The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [401]
‘I can’t begin to tell you how bored I am, or perhaps I’m merely yearning … But that too will pass. This young engineer keeps visiting us every few days. At first he entertained me with talk about iron bridges, and now he tells me he was in love with a woman who married someone else, that he despaired, lost hope of falling in love again, and longs to regain his health by a new, better love. He also confided in me that he sometimes writes poetry, in which he only sings the charms of Nature however … Sometimes I want to burst into tears out of sheer boredom, but as I would die without society, I pretend to be listening and sometimes let him kiss my hand …’
The veins stood out in Wokulski’s forehead. He paused, then read on: ‘Papa is still feebler. He weeps several times a day, and whenever we are alone for five minutes, he reproaches me, in connection with you know whom! You can’t think how it upsets me.
‘I visit the Zasław ruins every few days. Something draws me there, I don’t know whether it is the beauty of Nature, or loneliness. When I am very unhappy, I write various things in pencil on the ruined walls, and joyfully think that the first rain will wash them all away.
‘But there! I was forgetting the most important thing. You must know that the marshal wrote my father a letter in which he very formally asked for my hand in marriage. I cried all night, not because I may become Her Excellency, but … because it may so easily happen!
‘The pen is dropping from my hand. Farewell, and recall your unhappy Bela sometimes.’
Wokulski crushed the letter: ‘I despise her so, and … I still love her,’ he murmured.
His head was on fire. He walked to and fro with fists clenched, and smiled at his own dreams.
Towards evening he received a telegram from Moscow, after which he at once sent a telegram to Paris. But he spent the next day, from morning to late at night, with his lawyer and agent.
Going to bed, he thought: ‘Am I committing a folly? Well, I will see how things are on the spot … Whether a metal lighter than air can exist is another question, but there is something in it, no doubt of that. Besides, in searching for the philosopher’s stone, chemistry developed: so who knows what will be discovered-next? In the end, it’s all the same to me, provided I get myself out of this mud.’
Not until the following afternoon did a reply arrive from Paris, which Wokulski read through several times. A moment later he was handed a letter from Mrs Wąsowska, with a likeness of the Sphinx in place of seal. ‘Yes,’ Wokulski muttered, smiling, ‘a human face and the body of an animal: and our imagination lends you wings.’
‘Pray call on me for a few moments,’ Mrs Wąsowska wrote, ‘I have some very important business and hope to leave today.’
‘Let us see what this important business is,’ he said to himself. Half an hour later he was at Mrs Wąsowska’s: trunks, ready packed, were standing in the vestibule. The lady of the house received him in her workroom, where not a single thing recalled work.
‘This is very civil of you,’ Mrs Wąsowska began, in an offended tone. ‘I was waiting for you all day yesterday, but you didn’t appear.’
‘You forbade me to come here, after all,’ replied Wokulski, in surprise.
‘How so? Didn’t I clearly invite you to the country? But never mind this, I will attribute it to your eccentricity … My dear sir, I have some very important business to discuss with you. I want to go abroad soon and should like your advice: when is the best time to buy francs — now, or before I leave?’
‘When are you leaving?’
‘Ah … In November … December,’ she replied, blushing.
‘Before your departure would be the best time.’
‘You think so?’
‘That is what everyone else does.’
‘I don’t want to do as everyone else does!’ Mrs Wąsowska exclaimed.
‘Then buy them now.’
‘But what if the