Prince Demetrius was not destined to see the fulfilment of his remoter hope, and to take a grandchild on his knee. In the September of this year, directly after the return of Sophia and her husband, he underwent an operation for tumour, and in November it was found that there was a recrudescence of the malady. A portion of the growth was removed by the forceps and sent for examination to Professor Virchow at Berlin, who reported unfavourably on it. The growth, it appeared on examination, was malignant, and the professor feared that there was no doubt that it was cancerous. He wrote at length to the Prince’s medical adviser, stating that life might perhaps be prolonged by a second operation, but that the reappearance of the disease so short a time after the first operation indicated that the knife could not effect a permanent cure. It was advisable, so he thought, to acquaint Princess Sophia with the true state of the case, and let the patient decide whether he would undergo a second operation or not. To one in his state of health this would be risky, if not{66} positively dangerous—in fact, the case was exactly one of those when it was right that the patient should decide.
The Prince’s doctor did as the pathologist suggested, and consulted Princess Sophia. She was perfectly clear that it was better to tell her father, and then leave the decision with him. Stricken as she was, for she had a strong personal affection for her father independent of the natural tie of relationship, she offered to tell him herself of the professor’s report, and the doctor gladly accepted her proposal.
It was one of the Prince’s good days on which she went to acquaint him with his condition, and the exceeding pain which he had suffered for more than a week was sensibly less. For a great part of this period he had been kept as far as possible under the dulling influence of morphia; but he had slept a natural sleep the night before, and had awoke his own man.
Outside the day was typically autumnal; the great groves of chestnuts, which stretched down from the lawn to the river, were in the short blaze of their gaudy liveries, and a coolness ineffably brisk and bracing was in the air. There had been a slight frost during the night, already the more brilliant of the leaves were falling, and the sweet odour of cleanliness came in through the open windows. The Princess, as she walked slowly from the room where she had breakfasted to her father’s bedroom, was touched in a way that hitherto had{67} been unknown to her, with the terrible thoughtlessness of inanimate things. This shedding of the russet foliage was but a simulated tragedy; next spring the trees would again be green and luxuriant as if no winter had ever interrupted their perennial vigour; winter to them was but a time for sleep, a renovation of their life, while to the puny sons of men no spring restored the ravages of time past. She looked out over the inimitable freshness of the land as she waited to know if her father could receive her, and the sense of contrast between the infinitesimal limits of humanity and its infinite possibilities caused her eyes to fill with tears. How momentous and trivial a thing was life!
Yes, he would see her at once; and she entered.
Prince Demetrius was in a humour at which imagination might boggle. He had enjoyed a good night; his pain was relieved, and he had reverted to his own diabolical temper.
Sophia stood for a moment in the doorway, hidden from the bed where her father lay by a screen, her nerves shrinking from that which lay before her, and steeling herself to go in. A voice from the bed, with an extraordinary degree of acidity in it, helped her to make the effort needed.
‘I should have thought à priori,’ remarked Prince Demetrius, ‘that a door must either be shut or open, but you, Sophia, seem to have grasped the subtlety of touch which is necessary to the leaving of it neither one nor the other. Please{68} decide which you intend to do, and for God’s sake do it.’
She drew a long breath, shut the door, and came to the bedside.
‘Good-morning, father,’ she said. ‘They told me you had a very good night. I am so glad;’ and she kissed him on the forehead.
‘The worst of a good night,’ remarked her father, ‘is that you do not know it is good until it is over. The pleasure of it is as unreal as the pain of a regret. Personally I never regret anything. Fools regret, and even a knave can repent.’
Sophia stood there silent; the burden of what she had to say took from her the power of initiating trivialities; but her father went on, rasping like a file.
‘When a thing is done, it is done, and things for the most part do not produce any consequences at all, though people who have addled their brains with trivial thinking tell us that they do. Moralists and philosophers are the most shallow people in the world, for argument is ever less sound than conviction. This morning, Sophia, you look as if you were inclined to argue. Please don’t do that, or, if you must argue—I know it may happen to any of us—please go and argue in the passage, where I can’t hear you.’
Sophia sat down by the bedside.
‘I am not come to argue,’ she said; ‘but, father, I am come to talk. I am come to tell you something.{69}’
‘Tell it, then,’ said Demetrius, with the composure of a tree.
‘It is this: I have a report from Berlin, and a question to ask you—— ’ and she stopped.
‘The message first, the question afterwards,’ said Prince Demetrius, and his composure seemed quite unshaken.
‘Professor Virchow has sent a most unfavourable report; your malady is malignant——’ and she stopped again.
‘Why the devil not say cancer, and have done with it?’ asked that man of iron.
‘You are right. And the question I have to ask you is whether you will have another operation or not. They say it is for you to decide. It will be dangerous, but it will, if successful, prolong your life a little.’
Prince Demetrius turned slightly in bed to look at Sophia, for her voice was unsteady.
‘Then it is the silliest question I ever heard,’ he said. ‘Of course I shall have nothing of the sort done. Blow your nose, Sophia, and don’t cry. If you allude to the subject again, I shall send you out of the room. Tell the doctors this only, that if ever they ask me anything so absurd again, I shall dispense with their services. The matter is closed. And now, if you have nothing to do, we will play écarté, please. Napoleon points, and a hundred francs on the game. Do you remember playing with me for the first time when you were a little girl? You played{70} well even then; now you are nearly as good as I am.’
From that day the Prince grew rapidly worse, and he suffered much. For many hours in the day he was under morphia, but a small interval only would elapse between the passing off of the of the narcotic and the return of pain. But in these intervals he was powerfully lucid and incisive.
‘It is this,’ he said once—‘this mockery of life which the medical fools thought I might wish to be prolonged. A man must have a singularly low opinion of consciousness if he thinks this is worth having. It is a bore, an awful bore, Sophia, and reminds me of waiting at a station for one’s train, which is the most inglorious way I know of passing the time.’
‘Would you care that I should read you the news?’ Sophia would ask sometimes.
‘Certainly not,’ he answered. ‘At last I feel irresponsible. Nobody can do anything which concerns me, except to leave the door open when I prefer it shut. Really, if one has to be somewhere, to be on a death-bed is one of the very best places. Nothing can touch one; it is like getting out of a tunnel full of jarring noises.’
He raised himself in bed a little.
‘I wish I had been your child, Sophia,’ he said, ‘and that is really all I want. I have lived quite long enough on my own account. There, don’t cry. I shall have another half-hour, I suppose, before the disgusting pain returns, so let us play{71} picquet. We shall have time for one partie, and then I shall send you away.’
But death was merciful, and came quicker than the doctors had anticipated, and on the first of January the Princess Sophia was proclaimed hereditary monarch of the realm of Rhodopé.