The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [414]
In the face of these meditations, Igancy experienced pangs of conscience, under the influence of which a sort of plan for the future began to make itself apparent. ‘I’ll enter into business,’ he said, ‘with Mrs Stawska and Mraczewski. They have twenty thousand roubles, I have twenty-five thousand, and for that amount we could open a respectable store, even if it stood alongside Szlangbaum’s.’
This plan so dominated him that it made him feel better in health. Admittedly, he kept having pains in the shoulders more often, and shortness of breath, but he paid no attention … ‘I’ll go abroad for a cure,’ he thought, ‘I’ll get rid of this silly shortness of breath and set to work properly … After all, is Szlangbaum the only one to make a fortune here?’
He felt younger and more vital, although Szuman advised him not to go out, and recommended him to avoid excitement. But the doctor often forgot his own prescriptions. Once he called on Rzecki early in the morning, so indignant that he had forgotten to put his tie on. ‘Do you know, sir,’ he cried, ‘I have found out some fine things about Wokulski …’
Ignacy put down his knife and fork (he was just eating a steak with mushrooms), and felt a pain in his shoulder. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked, in a feeble voice.
‘Staś is capital!’ said Szuman. ‘I’ve unearthed that railwayman Wysocki, from Skierniewice. I interrogated him and do you know what I’ve found out?’
‘How should I know?’ asked Rzecki, feeling dizzy for a moment.
‘Just think of it, sir!’ said Szuman, irritated, ‘that creature … that fool … When he was travelling with the Łęckis to Cracow last May, he threw himself under a train at Skierniewice. Wysocki saved him …’
‘Hm …’ Rzecki muttered.
‘No “hm” about it, that’s what happened. From this I deduce that our dear Staś had suicidal mania as well as his romanticism. I’d bet my entire fortune on it that he’s dead.’
Suddenly he stopped, catching sight of a terrible change on Ignacy’s face. He became very confused, almost lifted him into bed and vowed he would never again bring up the matter.
But fate had it otherwise. At the end of October, the postman gave Rzecki a letter addressed to Wokulski. The letter came from Zasław, the writing was illiterate. ‘Can it be from Węgiełek?’ wondered Ignacy, and he opened it.
‘Dear Sir,’ wrote Węgiełek, ‘First we thank you, Sir, for remembering us and for the five hundred roubles and all the benefits we received from your generous hands, my mother, my wife and me thank you. In the second place, all three of us inquire as to your health, and whether you got home safe. Certainly you did, else you would not have sent that wonderful gift. Only my wife is very worried about you, at night she don’t sleep, and she even wanted me to go to Warsaw, just like a woman. For here, Sir, in September, on the very same day as you met my mother in the potato field as you were going to the Castle, a terrible thing happened. My mother had just come back from the field, and was cooking supper, when there were two terrible bangs in the Castle, like thunderbolts, and the window-panes rattled all over the village. My mother dropped a jug and told me right away. “Hurry over to the Castle, maybe Mr Wokulski is still there, let’s hope nothing has happened to him,” and so I go. Good God! I barely recognised the hill. Out of the four walls of the Castle, only one was still standing, the other three was smashed into atoms. The stone we wrote verses on last year was broken into at least twenty pieces, and on the spot where the fallen-in well had been, there was a hole, and the rubble had piled up as high as a barn over it. I think the walls collapsed out of old age, but my mother says maybe the late blacksmith I once told you of had done the damage.’
‘Without telling anyone that you