“Yes,” was my answer; “I can understand how a doctor might feel that; but I don’t know how far the feeling of a patriot might overbalance this; how far the idea of serving his country would overcome every other feeling.”
Polnitzski gave me a glance which made me quiver.
“It is a question which I found I did not readily answer,” he said, “when I received from the chief of our Section an order not to let Kakonzoff recover.”
He sprang up from his chair and began to pace the floor.
“What could I do?” he said, pouring out his words with a rapidity which increased his slight foreign accent so that when his face was turned away I could hardly follow them. “There was my country bleeding her very heart’s blood. Every day the most infamous cruelties were done before my eyes. And if this man Kakonzoff lived to tell his story, it meant the torture, the death, of men whose only crime was that they had given up everything that makes life tolerable to save their fellows from political slavery. It lay in my power to let Kakonzoff die. A very slight neglect would accomplish that. To the cause of my country I had sworn the most solemn oaths, and sworn them with my whole heart. I had never before even questioned any order from the Section. I had obeyed with the blind fidelity of a man that loved the cause too well to think of his own will at all. But now—now, I simply found what I was asked to do was impossible! I could not do it. I fought it out with myself day and night, and all the time the patient was slowly getting better. The gain was slow, but it was steady, and I could not fail to see that his giving his wicked testimony against the patriots was simply a matter of time.
“But one day, through no fault of mine—indeed, because my express orders had been disobeyed—he became worse. I can’t tell you the relief I felt in thinking the man might die and I be spared the awful necessity of deciding. If he would only die without fault of mine—but I still did my best. I gave minute directions, and when I left him I promised to return in a few hours. As I went through the antechamber on my way out of the hotel, some one came behind me quickly and laid a hand on my arm. I thought it was the nurse, following to ask some question. I turned round to be face to face with Shurochka! My God! It was like a crazy farce or a bad dream!”
It is impossible that Dr. Polnitzski should not have known what an effect his story was producing on me, and it is hardly doubtful that his responsive Slav nature was more or less moved by my excitement. He seemed, however, scarcely to be conscious of me at all. His face was white with suffering, and he spoke with the vehemence of one who tries to be rid of intolerable pain by pouring it out in words.
“In a flash,” he went on, “it came over me what her presence meant, and I said to myself, ‘I will kill him!’ I had always hoped that in striking against the creatures of the Czar’s tyranny I might unknowingly reach the man that had harmed her; but I had wished not to know, for I could not bear that personal feeling should come into the work I did for my country. That work was the one sacred thing. Now what I had feared had been thrust on me. Shurochka was changed; there were marks of suffering in her face, and she showed, too, the effects of training which could never have come honestly into the life of a woman of her station. She was dressed like a lady. At first she did not know me. She spoke to me as a stranger, and implored me to save Kakonzoff. She caught me by the arm in her excitement; and then she recognized me. Then—oh, my God, what creatures women are!—then she cried out that I had loved her once, and that in memory of that time I must help her. Think of it! She flung my broken heart in my face to induce me to save the scoundrel she loved!
“It was Alexandrina, my old-time Shurochka, clinging to me as if she had risen from the grave where her shame should have been hidden, and I loved her then and always. I could hardly control myself to speak to her. All I could do was stupidly to ask if he was kind to her, and she shrank as if I had lashed her with the knout. She cried out that it was no matter, so long as she loved him, and that I must save him: that she could not live without him. I—could n’t endure it! I shook off her hands and rushed away more wild than sane, with her voice in my ears all agony and despair.”
His face was dreadful in its pain, and I felt that I had no right to see it. I closed my eyes, and tried to turn away a little, but in my clumsiness I knocked from the couch a book. The crash of its fall aroused him. He mechanically picked up the volume, and the act seemed somewhat to restore him to himself.