Gemma began at once to wait upon her; she moistened
her forehead with eau-de-Cologne, gently blew on it,
gently kissed her cheek, made her lay her head on
a pillow, forbade her to speak, and kissed her again.
Then, turning to Sanin, she began telling him in a
half-joking, half-tender tone what a splendid mother
she had, and what a beauty she had been. ’"Had
been,” did I say? she is charming now! Look,
look, what eyes!’
Gemma instantly pulled a white handkerchief out of
her pocket, covered her mother’s face with it,
and slowly drawing it downwards, gradually uncovered
Frau Lenore’s forehead, eyebrows, and eyes; she
waited a moment and asked her to open them. Her
mother obeyed; Gemma cried out in ecstasy (Frau Lenore’s
eyes really were very beautiful), and rapidly sliding
the handkerchief over the lower, less regular part
of the face, fell to kissing her again. Frau
Lenore laughed, and turning a little away, with a
pretence of violence, pushed her daughter away.
She too pretended to struggle with her mother, and
lavished caresses on her—not like a cat,
in the French manner, but with that special Italian
grace in which is always felt the presence of power.
At last Frau Lenore declared she was tired out ...
Then Gemma at once advised her to have a little nap,
where she was, in her chair, ’and I and the
Russian gentleman—“avec le monsieur
russe”—will be as quiet, as quiet
... as little mice ... “comme des petites
souris."’ Frau Lenore smiled at her in reply,
closed her eyes, and after a few sighs began to doze.
Gemma quickly dropped down on a bench beside her and
did not stir again, only from time to time she put
a finger of one hand to her lips—with the
other hand she was holding up a pillow behind her
mother’s head—and said softly, ‘sh-sh!’
with a sidelong look at Sanin, if he permitted himself
the smallest movement. In the end he too sank
into a kind of dream, and sat motionless as though
spell-bound, while all his faculties were absorbed
in admiring the picture presented him by the half-dark
room, here and there spotted with patches of light
crimson, where fresh, luxuriant roses stood in the
old-fashioned green glasses, and the sleeping woman
with demurely folded hands and kind, weary face, framed
in the snowy whiteness of the pillow, and the young,
keenly-alert and also kind, clever, pure, and unspeakably
beautiful creature with such black, deep, overshadowed,
yet shining eyes.... What was it? A dream?
a fairy tale? And how came he to be in
it?
XI
The bell tinkled at the outer door. A young peasant
lad in a fur cap and a red waistcoat came into the
shop from the street. Not one customer had looked
into it since early morning ... ’You see
how much business we do!’ Frau Lenore observed
to Sanin at lunch-time with a sigh. She was still
asleep; Gemma was afraid to take her arm from the
pillow, and whispered to Sanin: ‘You go,
Copyrights
The Torrents of Spring from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
