The Torrents of Spring Part 13

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 Kluber 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, Kluber, 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 pa.s.sed 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 Kluber, 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 pa.s.s?' There was one word Gemma could not bring herself to utter.... It burnt her lips; but all the more eagerly Sanin p.r.o.nounced 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 Kluber. 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 das.h.i.+ng swing to meet them. Sanin felt a pang; but glancing at Kluber'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 das.h.i.+ng, slightly skipping gait.

'What did he say, the wretched creature?' asked Sanin, and would have rushed after Kluber; 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 Kluber! 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.

x.x.x

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 pa.s.sion--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 circ.u.mstantially, exactly, with alacrity. When she had satisfied herself that he was a real n.o.bleman by birth, and had even expressed some surprise that he was not a prince, Frau Lenore a.s.sumed 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 Kluber--as she uttered the name, she sighed faintly, tightened her lips, and hesitated--Herr Kluber, 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 Kluber, 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 n.o.bleman, her daughter would herself become of n.o.ble rank, she evinced a certain satisfaction. 'But, of course, you will first have to go to Russia?'

'Why?'

'Why? Why, to obtain the permission of your Tsar.'

Sanin explained to her that that was not at all necessary ... but that he might certainly have to go to Russia for a very short time before his marriage--(he said these words, and his heart ached painfully, Gemma watching him, knew it was aching, and blushed and grew dreamy)--and that he would try to take advantage of being in his own country to sell his estate ... in any case he would bring back the money needed.

'I would ask you to bring me back some good Astrakhan lambskin for a cape,' said Frau Lenore. 'They're wonderfully good, I hear, and wonderfully cheap!'

'Certainly, with the greatest pleasure, I will bring some for you and for Gemma!' cried Sanin.

'And for me a morocco cap worked in silver,' Emil interposed, putting his head in from the next room.

'Very well, I will bring it you ... and some slippers for Pantaleone.'

'Come, that's nonsense, nonsense,' observed Frau Lenore. 'We are talking now of serious matters. But there's another point,' added the practical lady. 'You talk of selling your estate. But how will you do that? Will you sell your peasants then, too?'

Sanin felt something like a stab at his heart. He remembered that in a conversation with Signora Roselli and her daughter about serfdom, which, in his own words, aroused his deepest indignation, he had repeatedly a.s.sured them that never on any account would he sell his peasants, as he regarded such a sale as an immoral act.

'I will try and sell my estate to some man I know something of,'

he articulated, not without faltering, 'or perhaps the peasants themselves will want to buy their freedom.'