"You had better go home." His voice was very stern, and as she dropped her hand from his arm she felt it to be impossible to leave him in that way. Were she to do so, she would never be allowed to speak to him or to see him again. "Good-night," he said, preparing to turn from her.
"Anton, Anton, do not leave me like that."
"How then shall I leave you? Shall I say that it does not matter whether you obey me or not? It does matter. Between you and me such obedience matters everything. If we are to be together, I must abandon everything for you, and you must comply in everything with me." Then Nina, leaning close upon him, whispered into his ear that she would obey him.
VOLUME II
CHAPTER IX
Nina's misery as she went home was almost complete. She had not, indeed, quarrelled with her lover, who had again caressed her as she left him, and assured her of his absolute confidence, but she had undertaken a task against which her very soul revolted. It gave her no comfort to say to herself that she had undertaken to look for that which she knew she would not find, and that therefore her search could do no harm. She had, in truth, consented to become a spy upon her father, and was so to do in furtherance of the views of one who suspected her father of fraud, and who had not scrupled to tell her that her father was dishonest. Now again she thought of St Nicholas, as she heard the dull chime of the clock from the saint's tower, and found herself forced to acknowledge that she was doing very wickedly in loving a Jew. Of course troubles would come upon her. What else could she expect? Had she not endeavoured to throw behind her and to trample under foot all that she had learned from her infancy under the guidance of St Nicholas? Of course the saint would desert her. The very sound of the chime told her that he was angry with her. How could she hope again that St John would be good to her? Was it not to be expected that the black-flowing river over which she understood him to preside would become her enemy and would swallow her up — as Lotta Luxa had predicted? Before she returned home, when she was quite sure that Anton Trendellsohn had already passed over, she went down upon the bridge, and far enough along the causeway to find herself over the river, and there, crouching down, she looked at the rapid-running silent black stream beneath her. The waters were very silent and very black, but she could still see or feel that they were running rapidly. And they were cold, too. She herself at the present moment was very cold. She shuddered as she looked down, pressing her face against the stone-work, with her two hands resting on two of the pillars of the parapet. It would be very terrible. She did not think that she much cared for death. The world had been so hard to her, and was growing so much harder, that it would be a good thing to get away from it. If she could become ill and die, with a good kind nun standing by her bedside, and with the cross pressed to her bosom, and with her eyes fixed on the sweet face of the Virgin Mother as it was painted in the little picture in her room — in that way she thought that death might even be grateful. But to be carried away she knew not whither in the cold, silent, black-flowing Moldau! And yet she half believed the prophecy of Lotta. Such a quiet death as that she had pictured to herself could not be given to her! What nun would come to her bedside — to the bed of a girl who had declared to all Prague that she intended to marry a Jew? For weeks past she had feared even to look at the picture of the Virgin.
"I'm afraid you'll think I am very late, father," she said, as soon as she reached home.
Her father muttered something, but not angrily, and she soon busied herself about him, doing some little thing for his comfort, as was her wont. But as she did so she could not but remember that she had undertaken to be a spy upon him, to secrete his key, and to search surreptitiously for that which he was supposed to be keeping fraudulently. As she sat by him empty-handed — for it was Sunday night, and as a Christian she never worked with a needle upon the Sunday — she told herself that she could not do it. Could there be any harm done were she to ask him now, openly, what papers he kept in that desk? But she desired to obey her lover where obedience was possible, and he had expressly forbidden her to ask any such question. She sat, therefore, and said no word that could tend to ease her suffering; and then, when the time came, she went suffering to her bed.
On the next day there seemed to come to her no opportunity for doing that which she had to do. Souchey was in and out of the house all the morning, explaining to her that they had almost come to the end of the flour and of the potatoes which he had bought, that he himself had swallowed on the previous evening the last tip of the great sausage — for, as he had alleged, it was no use a fellow dying of starvation outright — and that there was hardly enough of chocolate left to make three cups. Nina had brought out her necklace and had asked Souchey to take it to the shop and do the best with it he could; but Souchey had declined the commission, alleging that he would be accused of having stolen it; and Nina had then prepared to go herself, but her father had called her, and he had come out into the sitting-room and had remained there during the afternoon, so that both the sale of the trinket and the search in the desk had been postponed. The latter she might have done at night, but when the night came the deed seemed to be more horrid than it would be even in the day.
She observed also, more accurately than she had ever done before, that he always carried the key of his desk with him. He did not, indeed, put it under his pillow, or conceal it in bed, but he placed it with an old spectacle-case which he always carried, and a little worn pocket-book which Nina knew to be empty, on a low table which stood at his bed-head; and now during the whole of the afternoon he had the key on the table beside him. Nina did not doubt but that she could take the key while he was asleep; for when he was even half asleep — which was perhaps his most customary state — he would not stir when she entered the room. But if she took it at all, she would do so in the day. She could not bring herself to creep into the room in the night, and to steal the key in the dark. As she lay in bed she still thought of it. She had promised her lover that she would do this thing. Should she resolve not to do it, in spite of that promise, she must at any rate tell Anton of her resolution. She must tell him, and then there would be an end of everything. Would it be possible for her to live without her love?