The Torrents of Spring
cried in a sad and choked voice, “I love her, love her madly!” and he
was all aglow within, like a fire when a thick layer of dead ash has
been suddenly blown off. An instant more … and he was utterly unable to
understand how he could have sat beside her … her!—and talked to her
and not have felt that he worshipped the very hem of her garment, that
he was ready as young people express it “to die at her feet.” The last
interview in the garden had decided everything. Now when he thought of
her, she did not appear to him with blazing curls in the shining
starlight; he saw her sitting on the garden-seat, saw her all at once
tossing back her hat, and gazing at him so confidingly … and the tremor
and hunger of love ran through all his veins. He remembered the rose
which he had been carrying about in his pocket for three days: he
snatched it out, and pressed it with such feverish violence to his
lips, that he could not help frowning with the pain. Now he considered
nothing, reflected on nothing, did not deliberate, and did not look
forward; he had done with all his past, he leaped forward into the
future; from the dreary bank of his lonely bachelor life he plunged
headlong into that glad, seething, mighty torrent—and little he cared,
little he wished to know, where it would carry him, or whether it would
dash him against a rock! No more the soft-flowing currents of the
Uhland song, which had lulled him not long ago … These were mighty,
irresistible torrents! They rush flying onwards and he flies with
them….
He took a sheet of paper, and without blotting out a word, almost with
one sweep of the pen, wrote as follows:—
“DEAR GEMMA,—You know what advice I undertook to give you, what your
mother desired, and what she asked of me; but what you don’t know and
what I must tell you now is, that I love you, love you with all the
ardour of a heart that loves for the first time! This passion has
flamed up in me suddenly, but with such force that I can find no words
for it! When your mother came to me and asked me, it was still only
smouldering in me, or else I should certainly, as an honest man, have
refused to carry out her request…. The confession I make you now is the
confession of an honest man. You ought to know whom you have to do
with—between us there should exist no misunderstandings. You see that I
cannot give you any advice…. I love you, love you, love you—and I have
nothing else—either in my head or in my heart!!
“DM. SANIN.”
When he had folded and sealed this note, Sanin was on the point of
ringing for the waiter and sending it by him…. “No!” he thought, “it
would be awkward…. By Emil? But to go to the shop, and seek him out
there among the other employés, would be awkward too. Besides, it’s
dark by now, and he has probably left the shop.” Reflecting after this
fashion, Sanin put on his hat, however, and went into the street; he
turned a corner, another, and to his unspeakable delight, saw Emil
before him. With a satchel under his arm, and a roll of papers in his
hand, the young enthusiast was hurrying home.
“They may well say every lover has a lucky star,” thought Sanin, and he
called to Emil.
The latter turned and at once rushed to him.
Sanin cut short his transports, handed him the note, and explained to
whom and how he was to deliver it…. Emil listened attentively.
“So that no one sees?” he inquired, assuming 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 snatched it out of Emil’s hand.
Passion 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
Klüber; 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 assumed
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 passing 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 severity—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 Dönhof and Herr von Richter! Each of them had stuck an
eyeglass in his eye, and was staring at him, chuckling!… Sanin got on