The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [67]
‘Unheard of!… Let us sit down,’ said the Prince, drawing him to a wide alcove, ‘and tell me what you have in mind.’
Meanwhile people were talking in the drawing-rooms.
‘There is something enigmatic about that man,’ said a lady in French, wearing diamonds, to a lady wearing peacock feathers, ‘I never before saw the Duchess crying.’
‘It’s a love story, of course,’ said the befeathered lady, ‘and it was a malicious trick on someone’s part to introduce that individual…’
‘Do you think that…?’
‘I’m quite sure,’ she replied, with a shrug. ‘One only has to look at him. Very bad manners, but what features, what pride of bearing! Noble birth cannot be concealed, not even by rags…’
‘How extraordinary,’ said the lady in diamonds, ‘and that fortune of his, allegedly made in Bulgaria?’
‘Of course. That helps explain why the Duchess, despite her wealth, spends so little on herself…’
‘And the Prince so very civil to him…’
‘That was the least he could do… Just to look at the pair of them is enough…’
‘Yet I wouldn’t say there was any likeness…’
‘Perhaps not, but—that pride, that self-confidence…and how very freely they talked to one another…’
At another table three men were conferring: ‘Well, the Countess has achieved a real coup d’état!’ said a dark man with a forelock.
‘And it succeeded. Wokulski is somewhat on the stiff side in his manners, but there’s something about him for all that,’ replied a grey-haired man.
‘Of course he’s in trade…’
‘Trade is no worse than banking…’
‘But a tradesman in haberdashery, he sells pocket-books,’ the dark man insisted.
‘We sell coats of arms sometimes,’ put in the third, a lean old man with grey whiskers.
‘On top of this he wants to marry here…’
‘So much the better for our girls…’
‘I’d let him have my daughter. I hear he’s respectable, wealthy, he won’t gamble her dowry away.’
The Countess passed by them swiftly: ‘Mr Wokulski,’ she said, and stretched out her fan in the direction of the alcove.
Wokulski hastened to her side. She gave him a hand, and they left the drawing-room together. Men at once surrounded the Prince, some asked to be introduced to Wokulski. ‘It is worth while,’ said the Prince, gratified. ‘There has never yet been such a man among us. Had we drawn closer to them long ago, our unhappy country would be different today…’
Izabela, who was passing, heard this and turned pale. The young man who had been with her in the church approached. ‘You are tired?’ he said.
‘A little,’ she replied, with an unhappy smile. ‘An odd question has just occurred to me,’ she added, after a pause, ‘I wonder whether I too am capable of struggling?’
‘Against your own heart?’ he asked. ‘It is not worth while.’
Izabela shrugged: ‘Not that. I am thinking of a real struggle, with a powerful enemy.’ She pressed his hand and left the drawing-room.
Conducted by the Countess, Wokulski passed through a long series of rooms. From one, far away from the other guests, came the sounds of singing and a pianoforte. When they entered, he was confronted by an unusual sight. A young man was playing the piano, one very handsome young woman standing by him was pretending to play a violin, and another a trumpet: to this music several couples were dancing, with only one man among them.
‘Naughty things!’ the Countess scolded. They replied by a burst of laughter, but did not pause in their diversions.
They passed through this room and came to a staircase.
‘That,’ said the Countess, ‘was the highest aristocracy. Instead of sitting in the drawing-rooms, they have taken refuge here to misbehave themselves…’
‘How sensible of them,’ Wokulski thought. And it seemed to him that life passed more simply and more entertainingly among those people than among the pompous bourgeoisie or gentry seeking to enter aristocratic circles.
Upstairs, in a room well away from the tumult, and somewhat dark, sat the Duchess in an armchair.
‘I’ll leave you here,’ said the Countess. ‘Have a talk, for I must go back to the guests.’
‘Thank you, Joanna,’ the Duchess replied. ‘Please