How his heart throbbed! How glad he was that he had obeyed her so unconditionally! And, my God, what was promised … what was not promised, by that unknown, unique, impossible, and undubitably certain morrow!
He feasted his eyes on Gemma’s note. The long, elegant tail of the letter G, the first letter of her name, which stood at the bottom of the sheet, reminded him of her lovely fingers, her hand…. He thought that he had not once touched that hand with his lips…. “Italian women,” he mused, “in spite of what’s said of them, are modest and severe…. And Gemma above all! Queen … goddess … pure, virginal marble….”
“But the time will come; and it is not far off….” There was that night in Frankfort one happy man…. He slept; but he might have said of himself in the words of the poet:
“I sleep … but my watchful heart sleeps not.”
And it fluttered as lightly as a butterfly flutters his wings, as he stoops over the flowers in the summer sunshine.
XXVII
At five o’clock Sanin woke up, at six he was dressed, at half-past six he was walking up and down the public garden within sight of the little arbour which Gemma had mentioned in her note. It was a still, warm, grey morning. It sometimes seemed as though it were beginning to rain; but the outstretched hand felt nothing, and only looking at one’s coat-sleeve, one could see traces of tiny drops like diminutive beads, but even these were soon gone. It seemed there had never been a breath of wind in the world. Every sound moved not, but was shed around in the stillness. In the distance was a faint thickening of whitish mist; in the air there was a scent of mignonette and white acacia flowers.
In the streets the shops were not open yet, but there were already some people walking about; occasionally a solitary carriage rumbled along … there was no one walking in the garden. A gardener was in a leisurely way scraping the path with a spade, and a decrepit old woman in a black woollen cloak was hobbling across the garden walk. Sanin could not for one instant mistake this poor old creature for Gemma; and yet his heart leaped, and he watched attentively the retreating patch of black.
Seven! chimed the clock on the tower. Sanin stood still. Was it possible she would not come? A shiver of cold suddenly ran through his limbs. The same shiver came again an instant later, but from a different cause. Sanin heard behind him light footsteps, the light rustle of a woman’s dress…. He turned round: she!
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, passed 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 passed by the arbour, turned to the right, passed 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 passed, 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 passionately, 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 Klüber….”
“Monsieur Dimitri,” said Gemma, and she passed her hand over her hair on the side turned towards Sanin, “don’t, please, call Herr Klüber 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 snatched 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 scraped 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 muffled-up figure, which hurriedly slipped a little aside as though trying to remain unobserved. 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.