_THE GENERAL'S WILL_
I
It happened in winter, just before the holidays. Ivan Feodorovitch
Lobnitchenko, the lawyer, whose office is in one of the main streets
of St. Petersburg, was called hurriedly to witness the last will and
testament of one at the point of death. The sick man was not strictly
a client of Ivan Feodorovitch; under other circumstances, he might
have refused to make this late call, after a day's heavy toil ... but
the dying man was an aristocrat and a millionaire, and such as he meet
no refusals, whether in life, or, much more, at the moment of death.
Lobnitchenko, taking a secretary and everything necessary, with a sigh
scratched himself behind the ear, and thrusting aside the thought of
the delightful evening at cards that awaited him, set out to go to the
sick man.
General Iuri Pavlovitch Nasimoff was far gone. Even the most
compassionate doctors did not give him many days to live, when he
finally decided to destroy the will which he had made long ago, not in
St. Petersburg, but in the provincial city where he had played the
Tsar for so many years. The general had come to the capital for a
time, and had lain down--to rise no more.
This was the opinion of the physicians, and of most of those about
him; the sick man himself was unwilling to admit it. He was a
stalwart-hearted and until recently a stalwart-bodied old man, tall,
striking, with an energetic face, and a piercing, masterful glance,
hard to forget, even if you saw him only once.
He was lying on the sofa, in a richly furnished hotel suite,
consisting of three of the best rooms. He received the lawyer gayly
enough. He himself explained the circumstances to him, though every
now and then compelled to stop by a paroxysm of pain, with difficulty
repressing the groans which almost escaped him, in spite of all his
efforts. During these heavy moments, Ivan Feodorovitch raised his eyes
buried in fat to the sick man's face, and his plump little features
were convulsed in sympathy with the sufferer's pain. As soon as the
courageous old man, fighting hard with the paroxysms of pain, had got
the better of them, taking his hands from his contorted face, and
drawing a painful breath, he began anew to explain his will.
Lobnitchenko dropped his eyes again and became all attention.
The general explained in detail to the lawyer. He had been married
twice, and had three children, a son and a daughter from his first
marriage, who had long ago reached adultship, and a nine-year-old
daughter from his second marriage. His second wife and daughter he
expected every day; they were abroad, but would soon return. His elder
daughter would also probably come.
The lawyer was not acquainted with Nazimoff's family; indeed he had
never before seen the general, though, like all Russia, he knew of him
by repute. But judging from the tone of contempt or of pity with which
he spoke of his second wife or her daughter, the lawyer guessed at
once that the general's home life was not happy. The further
explanations of the sick man convinced him of this. A new will was to
be drawn up, directly contrary to the will signed six years before,
which bequeathed to his second wife, Olga Vseslavovna, unlimited
authority over their little daughter, and her husband's entire
property. In the first will he had left nearly everything, with the
exception of the family estate, which he did not feel justified in
taking from his son, to his second wife and her daughter. Now he
wished to restore to his elder children the rights which he had
deprived them of, and especially to his eldest daughter, Anna Iurievna
Borissova, who was not even mentioned in the first will. In the new
will, with the exception of the seventh part, the widow's share, he
divided the whole of his land and capital between his children
equally; and he further appointed a strict guardianship over the
property of his little daughter, Olga Iurievna.
The will was duly arranged, drawn up and witnessed, and after the
three witnesses had signed it, it was left, by the general's wish, in
his own keeping.
"I will send it to you to take care of," he said to the lawyer. "It
will be safer in your hands than here, in my temporary quarters. But
first I wish to read it to my wife, and ... to my eldest daughter ...
if she arrives in time."
The lawyer and the priest, who was one of the witnesses, were already
preparing to take leave of the general, when voices and steps were
heard in the corridor; a footman's head appeared through the door,
calling the doctor hurriedly forth. It appeared that the general's
lady had arrived suddenly, without letting anyone know by telegram
that she was coming.
The doctor hastily slipped out of the room; he feared the result of
emotion on the sick man, and wished to warn the general's wife of his
grave danger, but the sick man noticed the move, and it was impossible
to guard him against disturbance.
"What is going on there?" he asked. "What are you mumbling about,
Edouard Vicentevitch? Tell me what is the matter? Is it my daughter?"
"Your excellency, I beg of you to take care of yourself!" the doctor
was beginning, evidently quite familiar with the general's family
affairs, and therefore dreading the meeting of husband and wife. "It
is not Anna Iurievna...."
"Aha!" the sick man interrupted him; "she has come? Very well. Let her
come in. Only the little one ... I don't wish her to come ... to-day."
Suffering was visible in his eyes, this time not bodily suffering.
The door opened, with the rustling of a silk dress. A tall,
well-developed, and decidedly handsome woman appeared on the
threshold. She glanced at the pain-stricken face, which smiled
contemptuously toward her. In a moment she was beside the general,
kneeling beside him on the carpet, bending close to him, and pressing
his hand, as she repeated in a despairing whisper:
"Oh, Georges! Georges! Is it really you, my poor friend?"
It would be hard to define the expression of rapidly changing emotions
which passed over the sick man's face, which made his breast heave,
and his great heart quiver and tremble painfully. Displeasure and
pity, sympathy and contempt, anger and grief, all were expressed in
the short, sharp, bitter laugh, and the few words which escaped his
lips when he saw his little daughter timidly following her mother into
his room.
"Do not teach her to lie!" and he nodded toward the child, and turned
toward the wall, with an expression of pain and pity on his face. The
lawyer and the priest hastened to take their leave and disappear.
"Ah! Sinners! sinners!" muttered the latter, as he descended the
stairs.
"Things are not in good shape between them?" asked Lobnitchenko. "They
don't get on well together?"
"How should they be in good shape, when he came here to get a
divorce?" whispered the priest, shaping his fur cap. "But God decided
otherwise. Even without a divorce, he will be separated forever from
his wife!"
"I don't believe he is so very far gone. He is a stalwart old man.
Perhaps he will pull through," went on the man of law.
"God's hand is over all," answered the priest, shrugging his
shoulders. And so they went their different ways.