The Torrents of Spring
would complain of one thing only—that dangers were so few, and all she
could overcome. “Sanin!” she cried, “why, this is like Bürger’s Lenore!
Only you’re not dead—eh? Not dead … I am alive!” She let her force and
daring have full fling. It seemed not an Amazon on a galloping horse,
but a young female centaur at full speed, half-beast and half-god, and
the sober, well-bred country seemed astounded, as it was trampled
underfoot in her wild riot!
Maria Nikolaevna at last drew up her foaming and bespattered mare; she
was staggering under her, and Sanin’s powerful but heavy horse was
gasping for breath.
“Well, do you like it?” Maria Nikolaevna asked in a sort of exquisite
whisper.
“I like it!” Sanin echoed back ecstatically. And his blood was on fire.
“This isn’t all, wait a bit.” She held out her hand. Her glove was torn
across.
“I told you I would lead you to the forest, to the mountains…. Here
they are, the mountains!” The mountains, covered with tall forest, rose
about two hundred feet from the place they had reached in their wild
ride. “Look, here is the road; let us turn into it—and forwards. Only
at a walk. We must let our horses get their breath.”
They rode on. With one vigorous sweep of her arm Maria Nikolaevna flung
back her hair. Then she looked at her gloves and took them off. “My
hands will smell of leather,” she said, “you won’t mind that, eh?” …
Maria Nikolaevna smiled, and Sanin smiled too. Their mad gallop
together seemed to have finally brought them together and made them
friends.
“How old are you?” she asked suddenly.
“Twenty-two.”
“Really? I’m twenty-two too. A nice age. Add both together and you’re
still far off old age. It’s hot, though. Am I very red, eh?”
“Like a poppy!”
Maria Nikolaevna rubbed her face with her handkerchief. “We’ve only to
get to the forest and there it will be cool. Such an old forest is like
an old friend. Have you any friends?”
Sanin thought a little. “Yes … only few. No real ones.”
“I have; real ones—but not old ones. This is a friend too—a horse. How
carefully it carries one! Ah, but it’s splendid here! Is it possible I
am going to Paris the day after to-morrow?”
“Yes … is it possible?” Sanin chimed in.
“And you to Frankfort?”
“I am certainly going to Frankfort.”
“Well, what of it? Good luck go with you! Anyway, to-day’s ours … ours
… ours!”
The horses reached the forest’s edge and pushed on into the forest. The
broad soft shade of the forest wrapt them round on all sides.
“Oh, but this is paradise!” cried Maria Nikolaevna. “Further, deeper
into the shade, Sanin!”
The horses moved slowly on, “deeper into the shade,” slightly swaying
and snorting. The path, by which they had come in, suddenly turned off
and plunged into a rather narrow gorge. The smell of heather and
bracken, of the resin of the pines, and the decaying leaves of last
year, seemed to hang, close and drowsy, about it. Through the clefts of
the big brown rocks came strong currents of fresh air. On both sides of
the path rose round hillocks covered with green moss.
“Stop!” cried Maria Nikolaevna, “I want to sit down and rest on this
velvet. Help me to get off.”
Sanin leaped off his horse and ran up to her. She leaned on both his
shoulders, sprang instantly to the ground, and seated herself on one of
the mossy mounds. He stood before her, holding both the horses’ bridles
in his hand.
She lifted her eyes to him…. “Sanin, are you able to forget?”
Sanin recollected what had happened yesterday … in the carriage. “What
is that—a question … or a reproach?”
“I have never in my life reproached any one for anything. Do you
believe in magic?”
“What?”
“In magic?—you know what is sung of in our ballads—our Russian peasant
ballads?”
“Ah! That’s what you’re speaking of,” Sanin said slowly.
“Yes, that’s it. I believe in it … and you will believe in it.”
“Magic is sorcery …” Sanin repeated, “Anything in the world is
possible. I used not to believe in it—but I do now. I don’t know
myself.”
Maria Nikolaevna thought a moment and looked about her. “I fancy this
place seems familiar to me. Look, Sanin, behind that bushy oak—is there
a red wooden cross, or not?”
Sanin moved a few steps to one side. “Yes, there is.” Maria Nikolaevna
smiled. “Ah, that’s good! I know where we are. We haven’t got lost as
yet. What’s that tapping? A wood-cutter?”
Sanin looked into the thicket. “Yes … there’s a man there chopping up
dry branches.”
“I must put my hair to rights,” said Maria Nikolaevna. “Else he’ll see
me and be shocked.” She took off her hat and began plaiting up her long
hair, silently and seriously. Sanin stood facing her … All the lines of
her graceful limbs could be clearly seen through the dark folds of her
habit, dotted here and there with tufts of moss.
One of the horses suddenly shook itself behind Sanin’s back; he himself
started and trembled from head to foot. Everything was in confusion
within him, his nerves were strung up like harpstrings. He might well
say he did not know himself…. He really was bewitched. His whole being
was filled full of one thing … one idea, one desire. Maria Nikolaevna
turned a keen look upon him.
“Come, now everything’s as it should be,” she observed, putting on her
hat. “Won’t you sit down? Here! No, wait a minute … don’t sit down!
What’s that?”
Over the tree-tops, over the air of the forest, rolled a dull rumbling.
“Can it be thunder?”
“I think it really is thunder,” answered Sanin.
“Oh, this is a treat, a real treat! That was the only thing wanting!”
The dull rumble was heard a second time, rose, and fell in a crash.
“Bravo! Bis! Do you remember I spoke of the _Æneid_ yesterday? They too
were overtaken by a storm in the forest, you know. We must be off,
though.” She rose swiftly to her feet. “Bring me my horse…. Give me
your hand. There, so. I’m not heavy.”
She hopped like a bird into the saddle. Sanin too mounted his horse.
“Are you going home?” he asked in an unsteady voice.
“Home indeed!” she answered deliberately and picked up the reins.
“Follow me,” she commanded almost roughly. She came out on to the road
and passing the red cross, rode down into a hollow, clambered up again
to a cross road, turned to the right and again up the mountainside….
She obviously knew where the path led, and the path led farther and
farther into the heart of the forest. She said nothing and did not look
round; she moved imperiously in front and humbly and submissively he
followed without a spark of will in his sinking heart. Rain began to
fall in spots. She quickened her horse’s pace, and he did not linger
behind her. At last through the dark green of the young firs under an
overhanging grey rock, a tumbledown little hut peeped out at him, with
a low door in its wattle wall…. Maria Nikolaevna made her mare push
through the fir bushes, leaped off her, and appearing suddenly at the
entrance to the hut, turned to Sanin, and whispered “Æneas.”
Four hours later, Maria Nikolaevna and Sanin, accompanied by the groom,
who was nodding in the saddle, returned to Wiesbaden, to the hotel.
Polozov met his wife with the letter to the overseer in his hand. After
staring rather intently at her, he showed signs of some displeasure on
his face, and even muttered, “You don’t mean to say you’ve won your
bet?”
Maria Nikolaevna simply shrugged her shoulders.
The same day, two hours later, Sanin was standing in his own room
before her, like one distraught, ruined….
“Where are you going, dear?” she asked him. “To Paris, or to
Frankfort?”
“I am going where you will be, and will be with you till you drive me
away,” he answered with despair and pressed close to him the hands of
his sovereign. She freed her hands, laid them on his head, and clutched
at his hair with her fingers. She slowly turned over and twisted the
unresisting hair, drew herself up, her lips curled with triumph, while
her eyes, wide and clear, almost white, expressed nothing but the
ruthlessness and glutted joy of conquest. The hawk, as it clutches a
captured bird, has eyes like that.
XLIII
This was what Dimitri Sanin remembered when in the stillness of his
room turning over his old papers he found among them a garnet cross.
The events we have described rose clearly and consecutively before his
mental vision…. But when he reached the moment when he addressed that
humiliating prayer to Madame Polozov, when he grovelled at her feet,
when his slavery began, he averted his gaze from the images he had
evoked, he tried to recall no more. And not that his memory failed him,
oh no! he knew only too well what followed upon that moment, but he was
stifled by shame, even now, so many years after; he dreaded that
feeling of self-contempt, which he knew for certain would overwhelm
him, and like a torrent, flood all other feelings if he did not bid his
memory be still. But try as he would to turn away from these memories,
he could not stifle them entirely. He remembered the scoundrelly,
tearful, lying, pitiful letter he had sent to Gemma, that never
received an answer…. See her again, go back to her, after such
falsehood, such treachery, no! no! he could not, so much conscience and
honesty was left in him. Moreover, he had lost every trace of
confidence in himself, every atom of self-respect; he dared not rely on
himself for anything. Sanin recollected too how he had later on—oh,
ignominy!—sent the Polozovs’ footman to Frankfort for his things, what
cowardly terror he had felt, how he had had one thought only, to get
away as soon as might be to Paris—to Paris; how in obedience to Maria
Nikolaevna, he had humoured and tried to please Ippolit Sidoritch and
been amiable to Dönhof, on whose finger he noticed just such an iron
ring as Maria Nikolaevna had given him!!! Then followed memories still
worse, more ignominious … the waiter hands him a visiting card, and on
it is the name, “Pantaleone Cippatola, court singer to His Highness the
Duke of Modena!” He hides from the old man, but cannot escape meeting
him in the corridor, and a face of exasperation rises before him under
an upstanding topknot of grey hair; the old eyes blaze like red-hot
coals, and he hears menacing cries and curses: “_Maledizione!_” hears
even the terrible words: “_Codardo! Infame traditore!_” Sanin closes
his eyes, shakes his head, turns away again and again, but still he
sees himself sitting in a travelling carriage on the narrow front seat
… In the comfortable places facing the horses sit Maria Nikolaevna and
Ippolit Sidoritch, the four horses trotting all together fly along the
paved roads of Wiesbaden to Paris! to Paris! Ippolit Sidoritch is
eating a pear which Sanin has peeled for him, while Maria Nikolaevna
watches him and smiles at him, her bondslave, that smile he knows
already, the smile of the proprietor, the slave-owner…. But, good God,
out there at the corner of the street not far from the city walls,
wasn’t it Pantaleone again, and who with him? Can it be Emilio? Yes, it
was he, the enthusiastic devoted boy! Not long since his young face had
been full of reverence before his hero, his ideal, but now his pale
handsome face, so handsome that Maria Nikolaevna noticed him and poked
her head out of the carriage window, that noble face is glowing with
anger and contempt; his eyes, so like _her_ eyes! are fastened upon
Sanin, and the tightly compressed lips part to revile him….
And Pantaleone stretches out his hand and points Sanin out to Tartaglia
standing near, and Tartaglia barks at Sanin, and the very bark of the
faithful dog sounds like an unbearable reproach…. Hideous!
And then, the life in Paris, and all the humiliations, all the
loathsome tortures of the slave, who dare not be jealous or complain,
and who is cast aside at last, like a worn-out garment….