The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [402]
‘Then postpone your purchase until December.’
‘Well, sir, you know you’re the only person who can advise me … Black is black, white white. What sort of man are you? A man ought to be firm all the time, or at least know what he wants … Well, have you brought me Bela’s letter?’
Wokulski silently handed her the letter.
‘Really!’ she exclaimed, vivaciously, ‘so you don’t love her? In that case, a talk about her ought not to distress you. For I have to reconcile you both or … Put the poor girl out of her misery. You are prejudiced against her … You are doing her an injustice. That is dishonest … A man of honour would not behave thus, would not worm his way into her affections, then throw her aside like a faded bouquet.’
‘Dishonest!’ Wokulski repeated. ‘Kindly tell me, madam, what sort of honesty can be left in a man who has been nurtured on suffering and humiliation, or humiliation and suffering!’
‘You had other moments, too.’
‘Oh, yes indeed — a few kind looks and kind words, which now have the one fault in my eyes that they were … trickery.’
‘Today she regrets that, and if you were to return …’
‘What for?’
‘To gain her heart and her hand.’
‘Leaving the other hand for both known and unknown admirers? No, madam, I have had enough of those races, in which I was outstripped by Messrs Starski, Szastalski and the devil knows how many others besides! I cannot play the role of a eunuch in the presence of my ideal, and see a happy rival or undesirable cousin in every man.’
‘How low that is!’ Mrs Wąsowska exclaimed. ‘So for one mistake — and an innocent one, moreover — your are rejecting the woman you once loved?’
‘Allow me to have my own idea of the number of the mistakes, madam: and as for innocence. … Merciful heavens! What a wretched position I am in, since I don’t even know how far their “innocence” went.’
‘Can you suppose? …’ Mrs Wąsowska asked, coldly.
‘I suppose nothing,’ Wokulski replied, quietly. ‘All I know is that, in my view, a flirtation of the commonest sort was going on under the cover of indifferent liking, and … that sufficed. I can understand a wife deceiving her husband: she may explain away her actions by the bonds which marriage has placed upon her. But that a free woman should deceive a stranger … Ha ha ha! That is a different kind of sport, for Heaven’s sake! After all, she had the right to place Starski — and all of them — above me. But no! She also needed to have a fool in her suite of followers, a fool who truly loved her, who was prepared to sacrifice everything for her sake. And for the final degradation of human nature, it was I and I alone that she wanted to use as a screen for herself and her admirers … Don’t you know how those people must have laughed at me, heaped with cheaply purchased attentions? And do you realise what a Hell it is, to be as ludicruous as I was, and yet at the same as unhappy, to realise my own decline and yet to know too that it was undeserved?’
Mrs Wąsowska’s lips trembled: she was restraining tears with difficulty. ‘Isn’t it all imagination?’ she interposed.
‘Oh, no, madam … Betrayed self-respect isn’t imagination.’
‘Well?’
‘What is the alternative?’ Wokulski replied. ‘I realised in time, I got myself out, and today I at least have the satisfaction of knowing that my rival’s victory is not complete, as far as I’m concerned.’
‘That is irrevocable?’
‘If you please, madam … I understand a woman surrendering herself for love, or selling herself out of poverty. But I cannot conceive this spiritual prostitution, carried out without any need, in cold blood, keeping up an appearance of virtue.’
‘So there are things that cannot be forgiven?’ she inquired softly.
‘Who is to forgive whom? Mr Starski will never take offence over such matters, and will perhaps even recommend her to his friends. For the rest, people with so many and such choice friends need not care.’
‘A last word,’ said Mrs Wąsowska, rising. ‘May I know your intentions?’
‘I wish I knew them myself.’
She gave him her hand: ‘Goodbye, sir.’
‘I wish you every