Chapter 6

“Frau Lenore, think a moment; what right have I …”

“You promise? You don’t want me to die here at once before your eyes?”

Sanin was utterly nonplussed. It was the first time in his life he had had to deal with any one of ardent Italian blood.

“I will do whatever you like,” he cried. “I will talk to Fräulein Gemma….”

Frau Lenore uttered a cry of delight.

“Only I really can’t say what result will come of it …”

“Ah, don’t go back, don’t go back from your words!” cried Frau Lenore in an imploring voice; “you have already consented! The result is certain to be excellent. Any way, _I_ can do nothing more! She won’t listen to _me_!”

“Has she so positively stated her disinclination to marry Herr Klüber?” Sanin inquired after a short silence.

“As if she’d cut the knot with a knife! She’s her father all over, Giovanni Battista! Wilful girl!”

“Wilful? Is she!” … Sanin said slowly.

“Yes … yes … but she’s an angel too. She will mind you. Are you coming soon? Oh, my dear Russian friend!” Frau Lenore rose impulsively from her chair, and as impulsively clasped the head of Sanin, who was sitting opposite her. “Accept a mother’s blessing—and give me some water!”

Sanin brought Signora Roselli a glass of water, gave her his word of honour that he would come directly, escorted her down the stairs to the street, and when he was back in his own room, positively threw up his arms and opened his eyes wide in his amazement.

“Well,” he thought, “well, _now_ life is going round in a whirl! And it’s whirling so that I’m giddy.” He did not attempt to look within, to realise what was going on in himself: it was all uproar and confusion, and that was all he knew! What a day it had been! His lips murmured unconsciously: “Wilful … her mother says … and I have got to advise her … her! And advise her what?”

Sanin, really, was giddy, and above all this whirl of shifting sensations and impressions and unfinished thoughts, there floated continually the image of Gemma, the image so ineffaceably impressed on his memory on that hot night, quivering with electricity, in that dark window, in the light of the swarming stars!

XXIV

With hesitating footsteps Sanin approached the house of Signora Roselli. His heart was beating violently; he distinctly felt, and even heard it thumping at his side. What should he say to Gemma, how should he begin? He went into the house, not through the shop, but by the back entrance. In the little outer room he met Frau Lenore. She was both relieved and scared at the sight of him.

“I have been expecting you,” she said in a whisper, squeezing his hand with each of hers in turn. “Go into the garden; she is there. Mind, I rely on you!”

Sanin went into the garden.

Gemma was sitting on a garden-seat near the path, she was sorting a big basket full of cherries, picking out the ripest, and putting them on a dish. The sun was low—it was seven o’clock in the evening—and there was more purple than gold in the full slanting light with which it flooded the whole of Signora Roselli’s little garden. From time to time, faintly audibly, and as it were deliberately, the leaves rustled, and belated bees buzzed abruptly as they flew from one flower to the next, and somewhere a dove was cooing a never-changing, unceasing note. Gemma had on the same round hat in which she had driven to Soden. She peeped at Sanin from under its turned-down brim, and again bent over the basket.

Sanin went up to Gemma, unconsciously making each step shorter, and … and … and nothing better could he find to say to her than to ask why was she sorting the cherries.

Gemma was in no haste to reply.

“These are riper,” she observed at last, “they will go into jam, and those are for tarts. You know the round sweet tarts we sell?”

As she said those words, Gemma bent her head still lower, and her right hand with two cherries in her fingers was suspended in the air between the basket and the dish.

“May I sit by you?” asked Sanin.

“Yes.” Gemma moved a little along on the seat. Sanin placed himself beside her. “How am I to begin?” was his thought. But Gemma got him out of his difficulty.

“You have fought a duel to-day,” she began eagerly, and she turned all her lovely, bashfully flushing face to him—and what depths of gratitude were shining in those eyes! “And you are so calm! I suppose for you danger does not exist?”

“Oh, come! I have not been exposed to any danger. Everything went off very satisfactorily and inoffensively.”

Gemma passed her finger to right and to left before her eyes … Also an Italian gesture. “No! no! don’t say that! You won’t deceive me! Pantaleone has told me everything!”

“He’s a trustworthy witness! Did he compare me to the statue of the commander?”

“His expressions may be ridiculous, but his feeling is not ridiculous, nor is what you have done to-day. And all that on my account … for me … I shall never forget it.”

“I assure you, Fräulein Gemma …”

“I shall never forget it,” she said deliberately; once more she looked intently at him, and turned away.

He could now see her delicate pure profile, and it seemed to him that he had never seen anything like it, and had never known anything like what he was feeling at that instant. His soul was on fire.

“And my promise!” flashed in among his thoughts.

“Fräulein Gemma …” he began after a momentary hesitation.

“What?”

She did not turn to him, she went on sorting the cherries, carefully taking them by their stalks with her finger-tips, assiduously picking out the leaves…. But what a confiding caress could be heard in that one word, “What?”

“Has your mother said nothing to you … about …”

“About?”

“About me?”

Gemma suddenly flung back into the basket the cherries she had taken.

“Has she been talking to you?” she asked in her turn.

“Yes.”

“What has she been saying to you?”

“She told me that you … that you have suddenly decided to change … your former intention.” Gemma’s head was bent again. She vanished altogether under her hat; nothing could be seen but her neck, supple and tender as the stalk of a big flower.

“What intentions?”

“Your intentions … relative to … the future arrangement of your life.”

“That is … you are speaking … of Herr Klüber?”

“Yes.”

“Mamma told you I don’t want to be Herr Klüber’s wife?”

“Yes.”

Gemma moved forward on the seat. The basket tottered, fell … a few cherries rolled on to the path. A minute passed by … another.

“Why did she tell you so?” he heard her voice saying. Sanin as before could only see Gemma’s neck. Her bosom rose and fell more rapidly than before.

“Why? Your mother thought that as you and I, in a short time, have become, so to say, friends, and you have some confidence in me, I am in a position to give you good advice—and you would mind what I say.”

Gemma’s hands slowly slid on to her knees. She began plucking at the folds of her dress.

“What advice will you give me, Monsieur Dimitri?” she asked, after a short pause.

Sanin saw that Gemma’s fingers were trembling on her knees…. She was only plucking at the folds of her dress to hide their trembling. He softly laid his hand on those pale, shaking fingers.

“Gemma,” he said, “why don’t you look at me?” She instantly tossed her hat back on to her shoulder, and bent her eyes upon him, confiding and grateful as before. She waited for him to speak…. But the sight of her face had bewildered, and, as it were, dazed him. The warm glow of the evening sun lighted up her youthful head, and the expression of that head was brighter, more radiant than its glow.

“I will mind what you say, Monsieur Dimitri,” she said, faintly smiling, and faintly arching her brows; “but what advice do you give me?”

“What advice?” repeated Sanin. “Well, you see, your mother considers that to dismiss Herr Klüber simply because he did not show any special courage the day before yesterday …”

“Simply because?” said Gemma. She bent down, picked up the basket, and set it beside her on the garden seat.

“That … altogether … to dismiss him, would be, on your part … unreasonable; that it is a step, all the consequences of which ought to be thoroughly weighed; that in fact the very position of your affairs imposes certain obligations on every member of your family …”

“All that is mamma’s opinion,” Gemma interposed; “those are her words; but what is your opinion?”

“Mine?” Sanin was silent for a while. He felt a lump rising in his throat and catching at his breath. “I too consider,” he began with an effort …

Gemma drew herself up. “Too? You too?”

“Yes … that is …” Sanin was unable, positively unable to add a single word more.

“Very well,” said Gemma. “If you, as a friend, advise me to change my decision—that is, not to change my former decision—I will think it over.” Not knowing what she was doing, she began to tip the cherries back from the plate into the basket…. “Mamma hopes that I will mind what you say. Well … perhaps I really will mind what you say.”

“But excuse me, Fräulein Gemma, I should like first to know what reason impelled you …”

“I will mind what you say,” Gemma repeated, her face right up to her brows was working, her cheeks were white, she was biting her lower lip. “You have done so much for me, that I am bound to do as you wish; bound to carry out your wishes. I will tell mamma … I will think again. Here she is, by the way, coming here.”

Frau Lenore did in fact appear in the doorway leading from the house to the garden. She was in an agony of impatience; she could not keep still. According to her calculations, Sanin must long ago have finished all he had to say to Gemma, though his conversation with her had not lasted a quarter of an hour.

“No, no, no, for God’s sake, don’t tell her anything yet,” Sanin articulated hurriedly, almost in alarm. “Wait a little … I will tell you, I will write to you … and till then don’t decide on anything … wait!”

He pressed Gemma’s hand, jumped up from the seat, and to Frau Lenore’s great amazement, rushed past her, and raising his hat, muttered something unintelligible—and vanished.

She went up to her daughter.

“Tell me, please, Gemma…”

The latter suddenly got up and hugged her. “Dear mamma, can you wait a little, a tiny bit … till to-morrow? Can you? And till to-morrow not a word?… Ah!…”

She burst into sudden happy tears, incomprehensible to herself. This surprised Frau Lenore, the more as the expression of Gemma’s face was far from sorrowful,—rather joyful in fact.

“What is it?” she asked. “You never cry and here, all at once …”

“Nothing, mamma, never mind! you only wait. We must both wait a little. Don’t ask me anything till to-morrow—and let us sort the cherries before the sun has set.”

“But you will be reasonable?”

“Oh, I’m very reasonable!” Gemma shook her head significantly. She began to make up little bunches of cherries, holding them high above her flushed face. She did not wipe away her tears; they had dried of themselves.

XXV

Almost running, Sanin returned to his hotel room. He felt, he knew that only there, only by himself, would it be clear to him at last what was the matter, what was happening to him. And so it was; directly he had got inside his room, directly he had sat down to the writing-table, with both elbows on the table and both hands pressed to his face, he cried in a sad and choked voice, “I love her, love her madly!” and he was all aglow within, like a fire when a thick layer of dead ash has been suddenly blown off. An instant more … and he was utterly unable to understand how he could have sat beside her … her!—and talked to her and not have felt that he worshipped the very hem of her garment, that he was ready as young people express it “to die at her feet.” The last interview in the garden had decided everything. Now when he thought of her, she did not appear to him with blazing curls in the shining starlight; he saw her sitting on the garden-seat, saw her all at once tossing back her hat, and gazing at him so confidingly … and the tremor and hunger of love ran through all his veins. He remembered the rose which he had been carrying about in his pocket for three days: he snatched it out, and pressed it with such feverish violence to his lips, that he could not help frowning with the pain. Now he considered nothing, reflected on nothing, did not deliberate, and did not look forward; he had done with all his past, he leaped forward into the future; from the dreary bank of his lonely bachelor life he plunged headlong into that glad, seething, mighty torrent—and little he cared, little he wished to know, where it would carry him, or whether it would dash him against a rock! No more the soft-flowing currents of the Uhland song, which had lulled him not long ago … These were mighty, irresistible torrents! They rush flying onwards and he flies with them….

He took a sheet of paper, and without blotting out a word, almost with one sweep of the pen, wrote as follows:—

“DEAR GEMMA,—You know what advice I undertook to give you, what your mother desired, and what she asked of me; but what you don’t know and what I must tell you now is, that I love you, love you with all the ardour of a heart that loves for the first time! This passion has flamed up in me suddenly, but with such force that I can find no words for it! When your mother came to me and asked me, it was still only smouldering in me, or else I should certainly, as an honest man, have refused to carry out her request…. The confession I make you now is the confession of an honest man. You ought to know whom you have to do with—between us there should exist no misunderstandings. You see that I cannot give you any advice…. I love you, love you, love you—and I have nothing else—either in my head or in my heart!!

“DM. SANIN.”

When he had folded and sealed this note, Sanin was on the point of ringing for the waiter and sending it by him…. “No!” he thought, “it would be awkward…. By Emil? But to go to the shop, and seek him out there among the other employés, would be awkward too. Besides, it’s dark by now, and he has probably left the shop.” Reflecting after this fashion, Sanin put on his hat, however, and went into the street; he turned a corner, another, and to his unspeakable delight, saw Emil before him. With a satchel under his arm, and a roll of papers in his hand, the young enthusiast was hurrying home.

“They may well say every lover has a lucky star,” thought Sanin, and he called to Emil.

The latter turned and at once rushed to him.

Sanin cut short his transports, handed him the note, and explained to whom and how he was to deliver it…. Emil listened attentively.

“So that no one sees?” he inquired, assuming an important and mysterious air, that said, “We understand the inner meaning of it all!”

“Yes, my friend,” said Sanin and he was a little disconcerted; however, he patted Emil on the cheek…. “And if there should be an answer…. You will bring me the answer, won’t you? I will stay at home.”

“Don’t worry yourself about that!” Emil whispered gaily; he ran off, and as he ran nodded once more to him.

Sanin went back home, and without lighting a candle, flung himself on the sofa, put his hands behind his head, and abandoned himself to those sensations of newly conscious love, which it is no good even to describe. One who has felt them knows their languor and sweetness; to one who has felt them not, one could never make them known.

The door opened—Emil’s head appeared.

“I have brought it,” he said in a whisper: “here it is—the answer!”

He showed and waved above his head a folded sheet of paper.

Sanin leaped up from the sofa and snatched it out of Emil’s hand. Passion was working too powerfully within him: he had no thought of reserve now, nor of the observance of a suitable demeanour—even before this boy, her brother. He would have been scrupulous, he would have controlled himself—if he could!

He went to the window, and by the light of a street lamp which stood just opposite the house, he read the following lines:—

I beg you, I beseech you—_don’t come to see us, don’t show yourself all day to-morrow_. It’s necessary, absolutely necessary for me, and then everything shall be settled. I know you will not say no, because …

“GEMMA.”

Sanin read this note twice through. Oh, how touchingly sweet and beautiful her handwriting seemed to him! He thought a little, and turning to Emil, who, wishing to give him to understand what a discreet young person he was, was standing with his face to the wall, and scratching on it with his finger-nails, he called him aloud by name.

Emil ran at once to Sanin. “What do you want me to do?”

“Listen, my young friend…”

“Monsieur Dimitri,” Emil interrupted in a plaintive voice, “why do you address me so formally?”

Sanin laughed. “Oh, very well. Listen, my dearest boy—(Emil gave a little skip of delight)—listen; _there_ you understand, there, you will say, that everything shall be done exactly as is wished—(Emil compressed his lips and nodded solemnly)—and as for me … what are you doing to-morrow, my dear boy?”

“I? what am I doing? What would you like me to do?”

“If you can, come to me early in the morning—and we will walk about the country round Frankfort till evening…. Would you like to?”

Emil gave another little skip. “I say, what in the world could be jollier? Go a walk with you—why, it’s simply glorious! I’ll be sure to come!”

“And if they won’t let you?”

“They will let me!”

“Listen … Don’t say _there_ that I asked you to come for the whole day.”

“Why should I? But I’ll get away all the same! What does it matter?”

Emil warmly kissed Sanin, and ran away.

Sanin walked up and down the room a long while, and went late to bed. He gave himself up to the same delicate and sweet sensations, the same joyous thrill at facing a new life. Sanin was very glad that the idea had occurred to him to invite Emil to spend the next day with him; he was like his sister. “He will recall her,” was his thought.

But most of all, he marvelled how he could have been yesterday other than he was to-day. It seemed to him that he had loved Gemma for all time; and that he had loved her just as he loved her to-day.

XXVI

At eight o’clock next morning, Emil arrived at Sanin’s hotel leading Tartaglia by a string. Had he sprung of German parentage, he could not have shown greater practicality. He had told a lie at home; he had said he was going for a walk with Sanin till lunch-time, and then going to the shop. While Sanin was dressing, Emil began to talk to him, rather hesitatingly, it is true, about Gemma, about her rupture with Herr Klüber; but Sanin preserved an austere silence in reply, and Emil, looking as though he understood why so serious a matter should not be touched on lightly, did not return to the subject, and only assumed from time to time an intense and even severe expression.

After drinking coffee, the two friends set off together—on foot, of course—to Hausen, a little village lying a short distance from Frankfort, and surrounded by woods. The whole chain of the Taunus mountains could be seen clearly from there. The weather was lovely; the sunshine was bright and warm, but not blazing hot; a fresh wind rustled briskly among the green leaves; the shadows of high, round clouds glided swiftly and smoothly in small patches over the earth. The two young people soon got out of the town, and stepped out boldly and gaily along the well-kept road. They reached the woods, and wandered about there a long time; then they lunched very heartily at a country inn; then climbed on to the mountains, admired the views, rolled stones down and clapped their hands, watching the queer droll way in which the stones hopped along like rabbits, till a man passing below, unseen by them, began abusing them in a loud ringing voice. Then they lay full length on the short dry moss of yellowish-violet colour; then they drank beer at another inn; ran races, and tried for a wager which could jump farthest. They discovered an echo, and began to call to it; sang songs, hallooed, wrestled, broke up dry twigs, decked their hats with fern, and even danced. Tartaglia, as far as he could, shared in all these pastimes; he did not throw stones, it is true, but he rolled head over heels after them; he howled when they were singing, and even drank beer, though with evident aversion; he had been trained in this art by a student to whom he had once belonged. But he was not prompt in obeying Emil—not as he was with his master Pantaleone—and when Emil ordered him to “speak,” or to “sneeze,” he only wagged his tail and thrust out his tongue like a pipe.

The young people talked, too. At the beginning of the walk, Sanin, as the elder, and so more reflective, turned the conversation on fate and predestination, and the nature and meaning of man’s destiny; but the conversation quickly took a less serious turn. Emil began to question his friend and patron about Russia, how duels were fought there, and whether the women there were beautiful, and whether one could learn Russian quickly, and what he had felt when the officer took aim at him. Sanin, on his side, questioned Emil about his father, his mother, and in general about their family affairs, trying every time not to mention Gemma’s name—and thinking only of her. To speak more precisely, it was not of her he was thinking, but of the morrow, the mysterious morrow which was to bring him new, unknown happiness! It was as though a veil, a delicate, bright veil, hung faintly fluttering before his mental vision; and behind this veil he felt … felt the presence of a youthful, motionless, divine image, with a tender smile on its lips, and eyelids severely—with affected severity—downcast. And this image was not the face of Gemma, it was the face of happiness itself! For, behold, at last _his_ hour had come, the veil had vanished, the lips were parting, the eyelashes are raised—his divinity has looked upon him—and at once light as from the sun, and joy and bliss unending! He dreamed of this morrow—and his soul thrilled with joy again in the melting torture of ever-growing expectation!

And this expectation, this torture, hindered nothing. It accompanied every action, and did not prevent anything. It did not prevent him from dining capitally at a third inn with Emil; and only occasionally, like a brief flash of lightning, the thought shot across him, What if any one in the world knew? This suspense did not prevent him from playing leap-frog with Emil after dinner. The game took place on an open green lawn. And the confusion, the stupefaction of Sanin may be imagined! At the very moment when, accompanied by a sharp bark from Tartaglia, he was flying like a bird, with his legs outspread over Emil, who was bent double, he suddenly saw on the farthest border of the lawn two officers, in whom he recognised at once his adversary and his second, Herr von Dönhof and Herr von Richter! Each of them had stuck an eyeglass in his eye, and was staring at him, chuckling!… Sanin got on his feet, turned away hurriedly, put on the coat he had flung down, jerked out a word to Emil; the latter, too, put on his jacket, and they both immediately made off.

It was late when they got back to Frankfort. “They’ll scold me,” Emil said to Sanin as he said good-bye to him. “Well, what does it matter? I’ve had such a splendid, splendid day!”

When he got home to his hotel, Sanin found a note there from Gemma. She fixed a meeting with him for next day, at seven o’clock in the morning, in one of the public gardens which surround Frankfort on all sides.

How his heart throbbed! How glad he was that he had obeyed her so unconditionally! And, my God, what was promised … what was not promised, by that unknown, unique, impossible, and undubitably certain morrow!