The seasons of the year did not exist for her, only an everlasting spring full of soft light, living flowers and perfumes. The times of day did not exist for her either, since for whole months at a time she would go to bed at eight in the morning and dine at two at night. There was no difference in geographical location, since in Paris, Vienna, Rome, Berlin or London she would find the same people, the same manners, the same objects and even the same food — soups from Pacific seaweed, oysters from the North Sea, fish from the Atlantic or Mediterranean, animals from every country, fruits from all parts of the globe. For her, even the force of gravity did not exist, since her chairs were placed for her, plates were handed, she herself was driven in carriages through the streets, conducted inside, helped upstairs.
A veil shielded her from the wind, a carriage from the rain, furs from the cold, a parasol and gloves from the sun. And thus she lived from day to day, month to month, year to year, above other people and even above the laws of nature. Twice in her life she experienced a terrible storm, once in the Alps, later in the Mediterranean. The bravest shrank in terror, but Izabela smiled as she listened to the thunder of the battering waves and the shuddering of the boat, never even considering the danger. Nature was staging a splendid spectacle for her, with thunderbolts, waves and chaos, just as on another occasion it had shown her the moon over the Lake of Geneva, or had drawn aside clouds veiling the sun over a Rhine waterfall. For mechanics in the theatre did the same every day, and even nervous ladies were not alarmed.
This world of everlasting spring, where silks rustled, only sculptured trees grew and where clay was covered with artistic paintings — this world had its own population. Its proper inhabitants were princesses and princes, dukes and duchesses and very old and wealthy aristocrats of both sexes. It also included wealthy women and married men who played hosts, matrons who watched over elegant manners and behaviour, and elderly gentlemen who took their place at the top table, spoke kindly to young people, blessed them and played cards. There were also bishops, the likenesses of God in this world, high officials whose presence protected this world from disturbances and earthquakes, and finally there were children, little angels sent from Heaven so that their elders could arrange Kinderbale.
Amidst the permanent population of this enchanted world an ordinary mortal would sometimes appear, who had succeeded in reaching the heights of Olympus on the wings of fame. He might be an engineer who had linked two oceans or drilled through mountains, or a captain who had lost his entire company in a battle with savages and, although gravely wounded, had himself been spared by the love of a Negro princess. He might be a traveller who was said to have discovered a new part of the globe, had been shipwrecked on a desert island and even tasted human flesh.
There were also eminent painters and in particular there were inspired poets who wrote charming verses in the albums of the princesses, poets who might fall hopelessly in love and render the charms of their cruel goddess immortal, first in the newspapers then in slim volumes printed on vellum.
All these people, among whom there carefully moved a crowd of uniformed footmen, female companions, poor cousins and relatives seeking promotion — all these people were on a permanent holiday.
From midday they visited one another and returned visits, or drove to the shops. In the evenings, they amused themselves before, at and after dinner. Then they drove to a concert or the theatre, there to see another artificial world, in which heroes rarely ate or worked, but frequently talked to themselves, where the infidelity of a woman caused tremendous catastrophes and where a lover, slain by the husband in Act Five, would rise from the dead next day to perpetrate the same mistakes and talk to himself without being heard by the person standing next to him. On leaving the theatre, they gathered in drawing-rooms again, and servants carried cold or warm drinks about, artistes sang, young married ladies listened to the wounded captain talk about his Negro princess, unmarried young ladies talked to the poets about affinities of the soul, elderly gentlemen gave the engineers their views on engineering and middle-aged ladies fought one another with hints and glances for the sake of the traveller who had eaten human flesh. Then they sat down to supper, at which mouths ate, stomachs digested and little shoes under the table talked about the feelings of frozen hearts and the dreams of unfeeling heads. Then they would separate, to regain their strength for the dream of life in real sleep.
Outside this enchanted world was yet another world — the ordinary one.
Izabela knew of its existence, and even liked gazing at it from the window of her carriage or boudoir. Framed thus, and at a distance, that world seemed picturesque, even charming. She saw farm labourers slowly ploughing the earth, great wagons drawn by broken-down nags, hawkers of fruit and vegetables, an old man breaking stones at the roadside, messengers hurrying by, pretty and impudent flower-girls, a family consisting of father, stout mother and four little children holding hands in pairs, a dandy of the lower world travelling in a droshky and behaving quite absurdly — and sometimes a funeral. And she told herself that this world, though inferior, was charming; it was even more charming than paintings of low life, for it moved and changed.
And Izabela also knew that just as flowers bloomed in hot-houses and vines in vineyards, so things necessary to her grew in that inferior world. It was from that world that loyal Mikołaj and the maid Anna came, it was there that people made carved chairs, porcelain, crystal and curtains, it was there that polishers, upholsterers, gardeners and the girls who made her dresses were born. Once in a modiste’s, she had asked to be shown the tailoring shop and it was so interesting to see a dozen girls cutting, tacking and fitting garments on busts. She was certain this gave them great pleasure, for the girls who took her measurements were always smiling and so anxious that the dress be well cut. And Izabela knew that in that inferior world there existed some people who happened to be unhappy. So she gave instructions that any poor person she met should be given a few złoty. Once, meeting a poor woman with a child as pale as wax at her breast, Izabela gave her a bracelet of her own, while she always bestowed sweets on beggar-children and kissed them piously. For it seemed to her that Christ might be hidden in one of these poor people, or perhaps in each one of them, and they had crossed her path so she might have the opportunity of doing a good deed.
On the whole she felt benevolent towards the people of this inferior world. The words of the Bible came to her mind: ‘thou shalt labour in the sweat of thy brow,’ and obviously they had committed some grave sin, since they were condemned to labour. Angels such as she could not but pity their fate. Such as she, whose greatest labour was that of touching an electric bell or giving an order.
Once only did that inferior world make a powerful impression upon her.
She visited an iron foundry in France one day. While travelling down from the mountains into a region of woods and fields under a sapphire sky, she saw an abyss of black smoke and white steam, and heard the dull rattling, creak and hiss of machinery. Then she saw the foundries, like the towers of medieval castles breathing flame, powerful wheels that revolved as fast as lightning, great scaffolds that moved on rails, streams of molten iron glowing white, and half-naked labourers like bronze statues with sombre expressions. Over it all was a blood-red glow, the sound of rumbling wheels, bellows panting, the thundering of hammers and impatient breathing of furnaces, and underfoot the terrified earth trembled.
Then it seemed to Izabela that she had descended from the heights of Olympus into the hopeless chasms of Vulcan, where the Cyclops were forging thunderbolts that might shatter Olympus itself. She recalled legends of rebellious giants, of the end of this splendid world of hers, and for the first time she the goddess, before whom senators and marshals bowed their heads, was afraid.
‘These are terrible people, papa,’ she whispered to her father.
He did not say a word, but pressed her arm more closely.
‘Surely they won’t harm a woman?’
‘No, not even they
,’ Tomasz replied.
Then Izabela was ashamed to think she was only concerned about herself, and she hastily added: ‘If they won’t harm a woman, they won’t harm you either …’
Mr Łęcki smiled and shook his head. At the time much was being said of the coming end of the old world, and Mr Łęcki felt this particularly, for he was experiencing great difficulty in extracting funds from his agents.
This visit to the iron foundry was an important epoch in Izabela’s life. Piously she read the poem by a distant cousin of hers, Zygmunt, and thought that she had this day found an appropriate illustration to his ‘Un-Divine Comedy’. From this time on, she often dreamed at twilight that the bastions of the Holy Trinity Fortress stood on that sunlit mountain from which her carriage had driven down to the iron foundry, and that the rebel democrats had their encampment in the valley below, veiled in smoke and steam, ready to set out to storm and overthrow her beautiful world.
Only now did she realise how much she loved her spiritual homeland, where crystal chandeliers replaced the sun, carpets the earth, statues and columns the trees. This other homeland included the aristocracy of all nations, the elegance of every age and the finest blessings of civilisation.
And was all this to collapse and perish, perhaps be scattered to the winds? … These elegant young men who sang with such feeling, danced delightfully, would fight a duel for a smile or jump headlong into a lake for a flower? And all these charming girls who gave her thousands of caresses, or confided so many little secrets in her or who wrote such very long letters in which sensitive feelings were mingled with very dubious spelling — were they all to perish too?
And the servants who behaved as though they had sworn undying love, loyalty and obedience to their masters? And the modistes who always greeted her with smiles and could remember the smallest details of her toilettes, who knew all about her triumphs in society? And the noble horses, whose flight a swallow might envy, and the clever dogs, just as attached as people, and the gardens where human hands had raised hills, poured streams, fashioned trees? … Was all this to vanish?
These thoughts gave Izabela’s face another expression — one of tranquil sorrow, which made her still more lovely. People said she had quite grown up now.
Understanding quite well that the great world is a superior world, Izabela slowly learned that people could only attain these heights and remain there with the help of two wings — those of birth and wealth. And birth and wealth were associated with certain chosen families, like the flower and fruit of the orange tree. It was also very likely that the good God, seeing two souls with celebrated names linked in the bonds of holy matrimony, would increase their income and also send them a little angel to look after, who would in due course carry on the eminence of the family by his virtues, good manners and beauty. Hence the duty of making sensible marriages, of which old ladies and gentlemen were the best informed. A proper choice of name and fortune meant everything. For love — not the wild love poets dream of, but genuine Christian love — appears only after the Sacrament, and it is quite enough if the wife knows how to behave prettily at home, and if the husband accompanies her ceremonially into society.
Thus it had been in the past and it had been good, according to all the matrons. But today this principle had been forgotten, and things were bad: misalliances were increasing, and the great families were in decline.
‘And there is no happiness in marriage,’ Izabela added quietly, for young ladies had imparted not a few of their domestic secrets to her.
As a result of these tales, she had acquired a great horror of marriage, and a slight contempt for men.
For a husband in his dressing-gown, yawning in his wife’s presence, kissing her with a mouth still tainted with cigar smoke, often exclaiming ‘Oh, let me be …’ or even ‘You’re a fool!’, who makes a scene at home over a new hat but will spend his money away from home on carriages for an actress — this is not at all an attractive creature. What was worse, every one of these men before his marriage had been a warm admirer of his lady, had wasted away if unable to see her, had blushed when they met and more than one had even threatened to shoot himself for love of her.
So, at the age of eighteen, Izabela knew how to tyrannise men with her coldness. When Victor Emmanuel kissed her hand one day, she told her father she wished to leave Rome at once. In Paris, a wealthy French duke had proposed marriage; she replied that she was Polish, and would not marry a foreigner. She rejected a Podolian magnate with the remark that she would only yield her hand to a man she loved, and that he had not yet appeared, while she rejected the proposals of an American millionaire with a burst of laughter.
Within a few years, this behaviour had created a desert around Izabela. She was admired and adored, but from a distance; no one wanted to risk a mocking refusal.
When her first distaste had passed, Izabela realized that marriage must be accepted as it is. She was already determined to marry, but on condition that she liked her future husband, that he had a good name and appropriate fortune. And she often met handsome men, wealthy and titled; unfortunately none of them combined the three conditions, so — more years passed.
Suddenly rumour had it that Mr Łęcki’s affairs were in a deplorable state, and Izabela found herself with only two suitors remaining from a whole battalion: these were a certain Baron and a certain marshal, both of them wealthy but old.
Now Izabela saw the ground was slipping away from beneath her feet, so she decided to lower her standards. But since the Baron and the marshal, in spite of their fortunes, aroused an unconquerable aversion in her, she postponed her final choice from one day to the next. Meanwhile, Mr Łęcki had quit society. The marshal could not wait for a reply and left for his country estate, while the heartbroken Baron went abroad — and Miss Izabela remained entirely alone. Of course, she knew that either of them would return if she summoned him, but which was she to choose, how could she stifle her aversion? What concerned her most of all, though, was whether it was possible to make such a sacrifice as this without any assurance that one day she might again acquire a fortune and would again be free to make her own choice. This time she would make her choice fully realising how difficult it was for her to live outside drawing-room society …
One thing greatly facilitated her marriage for rank. The fact was that Izabela had never been in love. This was due to her cold nature, and her belief that marriage survives with no poetic adjuncts, and finally an ideal love, the most extraordinary ever heard of.
Once in an art gallery, she had seen a statue of Apollo, which made such a strong impression upon her that she bought a fine copy, and had it placed in her boudoir. She would gaze at it for hours, would think of him … and who can tell how many kisses had warmed the hands and feet of the marble god? And a miracle came to pass: caressed by a loving woman, the clay had come to life. When one night she went to sleep weeping, the immortal stepped down from his pedestal and came to her in a laurel wreath, gleaming with a mystic glow.
He sat on the edge of her bed, gazed at her with eyes from which eternity looked out, then took her in his powerful embrace and brushed away her tears and cooled her fever with kisses from his pallid lips.
Henceforward he visited her more and more often, and as she swooned in his embraces, the god of light would whisper to her secrets of heaven and earth which had never before been uttered by a human tongue. And for love of her he wrought a still greater miracle, for his heavenly likeness was revealed to her in the features of men who at any time had made an impression on her.
Once he resembled a general (somewhat younger), who had won a battle and gazed upon the deaths of thousands of warriors. On another occasion he reminded her of the features of a celebrated tenor, to whom women threw flowers and whose carriage had been unharnessed by a crowd. Then he was a witty and handsome prince of the blood, a member of one of the oldest ruling families; or he was a brave fireman who won the Legion d’honneur for saving three persons from the fifth floor; or he
was a great painter who had startled the world with the scope of his imagination; and sometimes he was a Venetian gondolier, or a circus acrobat of great charm and strength.
For a while, each of these men had captured Izabela’s secret thoughts, to each of them she had devoted the most silent of sighs, knowing that for one reason or another she could not love him — and each had appeared to her in the shape of the god, in dreams that were half-real. From these visions, Izabela’s eyes took on a new expression — a supernatural brooding. Sometimes her eyes would gaze far above other people, and beyond this world; and when the golden and ash-coloured hair on her temples was disordered, as if dishevelled by a mysterious breath, then the observers seemed to behold an angel or saint.
A year earlier, at one such moment, Wokulski had seen Izabela. From that time onward his heart had known no peace.
Almost simultaneously, Tomasz had broken with society and joined the merchants’ club as a sign of his revolutionary sympathies. He used to play whist there with persons he had formerly despised, such as tanners, brush-makers and distillers, telling all and sundry that the aristocracy had no right to wall themselves up in exclusive society, but should lead the way for the enlightened bourgeois and, through them, for the whole nation. In return, the tanners, brushmakers and distillers all agreed that Mr Łęcki was the one aristocrat who was carrying out his duties towards the country, and doing so in a conscientious manner. They might have added daily, from nine in the evening till midnight.
While Mr Łęcki thus shouldered the burden of his position, Izabela passed her time in the solitude and silence of her fine apartment. Sometimes Mikołaj would be dozing in an armchair, Flora fast asleep with her ears plugged with cotton-wool, yet sleep would not come to Izabela’s boudoir, it was driven away by memories. And she would rise from her bed to pace for hours, wearing only a light robe, through the drawing-room where the carpet deadened her steps and the only light was that of two dim street-lamps.
The Doll Page 7