FullReads

Then followed hours I can never forget! I used to go in to Michel directly after dinner, and sit at a little round table in the half-darkened window. He used to be lying down in a little room out of the drawing-room, at the further end, on a broad leather sofa in the Empire style, with a gold bas-relief on its high, straight back. The bas-relief represented a marriage procession among the ancients. Michel’s head, thrown a little back on the pillow, always moved at once, and his pale face turned towards me: he smiled, his whole face brightened, he flung back his soft, damp curls, and said to me softly, ‘Good-morning, my kind sweet girl.’ I took up the book–Walter Scott’s novels were at the height of their fame in those days–the reading of Ivanhoe has left a particularly vivid recollection in my mind…. I could not help my voice thrilling and quivering as I gave utterance to Rebecca’s speeches. I, too, had Jewish blood, and was not my lot like hers? Was I not, like Rebecca, waiting on a sick man, dear to me? Every time I removed my eyes from the page and lifted them to him, I met his eyes with the same soft, bright smile over all his face. We talked very little; the door into the drawing-room was invariably open and some one was always sitting there; but whenever it was quiet there, I used, I don’t know why, to cease reading and look intently at Michel, and he looked at me, and we both felt happy then and, as it were, glad and shamefaced, and everything, everything we told each other then without a gesture or a word! Alas! our hearts came together, ran to meet each other, as underground streams flow together, unseen, unheard… and irresistibly.

‘Can you play chess or draughts?’ he asked me one day.

‘I can play chess a little,’ I answered.

‘That’s good. Tell them to bring a chess-board and push up the table.’

I sat down beside the sofa, my heart was throbbing, I did not dare glance at Michel,… Yet from the window, across the room, how freely I had gazed at him!

I began to set the chessmen… My fingers shook.

‘I suggested it… not for the game,’… Michel said in an undertone, also setting the pieces, ‘but to have you nearer me.’

I made no answer, but, without asking which should begin, moved a pawn… Michel did not move in reply… I looked at him. His head was stretched a little forward; pale all over, with imploring eyes he signed towards my hand…

Whether I understood him… I don’t remember, but something instantaneously whirled into my head…. Hesitating, scarcely breathing, I took up the knight and moved it right across the board. Michel bent down swiftly, and catching my fingers with his lips, and pressing them against the board, he began noiselessly and passionately kissing them…. I had no power, I had no wish to draw them back; with my other hand I hid my face, and tears, as I remember now, cold but blissful… oh, what blissful tears!… dropped one by one on the table. Ah, I knew, with my whole heart I felt at that moment, all that he was who held my hand in his power! I knew that he was not a boy, carried away by a momentary impulse, not a Don Juan, not a military Lovelace, but one of the noblest, the best of men… and he loved me!

‘Oh, my Susanna!’ I heard Michel whisper, ‘I will never make you shed other tears than these.’

He was wrong… he did.

But what use is there in dwelling on such memories… especially, especially now?

Michel and I swore to belong to each other. He knew that Semyon Matveitch would never let him marry me, and he did not conceal it from me. I had no doubt about it myself and I rejoiced, not that he did not deceive me–he could not deceive–but that he did not try to delude himself. For myself I asked for nothing, and would have followed where and how he chose. ‘You shall be my wife,’ he repeated to me. ‘I am not Ivanhoe; I know that happiness is not with Lady Rowena.’