The Genius. Margaret Horton Potter
there was a silence. Prince Gregoriev sat bent over the table. A grayish tinge, absolutely foreign to it, had overspread his face. His eyes were flaming. His teeth gnawed savagely at the ends of his mustache. The two physicians waited, considerately, till the lowered head was raised, the eyes lifted:
"There is—no other way? She—she has got to submit to the knife?"
"Gewiss! Nor can we promise—recovery—even so. Without it—two weeks—a month, perhaps!" he shrugged, helplessly. "You understand, it is medullary: the most rapid, the most malignant variety of all. It is not a case that promises credit to us. Therefore, if the Herr Graf would wish to try another physician, I should be glad that it were so. I would resign the case willingly; for this disease gives little satisfaction to us who love our work."
"At the same time," broke in Monsieur Petchkoff, the Russian doctor, with some asperity, "we must remind our client, Herr Weimann, that operations to-day do not mean what they did before the recent great discovery of anæsthetics. I have been using chloroform now for more than three years; and in every case where the heart permits, it has obliterated entirely the pain of incision. You understand that the patient may go to sleep in her bed and awaken there again, a few hours later, without the slightest knowledge that she has ever been removed from it. Consider that, your Highness!"
Gregoriev leaped to his feet. "Is it possible? I never believed those tales. Do you corroborate this statement?" he added, turning to Weimann, who sat approvingly nodding his head.
At the question he merely raised his shaggy brows, replying: "Without doubt, Herr Graf. Anæsthesia is now used in every enlightened country in the world. The Herr Doctor has exaggerated its benefits in no particular."
Gregoriev sank into his place again with a groan of relief. "Operate, then! Operate at once—to-day, if there be time!"
Prince Michael's desire, which was, in fact, that of his wife also, since the thing must be gone through, was impractical, owing to the fact that considerable preparatory work was still necessary. On the first day of the new month, Weimann made an examination of her heart, which resulted less satisfactorily than he had hoped. Not until evening did he finally announce his decision that the administration of chloroform might be made without undue danger. And after this there were still to be made those preparations necessary for an operation in the palace: Michael absolutely refusing his wife's request that she be taken to the Royal Hospital. Nor was it till the evening of that day—the second of April—that the unhappy lady wrote Ivan her scarcely deceptive letter: an act repellent to her, but insisted upon by Michael, who persisted in maintaining his belief in her ultimate recovery. With what an agony of yearning to see her boy, to bid him good-bye, the poor soul hung upon each painfully scrawled word, only those who have lain under the chill of death can know. From the first she had no hope, and but little desire, of leaving the dread table alive. Yet she was loath to give expression to the doubt that might still be hailed by her husband with his old, scornful mockery.
It was the first time, perhaps, that she had misjudged Michael on the side of inhumanity. Scorn for her was gone from him now; and so changed was he that his very servants could not read him. Was it remorse, or actually some long-latent affection, reawakened under the shadow of impending loss, that had brought the haggard lines about his mouth, and dulled the fires of those terrible eyes? Sophia herself asked that question of the darkness, as she lay the long night through, watching for what she dreamed of as her last dawn.
The hour of the operation was fixed for one o'clock on the afternoon of April third. By dawn of that day the whole household was astir, gravitating, for the first time in many a year, wholly about the bedroom of the mistress of the house. Madame Gregoriev, lying motionless in the half-light of her room during the morning hours, preceding the impending ordeal, was filled with a sense of unreality, of wonder at the stir that was suddenly being created about her. For years she had been accustomed to a life of systematic neglect. For months she had borne her bodily torment silently and without hope of aid. Now, in one day, as it seemed, she had become the centre of a new world. There were two professional nurses to anticipate her every want, while old Másha, hitherto her one attendant, cowered snuffling in a dark corner of the room. At her bedside her husband, his black eyes dulled with trouble, sat side by side with Vassily, the brother, whose manner had never before so softened in addressing her. And his voice grew husky as he persisted in the assurances of perfect recovery that he could not himself believe. Lastly, and best of all, Caroline was coming: was, indeed, already on her rapid way. All things had been done for her comfort; yet none of them weighed for a moment in the balance with her one, great, unvoiced desire: the desire to see and talk to her boy before she yielded herself to that mysterious unconsciousness from which she had not the smallest hope of emerging. But she was now wholly under Michael's sway. She realized that he was acting for Ivan's peace of mind: that in so acting he had himself some hope of her recovery. And, remembering his new consideration for her, she could not bring herself to dispute him. When, at the hour named, the surgeons and their assistants entered her room, she received the kisses of husband and brother upon an unwrinkled brow; and, as she lifted her head towards the sweet-smelling sponge, there was a faint smile upon her lips, a gleam of relief in her tired eyes.
Vassily Blashkov and his black brother-in-law waited together at Sophia's bedside till her unconsciousness was complete; and then both stood, reverently, while the limp body was carried from the room. For the first time in their lives these two utterly selfish men looked into each other's eyes with but one comprehensive thought, which was all for another. Each man was suddenly white with unwonted feeling; for there was something in the pose of that helpless form which brought home, with a poignant stab, a sudden realization of her neglected life.
Still acting upon common impulse the two presently descended, side by side, to Michael's official room, where, on the table, Piotr had placed a bottle of sherry, some glasses, and a plate of biscuits. Before these the two seated themselves; and, as the first glow of the wine began to course through them, they fell into a low-voiced conversation; for it was a period of strain so great that any possibility of forgetfulness was grasped, eagerly. Of Sophia, however, neither could speak; and their thoughts fell naturally upon that which was dearest to her: Ivan: the nephew to whom the uncle was almost a complete stranger. And it was to this man whom for years he had hated so roundly, that Michael revealed, for the only time in his life, his feeling for the boy whom he had so tardily and slightly acknowledged.
"You—haven't told him, I understand?" Blashkov began, in a low tone.
"Not yet. If—if she comes out—he may see her. The anxiety will be less for him.—She—she's his whole life, here."
"And he hers, I imagine?"
"It's true.—I—I haven't counted with either of them.—I never tried."
This was all. The long, almost unbearable pause that followed was broken by a commonplace remark, and the conversation kept in that vein by mutual consent. For, when the inner life is throbbing fast and strong, intimate expression becomes impossible. And above these two men, chatting about the trivial things of their existence, hung a black shadow of dread: a strain of waiting which, minute by minute, grew more tense.
An hour had passed, and the ears of both were strained for the faintest sound in the corridor, when there came an unhoped-for break. Less than forty-eight hours after the first news had reached her in Petersburg, Caroline Dravikine entered the Gregoriev house in Moscow. Piotr, his face alight with relief, showed her into the room where brother and brother-in-law sat together. There she flung off her wraps, commanded tea, and exerted all her power towards distracting the thoughts of those two men who showed not half her courage in the face of a calamity which could touch neither of them as it must touch her, who had kept the one greatly unselfish affection of her life for the sister now lying at the point of death above her.
A second hour slipped round, and the momentary relief of Caroline's arrival passed. The darkening room had grown silent again, and the sense of oppression was becoming unendurable to the three of them, when one of the nurses slipped into the room to say:
"The Princess Gregoriev is in her bed. You can see her if you wish."
A woman's whisper broke the twilight: "Thank