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Tioka grew worse. With glittering eyes and thin red cheeks he cried all day long that he wanted Grania—that he wanted Tania. But Grania had been sent away hurriedly for fear of infection—Count Kamarowsky's sister had come and taken him away—and Tania, alas! the gentle little Tania, far away in the castle of the Tarnowskys, had doubtless long since forgotten her brother Tioka and her heart-broken mother as well.
The doctors shook their heads gravely as they stood by the tumbled cot in which the little boy tossed and moaned ceaselessly: “A train—a train is running over my head. Take it away! It hurts me, it hurts me…” And as they looked into his throat, which was dark red, almost purple in hue, they murmured: “Diphtheria? Scarlet fever?” Then they went away, conversing in low tones, leaving me beside myself with grief and terror.
Kamarowsky watched with me night and day. Sometimes he fell asleep; and when I saw him sleeping, the old, unreasoning hatred for him stirred in my heart again.
Prilukoff had left the Hotel Victoria, and had taken a room at the Bristol to be near us. Occasionally I saw him for a moment standing mournful and depressed outside my door. We looked at each other with anguish-stricken eyes, but we scarcely ever spoke. I had no thought for anything but Tioka.
One night—the fourth since he had been taken ill—the child, who had been dozing for a few moments, awoke coughing and choking.
“Mother, mother!” he gasped, fixing his large frightened eyes upon me. “Why do you let me die?” Then he closed his eyes again.
I stood as if turned to stone. It was true. It was I, I who was letting him die. That idea had already flitted through my brain, but I had never dared to formulate the awful thought. As soon as he had fallen ill I had said to myself: “This is retribution. Did I not vow on Tioka's life?…”
I saw myself again at the theater on the evening of “The Merry Widow,” and Prilukoff pointing to the child's angel head and whispering: “If you break your word, it is he who will pay for it.”
Yes; Tioka was paying for it. He was paying for the iniquitous vow that had been wrung from me that night at Orel when the three men pursued me in the darkness. With his revolver pressed against his temple Prilukoff had bidden me: “Swear!” Ah, why had I not let his fate overtake him? Why had he not pulled the trigger and fallen dead at my feet? Naumoff would have rushed in, and Kamarowsky would have broken in the door, and the whole of the triple treachery and fraud and dishonor would have been revealed; but, at least, I should have been free—free to take my child and wander with him through the wide spaces of the world. Whereas, coward that I had been, the fear of disgrace had vanquished me, and the threat of ignominy and death had dragged the inhuman vow from my lips.... And now Tioka was paying for it.
The fierce primitive instinct of maternity awoke within me. Weakened by illness and wakefulness, my spirit lost itself again in the dark labyrinth of superstition. My frantic gaze passed from Tioka—lying wan and wasted on his pillows, gasping like a little dying bird—to Kamarowsky stretched out in an armchair, with his flaccid hands hanging at his sides and the corners of his mouth relaxed in sleep. I looked at him; I seemed to see him for the first time—this man to save whose life I was sacrificing my own child's. Yes, Tioka was dying in order that this stranger, this outsider, this enemy might live.
When I turned towards Tioka again I saw that his eyes were open and fixed upon me. I fell on my knees beside him and whispered wildly: “Darling, darling, I will not let you die. No, my soul, my own, I will save you. You shall get well again and run out and play in the sunshine.... The other one shall die—but not you, not you! Now you will get well immediately. Are you not better already, my love, my own? Are you not better already?”
And my boy, cradled in my arms, smiled faintly as my soft wild whispers lulled him to sleep.
This idea now took possession of my brain, to the exclusion of all others. I thought and dreamed of nothing else. Tioka had scarlet fever and the fluctuations in his illness seemed to depend solely upon me. When I told myself that I was firmly, irrevocably resolved to compass the death of Kamarowsky, the child's fever seemed to abate, his throat was less inflamed, the pains in his head diminished. But if, as I grew calmer and clung to hope again, I hesitated in my ruthless purpose, lo! the fever seized him anew, the rushing trains went thundering over his temples, and his tender throat swelled until he could hardly draw his breath.
Prilukoff followed the oscillations of my distracted spirit with weary resignation; he was benumbed and apathetic, without mind and without will. When in the fixity of my mania I insisted upon the necessity of the crime, he would answer languidly: “Oh, no. Leave it alone. Let things be.”
Then I grew more and more frenzied, weeping and tearing my hair.
“Can you not understand that Tioka is dying? Tioka, my little Tioka is dying! And it is we who are killing him.”
“No, no,” sighed Prilukoff. “Let things alone.”
Tioka grew worse.
A day came when he could not see me or hear me—when he lay quite still with scarcely flickering breath. Then I rose as one in a dream. I went to Prilukoff's room.
He sat listlessly by the window, smoking. I seized him by the arm.
“Donat Prilukoff, I renew my oath. Paul Kamarowsky shall die within this year!”
“All right, all right!” grumbled Prilukoff, wearied to exhaustion by my constant changes of mood. “Let us finish him once for all, and have done with it.”
I gasped. “Where? When? Is it you who will—”
Prilukoff raised his long, languid eyes. “Whatever you like,” he said. Then he added in a spent voice: “I am very tired.”
And it was I who urged him, who pushed him on, who hurried him to think out and shape our plans. He was languid and inert. Sometimes he would look dully at me and say: “What a terrible woman you are.” But I thought only of Tioka, and my eager and murderous frenzy increased.
And behold! Tioka got better. This chance coincidence assumed in my diseased brain the character of a direct answer from heaven. The sacrifice had been accepted!
A year later, when I stood before the judges who were to sentence me, no word of this delusion passed my lips. Demented though I was, I knew myself to be demented; I knew that this idea of a barter with heaven was an insensate idea; and yet, by some fallacy of my hallucinated brain, I believed—do I not even now believe it?—that my vow had been heard, that my word must be kept, that one life must be bought with the other.
Even so, better, far better would it have been to let my child's white soul flutter heavenwards, than to retain it with my blood-stained hand.
But at that time my one thought was to save him, even though for his life, not one, but a thousand others had been immolated.
The day came when I was able to carry him in my arms from his cot to an easy chair beside the window. What a joy was that brief transit! His frail arms were round my neck and his head lay on my shoulder. With slow, lingering steps I went, loth to leave him out of my embrace.
A sweet Italian verse came light and fragrant into my memory:
I thought I bore a flower within my arms…It was Prilukoff who reminded me with a cynical smile that the vow included also Nicolas Naumoff.
Nicolas Naumoff! I had almost forgotten him. Nicolas Naumoff! Must he, this distant and forgotten stranger, also die?
I cannot tell which of us it was who conceived the idea of making use of him as our instrument—of destroying him by making him a weapon of destruction, of murdering him by making him a murderer.
The idea may have been mine. I feared that I could not rely upon the languid, listless Prilukoff. Yes; it must have been I who devised this method of propitiating the avenging Fates, and averting from us the imminent Nemesis.
“A good idea,” said Prilukoff wearily. “Let Naumoff do it.” And he lighted a cigarette.
I gazed at him, aquiver with superstitious dread. “Do you think that then Naumoff need not die? Do you think that”—I hesitated—“that will be enough?…”
Prilukoff turned and looked at me as if aghast. Then he nodded his head and the fearful, crooked smile distorted his countenance.
“Yes,” he said. “I think that will be enough.”
XXXVIII
To what end should I narrate anew the terrible story which is known to all? Must I dip again into the soilure and abomination of that awful time? How dare I tell of the luring telegrams sent to the distant Naumoff, my guileless and impassioned lover, and of the joy and gratitude with which he hastened to me? How describe the slow, insidious poisoning of his mind against Kamarowsky, the hatred subtly instilled in him against that unconscious, kindly man? And the lies, the slanders, the ambiguous disclosures of pretended outrages inflicted upon me, of insults and injuries I feigned to have suffered at Kamarowsky's hands?…
Naumoff believed it all. His astonishment and indignation knew no bounds. What? Kamarowsky, whom he had always thought the most chivalrous and considerate of men, was a despicable, worthless coward? Well, Naumoff would challenge him; he would fight a duel to the death with him who had been his best friend.
But not that, not that was what I wanted.
Tioka recovered. Taller, thinner and paler, he came out once more into the sunshine, leaning on my arm, enraptured at everything, greeting every ray of light and every winged or flowering thing as if it were a new acquaintance.
Not for an instant did I suffer my mind to waver. God, the terrible God of my disordered fancy, had accepted the compact, and it was now for me to carry it out.
As soon as Tioka was well enough to travel, I sent him to Russia to some of our relations. While I was discharging my debt for his life, he must be far away.
Then began the ghastly game, the sinister comedy with the three puppets, whose strings I held in my fragile hands. I had to tranquilize and disarm Kamarowsky; to kindle and fan the murderous fury of Prilukoff; and above all to enchain and infatuate Naumoff, so as to impel him to the crime.
Ah, every art that Lilith, daughter of Eve and of the Serpent, has bequeathed to woman, every insidious perversity and subtle wile did I bring into play to charm and enamor this youthful dreamer. With every incitement did I lure and tempt him; with every witchery did I entangle him in the meshes of my perversity and in the whirlwind of my golden hair.
I was indeed the modern Circe, weaving her evil spell. I was fervent and temerarious, full of exotic anomalies, eccentric, unexpected.... I delighted in causing him both pleasure and suffering in a thousand unnatural and outrageous ways; I cut my initials in his arm with the triangular blade of a dagger; I pressed my lighted cigarette upon his hand; I assumed all the absurdities, perversities and puerilities with which since time immemorial woman has decoyed and beguiled man, who, after all, is essentially a simple-minded and ingenuous being.
Nicolas Naumoff was dazed and fascinated by all this strange hysteria and subtlety. He believed himself to be the hero of a fabulous passion—the incomparable conqueror of a wondrous and portentous love.
There were times when I myself was carried away by this play of my own invention. Now and then I lost sight of the grim purpose of this process of seduction; I rejoiced in my own coquetries, and myself burned in the flame I had deliberately kindled.
One evening as he knelt before me, pressing my cool hands against his fevered forehead, I bent over him with a smile.
“Why do you love me so much?” I asked. “Tell me. Tell me the truth.”
He answered me gravely in a deep voice, enumerating the reasons on my fingers as he held them in his own.
“I love you because you are beautiful and terrible. Because you have that white, subtle face, and that mouth that is like a greedy rose, and those long, cruel eyes … I love you because you are different from all others, better or worse than all, more intelligent and more passionate than all.” He was silent for a moment. “And also because you have forced me to love you.”
Yes. I had forced him to love me. And now he was what I wanted him to be—an instrument ready to my hand: a fierce and docile instrument of death, a submissive and murderous weapon.
June crept warmly up from the south, and murmured of blue waters and dancing sunlight.
“Mura, let us go to Venice,” said Paul Kamarowsky one afternoon as he sat beside me on the balcony; “let us pass these last three months of waiting at the Lido. If needs be, I can take you back to Russia later on, to complete the few formalities that must precede our marriage.”
“To Venice?” I said faintly.
Paul Kamarowsky smiled.
“Ti guardo e palpito, Venezia mia,“he quoted under his breath. And bending forward, he kissed my trembling lips.
XXXIX
We prepared to leave. Naumoff's despair was puerile and clamorous. I entreated him to go back to Orel and wait for me there, and I promised him that I would soon return to Russia and see him again. As for Prilukoff, he awakened from his lethargy with the roar of a wounded wild beast. “To Venice! You are going to Venice with that man? Is that how you keep your vow?”
“I will keep it, I will keep it,” I cried. “But I said—it—it should be done within the year—this is only June—we can wait six months longer.”
“By that time you will be his wife,” snarled Prilukoff between clenched teeth. “Unless it is done within the next three months you know it will never be done at all. Go your way,” he jeered, “do as you like! Play fast and loose with fate as you have played fast and loose with me!” He turned and gripped my wrist. “But you will escape neither of us. Fate and I will overtake you, Marie Tarnowska, be it in Venice—or in hell!”
We left for the Lido.
And while, on the arm of my bethrothed, I wandered by the dancing waters, and the golden hours showered their light upon us, in my dark heart I prayed:
“God, give me strength and ruthlessness! God, who didst guide the hand of Judith, fill my soul with violence and teach my hand to slay!”
········Prilukoff followed us to Verona. Then he came after us to Venice, where he took rooms in the same hotel, lurking in the corridors, shadowing us in the streets, pursuing me day and night with his misery and jealousy. Occasionally I saw him for a few moments alone, and then we would whisper together about the deed that was to be done, speaking feverishly in low quick tones like demented creatures. If I wavered, it was he who reminded me ruthlessly of my child and of my vow; if he hesitated, it was I who with the insensate perversity of madness urged him on towards the crime.
One evening—ah, how well do I remember that radiant summer sunset beneath which the lagoon lay like a fluid sheet of copper!—he met me on the Lido. He was morose and gloomy. He took from his pocket a black crumpled package. It was Elise's old satchel—the “white elephant,” tattered, empty, dead.
With a vehement movement he flung it into the water. Where it fell the sheet of copper shivered into a thousand splinters of red gold.
“Empty?” I asked in a low tone.
“Empty,” he replied.
“And now, what will you do?”
He shrugged his shoulders. It was then that the idea came to him—the execrable, the nefarious idea.
“Listen. As he”—with a movement of his head he indicated the absent Kamarowsky—“is doomed—I suppose he is doomed, isn't he?” he interposed.
I assented in a barely audible whisper: “Yes.”
“Well, his—his disappearance may as well be of some use. Do you not think so?”
Seeing the look of horror which I turned upon him, he continued: “For goodness' sake don't let us behave like romantic fools. We are not a pair of poetic assassins in a play, are we?”
Gradually, by subtle pleading and plausible argument, he led my weak brain to view the idea with less horror. He assured me that we had not only the right but almost the duty to commit this enormity. According to him, it was not a shameful and disgraceful deed. No; it was a just, reasonable, logical thing to do.
“Of course, it is not as if we were getting rid of a man simply in order to plunder him of his money. No, indeed. That would be vile, that would be abominable. But, given the necessity—the irrevocableness—of his fate, why should we not see to it that his death may at least be of some use to some one? Not to ourselves, remember. The money you get from him shall be used to serve a just purpose—to redress a wrong. We shall make restitution to those I have despoiled. I will pay back what I took from my clients to the very last farthing. And anything that is left over shall be given in charity to the poor. What do you say to that? We shall keep nothing for ourselves—nothing. Do you agree?”
He went on to recall that among the clients he had defrauded was a widow with four little children; the thought of her, he said, had always worried him. It was good to think that she would recover every penny.
The advocate in him awoke, eloquent and convincing, until he ended by assuring me that we should be performing a meritorious deed.
Indignant at first, then uncertain, then reluctant, I was finally persuaded. Soon I heard myself repeating after him: “It will be a meritorious deed.”
Ah, if such beings as evil spirits exist, with what laughter must they have listened to our talk in that exquisite evening hour.
It was Prilukoff who thought out the details and settled the plan.
“You must get him to insure his life.”
“How can I?” I cried feebly and tearfully. “How can one possibly suggest such a thing?”
“Leave that to me,” said Prilukoff, reverting to his Moscow manner.
Next day he showed me a letter written by himself in a disguised hand.
“Open this letter when he is present, and when he insists on seeing it, show it to him … reluctantly!”
“But what if he does not insist?”
“You must make him insist,” said Prilukoff.
The letter was brought to me in Kamarowsky's presence, and when he saw me turning scarlet and then pale as I opened it, he insisted on seeing what it contained.
I showed it to him … reluctantly.
The letter was in Prilukoff's handwriting, but was signed “Ivan Troubetzkoi.” The prince (whom I scarcely remembered, and whom I had not seen for more than six years) begged me to marry him, and as proof of his devotion offered to make a will in my favor and, in addition, to insure his life for half a million francs.
Paul Kamarowsky was aghast.
“Is everybody trying to steal you away from me, Mura?” he exclaimed brokenly; then he sat down on the sofa with his head in his hands. I gazed at him, feeling as if I should die with sorrow and remorse.
For a long time he did not speak. Then he drew me to him.
“Dear one, do not heed the offers of other people. No one, whether he be prince or moujik, can love you more than I do. No one will do more for you than I am willing to do. I, also, am ready to make a will in your favor; I, also, will insure my life for half a million francs.”
“No, no,” I cried, crushed with misery and shame.
“Oh, yes, I will. It shall be done immediately. To-day.”
And it was done.
“You see?” cried Prilukoff triumphantly, “I am not quite a fool yet, am I? Hush now, don't cry. Remember that it is not for ourselves, but to make an honorable act of restitution.”
“But a hundred thousand francs would have been enough for that,” I sobbed.
“The other four hundred thousand we shall give to the poor,” said Prilukoff. “It will be a meritorious deed.”
XL
I remember that when I was a child I was taken to a fair and given a ride on a switchback railway. I was scarcely seated in the car, with the straps round my waist and the giddy track before me, than I cried to get out again. But the car was already moving forward, slowly gliding down the first incline.
I screamed, writhing against the straps, “Stop! stop! I want to get out. I want to go back!” But now the car was rushing giddily, in leaps and bounds, down one slope and up another, whirling over bridges and gulfs, dashing down the precipitous declivity with ever-increasing speed.
Even thus had I embarked, almost without realizing it, upon the rapid slope of crime. Impelled by my own madness, I had started on the vertiginous course to perdition, and now I plunged downwards, rolling, leaping, rushing into the darkness, without possibility of pause or return.
It was Kamarowsky himself who begged me to leave Venice for Kieff, where some formalities still remained to be accomplished before our impending marriage. He offered to accompany me, but I declined. He resigned himself, therefore, though with reluctance, to allowing me to start alone with Elise.
“Now,” said Prilukoff, on the eve of my departure—and the transversal vein stood out like whipcord on his forehead—“let there be no more backing out and putting off. You will see Naumoff in Russia; send him straight back here. I'm sick of this business; let us get it over.”
I bowed my head and wept.
Kamarowsky took me to the railway station, where I found the compartment he had reserved for me already filled with flowers. I thanked him with trembling lips.
“In three weeks, my love,” he said, “you will be back again, and then I shall not part from you any more.” He kissed me and stepped down upon the platform, where he stood gazing up at me with smiling eyes. Many people stood near, watching us. I leaned out of the carriage window, and as I looked at him I kept repeating to myself: “This is the last time I shall see him! The last time!”
It seemed strange and incongruous to see him there, with his usual aspect, making ordinary gestures and uttering commonplace remarks. Knowing as I did that he stood on the threshold of death, I wondered that he had not a more staid and solemn demeanor, slower, graver gestures and memorable words.
Whereas he was saying, with a smile: “Mind you don't lose your purse; and remember to look after your luggage at the Customs. You will have the dining-car at Bozen.” And then, looking about him: “Would you like some newspapers?” He hurried away after the newsvendor, and then counted his change and argued about a coin which he thought was counterfeit. He came back to my carriage door, handed me the newspapers, and with his handkerchief dried his forehead and the inside of his hat.
“Fearfully hot,” he said, looking up at me with a friendly laugh.
All this seemed terribly out of keeping with the tragic situation of which, all unconsciously, he was the hero. I tried to say something tender and affectionate to him, but my agitation stifled me.
“Mind you are good,” he said, still smiling, and he threw a glance at some officers in the compartment next to mine.
I heard the doors being shut and the guard calling out “Partenza!” My heart began to beat wildly. I felt as if once again I were strapped in the car on the switchback railway. I wanted to get out, to stop, to turn back. A whistle sounded and a gong was struck.
“Well, Mura, au revoir,” cried Kamarowsky, stretching up his hand to me. “A happy journey and all blessings.”
I leaned out as far as I could—the bar across the window hindered me, but I managed to touch his outstretched hand with the tips of my fingers.
A spasm caught my throat. “Paul, Paul!” I gasped. “Oh, God, forgive me!” A shrill whistle drowned my voice as the train moved slowly forward.
He must have seen the anguish in my face, for he cried anxiously:
“What? What did you say?” Now he was running beside the train, which was beginning to go faster.
I repeated my cry: “Forgive me! Forgive me!” and stretched out my arms to him from the window.
He shook his head to show that he had not understood. The train was throbbing and hastening.
He ran faster beside it. “What—what is it? What did you say?” But the train was gaining speed, and he was obliged to stop. He stood there, erect and solitary, at the extreme end of the platform, following with perplexed and questioning gaze the train that was carrying me away.
It is thus always that I see him in my memory—a solitary figure, gazing at me with perplexed and wondering eyes.