No farewell message would be so eloquent as these pages in which I had laid bare the innermost thoughts of my soul since I first knew her. She should receive no other message from me. I next tore up poor Beddoes’s litter of I O U’s, and making a parcel of the fragments directed it to him. János received my instructions with his usual taciturn docility, yet if anything could have roused me from the curious state of apathy in which I found myself, it would have been the sight of the dumb concern on the faithful fellow’s countenance.
Having thus put all my worldly affairs in order, I sat me down in my armchair, awaiting the dawn, and viewed the past as one who has done with life. I had a strong presentiment upon me that I should not survive the meeting.
At times, the vision of my wife sleeping, at that very moment, as I had so often watched her sleep, lightly and easily as a child, little wotting, little caring, perhaps, if she had wotted, of her husband’s solemn vigil, would rise up before me with a vividness so cruel as well-nigh to rouse me. But the new calmness of my soul defied these assaults; an unknown philosophy had succeeded to the violence of my emotions.
When my seconds called for me in the first greyness of the morning they found me ready for them. They themselves were shivering from the raw cold, with arms thrust to the elbows into the depths of their muffs; Carew, all yellow and shrivelled,—an old man of a sudden,—and Beddoes, blue and purple, the sleep still in his swollen eyes, hardly able to keep his teeth from chattering—a very schoolboy! They could scarce conceal their amazement at my placidity. It was not, indeed, that I found myself bodily fit for the contest, for the whole of my left side was stiff, and I could hardly move that arm without pain; yet placid I was, I scarcely now know why.
Thus we set forth in Sir John Beddoes’s coach, János on the box, and a civil, shy young man on the back seat beside Beddoes: this was, the latter informed me, the best surgeon he had been able to secure at such short notice.
The fog disappeared, and when the mists evaporated it promised to be a fine, bright, frosty morning.
Now, it may be after all that I was a little light-headed with the heat of the wound in my blood, for I have no very clear recollections of that morning. It remains in my mind rather as a bright-coloured fantasy than a series of events I have actually lived through.
I remember, as a man may remember a scene in a play, a garden running down to the river-side, very bare and desolate, and the figure and face of my bulky antagonist as he conferred excitedly with two outlandish-looking men, his seconds. These had fierce moustaches, and reminded me vaguely of the cravat captains I had known in the Empire. Then the scene shifts: we stand facing each other. I am glad of the chill of the air, with nothing between it and my fevered breast but the thinness of my shirt. But my opponent stamps like a menacing bull, as if furious at the benumbing blasts. Now I am fighting—fighting for my life—as never in battle or in single combat have I had need to fight before. This is no courteous duel between gentlemen, no honourable meeting, but the struggle of a man with his murderer. Physically at a disadvantage from my hurt, I am moreover conscious that against this brute fury all my skill at arms is of no avail and my strength is rapidly failing. Then, as he drives me by the sheer weight of his mass, I see his face thrust forward into mine, distorted with such a frenzy that I wonder in a sort of unformed way why this man should thus thirst to kill me. The next moment, with an extraordinary sense of universal failure and disorganisation which is yet not pain, I realise that I am hit—badly hit.
Upon that instant I find my brain cleared to a lucidity I have never felt before. I see my opponent’s sword flash ruby red with my own blood in the sun rays; I see him smile, a smile of glorious triumph, which cuts a deep dimple beside his lip; I hear him pant at me the strange words, “Ha! Ottilie!” and then I am again seared, rent once more, and to the sound of a howl of many voices my world falls into chaos and exists no more.