Otto Kreisler, when he had entered the Café Souchet, had been anxious. His eyes had picked out Soltyk in a delicate flurry. He had been afraid that he might escape him. Soltyk looked so securely bedded in life, and he wanted to wrench him out. He was not at all bad-tempered at the moment. He would have extracted him quite “painlessly” if required. But bleeding and from the roots, he must come out! (Br-r-rr. The Bersaker rage!)

He was quite quiet and well-behaved; above all things, well-behaved! The mood he had happened on for this particular phase of his action was a virulent snobbery. He was a painful and blushing snob! He had, at his last public appearance, taken the r?le of a tramp-comedian. He had invited every description of slight and indignity. The world seemed to wish to perpetuate this part for him. But he would not play! He refused! A hundred times, he refused!

He remembered with eagerness that he was a German gentleman, with a university education; who had never worked; a member of an honourable family! He remembered each detail socially to his advantage, realizing methodically things he had from childhood accepted and never thought of examining. But he had gone a step further. He had arbitrarily revived the title of Frei-Herr that, it was rumoured in his family, his ancestors had borne. With Bitzenko he had referred to himself as the Frei-Herr Otto Kreisler. Had the occasion allowed, he would have been very courteous and gentle with Soltyk, merely to prove what a gentleman he was! But, alas, nothing but brutality (against the grain—the noble grain—as this went!) would achieve his end.

And the end was still paramount. His snobbery was the outcome of this end, of his end. It was, in this obsession of disused and disappearing life, the wild assertion of vitality, the clamour for recognition[257] that life and the beloved self were still there, that brought out the reeking and brand-new snob. He was almost dead (he had promised his father his body for next month, and must be punctual), but people already had begun treading on him and striking matches on his boots. As to fighting with a man who was practically dead, to all intents and purposes, one mass of worms—a worm, in short—that was not to be expected of anybody.

So he became a violent snob.

It was Soltyk’s rude behaviour on the day before in the presence of Anastasya that had set him raving on this subject. The Russian Pole was up against a raving snob whose social dignity he had wounded.

Bitzenko and Kreisler came out to get Louis Soltyk like two madmen, full of solemn method and with miraculous solidarity. Their schemes and energies flew direct from mind to mind, without the need for words. Bitzenko with his own hand had brushed the back of Kreisler’s coat; on tiptoe doing this he looked particularly childlike. They were together there in Kreisler’s room before they started like two little boys dressing up in preparation for some mischief.

Kreisler had fixed his eyes on Soltyk from his table with alert offensiveness. The prosperous appearance of the Poles annoyed him deeply. Their watches were all there, silk handkerchiefs slipped up their sleeves; they looked sleek and new. A gentle flame of social security and ease danced in their eyes and gestures. He was out in the dark, they were in a lighted room! He wished their fathers’ affairs might deteriorate and their fortunes fall to pieces; that their watches could be stolen, and their restaurant-tick attacked by insidious reports! And as he watched them he felt more and more an outcast, shabbier and shabbier. He saw himself the little official in a German provincial town that his father’s letter foreshadowed.

One or two of them pointed him out to Soltyk, and it was a wounding laugh of the latter’s that brought him to his feet.

[258]

As he was slapping his enemy he woke up out of his nightmare. He was like a sleeper having the first inkling of his solitude when he is woken by the climax of his dream, still surrounded by tenacious influences. But had any one struck him then, the blow would have had as little effect as a blow aimed at a waking man by a phantom of his sleep. The noise around him was a receding accompaniment.

Then he felt hypnotized by Soltyk’s quietness. The sweet white of the face made him sick. To overcome this he stepped forward again to strike the dummy once more, and then it moved suddenly. As he raised his hand his glasses almost slipped off, and at that point he was seized by the gar?ons. Hurried out on to the pavement, he could still see, at the bottom of a huge placid mirror just inside the café, the wriggling backs of the band of Poles. Drawing out his card-case, he had handed the waiter a visiting-card. The waiter at first refused it. He turned his head aside vaguely, as a dog does when doubtful about some morsel offered him; then he took it. Kreisler saw in the mirror the tearing up of his card. Fury once more—not so much because it was a new slight as that he feared his only hope, Soltyk, might escape him.

The worry of this hour or so in which Bitzenko was negotiating told on him so much that when at last his emissary announced that an arrangement had been come to in the sense he wished, he questioned him incredulously. He felt hardly any satisfaction, reaction setting in immediately.

Bitzenko went back to Kreisler’s door with him and, promising to return within half an hour, left him. Tarr having, as he had stipulated, left when the talking was over, Bitzenko first went in search of a friend to serve as second. The man he decided on was already in bed, and at once, half asleep, without preparation of any sort, consented to do what was asked of him.

“Will you be a second in a duel to-morrow morning at half-past six?”

[259]

“Yes.”

“At half-past six?”

“Yes.” And after a minute or two, “Is it you?”

“No, a German friend of mine.”

“All right.”

“You will have to get up at five.”

Bitzenko’s friend was a tall, powerfully built young Russian painter, who, with his great bow-legs, would take up some straggling and extravagantly twisted pose of the body and remain immobile for minutes together, with an air of ridiculous detachment. This combination of a tortured, restless attitude, and at the same time statuesque tendency, suggested something like a contemplative acrobat or contortionist. A mouth of almost anguished attention and little calm indifferent eyes, produced similar results in the face.

Bitzenko’s next move was to go to his rooms, put a gently ticking little clock, with an enormous alarum on the top, under his arm, and then walk round once more to Otto Kreisler’s. He informed his friend of these last arrangements made in his interests. He suggested that it would be better for him to sleep there that night, to save time in the morning. In short, he attached himself to Kreisler’s person. Until it were deposited in the large cemetery near by, or else departed from the Gare du Nord in a deal box for burial in Germany, it should not leave him. In the event of victory, and he being no longer responsible for it, it should disappear as best it could. The possible subsequent conflict with the police was not without charm for Bitzenko. He regarded the police force, its functions and existence, as a pretext for adventure.

The light was blown out. Bitzenko curled himself up on the floor. He insisted on this. Kreisler must be fresh in the morning and do him justice. The Russian could hear the bed shaking for some time. Kreisler was trembling violently. A sort of exultation at the thought of his success caused this nervous attack. He had been quite passive since he had heard that all was well.

[260]

At about half-past four in the morning Kreisler was dreaming of Volker and a pact he had made with him in his sleep never to divulge some secret, which there was never any possibility of his doing in any case, as he had completely forgotten what it was. He was almost annihilated by a terrific explosion. With his eyes suddenly wide open, he saw the little clock quivering in the mantelpiece beneath its large alarum. When it had stopped Kreisler could hardly believe his ears, as though this sound had been going to accompany life, for that day at least, as a destructive and terrifying feature. Then he saw the Russian, already on his feet. His white and hairy little body had apparently risen energetically out of the scratch bedclothes simultaneously with the “going off” of his clock, as though it were a mechanism set for the same hour.

They both dressed without a word. Kreisler wrote a short letter to his father, entrusting it to his second.

Kreisler’s last few francs were to be spent on a taxi to take them to the place arranged on, outside the fortifications.

They found the other second sound asleep. Bitzenko more or less dressed him. They set out in their taxi to the rendezvous by way of the Bois.

The chilly and unusual air of the early morning, the empty streets and shuttered houses, destroyed all feeling of reality of what was happening for Kreisler. Had the duel been a thing to fear it would have had an opposite effect. His errand did not appear as an inflexible reality, either, following upon events that there was no taking back. It was a whim, a caprice, they were pursuing, as though, for instance, they had woken up in the early morning and decided to go fishing. They were carrying it out with a dogged persistency, with which our whims are often served.

He kept his thought away from Soltyk. He seemed a very long way off; it would be fatiguing for the mind to go in search of him.

When the scientist’s nature, with immense fugue,[261] has induced a man to marry some handsome young lady—this feat accomplished, Nature leaves him practically alone, only coming back to give him a prod from time to time—assured that, like a little trickling stream, his life will go steadily on in the bed gauged for it by this upheaval. Nature, in Kreisler’s case, had done its work of another description. But she had left the Russian with him to see that all was carried out according to her wishes. Kreisler’s German nature that craved discipline, a course marked out, had got more even than it asked for. It had been presented with a mimic Fate.

But Bitzenko evidently took his pleasure morosely. The calm and assurance of the evening before had given place to a brooding humour. He was only restored to a silent and intense animation on hearing his “Browning” speak. He produced this somewhere in the Bois, and insisted on his principal having a little practice as they had plenty of time to spare. This was a very imprudent step. It might draw attention to their movements. Kreisler proved an excellent shot. Then the Russian himself, with impassible face, emptied a couple of chambers into a tree-trunk. He put his “Browning” back into his pocket hastily after this, as though startled at his own self-indulgence.

A piece of waste land, on the edge of a wood, well hidden on all sides, had been chosen for the duel.

The enemy was not on the ground. Kreisler’s passivity still subsisted. So far he had felt that Accident had been dealt a shrewd blow and brought to its knees. He was in good hands. Until this was all over he had nothing to worry about.

Fresh compartment. The duel became for him, as he stood on the damp grass, conventional. It was a duel like another. He was seeking reparation by arms. He had been libelled and outraged. “A beautiful woman” was at the bottom of it. Life had no value for him! Tant pis for the other man who had been foolhardy enough to cross his path. His coat-collar turned up, he looked sternly towards[262] the road, his moustaches blowing a little in the wind. He asked Bitzenko for a cigarette. That gentleman did not smoke, but the other Russian produced a khaki cigarette with a long mouthpiece. He struck a light. As Kreisler lit his cigarette at it, his hand resting against the other’s, a strange feeling shot through him at the contact of this flesh. He moistened his lips and spat out a piece of the mouthpiece he had bitten through.

The hour arranged came round and there was still no sign of anybody. The possibility of a hitch in the proceedings dawned on Kreisler. Personal animosity for Soltyk revived. That idea of obstinacy in a caprice, instead of merely carrying out something prearranged and unavoidable, despite his passivity, had proved really the wakefulness of his will. He looked towards his companions, alone there on the ground of the encounter. They were an unsatisfactory pair, after all. They did not look a winning team. He reproached himself for having hit just on this Russian for assistance.

Bitzenko, on the other hand, was deep in thought. He was rehearsing his part of second. The duel in which he had blinded his adversary was a figment of his boyish brain, confided with tears in his voice one evening to a friend. His only genuine claim to activity was that, in a perfect disguise, he had assisted the peasants of his estate to set fire to his little Manor House during the revolution of 1906 for the fun of the thing and in an access of revolutionary sentiment. Afterwards he had assisted the police with information in the investigation of the affair, also anonymously. All this he kept to himself. He referred to his past in Russia in a way that conjured up more luridness than the flames of his little chateau (which did not burn at all well) warranted.

Bitzenko was quite in his element climatically; whereas Kreisler felt his hands getting so cold that he thought they might fail him in the duel.

But a car was heard beyond the trees on the Paris road. This sound in the listless blur of nature was[263] masterful in its significance. It struck steadily and at once into brutish apathy. It so plainly knew what it wanted. It had perhaps outstripped men in that. Men in their soft bodies still contained the apathy of the fields. Their mind had burst out of them and taken these crawling pulps up on its rigid back.

It was Staretsky’s car. With its load of hats it drew up. The four members of the other party came on to the field, the fourth a young Polish doctor. They walked quickly. Bitzenko went to meet them. Staretsky protested energetically that the duel must not proceed.

“It must—not—go—on! Should anything happen—you must allow me to say, should anything happen—the blood of whoever falls will be at your door!” But he felt all the same that the prospect of having a little pond of blood at his door was an alluring one for Bitzenko.

“Has not your principal seen that in accepting this duel, M. Soltyk had proved his respect for Herr Kreisler’s claim? The attitude your principal attributed to him is not his attitude?”

Bitzenko stiffened.

“Is there anything in Herr Kreisler that would justify M. Soltyk in considering that he was condescending??”

The little Russian kept up his cunning and baffling wrangle. Soltyk’s eyes steadily avoided Kreisler’s person. He hoped this ridiculous figure might make some move enabling them to abandon the duel. But the idea of a favour coming from such a quarter was repellent. His stomach had been out of order the day before—he wondered if it would surge up, disgrace him. He might be sick at any moment. He saw himself on tiptoe, in an ignominious spasm, the proceedings held up, friends and enemies watching. He kept his eyes off Kreisler as a man on board ship keeps his eyes off a dish of banana fritters or a poached egg.

Kreisler, from twenty yards off, stared through his[264] glasses at the group of people he had assembled, as though he had been examining the enemy through binoculars. Obediently, erect and still, he appeared rather amazed at what was occurring. Soltyk, in rear of the others, struggled with his bile. He slipped into his mouth a sedative tablet, oxide of bromium and heroin. This made him feel more sick. For a few moments he stood still in horror, expecting to vomit at every moment. The blood rushed to his head and covered the back of his neck with a warm liquid sheet.

Kreisler’s look of surprise deepened. He had seen Soltyk slipping something into his mouth, and was puzzled and annoyed, like a child. What was he up to? Poison was the only guess he could give. What on earth??

Having taken part in many mensurs he knew that for this very serious duel his emotions were hardly adequate. His nervous system was as quiescent as a corpse’s. He became offended with his phlegm. All this instinctive resistance to the idea of Death, the indignity of being nothing, was rendered empty by his premature insensitiveness. He tried to visualize and feel. In a few minutes he might be dead! That had so little effect that he almost laughed.

Then he reflected that that man over there might in a few minutes be wiped out. He would become a disintegrating mess, uglier than any vitriol or syphilis could make him. All that organism he, Kreisler, would be turning into dung, as though by magic. He, Kreisler, is insulted. The sensations and energies of that man deny him equality of existence. He, Kreisler, lifts his hand, presses a little bar of steel, and the other is swept away into the earth. Heaven knows where the insulting spirit goes to. But the physical disfigurement at least is complete. He went through it laboriously. But it fell flat as well. He was too near the event to benefit by his fancy. Possibilities were weakened by the nearness of Certainty.

[265]

His momentary resentment with Bitzenko survived, and he next became annoyed at being treated like an objec............