Marie Tarnowska

Bozevsky had sprung to his feet; his eyes gleamed strangely. “You may be the King of Thule, Tarnowsky,” he cried in a mocking tone, “but I am the knight Olaf. You know the legend?” His clear insolent eyes surveyed the guests provocatively. “Olaf—you remember—was condemned to death for daring to love the king's daughter. He was at his last banquet. 'Take heed, Olaf,' said the king. 'The headsman stands at the door!' 'Let him stay there, sire, while I bid farewell to life in a last toast!' And standing up—just as I stand here—he raised his glass, as I raise mine:

“I drink to the earth, I drink to the sky,
I drink to the sea and the shore;
I drink to the days that I have seen,
And the days I shall see no more;
I drink to the King who has sentenced me,
And the Headsman at the door.

“I bless the joys that I have had
And the joys that I have missed;
I bless the eyes that have smiled on me
And the lips that I have kissed!”

Here Bozevsky turned and looked straight at me:

“To thy red lips that I have kissed
I raise this cup of wine,
I bless thy radiant loveliness
That made my life divine,
And I bless the hour that brings me death
For the hour that thou wert mine!”

He uttered these words in a loud voice, with his daring eyes fixed steadily on mine; then he raised his glass and drained it.

Vassili had sprung to his feet. But instantly Stahl was beside him, speaking rapidly, while Grigorievsky exclaimed:

“The sleighs are waiting. It is time to go home!”

Amid nervous and hurried farewells the perilous moment passed and the danger was averted. We all hastened to our sleighs; my cousin Vera and Madame Grigorievska were beside me; Stahl and Grigorievsky had each with an air of easy friendliness taken my husband by the arm.

“Good-by! Good-by! Bon voyage! Good-by!” The last farewells had been exchanged. The impatient horses were shaking their bells in the icy night air. Vera had already taken her place in the sleigh, and I was about to step in beside her, when I saw Bozevsky striding rapidly towards me. He passed in front of my husband, who was standing near the second sleigh with Stahl and Grigorievsky, and came straight to me. He stretched out his hand with a gesture of despair.

“So it is all over—all over!” he said. “And this is good-by!”

His voice broke, and he bent his fair head over my hand, crushing my fingers in his feverish clasp.

At that instant the report of a shot rang out, followed by a mad outburst of laughter from Vassili. I saw the horses of the sleigh plunge and rear.

Bozevsky, still clasping my hand, wrenched himself upright; a convulsive shiver passed through him, and his head jerked backwards with a strange, wooden movement like that of a broken doll—then with a shrill burst of laughter which showed all his teeth, he fell forward at my feet.

With a cry I bent over him, and I felt a splash of blood on my face. It spurted forth like the jet of a fountain from the side of his neck. Once again my hands, my dress were covered with his blood—I thought I was in a dream. Every one had come rushing up. Now they raised him. I saw Stahl snatch a white scarf from some one's shoulders and wind it round and round the wounded neck, and immediately a dark stain appeared on the scarf and slowly widened.

Supported by Stahl, Bozevsky stared about him with haggard eyes, until his gaze met mine.

A quiver passed over his face. “I bless the hour—” he gasped. Then a gush of blood came from his mouth, and he was silent.

XVII

Bozevsky was carried to his room and the manager and servants of the Grand Hotel thronged in murmuring consternation round his door. A Swedish doctor, staying at the hotel, was summoned in haste. He appeared in his dressing-gown, and with Stahl's assistance carefully dressed and bound up the deep double wound caused by the bullet, which had passed through the left side of Bozevsky's neck and come out beneath his chin.

Trembling and weeping I followed the sinister procession, and with Cousin Vera and Madame Stahl entered Bozevsky's room. Now I stood, silently praying, at the foot of the bed. Bozevsky sunken in his pillow, with his eyes closed and his head and neck in bandages, looked as if he were already dead.

He suddenly opened his eyes, and his gaze wandered slowly from side to side until it rested on me. He moved his lips as if to speak, and I hastened to his pillow and bent over him.

He whispered, “Stay here.”

“Yes,” I said, and sat down beside him, taking his moist, chill hand between my own.

He repeated weakly: “Stay here. Do not go away.”

The Swedish doctor was washing his hands and talking in a low voice to Stahl. He turned to me and said:

“You must try not to agitate him. Do not let him speak or move his head.” Then he went out into the corridor with Stahl.

Mrs. Stahl and Vera sat mute and terror-stricken in a corner. I watched Bozevsky, with a deep, dull ache racking my heart. He seemed to be falling asleep. I felt his hand relax in mine and his short breathing became calmer and more regular.

But Stahl came in again, and Bozevsky opened his eyes.

Stahl approached the bedside and stood for a long while looking down at his friend. Then he turned to me. “A nurse is coming,” he said. “I will take you ladies home and then come back and pass the night with him.”

Take me home! How could I return home? How could I endure to meet Vassili again? At the mere thought of seeing him, who with a treacherous shot from behind had shattered this young existence, hatred and terror flamed up within me. No! I would not return home. Never again would I touch the hand of Vassili Tarnowsky.

While these thoughts traversed my mind, some one knocked at the door. It was the nurse. Vera and Madame Grigorievska, after questioning me with their eyes, got up softly; then, with a glance of pity at Bozevsky, they went on tiptoe out of the room.

At the door Stahl beckoned to me to come. But I shook my head. As if he knew what was passing Bozevsky opened his eyes again.

“Stay here,” he whispered. Then he put his hand to the bandage round his neck. “If you leave me I will tear it all off.” He made a gesture as if he would do so.

“I shall not leave you,” I whispered bending over him. “I shall never leave you again.”

I kept my word.

Later I learned that Vassili had given himself up to the authorities, and that my grief-stricken mother had come to fetch our children and had taken them with her to Otrada. To her and to my father they were the source of much melancholy joy.

Thus did the old garden of my youth open again its shadowy pathways and flowery lawns to the unconscious but already sorrow-touched childhood of little Tioka and Tania—those tragic children whose father was in prison and whose mother, far away from them, watched and suffered by the sinister death-bed of a stranger. To me the two innocent, angelic figures often came in my dreams; and I cried out to them with bitterest tears: “Oh, my own children, my two loved ones, forgive your mother that she does not forsake one who is dying for her sake. This very night, perhaps, or to-morrow—soon, soon, alas!—his life will end. And with a broken heart your mother will return to you.”

But Bozevsky did not die that night. Nor the following day. Nor the day after.

Fate had in store for him and for me a much more appalling doom. He dragged his frightful death-agony through the interminable hours of a hundred days and a hundred nights. He was doomed to trail his torment from town to town, from surgeon to surgeon, from specialist to charlatan. One after another, they would unbandage the white and withered neck, probe the blue-edged wound, and then cover up again with yellow gauze the horrifying cavity; leaving us to return, heart-stricken and silent, to the luxurious hotels that housed our irremediable despair.

About that time I heard that Vassili had been released on bail. Later on he was acquitted by a jury in the distant city of Homel, on the ground of justifiable homicide.

Perhaps it was a just verdict. But for him whom he had struck down—and for me—what anguish, great Heavens! What lingering torture of heart-breaking days and nights.

Ah, those nights, those appalling nights! We dreaded them as one dreads some monstrous wild beast, lurking in wait to devour us. All day long we thought only of the night. As soon as twilight drew near Bozevsky, lying in his bed with his face towards the window, clutched my hand and would not let it go.

“I am afraid,” he would murmur. “I wish it were not night. If only it were not night!”