‘A branch…unknown to anyone,’ he replied, ‘and least of all to you, I am sure.’
‘Didn’t your father serve in the army?’
‘My uncle, but not my father.’
‘Do you not recall where he served? Wasn’t his first name Stanislaw?’
‘It was. He was a lieutenant, later a captain in the Seventh Infantry regiment.’
‘The first brigade of the second division,’ the Duchess interrupted. ‘You see, young man, that you are not so unknown to me. Is he still alive?’
‘He died five years ago.’
The Duchess’s hands began trembling. She opened a tiny flask and inhaled it. ‘He died, you say? God rest his soul… Did he not leave behind a souvenir of any kind?’
‘A gold cross.’
‘Yes, a gold cross… Nothing more?’
‘A miniature of himself, taken in 1828, on ivory.’
The Duchess kept sniffing the tiny flask: her hands trembled more and more. ‘A miniature,’ she repeated. ‘Do you happen to know who painted it? Did he not leave anything else?’
‘There was a bundle of letters and another miniature.’
‘What has become of them?’ the Duchess inquired, still more agitated.
‘My uncle sealed them up some days before he died and asked that they should be put into his coffin.’
‘Ah…ah…’ the old lady whispered, and burst into tears.
There was a stir in the drawing-room. Izabela anxiously hastened over, then the Countess. They took the Duchess by the hand and slowly led her into another room. All eyes were upon Wokulski. People began whispering.
Seeing that everyone was looking at him and talking about him, Wokulski grew embarrassed. In order to give the impression that this peculiar popularity did not concern him, he drank two glasses of wine in rapid succession from a table, then realised that one glass of Hungarian wine had been that of the general, and the other, of red wine, the bishop’s.
‘I am doing very nicely indeed,’ he said to himself. ‘They will say I offended the old lady in order to get at her neighbours’ wine.’
He rose, meaning to leave, and grew hot at the thought of proceeding across two drawing-rooms in which a gauntlet of stares and whispers awaited him. But the Prince stopped him.
‘You and the Duchess were no doubt talking about the old days, and that has distressed her. Am I right? To revert to the subject we were discussing when we were interrupted. Do you think it would be a good thing to establish a Polish factory of cheap linen?’
Wokulski shook his head: ‘I doubt if it would succeed,’ he replied. ‘It is difficult to conceive of large factories for people unable to make small improvements in those already in existence… In other words… I am referring to mills,’ Wokulski went on, ‘in a few years we shall even be importing flour, for our millers are reluctant to replace the stones they use with steam rollers.’
‘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 sit down,’ she turned to Wokulski.
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 t
here 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 bedims thy soul….” How true that is! And I would like to commemorate in some way the well that was to have joined us…’
Wokulski roused himself and gazed wide-eyed into the distance.
‘What is the matter?’ the Duchess asked.
‘Nothing,’ he replied with a smile, ‘death just looked into my eyes.’
‘That should not surprise you; death is very near an old woman like me, so my neighbours cannot help seeing it. But you will do as I ask?’
‘Yes.’
‘Call on me after the holiday and…come often. Perhaps you will find it tedious, but even I perhaps, infirm as I am, may be useful to you in some way. Now, be off with you, be off…’
Wokulski kissed her hand, she kissed his forehead several times, then touched the bell. A servant entered. ‘Take this gentleman to the drawing-room,’ she said.
Wokulski was stunned. He did not know which way he was going, did not realise what he had been talking about with the Duchess. He only sensed that he was in a maze of huge chambers, ancient portraits, soft footfalls, undefined perfume. He was surrounded by costly furniture, people of great sensibility and taste such as he had never dreamed of. But above all this, the presence of that aristocratic old woman wafted like a poem, imbued with sighs and tears.
‘What kind of a world is this? What kind of a world?’
Yet he felt the absence of something. He wanted to look upon Izabela once more. ‘Well, I will see her in the drawing-room…’
The footman opened the door to the drawing-room. Again, all heads turned towards him and talk died down like the rustle of a bird flying away. A moment of silence followed in which everyone looked at Wokulski, but he saw no one, only sought feverishly for that pale blue gown. ‘She isn’t here…’ he thought.
‘Just look how unconcerned he is by all of us,’ whispered the old man with grey whiskers, smiling.
‘She must be in the second drawing-room,’ Wokulski told himself.
He caught sight of the Countess, and went over to her.
‘Well, have you finished your conference?’ the Countess inquired. ‘The Duchess is a charming person, is she not?… You have a true friend in her, though not more than you have in me. Let me introduce you…Mr Wokulski!’ she added, turning to the lady in diamonds.
‘I will come to the point immediately,’ said the lady, looking at him loftily. ‘Our orphans need several rolls of linen…’ The Countess blushed slightly.
‘Only several?’ Wokulski echoed, and he looked at the lady’s diamonds, which represented the value of several hundred rolls of the very finest quality linen. ‘After the holiday,’ he went on, ‘I will have the honour of sending you the linen by the Countess.’
He bowed as if anxious to depart: ‘You wish to say goodbye to us?’ the Countess asked, somewhat embarrassed.
‘But he is impertinent!’ said the lady in diamonds to her companion in peacock feathers.
‘Goodbye, Countess, and thank you for the honour you have been kind enough to confer on me,’ said Wokulski, kissing the hand of his hostess.
‘But it is only au revoir, Mr Wokulski, isn’t it? We shall have a great deal of business together.’
Izabela was not in the second drawing-room either. Wokulski felt uneasy: ‘I must see her… Who knows how long it will be before we meet again under such circumstances…’
‘Ah, there you are,’ the Prince cried. ‘Now I know just what sort of a plot you and Łęcki have been hatching. A company for trading with the East—an excellent notion. You must let me in on it… We must get better acquainted…’ But seeing that Wokulski said nothing, he added: ‘I’m a great bore, Mr Wokulski, am I not? But that cannot be helped: you must join us; you and the likes of you—and we shall forge ahead together. Your firms are coats of arms, while our coats of arms are also firms which provide a guarantee of honesty in business dealings…’
They shook hands and Wokulski said something, though without knowing what. His uneasiness was mounting: he sought Izabela in vain.
‘Surely she is further on,’ he whispered fearfully, going into the last of the drawing-rooms.
Here Mr Łęcki stopped him with signs of unusual affection: ‘Are you leaving already? Well, goodbye, my dear sir. The first meeting after the holiday will be at my house, and with God’s blessing we shall begin work.’
‘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 pos
ition…’
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!