Roden's Corner

by Henry Seton Merriman

They stared at each other for a moment in silence. Mrs. Vansittart's lips were drawn back, showing her even, white teeth. Von Holzen's quiet eyes were wide open, so that the white showed all around the dark pupil. Then he sprang at her without a word. She was a lithe, strong woman, taller than he, or else she would have fallen. Instead, she stood her ground, and he, failing to get a grasp at her wrist, stumbled sideways against the table. In a moment she had run round it, and again they stared at each other, without a word, across the table where Percy Roden kept the books of the malgamite works.

A slow smile came to Von Holzen's face, which was colourless always, and now a sort of grey. He turned on his heel, walked to the door, and, locking it, slipped the key into his pocket. Then he returned to Mrs. Vansittart. Neither spoke. No explanation was at that moment necessary. He lifted the table bodily, and set it aside against the wall. Then he went slowly towards her, holding out his hand for the unaddressed envelope, which she held behind her back. He stood for a moment holding out his hand while his strong will went out to meet hers. Then he sprang at her again and seized her two wrists. The strength of his arms was enormous, for he was a deep-chested man, and had been a gymnast. The struggle was a short one, and Mrs. Vansittart dropped the envelope helplessly from her paralyzed fingers. He picked it up.

“You are the wife of Karl Vansittart,” he said in German.

“I am his widow,” she replied; and her breath caught, for she was still shaken by the physical and moral realization of her absolute helplessness in his hands, and she saw in a flash of thought the question in his mind as to whether he could afford to let her leave the room alive.

“Give me the key with which you opened the safe,” he said coldly.

She had replaced the key in her pocket, and now sought it with a shaking hand. She gave it to him without a word. Morally she would not acknowledge herself beaten, and the bitterness of that moment was the self-contempt with which she realized a physical cowardice which she had hitherto deemed quite impossible. For the flesh is always surprised by its own weakness.

Von Holzen looked at the key critically, turning it over in order to examine the workmanship. It was clumsily enough made, and he doubtless guessed how she had obtained it. Then he glanced at her as she stood breathless with a colourless face and compressed lips.

“I hope I did not hurt you,” he said quietly, thereby putting in a dim and far-off claim to greatness, for it is hard not to triumph in absolute victory.

She shook her head with a twisted smile, and looked down at her hands, which were still helpless. There were bands of bright red round the white wrists. Her gloves lay on the table. She went towards them and numbly took them up. He was impassive still, and his face, which had flushed a few moments earlier, slowly regained its usual calm pallor. It was this very calmness, perhaps, that suddenly incensed Mrs. Vansittart. Or it may have been that she had regained her courage.

“Yes,” she cried, with a sort of break in her voice that made it strident—“yes. I am Karl Vansittart's wife, and I—cared for him. Do you know what that means? But you can't. All that side of life is a closed book to such as you. It means that if you had been a hundred times in the right and he always in the wrong, I should still have believed in him and distrusted you—should still have cared for him and hated you. But he was not guilty. He was in the right and you were wrong—a thief and a murderer, no doubt. And to screen your paltry name, you sacrificed Karl and the happiness of two people who had just begun to be happy. It means that I shall not rest until I have made you pay for what you have done. I have never lost sight of you—and never shall—”