The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [96]
‘Bored?’ Izabela echoed, ‘he strikes me most of all as comical.’
‘I wouldn’t have said that,’ the Countess was surprised.
‘Well—unpleasant,’ Miss Izabela corrected herself.
Wokulski lacked the courage to leave the park. He walked along the other side of the pond and watched that grey dress fluttering among the trees. Not until later did he realise he was watching two grey dresses and a third, blue one, none of which belonged to Izabela: ‘I am abysmally stupid,’ he thought. Yet this did not help.
One day in the first half of June, Mrs Meliton let Wokulski know that Izabela would be out walking the next day with the Countess and the Duchess. This small incident might well have capital significance. For Wokulski had visited the Duchess several times since that memorable Easter, and knew that the old lady was extremely well disposed towards him. He usually listened to her tales of olden times, talked about his uncle and recently had even discussed erecting a gravestone for him. During these talks, the name of Izabela appeared in some unexplained manner, so unexpectedly that Wokulski was not able to conceal his emotion: his face changed; his voice darkened.
The old lady put on her spectacles and looked at Wokulski, then asked: ‘Am I right in thinking you are not indifferent to Miss Łęcka?’
‘I hardly know her…I have only spoken to her once in my life,’ Wokulski explained, in confusion.
The Duchess fell to pondering, nodded and murmured: ‘Ah…’
Wokulski bade her goodbye but that ‘Ah…’ remained in his mind. In any case, he was sure he did not have an enemy in the Duchess. And now, less than a week since that conversation, he had learned that the Duchess was going to the Łazienki park with the Countess and Izabela. Could she have found out that the ladies sometimes encountered him there? Perhaps she wanted to bring them together?
Wokulski looked at his watch: it was three in the afternoon. ‘So it’s to be tomorrow,’ he thought, ‘within twenty-four hours…No, not so many…how many?’ He could not estimate how many hours would flow between three o’clock and one o’clock next afternoon. He was overwhelmed with nervousness; he ate no dinner; his imagination rushed ahead, but cold common sense put the brake on it: ‘Let us see what tomorrow brings. Perhaps it will rain, or one of the ladies will be ill.’
He hurried out into the street and wandered about aimlessly, repeating: ‘Well, we shall see what tomorrow brings…Perhaps they won’t even stop? In any case, Izabela is a pretty woman, even unusually pretty, but she is only a woman, not a supernatural being. Thousands of equally pretty women walk about this world, yet I don’t dream of attaching myself to their skirts. What if she rejects me? So be it! I shall fall into the clutches of another, still more frantically…’
In the evening he went to the theatre, but left after the first act. Again he wandered about the town, and wherever he went, was haunted by the thought of the walk tomorrow and by an obscure premonition that it would bring him closer to Izabela.
That night passed, and dawn came. At noon, he ordered the carriage to be harnessed. He wrote a note to the shop that he would come later, and ripped a pair of gloves to shreds. At last the servant came in: ‘The horses are ready!’ He reached for his hat. ‘The Prince!’ said the servant.
Everything grew dark before Wokulski’s eyes: ‘Announce him…’
The Prince entered: ‘Good morning, Mr Wokulski,’ he cried, ‘are you going out? To the shops or the railway, I’ll be bound. But none of that! I hereby place you under arrest and am taking you off to my house. I will even be uncivil enough to commandeer your carriage, as I didn’t bring mine today. However, I am sure you will forgive me in view of the splendid news…’
‘Please be seated…’
‘Well, just for a moment. Pray imagine,’ said the Prince, as he took a chair, ‘that I have teased