Crying softly as I cradled my son's fair head upon my breast, I began:
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:
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?