The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations

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There was in Moscow a society of rich gamesters, presided over by
the celebrated Chekalinsky, who had passed all his life at the card
table, and had amassed millions, accepting bills of exchange for
his winnings, and paying his losses in ready money. His long
experience secured for him the confidence of his companions, and
his open house, his famous cook, and his agreeable and fascinating
manners, gained for him the respect of the public. He came to St.
Petersburg. The young men of the capital flocked to his rooms,
forgetting balls for cards, and preferring the emotions of faro to
the seductions of flirting. Naroumoff conducted Hermann to
Chekalinsky's residence.

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.

Vera Jelihovsky

The General's Will

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 threshhold.
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 Paylovitch 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.

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