staś could marry Mrs Stawska. A priceless little woman, how she loved him — and who knows whether she still does? Good God, I’d be delighted if Staś were to go back to her. So pretty, so noble, so much devotion … If there is still any order in the world (which I sometimes doubt), then Wokulski ought to marry Mrs Stawska. But he must make haste, for unless I am very much mistaken, Mraczewski is starting to think of her. ‘Sir,’ he sometimes says to me, wringing his hands, ‘what a woman, what a woman! If it weren’t for her unfortunate husband, I’d have proposed to her already.’
‘But would she accept you?’
‘I don’t know …’ he sighed.
He sank into a chair so that it trembled, and said: ‘When I met her the first time after her departure from Warsaw, it was as though I’d been struck by lightning, I liked her so …’
‘Well, and she made an impression on you even earlier.’
‘But not of this sort. After travelling from Paris to Czestochowa, I was drowsy, but she looked so pale, with such sad eyes, that I immediately thought: suppose I succeed? So I tried flirting with her. But she