"Father has been very poor. How should he not be poor when nothing is earned? And she came here, and she saw it."
"She sent you these things?"
"Yes, Ruth came with them; there was a great basket with nourishing food for father. It was very kind of her. But, Anton, Rebecca says that I ought not to marry you, because of our religion. She says all the Jews in Prague will become your enemies."
"We will not stay in Prague; we will go elsewhere. There are other cities besides Prague."
"Where n.o.body will know us?"
"Where we will not be ashamed to be known."
"I told Rebecca that I would give you back all your promises, if you wished me to do so."
"I do not wish it. I will not give you back your promises, Nina."
The enraptured girl again clung to him. "My own one," she said, "my darling, my husband; when you speak to me like that, there is no girl in Bohemia so happy as I am. Hush! I thought it was father. But no; there is no sound. I do not mind what anyone says to me, as long as you are kind."
She was now sitting on his knee, and his arm was round her waist, and she was resting her head against his brow; he had asked for no pardon, but all the past was entirely forgiven; why should she even think of it again? Some such thought was pa.s.sing through her mind, when he spoke a word, and it seemed as though a dagger had gone into her heart. "About that paper, Nina?" Accursed doc.u.ment, that it should be brought again between them to dash the cup of joy from her lips at such a moment as this! She disengaged herself from his embrace, almost with a leap.
"Well! what about the paper?" she said.
"Simply this, that I would wish to know where it is."
"And you think I have it?"
"No; I do not think so; I am perplexed about it, hardly knowing what to believe; but I do not think you have it; I think that you know nothing of it."
"Then why do you mention it again, reminding me of the cruel words which you spoke before?"
"Because it is necessary for both our sakes. I will tell you plainly just what I have heard: your servant Souchey has been with me, and he says that you have it."
"Souchey!"
"Yes; Souchey. It seemed strange enough to me, for I had always thought him to be your friend."
"Souchey has told you that I have got it?"
"He says that it is in that desk," and the Jew pointed to the old depository of all the treasures which Nina possessed.
"He is a liar."
"I think he is so, though I cannot tell why he should have so lied; but I think he is a liar; I do not believe that it is there; but in such a matter it is well that the fact should be put beyond all dispute. You will not object to my looking into the desk?" He had come there with a fixed resolve that he would demand to search among her papers. It was very unpleasant to him, and he knew that his doing so would be painful to her; but he told himself that it would be best for them both that he should persevere.
"Will you open it, or shall I?" he said; and as he spoke, she looked into his face, and saw that all tenderness and love were banished from it, and that the hard suspicious greed of the Jew was there instead.
"I will not unlock it," she said; "there is the key, and you can do as you please." Then she flung the key upon the table, and stood with her back up against the wall, at some ten paces distant from the spot where the desk stood. He took up the key, and placed it remorselessly in the lock, and opened the desk, and brought all the papers forth on to the table which stood in the middle of the room.
"Are all my letters to be read?" she asked.
"Nothing is to be read," he said.
"Not that I should mind it; or at least I should have cared but little ten minutes since. There are words there may make you think I have been a fool, but a fool only too faithful to you."
He made no answer to this, but moved the papers one by one carefully till he came to a folded doc.u.ment larger than the others. Why dwell upon it? Of course it was the deed for which he was searching. Nina, when from her station by the wall she saw that there was something in her lover"s hands of which she had no knowledge--something which had been in her own desk without her privity--came forward a step or two, looking with all her eyes. But she did not speak till he had spoken; nor did he speak at once. He slowly unfolded the doc.u.ment, and perused the heading of it; then he refolded it, and placed it on the table, and stood there with his hand upon it.
"This," said he, "is the paper for which I am looking. Souchey, at any rate, is not a liar.
"How came it there?" said Nina, almost screaming in her agony.
"That I know not; but Souchey is not a liar; nor were your aunt and her servant liars in telling me that I should find it in your hands."
"Anton," she said, "as the Lord made me, I knew not of it;" and she fell on her knees before his feet.
He looked down upon her, scanning every feature of her face and every gesture of her body with hard inquiring eyes. He did not stoop to raise her, nor, at the moment, did he say a word to comfort her. "And you think that I stole it and put it there?" she said. She did not quail before his eyes, but seemed, though kneeling before him, to look up at him as though she would defy him. When first she had sunk upon the ground, she had been weak, and wanted pardon though she was ignorant of all offence; but his hardness, as he stood with his eyes fixed upon her, had hardened her, and all her intellect, though not her heart, was in revolt against him. "You think that I have robbed you?"
"I do not know what to think," he said.
Then she rose slowly to her feet, and, collecting the papers which he had strewed upon the table, put them back slowly into the desk, and locked it.
"You have done with this now," she said, holding the key in her hand.
"Yes; I do not want the key again."
"And you have done with me also?"
He paused a moment or two to collect his thoughts, and then he answered her. "Nina, I would wish to think about this before I speak of it more fully. What step I may next take I cannot say without considering it much. I would not wish to pain you if I could help it."
"Tell me at once what it is that you believe of me?"
"I cannot tell you at once. Rebecca Loth is friendly to you, and I will send her to you to-morrow."
"I will not see Rebecca Loth," said Nina. "Hush! there is father"s voice. Anton, I have nothing more to say to you--nothing--nothing."
Then she left him, and went into her father"s room.
For some minutes she was busy by her father"s bed, and went about her work with a determined alacrity, as though she would wipe out of her mind altogether, for the moment, any thought about her love and the Jew and the doc.u.ment that had been found in her desk; and for a while she was successful, with a consciousness, indeed, that she was under the pressure of a terrible calamity which must destroy her, but still with an outward presence of mind that supported her in her work. And her father spoke to her, saying more to her than he had done for days past, thanking her for her care, patting her hand with his, caressing her, and bidding her still be of good cheer, as G.o.d would certainly be good to one who had been so excellent a daughter. "But I wish, Nina, he were not a Jew," he said suddenly.
"Dear father, we will not talk of that now."
"And he is a stern man, Nina."
But on this subject she would speak no further, and therefore she left the bedside for a moment, and offered him a cup, from which he drank.
When he had tasted it he forgot the matter that had been in his mind, and said no further word as to Nina"s engagement.
As soon as she had taken the cup from her father"s hand, she returned to the parlour. It might be that Anton was still there. She had left him in the room, and had shut her ears against the sound of his steps, as though she were resolved that she would care nothing ever again for his coming or going. He was gone, however, and the room was empty, and she sat down in solitude, with her back against the wall, and began to realise her position. He had told her that others accused her, but that he had not suspected her. He had not suspected her, but he had thought it necessary to search, and had found in her possession that which had made her guilty in his eyes!
She would never see him again--never willingly. It was not only that he would never forgive her, but that she could never now be brought to forgive him. He had stabbed her while her words of love were warmest in his ear. His foul suspicions had been present to his mind even while she was caressing him. He had never known what it was to give himself up really to his love for one moment. While she was seated on his knee, with her head pressed against his, his intellect had been busy with the key and the desk, as though he were a policeman looking for a thief, rather than a lover happy in the endearments of his mistress. Her vivid mind pictured all this to her, filling her full with every incident of the insult she had endured. No. There must be an end of it now. If she could see her aunt that moment, or Lotta, or even Ziska, she would tell them that it should be so. She would say nothing to Anton--no, not a word again, though both might live for an eternity; but she would write a line to Rebecca Loth, and tell the Jewess that the Jew was now free to marry whom he would among his own people. And some of the words that she thought would be fitting for such a letter occurred to her as she sat there. "I know now that a Jew and a Christian ought not to love each other as we loved. Their hearts are different." That was her present purpose, but, as will be seen, she changed it afterwards.
But ever and again as she strengthened her resolution, her thoughts would run from her, carrying her back to the sweet rapture of some moment in which the man had been gracious to her; and even while she was struggling to teach herself to hate him, she would lean her head on one side, as though by doing so she might once more touch his brow with hers; and unconsciously she would put out her fingers, as though they might find their way into his hand. And then she would draw them back with a shudder, as though recoiling from the touch of an adder.
Hours had pa.s.sed over her before she began to think whence had come the paper which Trendellsohn had found in her desk; and then, when the idea of some fraud presented itself to her, that part of the subject did not seem to her to be of great moment. It mattered but little who had betrayed her. It might be Rebecca, or Souchey, or Ruth, or Lotta, or all of them together. His love, his knowledge of her whom he loved, should have carried him aloft out of the reach of any such poor trick as that! What mattered it now who had stolen her key, and gone like a thief to her desk, and laid this plot for her destruction? That he should have been capable of being deceived by such a plot against her was enough for her. She did not even speak to Souchey on the subject.