Part 22

Gemma flew to kiss her mother…. It seemed as if only then she breathed freely again, and the load that had been oppressing her dropped from off her soul.

Sanin felt all at once so happy, his heart was filled with such childish gaiety at the thought, that here, after all, the dreams had come true to which he had abandoned himself not long ago in these very rooms, his whole being was in such a turmoil that he went quickly out into the shop. He felt a great desire, come what might, to sell something in the shop, as he had done a few days before…. “I have a full right to do so now!” he felt. “Why, I am one of the family now!” And he actually stood behind the counter, and actually kept shop, that is, sold two little girls, who came in, a pound of sweets, giving them fully two pounds, and only taking half the price from them.

At dinner he received an official position, as betrothed, beside Gemma. Frau Lenore pursued her practical investigations. Emil kept laughing and urging Sanin to take him with him to Russia. It was decided that Sanin should set off in a fortnight. Only Pantaleone showed a somewhat sullen face, so much so that Frau Lenore reproached him. “And he was his second!” Pantaleone gave her a glance from under his brows.

Gemma was silent almost all the time, but her face had never been lovelier or brighter. After dinner she called Sanin out a minute into the garden, and stopping beside the very garden-seat where she had been sorting the cherries two days before, she said to him. “Dimitri, don’t be angry with me; but I must remind you once more that you are not to consider yourself bound …”

He did not let her go on….

Gemma turned away her face. “And as for what mamma spoke of, do you remember, the difference of our religion—see here!…”

She snatched the garnet cross that hung round her neck on a thin cord, gave it a violent tug, snapped the cord, and handed him the cross.

“If I am yours, your faith is my faith!” Sanin’s eyes were still wet when he went back with Gemma into the house.

By the evening everything went on in its accustomed way. They even played a game of tresette.

XXXI

Sanin woke up very early. He found himself at the highest pinnacle of human happiness; but it was not that prevented him from sleeping; the question, the vital, fateful question—how he could dispose of his estate as quickly and as advantageously as possible—disturbed his rest. The most diverse plans were mixed up in his head, but nothing had as yet come out clearly. He went out of the house to get air and freshen himself. He wanted to present himself to Gemma with a project ready prepared and not without.

What was the figure, somewhat ponderous and thick in the legs, but well-dressed, walking in front of him, with a slight roll and waddle in his gait? Where had he seen that head, covered with tufts of flaxen hair, and as it were set right into the shoulders, that soft cushiony back, those plump arms hanging straight down at his sides? Could it be Polozov, his old schoolfellow, whom he had lost sight of for the last five years? Sanin overtook the figure walking in front of him, turned round…. A broad, yellowish face, little pig’s eyes, with white lashes and eyebrows, a short flat nose, thick lips that looked glued together, a round smooth chin, and that expression, sour, sluggish, and mistrustful—yes; it was he, it was Ippolit Polozov!

“Isn’t my lucky star working for me again?” flashed through Sanin’s mind.

“Polozov! Ippolit Sidorovitch! Is it you?”

The figure stopped, raised his diminutive eyes, waited a little, and ungluing his lips at last, brought out in a rather hoarse falsetto, “Dimitri Sanin?”

“That’s me!” cried Sanin, and he shook one of Polozov’s hands; arrayed in tight kid-gloves of an ashen-grey colour, they hung as lifeless as before beside his barrel-shaped legs. “Have you been here long? Where have you come from? Where are you stopping?”

“I came yesterday from Wiesbaden,” Polozov replied in deliberate tones, “to do some shopping for my wife, and I’m going back to Wiesbaden to-day.”

“Oh, yes! You’re married, to be sure, and they say, to such a beauty!”

Polozov turned his eyes away. “Yes, they say so.”

Sanin laughed. “I see you’re just the same … as phlegmatic as you were at school.”

“Why should I be different?”

“And they do say,” Sanin added with special emphasis on the word “do,” “that your wife is very rich.”

“They say that too.”

“Do you mean to say, Ippolit Sidorovitch, you are not certain on that point?”

“I don’t meddle, my dear Dimitri … Pavlovitch? Yes, Pavlovitch!—in my wife’s affairs.”

“You don’t meddle? Not in any of her affairs?”

Polozov again shifted his eyes. “Not in any, my boy. She does as she likes, and so do I.”

“Where are you going now?” Sanin inquired.