Nina Balatka Part 3

"No, father; he did not send."

"And what made you go?"

"I am so of often going there. He had spoken to me before about this.

He thinks you do not like him to come here, and you never go there yourself."

After this there was a pause for a few minutes, and Nina was settling herself to her work. Then the old man spoke again.

"Nina, I fear you see too much of Anton Trendellsohn." The words were the very words of Souchey; and Nina was sure that her father and the servant had been discussing her conduct. It was no more than she had expected, but her father's words had come very quickly upon Souchey's speech to herself. What did it signify? Everybody would know it all before twenty-four hours had pa.s.sed by. Nina, however, was determined to defend herself at the present moment, thinking that there was something of injustice in her father's remarks. "As for seeing him often, father, I have done it because your business has required it.

When you were ill in April I had to be there almost daily."

"But you need not have gone to-night. He did not send for you."

"But it is needful that something should be done to get for him that which is his own." As she said this there came to her a sting of conscience, a thought that reminded her that, though she was not lying to her father in words, she was in fact deceiving him; and remembering her a.s.sertion to her lover that she had never spoken falsely to her father, she blushed with shame as she sat in the darkness of her seat.

"To-morrow father," she said, "I will talk to you more about this, and you shall not at any rate say that I keep anything from you."

"I have never said so, Nina."

"It is late now, father. Will you not go to bed?"

Old Balatka yielded to this suggestion, and went to his bed; and Nina, after some hour or two, went to hers. But before doing so she opened the little desk that stood in the corner of their sitting-room, of which the key was always in her pocket, and took out everything that it contained. There were many letters there, of which most were on matters of business--letters which in few houses would come into the hands of such a one as Nina Balatka, but which, through the weakness of her father's health, had come into hers. Many of these she now read; some few she tore and burned in the stove, and others she tied in bundles and put back carefully into their place. There was not a paper in the desk which did not pa.s.s under her eye, and as to which she did not come to some conclusion, either to keep it or to burn it. There were no love-letters there. Nina Balatka had never yet received such a letter as that. She saw her lover too frequently to feel much the need of written expressions of love; and such sc.r.a.ps of his writing as there were in the bundles, referred altogether to small matters of business.

When she had thus arranged her papers, she too went to bed. On the next morning, when she gave her father his breakfast, she was very silent.

She made for him a little chocolate, and cut for him a few slips of white bread to dip into it. For herself, she cut a slice from a black loaf made of rye flour, and mixed with water a small quant.i.ty of the thin sour wine of the country. Her meal may have been worth perhaps a couple of kreutzers, or something less than a penny, whereas that of her father may have cost twice as much. Nina was a close and sparing housekeeper, but with all her economy she could not feed three people upon nothing. Latterly, from month to month, she had sold one thing out of the house after another, knowing as each article went that provision from such store as that must soon fail her. But anything was better than taking money from her aunt whom she hated--except taking money from the Jew whom she loved. From him she had taken none, though it had been often offered. "You have lost more than enough by father," she had said to him when the offer had been made. "What I give to the wife of my bosom shall never be reckoned as lost," he had answered. She had loved him for the words, and had pressed his hand in hers--but she had not taken his money. From her aunt some small meagre supply had been accepted from time to time--a florin or two now, and a florin or two again--given with repeated intimations on aunt Sophie's part, that her husband Karil could not be expected to maintain the house in the Kleinseite. Nina had not felt herself justified in refusing such gifts from her aunt to her father, but as each occasion came she told herself that some speedy end must be put to this state of things. Her aunt's generosity would not sustain her father, and her aunt's generosity nearly killed herself. On this very morning she would do that which should certainly put an end to a state of things so disagreeable.

After breakfast, therefore, she started at once for the house in the Windberg-ga.s.se, leaving her father still in his bed. She walked very quick, looking neither to the right nor the left, across the bridge, along the river-side, and then up into the straight ugly streets of the New Town. The distance from her father's house was nearly two miles, and yet the journey was made in half an hour. She had never walked so quickly through the streets of Prague before; and when she reached the end of the Windberg-ga.s.se, she had to pause a moment to collect her thoughts and her breath. But it was only for a moment, and then the bell was rung.

Yes; her aunt was at home. At ten in the morning that was a matter of course. She was shown, not into the grand drawing-room, which was only used on grand occasions, but into a little back parlour which, in spite of the wealth and magnificence of the Zamenoys, was not so clean as the room in the Kleinseite, and certainly not so comfortable as the Jew's apartment. There was no carpet; but that was not much, as carpets in Prague were not in common use. There were two tables crowded with things needed for household purposes, half-a-dozen chairs of different patterns, a box of sawdust close under the wall, placed there that papa Zamenoy might spit into it when it pleased him. There was a crowd of clothes and linen hanging round the stove, which projected far into the room; and spread upon the table, close to which was placed mamma Zamenoy's chair, was an article of papa Zamenoy's dress, on which mamma Zamenoy was about to employ her talents in the art of tailoring. All this, however, was nothing to Nina, nor was the dirt on the floor much to her, though she had often thought that if she were to go and live with aunt Sophie, she would contrive to make some improvement as to the cleanliness of the house.

"Your aunt will be down soon," said Lotta Luxa as they pa.s.sed through the pa.s.sage. "She is very angry, Nina, at not seeing you all the last week."

"I don't know why she should be angry, Lotta. I did not say I would come."

Lotta Luxa was a sharp little woman, over forty years of age, with quick green eyes and thin red-tipped nose, looking as though Paris might have been the town of her birth rather than Prague. She wore short petticoats, clean stockings, an old pair of slippers; and in the back of her hair she still carried that Diana's dart which maidens wear in those parts when they are not only maidens unmarried, but maidens also disengaged. No one had yet succeeded in drawing Lotta Luxa's arrow from her head, though Souchey, from the other side of the river, had made repeated attempts to do so. For Lotta Luxa had a little money of her own, and poor Souchey had none. Lotta muttered something about the thoughtless thanklessness of young people, and then took herself down-stairs. Nina opened the door of the back parlour, and found her cousin Ziska sitting alone with his feet propped upon the stove.

"What, Ziska," she said, "you not at work by ten o'clock!"

"I was not well last night, and took physic this morning," said Ziska.

"Something had disagreed with me."

"I'm sorry for that, Ziska. You eat too much fruit, I suppose."

"Lotta says it was the sausage, but I don't think it was. I'm very fond of sausage, and everybody must be ill sometimes. She'll be down here again directly;" and Ziska with his head nodded at the chair in which his mother was wont to sit.

Nina, whose mind was quite full of her business, was determined to go to work at once. "I'm glad to have you alone for a moment, Ziska," she said.

"And so am I very glad; only I wish I had not taken physic, it makes one so uncomfortable."

At this moment Nina had in her heart no charity towards her cousin, and did not care for his discomfort. "Ziska," she said, "Anton Trendellsohn wants to have the papers about the houses in the Kleinseite. He says that they are his, and you have them."

Ziska hated Anton Trendellsohn, hardly knowing why he hated him. "If Trendellsohn wants anything of us," said he, "why does he not come to the office? He knows where to find us."

"Yes, Ziska, he knows where to find you; but, as he says, he has no business with you--no business as to which he can make a demand. He thinks, therefore, you would merely bid him begone."

"Very likely. One doesn't want to see more of a Jew than one can help."

"That Jew, Ziska, owns the house in which father lives. That Jew, Ziska, is the best friend that--that--that father has."

"I'm sorry you think so, Nina."

"How can I help thinking it? You can't deny, nor can uncle, that the houses belong to him. The papers got into uncle's hands when he and father were together, and I think they ought to be given up now. Father thinks that the Trendellsohns should have them. Even though they are Jews, they have a right to their own."

"You know nothing about it, Nina. How should you know about such things as that?"

"I am driven to know. Father is ill, and cannot come himself."

"Oh, laws! I am so uncomfortable. I never will take stuff from Lotta Luxa again. She thinks a man is the same as a horse."

This little episode put a stop to the conversation about the t.i.tle-deeds, and then Madame Zamenoy entered the room. Madame Zamenoy was a woman of a portly demeanour, well fitted to do honour by her personal presence to that carriage and horses with which Providence and an indulgent husband had blessed her. And when she was dressed in her full panoply of French millinery--the materials of which had come from England, and the manufacture of which had taken place in Prague--she looked the carriage and horses well enough. But of a morning she was accustomed to go about the house in a pale-tinted wrapper, which, pale-tinted as it was, should have been in the washing-tub much oftener than was the case with it--if not for cleanliness, then for mere decency of appearance.

And the mode in which she carried her matutinal curls, done up with black pins, very visible to the eye, was not in itself becoming. The handkerchief which she wore in lieu of cap, might have been excused on the score of its ugliness, as Madame Zamenoy was no longer young, had it not been open to such manifest condemnation for other sins. And in this guise she would go about the house from morning to night on days not made sacred by the use of the carriage. Now Lotta Luxa was clean in the midst of her work; and one would have thought that the cleanliness of the maid would have shamed the slatternly ways of the mistress. But Madame Zamenoy and Lotta Luxa had lived together long, and probably knew each other well.

"Well, Nina," she said, "so you've come at last?"

"Yes; I've come, aunt. And as I want to say something very particular to you yourself, perhaps Ziska won't mind going out of the room for a minute." Nina had not sat down since she had been in the room, and was now standing before her aunt with almost militant firmness. She was resolved to rush at once at the terrible subject which she had in hand, but she could not do so in the presence of her cousin Ziska.

Ziska groaned audibly. "Ziska isn't well this morning," said Madame Zamenoy, "and I do not wish to have him disturbed."

"Then perhaps you'll come into the front parlour, aunt."

"What can there be that you cannot say before Ziska?"

"There is something, aunt," said Nina.

If there were a secret, Madame Zamenoy decidedly wished to hear it, and therefore, after pausing to consider the matter for a moment or two, she led the way into the front parlour.

"And now, Nina, what is it? I hope you have not disturbed me in this way for anything that is a trifle."

"It is no trifle to me, aunt. I am going to be married to--Anton Trendellsohn." She said the words slowly, standing bolt-upright, at her greatest height, as she spoke them, and looking her aunt full in the face with something of defiance both in her eyes and in the tone of her voice. She had almost said, "Anton Trendellsohn, the Jew;" and when her speech was finished, and admitted of no addition, she reproached herself with pusillanimity in that she had omitted the word which had always been so odious, and would now be doubly odious--odious to her aunt in a tenfold degree.

Madame Zamenoy stood for a while speechless--struck with horror.

The tidings which she heard were so unexpected, so strange, and so abominable, that they seemed at first to crush her. Nina was her niece--her sister's child; and though she might be repudiated, reviled, persecuted, and perhaps punished, still she must retain her relationship to her injured relatives. And it seemed to Madame Zamenoy as though the marriage of which Nina spoke was a thing to be done at once, out of hand--as though the disgusting nuptials were to take place on that day or on the next, and could not now be avoided. It occurred to her that old Balatka himself was a consenting party, and that utter degradation was to fall upon the family instantly. There was that in Nina's air and manner, as she spoke of her own iniquity, which made the elder woman feel for the moment that she was helpless to prevent the evil with which she was threatened.

"Anton Trendellsohn--a Jew," she said, at last.

"Yes, aunt; Anton Trendellsohn, the Jew. I am engaged to him as his wife."

There was a something of doubtful futurity in the word engaged, which gave a slight feeling of relief to Madame Zamenoy, and taught her to entertain a hope that there might be yet room for escape. "Marry a Jew, Nina," she said; "it cannot be possible!"

"It is possible, aunt. Other Jews in Prague have married Christians."