The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [68]
When they were alone, she added: ‘You cannot know how many memories you have brought back to me.’
Only then did Wokulski realise that some unusual relationship must have existed between this woman and his uncle. He was overcome with uneasy surprise. ‘Thank God,’ he thought, ‘that I’m the legal child of my parents…’
‘Now,’ the Duchess began, ‘you say your uncle is dead. Where is his grave?’
‘At Zasław, where he lived after returning from abroad.’
The old lady raised a handkerchief to her eyes: ‘Is it so? How ungrateful of me… Were you ever at his home? Did he say nothing to you? Did he not show you…? For there, on a hill-top, is a ruined castle, is there not? Are the ruins still standing?’
‘My uncle went to the castle every day for his walk, and I used to sit there with him for hours at a time, on a big rock.’
‘Really? I know that rock; we both sat there together, and watched the river, and the clouds that passed taught us that happiness passes, just like they do. I only feel that now… And is the well inside the castle still as deep as ever?’
‘It is very deep. But access to it is difficult, for ruins have covered the way in. It was not until my uncle showed me the way that…’
‘Do you know’, said the Duchess, ‘that when we last said goodbye, we wondered if we should throw ourselves into that well… No one would ever have found us, and we would have been together for ever… As always—the follies of youth…’
She touched her eyes, and went on: ‘I…I loved him very much, and think that he too loved me—a little, when he looked back. But he was a poor officer and I, unfortunately, was a rich heiress and related to two generals. So they separated us. Perhaps we were too virtuous… But no matter, no matter,’ she added, smiling and crying. ‘Such things can only be spoken of by a woman in her seventies…’
A sob interrupted her. She sniffed at the little flask, paused, then went on again: ‘Great crimes are always being committed in this world of ours, but surely the greatest is to murder love. So many years have passed, almost half a century; everything has gone, my fortune, title, youth, happiness… Only grief has not passed and remains as fresh as though it were yesterday. Ah, were it not for my faith in another world, where this world’s injustices are rewarded, who knows but that life and its conventions might not have been cursed… But you do not understand me, for you people nowadays have stronger though colder hearts than we…’
Wokulski sat with downcast eyes. Something was stifling him, tearing at his heart. He pressed his fingernails in his palms and wondered how to get away as fast as he could, so as not to listen to these laments which renewed his own most painful wounds.
‘Has a gravestone been erected on his tomb?’ the Duchess asked presently. Wokulski flushed. It had not occurred to him that the dead required anything more than a clod of earth over them.
‘No?’ the Duchess continued, noticing his embarrassment. ‘But I am not surprised at you, my child, for forgetting a gravestone—rather do I reproach myself for having forgotten the man.’
She paused again, and putting her thin, trembling hand on his arm, suddenly said in a low voice: ‘I have a request to make. Please say you will do it.’
‘Of course,’ Wokulski replied.
‘Let me have a gravestone erected for him. But as I cannot see to it myself, you will do it. Take a stonemason with you, and tell him to make use of that rock, the one we used to sit on in the castle, and let one half be placed on his grave. Pay whatever it costs, and I shall return it to you with my eternal gratitude. Will you do this?’
‘I will.’
‘Good, I thank you…I think he will rest more easily under that stone which once heard us talking and which saw our tears…Oh, how painful it is to recollect… As for the inscription,’ she went on, ‘when we parted he left me a few verses from Mickiewicz. You must have read them: “Like a shadow that lengthens as the mournful wheel turns—so will remembrance of me… The further it flees, the more profound will be the mourning that