The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales by Various

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They passed through a suite of rooms, filled with attentive domestics.
The place was crowded. Generals and Privy Counsellors were playing at
whist, young men were lolling carelessly upon the velvet-covered
sofas, eating ices and smoking pipes. In the drawing-room, at the head
of a long table, around which were assembled about a score of players,
sat the master of the house keeping the bank. He was a man of about
sixty years of age, of a very dignified appearance; his head was
covered with silvery white hair; his full, florid countenance
expressed good-nature, and his eyes twinkled with a perpetual smile.
Naroumoff introduced Hermann to him. Chekalinsky shook him by the hand
in a friendly manner, requested him not to stand on ceremony, and then
went on dealing.

The game occupied some time. On the table lay more than thirty cards.
Chekalinsky paused after each throw, in order to give the players time
to arrange their cards and note down their losses, listened politely
to their requests, and more politely still, straightened the corners
of cards that some player's hand had chanced to bend. At last the game
was finished. Chekalinsky shuffled the cards, and prepared to deal
again.

"Will you allow me to take a card?" said Hermann, stretching out his
hand from behind a stout gentleman who was punting.

Chekalinsky smiled and bowed silently, as a sign of acquiescence.
Naroumoff laughingly congratulated Hermann on his abjuration of that
abstention from cards which he had practised for so long a period, and
wished him a lucky beginning.

"Stake!" said Hermann, writing some figures with chalk on the back of
his card.

"How much?" asked the banker, contracting the muscles of his eyes,
"excuse me, I cannot see quite clearly."

"Forty-seven thousand roubles," replied Hermann. At these words every
head in the room turned suddenly round, and all eyes were fixed upon
Hermann.

"He has taken leave of his senses!" thought Naroumoff.

"Allow me to inform you," said Chekalinsky, with his eternal smile,
"that you are playing very high; nobody here has ever staked more than
two hundred and seventy-five roubles at once."

"Very well," replied Hermann, "but do you accept my card or not?"

Chekalinsky bowed in token of consent.

"I only wish to observe," said he, "that although I have the greatest
confidence in my friends, I can only play against ready money. For my
own part I am quite convinced that your word is sufficient, but for
the sake of the order of the game, and to facilitate the reckoning up,
I must ask you to put the money on your card."

Hermann drew from his pocket a bank-note, and handed it to
Chekalinsky, who, after examining it in a cursory manner, placed it on
Hermann's card.

He began to deal. On the right a nine turned up, and on the left a
three.

"I have won!" said Hermann, showing his card.

A murmur of astonishment arose among the players. Chekalinsky frowned,
but the smile quickly returned to his face. "Do you wish me to settle
with you?" he said to Hermann.

"If you please," replied the latter.

Chekalinsky drew from his pocket a number of banknotes and paid at
once. Hermann took up his money and left the table. Naroumoff could
not recover from his astonishment. Hermann drank a glass of lemonade
and returned home.

The next evening he again repaired to Chekalinsky's. The host was
dealing. Hermann walked up to the table; the punters immediately made
room for him. Chekalinsky greeted him with a gracious bow.

Hermann waited for the next deal, took a card and placed upon it his
forty-seven thousand roubles, together with his winnings of the
previous evening.

Chekalinsky began to deal. A knave turned up on the right, a seven on
the left.

Hermann showed his seven.

There was a general exclamation. Chekalinsky was evidently ill at
ease, but he counted out the ninety-four thousand roubles and handed
them over to Hermann, who pocketed them in the coolest manner
possible, and immediately left the house.

The next evening Hermann appeared again at the table. Everyone was
expecting him. The generals and privy counsellors left their whist in
order to watch such extraordinary play. The young officers quitted
their sofas, and even the servants crowded into the room. All pressed
round Hermann. The other players left off punting, impatient to see
how it would end. Hermann stood at the table, and prepared to play
alone against the pale, but still smiling Chekalinsky. Each opened a
pack of cards. Chekalinsky shuffled. Hermann took a card and covered
it with a pile of bank-notes. It was like a duel. Deep silence reigned
around.

Chekalinsky began to deal, his hands trembled. On the right a queen
turned up, and on the left an ace.

"Ace has won!" cried Hermann, showing his card.

"Your queen has lost," said Chekalinsky, politely.

Hermann started; instead of an ace, there lay before him the queen of
spades! He could not believe his eyes, nor could he understand how he
had made such a mistake.

At that moment it seemed to him that the queen of spades smiled
ironically, and winked her eye at him. He was struck by her remarkable
resemblance....

"The old Countess!" he exclaimed, seized with terror. Chekalinsky
gathered up his winnings. For some time Hermann remained perfectly
motionless. When at last he left the table, there was a general
commotion in the room.

"Splendidly punted!" said the players. Chekalinsky shuffled the cards
afresh, and the game went on as usual.

* * * * *

Hermann went out of his mind, and is now confined in room number
seventeen of the Oboukhoff Hospital. He never answers any questions,
but he constantly mutters with unusual rapidity: "Three, seven, ace!
Three, seven, queen!"

Lizaveta Ivanovna has married a very amiable young man, a son of the
former steward of the old Countess. He is in the service of the State
somewhere, and is in receipt of a good income. Lizaveta is also
supporting a poor relative.

Tomsky has been promoted to the rank of captain, and has become the
husband of the Princess Pauline.

FOOTNOTES OF _THE QUEEN OF SPADES_:

[1: Said of a card when it wins or loses in the quickest possible
time.]

[2: Diminutive of Lizaveta (Elizabeth).]

VERA JELIHOVSKY

_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.

II

"Olga!" cried the sick man, without turning round, and feeling near
him the swift movement of his wife, he pushed her away with an
impatient movement of his hand, and added, "Not you! my daughter
Olga!"

"Olga! Go, my child, papa is calling you," cried the general's wife in
a soft voice, in French, to the little girl, who was standing
undecidedly in the center of the room.

"Can you not drop your foreign phrases?" angrily interrupted the
general. "This is not a drawing-room! You might drop it, from a sense
of decency."

His voice became shrill, and made the child shudder and begin to cry.
She went to him timidly.

The general looked at her with an expression of pain. He drew her
toward him with his left hand, raising the right to bless her.

"In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!" he
whispered, making the sign of the cross over her. "God guard you from
evil, from every bad influence.... Be kind ... honest ... most of all,
be honest! Never tell lies. God guard you from falsehood, from lying,
even more than from sorrow!"

Tears filled the dying man's eyes. Little Olga shuddered from head to
foot; she feared her father, and at the same time was so sorry for
him. But pity got the upper hand. She clung to him, wetting him with
her tears. Her father raised his hand, wishing to make the sign of the
cross once more over the little head which lay on his breast, but
could not complete the gesture. His hand fell heavily, his face was
once more contorted with pain; he turned to those who stood near him,
evidently avoiding meeting his wife's eyes, and whispered:

"Take her away. It is enough. Christ be with her!" And for a moment he
collected strength to place his hand on the child's head.

The doctor took the little girl by the hand, but her mother moved
quickly toward her.

"Kiss him! Kiss papa's hand!" she whispered, "bid him good-by!"

The general's wife sobbed, and covered her face with her handkerchief,
with the grand gesture of a stage queen. The sick man did not see
this. At the sound of her voice he frowned and closed his eyes tight,
evidently trying not to listen. The doctor led the little girl away to
another room and gave her to her governess.

When he came back to the sick man the general, lying on the sofa,
still in the same position, and without looking at his wife who stood
beside his pillow, said to her:

"I expect my poor daughter Anna, who has suffered so much injustice
through you.... I have asked her to forgive me. I shall pray her to be
a mother to her little sister.... I have appointed her the child's
guardian. She is good and honest ... she will teach the child no evil.
And this will be best for you also. You are provided for. You will
find out from the new will. You could not have had any profit from
being her guardian. If Anna does not consent to take little Olga to
live with her, and to educate her with her own children, as I have
asked her, Olga will be sent to a school. You will prefer liberty to
your daughter; it will be pleasanter for you. Is it not so?"

Contempt and bitter irony were perceptible in his voice. His wife did
not utter a syllable. She remained so quiet that it might have been
thought she did not even hear him, but for the convulsive movement of
her lips, and of the fingers of her tightly clasped hands.

The doctor once more made a movement to withdraw discreetly, but the
general's voice stopped him. "Edouard Vicentevitch? Is he here?"

"I am here, your excellency," answered the doctor, bending over the
sick man. "Would not your excellency prefer to be carried to the bed?
It will be more comfortable lying down."

"More comfortable to die?" sharply interrupted the general. "Why do
you drivel? You know I detest beds and blankets. Drop it! Here, take
this," and he gave him a sheet of crested paper folded in four, which
was lying beside him. "Read it, please. Aloud! so that she may know."

He turned his eyes toward his wife. The doctor unwillingly began his
unpleasant task. He was a man of fine feeling, and although he had no
very high opinion of the general's wife, still she was a woman. And a
beautiful woman. He would have preferred that she should learn from
someone else how many of the pleasures of life were slipping away from
her, in virtue of the new will. But there was nothing for it but to do
as he was ordered. It was always hard to oppose Iuri Pavlovitch; now
it was quite impossible.

Olga Vseslavovna listened to the reading of the will with complete
composure. She sat motionless, leaning back in an armchair, with
downcast eyes, and only showing her emotion when her husband was no
longer able to stifle a groan. Then she turned toward him her pale,
beautiful face, with evident signs of heartfelt sympathy, and was even
rising to come to his assistance. The sick man impatiently refused her
services, significantly turning his eyes toward the doctor, who was
reading his last will and testament, as though he would say: "Listen!
Listen! It concerns you."

It did concern her, without a doubt. General Nazimoff's wife learned
that, instead of an income of a hundred thousand a year, which she had
had a right to expect, she could count only on a sum sufficient to
keep her from poverty; what in her opinion was a mere pittance.

The doctor finished reading, coughing to hide his confusion, and
slowly folded the document.

"You have heard?" asked the general, in a faint, convulsive voice.

"I have heard, my friend," quietly answered his wife.

"You have nothing to say?"

"What can I say? You have a right to dispose of what belongs to
you.... But ... still I...."

"Still you what?" sharply asked her husband.

"Still, I hope, my friend, that this is not your last will...."

General Nazimoff turned, and even made an effort to raise himself on
his elbow.

"God willing, you will recover. Perhaps you will decide more than once
to make other dispositions of your property," calmly continued his
wife.

The sick man fell back on the pillows.

"You are mistaken. Even if I do not die, you will not be able to
deceive me again. This is my last will!" he replied convulsively.

And with trembling hand he gave the doctor a bunch of keys.

"There is the dispatch box. Please open it, and put the will in."

The doctor obeyed his wish, without looking at Olga Vseslavovna. She,
on her part, did not look at him. Shrugging her shoulders at her
husband's last words, she remained motionless, noticing nothing except
his sufferings. His sufferings, it seemed, tortured her.

Meanwhile the dying man followed the doctor with anxious eyes, and as
soon as the latter closed the large traveling dispatch box he
stretched out his hand to him for the keys.

"So long as I am alive, I will keep them!" he murmured, putting the
bunch of keys away in his pocket. "And when I am dead, I intrust them
to you, Edouard Vicentevitch. Take care of them, as a last service to
me!" And he turned his face once more to the wall.

"And now, leave me alone! The pain is less. Perhaps I shall go to
sleep. Leave me!"

"My friend! Permit me to remain near you," the general's wife began,
bending tenderly over her husband.

"Go!" he cried sharply. "Leave me in peace, I tell you!"

She rose, trembling. The doctor hastily offered her his arm. She left
the room, leaning heavily on him, and once more covering her face with
her handkerchief, in tragic style.

"Be calm, your excellency!" whispered the doctor sympathetically, only
half conscious of what he was saying.

"These rooms have been prepared for you. You also need to rest, after
such a long journey."

"Oh, I am not thinking about myself. I am so sorry for him. Poor,
poor, senseless creature. How much I have suffered at his hands. He
was always so suspicious, so hard to get on with. And whims and
fantasies without end. You know, doctor, I have sometimes even thought
he was not in full possession of his faculties."

"Hm!" murmured the doctor, coughing in confusion.

"Take this strange change of his will, for instance," the general's
wife continued, not waiting for a clearer expression of sympathy.
"Take his manner toward me. And for what reason?"

"Yes, it is very sad," murmured the doctor.

"Tell me, doctor, does he expect his son and daughter?"

"Only his daughter, Anna Iurievna. She promised to come, with her
oldest children. A telegram came yesterday. We have been expecting her
all day."

"What is the cause of this sudden tenderness? They have not seen each
other for ten years. Does he expect her husband, too? His son-in-law,
the pedagogue?" contemptuously asked the general's wife.

"No! How could he come? He could not leave his service. And his son,
too, Peter Iurevitch, he cannot come at once. He is on duty, in
Transcaspia. It is a long way."

"Yes, it is a long way!" assented the general's wife, evidently busy
with other thoughts. "But tell me, Edouard Vicentevitch, this new
will, has it been written long?"

"It was drawn up only to-day. The draft was prepared last week, but
the general kept putting it off. But when his pains began this
morning...."

"Is it the end? Is it dangerous?" interrupted Olga Vseslavovna.

"Very--a very bad sign. When they began, Iuri Pavlovitch sent at once
for the lawyer. He was still here when you arrived."

"Yes. And the old will, which he made before, has been destroyed?"

"I do not know for certain. But I think not. Oh, no, I forgot. The
general was going to send a telegram."

"Yes? to send a telegram?"

The general's wife shrugged her shoulders, sadly shook her head, and
added:

"He is so changeable! so changeable! But I think it is all the same.
According to law, only the last will is valid?"

"Yes, without doubt; the last."

The general's wife bowed her head.

"What hurts me most," she whispered, with a bitter smile, bending
close to the young doctor, and leaning heavily on his arm, "what hurts
me most, is not the money. I am not avaricious. But why should he take
my child away from me? Why should he pass over her own mother, and
intrust her to her half-sister? A woman whom I do not know, who has
not distinguished herself by any services or good actions, so far as I
know. I shall not submit. I shall contest the will. The law must
support the right of the mother. What do you think, doctor?"

The doctor hastily assented, though, to tell the truth, he was not
thinking of anything at the moment, except the strange manner in which
the general's wife, while talking, pressed close to her companion.

At that moment a bell rang, and the general's loud voice was heard:

"Doctor! Edouard Vicentevitch!"

"Coming!" answered the doctor.

And leaving Olga Vseslavovna at the threshold of her room, he ran
quickly to the sick man.

"A vigorous voice--for a dying man! He shouts as he used to at the
manoeuvers!" thought the general's wife.

And her handsome face at once grew dark with the hate which stole over
it. This was only a passing expression, however; it rapidly gave place
to sorrow, when she saw the manservant coming from the sick man.

"What is the matter with your master, Yakov? Is he worse?"

"No, madam. God has been gracious. He told me to push the box nearer
him, and ordered Edouard Vicentevitch to open it. He wants to send
some telegram or other."

"Thank God, he is not worse. Yakov, I am going to send a telegram to
the station myself, in a few minutes, by my coachman. You can give him
the general's telegram, too."

"Very well, madam."

"And another thing. I shall not go to bed. If there is any change in
your master's condition, Yakov, come and knock at my door at once. I
beg of you, tell me the very moment anything happens. Here is
something for you, Yakov;--you have grown thin, waiting upon your
master!"

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