"Brown-eyed Peter is going for a soldier;
Going for a soldier with his little turn-up nose..."
"No, no, no!" shrieked Tioka despairingly. "Tania, Tania--the moon--the
picture. Say it quickly!"
A lightning flash seemed to tear the clouds of oblivion from my brain
and illuminate the past. I was once more in Vassili's country house ...
once more I entered the dim white nursery where my children, like two
blonde seraphs, lay asleep.... A lamp hanging between the two little
cots lit up an artless picture hanging on the wall--a rippling-haired
Madonna standing in a star-lit sky, holding in her youthful arms the
infant Jesus with a count's coronet on His head.
Crying softly as I cradled my son's fair head upon my breast, I began:
"When little children sleep, the Virgin Mary
Steps with white feet upon the crescent moon...."
* * * * *
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."