The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [53]
Strange! After all, he had the reputation of an established philanthropist. Members of the Charitable Society, in their frock-coats, had thanked him for his offerings to their ever-hungry institutions; Countess Karolowa talked in drawing-rooms of all the money he had donated to her orphanage; his servants and clerks spread his fame for raising their wages. But these things caused Wokulski no pleasure, for he himself attached no significance to them. He tossed thousands of roubles to charity to buy fame, without ever asking what was to be done with the money.
Not until today, when he had extricated a man from destitution by a mere ten roubles, which no one would tell the rest of the world of, not until today had he recognised what sacrifice meant. Not until this day had a new, hitherto unknown part of the world risen up before his eyes—poverty, which must be helped.
‘Yes, but did I not notice poverty before?’ Wokulski whispered. And he recalled whole throngs of ragged people, poor, looking for work, throngs of starving horses, hungry dogs, trees with broken bark and broken branches. He had encountered all these things without emotion. It was not until now, when a great personal pain had fallowed and harrowed his soul, had fertilized it with his own blood and tears unseen to the world, that this strange plant had grown within him: this mutual sympathy encompassing everything—people, animals, even inanimate objects.
‘The doctor would say a new cell has been formed in my brain, or that several old ones had joined together,’ he thought. ‘Yes—but what now?’
Hitherto he had had only one aim: to approach Izabela. Now he acquired another: to extricate Wysocki from destitution.
‘A small thing!’
‘And transfer his brother to Skierniewice,’ a voice added.
‘A mere nothing!’
But behind these two people were several others, with still others behind them, then a huge crowd struggling with all kinds of poverty and finally—a whole ocean of suffering which must be mitigated as far as his powers allowed, or at least stopped from spreading.
‘Visions…abstractions…nervous exhaustion!’ Wokulski whispered.
That was one way. At the end of the other, however, he saw a real and well-defined aim—Izabela.
‘I’m not Christ, to sacrifice myself for mankind.’
‘So—forget the Wysockis to begin with,’ the inner voice retorted.
‘Well, this is nonsense. Even though I’m excited today, I mustn’t make a fool of myself,’ Wokulski thought. ‘I’ll do what can be done, but I won’t renounce my own happiness, that’s too much…’
At this moment he stopped at the door of his shop and went in.
Inside, Wokulski found only one customer. It was a tall lady in black, of indeterminate age. Before her was a pile of dressing-cases—wooden, leather, plush, metal, plain and fancy, the most expensive and the cheapest—and all the clerks were attending to her. Klein kept proffering more, Mraczewski was praising the cases, while Lisiecki accompanied him with gestures. Only Ignacy came forward to greet his principal.
‘There’s a delivery from Paris,’ he told Wokulski, ‘I think we shall have to collect it tomorrow.’
‘As you like…’
‘And orders from Moscow for ten thousand roubles, for early May.’
‘I expected them.’
‘Two hundred from Radom, but the driver wants payment by tomorrow.’
Wokulski shrugged. ‘We must have done with this huckstering trade once and for all,’ he exclaimed. ‘There’s no profit in it and the demands are too heavy.’
‘Break with our provincial trade?’ Rzecki asked in surprise.
‘Break with the Jews,’ Lisiecki put in in an undertone; ‘the boss is quite right to get out of those wretched deals. Sometimes I’m ashamed to give change, the money smells so of garlic…’
Wokulski did not reply. He sat down at his accounts and pretended to be reckoning, but in reality he did nothing; he had not the energy. He recalled