The Torrents of Spring
restrain myself. Mamma positively screamed with horror, but I went into
the next room and got his ring—you didn’t notice, I took it off two
days ago—and gave it to him. He was fearfully offended, but as he is
fearfully self-conscious and conceited, he did not say much, and went
away. Of course I had to go through a great deal with mamma, and it
made me very wretched to see how distressed she was, and I thought I
had been a little hasty; but you see I had your note, and even apart
from it I knew …”
“That I love you,” put in Sanin.
“Yes … that you were in love with me.”
So Gemma talked, hesitating and smiling and dropping her voice or
stopping altogether every time any one met them or passed by. And Sanin
listened ecstatically, enjoying the very sound of her voice, as the day
before he had gloated over her handwriting.
“Mamma is very much distressed,” Gemma began again, and her words flew
very rapidly one after another; “she refuses to take into consideration
that I dislike Herr Klüber, that I never was betrothed to him from
love, but only because of her urgent entreaties…. She suspects—you,
Dimitri; that’s to say, to speak plainly, she’s convinced I’m in love
with you, and she is more unhappy about it because only the day before
yesterday nothing of the sort had occurred to her, and she even begged
you to advise me…. It was a strange request, wasn’t it? Now she calls
you … Dimitri, a hypocrite and a cunning fellow, says that you have
betrayed her confidence, and predicts that you will deceive me….”
“But, Gemma,” cried Sanin, “do you mean to say you didn’t tell her?…”
“I told her nothing! What right had I without consulting you?”
Sanin threw up his arms. “Gemma, I hope that now, at least, you will
tell all to her and take me to her…. I want to convince your mother
that I am not a base deceiver!”
Sanin’s bosom fairly heaved with the flood of generous and ardent
emotions.
Gemma looked him full in the face. “You really want to go with me now
to mamma? to mamma, who maintains that … all this between us is
impossible—and can never come to pass?” There was one word Gemma could
not bring herself to utter…. It burnt her lips; but all the more
eagerly Sanin pronounced it.
“Marry you, Gemma, be your husband—I can imagine no bliss greater!”
To his love, his magnanimity, his determination—he was aware of no
limits now.
When she heard those words, Gemma, who had stopped still for an
instant, went on faster than ever…. She seemed trying to run away from
this too great and unexpected happiness! But suddenly her steps
faltered. Round the corner of a turning, a few paces from her, in a new
hat and coat, straight as an arrow and curled like a poodle—emerged
Herr Klüber. He caught sight of Gemma, caught sight of Sanin, and with
a sort of inward snort and a backward bend of his supple figure, he
advanced with a dashing swing to meet them. Sanin felt a pang; but
glancing at Klüber’s face, to which its owner endeavoured, as far as in
him lay, to give an expression of scornful amazement, and even
commiseration, glancing at that red-cheeked, vulgar face, he felt a
sudden rush of anger, and took a step forward.
Gemma seized his arm, and with quiet decision, giving him hers, she
looked her former betrothed full in the face…. The latter screwed up
his face, shrugged his shoulders, shuffled to one side, and muttering
between his teeth, “The usual end to the song!” (Das alte Ende vom
Liede!)—walked away with the same dashing, slightly skipping gait.
“What did he say, the wretched creature?” asked Sanin, and would have
rushed after Klüber; but Gemma held him back and walked on with him,
not taking away the arm she had slipped into his.
The Rosellis’ shop came into sight. Gemma stopped once more.
“Dimitri, Monsieur Dimitri,” she said, “we are not there yet, we have
not seen mamma yet…. If you would rather think a little, if … you are
still free, Dimitri!”
In reply Sanin pressed her hand tightly to his bosom, and drew her on.
“Mamma,” said Gemma, going with Sanin to the room where Frau Lenore was
sitting, “I have brought the real one!”
XXIX
If Gemma had announced that she had brought with her cholera or death
itself, one can hardly imagine that Frau Lenore could have received the
news with greater despair. She immediately sat down in a corner, with
her face to the wall, and burst into floods of tears, positively
wailed, for all the world like a Russian peasant woman on the grave of
her husband or her son. For the first minute Gemma was so taken aback
that she did not even go up to her mother, but stood still like a
statue in the middle of the room; while Sanin was utterly stupefied, to
the point of almost bursting into tears himself! For a whole hour that
inconsolable wail went on—a whole hour! Pantaleone thought it better to
shut the outer door of the shop, so that no stranger should come;
luckily, it was still early. The old man himself did not know what to
think, and in any case, did not approve of the haste with which Gemma
and Sanin had acted; he could not bring himself to blame them, and was
prepared to give them his support in case of need: he greatly disliked
Klüber! Emil regarded himself as the medium of communication between
his friend and his sister, and almost prided himself on its all having
turned out so splendidly! He was positively unable to conceive why Frau
Lenore was so upset, and in his heart he decided on the spot that
women, even the best of them, suffer from a lack of reasoning power!
Sanin fared worst of all. Frau Lenore rose to a howl and waved him off
with her hands, directly he approached her; and it was in vain that he
attempted once or twice to shout aloud, standing at a distance, “I ask
you for your daughter’s hand!” Frau Lenore was particularly angry with
herself. “How could she have been so blind—have seen nothing? Had my
Giovann’ Battista been alive,” she persisted through her tears,
“nothing of this sort would have happened!” “Heavens, what’s it all
about?” thought Sanin; “why, it’s positively senseless!” He did not
dare to look at Gemma, nor could she pluck up courage to lift her eyes
to him. She restricted herself to waiting patiently on her mother, who
at first repelled even her….
At last, by degrees, the storm abated. Frau Lenore gave over weeping,
permitted Gemma to bring her out of the corner, where she sat huddled
up, to put her into an arm-chair near the window, and to give her some
orange-flower water to drink. She permitted Sanin—not to approach … oh,
no!—but, at any rate, to remain in the room—she had kept clamouring for
him to go away—and did not interrupt him when he spoke. Sanin
immediately availed himself of the calm as it set in, and displayed an
astounding eloquence. He could hardly have explained his intentions and
emotions with more fire and persuasive force even to Gemma herself.
Those emotions were of the sincerest, those intentions were of the
purest, like Almaviva’s in the _Barber of Seville_. He did not conceal
from Frau Lenore nor from himself the disadvantageous side of those
intentions; but the disadvantages were only apparent! It is true he was
a foreigner; they had not known him long, they knew nothing positive
about himself or his means; but he was prepared to bring forward all
the necessary evidence that he was a respectable person and not poor;
he would refer them to the most unimpeachable testimony of his
fellow-countrymen! He hoped Gemma would be happy with him, and that he
would be able to make up to her for the separation from her own
people!… The allusion to “separation”—the mere word “separation”—almost
spoiled the whole business…. Frau Lenore began to tremble all over and
move about uneasily…. Sanin hastened to observe that the separation
would only be temporary, and that, in fact, possibly it would not take
place at all!
Sanin’s eloquence was not thrown away. Frau Lenore began to glance at
him, though still with bitterness and reproach, no longer with the same
aversion and fury; then she suffered him to come near her, and even to
sit down beside her (Gemma was sitting on the other side); then she
fell to reproaching him,—not in looks only, but in words, which already
indicated a certain softening of heart; she fell to complaining, and
her complaints became quieter and gentler; they were interspersed with
questions addressed at one time to her daughter, and at another to
Sanin; then she suffered him to take her hand and did not at once pull
it away … then she wept again, but her tears were now quite of another
kind…. Then she smiled mournfully, and lamented the absence of Giovanni
Battista, but quite on different grounds from before…. An instant more
and the two criminals, Sanin and Gemma, were on their knees at her
feet, and she was laying her hands on their heads in turn; another
instant and they were embracing and kissing her, and Emil, his face
beaming rapturously, ran into the room and added himself to the group
so warmly united.
Pantaleone peeped into the room, smiled and frowned at the same time,
and going into the shop, opened the front door.
XXX
The transition from despair to sadness, and from that to “gentle
resignation,” was accomplished fairly quickly in Frau Lenore; but that
gentle resignation, too, was not slow in changing into a secret
satisfaction, which was, however, concealed in every way and suppressed
for the sake of appearances. Sanin had won Frau Lenore’s heart from the
first day of their acquaintance; as she got used to the idea of his
being her son-in-law, she found nothing particularly distasteful in it,
though she thought it her duty to preserve a somewhat hurt, or rather
careworn, expression on her face. Besides, everything that had happened
the last few days had been so extraordinary…. One thing upon the top of
another. As a practical woman and a mother, Frau Lenore considered it
her duty also to put Sanin through various questions; and Sanin, who,
on setting out that morning to meet Gemma, had not a notion that he
should marry her—it is true he did not think of anything at all at that
time, but simply gave himself up to the current of his passion—Sanin
entered, with perfect readiness, one might even say with zeal, into his
part—the part of the betrothed lover, and answered all her inquiries
circumstantially, exactly, with alacrity. When she had satisfied
herself that he was a real nobleman by birth, and had even expressed
some surprise that he was not a prince, Frau Lenore assumed a serious
air and “warned him betimes” that she should be quite unceremoniously
frank with him, as she was forced to be so by her sacred duty as a
mother! To which Sanin replied that he expected nothing else from her,
and that he earnestly begged her not to spare him!
Then Frau Lenore observed that Herr Klüber—as she uttered the name, she
sighed faintly, tightened her lips, and hesitated—Herr Klüber, Gemma’s
former betrothed, already possessed an income of eight thousand
guldens, and that with every year this sum would rapidly be increased;
and what was his, Herr Sanin’s income? “Eight thousand guldens,” Sanin
repeated deliberately…. “That’s in our money … about fifteen thousand
roubles…. My income is much smaller. I have a small estate in the
province of Tula…. With good management, it might yield—and, in fact,
it could not fail to yield—five or six thousand … and if I go into the
government service, I can easily get a salary of two thousand a year.”
“Into the service in Russia?” cried Frau Lenore, “Then I must part with
Gemma!”
“One might be able to enter in the diplomatic service,” Sanin put in;
“I have some connections…. There one’s duties lie abroad. Or else, this
is what one might do, and that’s much the best of all: sell my estate