The Torrents of Spring
convulsively thumping at his chest, in a hoarse voice wailed out in his
mixed jargon: “_A la la la … Che bestialita! Deux zeun ommes comme ça
que si battono—perchè? Che diavolo? Andata a casa!_”
“I will not consent to a reconciliation,” Sanin intervened hurriedly.
“And I too will not,” his opponent repeated after him.
“Well, then shout one, two, three!” von Richter said, addressing the
distracted Pantaleone. The latter promptly ducked behind the bush
again, and from there, all huddled together, his eyes screwed up, and
his head turned away, he shouted at the top of his voice: “_Una … due …
tre!_”
The first shot was Sanin’s, and he missed. His bullet went ping against
a tree. Baron von Dönhof shot directly after him—intentionally, to one
side, into the air.
A constrained silence followed…. No one moved. Pantaleone uttered a
faint moan.
“Is it your wish to go on?” said Dönhof.
“Why did you shoot in the air?” inquired Sanin.
“That’s nothing to do with you.”
“Will you shoot in the air the second time?” Sanin asked again.
“Possibly: I don’t know.”
“Excuse me, excuse me, gentlemen …” began von Richter; “duellists have
not the right to talk together. That’s out of order.”
“I decline my shot,” said Sanin, and he threw his pistol on the ground.
“And I too do not intend to go on with the duel,” cried Dönhof, and he
too threw his pistol on the ground. “And more than that, I am prepared
to own that I was in the wrong—the day before yesterday.”
He moved uneasily, and hesitatingly held out his hand. Sanin went
rapidly up to him and shook it. Both the young men looked at each other
with a smile, and both their faces flushed crimson.
“_Bravi! bravi!_” Pantaleone roared suddenly as if he had gone mad, and
clapping his hands, he rushed like a whirlwind from behind the bush;
while the doctor, who had been sitting on one side on a felled tree,
promptly rose, poured the water out of the jug and walked off with a
lazy, rolling step out of the wood.
“Honour is satisfied, and the duel is over!” von Richter announced.
“_Fuori!_” Pantaleone boomed once more, through old associations.
When he had exchanged bows with the officers, and taken his seat in the
carriage, Sanin certainly felt all over him, if not a sense of
pleasure, at least a certain lightness of heart, as after an operation
is over; but there was another feeling astir within him too, a feeling
akin to shame…. The duel, in which he had just played his part, struck
him as something false, a got-up formality, a common officers’ and
students’ farce. He recalled the phlegmatic doctor, he recalled how he
had grinned, that is, wrinkled up his nose when he saw him coming out
of the wood almost arm-in-arm with Baron Dönhof. And afterwards when
Pantaleone had paid him the four crowns due to him … 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
Klüber? 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 Fräulein 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, noble signor! Come along, Emilio! On tip-toe! On tip-toe!
Sh—sh—sh!”
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 Klüber, 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 glass 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 circumstances! 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 Klüber, 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 Klüber 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.
“And how is Herr Klüber to look after his shop, if he is to fight with
his customers? It’s utterly inconsistent! And now I am to send him
away! But what are we going to live on? At one time we were the only
people that made angel cakes, and nougat of pistachio nuts, and we had
plenty of customers; but now all the shops make angel cakes! Only
consider; even without this, they’ll talk in the town about your duel …
it’s impossible to keep it secret. And all of a sudden, the marriage
broken off! It will be a scandal, a scandal! Gemma is a splendid girl,
she loves me; but she’s an obstinate republican, she doesn’t care for
the opinion of others. You’re the only person that can persuade her!”
Sanin was more amazed than ever. “I, Frau Lenore?”
“Yes, you alone … you alone. That’s why I have come to you; I could not
think of anything else to do! You are so clever, so good! You have
fought in her defence. She will trust you! She is bound to trust
you—why, you have risked your life on her account! You will make her