‘Dear and Respected Sir,’ she wrote, ‘since God has given you so much money, do not spend it on a sinner like me. For now I can earn my own living, if I find something to set my hands to, but there are many people in Warsaw whose need is greater than mine, unhappy and disgraced though I am…’
Wokulski was sorry this request had been unanswered for several days. He replied at once and called the servant. ‘Have this letter delivered in the morning,’ he said, ‘at the Magdalenes.’
‘Very good, sir,’ the servant replied, trying to stifle a yawn.
‘And bring the carter Wysocki to me, the man in Tamka Street, d’you know him?’
‘Course I do…But have you heard, sir…?’
‘Be sure he comes in the morning, that’s all.’
‘Why shouldn’t I, sir? But have you heard Oberman lost a lot of money? He was here this evening, he swore he would kill himself or do himself an injury if you didn’t forgive him. So I said to him, “Don’t be silly,” I said, “don’t kill yourself, wait a bit…the old man’s got a soft heart.” And he says, “That’s what I thought, but even so there will be a row, and even if he cuts my wages, my son is going to be a doctor, and old age is just around the corner…”’
‘Come now, be off to bed with you,’ Wokulski interrupted.
‘All right, sir, all right,’ the servant replied, crossly, ‘though working for the likes of you is worse than being in prison, that it is…A man can’t even go to bed when he chooses…’ He took the letter and went out.
Next day, about nine in the morning, the servant awoke Wokulski and told him Wysocki was waiting. ‘Tell him to come in.’
The carter entered next moment. He was respectably dressed, had a ruddy complexion and cheerful look. He approached the bed and kissed Wokulski’s hand.
‘Wysocki, I understand there’s a room vacant in your house?’
‘Indeed there is, sir, for my uncle has died and those beasts of tenants wouldn’t pay the rent so I turned ’em out. The scoundrels could always find money for vodka, but never for the rent…’
‘I’ll rent the room from you,’ said Wokulski, ‘but you must clean it out first.’
The carter looked at Wokulski in surprise.
‘A young seamstress will be living there,’ Wokulski continued, ‘she can board with you, your wife can launder for her…Let her see what more she’ll need. I’ll give you money for furniture and linen…Then you must watch to see she doesn’t bring anyone into the house…’
‘Not likely,’ the carter exclaimed excitedly, ‘whenever you need her, sir, I’ll bring her…but that anyone from the town—no, that wouldn’t do. In such a business you might get into bad company.’
‘You’re a fool, Wysocki. I don’t mean to see her at all. Let her do as she pleases, provided she is well-behaved, modest and industrious. But don’t let anyone visit her. Do you understand? The walls in the room must be painted, wash the floor, buy some cheap furniture—but new and good—you know what I mean.’
‘Of course, sir. I’ve been carting such furniture all my life.’
‘Very well. And let your wife ascertain what the girl needs in linen and clothes, then let me know.’
‘I understand, sir,’ said Wysocki, kissing his hand again.
‘But what about your brother? How is he?’
‘Not doing so badly, sir. He’s back in Skierniewice, thanks be to God and to you, sir; he has his plot of land; he’s taken on a farmhand, and now he’s quite the gentleman. In a few years’ time he’ll buy more land, because he has a railway-guard and two firemen boarding with him. And the railway has even increased his wages.’
Wokulski said goodbye to the carter and began dressing: ‘I’d like to be able to sleep through the time until I see her again,’ Wokulski thought.
He did not feel like going to the shop. He picked up a book and read, deciding to call on Baron Krzeszowski between one and two. At eleven, the door-bell and the sound of a door opening were heard from the vestibule. The servant came in: ‘A lady is waiting…’
‘Ask her in,’ said Wokulski.
A woman’s dress rustled in the hall. Wokulski, on the threshold, saw his penitent. The extraordinary changes in her astounded him. The girl was dressed in black, had a pale but healthy complexion and a timid expression. Catching sight of Wokulski, she blushed and began trembling.
‘Take a seat please, miss,’ he exclaimed, indicating a chair. She sat down on the edge of a velvet chair, still more embarrassed. Her eyelids fluttered rapidly, she gazed at the carpet and drops of tears glittered on her lashes. Two months earlier she had looked very differently.
‘So you have learned sewing, miss?’
‘Yes.’
‘And where do you plan to settle?’
‘Maybe in some shop…or in service in Russia…’
‘Why there?’
‘Because people say it’s easier to get work there, and here…who will employ me?’ she whispered.
‘But would it not pay you to stay here, if some shop were to buy work from you?’
‘Oh yes…But a girl must have her own sewing-machine, and a place to live, and everything…A girl who hasn’t got these things must go into service.’
Even her voice had altered. Wokulski eyed her attentively, and finally said: ‘You will stay in Warsaw for the time being. You will live with the Wysocki family in Tamka. They are very good people. You will have your own room, you can board with them, and the sewing-machine and everything necessary will be provided too. I’ll give you a reference to a store and in a few months’ time, we’ll see whether you can support yourself by this work. Here is Wysocki’s address. Please go there at once, buy some furniture with Mrs Wysocka and make sure they have put the room in order. I’ll send you the sewing-machine tomorrow…And here is some money for settling in. It’s a loan: you can pay me back by instalments when work starts coming in.’
He gave her a few dozen roubles wrapped in a note to Wysocki. When she hesitated to take them, he pressed the twist of paper into her hand and said: ‘Please go to Wysocki at once. He’ll bring you a letter for the linen shop in a few days. Please call upon me in case of urgent need. Goodbye now…’
The girl stayed a little longer in the centre of the hall; then she wiped away her tears and went out, filled with a kind of sublime astonishment.
‘We’ll see how she gets on in her new surroundings,’ Wokulski said to himself, and took to his reading again.
At one o’clock that afternoon, Wokulski set off to call on Baron Krzeszowski, reproaching himself on the way that he had procrastinated so in visiting his former antagonist. ‘Never mind,’ he consoled himself, ‘after all, I could not intrude when he was ill. And I sent in a visiting-card.’
As he approached the house in which the Baron was lodging, Wokulski could not help noticing that the walls of the house were as unhealthily greenish as Maruszewicz was unhealthily yellowish, and that the blinds were up in Krzeszowski’s apartment. ‘Evidently he has recovered,’ he thought, ‘all the same, it won’t do to ask about his debts right away. I’ll mention them on my second or third visit; then I’ll pay off the usurers and the poor Baron will be able to breathe again. I cannot be indifferent towards a man who has apologised to Izabela.’
He went up to the second floor, and rang the bell. Steps were audible inside the apartment, but there was evidently no urgency about opening the door. He rang again. The footsteps and even the moving about of objects went on inside, but still no one came. In his impatience, he pulled the door-bell so hard he nearly wrenched it off. Only then did someone come to the door and start unfastening the chain in a phlegmatic manner, then turned the key and pulled back the bolt, muttering: ‘One of us, obviously…No Jew would ring like that…’
Finally the door opened and the footman Konstanty appeared.
Seeing Wokulski, he blinked, thrust out his lower lip and asked: ‘Well?’ Wokulski guessed he was not in the faithful servant’s good books, as the latter had b
een present at the duel.
‘Is the Baron at home?’ he asked.
‘The Baron’s in bed, poorly and is not receiving anyone because the doctor is with him.’
Wokulski produced his card and two roubles: ‘When will it be possible, more or less, to call?’
‘Not at present, not at all,’ Konstanty replied, somewhat more mildly, ‘my master is ill of a bullet wound, and the doctors have told him to go to warm countries, or leave town today or tomorrow.’
‘So it will not be possible to see him before he goes?’
‘Not at all. The doctors have forbidden him to see anyone. He’s feverish all the time.’
Two card tables, one with a broken leg and the other with a thickly bescribbled cloth, as well as two candlesticks with the stumps of wax candles, made Wokulski doubt the accuracy of Konstanty’s diagnosis. Nevertheless, he added another rouble and left, not at all pleased with his reception: ‘Perhaps the Baron simply didn’t want me to call? Then let him pay off the usurers himself, and keep them out by chaining, locking and bolting the door…’
He went home.
The Baron really intended to leave for the countryside and was not well, though he was not so poorly either. The wound in his cheek was very slow in healing: not because it was serious, but because the Baron’s health was very much undermined.
During Wokulski’s call, the Baron had been wrapped up like an old woman against the cold, but was not in bed, sitting instead in an armchair while with him, was not the doctor, but Count Liciński. He was just complaining to the Count of his state of health: ‘May the devil take this wretched way of life,’ he said, ‘my father left me nearly half a million roubles, but four diseases too, each worth a million. How inconvenient it is to be without eye-glasses! And just think, Count—the money has all gone but I still have the diseases. And as I have caught a few more diseases myself, and made new debts—the situation is clear. I’d have to send for the notary and for a coffin if I even scratched myself…’
‘Dear me, yes,’ the Count exclaimed, ‘though I don’t think you should waste money on notaries in such a situation.’
‘It’s the rent collectors who are really the ruin of me…’
The Baron irritably overheard the echoes reaching him from the hall as he talked, but could not make out who it was. Not until he heard the door close, the bolt drawn and the chain put up, did he suddenly bellow: ‘Konstanty!’
In a moment the servant entered, though without undue haste. ‘Who was that? Goldcygier, I daresay…I told you not to have anything to do with that scoundrel, just grab him and throw him downstairs. Just think,’ and he turned to Liciński, ‘that damned Jew is pestering me with a forged promissory note for four hundred roubles, and has the impudence to demand payment.’
‘You should start a law-suit against him, dear me, yes…’
‘I don’t start law-suits. I am not a public prosecutor, it isn’t my duty to chase after forgers. In any case, I don’t want to take the initiative in ruining some poor wretch who’s killing himself with work running down other people’s signatures. So I’m waiting for Goldcygier to start an action, and then will declare that it is not my signature, though without accusing anyone.’
‘As it happens, it wasn’t Goldcygier,’ Konstanty remarked.
‘Then who was it? The councillor? Or the tailor, I suppose…’
‘No, it was this person,’ said the servant, handing a visiting card to Krzeszowski, ‘a respectable person but I sent him away like you said.’
‘What!’ the Count asked in surprise, glancing at the card, ‘didn’t you give orders to receive Wokulski?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ the Baron agreed, ‘a low person, and certainly not fit for society.’
Count Liciński sat up in his chair rather significantly: ‘I never expected to hear such a remark about that gentleman…from you. Oh dear me, no…’
‘Pray don’t take what I said as derogatory,’ the Baron explained hastily, ‘Mr Wokulski has done nothing to be ashamed of, only…a minor dirty trick which may pass in trade, but not in society.’
Both the Count in his armchair and Konstanty on the threshold eyed the Baron attentively. ‘Judge for yourself,’ the Baron went on, ‘I yielded up my mare to Baroness Krzeszowska (my legal spouse before God and man) for eight hundred roubles. Madame Krzeszowska—to spite me (I’ve no idea why!)—decided to sell it. So a purchaser was found in Mr Wokulski who, by taking advantage of a woman’s weakness, thought he would make a profit out of the mare—two hundred roubles—as he only gave six hundred for her.’
‘He was in the right, dear me, yes,’ the Count interposed.
‘Well, I suppose so…Yes, I know he was. But a man who throws away thousands of roubles just for show, and then makes twenty-five per cent profit in an underhand manner and out of hysterical females—such a man is not behaving with the best of taste. He isn’t a gentleman. He committed no crime, but…he’s as unbalanced in his relations with other people as someone who gives presents of carpets and shawls to his friends, but would take a handkerchief away from a stranger. You can’t deny it…’
The Count said nothing; not for a while did he exclaim, ‘Dear me…But are you positive of it?’
‘Absolutely. The arrangement between Madame Krzeszowski and that…gentleman was made by my Maruszewicz, and I know it from him.’
‘Dear me. However that may be, Wokulski is a good tradesman, and is in charge of our partnership.’
‘Just as long as he doesn’t cheat you…’
Konstanty, still on the threshold, had begun to nod his head condescendingly, then impatiently exclaimed: ‘Eh! Whatever are you talking about? Pah! You’re no better than a little child, to be sure…’
The Count glanced at him curiously, and the Baron burst out: ‘Why, you fool, who asked your opinion?’
‘Why shouldn’t I give it, when you chatter and behave like a little child…I’m only a footman, but I’d sooner trust a man who gives me two roubles when he calls than one who borrows three and is in no hurry to repay it. That’s it—Mr Wokulski gave me two roubles today, but Mr Maruszewicz…’
‘Be off with you!’ the Baron roared, seizing a carafe, at the sight of which Konstanty saw fit to put the thickness of the door between himself and his master.
‘That flunkey is a knave,’ the Baron added, evidently very vexed.
‘Do you have a weakness for this Maruszewicz fellow?’ the Count inquired.
‘He’s an honest young man…He’s got me out of all kinds of scrapes…He’s given me ever so many proofs of his dog-like attachment…’
‘Dear me,’ the Count muttered thoughtfully. He stayed a few minutes longer without speaking, then bade the Baron goodbye.
On his way home, Count Liciński’s thoughts reverted several times to Wokulski. He considered it quite natural that a tradesman should profit even on a race-horse: at the same time, he felt some distaste for such transactions and was displeased that Wokulski should hobnob with Maruszewicz, a dubious individual to say the least. ‘As usual, a newly rich parvenu,’ the Count muttered, ‘we took to him prematurely, though…he may manage the partnership…under strict control, of course, by us.’
A few days later, at about nine in the morning, Wokulski received two letters: one from Mrs Meliton, the other from the Prince’s lawyer. He opened the first impatiently: in it, Mrs Meliton wrote only these words: ‘In the Łazienki park today at the usual time.’ He read it several times, then reluctantly took up the lawyer’s, which also invited him at eleven in the morning to a conference about the Łęcki house purchase. Wokulski sighed deeply; he had the time.
At eleven prompt, he was in the lawyer’s office, where he found old Szlangbaum. He could not help noticing that the grey-haired Jew looked very grave against the background of the brown furniture and tapestry, and that it suited the lawyer, in his brown morocco slippers, very well.
‘You are lucky, Mr Wokulski,’ Szlangbaum exclaimed, ‘no sooner do you want to
purchase a house than the price of houses goes up. Upon my word, in six months you will make your deposit on this house, and then some over! And me too…’
‘You think so?’ Wokulski replied carelessly.
‘I don’t think, I’m making money already,’ said the Jew, ‘yesterday Baroness Krzeszowska’s lawyer borrowed ten thousand roubles from me until New Year, and paid me eight hundred roubles interest in advance.’
‘What’s that? Is she short of money already?’ Wokulski asked the lawyer.
‘She has ninety thousand in the bank, but the Baron has frozen it. Fine marriage articles, I must say,’ the lawyer smiled, ‘the husband freezes money which is indubitably the property of his wife, against whom he is starting an action for separation. It’s true that I never write such marriage articles, ha ha…’ the lawyer laughed, puffing smoke from his great amber pipe.
‘Why did the Baroness borrow ten thousand from you, Mr Szlangbaum?’ Wokulski asked.
‘Don’t you know?’ the Jew replied, ‘houses are going up, and the lawyer told the Baroness she would not get the Łęcki house for less than seventy thousand. She’d like to buy it for ten thousand, of course, but what can she do?’
The lawyer sat down at his desk and said: ‘So, my dear Mr Wokulski, the Łęcki house is to be bought not (he nodded) in my name but that of (he bowed) Mr S. Szlangbaum.’
‘I’ll buy it, to be sure,’ the Jew murmured.
‘But for ninety thousand roubles,’ Wokulski interrupted, ‘not a penny less, and by auction,’ he added emphatically.
‘Why not? It ain’t my money! If you want to pay, there will be others to outbid you…If I had as many thousands as there are respectable Catholic people to be found for the purpose here in Warsaw, why then, I’d be richer than Rothschild.’
‘So your opponents at the sale will be respectable people,’ the lawyer repeated, ‘very well. Now I’ll give Mr Szlangbaum the money.’