Tarr’s character at this time performed repeatedly the following manoeuvre: his best energies would, once a farce was started, gradually take over the business from the play department and continue it as a serious line of its own. It was as though it had not the go to initiate anything of its own accord. It was content to exploit the clown’s discoveries.

The bellicose visit to Kreisler now projected was launched to a slow blast of Humour, ready, when the time came, to turn into a storm. His contempt for the German would not allow him to enter into anything seriously against him. Kreisler was a joke. Jokes, it had to be admitted (and in that they became more effective than ever), were able to make you sweat.

That Kreisler could be anywhere but at the CafÉ de l’Aigle on the following evening never entered Tarr’s head. As he was on an unpleasant errand, he took it for granted that Fate would on this occasion put everything punctually at his disposal. Had it been an errand of pleasure, he would have instinctively supposed the reverse.

At ten, and at half-past, his rival had not yet arrived. Tarr set out to make rapidly a tour of the other cafÉs. But Kreisler might be turning over a new leaf. He might be going to bed, as on the previous evening. He must not be again sought, though, on his own territory. The moral disadvantage of this position, on a man’s few feet of most intimate floor space, Tarr had clearly realized.

The CafÉ Souchet, the most frequented cafÉ of the Quarter, entered merely in a spirit of German thoroughness, was, however, the one. More alert, and brushed up a little, Tarr thought, Kreisler was sitting with another man, with a bearded, naÏf, and rather pleasant face, over his coffee. No pile of saucers this time attended him.

The stranger was a complication. Perhaps the night’s affair should be put off until the conditions were more favourable. But Tarr’s vanity was impatient. His wait in the original cafÉ had made him nervous and hardly capable of acting with circumspection. On the other hand, it might come at once. This was an opposite complication. Kreisler might open hostilities on the spot. This would rob him of the subtle benefits to be derived from his gradual strategy. This must be risked. He was not very calm. He crudely went up to Kreisler’s table and sat down. The feeling of the lack of aplomb in this action, and his disappointment at the presence of the other man, chased the necessary good humour out of his face. He had carefully preserved this expression for some time, even walking lazily and quietly as if he were carrying a jug of milk. Now it vanished in a moment. Despite himself, he sat down opposite Kreisler as solemn as a judge, pale, his eyes fixed on the object of his activity with something like a scowl.

But, his first absorption in his own sensations lifted and eased a little, he recognized that something very unusual was in the air.

Kreisler and his friend were not speaking or doing anything visibly. They were just sitting still, two self-possessed malefactors. Nevertheless, Tarr’s arrival to all appearance disturbed and even startled them, as if they had been completely wrapped up in some engrossing game or conspiracy.

Kreisler had his eyes trained across the room. The other man, too, was turned slightly in that direction, although his eyes followed the tapping of his boot against the ironwork of the table, and he only looked up occasionally.

Kreisler turned round, stared at Tarr without at once taking in who it was; then, as though saying to himself, “It’s only Bertha’s Englishman,” he took up his former wilful and patient attitude, his eyes fixed.

Tarr had grinned a little as Kreisler turned his way, rescued from his solemnity. There was just a perceptible twist in the German’s neck and shade of expression that would have said “Ah, there you are? Well, be quiet, we’re having some fun. Just you wait!”

But Tarr was so busy with his own feelings that he didn’t understand this message. He wondered if he had been seen by Kreisler in the distance, and if this reception had been concerted between him and his friend. If so, why?

Sitting, as he was, with his back to the room, he stared at his neighbour. His late boon companion distinctly was waiting, with absurd patience, for something. The poise of his head, the set of his yellow Prussian jaw, were truculent, although otherwise he was peaceful and attentive. His collar looked new rather than clean. His necktie was one not familiar to Tarr. Boots shone impassibly under the table.

Tarr screwed his chair sideways, and faced the room. It was full of people—very athletically dressed American men, all the varieties of the provincial in American women, powdering their noses and ogling Turks, or sitting, the younger ones, with blameless interest and fine complexions. And there were plenty of Turks, Mexicans, Russians and other “types” for the American ladies! In the wide passage-way into the further rooms sat the orchestra, playing the “Moonlight Sonata,” Dvorak and the “Machiche.”

In the middle of the room, at Tarr’s back, he now saw a group of eight or ten young men whom he had seen occasionally in the CafÉ Berne. They looked rather German, but smoother and more vivacious. Poles or Austrians, then? Two or three of them appeared to be amusing themselves at his expense. Had they noticed the little drama that he was conducting at his table? Were they friends of Kreisler’s, too?—He was incapable of working anything out. He flushed and felt far more like beginning on them than on his complicated idiot of a neighbour, who had become a cold task. This genuine feeling illuminated for him the tired frigidity of his present employment.

He had moved his chair a little to the right, towards the group at his back, and more in front of Kreisler, so that he could look into his face. On turning back now, and comparing the directions of the various pairs of eyes engaged, he at length concluded that he was without the sphere of interest; just without it.

At this moment Kreisler sprang up. His head was thrust forward, his hands were in rear, partly clenched and partly facilitating his passage between the tables by hemming in his coat tails. The smooth round cloth at the top of his back, his smooth head above that with no back to it, struck Tarr in the way a momentary smell of sweat would. Germans had no backs to them, or were like polished pebbles behind. Tarr mechanically moved his hand upwards from his lap to the edge of the table on the way to ward off a blow. He was dazed by all the details of this meeting, and the peculiar miscarriage of his plan.

But Kreisler brushed past him with the swift deftness of a person absorbed with some strong movement of the will. The next moment Tarr saw the party of young men he had been observing in a sort of noisy blur of commotion. Kreisler was in among them, working on something in their midst. There were two blows—smack—smack; an interval between them. He could not see who had received them.

Tarr then heard Kreisler shout in German:

“For the second time to-day! Is your courage so slow that I must do it a third time?”

Conversation had stopped in the cafÉ and everybody was standing. The companions of the man smacked, too, had risen in their seats. They were expostulating in three languages. Several were mixed up with the garÇons, who had rushed up to do their usual police work on such occasions. Over Kreisler’s shoulder, his eyes carbonized to a black sweetness, his cheeks a sweet sallow-white, with a red mark where Kreisler’s hand had been, Tarr saw the man his German friend had singled out. He had sprung towards the aggressor, but by that time Kreisler had been seized from behind and was being hustled towards the door. The blow seemed to hurt his vanity so much that he was standing half-conscious till the pain abated. He seemed to wish to brush the blow off, but was too vain to raise his hands to his cheek. It was left there like a scorching compress. His friends, Kreisler wrenched away from them, were left standing in a group, in attitudes more or less of violent expostulation and excitement.

Kreisler receded in the midst of a band of waiters towards the door. He was resisting and protesting, but not too much to retard his quick exit. The garÇons had the self-conscious unconcern of civilian braves.

The young man attacked and his friends were explaining what had happened, next, to the manager of the cafÉ. A garÇon brought in a card on a plate. There was a new outburst of protest and contempt from the others. The plate was presented to the individual chiefly concerned, who brushed it away, as though he had been refusing a dish that a waiter was, for some reason, pressing upon him. Then suddenly he took up the card, tore it in half, and again waived away the persistent platter. The garÇon looked at the manager of the cafÉ and then returned to the door.

So this was what Kreisler and the little bearded man had been so busy about! Kreisler had laid his plans for the evening as well! Tarr’s scheme was destined not to be realized; unless he followed Kreisler at once, and got up a second row, a more good-natured one, just outside the cafÉ? Should he go out now and punch Kreisler’s head, fight about a little bit, and then depart, his business done, and leave Kreisler to go on with his other row? For he felt that Kreisler intended making an evening of it. His companion had not taken part in the fracas, but had followed on his heels in his ejection, protesting with a vehemence that was intended to hypnotize.

Just at the moment when he had felt that he was going to be one of the principal parties to a violent scene, Tarr had witnessed, not himself at all, but another man snatched up into his rÔle. He felt relieved. As he watched the man Kreisler had struck, he seemed to be watching himself. And yet he felt rather on the side of Kreisler. With a mortified chuckle he prepared to pay for his drink and be off, leaving Kreisler for ever to his very complicated, mysterious and turbulent existence. He noticed just then that Kreisler’s friend had come back again, and was talking to the man who had been struck. He could hear that they were speaking Russian or Polish. With great collectedness, Kreisler’s emissary, evidently, was meeting their noisy expostulations. He could not at least, like a card, be torn in half! On the other hand, in his person he embodied the respectability of a visiting card. He was dressed with perfect “correctness” suitable to such occasions and such missions as his appeared to be. By his gestures (one of which was the taking an imaginary card between his thumb and forefinger and tearing it) Tarr could follow a little what he was saying.

“That, sir,” he seemed to assert, “is not the way to treat a gentleman. That, too, is an insult no gentleman will support.” He pointed towards the door. “Herr Kreisler, as you know, cannot enter the cafÉ; he is waiting there for your reply. He has been turned out like a drunken workman.”

The Russian was as grave as he was collected, and stood in front of the other principal in this affair, who had sat down again now, with the evident determination to get a different reply. The talking went on for some time. Then he turned towards Tarr, and, seeing him watching the discussion, came towards him, raising his hat. He said in French:

“You know Herr Kreisler, I believe. Will you consent to act for him with me, in an affair that unfortunately?? If you would step over here, I will put you ‘au courant.’”

“I’m afraid I cannot act for Herr Kreisler, as I am leaving Paris early to-morrow morning,” Tarr replied.

But the Russian displayed the same persistence with him as he had observed him already capable of with the other people.

At last Tarr said, “I don’t mind acting temporarily for a few minutes, now, until you can find somebody else. But you must understand that I cannot delay my journey—you must find a substitute at once.”

The Russian explained with businesslike gusto and precision, having drawn him towards the door (seemingly to cut off a possible retreat of the enemy), that it was a grave affair. Kreisler’s honour was compromised. His friend Otto Kreisler had been provoked in an extraordinary fashion. Stories had been put about concerning him, affecting seriously the sentiments of a girl he knew regarding him; put about with that object by another gentleman, also acquainted with this girl. The Russian luxuriated emphatically on this point. Tarr suggested that they should settle the matter at once, as he had not very much time. He was puzzled. Surely the girl mentioned must be Bertha? If so, had Bertha been telling more fibs? Was the Kreisler mystery after all to her discredit? Perhaps he was now in the presence of another rival, existing, unknown to him, even during his friendship with her.

In this heroic, very solemnly official atmosphere of ladies’ “honour” and the “honour” of gentlemen, that the little Russian was creating, Tarr unwillingly remained for some time. Noisy bursts of protest from other members of the opposing party met the Russian’s points. “It was all nonsense;” they shouted; “there could be no question of honour here. Kreisler was a quarrelsome German. He was drunk.” Tarr liked his own farces. But to be drawn into the service of one of Kreisler’s was a humiliation. Kreisler, without taking any notice of him, had turned the tables.

The discussion was interminable. They were now speaking French. The entire cafÉ appeared to be participating. Several times the principal on the other side attempted to go, evidently very cross at the noisy scene. Then Anastasya’s name was mentioned. Tarr found new interest in the scene.

“You and Herr Kreisler,” the Russian was saying patiently and distinctly, “exchanged blows, I understand, this afternoon, before this lady. This was as a result of my friend Herr Kreisler demanding certain explanations from you which you refused to give. These explanations had reference to certain stories you are supposed to have circulated as regards him.”

“Circulated—as regards—that chimpanzee you are conducting about?

“If you please! By being abusive you cannot escape. You are accused by my friend of having at his expense?”

“Expense? Does he want money?”

“If you please! You cannot buy off Herr Kreisler; but he might be willing for you to pay a substitute if you find it—inconvenient??”

“I find you, bearded idiot!?”

“We can settle all that afterwards. You understand me? I shall be quite ready! But at present it is the affair between you and Herr Kreisler?”

In brief, it was the hapless Soltyk that Kreisler had eventually got hold of, and had just now publicly smacked, having some hours before smacked him privately.

CHAPTER II

Kreisler’s afternoon encounter with Anastasya and Soltyk had resembled Tarr’s meeting with him and Bertha. Kreisler had seen Anastasya and his new cafÉ friend one day from his window. His reference to possible nose-pulling was accounted for by this. The next day he had felt rather like seeing Anastasya again somewhere. With this object, he had patrolled the neighbourhood. About four o’clock, having just bought some cigarettes at the “Berne,” he was standing outside considering a walk in the Luxemburg, when FrÄulein Vasek appeared in this unshunnable circus of the Quartier du Paradis. Soltyk was with her. He went over at once. With urbane timidity, as though they had been alone, he offered his hand. She looked at Soltyk, smiling. But she showed no particular signs of wanting to escape. They began strolling along the Boulevard, Soltyk showing every sign of impatience. She then stopped.

“Mr. Soltyk and I were just going to have the ‘five o’clock’ somewhere,” she said.

Soltyk looked pointedly down the Boulevard, as though that had been an improper piece of information to communicate to Kreisler.

“If you consent to my accompanying you, FrÄulein, it would give me the greatest pleasure to remain in your company a little longer.”

She laughed. “Where were we going, Louis? Didn’t you say there was a place near here?”

“There is one over there. But I’m afraid, FrÄulein Vasek, I must leave you.—I have?”

“Oh, must you? I’m sorry.”

Soltyk was astonished and mortified. He did not go, looking at her doubtfully. At this point Kreisler had addressed him.

“I said nothing, sir, when a moment ago, you failed to return my salute. I understand you were going to have tea with FrÄulein Vasek. Now you deprive her suddenly of the pleasure of your company. So there is no further doubt on a certain point. Will you tell me at once and clearly what objection you have to me?”

“I don’t wish to discuss things of that sort before this lady.”

“Will you then name a place where they may be discussed? I will then take my leave?”

“I see no necessity to discuss anything with you.”

“Ah, you see none. I do. And perhaps it is as well that FrÄulein Vasek should hear. Will you explain to me, sir, how it is that you have been putting stories about having reference to me, and to my discredit, calculated to prejudice people against me? Since this lady no doubt has heard some of your lies, it would be of advantage that you take them back at once, or else explain yourself.”

Before Kreisler had finished, Soltyk said to Anastasya, “I had better go at once, to save you this—” Then he turned to Kreisler,

“I should have thought you would have had sufficient decency left?”

“Decency, liar? Decency, lying swine? Decency—? What do you mean?” said Kreisler, loudly, in crescendo.

Then he crossed quickly over in front of Anastasya and smacked Soltyk first smartly on one cheek and then on the other.

“There is liar branded on both your cheeks! And if you should not wish to have coward added to your other epithets, you or your friends will find me at the following address before the day is out.” Kreisler produced a card and handed it to Soltyk.

Soltyk stared at him, paralysed for the moment at this outrage, his eyes burning with the sweet intensity Tarr noticed that evening, taking in the incredible fact. He got the fact at last. He lifted his cane and brought it down on Kreisler’s shoulders. Kreisler snatched it from him, broke it in three and flung it in his face, one of the splinters making a little gash in his under lip.

Anastasya had turned round and begun walking away, leaving them alone. Kreisler also waited no longer, but marched rapidly off in the other direction.

Soltyk caught Anastasya up, and apologized for what had occurred, dabbing his lip with a handkerchief.

Kreisler after this felt himself fairly launched on a satisfactory little affair. Many an old talent would come in useful. He acted for the rest of the day with a gusto of professional interest. For an hour or two he stayed at home. No one came, however, to call him to account. Leaving word that he would soon be back, he left in search of a man to act for him. He remembered a Russian he had had some talk with at the Studio, and whom he had once visited. He was celebrated for having had a duel and blinded his opponent. His instinct now led him to this individual, who has already been seen in action. His qualifications for a second were quite unique.

Kreisler found him just finishing work. He had soon explained what he required of him. With great gravity he set forth his attachment for a “beautiful girl,” the discreditable behaviour of the Russian in seeking to prejudice her against him. In fact, he gave an entirely false picture of the whole situation. His honour must now be satisfied. He would accept nothing less than reparation by arms. Such was Kreisler, but he was himself very cynically. He had explained this to Volker after the following manner: “I am a hundred different things; I am as many people as the different types of people I have lived amongst. I am a ‘Boulevardier’ (he believed that on occasion he answered fully to that description), I am a ‘Rapin’; I am also a ‘Korps-student.’”

In his account of how things stood he had, besides, led the Russian to understand that there was more in it all than it was necessary to say, and, in fact, than he could say. Whatever attitude Soltyk might take up, this gentleman too knew, he hinted, that they had come to the point in their respective relations towards this “beautiful girl” at which one of them must disappear. In addition, he, Kreisler, had been grossly insulted in the very presence of the “beautiful girl” that afternoon. The Russian’s compatriot had used his cane. These latter were facts that would be confirmed later, for the physical facts at least could not be got round by Soltyk.

The Russian, Bitzenko by name, a solemnly excitable bourgeois of Petrograd, recognized a situation after his own heart. Excitement was a food he seldom got in such quantities, and pretending to listen to Kreisler a little abstractedly and uncertainly to start with, he was really from the first very much his man.

So Kreisler and his newly found henchman, silently and intently engaged on their evening’s business, have been accounted for. Soltyk had been discovered some quarter of an hour before Tarr’s appearance, and stared out of countenance for the whole of the time by Kreisler.

CHAPTER III

The indignation and flurry subsided; but the child of this eruption remained. The Polish party found the legacy of the uproar as cold as its cause had been hot. Bitzenko inspired respect as he scratched his beard, which smelt of Turkish tobacco, and wrinkled up imperturbably small grey eyes.

Then, the excitement over, the red mark on Soltyk’s cheek became merely a fact. One or two of his friends found themselves examining it obliquely, as a relic, with curiosity.

He had had his face smacked earlier in the day, as well. How much longer was his face going to go on being smacked? Here was this Russian still there. There was the chance of an affair. A duel—a duel, for a change, in our civilized life; c’Était une idÉe.

Who was the girl the Russian kept mentioning? Was she that girl he had been telling them about who had a man-servant? Kreisler was a Frei-Herr? The Russian had referred to him as “my friend the Frei-Herr.”

“Herr Kreisler does not wish to take further measures to ensure himself some form of satisfaction,” the Russian said monotonously.

“There is always the police for drunken blackguards,” Soltyk answered.

“If you please! That is not the way! It is not usually so difficult to obtain satisfaction from a gentleman.”

“But then I am not a gentleman in the sense that your friend Kreisler is.”

“Perhaps not, but a blow on the face?”

The little Russian said “blow on the face” in a soft inviting way, as though it were a titbit with powers of fascination of its own.

“But it is most improper to ask me to stand here wrangling with you,” he next said.

“You please yourself.”

“I am merely serving my friend Herr Kreisler. Will you oblige me by indicating a friend of yours with whom I can discuss this matter?”

The waiter who had brought in the card again approached their table. This time he presented Soltyk with a note, written on the cafÉ paper and folded in four.

Tarr had been watching what was going on with as much interest as his ruffled personal dignity would allow him to take. He did not believe in a duel. But he wondered what would happen, for he was certain that Kreisler would not let this man alone until something had happened. What would he have done, he asked himself, in Soltyk’s place? He would have naturally refused to consider the idea of a duel as a possibility. If you had to fight a duel with any man who liked to hit you on the head—Kreisler, moreover, was not a man with whom a duel need be fought. He was in a weak position in that way, in spite of the additional blacking on his boots. Tarr himself, of course, could have taken refuge in the fact that Englishmen do not duel. But what would have been the next step, this settled, had he been in Soltyk’s shoes? Kreisler was waiting at the door of the cafÉ. If his enemy got up and went out, at the door he would once more have his face smacked. His knowledge of Kreisler convinced him that that face would be smacked all over the quartier, at all hours of the day, for many days to come. Kreisler, unless physically overwhelmed, would smack it in public and in private until further notice. He would probably spit in it, after having smacked it, occasionally. So Kreisler must be henceforth fought by his victim wherever met. Would this state of things justify the use of a revolver? No. Kreisler should be maimed. It all should be prepared with great thoroughness; exactly the weight of stick, etc. The French laws would allow quite a bad wound. But Tarr felt that the sympathetic young Prussian-Pole would soon have Bitzenko on his hands as well. Bitzenko was very alarming.

Kreisler, although evicted from the cafÉ, had been allowed by the waiters to take up his position on a distant portion of the terrace. There he sat with his legs crossed and his eye fixed on the door with a Scottish solemnity. He was an object of considerable admiration to the garÇons. His coolness and persistence appeared to them amusing and typical. His solemnity aroused their wonder and respect. He meant business. He was behaving correctly.

Soltyk opened the note at once.

On it was written in German:

A little man sitting next to Soltyk with an eloquent, sleek lawyer’s face took the letter as though it had been a public document and read it. He bent towards his friend and said:

“What is really the matter with this gentleman?”

Soltyk shrugged his shoulders.

“He’s a brute, and he is a little crazy as well. He wants to pick a quarrel with me, I don’t know why.”

“He means trouble. Doesn’t he want to be taken seriously, only? Let his shaggy friend here have a chat with a friend of yours. He may be a nuisance—”

“What rot! Why should one, Stephen? If he comes for me at the door, let him! I wish that little man there would go away. He has annoyed us quite enough.”

“Louis, will you give me permission to speak to him on your behalf?”

“If that will give you any satisfaction.”

Stephen (Staretsky) got up and put himself at Bitzenko’s disposition. The whole party became tumultuous at this.

“What the devil are you up to, Stephen? Let them alone.”

“You’re not going??”

“Tell them to go to hell!”

“Stephen, come back, you silly fool!”

Stephen Staretsky smiled at this with a sort of worldly indulgence. “You don’t understand. This is the best thing to do,” he seemed to say.

“Do you want this to last the whole evening?” he asked the man nearest him.

He followed Bitzenko out, and Tarr followed Bitzenko.

CHAPTER IV

They went over to a small, gaudy, quiet cafÉ opposite, Kreisler watching them, but still with his eye on the door near at hand.

Tarr was amused now at his position of dummy. He enjoyed crossing the road under Kreisler’s eye, in his service. The evening’s twists were very comic.

Imaginative people are easy to convince of the naturalness of anything; and the Russian was the prophet of the necessity of this affair. Stephen was not convinced; but he soon made up his mind that Bitzenko was either Kreisler’s accomplice in some scheme or at least had made up his mind that there could only be one ending to the matter.

He went back to the cafÉ and, sitting down beside Soltyk again, said:

“I’m afraid I was mistaken, Louis. Your German means to fight you or else he has some little game. If you’re sure there’s nothing in it, you must tell him and his little Russian to go to the devil.”

While Stephen Staretsky had been away one of Soltyk’s friends told them about Bitzenko.

“Don’t you know him, Louis? Maiewski used to know him. He lives in one of those big studios, Rue Ulm, near the Invalides. Il a du pognon, il parait.”

Soltyk began patting his cheek gently. But his vanity ached steadily inside.

“What is his name?” asked another.

“Bitzenko. He once had a duel and blinded a man.”

Soltyk looked up and stopped patting his cheek.

“How? Blinded him?” somebody asked.

“Yes, blinded him.”

The blows began to take effect, the atmosphere becoming somehow congenial to them. When Stephen Staretsky delivered his message Soltyk was losing his self-control. The opportunity of killing this obnoxious figure offered him so obstinately by Bitzenko—whom he disliked even more—began to recommend itself to him. This commis voyageur sent to press the attractions of destruction had won his point.

Soltyk had been silent. He had been twisting up the corners of a newspaper on the table before him, and appeared struck lazy, into a kind of sullen sleepiness and detachment resembling despair.

“Ask him,” he said suddenly to Staretsky, “what he wants.”

“What do you mean?”

Soltyk answered irritably, “Why, what they want: what sort of a duel he wants and when.” “Duel” was said as though it were a common object. “Settle it quickly and let’s get all this nonsense over, since you have begun negotiations.”

Stephen Staretsky stared at him.

“You don’t mean—? I have not been negotiating. I simply?”

The others once more clamoured, after a moment of astonishment.

“You don’t mean to say, Louis, you’re going??”

“What nonsense, what utter nonsense! What can you be thinking of?”

“If Bitzenko comes in again, pay no attention to him! What possesses you, Louis! Whatever possesses you, Louis!”

Soltyk looked angrily at his friends without replying.

“Staretsky, arrange that, do you mind?” he said when the exclamations stopped. “But for Heaven’s sake get it finished quickly. This is becoming boring.”

Staretsky said, leaning on the back of Soltyk’s chair, with authority:

“Don’t be absurd, Louis: don’t be absurd. You must refuse to listen to him. All that rot about libelling and the ‘beautiful girl’: my God, man, you’re not going to take that seriously?”

“Of course not. But I shall fight the German clown. I want to. This is becoming ridiculous.”

Soltyk had made up his mind. He would never have armed himself and shot Kreisler in the street. That would have been too ridiculous. It would have had the touch of passion and intimacy of a crime passionel. It would only have been dignified for an inhabitant of Nevada.

He did not regard this as a duel, but a brawl, ordered by the rules of “affairs of honour.” If a drunken man or an apache attacked you the best thing to do would be to fight. If he offered to “fight you fair”—putting it in that way—then that would be the best thing, too, no doubt.

But Bitzenko really had brought him to this. Kreisler alone could never have hoped to compass anything approaching a duel with him.

Stephen Staretsky overwhelmed him with expostulation—even reproaches. His voice rose and fell in a microscopic stream of close-packed sound. His face became shiny and the veins appeared in it. He begged Soltyk to think of his friends! He gathered his arguments up in the tips of his fingers in little nervous bunches and held them under his friend’s nose, as though asking him to smell them. And then, with a spasm of the body, a vibrating twang on some deep chord in his throat, he dashed his gathered fingers towards the floor.

In face of this attack it was impossible, even had he wished to do so, for Soltyk to reconsider his decision. The others, too, sat for the most part watching him.

Bitzenko appeared again. Soltyk became pale at the sight of this sinister figure, so bourgeois, prepossessing, and bearded, with its legend of blindings and blood and uncanny tenacity as a second.

He turned to a good-looking, sleek, sallow companion at his elbow.

“Khudin, will you act for me, as Stephen won’t?”

Stephen Staretsky rose. A superfine sweat moistened his skin. His extraordinary volubility was tucked away somewhere in him in a flash, in a satisfied and polished acrobatic, and he faced the Russian. Khudin rose at the same time. Bitzenko had won.

Tarr was astonished at the rapid tragic trend of these farcical negotiations.

“How angry that man must be to do that,” he thought. But he had not been smacked the evening before; yet he remembered he had been passably angry.

CHAPTER V

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 rÔle 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 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.

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 garÇons. 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?”

“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.

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, 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 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 chÂteau (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 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 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.

His momentary resentment with Bitzenko survived, and he next became annoyed at being treated like an object, as he felt it. He was not deliberately conscious of much. But, try as he would to elude the disgraces and besmirchings of death, people refused to treat him as anything but a sack of potatoes.

There four or five men had been arguing about him for the last five minutes, and they had not once looked his way. But clearly Bitzenko was defending his duel.

Why should Bitzenko go on disposing of him in this fashion? He took everything for granted; he never so much as appealed to him, even once. Had Bitzenko been commissioned to hustle him out of existence?

But Soltyk. There was that fellow again slipping something into his mouth! A cruel and fierce sensation of mixed real and romantic origin rose hotly round his heart. He loved that man! But because he loved him he wished to plunge a sword into him, to plunge it in and out and up and down! Why had pistols been chosen?

He would let him off for two pins! He would let him off if?Yes! He began pretending to himself that the duel might after all not take place. That was the only way he could get anything out of it.

He laughed; then shouted out in German:

“Give me one!”

They all looked round. Soltyk did not turn, but the side of his face became crimson.

Kreisler felt a surge of active passion at the sight of the blood in his face.

“Give me one,” Kreisler shouted again, putting out the palm of his hand, and laughing in a thick, insulting, hearty way. He was now a Knabe. He was young and cheeky. His last words had been said with quick cleverness. The heavy coquetting was double-edged.

“What do you mean?” Bitzenko called back.

“I want a jujube. Ask Herr Soltyk!”

They all turned towards the other principal to the duel, standing some yards on the other side of them.

Head thrown back and eyes burning, Soltyk gazed at Kreisler. It was genuine, but not very strong. If killing could be embodied in the organ that sees—a new function of expression—a perfect weapon would exist. Only the intensest expression being effective, such spiritual blasting powers would be a solution of the arbitrary decisions of force. Words, glances, music are at present as indirect as hands and cannons. Such music might be written, however, that no fool, hearing it, could survive. Whether it throttled him in a spasm of disgust or of shame is immaterial. Soltyk’s battery was too conventional to pierce the layers of putrifying tragedy, Kreisler’s bulwark. It played to the limit of its power. His cheeks were a dull red: his upper lip was stretched tightly over the gums. The white line of teeth made his face look as though he were laughing. He stamped his foot on the ground with the impetuous grace of a Russian dancer, and started walking hurriedly up and down. He glared at his seconds as well, but although sick with impatience made no protest.

A peal of drawling laughter came from Kreisler:

“Sorry! Sorry! My mistake,” he shouted.

Bitzenko came over and asked Kreisler if he still, for his part, was of the same mind, that the duel should go on. The principal stared impenetrably at the second.

“If such an arrangement can be come to as should—er?” he began slowly. He was going to play with Bitzenko too, against whom his humour had shifted. A look of deepest dismay appeared in the Russian’s face.

“I don’t understand. You mean??”

“I mean, that if the enemy and you can find a basis for understanding?” and Kreisler went on staring at Bitzenko with his look of false surprise.

“You seem very anxious for me to fight, Herr Bitzenko,” he then said furiously. With a laugh at Bitzenko’s miserable face and evident pleasure at his quick-change temperamental, facial agility, he left him, walking towards the other assistants.

Addressing Staretsky, his face radiating affability, stepping with caution, as though to avoid puddles, he said:

“I am willing to forgo the duel at once on one condition. If Herr Soltyk will give me a kiss, I will forgo the duel!”

He smiled archly and expectantly at Staretsky.

“I don’t know what you mean!”

“Why, a kiss. You know what a kiss is, my dear sir.”

“I shall consider you out of your mind, if?”

“That is my condition.”

Soltyk had come up behind Staretsky.

“What is your condition?” he asked loudly.

Kreisler stepped forward so quickly that he was beside him before Soltyk could move. With one hand coaxingly extended towards his arm, he was saying something, too softly for the others to hear.

He had immobilized everybody by his rapid action. Surprise had shot their heads all one way. They stood, watching and listening, screwed into astonishment as though by deft fingers.

His soft words, too, must have carried sleep. Their insults and their honey clogged up his enemy. A hand had been going up to strike. But at the words it stopped dead. So much new matter for anger had been poured into the ear that it wiped out all the earlier impulse. Action must be again begun right down from the root.

Kreisler thrust his mouth forward amorously, his body in the attitude of the eighteenth-century gallant, as though Soltyk had been a woman.

The will broke out frantically from the midst of bandages and a bulk of suddenly accruing fury. Soltyk tore at himself first, writhing upright, a statue’s bronze softening, suddenly, with blood. He became white and red by turns. His blood, one heavy mass, hurtled about in him, up and down, like a sturgeon in a narrow tank.

All the pilules he had taken seemed acting sedatively against the wildness of his muscles. The bromium fought the blood.

His hands were electrified. Will was at last dashed all over him, an Arctic douche. The hands flew at Kreisler’s throat. His nails made six holes in the flesh and cut into the tendons beneath. Kreisler was hurled about. He was pumped backwards and forwards. His hands grabbed a mass of hair; as a man slipping on a precipice gets hold of a plant. Then they gripped along the coat-sleeves, connecting him with the engine he had just overcharged with fuel. A sallow white, he became puffed and exhausted.

“Acha—acha—” a noise, the beginning of a word, came from his mouth. He sank on his knees. A notion of endless violence filled him. “Tchun—tchun—tchun—tchun—tchun—tchun!” He fell on his back, and the convulsive arms came with him. The strangling sensation at his neck intensified.

Meanwhile a breath of absurd violence had smitten everywhere.

Staretsky had said:

“That crapule is beneath contempt! Pouah!—I refuse to act. Whatever induced us?”

Bitzenko had begun a discourse. Staretsky turned on him, shrieking, “Foute-moi la paix, imbÉcile!”

At this Bitzenko rapped him smartly on the cheek. Staretsky, who spent his mornings sparring with a negro pugilist, gave him a blow between the eyes, which laid him out insensible.

Bitzenko’s friend, interfering when he saw this, seized Staretsky round the waist, and threw him down, falling with him.

The doctor and the other second, Wenceslas Khudin, went to separate Soltyk and Kreisler, scuffling and exhorting. The field was filled with cries, smacks, and harsh movements.

This Slav chaos gradually cleared up.

Soltyk was pulled off; Staretsky and the young Russian were separated. Bitzenko once more was on his feet. Then they were all dusting their trousers, arranging their collars, picking up their hats.

Kreisler stood stretching his neck to right and left alternately. His collar was torn open; blood trickled down his chest. He had felt weak and unable to help himself against Soltyk.

Actual fighting appeared a contingency outside the calculations or functioning of his spirit. Brutal by rote and in the imagination, if action came too quickly before he could inject it with his dream, his forces were disconnected. This physical mÊlÉe had been a disturbing interlude. He was extremely offended at it. His eyes rested steadily and angrily on Soltyk. This attempt on his part to escape into physical and secondary things he must be made to pay for! He staggered a little, with the dignity of the drunken man.

His glasses were still on his nose. They had weathered the storm, tightly riding his face, because of Soltyk’s partiality for his neck.

Staretsky took Soltyk by the arm.

“Come along, Louis. Surely you don’t want any more of it? Let’s get out of this. I refuse to act as second. You can’t fight without seconds!”

Soltyk was panting, his mouth opening and shutting. He first turned this way, then that. His action was that of a man avoiding some importunity.

“C’est bien, c’est bien!” he gasped in French. “Je sais. Laisse-moi.”

All his internal disorganization was steadily claiming his attention.

“Mais dÉpÊche-toi donc! Filons. Nous avons plus rien À faire ici.” Staretsky slipped his arm through his. Half supporting him, he began urging him along towards the car. Soltyk, stumbling and coughing, allowed himself to be guided.

Khudin and the doctor had been talking together, as the only two men on the field in full possession of their voices and breath. When they saw their friends moving off, they followed.

Bitzenko, recuperating rapidly, started after them.

Kreisler saw all this at first with indifference. He had taken his handkerchief out and was dabbing his neck. Then suddenly, with a rather plaintive but resolute gait, he ran after his second, his eye fixed on the retreating Poles.

“Hi! A moment! Your Browning. Give me your Browning!” he said hoarsely. His voice had been driven back into the safer depths of his body. It was a new and unconvincing one.

Bitzenko did not appear to understand.

Kreisler plucked the revolver out of his pocket with the deftness of an animal. There was a report. He was firing in the air.

Staretsky had faced quickly round, dragging Soltyk. Kreisler was covering them with the Browning.

“Halt!” he shouted. “Stop there! Not so quickly! I will shoot you like a dog if you will not fight!”

Still holding them up, he ordered Bitzenko to take over to them one of the revolvers provided for the duel.

“That will be murder! If you assist in this, sir, you will be participating in a murder! Stop this?”

Staretsky was jabbering at Bitzenko, his arm through his friend’s. Soltyk stood wiping his face with his hand, his eyes on the ground. His breath came heavily, and he kept shifting his feet.

Bitzenko’s tall young Russian stood in a twisted attitude, a gargoyle Apollo. His mask of peasant tragedy had broken into a slight smile.

“Move and I fire! Move and I fire!” Kreisler kept shouting, moving up towards them, with stealthy grogginess. He kept shaking the revolver and pointing at them with the other hand, to keep them alive to the reality of the menace.

“Don’t touch the pistols, Louis!” said Staretsky, as Bitzenko came over with his leather dispatch-case. He let go of Soltyk’s arm and folded his own.

“Don’t touch them, Louis. They daren’t shoot!”

Louis appeared apathetic both as to the pistols and the good advice.

“Leave him both,” Kreisler called, his revolver still trained on Staretsky and Soltyk.

Bitzenko put them both down, a foot away from Soltyk, and walked hurriedly out of the zone of fire.

“Will you take up one of those pistols, or both?” Kreisler said.

“Kindly point that revolver somewhere else, and allow us to go!” Staretsky said loudly.

“I’m not speaking to you, pig-face! It’s you I’m addressing. Take up that pistol!”

He was now five or six yards from them.

“Herr Soltyk is unarmed! The pistols you want him to take only have one charge. Yours has twelve. In any case it would be murder!”

Kreisler walked up to them. He was very white, much quieter, and acted with effort. He stooped down to take up one of the pistols. Staretsky aimed a blow at his head. It caught him just in front of the ear, on the right cheek-bone. He staggered sideways, tripped, and fell. The moment he felt the blow he pulled the trigger of the Browning, which still pointed towards his principal adversary. Soltyk threw his arms up: Kreisler was struggling towards his feet: he fell face forwards on top of him.

Kreisler thought this was a new attack. He seized Soltyk’s body round the middle, rolling over on top of it. It was quite limp. He then thought the other man had fainted; ruptured himself?? He drew back quickly. Two hands grasped him and flung him down on his stomach. This time his glasses went. Scrambling after them, he remembered his Browning, which he had dropped. He shot his hands out to left and right—forgetting his glasses—to recover the Browning. He felt that a blow was a long time in coming.

“He’s dead! He’s dead! He’s dead!”

Staretsky’s voice, announcing that in French, he heard at the same time as Bitzenko’s saying:

“What are you looking for? Come quickly!”

“Where is the Browning?” he asked. At that moment his hand struck his glasses. He put them on and got to his feet.

At Bitzenko’s words he had a feeling of a new order of things having set in, that he remembered having experienced once or twice before in life. They came in a fresh surprising tone. It was as though they were the first words he had heard that day. They seemed to imply a sudden removal, a journey, novel conditions.

“Come along, I’ve got the Browning. There’s no time to lose.” It was all over; he must embrace practical affairs. The Russian’s voice was businesslike. Something had finished for him, too. Kreisler saw the others standing in a peaceful group; the doctor was getting up from beside Soltyk.

Staretsky rushed over to Kreisler, and shook his fist in his face and tried to speak. But his mouth was twisted down at the corners, and he could hardly see. The palms of his hands pressed into each of his eyes, the next moment he was sobbing, walking back to his friends.

Bitzenko’s bolt was shot. Kreisler had been unsatisfactory. All had ended in a silly accident, which might have awkward consequences for his second. It was hardly a real corpse at all.

But something was sent to console him. The police had got wind of the duel. Bitzenko, his compatriot and Kreisler were walking down the field, intending to get into the road at the farther end, and walk to the nearest station. The taxi had been sent away, Kreisler having no more money, and Bitzenko’s feeling in the matter being that should Kreisler fall, a corpse can always find some sentimental soul to look after it. And there was always the Morgue, dramatic and satisfactory.

They were already half-way along the field when a car passed them on the other side of the hedge at full tilt.

The Russian was once more in his element. His face cleared. He looked ten years younger. In the occupants of the car he had recognized members of the police force!

Calling “Run!” to Kreisler he took to his heels, followed by his young fellow-second, whose neck shot in and out, and whose great bow-legs could almost be heard twanging as he ran. They reached a hedge, ran along the farther side of it. Bitzenko was bent double as though to escape a rain of bullets. Eventually he was seen careering across an open space quite near the river, which lay a couple of hundred yards beyond the lower end of the field. There he lay ambushed for a moment, behind a shrub. Then he darted forward again, and eventually disappeared along the high road in a cloud of dust. His athletic young friend made straight for the railway station, which he reached without incident and returned at once to Paris. Kreisler conformed to Bitzenko’s programme of flight. He scrambled through the hedge, crossed the road and escaped almost unnoticed.

The truth was that the Russian had attracted the attention of the police to such an extent by his striking flight, that without a moment’s hesitation they had bolted helter-skelter after him. They contented themselves with a parting shout or two at Kreisler. Duelling was a very venial offence; capture in these cases was not a matter of the least moment. But they were so impressed by the Russian’s businesslike way of disappearing that they imagined this must have been a curiously immoral sort of duel. That he was the principal they did not doubt for a moment.

So they went after him in full cry, rousing two or three villagers in their passage, who followed at their heels, pouring with frantic hullabaloo in the direction of Paris. Bitzenko, however, with great resourcefulness, easily outwitted them. He crossed the Seine near St. Cloud, and got back to Paris in time to read the afternoon newspaper account of the duel and flight with infantile solemnity and calm.

CHAPTER VI

Five days after this, in the morning, Otto Kreisler mounted the steps of the police-station of a small town near the German frontier. He was going to give himself up.

Bitzenko had pictured his principal, in the event of his succeeding against Soltyk, seeking rapidly by train the German frontier, disguised in some extraordinary manner. Had the case been suggested to him of a man in this position without sufficient money in his pocket to buy a ticket, he would then have imagined a melodramatic figure hurrying through France, dodging and dogged by the police, defying a thousand perils. Whether Kreisler were still under the spell of the Russian or not, this was the course, more or less, he took. He could be trusted not to go near Paris. That city dominated all his maledictions.

The police disturbing the last act of his sanguinary farce was a similar contretemps to Soltyk’s fingers in his throat. At the last moment everything had begun to go wrong. He had not prepared for it, because, as though from cunning, the world had shown no tendency up till then to interfere.

Soltyk had died when his back was turned, so to speak. He got the contrary of comfort out of the thought that he could claim to have done the deed. The police had rushed in and broken things off short, swept everything away, ended the banquet in a brutal raid. A deep sore, a shocked and dislocated feeling remained in Kreisler’s mind. He had been hurried so much! He had never needed leisure, breathing space, so much. The disaster of Soltyk’s death was raw on him! Had he been given time—only a little time—he might have put that to rights. (This sinister regret could only imply a possible mutilation of the corpse.)

A dead man has no feeling. He can be treated as an object and hustled away. But a living man needs time!—time!

Does not a living man need so much time to develop his movements, to lord it with his thoughtful body, to unroll his will? Time is what he needs!

As a tramp being hustled away from a cafÉ protests, at each jerk the waiter gives him, that he is a human being, probably a free human being—yes, probably free; so Kreisler complained to his fate that he was a living man, that he required time—that above all it was time he needed—to settle his affairs and withdraw from life. But his fate was a harsh Prussian gendarme. He whined and blustered to no effect.

He was superstitious as well in the usual way about this decease. In his spiritless and brooding tramp he questioned if it were not he that had died and not Soltyk, and if it were not his ghost that was now wandering off nowhere in particular.

One franc and a great many coppers remained to him. As he jumped from field to road and road to field again, in his flight, they rose and fell in a little leaden wave in his pocket, breaking dully on his thigh. This little wave rose and fell many times, till he began to wait for it, and its monotonous grace. It was like a sigh. It heaved and clashed down in a foiled way.

He spent the money that evening on a meal in a village. The night was dry and was passed in an empty barge. Next day, at four in the afternoon, he arrived at Meaux. Here he exchanged his entire wardrobe for a very shabby workman’s outfit, gaining seven francs and fifty centimes on the exchange. He caught the early train for Rheims, travelling thirty-five kilometres of his journey at a sou a kilometre, got a meal near the station, and took another ticket to Verdun. Believing himself nearer the frontier than he actually was, he set out on foot. At the next large town, Pontlieux, he had too hearty a meal. He had exhausted his stock of money long before the frontier was reached. For two days he had eaten hardly anything; and tramped on in a dogged and careless spirit.

The nearness of the German frontier began to rise like a wall in front of him. This question had to be answered: Did he want to cross it after all?

His answer was to mount the steps of the local gendarmerie.

His Prussian severity of countenance, now that he was dressed in every point like a vagabond, without hat and his hair disordered, five days’ beard on his chin—this sternness of the German warrior gave him the appearance of a scowling ruffian. The agent on duty, who barred his passage brutally before the door of the inner office, scowling too, classed him as a depraved cut-throat vagabond, and considered his voluntary entrance into the police-station as an act not only highly suspicious and unaccountable in itself, but of the last insolence.

“Qu’est-ce qu’il te faut?”

“Foir le Commissaire,” returned Kreisler.

“Tu ne peux pas le voir. Il n’y est pas.”

A few more laconic sentences followed, the agent reiterating sulkily that the magistrate was not there. But he was eyeing Kreisler doubtfully and turning something over in his mind.

The day before, two Germans had been arrested in the neighbourhood as spies, and were now locked up in this building until further evidence should be collected on the affair. It is extremely imprudent for a German to loiter on the frontier on entering France. It is much wiser for him to push on at once—neither looking to right nor left—pretending especially not to notice hills, unnatural military-looking protuberances, ramparts, etc.—to hurry on as rapidly as possible to the interior. But the two men in question were carpenters by profession, and both carried huge foot-rules in their pockets. The local authorities on this discovery were in a state of the deepest consternation. They shut them up, with their implements, in the most inaccessible depths of the local police-station. And it was in the doorway of this building—all the intermittant inhabitants of which were in a state of hysterical speculation, that Kreisler had presented himself.

The agent, who had recognized a German by his accent and manner, at last turned and disappeared through the door, telling him to wait. He reappeared with several superiors. All of them crowded in the doorway and surveyed Kreisler blankly. One asked in a voice of triumphant suspicion:

“And what are you doing there, my good fellow?”

“I had tuel, and killed the man; I have walked for more days?”

“Yes, we know all about that!”

“So you had a duel, eh?” asked another, and they all laughed with nervous suddenness at the picture of this vagabond defending his honour at twenty paces.

“Well, is that all you have to say?”

“I would eat.”

“Yes! your two friends inside also have big appetites. But come to the point. Have you anything to tell us about your compatriots inside there?”

Since his throttling by Soltyk, Kreisler had changed. He knew he was beaten. There was nothing to do but to die. His body ran to the German frontier as a chicken’s does down a yard, headless, from the block.

Kreisler did not understand the official. He muttered that he was hungry. He could hardly stand. Leaning his shoulder against the wall, he stood with his eyes on the ground. He was making himself at home! “What a nerve!”

“Va t’en! If you don’t want to tell us anything, clear out. Be quick about it! A pretty lot of trouble you cursed Germans are giving us. You’ll none of you speak when it comes to the point. You all stand staring like boobies. But that won’t pay here. Of you go!”

They all turned back into the office, and slammed the door. The agent stood before it again, looking truculently at Kreisler. He said:

“Passez votre chemin! Don’t stand gaping there!”

Then, giving him a shake, he hustled him to the top of the steps. A parting shove sent him staggering down into the road.

Kreisler walked on for a little. Eventually, in a quiet square, near the entrance to the town, he fell on a bench, drew his legs up and went to sleep.

At ten o’clock, the town lethargically retiring, all its legs moving slowly, like a spent insect, heavily boarding itself in, an agent came gradually along the square. Kreisler’s visit to the police-station was not known to this one. He stopped opposite the sleeping Kreisler, surveying him with lawful indignation.

“En voilÀ un joli gigolo!” He swayed energetically up to him.

“Eh! le copain! Tu voudrais coucher À la belle Étoile?”

He shook him.

“Oh, lÀ! Tu ne peux pas dormir ici! Houp! DÉpÊches-toi. Mets-toi debout!”

Kreisler responded only by a tired movement as though to bury his skull in the bench. A more violent jerk rolled him on the ground.

He woke up and protested in German, with a sort of dull asperity. He got on to his feet.

At the sound of the familiar gutturals of the neighbouring Empire, the agent became differently angry. Kreisler stood there, muttering partly in German and partly in French; he was very tired. He was telling bitterly of his attempt to get into the police-station, and of his inhospitable reception. The agent understood several words of German—notably “ja” and “lager beer” and “essen.” The consequence was that he always thought he understood more than was really said in that language. However much might be actually intended on any given occasion by the words of that profound and teeming tongue, it could never equal in scope, intensity, and meaning what he heard.

So he was convinced that Kreisler was threatening an invasion, and scoffed loudly in reply. He understood Kreisler to assert that the town in which they stood would soon belong to Germany, and that he would then sleep, not on a bench, but in the best bed their dirty little hole of a village could offer. He approached him threateningly. And eventually the functionary distinctly heard himself apostrophized as a “sneaking ‘flic’,” a “dirty peeler.” At that he laid his hand on Kreisler’s collar, and threw him in the direction of the police-station. He had miscalculated the distance. Kreisler, weak for want of food, fell at his feet; but, getting up, scuffled a short time. Then, it occurring to him that here was an unhoped for way of getting a dinner, and being lodged after all in the bureau de police, he suddenly became passive and complaisant.

Arrived at the police-station—with several revolts against the brutal handling to which he was subjected—he was met at the door by the same inhospitable man. Exasperated beyond measure at this unwelcome guest turning up again, the man sent his comrade into the office to report, while he held Kreisler. He held him as a restive horse is held, and jerked him several times against the wall, as if he had been showing signs of resistance.

Two men, one that he had formerly seen, came and looked at him. No effort was made to discover if he were really at fault or not. By this time they were quite convinced that he was a desperate character, and if not a spy, then anyway a murderer, although they were inclined to regard him as a criminal mystery. At all events they no longer could question his right to a night’s lodging.

Kreisler was led to a cell, given some bread and water at his urgent request, and left alone.

On the following morning he was taken up before the commissaire de police. When Kreisler was brought in, this gentleman had just finished cross-examining for the fifteenth time the two German carpenters who were retained as spies. They were not let alone for an instant. They would be dragged out of their cells three times in the course of an afternoon, as often as a new and brilliant idea should strike one of the numerous staff of the police-station. They would be confronted with their foot-rules, and watched in breathless silence; or be keenly cross-questioned, confused and contradicted as to the exact hour at which they had lunched the day before their arrest. The commissaire was perspiring all over with the intensity of his last effort to detect something. Kreisler was led in, and prevented from finishing any sentence or of becoming in any way intelligible during a quarter of an hour by the furious interruptions of the enraged officer. At last he succeeded in asserting that he was quite unacquainted with the two carpenters; moreover, that all he needed was food; that he had decided to give himself up and await the decision of the Paris authorities as regards the deed. If they were not going to take any action, he would return to Paris—at least, as soon as he had received a certain letter; and he gave his address. The commissaire considered him with exhausted animosity and he was sent back to his cell.

He slept the greater part of the day, but the next he spent nervous and awake. In the afternoon a full confirmation of his story reached the authorities. It was likely that the following morning he would be sent to Paris. It meant, then, that he was going to be tried as a kind of murderer. He could not allege complete accident. The thought of Paris, the vociferous courts, the ennuis of a criminal case about this affair, so thoroughly ended and boringly out of date, disturbed him extremely. Then the Russian—he would have to see him again. Kreisler felt that he was being terribly worried once more. Sorrow for himself bowed him down. This journey to Paris resembled his crossing of the German frontier. He had felt that it was impossible to see his father. That represented an effort he would do anything to avoid. Resentment against his parent had vanished. It was this that made a meeting so difficult. It was a stranger, with an ill will that had survived his own, awaiting him. Noise, piercing noise, effort, awaited him revengefully. He knew exactly what his father would do and say. If there had been a single item that he could not forecast!—But there was not the least item. Paris was the same. The energy and obstinacy of the rest of the world, the world that would question him and drag him about, these frightened him as something mad. Bitzenko appealed most to this new-born timidity. Bitzenko was like some favourite dish a man has one day eaten too much of, and will never be able again to enjoy, or even support.

On the other hand, he became quite used to his cell. His mind was sick, and this room had a clinical severity. It had all the economical elements of a place in which a human operation might be performed. He became fond of it as patients get an appetite for the leanness of convalescent life. He lay on his bed. He turned over the shell of many empty and depressing hours he had lived. He took particular pleasure in these listless concave shapes. His “good times” were avoided. Days spent with his present stepmother, before his father knew her, gave him a particularly numbing and nondescript feeling.

He sat up, listening to the noises from the neighbouring rooms and corridors. It began to sound to him like one steady preparation for his removal. Steps bustled about getting this ready and getting that ready.

The police-station had cost him some trouble to enter. But they had been attracted to each other from the start. Something in the form of an illicit attachment now existed between them. Buildings are female. There is no such thing as a male building. This practical and pretentious small modern edifice was having its romance. Otto Kreisler was its romance.

It was now warning him. It echoed sharply and insistently the feet of its policemen.

After his evening meal he took up his bed in his arms and placed it on the opposite side of the cell, under the window. He sat there for some time as though resting after this effort. The muttering of two children on a doorstep in the street below came to him on the evening light with melodramatic stops and emptiness. It bore with it an image, like an old picture, bituminous and with a graceful, queer formality. It fixed itself before him like a mirage. He watched it muttering.

He began slowly drawing off his boots. He took out the laces, and tied them together for greater strength. Then he tore several strips off his shirt, and made a short cord of them. He went through these actions deliberately and deftly, as though it were a routine and daily happening. He measured the drop from the bar of the ventilator, calculating the necessary length of cord, like a boy preparing the accessories of some game. It was only a game, too. He realized what these proceedings meant, but shunned the idea that it was serious. Just as an unmoral man with a disinclination to write a necessary letter takes up the pen, resolving to begin it merely and writes more and more until it is, in fact, completed, so Kreisler proceeded with his task.

Standing on his bed, he attached the cord to the ventilator. He tested its strength by holding it some inches from the top, and then, his shoulders hunched, swaying his whole weight languidly on it for a moment.

Adjusting the noose, he smoothed his hair back after he had slipped it over his head. He made as though to kick the bed away, playfully, then stood still, staring in front of him. The last moment must be one of realization. He was not a coward. His caution was due to his mistrust of some streaks of him, the sex streak the powerfullest.

A sort of heavy confusion burst up as he withdrew the restraint. It reminded him of Soltyk’s hands on this throat. The same throttling feeling returned. The blood bulged in his head. He felt dizzy; it was the Soltyk struggle over again. But, as with Soltyk, he did not resist. He gently worked the bed outwards from under him, giving it a last steady shove. He hung, gradually choking, the last thing he was conscious of, his tongue.

The discovery of his body caused a deep-felt indignation among the staff at the police-station. They remembered the persistence with which this unprincipled and equivocal vagrant (as which they still regarded him) had attempted to get into the building. And it was clear to their minds that his sole purpose had been to hang himself on their premises. He had mystified them from the first. Now their vague suspicions were bitterly confirmed, and had taken an unpardonable form. Each man felt that this corpse had personally insulted and made a fool of him. They thrust it savagely into the earth, with vexed and disgusted faces.

Herr Kreisler paid without comment what was claimed by the landlord in Paris for his son’s room; and writing to the authorities at the frontier town about the burial, paid exactly the sum demanded by this town for disposing of the body.

CHAPTER VII

The sight of Bertha’s twistings and turnings, her undignified rigmarole, had irritated Anastasya. This was why she had brutally announced, as though to cut short all that, that Kreisler’s behaviour was due simply to the fact that he fancied himself in love with her, Anastasya. “He was not worrying about FrÄulein Lunken. He was in love with me;” the statement amounted to that. There was no disdainful repudiation or self-reference in her statement; only a piece of information.

Bertha’s intuitions and simplifications had not been without basis. This “hostile version” had contained a certain amount of hostile intention.

But Anastasya had another reason for this immodest explicitness. She personally liked Kreisler. The spectacle of Bertha excusing herself, and in the process putting Kreisler in a more absurd and unsatisfactory light, annoyed her extremely.

How could Tarr consort with Bertha, she questioned? Her aristocratic woman’s sense did not appreciate the taste for a slut, a miss or a suburban queen. The apache, the coster girl, fisher-lass, all that had character, oh, yes. Her romanticism, in fact, was of the same order as Butcher’s only better.

Two days after the duel she met Tarr in the street. They agreed to meet at Lejeune’s for dinner.

The table at which she had first come across Kreisler was where they sat.

“You knew Soltyk, didn’t you?” he asked her.

“Yes. It was a terrible affair. Poor Soltyk!”

She looked at Tarr doubtfully. A certain queer astonishment in her face struck Tarr. It was the only sign of movement beneath. She spoke with a businesslike calm about his death. There was no sign of feeling or search for feeling.

She refused to regard herself as the “woman in the affair.” She knew people referred to her as that. Soltyk possessed a rather ridiculous importance, being dead; a cadaveric severity in the meaning of the image, Soltyk, for her. The fact was bigger than the person. He was like a boy in his father’s clothes.

Kreisler, on the other hand, she abominated. To have killed, he to have killed!—and to have killed some one she knew! It was a hostile act to bring death so near her. She knew it was hostile. She hoped he might never come back to Paris. She did not want to meet Kreisler.

But these feelings were not allowed to transpire. She recognized them as personal. She was so fastidious that she refrained from using them in discussing the affair when they would have given a suspect readiness and “sincerity” to her expression. She rather went to the other extreme.

“They say Soltyk was not killed in a duel,” Tarr continued. “Kreisler is to be charged with murder, or at least manslaughter.”

“Yes, I have heard that Kreisler shot him before he was ready or something?”

“I heard that he was shot when he was unarmed. There was no duel at all.”

“Oh, that is not the version I have heard.”

She did not seem revengeful about her friend.

“I was Kreisler’s second for half an hour,” Tarr said in a minute.

“How do you mean, for half an hour?” She was undemonstrative but polite.

“I happened to be there, and was asked to help him until somebody else could be found. I did not suspect him, I may say, of meaning to go to such lengths.”

“What was the reason of it all—do you know?”

“According to Kreisler, they had done some smacking earlier in the day?”

“Yes. Herr Kreisler met Soltyk and myself. I think that Soltyk then was a little in the wrong.”

“I dare say.”

Tarr’s sympathies were all with Kreisler. He had never been attracted by Poles, and as such rather than a Russian he thought of Soltyk. Deep square races he preferred. And Kreisler was a clumsy and degenerate atavism bringing a peculiarity into too elastic life.

Some of Tarr’s absurd friendliness for Bertha flowed over on to her fellow-countryman.

Had Anastasya more of a hand in the duel than he would naturally believe? Her indifference to Soltyk’s death, and her favouring Kreisler, almost pointed to something unusual. Kreisler’s ways were still mysterious!

That was all they said about the duel. As they were finishing the meal, after turning her head towards the entrance door, Anastasya remarked, with mock concern:

“There is your fiancÉe. She seems rather upset.”

Tarr looked towards the door. Bertha’s white face was close up against one of the narrow panes, above the lace curtain. There were four and a half feet of window on either side of the door. There were so many objects and lights in the front well of the shop that her face would not be much noticed in the corner it had chosen.

Her eyes were round, vacant, and dark, the features very white and heavy, the mouth steadily open in painful lines. As he looked the face drew gradually away, and then disappeared into the melodramatic night. It was a large trapped fly on the pane. It withdrew with a glutinous, sweet slowness. The heavy white jowl seemed pulling itself out of some fluid trap where it had been caught like a weighty body.

Tarr knew how the pasty flesh would nestle against the furs, the shoulders swing, the legs move just as much as was necessary for progress, with no movement of the hips. Everything about her in the chilly night would give an impression of warmth and system. The sleek cloth fitting the square shoulders tightly, the underclothes carefully tight as well, the breath from her nostrils the slight steam from a contented machine.

He caught Anastasya’s eye and smiled.

“Your fiancÉe is pretty,” she said, pretending that was the answer to the smile.

“She’s not my fiancÉe. But she’s a pretty girl.”

“Oh, I understood you were engaged?”

“No.”

“It’s no good,” he thought. But he must spare Bertha in future such discomforting sights.