Nina Balatka Part 4

"Yes, I know it. There have been outcasts among us low enough so to degrade themselves--low women who were called Christians. There has been no girl connected with decent people who has ever so degraded herself. Does your father know of this?"

"Not yet."

"Your father knows nothing of it, and you come and tell me that you are engaged--to a Jew!" Madame Zamenoy had so far recovered herself that she was now able to let her anger mount above her misery. "You wicked girl! Why have you come to me with such a story as this?"

"Because it is well that you should know it. I did not like to deceive you, even by secrecy. You will not be hurt. You need not notice me any longer. I shall be lost to you, and that will be all."

"If you were to do such a thing you would disgrace us. But you will not be allowed to do it."

"But I shall do it."

"Nina!"

"Yes, aunt. I shall do it. Do you think I will be false to my troth?"

"Your troth to a Jew is nothing. Father Jerome will tell you so."

"I shall not ask Father Jerome. Father Jerome, of course, will condemn me; but I shall not ask him whether or not I am to keep my promise--my solemn promise."

"And why not?"

Then Nina paused a moment before she answered. But she did answer, and answered with that bold defiant air which at first had disconcerted her aunt.

"I will ask no one, aunt Sophie, because I love Anton Trendellsohn, and have told him that I love him."

"Pshaw!"

"I have nothing more to say, aunt. I thought it right to tell you, and now I will go."

She had turned to the door, and had her hand upon the lock when her aunt stopped her. "Wait a moment, Nina. You have had your say; now you must hear me."

"I will hear you if you say nothing against him."

"I shall say what I please."

"Then I will not hear you." Nina again made for the door, but her aunt intercepted her retreat. "Of course you can stop me, aunt, in that way if you choose."

"You bold, bad girl!"

"You may say what you please about myself."

"You are a bold, bad girl!"

"Perhaps I am. Father Jerome says we are all bad. And as for boldness, I have to be bold."

"You are bold and brazen. Marry a Jew! It is the worst thing a Christian girl could do."

"No, it is not. There are things ten times worse than that."

"How you could dare to come and tell me!"

"I did dare, you see. If I had not told you, you would have called me sly."

"You are sly."

"I am not sly. You tell me I am bad and bold and brazen."

"So you are."

"Very likely. I do not say I am not. But I am not sly. Now, will you let me go, aunt Sophie?"

"Yes, you may go--you may go; but you may not come here again till this thing has been put an end to. Of course I shall see your father and Father Jerome, and your uncle will see the police. You will be locked up, and Anton Trendellsohn will be sent out of Bohemia. That is how it will end. Now you may go." And Nina went her way.

Her aunt's threat of seeing her father and the priest was nothing to Nina. It was the natural course for her aunt to take, and a course in opposition to which Nina was prepared to stand her ground firmly. But the allusion to the police did frighten her. She had thought of the power which the law might have over her very often, and had spoken of it in awe to her lover. He had rea.s.sured her, explaining to her that, as the law now stood in Austria, no one but her father could prevent her marriage with a Jew, and that he could only do so till she was of age. Now Nina would be twenty-one on the first of the coming month, and therefore would be free, as Anton told her, to do with herself as she pleased. But still there came over her a cold feeling of fear when her aunt spoke to her of the police. The law might give the police no power over her; but was there not a power in the hands of those armed men whom she saw around her on every side, and who were seldom countrymen of her own, over and above the law? Were there not still dark dungeons and steel locks and hard hearts? Though the law might justify her, how would that serve her, if men--if men and women, were determined to persecute her? As she walked home, however, she resolved that dark dungeons and steel locks and hard hearts might do their worst against her. She had set her will upon one thing in this world, and from that one thing no persecution should drive her. They might kill her, perhaps. Yes, they might kill her; and then there would be an end of it. But to that end she would force them to come before she would yield. So much she swore to herself as she walked home on that morning to the Kleinseite.

Madame Zamenoy, when Nina left her, sat in solitary consideration for some twenty minutes, and then called for her chief confidant, Lotta Luxa. With many expressions of awe, and with much denunciation of her niece's iniquity, she told to Lotta what she had heard, speaking of Nina as one who was utterly lost and abandoned. Lotta, however, did not express so much indignant surprise as her mistress expected, though she was willing enough to join in abuse against Nina Balatka.

"That comes of letting girls go about just as they please among the men," said Lotta.

"But a Jew!" said Madame Zamenoy. "If it had been any kind of a Christian, I could understand it."

"Trendellsohn has such a hold upon her, and upon her father," said Lotta.

"But a Jew! She has been to confession, has she not?"

"Regularly," said Lotta Luxa.

"Dear, dear! what a false hypocrite! And at ma.s.s?"

"Four mornings a-week always."

"And to tell me, after it all, that she means to marry a Jew. Of course, Lotta, we must prevent it."

"But how? Her father will do whatever she bids him."

"Father Jerome would do anything for me."

"Father Jerome can do little or nothing if she has the bit between her teeth," said Lotta. "She is as obstinate as a mule when she pleases. She is not like other girls. You cannot frighten her out of anything."

"I'll try, at least," said Madame Zamenoy.

"Yes, we can try," said Lotta.

"Would not the mayor help us--that is, if we were driven to go to that?"

"I doubt if he could do anything. He would be afraid to use a high hand. He is Bohemian. The head of the police might do something, if we could get at him."

"She might be taken away."