Chapter 7

He feasted his eyes on Gemma’s note. The long, elegant tail of the letter G, the first letter of her name, which stood at the bottom of the sheet, reminded him of her lovely fingers, her hand…. He thought that he had not once touched that hand with his lips…. “Italian women,” he mused, “in spite of what’s said of them, are modest and severe…. And Gemma above all! Queen … goddess … pure, virginal marble….”

“But the time will come; and it is not far off….” There was that night in Frankfort one happy man…. He slept; but he might have said of himself in the words of the poet:

“I sleep … but my watchful heart sleeps not.”

And it fluttered as lightly as a butterfly flutters his wings, as he stoops over the flowers in the summer sunshine.

XXVII

At five o’clock Sanin woke up, at six he was dressed, at half-past six he was walking up and down the public garden within sight of the little arbour which Gemma had mentioned in her note. It was a still, warm, grey morning. It sometimes seemed as though it were beginning to rain; but the outstretched hand felt nothing, and only looking at one’s coat-sleeve, one could see traces of tiny drops like diminutive beads, but even these were soon gone. It seemed there had never been a breath of wind in the world. Every sound moved not, but was shed around in the stillness. In the distance was a faint thickening of whitish mist; in the air there was a scent of mignonette and white acacia flowers.

In the streets the shops were not open yet, but there were already some people walking about; occasionally a solitary carriage rumbled along … there was no one walking in the garden. A gardener was in a leisurely way scraping the path with a spade, and a decrepit old woman in a black woollen cloak was hobbling across the garden walk. Sanin could not for one instant mistake this poor old creature for Gemma; and yet his heart leaped, and he watched attentively the retreating patch of black.

Seven! chimed the clock on the tower. Sanin stood still. Was it possible she would not come? A shiver of cold suddenly ran through his limbs. The same shiver came again an instant later, but from a different cause. Sanin heard behind him light footsteps, the light rustle of a woman’s dress…. He turned round: she!

Gemma was coming up behind him along the path. She was wearing a grey cape and a small dark hat. She glanced at Sanin, turned her head away, and catching him up, passed rapidly by him.

“Gemma,” he articulated, hardly audibly.

She gave him a little nod, and continued to walk on in front. He followed her.

He breathed in broken gasps. His legs shook under him.

Gemma passed by the arbour, turned to the right, passed by a small flat fountain, in which the sparrows were splashing busily, and, going behind a clump of high lilacs, sank down on a bench. The place was snug and hidden. Sanin sat down beside her.

A minute passed, and neither he nor she uttered a word. She did not even look at him; and he gazed not at her face, but at her clasped hands, in which she held a small parasol. What was there to tell, what was there to say, which could compare, in importance, with the simple fact of their presence there, together, alone, so early, so close to each other.

“You … are not angry with me?” Sanin articulated at last.

It would have been difficult for Sanin to have said anything more foolish than these words … he was conscious of it himself…. But, at any rate, the silence was broken.

“Angry?” she answered. “What for? No.”

“And you believe me?” he went on.

“In what you wrote?”

“Yes.”

Gemma’s head sank, and she said nothing. The parasol slipped out of her hands. She hastily caught it before it dropped on the path.

“Ah, believe me! believe what I wrote to you!” cried Sanin; all his timidity suddenly vanished, he spoke with heat; “if there is truth on earth—sacred, absolute truth—it’s that I love, love you passionately, Gemma.”

She flung him a sideway, momentary glance, and again almost dropped the parasol.

“Believe me! believe me!” he repeated. He besought her, held out his hands to her, and did not dare to touch her. “What do you want me to do … to convince you?”

She glanced at him again.

“Tell me, Monsieur Dimitri,” she began; “the day before yesterday, when you came to talk to me, you did not, I imagine, know then … did not feel …”

“I felt it,” Sanin broke in; “but I did not know it. I have loved you from the very instant I saw you; but I did not realise at once what you had become to me! And besides, I heard that you were solemnly betrothed…. As far as your mother’s request is concerned—in the first place, how could I refuse?—and secondly, I think I carried out her request in such a way that you could guess….”

They heard a heavy tread, and a rather stout gentleman with a knapsack over his shoulder, apparently a foreigner, emerged from behind the clump, and staring, with the unceremoniousness of a tourist, at the couple sitting on the garden-seat, gave a loud cough and went on.

“Your mother,” Sanin began, as soon as the sound of the heavy footsteps had ceased, “told me your breaking off your engagement would cause a scandal”—Gemma frowned a little—that I was myself in part responsible for unpleasant gossip, and that … consequently … I was, to some extent, under an obligation to advise you not to break with your betrothed, Herr Klüber….”

“Monsieur Dimitri,” said Gemma, and she passed her hand over her hair on the side turned towards Sanin, “don’t, please, call Herr Klüber my betrothed. I shall never be his wife. I have broken with him.”

“You have broken with him? when?”

“Yesterday.”

“You saw him?”

“Yes. At our house. He came to see us.”

“Gemma? Then you love me?”

She turned to him.

“Should … I have come here, if not?” she whispered, and both her hands fell on the seat.

Sanin snatched those powerless, upturned palms, and pressed them to his eyes, to his lips…. Now the veil was lifted of which he had dreamed the night before! Here was happiness, here was its radiant form!

He raised his head, and looked at Gemma, boldly and directly. She, too, looked at him, a little downwards. Her half-shut eyes faintly glistened, dim with light, blissful tears. Her face was not smiling … no! it laughed, with a blissful, noiseless laugh.

He tried to draw her to him, but she drew back, and never ceasing to laugh the same noiseless laugh, shook her head. “Wait a little,” her happy eyes seemed to say.

“O Gemma!” cried Sanin: “I never dreamed that you would love me!”

“I did not expect this myself,” Gemma said softly.

“How could I ever have dreamed,” Sanin went on, “when I came to Frankfort, where I only expected to remain a few hours, that I should find here the happiness of all my life!”

“All your life? Really?” queried Gemma.

“All my life, for ever and ever!” cried Sanin with fresh ardour.

The gardener’s spade suddenly scraped two paces from where they were sitting.

“Let’s go home,” whispered Gemma: “we’ll go together—will you?”

If she had said to him at that instant “Throw yourself in the sea, will you?” he would have been flying headlong into the ocean before she had uttered the last word.

They went together out of the garden and turned homewards, not by the streets of the town, but through the outskirts.

XXVIII

Sanin walked along, at one time by Gemma’s side, at another time a little behind her. He never took his eyes off her and never ceased smiling. She seemed to hasten … seemed to linger. As a matter of fact, they both—he all pale, and she all flushed with emotion—were moving along as in a dream. What they had done together a few instants before—that surrender of each soul to another soul—was so intense, so new, and so moving; so suddenly everything in their lives had been changed and displaced that they could not recover themselves, and were only aware of a whirlwind carrying them along, like the whirlwind on that night, which had almost flung them into each other’s arms. Sanin walked along, and felt that he even looked at Gemma with other eyes; he instantly noted some peculiarities in her walk, in her movements,—and heavens! how infinitely sweet and precious they were to him! And she felt that that was how he was looking at her.

Sanin and she were in love for the first time; all the miracles of first love were working in them. First love is like a revolution; the uniformly regular routine of ordered life is broken down and shattered in one instant; youth mounts the barricade, waves high its bright flag, and whatever awaits it in the future—death or a new life—all alike it goes to meet with ecstatic welcome.

“What’s this? Isn’t that our old friend?” said Sanin, pointing to a muffled-up figure, which hurriedly slipped a little aside as though trying to remain unobserved. In the midst of his abundant happiness he felt a need to talk to Gemma, not of love—that was a settled thing and holy—but of something else.

“Yes, it’s Pantaleone,” Gemma answered gaily and happily. “Most likely he has been following me ever since I left home; all day yesterday he kept watching every movement I made … He guesses!”

“He guesses!” Sanin repeated in ecstasy. What could Gemma have said at which he would not have been in ecstasy?

Then he asked her to tell him in detail all that had passed the day before.

And she began at once telling him, with haste, and confusion, and smiles, and brief sighs, and brief bright looks exchanged with Sanin. She said that after their conversation the day before yesterday, mamma had kept trying to get out of her something positive; but that she had put off Frau Lenore with a promise to tell her her decision within twenty-four hours; how she had demanded this limit of time for herself, and how difficult it had been to get it; how utterly unexpectedly Herr Klüber had made his appearance more starched and affected than ever; how he had given vent to his indignation at the childish, unpardonable action of the Russian stranger—“he meant your duel, Dimitri,”—which he described as deeply insulting to him, Klüber, and how he had demanded that “you should be at once refused admittance to the house, Dimitri.” “For,” he had added—and here Gemma slightly mimicked his voice and manner—“‘it casts a slur on my honour; as though I were not able to defend my betrothed, had I thought it necessary or advisable! All Frankfort will know by to-morrow that an outsider has fought a duel with an officer on account of my betrothed—did any one ever hear of such a thing! It tarnishes my honour!” Mamma agreed with him—fancy!—but then I suddenly told him that he was troubling himself unnecessarily about his honour and his character, and was unnecessarily annoyed at the gossip about his betrothed, for I was no longer betrothed to him and would never be his wife! I must own, I had meant to talk to you first … before breaking with him finally; but he came … and I could not restrain myself. Mamma positively screamed with horror, but I went into the next room and got his ring—you didn’t notice, I took it off two days ago—and gave it to him. He was fearfully offended, but as he is fearfully self-conscious and conceited, he did not say much, and went away. Of course I had to go through a great deal with mamma, and it made me very wretched to see how distressed she was, and I thought I had been a little hasty; but you see I had your note, and even apart from it I knew …”

“That I love you,” put in Sanin.

“Yes … that you were in love with me.”

So Gemma talked, hesitating and smiling and dropping her voice or stopping altogether every time any one met them or passed by. And Sanin listened ecstatically, enjoying the very sound of her voice, as the day before he had gloated over her handwriting.

“Mamma is very much distressed,” Gemma began again, and her words flew very rapidly one after another; “she refuses to take into consideration that I dislike Herr Klüber, that I never was betrothed to him from love, but only because of her urgent entreaties…. She suspects—you, Dimitri; that’s to say, to speak plainly, she’s convinced I’m in love with you, and she is more unhappy about it because only the day before yesterday nothing of the sort had occurred to her, and she even begged you to advise me…. It was a strange request, wasn’t it? Now she calls you … Dimitri, a hypocrite and a cunning fellow, says that you have betrayed her confidence, and predicts that you will deceive me….”

“But, Gemma,” cried Sanin, “do you mean to say you didn’t tell her?…”

“I told her nothing! What right had I without consulting you?”

Sanin threw up his arms. “Gemma, I hope that now, at least, you will tell all to her and take me to her…. I want to convince your mother that I am not a base deceiver!”

Sanin’s bosom fairly heaved with the flood of generous and ardent emotions.

Gemma looked him full in the face. “You really want to go with me now to mamma? to mamma, who maintains that … all this between us is impossible—and can never come to pass?” There was one word Gemma could not bring herself to utter…. It burnt her lips; but all the more eagerly Sanin pronounced it.

“Marry you, Gemma, be your husband—I can imagine no bliss greater!”

To his love, his magnanimity, his determination—he was aware of no limits now.

When she heard those words, Gemma, who had stopped still for an instant, went on faster than ever…. She seemed trying to run away from this too great and unexpected happiness! But suddenly her steps faltered. Round the corner of a turning, a few paces from her, in a new hat and coat, straight as an arrow and curled like a poodle—emerged Herr Klüber. He caught sight of Gemma, caught sight of Sanin, and with a sort of inward snort and a backward bend of his supple figure, he advanced with a dashing swing to meet them. Sanin felt a pang; but glancing at Klüber’s face, to which its owner endeavoured, as far as in him lay, to give an expression of scornful amazement, and even commiseration, glancing at that red-cheeked, vulgar face, he felt a sudden rush of anger, and took a step forward.

Gemma seized his arm, and with quiet decision, giving him hers, she looked her former betrothed full in the face…. The latter screwed up his face, shrugged his shoulders, shuffled to one side, and muttering between his teeth, “The usual end to the song!” (Das alte Ende vom Liede!)—walked away with the same dashing, slightly skipping gait.

“What did he say, the wretched creature?” asked Sanin, and would have rushed after Klüber; but Gemma held him back and walked on with him, not taking away the arm she had slipped into his.

The Rosellis’ shop came into sight. Gemma stopped once more.

“Dimitri, Monsieur Dimitri,” she said, “we are not there yet, we have not seen mamma yet…. If you would rather think a little, if … you are still free, Dimitri!”

In reply Sanin pressed her hand tightly to his bosom, and drew her on.

“Mamma,” said Gemma, going with Sanin to the room where Frau Lenore was sitting, “I have brought the real one!”

XXIX

If Gemma had announced that she had brought with her cholera or death itself, one can hardly imagine that Frau Lenore could have received the news with greater despair. She immediately sat down in a corner, with her face to the wall, and burst into floods of tears, positively wailed, for all the world like a Russian peasant woman on the grave of her husband or her son. For the first minute Gemma was so taken aback that she did not even go up to her mother, but stood still like a statue in the middle of the room; while Sanin was utterly stupefied, to the point of almost bursting into tears himself! For a whole hour that inconsolable wail went on—a whole hour! Pantaleone thought it better to shut the outer door of the shop, so that no stranger should come; luckily, it was still early. The old man himself did not know what to think, and in any case, did not approve of the haste with which Gemma and Sanin had acted; he could not bring himself to blame them, and was prepared to give them his support in case of need: he greatly disliked Klüber! Emil regarded himself as the medium of communication between his friend and his sister, and almost prided himself on its all having turned out so splendidly! He was positively unable to conceive why Frau Lenore was so upset, and in his heart he decided on the spot that women, even the best of them, suffer from a lack of reasoning power! Sanin fared worst of all. Frau Lenore rose to a howl and waved him off with her hands, directly he approached her; and it was in vain that he attempted once or twice to shout aloud, standing at a distance, “I ask you for your daughter’s hand!” Frau Lenore was particularly angry with herself. “How could she have been so blind—have seen nothing? Had my Giovann’ Battista been alive,” she persisted through her tears, “nothing of this sort would have happened!” “Heavens, what’s it all about?” thought Sanin; “why, it’s positively senseless!” He did not dare to look at Gemma, nor could she pluck up courage to lift her eyes to him. She restricted herself to waiting patiently on her mother, who at first repelled even her….

At last, by degrees, the storm abated. Frau Lenore gave over weeping, permitted Gemma to bring her out of the corner, where she sat huddled up, to put her into an arm-chair near the window, and to give her some orange-flower water to drink. She permitted Sanin—not to approach … oh, no!—but, at any rate, to remain in the room—she had kept clamouring for him to go away—and did not interrupt him when he spoke. Sanin immediately availed himself of the calm as it set in, and displayed an astounding eloquence. He could hardly have explained his intentions and emotions with more fire and persuasive force even to Gemma herself. Those emotions were of the sincerest, those intentions were of the purest, like Almaviva’s in the _Barber of Seville_. He did not conceal from Frau Lenore nor from himself the disadvantageous side of those intentions; but the disadvantages were only apparent! It is true he was a foreigner; they had not known him long, they knew nothing positive about himself or his means; but he was prepared to bring forward all the necessary evidence that he was a respectable person and not poor; he would refer them to the most unimpeachable testimony of his fellow-countrymen! He hoped Gemma would be happy with him, and that he would be able to make up to her for the separation from her own people!… The allusion to “separation”—the mere word “separation”—almost spoiled the whole business…. Frau Lenore began to tremble all over and move about uneasily…. Sanin hastened to observe that the separation would only be temporary, and that, in fact, possibly it would not take place at all!

Sanin’s eloquence was not thrown away. Frau Lenore began to glance at him, though still with bitterness and reproach, no longer with the same aversion and fury; then she suffered him to come near her, and even to sit down beside her (Gemma was sitting on the other side); then she fell to reproaching him,—not in looks only, but in words, which already indicated a certain softening of heart; she fell to complaining, and her complaints became quieter and gentler; they were interspersed with questions addressed at one time to her daughter, and at another to Sanin; then she suffered him to take her hand and did not at once pull it away … then she wept again, but her tears were now quite of another kind…. Then she smiled mournfully, and lamented the absence of Giovanni Battista, but quite on different grounds from before…. An instant more and the two criminals, Sanin and Gemma, were on their knees at her feet, and she was laying her hands on their heads in turn; another instant and they were embracing and kissing her, and Emil, his face beaming rapturously, ran into the room and added himself to the group so warmly united.

Pantaleone peeped into the room, smiled and frowned at the same time, and going into the shop, opened the front door.

XXX

The transition from despair to sadness, and from that to “gentle resignation,” was accomplished fairly quickly in Frau Lenore; but that gentle resignation, too, was not slow in changing into a secret satisfaction, which was, however, concealed in every way and suppressed for the sake of appearances. Sanin had won Frau Lenore’s heart from the first day of their acquaintance; as she got used to the idea of his being her son-in-law, she found nothing particularly distasteful in it, though she thought it her duty to preserve a somewhat hurt, or rather careworn, expression on her face. Besides, everything that had happened the last few days had been so extraordinary…. One thing upon the top of another. As a practical woman and a mother, Frau Lenore considered it her duty also to put Sanin through various questions; and Sanin, who, on setting out that morning to meet Gemma, had not a notion that he should marry her—it is true he did not think of anything at all at that time, but simply gave himself up to the current of his passion—Sanin entered, with perfect readiness, one might even say with zeal, into his part—the part of the betrothed lover, and answered all her inquiries circumstantially, exactly, with alacrity. When she had satisfied herself that he was a real nobleman by birth, and had even expressed some surprise that he was not a prince, Frau Lenore assumed a serious air and “warned him betimes” that she should be quite unceremoniously frank with him, as she was forced to be so by her sacred duty as a mother! To which Sanin replied that he expected nothing else from her, and that he earnestly begged her not to spare him!

Then Frau Lenore observed that Herr Klüber—as she uttered the name, she sighed faintly, tightened her lips, and hesitated—Herr Klüber, Gemma’s former betrothed, already possessed an income of eight thousand guldens, and that with every year this sum would rapidly be increased; and what was his, Herr Sanin’s income? “Eight thousand guldens,” Sanin repeated deliberately…. “That’s in our money … about fifteen thousand roubles…. My income is much smaller. I have a small estate in the province of Tula…. With good management, it might yield—and, in fact, it could not fail to yield—five or six thousand … and if I go into the government service, I can easily get a salary of two thousand a year.”

“Into the service in Russia?” cried Frau Lenore, “Then I must part with Gemma!”

“One might be able to enter in the diplomatic service,” Sanin put in; “I have some connections…. There one’s duties lie abroad. Or else, this is what one might do, and that’s much the best of all: sell my estate and employ the sum received for it in some profitable undertaking; for instance, the improvement of your shop.” Sanin was aware that he was saying something absurd, but he was possessed by an incomprehensible recklessness! He looked at Gemma, who, ever since the “practical” conversation began, kept getting up, walking about the room, and sitting down again—he looked at her—and no obstacle existed for him, and he was ready to arrange everything at once in the best way, if only she were not troubled!

“Herr Klüber, too, had intended to give me a small sum for the improvement of the shop,” Lenore observed after a slight hesitation.

“Mother! for mercy’s sake, mother!” cried Gemma in Italian.

“These things must be discussed in good time, my daughter,” Frau Lenore replied in the same language. She addressed herself again to Sanin, and began questioning him as to the laws existing in Russia as to marriage, and whether there were no obstacles to contracting marriages with Catholics as in Prussia. (At that time, in 1840, all Germany still remembered the controversy between the Prussian Government and the Archbishop of Cologne upon mixed marriages.) When Frau Lenore heard that by marrying a Russian nobleman, her daughter would herself become of noble rank, she evinced a certain satisfaction. “But, of course, you will first have to go to Russia?”

“Why?”