The Torrents of Spring Part 8

Ah! there was something nasty about it!

Yes, Sanin was a little conscience-smitten and ashamed ... though, on the other hand, what was there for him to have done? Could he have left the young officer's insolence unrebuked? could he have behaved like Herr Kluber? He had stood up for Gemma, he had championed her ...

that was so; and yet, there was an uneasy pang in his heart, and he was conscience--smitten, and even ashamed.

Not so Pantaleone--he was simply in his glory! He was suddenly possessed by a feeling of pride. A victorious general, returning from the field of battle he has won, could not have looked about him with greater self-satisfaction. Sanin's demeanour during the duel filled him with enthusiasm. He called him a hero, and would not listen to his exhortations and even his entreaties. He compared him to a monument of marble or of bronze, with the statue of the commander in Don Juan!

For himself he admitted he had been conscious of some perturbation of mind, 'but, of course, I am an artist,' he observed; 'I have a highly-strung nature, while you are the son of the snows and the granite rocks.'

Sanin was positively at a loss how to quiet the jubilant artist.

Almost at the same place in the road where two hours before they had come upon Emil, he again jumped out from behind a tree, and, with a cry of joy upon his lips, waving his cap and leaping into the air, he rushed straight at the carriage, almost fell under the wheel, and, without waiting for the horses to stop, clambered up over the carriage-door and fairly clung to Sanin.

'You are alive, you are not wounded!' he kept repeating. 'Forgive me, I did not obey you, I did not go back to Frankfort ... I could not! I waited for you here ... Tell me how was it? You ... killed him?'

Sanin with some difficulty pacified Emil and made him sit down.

With great verbosity, with evident pleasure, Pantaleone communicated to him all the details of the duel, and, of course, did not omit to refer again to the monument of bronze and the statue of the commander.

He even rose from his seat and, standing with his feet wide apart to preserve his equilibrium, folding his arm on his chest and looking contemptuously over his shoulder, gave an ocular representation of the commander--Sanin! Emil listened with awe, occasionally interrupting the narrative with an exclamation, or swiftly getting up and as swiftly kissing his heroic friend.

The carriage wheels rumbled over the paved roads of Frankfort, and stopped at last before the hotel where Sanin was living.

Escorted by his two companions, he went up the stairs, when suddenly a woman came with hurried steps out of the dark corridor; her face was hidden by a veil, she stood still, facing Sanin, wavered a little, gave a trembling sigh, at once ran down into the street and vanished, to the great astonishment of the waiter, who explained that 'that lady had been for over an hour waiting for the return of the foreign gentleman.' Momentary as was the apparition, Sanin recognised Gemma.

He recognised her eyes under the thick silk of her brown veil.

'Did Fraulein Gemma know, then?'... he said slowly in a displeased voice in German, addressing Emil and Pantaleone, who were following close on his heels.

Emil blushed and was confused.

'I was obliged to tell her all,' he faltered; 'she guessed, and I could not help it.... But now that's of no consequence,' he hurried to add eagerly, 'everything has ended so splendidly, and she has seen you well and uninjured!'

Sanin turned away.

'What a couple of chatterboxes you are!' he observed in a tone of annoyance, as he went into his room and sat down on a chair.

'Don't be angry, please,' Emil implored.

'Very well, I won't be angry'--(Sanin was not, in fact, angry--and, after all, he could hardly have desired that Gemma should know nothing about it). 'Very well ... that's enough embracing. You get along now.

I want to be alone. I'm going to sleep. I'm tired.'

'An excellent idea!' cried Pantaleone. 'You need repose! You have fully earned it, n.o.ble signor! Come along, Emilio! On tip-toe! On tip-toe! Sh--sh--s.h.!.+'

When he said he wanted to go to sleep, Sanin had simply wished to get rid of his companions; but when he was left alone, he was really aware of considerable weariness in all his limbs; he had hardly closed his eyes all the preceding night, and throwing himself on his bed he fell immediately into a sound sleep.

XXIII

He slept for some hours without waking. Then he began to dream that he was once more fighting a duel, that the antagonist standing facing him was Herr Kluber, and on a fir-tree was sitting a parrot, and this parrot was Pantaleone, and he kept tapping with his beak: one, one, one!

'One ... one ... one!' he heard the tapping too distinctly; he opened his eyes, raised his head ... some one was knocking at his door.

'Come in!' called Sanin.

The waiter came in and answered that a lady very particularly wished to see him.

'Gemma!' flashed into his head ... but the lady turned out to be her mother, Frau Lenore.

Directly she came in, she dropped at once into a chair and began to cry.

'What is the matter, my dear, good Madame Roselli?' began Sanin, sitting beside her and softly touching her hand. 'What has happened?

calm yourself, I entreat you.'

'Ah, Herr Dimitri, I am very ... very miserable!'

'You are miserable?'

'Ah, very! Could I have foreseen such a thing? All of a sudden, like thunder from a clear sky ...'

She caught her breath.

'But what is it? Explain! Would you like a gla.s.s of water?'

'No, thank you.' Frau Lenore wiped her eyes with her handkerchief and began to cry with renewed energy. 'I know all, you see! All!'

'All? that is to say?'

'Everything that took place to-day! And the cause ... I know that too!

You acted like an honourable man; but what an unfortunate combination of circ.u.mstances! I was quite right in not liking that excursion to Soden ... quite right!' (Frau Lenore had said nothing of the sort on the day of the excursion, but she was convinced now that she had foreseen 'all' even then.) 'I have come to you as to an honourable man, as to a friend, though I only saw you for the first time five days ago.... But you know I am a widow, a lonely woman.... My daughter ...'

Tears choked Frau Lenore's voice. Sanin did not know what to think.

'Your daughter?' he repeated.

'My daughter, Gemma,' broke almost with a groan from Frau Lenore, behind the tear-soaked handkerchief, 'informed me to-day that she would not marry Herr Kluber, and that I must refuse him!'

Sanin positively started back a little; he had not expected that.

'I won't say anything now,' Frau Lenore went on, 'of the disgrace of it, of its being something unheard of in the world for a girl to jilt her betrothed; but you see it's ruin for us, Herr Dimitri!' Frau Lenore slowly and carefully twisted up her handkerchief in a tiny, tiny little ball, as though she would enclose all her grief within it.

'We can't go on living on the takings of our shop, Herr Dimitri! and Herr Kluber is very rich, and will be richer still. And what is he to be refused for? Because he did not defend his betrothed? Allowing that was not very handsome on his part, still, he's a civilian, has not had a university education, and as a solid business man, it was for him to look with contempt on the frivolous prank of some unknown little officer. And what sort of insult was it, after all, Herr Dimitri?'

'Excuse me, Frau Lenore, you seem to be blaming me.'

'I am not blaming you in the least, not in the least! You're quite another matter; you are, like all Russians, a military man ...'

'Excuse me, I'm not at all ...'

'You're a foreigner, a visitor, and I'm grateful to you,' Frau Lenore went on, not heeding Sanin. She sighed, waved her hands, unwound her handkerchief again, and blew her nose. Simply from the way in which her distress expressed itself, it could be seen that she had not been born under a northern sky.