The Torrents of Spring Part 11

'So that no one sees?' he inquired, a.s.suming an important and mysterious air, that said, 'We understand the inner meaning of it all!'

'Yes, my friend,' said Sanin and he was a little disconcerted; however, he patted Emil on the cheek.... 'And if there should be an answer.... You will bring me the answer, won't you? I will stay at home.'

'Don't worry yourself about that!' Emil whispered gaily; he ran off, and as he ran nodded once more to him.

Sanin went back home, and without lighting a candle, flung himself on the sofa, put his hands behind his head, and abandoned himself to those sensations of newly conscious love, which it is no good even to describe. One who has felt them knows their languor and sweetness; to one who has felt them not, one could never make them known.

The door opened--Emil's head appeared.

'I have brought it,' he said in a whisper: 'here it is--the answer!'

He showed and waved above his head a folded sheet of paper.

Sanin leaped up from the sofa and s.n.a.t.c.hed it out of Emil's hand.

Pa.s.sion was working too powerfully within him: he had no thought of reserve now, nor of the observance of a suitable demeanour--even before this boy, her brother. He would have been scrupulous, he would have controlled himself--if he could!

He went to the window, and by the light of a street lamp which stood just opposite the house, he read the following lines:--

I beg you, I beseech you--_don't come to see us, don't show yourself all day to-morrow_. It's necessary, absolutely necessary for me, and then everything shall be settled. I know you will not say no, because ...

'GEMMA.'

Sanin read this note twice through. Oh, how touchingly sweet and beautiful her handwriting seemed to him! He thought a little, and turning to Emil, who, wishing to give him to understand what a discreet young person he was, was standing with his face to the wall, and scratching on it with his finger-nails, he called him aloud by name.

Emil ran at once to Sanin. 'What do you want me to do?'

'Listen, my young friend...'

'Monsieur Dimitri,' Emil interrupted in a plaintive voice, 'why do you address me so formally?'

Sanin laughed. 'Oh, very well. Listen, my dearest boy--(Emil gave a little skip of delight)--listen; _there_ you understand, there, you will say, that everything shall be done exactly as is wished--(Emil compressed his lips and nodded solemnly)--and as for me ... what are you doing to-morrow, my dear boy?'

'I? what am I doing? What would you like me to do?'

'If you can, come to me early in the morning--and we will walk about the country round Frankfort till evening.... Would you like to?'

Emil gave another little skip. 'I say, what in the world could be jollier? Go a walk with you--why, it's simply glorious! I'll be sure to come!'

'And if they won't let you?'

'They will let me!'

'Listen ... Don't say _there_ that I asked you to come for the whole day.'

'Why should I? But I'll get away all the same! What does it matter?'

Emil warmly kissed Sanin, and ran away.

Sanin walked up and down the room a long while, and went late to bed.

He gave himself up to the same delicate and sweet sensations, the same joyous thrill at facing a new life. Sanin was very glad that the idea had occurred to him to invite Emil to spend the next day with him; he was like his sister. 'He will recall her,' was his thought.

But most of all, he marvelled how he could have been yesterday other than he was to-day. It seemed to him that he had loved Gemma for all time; and that he had loved her just as he loved her to-day.

XXVI

At eight o'clock next morning, Emil arrived at Sanin's hotel leading Tartaglia by a string. Had he sprung of German parentage, he could not have shown greater practicality. He had told a lie at home; he had said he was going for a walk with Sanin till lunch-time, and then going to the shop. While Sanin was dressing, Emil began to talk to him, rather hesitatingly, it is true, about Gemma, about her rupture with Herr Kluber; but Sanin preserved an austere silence in reply, and Emil, looking as though he understood why so serious a matter should not be touched on lightly, did not return to the subject, and only a.s.sumed from time to time an intense and even severe expression.

After drinking coffee, the two friends set off together--on foot, of course--to Hausen, a little village lying a short distance from Frankfort, and surrounded by woods. The whole chain of the Taunus mountains could be seen clearly from there. The weather was lovely; the sunshine was bright and warm, but not blazing hot; a fresh wind rustled briskly among the green leaves; the shadows of high, round clouds glided swiftly and smoothly in small patches over the earth.

The two young people soon got out of the town, and stepped out boldly and gaily along the well-kept road. They reached the woods, and wandered about there a long time; then they lunched very heartily at a country inn; then climbed on to the mountains, admired the views, rolled stones down and clapped their hands, watching the queer droll way in which the stones hopped along like rabbits, till a man pa.s.sing below, unseen by them, began abusing them in a loud ringing voice.

Then they lay full length on the short dry moss of yellowish-violet colour; then they drank beer at another inn; ran races, and tried for a wager which could jump farthest. They discovered an echo, and began to call to it; sang songs, hallooed, wrestled, broke up dry twigs, decked their hats with fern, and even danced. Tartaglia, as far as he could, shared in all these pastimes; he did not throw stones, it is true, but he rolled head over heels after them; he howled when they were singing, and even drank beer, though with evident aversion; he had been trained in this art by a student to whom he had once belonged. But he was not prompt in obeying Emil--not as he was with his master Pantaleone--and when Emil ordered him to 'speak,' or to 'sneeze,' he only wagged his tail and thrust out his tongue like a pipe.

The young people talked, too. At the beginning of the walk, Sanin, as the elder, and so more reflective, turned the conversation on fate and predestination, and the nature and meaning of man's destiny; but the conversation quickly took a less serious turn. Emil began to question his friend and patron about Russia, how duels were fought there, and whether the women there were beautiful, and whether one could learn Russian quickly, and what he had felt when the officer took aim at him. Sanin, on his side, questioned Emil about his father, his mother, and in general about their family affairs, trying every time not to mention Gemma's name--and thinking only of her. To speak more precisely, it was not of her he was thinking, but of the morrow, the mysterious morrow which was to bring him new, unknown happiness! It was as though a veil, a delicate, bright veil, hung faintly fluttering before his mental vision; and behind this veil he felt ... felt the presence of a youthful, motionless, divine image, with a tender smile on its lips, and eyelids severely--with affected seventy--downcast.

And this image was not the face of Gemma, it was the face of happiness itself! For, behold, at last _his_ hour had come, the veil had vanished, the lips were parting, the eyelashes are raised--his divinity has looked upon him--and at once light as from the sun, and joy and bliss unending! He dreamed of this morrow--and his soul thrilled with joy again in the melting torture of ever-growing expectation!

And this expectation, this torture, hindered nothing. It accompanied every action, and did not prevent anything. It did not prevent him from dining capitally at a third inn with Emil; and only occasionally, like a brief flash of lightning, the thought shot across him, What if any one in the world knew? This suspense did not prevent him from playing leap-frog with Emil after dinner. The game took place on an open green lawn. And the confusion, the stupefaction of Sanin may be imagined! At the very moment when, accompanied by a sharp bark from Tartaglia, he was flying like a bird, with his legs outspread over Emil, who was bent double, he suddenly saw on the farthest border of the lawn two officers, in whom he recognised at once his adversary and his second, Herr von Donhof and Herr von Richter! Each of them had stuck an eyegla.s.s in his eye, and was staring at him, chuckling!...

Sanin got on his feet, turned away hurriedly, put on the coat he had flung down, jerked out a word to Emil; the latter, too, put on his jacket, and they both immediately made off.

It was late when they got back to Frankfort. 'They'll scold me,' Emil said to Sanin as he said good-bye to him. 'Well, what does it matter?

I've had such a splendid, splendid day!'

When he got home to his hotel, Sanin found a note there from Gemma.

She fixed a meeting with him for next day, at seven o'clock in the morning, in one of the public gardens which surround Frankfort on all sides.

How his heart throbbed! How glad he was that he had obeyed her so unconditionally! And, my G.o.d, what was promised ... what was not promised, by that unknown, unique, impossible, and undubitably certain morrow!

He feasted his eyes on Gemma's note. The long, elegant tail of the letter G, the first letter of her name, which stood at the bottom of the sheet, reminded him of her lovely fingers, her hand.... He thought that he had not once touched that hand with his lips.... 'Italian women,' he mused, 'in spite of what's said of them, are modest and severe.... And Gemma above all! Queen ... G.o.ddess ... pure, virginal marble....'

'But the time will come; and it is not far off....' There was that night in Frankfort one happy man.... He slept; but he might have said of himself in the words of the poet:

'I sleep ... but my watchful heart sleeps not.'

And it fluttered as lightly as a b.u.t.terfly flutters his wings, as he stoops over the flowers in the summer sunshine.

XXVII

At five o'clock Sanin woke up, at six he was dressed, at half-past six he was walking up and down the public garden within sight of the little arbour which Gemma had mentioned in her note. It was a still, warm, grey morning. It sometimes seemed as though it were beginning to rain; but the outstretched hand felt nothing, and only looking at one's coat-sleeve, one could see traces of tiny drops like diminutive beads, but even these were soon gone. It seemed there had never been a breath of wind in the world. Every sound moved not, but was shed around in the stillness. In the distance was a faint thickening of whitish mist; in the air there was a scent of mignonette and white acacia flowers.

In the streets the shops were not open yet, but there were already some people walking about; occasionally a solitary carriage rumbled along ... there was no one walking in the garden. A gardener was in a leisurely way sc.r.a.ping the path with a spade, and a decrepit old woman in a black woollen cloak was hobbling across the garden walk. Sanin could not for one instant mistake this poor old creature for Gemma; and yet his heart leaped, and he watched attentively the retreating patch of black.

Seven! chimed the clock on the tower. Sanin stood still. Was it possible she would not come? A shiver of cold suddenly ran through his limbs. The same shiver came again an instant later, but from a different cause. Sanin heard behind him light footsteps, the light rustle of a woman's dress.... He turned round: she!