The Intoxicated Ghost, and other stories

“Shurochka was gone. It was whispered that a noble high in the army had carried her off, but no one dared to speak openly. We must be careful how we complain in Holy Russia! When her husband tried to find her, when he tormented the police to right him, he was arrested as a political offender – the charge always serves. The man, as I afterward learned authoritatively, was no more a conspirator than you are. He was sent to the mines of Siberia simply because he complained that his wife had been stolen, and so made himself obnoxious to a man in power. It was fortunate for me that I did not learn the officer’s name, or I should have gone to Siberia too.”

Dr. Polnitzski threw himself into a chair by the fire and remained staring into the coals as if he had forgotten me, and as if he again were back in the dreadful days of which he had spoken. I waited some time before I spoke, and then, without daring to offer sympathy, I asked if he were willing to go on with his story. He looked at me as if he saw me through a dream; then he came to sit down beside my couch.

“Pardon me,” he said. “I was a fool to allow myself to speak, but now you may have the whole of it. It is n’t worth while for me to tell you my experiences as a patriot – a Nihilist, you would say. I was full of zeal; I was young and hot-headed; I thought that all the strength of my feeling was turned to my country. I know now that a good deal of it was consumed in the desire for revenge upon that unknown officer. Russia, our Holy Russia, I said to myself, must be to me both wife and child. Stepniak said to me once that Russia was the only country in the world where it was a man’s duty not to obey the laws. You cannot understand it here in England, where it never occurs to you to fear, as you lie down at night, that for no fault whatever you may in the morning find yourself on the way to lifelong exile and some horrible, living death. I could tell you things that I can hardly think of without going mad; they are the events of every day in our unhappy land. The heroism, the devotion, of those striving to free Russia can be believed only by the few that know they are true. They are beyond human; they are divine. Why, the things I have known done by women so pure and delicate that they were almost angels already – ”

He broke off and wiped his forehead.

“I beg your pardon,” said he, in a tone he evidently tried to make more natural. “I will not talk of this. I have not spoken so for years and I cannot command myself. It is enough for you to know that I saw it all, and that, to the best of my ability, I did my part. As time went on, I established myself as a physician at St. Petersburg. My family connection, although I had no near relatives, was of use to me, and in the end I had an excellent position. I was fortunate in the curing of wounds, and I had the luck to attract attention by saving the life of a near relative of the Czar. All this I looked at as so much work done for the cause. Every advance I made in influence, in wealth, in power, put me in a position to be so much the more serviceable to the great purpose of my life. Personal ambition was so swallowed up in the tremendousness of that issue that self was lost sight of. The patriot cannot remember himself in a land like Russia.

“When the execution” – He paused and turned to me with a singular smile. “You would say the assassination – when the death of General Kakonzoff was determined in our Section, no part was assigned to me, but I was high enough in the counsels of the patriots to know all that was done. He had possession of information which it was necessary to suppress. He came to St. Petersburg to present it in person. He told me frankly enough afterward that he could not trust any one because he counted upon a reward for giving the evidence himself. We were minutely informed of his plans and his movements. We had taken the precaution to replace his body-servant by one of our own men as soon as he began to make inquiries about two patriots who were suspected by the government. He had proofs which would have been fatal to them, and it was necessary to intercept these. If he had been put out of the way, our agent would easily have got possession of the papers, and without the testimony of the general our two friends were safe. The plot failed through one of those chances that make men believe in the supernatural. He was shot as he stepped out of the train at the St. Petersburg station, but the very instant our man fired, Kakonzoff stumbled. The bullet, which should have gone through his heart, passed through his lungs without killing him.”

The perfectly cool manner in which Dr. Polnitzski spoke of this incident affected me like a vertigo. To have a man who is one’s daily companion, and of whom one has become fond, speak of an assassination as if it were an ordinary occurrence, is almost like seeing him concerned himself in a murder. I lay there listening to the doctor with a fascination not unmixed with horror, despite the fact that my sympathies, as he knew beforehand, were strongly with the Nihilists. To be in sympathy with their cause and to come so near as to smell the reek of blood, so to speak, were, however, very different things.

“By a strange chance,” the doctor went on, “I was summoned to attend the wounded man, and although it was a desperate fight, I was after some days satisfied that I could save his life.”

“But,” I interrupted, “I don’t see why you should try to save his life if you were of those who doomed him to death in the first place.”

He looked at me piercingly.

“You forget,” he answered, “that I was called to him as a physician. It is the duty of a physician to save life, as it may be the duty of a patriot to take it. I was trying to do my best in both capacities. I had given the best counsel I could in the Section and, when he was on his feet, I would have shot him myself if it had seemed to my superiors that I was the best person to do it. Does it seem to you that I could have taken advantage of his helplessness, of his confidence, of my skill as a physician, to deprive him of the life which it is the aim of a physician’s existence to preserve?”

He waited for me to reply, but I had no answer to give him. The situation was one so far outside of my experience, so fantastically unreal as measured by my own life, that I could not even judge of it.

“See,” he went on, leaning forward with shining eyes and with increasing excitement of manner, “the patient puts himself into the hands of his physician, body and soul. To betray that trust is to strike at the very heart of the whole sacred art of healing. If I, as a physician, took advantage of this sick man, I not only betrayed the personal trust he put in me, but I was false to the whole principle on which the relation of doctor and patient rests. Don’t you see what a tremendous question is involved? That to harm Kakonzoff was to go beyond the limits of human possibility?”

“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.

“You may judge,” he began again, “the hell that I was in. I could have torn the man to bits, and yet – and yet now I said to myself that to obey the Section and let Kakonzoff die would be doing a murder to gratify personal hate. Yet all the sides of the question tortured me. I asked the valet in the afternoon about the woman that had spoken to me. He shrugged his shoulders, and said she was only a peasant that the general was tired of, but that she would not leave him, although he beat her. He beat her!”

There were tears in my eyes at the intensity with which he spoke, but Dr. Polnitzski’s were dry. He clenched his strong hands as if he were crushing something. Then he shook himself as if he were awaking, and threw back his head with a bitter attempt at a laugh.

“Bah!” he exclaimed, with a shrug. “I have never talked like this in my life, but it is so many years since I talked at all that I have lost control of myself. I beg your pardon.”

He crossed the room, sat down by the fire, and began to fill his pipe.

“But, Dr. Polnitzski,” I protested eagerly, “I do not want to force your confidence, but you cannot stop such a story there.”

He looked at me a moment as if he would not go on. Then his face darkened.

“What could the end of such a story be?” he demanded. “Any end must be ruin and agony. Should I be moved by personal feelings to be false to everything I held sacred? Should I take my revenge at the price of professional honor? I said to myself that in time she might come to care for me, if this man were out of her life. Kindness could do so much with some women. But could I make such a choice?”

“No,” I said slowly, “you could not do that.”

“Could I restore him to life, then, and have him go on beating that poor girl and flinging her into the ditch at last?”

I had no answer.

“Could I let him live to destroy the patriots whose sworn fellow I was? Do you think I could ever sleep again without dreaming of their fate? Could I kill him there in his bed – I, the physician he trusted? Could I do that?”

“In God’s name,” I cried, “what did you do?”

He regarded me with a look that challenged my very deepest thought.

“The patriots were spared,” he answered. “That was my fee for saving the life of General Kakonzoff. A year later I paid for having asked that favor by being exiled myself.”

“And – and – the other?” I asked.

“She, thank God, is dead.”

For a moment or two we remained motionless and unspeaking. Then I silently held out my hand to him. I had no words.

IN THE VIRGINIA ROOM

“Childless,” was the word which she murmured in her heart, as she entered the building which had once been the Presidential Mansion of Jefferson Davis and now is the Confederate Museum. Why the thought of her estranged daughter flashed upon her as she came to do honor to the memory of her long dead husband, Mrs. Desborough could not have told, but so overwhelming was the sadness of her mood that she could hardly wonder if this bitter memory took advantage of her moment of weakness to obtrude itself. She set her lips tightly and put it determinedly into the background. She would not think of the daughter who was lost to her; to-day and here no thought but should go back in loving homage and passionate grief to the hero whose name she bore.

She went at once to the Virginia Room, bowing quickly but kindly to the custodian of the Museum, and as she pushed open the door of the sad place, she thought herself alone. The heavy April rain which was drenching Richmond outside kept visitors away, and the building was almost deserted. In her yearly visits to this spot, those pilgrimages which she had made as to a shrine, she had once before had the Virginia Room to herself, untroubled by the presence of strangers; and now with a quick sigh of relief she realized how great had been the comfort of that solitude. To her sensitive nature it was hard to stand before the memorials of her dead and yet to be aware that strange eyes, eyes curious if sympathetic, might be reading in her face all the emotions of her very soul. To preserve the calm necessary before the public had always seemed to her almost like being untrue to the memory she came to consecrate; and to-day it was with a swelling sigh of relief that she threw back her heavy widow’s veil with the free, proud motion which belonged to the women of her race and time – the women bred in the South before the war. She was an old woman, though not much over sixty, for pain can age more swiftly than time. The high-bred mien would be hers as long as life remained, and wonderful was her self-control. Again and again she had felt unshed tears burn in her eyes like living fire, yet had been sure that no stranger had had reason to look upon her as more than a casual visitor to the museum; but to be able to let her grief have way seemed almost a joy. She felt the quick drops start at the bare thought. Life had left her no greater blessing than this liberty to weep undiscovered over the memorials of her dead.

At the instant a man came from behind one of the cases, so near that she might have touched him. Instinctively she tried to take her handkerchief from her chatelaine, and in her confusion detached the bag. It fell at the feet of the gentleman, who stooped at once to pick it up. As he held it out, she forced a smile to her fine old face.

“Thank you,” she said; “I – I was very awkward.”

“Not at all,” he responded. “Those bags are so easily unhooked.”

The tone struck her almost like a blow. To the disappointment of finding that she was not alone in this solemn place was added the bitter fact that the intruder who had come upon her was not of her people. An impulse of bitterness from the old times of blood and of fire swept over her like a wave. The room had carried her back as it always did to the past, and after almost two-score years she for the first time broke through the stern resolve that had kept her from hostile speech.

“You are a Northerner!” she exclaimed.

The words were nothing, but the tone, she knew, was hot with all the long pent-up bitterness. She felt her cheek flush as, almost before the words were spoken, she realized what she had said. The stranger, however, showed no sign of resentment. He smiled, then grew grave again.

“Yes. Do not Northerners visit the Museum? I supposed nobody came to Richmond without coming here.”

She was painfully annoyed, and felt her thin cheeks glow as hotly as if she were still a girl. To be lacking in politeness was sufficiently humiliating, but to seem rude to one from the North, to fail in living up to her traditions, was intolerable.

“I beg your pardon,” she forced herself to say. “To come through that door is to step into the past, and I spoke as I might have when – ”

“When a Yankee in the house of President Davis would have required explicit explanation,” the stranger finished the sentence she knew not how to complete.

Even in her discomposure she appreciated both the courtesy which spared her the embarrassment of being left in the confusion of an unfinished remark and the adroitness which gave to his reply just the right tone of lightness. He was evidently a man of the world. Her instinct, not to be outdone in politeness, least of all by one of her race, made her speak again.

“I was rude,” she said stiffly. “To-day is an anniversary on which I always come here, and I forgot myself.”

“Then I must have seemed doubly obtrusive,” he returned gravely.

He was certainly a gentleman. He was well groomed, moreover, with the appearance of quiet wealth. One of his hands was ungloved, and she noted appreciatively how finely shaped it was, how white and well kept. The North had all the wealth now, she reflected involuntarily, while so many of the descendants of old Southern families were forced to earn their very bread by occupations unworthy of them. They could not keep their fine hands, hands that told of blood and breeding for generations, as could this stranger before her. His attractiveness, his air of prosperity, were offensive to her because they emphasized the pitiful poverty of so many of her kin whose forefathers had never known what want could be.

“The Museum is open to the public,” she replied, with increasing coldness.

She expected him to bow and leave her. Not only did he linger, but she seemed to see in his face a look of pity. Before she could resent this pity, however, she met his eyes with her own, and the look seemed to her to be one of sympathy.

“Will you pardon my saying that I too came here to-day because it is an anniversary?”

“An anniversary?” she echoed. “How can an anniversary bring a Northerner here?”

“It is n’t mine exactly. It is my son’s. His mother is a Virginian.”

So highly strung was her mood that she noticed almost with approval that he had said “is” and not “was.” He had at least not deprived his wife of her birthright as a daughter of the sacred soil. She began to be aware of a growing excitement. She could hardly have heard unmoved any allusion to a marriage which had taken from the South a woman born to its traditions and to its sorrows. She felt a fresh impulse of anger against this prosperous son of the North who had carried away from a Virginia mother a daughter as she had been robbed of hers. The cruel pang of crushed motherhood which ached within her at the remembrance of her own child, the child she had herself cast off because of her marriage, was so fierce that for a moment she could not command her voice. She could not shape the question which was in her heart, but she felt that with her eyes she all but commanded the stranger to tell her more.

“We live in the North,” he explained, “but she has long promised the boy that when he was eight he should see the relics of his Virginian grandfather which are in the museum here. Unfortunately, when the time came, she was not well enough to come with him; and as she wished him to be here on this especial day, I have brought him.”

The Southern woman felt her heart beating tumultuously, and it was almost as if another spoke when she said in a manner entirely conventional: —

“I trust that her illness is not serious.”

“If it were, I should not be here myself,” he answered.

She collected her strength, which seemed to be leaving her, and forced herself to look around the room. She could not have told what she expected, or whether she most hoped or feared what she might see.

“But your son?” she asked.

The man’s face changed subtly.

“My father,” he replied, “was an officer in the Union army. I wished to see this place first, to be prepared for Desborough’s questions. It is n’t easy to answer the questions of a clever lad whose two grandfathers have been killed in the same battle, fighting on opposite sides.”

The name struck her like a blow. She leaned for support against the corner of the nearest case, and fixed her gaze on the pathetic coat of General Lee behind the glass which showed her as a faint wraith the reflection of her own face. Desborough had been her husband’s name, and this the anniversary of his death; she felt as if the dead had arisen to confront her, and that some imperative call in the blood insistently responded. Yet she could not believe that her son-in-law was before her, regarding her with that straightforward, appealingly honest gaze; she said to herself that the name was merely a coincidence, that every day in the year was the anniversary of the death of some Virginian hero, and that this could not be her daughter’s husband.

“Have you decided what to tell your son?” she heard her voice, strange and far off, asking amid the thrilling quiet of the room.

The stranger regarded her as if struck by the note of challenge in her tone. His serious eyes seemed to her to be endeavoring to probe her own in search of the cause of her sharpness.

“I can do no more,” was his answer, “than to tell him what I have always told him – the truth, as far as I can see it.”

“And the truth which you can tell him here – here, before the sacred relics of our dead, the sacred memorials of our Lost Cause – ”

She could not go on, but stopped suddenly that he might not hear her voice break.

“He has never been taught anything but that the men of the South fought for what they believed, and that no man can do a nobler thing than to give his life for his faith.”

She became suddenly and illogically sure that she was talking to her son-in-law, although the ground of her conviction was no other than the one she had just before rejected. The whole thing flashed upon her mind as perfectly simple. Her daughter knew that on this day she was always to be found here, and had meant to meet her, with the little son bearing his grandfather’s name. The question now was whether the husband knew. Something in his air, something half-propitiatory, something certainly beyond the ordinary deference offered to a lady who is a stranger, gave her a vague distrust. She was not untouched by the desire for reconciliation, but she had again and again resisted that before, and least of all could she tolerate the idea of being tricked. The possibility that her son-in-law might be feigning ignorance to work the more surely upon her sympathy angered her.