The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [70]
‘She’s not here!’ Wokulski thought, bidding goodbye to Tomasz.
‘You know, sir,’ Łęcki whispered, ‘you have made a tremendous impression. The Countess is quite beside herself with glee, the Prince speaks only of you… And that incident with the Duchess, too! Quite marvellous… No one could wish for a better position…’
Wokulski was already on the threshold. Once again his glassy eyes travelled around the drawing-room—and he went out with despair in his heart. ‘Perhaps I ought to go back and say goodbye to her? After all, she was taking the hostess’s place…’ he thought, going slowly down the stairs. Suddenly he stopped, hearing the rustle of a dress in the long gallery: ‘There she is!’
He looked up, and saw the lady in diamonds.
Someone handed him his overcoat. Wokulski went into the street, staggering as though intoxicated: ‘What is a fine position to me—if she is not there?’
‘Mr Wokulski’s carriage!’ the porter shouted from the porch, devoutly clutching a three-rouble piece. His bleary eyes and somewhat hoarse voice bore witness that this citizen, despite his responsible position, had nevertheless been celebrating the first day of Easter. ‘Mr Wokulski’s carriage!… Wokulski’s carriage… Drive up, Wokulski!’ the drivers called.
Two lines of carriages were slowly moving along the Boulevard to and from the Belvedere palace. Someone passing caught sight of Wokulski standing on the pavement and bowed. ‘An acquaintance!’ Wokulski whispered, and he flushed. When his carriage was brought, he went to get in, but changed his mind: ‘Go home, my man,’ he said to the driver, tipping him.
The carriage drove off towards town. Wokulski joined the passers-by and went towards Aleje Ujazdowskie. He walked slowly and eyed the people in carriages. He knew many of them personally. There went a saddler who supplied him with leather goods, out for a ride with his wife who resembled a sugar-sack, and their rather plain daughter, whom they wanted to marry off to him. There went the son of a butcher, who had at one time supplied Hopfer’s shop with pork. There was a wealthy carpenter with his family. The widow of a distiller, who had a large fortune of her own and was equally ready to bestow her hand on Wokulski… Here a tanner, there two clerks in the textile trade, then a tailor, a bricklayer, a jeweller, a baker—and here was his competitor, a haberdasher, in an ordinary carriage.
Most failed to see Wokulski, but some did, and bowed: but there were also those who saw him and did not bow, and even grinned maliciously. Of all these merchants, industrialists and tradesmen, equal to him in position, some wealthier and longer established in Warsaw—he alone had been invited to the Countess. None of them, only he!
‘I’m having incredibly good fortune,’ he thought. ‘In six months I’ve made a fortune of thousands, in a few years I may have millions. Even earlier… Already today I have the entrée to drawing-rooms, and with a year—what? I might have waited on some of those people with whom I rubbed shoulders this evening—seventeen years ago, in the shop: the only reason I did not, was that none of them would enter such a place. From the cellar of a shop to the boudoir of a Countess! What a leap… But am I not advancing too fast?’ he added, with secret uneasiness in his heart.
He had reached the wide Aleje Ujazdowskie, where a fair was being held in the southern portion. The sound of barrel-organs mingled with the blowing of trumpets and the uproar of a crowd of several thousands enveloped him like the wave of an incoming tide. He could very clearly see the long line of swings rocking from right to left, like great pendulums. Then another line of swiftly revolving canopies, striped in different colours, where hideous monsters glowed and brightly dressed clowns, or huge dolls, were standing. And in the centre were two lofty poles, up which men competing for frock-coats or cheap watches were scrambling. An excited crowd