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⸺?”