The Torrents of Spring Part 12

Gemma was coming up behind him along the path. She was wearing a grey cape and a small dark hat. She glanced at Sanin, turned her head away, and catching him up, pa.s.sed rapidly by him.

'Gemma,' he articulated, hardly audibly.

She gave him a little nod, and continued to walk on in front. He followed her.

He breathed in broken gasps. His legs shook under him.

Gemma pa.s.sed by the arbour, turned to the right, pa.s.sed by a small flat fountain, in which the sparrows were splashing busily, and, going behind a clump of high lilacs, sank down on a bench. The place was snug and hidden. Sanin sat down beside her.

A minute pa.s.sed, and neither he nor she uttered a word. She did not even look at him; and he gazed not at her face, but at her clasped hands, in which she held a small parasol. What was there to tell, what was there to say, which could compare, in importance, with the simple fact of their presence there, together, alone, so early, so close to each other.

'You ... are not angry with me?' Sanin articulated at last.

It would have been difficult for Sanin to have said anything more foolish than these words ... he was conscious of it himself.... But, at any rate, the silence was broken.

'Angry?' she answered. 'What for? No.'

'And you believe me?' he went on.

'In what you wrote?'

'Yes.'

Gemma's head sank, and she said nothing. The parasol slipped out of her hands. She hastily caught it before it dropped on the path.

'Ah, believe me! believe what I wrote to you!' cried Sanin; all his timidity suddenly vanished, he spoke with heat; 'if there is truth on earth--sacred, absolute truth--it's that I love, love you pa.s.sionately, Gemma.'

She flung him a sideway, momentary glance, and again almost dropped the parasol.

'Believe me! believe me!' he repeated. He besought her, held out his hands to her, and did not dare to touch her. 'What do you want me to do ... to convince you?'

She glanced at him again.

'Tell me, Monsieur Dimitri,' she began; 'the day before yesterday, when you came to talk to me, you did not, I imagine, know then ... did not feel ...'

'I felt it,' Sanin broke in; 'but I did not know it. I have loved you from the very instant I saw you; but I did not realise at once what you had become to me! And besides, I heard that you were solemnly betrothed.... As far as your mother's request is concerned--in the first place, how could I refuse?--and secondly, I think I carried out her request in such a way that you could guess....'

They heard a heavy tread, and a rather stout gentleman with a knapsack over his shoulder, apparently a foreigner, emerged from behind the clump, and staring, with the unceremoniousness of a tourist, at the couple sitting on the garden-seat, gave a loud cough and went on.

'Your mother,' Sanin began, as soon as the sound of the heavy footsteps had ceased, 'told me your breaking off your engagement would cause a scandal'--Gemma frowned a little--that I was myself in part responsible for unpleasant gossip, and that ... consequently ... I was, to some extent, under an obligation to advise you not to break with your betrothed, Herr Kluber....'

'Monsieur Dimitri,' said Gemma, and she pa.s.sed her hand over her hair on the side turned towards Sanin, 'don't, please, call Herr Kluber my betrothed. I shall never be his wife. I have broken with him.'

'You have broken with him? when?'

'Yesterday.'

'You saw him?'

'Yes. At our house. He came to see us.'

'Gemma? Then you love me?'

She turned to him.

'Should ... I have come here, if not?' she whispered, and both her hands fell on the seat.

Sanin s.n.a.t.c.hed those powerless, upturned palms, and pressed them to his eyes, to his lips.... Now the veil was lifted of which he had dreamed the night before! Here was happiness, here was its radiant form!

He raised his head, and looked at Gemma, boldly and directly. She, too, looked at him, a little downwards. Her half-shut eyes faintly glistened, dim with light, blissful tears. Her face was not smiling ... no! it laughed, with a blissful, noiseless laugh.

He tried to draw her to him, but she drew back, and never ceasing to laugh the same noiseless laugh, shook her head. 'Wait a little,' her happy eyes seemed to say.

'O Gemma!' cried Sanin: 'I never dreamed that you would love me!'

'I did not expect this myself,' Gemma said softly.

'How could I ever have dreamed,' Sanin went on, 'when I came to Frankfort, where I only expected to remain a few hours, that I should find here the happiness of all my life!'

'All your life? Really?' queried Gemma.

'All my life, for ever and ever!' cried Sanin with fresh ardour.

The gardener's spade suddenly sc.r.a.ped two paces from where they were sitting.

'Let's go home,' whispered Gemma: 'we'll go together--will you?'

If she had said to him at that instant 'Throw yourself in the sea, will you?' he would have been flying headlong into the ocean before she had uttered the last word.

They went together out of the garden and turned homewards, not by the streets of the town, but through the outskirts.

XXVIII

Sanin walked along, at one time by Gemma's side, at another time a little behind her. He never took his eyes off her and never ceased smiling. She seemed to hasten ... seemed to linger. As a matter of fact, they both--he all pale, and she all flushed with emotion--were moving along as in a dream. What they had done together a few instants before--that surrender of each soul to another soul--was so intense, so new, and so moving; so suddenly everything in their lives had been changed and displaced that they could not recover themselves, and were only aware of a whirlwind carrying them along, like the whirlwind on that night, which had almost flung them into each other's arms.

Sanin walked along, and felt that he even looked at Gemma with other eyes; he instantly noted some peculiarities in her walk, in her movements,--and heavens! how infinitely sweet and precious they were to him! And she felt that that was how he was looking at her.

Sanin and she were in love for the first time; all the miracles of first love were working in them. First love is like a revolution; the uniformly regular routine of ordered life is broken down and shattered in one instant; youth mounts the barricade, waves high its bright flag, and whatever awaits it in the future--death or a new life--all alike it goes to meet with ecstatic welcome.

'What's this? Isn't that our old friend?' said Sanin, pointing to a m.u.f.fled-up figure, which hurriedly slipped a little aside as though trying to remain un.o.bserved. In the midst of his abundant happiness he felt a need to talk to Gemma, not of love--that was a settled thing and holy--but of something else.

'Yes, it's Pantaleone,' Gemma answered gaily and happily. 'Most likely he has been following me ever since I left home; all day yesterday he kept watching every movement I made ... He guesses!'

'He guesses!' Sanin repeated in ecstasy. What could Gemma have said at which he would not have been in ecstasy?

Then he asked her to tell him in detail all that had pa.s.sed the day before.