The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [63]
‘How?’
‘I’ll give you a letter, which you will take with you, and you can stay there. Do you want to—or not?’
‘Ha—give me the letter first. Then I’ll see what it is like.’
She sat down and gazed about the room. Wokulski wrote the letter, told her where to go and added: ‘Here’s money for the trip, and for moving your things. If you are a good girl, and industrious, they will be good to you; but if you don’t take advantage of this opportunity—then do what you want. You may go.’
The girl laughed out loud: ‘The old woman will be mad! I’ll show her…Ha ha! But…may be you’re only putting me on?’
‘Go,’ said Wokulski, indicating the door.
She glanced inquiringly at him once again, and went out with a shrug.
Presently Ignacy appeared: ‘What kind of an acquaintance was that?’ he asked sourly.
‘You’re right…’ said Wokulski thoughtfully. ‘I never yet saw such an animal, though I know many beasts.’
‘Thousands in Warsaw alone,’ Rzecki replied.
‘I know. It is no use condemning them, though, for they are continually being reborn and, in consequence, society will sooner or later have to be reconstructed from top to bottom. Or perish.’
‘Hm…’ Rzecki whispered, ‘I thought as much.’
Wokulski said goodbye to him. He felt like a man with fever over whom cold water had been thrown.
‘But before society can re-create itself,’ he thought, ‘I can see that the sphere of my philanthropy will narrow down very much. My fortune will not suffice to ennoble inhuman instincts. I prefer yawning ladies seeking charity to weeping and praying monsters…’
The picture of Izabela appeared to him, surrounded by an aureole even brighter than before. The blood rose to his head and he blamed himself inwardly for comparing her with such a creature! ‘I’d sooner throw away money on carriages and racehorses than on that sort of wretch!’
On Easter Sunday, Wokulski drove to the Countess’s house in a hired carriage. There he found a long line of carriages of all kinds and elegance. There were smart droshkies serving gilded youths, ordinary droshkies hired by the hour by retired persons; old carriages, old horses, old equipment and servants in worn livery; and new little barouches direct from Vienna, whose footmen had flowers in their button-holes and whose drivers laid their whips across their thighs like marshals’ batons. There were even fantastic Cossacks dressed in trousers so baggy that their masters might have placed all their hopes within them.
In passing he also noticed that in the crowd of drivers, the servants of great gentlefolk behaved in a very dignified manner, while those of bankers wished to run the whole show (for which they were much abused), but that the droshky-men were the most resolute. However, the drivers of the hired carriages kept close together, despising the rest and being despised by them.
When Wokulski entered the vestibule, a grey-haired doorkeeper with a black ribbon around his neck bowed low and opened the door to the cloakroom, where a gentleman in a black frock-coat relieved him of his overcoat. At the same time, the Countess’s butler Józef hurried up: he knew Wokulski well, and he had brought the music-box and singing-birds from the store to the church. ‘Her Excellency expects you,’ said Józef.
Wokulski reached into his waistcoat pocket and handed him five roubles, feeling he was behaving like a parvenu. ‘How stupid of me,’ he thought. ‘No—not stupid—merely a nouveau riche who has to pay everyone at every step he takes in this society. Well, it costs more to convert women who have sinned.’
He went up the marble staircase that was decorated with flowers, Józef in front. On the first landing he had his hat on his head, on the second he took it off, not knowing whether he was behaving properly or not. ‘I might have gone in to join them with my hat on,’ he said to himself.
He noticed that although Józef was past middle age, he darted up the stairs like a young goat, and had already disappeared, so that Wokulski was left alone, not knowing which way to go nor to whom he should announce himself. It was only a moment,