The Torrents of Spring Part 19

'Never mind, go on, go on,' she said, as it were coming to his aid; 'I'm listening to you. I like to hear you; go on talking.'

Sanin fell to describing his estate, how many acres it contained, and where it was situated, and what were its agricultural advantages, and what profit could be made from it ... he even referred to the picturesque situation of the house; while Maria Nikolaevna still watched him, and watched more and more intently and radiantly, and her lips faintly stirred, without smiling: she bit them. He felt awkward at last; he was silent a second time.

'Dimitri Pavlovitch' began Maria Nikolaevna, and sank into thought again.... 'Dimitri Pavlovitch,' she repeated.... 'Do you know what: I am sure the purchase of your estate will be a very profitable transaction for me, and that we shall come to terms; but you must give me two days.... Yes, two days' grace. You are able to endure two days'

separation from your betrothed, aren't you? Longer I won't keep you against your will--I give you my word of honour. But if you want five or six thousand francs at once, I am ready with great pleasure to let you have it as a loan, and then we'll settle later.'

Sanin got up. 'I must thank you, Maria Nikolaevna, for your kindhearted and friendly readiness to do a service to a man almost unknown to you. But if that is your decided wish, then I prefer to await your decision about my estate--I will stay here two days.'

'Yes; that is my wish, Dimitri Pavlovitch. And will it be very hard for you? Very? Tell me.'

'I love my betrothed, Maria Nikolaevna, and to be separated from her is hard for me.'

'Ah! you're a heart of gold!' Maria Nikolaevna commented with a sigh.

'I promise not to torment you too much. Are you going?'

'It is late,' observed Sanin.

'And you want to rest after your journey, and your game of "fools"

with my husband. Tell me, were you a great friend of Ippolit Sidorovitch, my husband?'

'We were educated at the same school.'

'And was he the same then?'

'The same as what?' inquired Sanin. Maria Nikolaevna burst out laughing, and laughed till she was red in the face; she put her handkerchief to her lips, rose from her chair, and swaying as though she were tired, went up to Sanin, and held out her hand to him.

He bowed over it, and went towards the door.

'Come early to-morrow--do you hear?' she called after him. He looked back as he went out of the room, and saw that she had again dropped into an easy-chair, and flung both arms behind her head. The loose sleeves of her tea-gown fell open almost to her shoulders, and it was impossible not to admit that the pose of the arms, that the whole figure, was enchantingly beautiful.

x.x.xVI

Long after midnight the lamp was burning in Sanin's room. He sat down to the table and wrote to 'his Gemma.' He told her everything; he described the Polozovs--husband and wife--but, more than all, enlarged on his own feelings, and ended by appointing a meeting with her in three days!!! (with three marks of exclamation). Early in the morning he took this letter to the post, and went for a walk in the garden of the Kurhaus, where music was already being played. There were few people in it as yet; he stood before the arbour in which the orchestra was placed, listened to an adaptation of airs from 'Robert le Diable,'

and after drinking some coffee, turned into a solitary side walk, sat down on a bench, and fell into a reverie. The handle of a parasol gave him a rapid, and rather vigorous, thump on the shoulder. He started.... Before him in a light, grey-green barege dress, in a white tulle hat, and _suede_ gloves, stood Maria Nikolaevna, fresh and rosy as a summer morning, though the languor of sound unbroken sleep had not yet quite vanished from her movements and her eyes.

'Good-morning,' she said. 'I sent after you to-day, but you'd already gone out. I've only just drunk my second gla.s.s--they're making me drink the water here, you know--whatever for, there's no telling ...

am I not healthy enough? And now I have to walk for a whole hour. Will you be my companion? And then we'll have some coffee.'

'I've had some already,' Sanin observed, getting up; 'but I shall be very glad to have a walk with you.'

'Very well, give me your arm then; don't be afraid: your betrothed is not here--she won't see you.'

Sanin gave a constrained smile. He experienced a disagreeable sensation every time Maria Nikolaevna referred to Gemma. However, he made haste to bend towards her obediently.... Maria Nikolaevna's arm slipped slowly and softly into his arm, and glided over it, and seemed to cling tight to it.

'Come--this way,' she said to him, putting up her open parasol over her shoulder. 'I'm quite at home in this park; I will take you to the best places. And do you know what? (she very often made use of this expression), we won't talk just now about that sale, we'll have a thorough discussion of that after lunch; but you must tell me now about yourself ... so that I may know whom I have to do with. And afterwards, if you like, I will tell you about myself. Do you agree?'

'But, Maria Nikolaevna, what interest can there be for you ...'

'Stop, stop. You don't understand me. I don't want to flirt with you.'

Maria Nikolaevna shrugged her shoulders. 'He's got a betrothed like an antique statue, is it likely I am going to flirt with him? But you've something to sell, and I'm the purchaser. I want to know what your goods are like. Well, of course, you must show what they are like.

I don't only want to know what I'm buying, but whom I'm buying from. That was my father's rule. Come, begin ... come, if not from childhood--come now, have you been long abroad? And where have you been up till now? Only don't walk so fast, we're in no hurry.'

'I came here from Italy, where I spent several months.'

'Ah, you feel, it seems, a special attraction towards everything Italian. It's strange you didn't find your lady-love there. Are you fond of art? of pictures? or more of music?'

'I am fond of art.... I like everything beautiful.'

'And music?'

'I like music too.'

'Well, I don't at all. I don't care for anything but Russian songs--and that in the country and in the spring--with dancing, you know ... red s.h.i.+rts, wreaths of beads, the young gra.s.s in the meadows, the smell of smoke ... delicious! But we weren't talking of me. Go on, tell me.'

Maria Nikolaevna walked on, and kept looking at Sanin. She was tall--her face was almost on a level with his face.

He began to talk--at first reluctantly, unskilfully--but afterwards he talked more freely, chattered away in fact. Maria Nikolaevna was a very good listener; and moreover she seemed herself so frank, that she led others unconsciously on to frankness. She possessed that great gift of 'intimateness'--_le terrible don de la familiarite_--to which Cardinal Retz refers. Sanin talked of his travels, of his life in Petersburg, of his youth.... Had Maria Nikolaevna been a lady of fas.h.i.+on, with refined manners, he would never have opened out so; but she herself spoke of herself as a 'good fellow,' who had no patience with ceremony of any sort; it was in those words that she characterised herself to Sanin. And at the same time this 'good fellow' walked by his side with feline grace, slightly bending towards him, and peeping into his face; and this 'good fellow' walked in the form of a young feminine creature, full of the tormenting, fiery, soft and seductive charm, of which--for the undoing of us poor weak sinful men--only Slav natures are possessed, and but few of them, and those never of pure Slav blood, with no foreign alloy. Sanin's walk with Maria Nikolaevna, Sanin's talk with Maria Nikolaevna lasted over an hour. And they did not stop once; they kept walking about the endless avenues of the park, now mounting a hill and admiring the view as they went, and now going down into the valley, and getting hidden in the thick shadows,--and all the while arm-in-arm. At times Sanin felt positively irritated; he had never walked so long with Gemma, his darling Gemma ... but this lady had simply taken possession of him, and there was no escape! 'Aren't you tired?' he said to her more than once. 'I never get tired,' she answered. Now and then they met other people walking in the park; almost all of them bowed--some respectfully, others even cringingly. To one of them, a very handsome, fas.h.i.+onably dressed dark man, she called from a distance with the best Parisian accent, '_Comte, vous savez, il ne faut pas venir me voir--ni aujourd'hui ni demain_.' The man took off his hat, without speaking, and dropped a low bow.

'Who's that?' asked Sanin with the bad habit of asking questions characteristic of all Russians.

'Oh, a Frenchman, there are lots of them here ... He's dancing attendance on me too. It's time for our coffee, though. Let's go home; you must be hungry by this time, I should say. My better half must have got his eye-peeps open by now.'

'Better half! Eye-peeps!' Sanin repeated to himself ... 'And speaks French so well ... what a strange creature!'

Maria Nikolaevna was not mistaken. When she went back into the hotel with Sanin, her 'better half or 'dumpling' was already seated, the invariable fez on his head, before a table laid for breakfast.

'I've been waiting for you!' he cried, making a sour face. 'I was on the point of having coffee without you.'

'Never mind, never mind,' Maria Nikolaevna responded cheerfully. 'Are you angry? That's good for you; without that you'd turn into a mummy altogether. Here I've brought a visitor. Make haste and ring! Let us have coffee--the best coffee--in Saxony cups on a snow-white cloth!'

She threw off her hat and gloves, and clapped her hands.

Polozov looked at her from under his brows.

'What makes you so skittish to-day, Maria Nikolaevna?' he said in an undertone.

'That's no business of yours, Ippolit Sidoritch! Ring! Dimitri Pavlovitch, sit down and have some coffee for the second time. Ah, how nice it is to give orders! There's no pleasure on earth like it!'

'When you're obeyed,' grumbled her husband again.

'Just so, when one's obeyed! That's why I'm so happy! Especially with you. Isn't it so, dumpling? Ah, here's the coffee.'