The Doll

by Bolesław Prus

  He walked to the lake, hurried around the park as if seeking to dispel his forebodings. The thought that Izabela might be leaving nagged him. He suppressed it so much that it was no longer clear, only an insignificant vexation somewhere in the depths of his heart.

  At breakfast, the Duchess seemed to greet him more affectionately than usual, everyone seemed to be behaving more ceremoniously, Felicja seemed to be gazing at him insistently, as if reproachfully. Then again, after breakfast, it seemed to him that the Duchess made some kind of signal to Mrs Wąsowska. ‘I must be ill,’ he thought.

  But he at once recovered, for Miss Izabela declared she wanted to stroll in the park: ‘Does anyone want to accompany me?’ she asked.

  Wokulski leapt to his feet, the others remained seated. So he found himself alone in the garden with Izabela, and again the tranquillity he always felt in her presence returned to him. Halfway down an alley, Izabela said: ‘I am very sorry to be leaving Zasławek …’ ‘Sorry?’ Wokulski thought, but she went on quickly, ‘I must leave. My aunt wrote on Wednesday for me to go back, but the Duchess didn’t show me the letter, she kept me here. It wasn’t until a special messenger arrived yesterday …’

  ‘Are you leaving tomorrow?’ Wokulski asked.

  ‘Today, after lunch,’ she replied, lowering her gaze.

  ‘Today!’ he repeated.

  They were just passing a fence behind which, in the farm-yard, stood the carriage in which Izabela had come. The coachman was arranging reins around the box. But this time, neither the news nor the preparations for departure made any impression on Wokulski. ‘Well, what of it?’ he thought, ‘anyone who comes, must also leave. It is very natural.’

  This calmness surprised even him.

  They walked a few more paces under the overhanging branches, then all at once, a terrible despair seized him. He felt that if the carriage for Izabela had driven up at this moment, he would have thrown himself under its wheels to prevent her from leaving. Let the carriage run over him and stop his sufferings once and for all!

  Then another wave of calmness descended, and Wokulski wondered where such adolescent thoughts had come from. After all, Miss Izabela had the right to leave when she chose, to go where she chose, and with whom she pleased.

  ‘Will you be staying with your aunt much longer?’ he asked.

  ‘A month at most.’

  ‘A month!’ he repeated, ‘will I at least be permitted to call on you later?’

  ‘Oh yes, please do,’ she replied, ‘my father is a great friend of yours.’

  ‘And you?’

  She blushed and was silent.

  ‘You don’t reply,’ said Wokulski, ‘you don’t even guess how dear each of your words is to me, when I hear them so rarely. And now you are leaving without giving me even a shadow of hope.’

  ‘Perhaps time will help,’ she murmured.

  ‘If only it would! But in any case, allow me to tell you something, madam. You see, in life, one can find people more amusing than I am, more elegant, with titles, even with larger fortunes. But you will surely not find another attachment like mine. For if love is measured by suffering, then love such as mine has perhaps never before been seen in this world. I haven’t the right to complain to anyone for that. It’s destiny. By what strange paths it has led me to you! How many disasters had to occur before I, a poor lad, was able to acquire an education which lets me speak to you today? What accident drove me to the theatre where I saw you for the first time? And didn’t a series of miracles found the fortune I now possess?

  ‘When I think of these things, it seems to me I was destined even before birth to meet you. If my poor uncle hadn’t fallen in love as a young man, I wouldn’t be here today. And is it not strange that I myself, instead of amusing myself with women as other men do, have hitherto avoided them and also deliberately waited for one, for you …’

  Izabela imperceptibly wiped away a tear. Wokulski, without looking at her, said: ‘Not long ago, when I was in Paris, I had two choices before me. One led to a great invention which might change the history of the world — the other to you. I renounced the first, for an invisible chain binds me here — the hope that you will love me. If that is possible, then I’d prefer happiness with you to the greatest fame without you: fame is but a counter for which we sacrifice our own happiness for others. But if I am deluding myself, only you can take the spell off me. Tell me you have not, and never will have any feeling for me … and I’ll go back, where I should perhaps have remained from the first.’

  ‘Is it to be so?’ he asked, taking her hand.

  She did not utter a word.

  ‘Then I will stay,’ he said after a moment, ‘I’ll be patient, and you yourself will give me the signal that my hopes have been fulfilled.’

  They went back to the palace. Izabela was somewhat altered, but she talked gaily to everyone. Tranquillity came back to Wokulski. He was no longer desperate because Izabela was leaving, he told himself he would see her in a month, and that sufficed for him at present. After luncheon, the carriage drove up: the departures began. In the porch Izabela whispered to Mrs Wąsowska: ‘Perhaps, Kazia, you won’t tease that poor man?’

  ‘Whom do you mean?’

  ‘Your namesake.’

  ‘Ah, Starski… We’ll see.’

  Izabela gave Wokulski her hand. ‘Until we meet again,’ she murmured, with emphasis.

  She drove away. The entire company stood in the porch watching the carriage which moved off around the lake, disappeared behind a hillock and reappeared, until finally only a cloud of yellow dust was left.

  ‘A very fine day,’ said Wokulski.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Starski replied.

  Mrs Wąsowska was eyeing Wokulski with lowered lashes.

  They all separated slowly. Wokulski remained alone. He went to his room, but it seemed very empty: then he wanted to stroll in the park, but something kept him away … He thought Izabela must be still in the house, and could not for the life of him grasp that she had left, that she was already a mile away from Zasławek, and that each second was taking her further away from him. ‘She has gone, after all,’ he thought, ‘she has gone — but what of it?’

  He went to the lake and gazed at the white boat around which the water was gleaming, until his eyes ached. Suddenly one of the swans swimming along the opposite bank caught sight of him, and flew with a fluttering of wings to the punt. And at this moment Wokulski was seized with such vast, limitless unhappiness, as though he were on the point of quitting life itself …

  Plunged in his own bitter thoughts, Wokulski hardly noticed what was going on around him. Nevertheless, towards evening, he observed that the whole company at Zasławek, after coming in from the park, was peevish. Felicja shut herself up with Ewelina in her room, the Baron was irritable and Starski ironical and impudent.

  After dinner the Duchess summoned Wokulski. Signs of vexation were also apparent in the old lady, though she tried to hide them. ‘Have you been thinking at all, Mr Stanisław, of the sugar-factory?’ she asked, sniffing a little flask — always a sign of emotion. ‘Think of it, pray, and talk to me, for all this gossip has upset me.’

  ‘Are you worried?’ asked Wokulski.

  She made a gesture: ‘Ah, worry … All I want is for this marriage between Ewelina and the Baron to take place, or be broken off. Either let them both go away, or Starski … It’s all the same.’

  Wokulski lowered his gaze and was silent, guessing that Starski’s flirtation with the Baron’s fiancée must have taken on a still more obvious form. But what concern was that to him?

  ‘These young girls are silly creatures,’ the Duchess began after a moment, ‘they think that when one of them catches a rich husband and a handsome lover as well, then she will fill up her life. Silly creatures! They don’t realise that soon the old husband and the empty lover will grow hateful, and that sooner or later she’ll want to meet a genuine man. And if one comes along, to her misfortune, what can she give him? The charms
she’s sold, or a heart defiled by such as Starski?

  ‘And to think that almost every one of them must go through such a school before she gets to understand people! Earlier, even if she meets the noblest of men, she can’t appreciate him. She’ll choose a rich old man or impudent scoundrel, will waste her life in their company, and not until some future time will she wish to be born again. … Usually too late, and in vain.

  ‘What surprises me most,’ she went on, ‘is the fact that men don’t understand these dolls. It’s no secret to any woman, from Mrs Wąsowska to my chambermaid, that neither heart nor sense has yet awoken in Ewelina: it’s all asleep in her … Yet the Baron regards her as a divinity, and deludes himself, poor wretch, that she loves him.’

  ‘Why not warn him?’ Wokulski asked in a stifled voice.

  ‘For goodness sake, that would be useless … Did I ever once give him to understand that Ewelina is still only a spoiled child and a doll? Perhaps something will come of her one day, but not at present! Starski is just right for her. And what,’ she added, after a pause, ‘have you thought about the sugar-factory? Have a horse saddled tomorrow, ride out in the fields by yourself or — better still — with Wąsowska. She’s a worthy woman, I may tell you …’

  When Wokulski left the Duchess, he was in a state of alarm. ‘What was she saying,’ he thought, ‘about the Baron and Ewelina? Wasn’t she quite simply warning me? For Starski flirts with others as well as Ewelina. What happened in the brake? I’d sooner shoot myself …’

  But then he recollected himself. ‘In the brake,’ he thought, ‘it was either an illusion, in which case I’m doing an innocent woman an injustice, or if it was a fact … Well, I’m certainly not going to be the rival of that operetta libertine, and sacrifice my life for a depraved woman. She has the right to flirt with whom she pleases, but not to deceive a man whose only crime is that he loves her. I must get away from this Capua, and set to work. I’ll fulfil my life better in Geist’s laboratory than in any drawing-room.’

  Towards ten o’clock the Baron came into his room, terribly changed. At first he smiled and joked, then sank breathlessly into a chair and said, after a moment: ‘You know, my dear Mr Wokulski, I sometimes think — not in my own experience, for my fiancée is the noblest of girls — but sometimes I think women deceive us …’

  ‘Yes, sometimes …’

  ‘Perhaps it isn’t their fault,’ said the Baron, ‘but one must admit that sometimes they let themselves be trifled with by intriguers.’

  ‘Yes, indeed they do.’

  The Baron was shivering so much that his teeth chattered. ‘Don’t you think, sir,’ he asked, after pondering, ‘that such things should be prevented?’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘By removing a woman from contact with the intriguers, at least.’

  Wokulski laughed aloud: ‘It’s possible to free a woman from intriguers, but is it possible to free her from her own instincts? What would you advise if the man whom you consider a trifler or intriguer is to her a male of the same species as herself?’

  Gradually a feeling of rage began dominating him. He walked about the room, and said: ‘How can one struggle against a law of nature by which a bitch, even of the best breed, will couple — not with a lion — but with a dog? Show her a whole menagerie of the noblest animals, but she’ll renounce them all for a few dogs. Yet it is hardly surprising, for they are her species.’

  ‘So in your opinion there’s no help for it?’ asked the Baron.

  ‘Not at present, but at some future time there will be sincerity in human relations, and freedom of choice. When a woman won’t need to pretend to love or flirt with every man, then at once she will discard those she doesn’t care for, and will go to the man who suits her taste. Then there won’t be any deceived lovers or deceivers, relationships will be formed in a natural manner.’

  When the Baron left, Wokulski went to bed. He did not sleep all night, but he regained equanimity. ‘What sort of complaint can I have against Izabela?’ he thought, ‘after all, she didn’t say she loved me; all she did was to give me barely a shadow of hope that it may happen at some time. She’s right, for she hardly knows me. What sort of illusions are these? … Starski? … But she wants to match him with Mrs Wąsowska, so surely it hasn’t occurred to her to flirt with him. The Duchess? … The Duchess likes Izabela, she told me so, and besides, she invited me here … I have time. I’ll get to know her better, and if she falls in love with me, I’ll be happy and can be at rest. If not — I’ll go back to Geist. In any case, I’ll sell the apartment house and the store, but will stay in the trading company with Russia. That will bring me in a hundred thousand roubles or so within a few years, and won’t lay her open to the charge of being a tradesman’s wife.’

  After breakfast next morning, he ordered a horse and rode out on the pretext of surveying the district. Without thinking, he turned along the road by which Izabela’s carriage had driven away the day before, and where he believed traces of wheels were still visible. Then, almost mechanically, he rode towards the wood where they had so recently gone for mushrooms. At this spot she had laughed, here she had talked to him, here she surveyed the view …

  Suspicion, anger, everything, died away within him. In their place, an unhappiness as fine as tears, yet burning like everlasting fire, began flowing into his heart. Entering the wood, he dismounted and led the horse. This was the path along which they had both walked, but it seemed somehow different. This part of the wood was supposed to resemble a church — today there was no trace of a likeness. All around was grey and quiet. Only the croaking of crows which were at this moment flying over the wood, and the bark of a squirrel as it climbed a tree could be heard.

  Wokulski reached the clearing where he and Izabela had talked: he even found the tree-stump she had sat on. Everything was as it had been: only she was absent … Already the undergrowth was turning yellow, and sorrow drooped from the pine trees like spider-webs. So impalpable, yet it entangled him!

  ‘It’s madness,’ he thought, ‘to make oneself too dependent on another human being. I worked for her alone, I think of her, I live for her. The worst is that I rejected Geist for her sake … Well, but what more would I have got from Geist? I’d be as dependent as I am today, except that my master would be an old German instead of a beautiful woman. And I’d work the same, even harder, except that today I’m working for my own happiness, and there it would be for the happiness of others, who in any case would have a good time, and fall in love at my expense.

  ‘Besides, what right have I to complain? A year ago I hardly dared dream about Izabela, and today I know her, I’m even trying to win her affection … But do I know her? She’s a conventional aristocrat, yes … but she still hasn’t looked around the world. She has a poetic spirit, or perhaps merely presents one. She’s a flirt, but that will change if she falls in love with me … In a word, it isn’t bad, and within a year …’

  At this moment his horse raised its head and neighed: neighing and the sound of hoofs echoed in the depths of the wood. Soon a woman on horseback appeared at the end of the drive, and Wokulski recognised Mrs Wąsowska. ‘Hop, hop!’ she cried, laughing. She jumped off her horse, and gave the reins to Wokulski. ‘Tie him up, sir,’ she said, ‘ah, how well I know you! An hour ago I asked the Duchess where you were. “He’s gone out looking for a site for the sugar-factory.” “Just so,” thought I, “he’s gone into the woods to dream.” I ordered a horse and here I find you, sitting on a tree-stump in a state of exaltation. Ha ha ha!’

  ‘Do I look so comical?’

  ‘No! You do not look at all comical to me, but — how shall I word it? — unexpected. I imagined you very differently. When they told me you were a tradesman who had also made a fortune, I thought: “A tradesman? So he’s come into the country either to woo a rich young woman, or to obtain money from the Duchess for some business.” In any case, I thought you a cold man, calculating, a man who estimates the values of the trees as he walks in
a wood, and who doesn’t look at the sky because it doesn’t pay interest. But what do I find? A dreamer, a medieval troubadour who disappears into the wood to sigh and gaze upon last week’s traces of her feet! A faithful knight, who loves one woman through life and death, and is impudent to the others. Oh, Mr Wokulski, how amusing this is — and how old-fashioned!’

  ‘Have you quite finished?’ Wokulski asked coldly.

  ‘Yes … Have you something to add?’

  ‘No, madam. I suggest we go back to the house.’

  Mrs Wąsowska blushed scarlet. ‘I trust,’ she said, taking the horse’s bridle, ‘that you don’t think I speak of your love in this manner so as to catch you for myself? … You say nothing. So let’s be serious. There was a moment when I liked you: there was, but it passed. Even if it hadn’t, even if I were dying for love of you, which will certainly not happen, for I haven’t yet lost any sleep or appetite — I wouldn’t surrender to you, do you hear me? — not even if you came crawling at my feet. I couldn’t live with a man who loves another woman as you do. I am too proud. Do you believe me?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘I thought so. If I vexed you with my remarks, it was simply out of benevolence. Your madness impresses me, I hope you will be happy and that’s why I say — throw off the medieval troubadour, for this is the nineteenth century, women are different from what you imagine, as even twenty-year-old youths know.’

  ‘What are they really like?’

  ‘Pretty, agreeable, they like twisting you around their little fingers, and will fall in love only enough to enjoy it. No woman will accept a dramatic love, or at least not all women … First she must grow tired of flirtations, and then she will find herself a dramatic lover …’

  ‘In a word, you are insinuating that Izabela …’

  ‘Oh, I insinuate nothing about Izabela,’ Mrs Wąsowska protested vivaciously, ‘in her there is material for a fine woman, and the man she falls in love with will be happy. But before she falls in love … Pray help me mount.’