The Duel

“It would be best perhaps if we went on our way together?”

The winding steps, worn by foot-passengers, cut through a large field of white beet. In the distance the town, with its white houses and red-tiled roofs, might be distinguished. Both officers walked side by side, yet with an evident effort to keep as far as possible from each other, and the beets’ thick, luxuriant, and juicy leaves were crushed and bruised beneath their feet. Both observed, for a long time, an obstinate silence. Finally, after taking a deep breath, Nikoläiev managed, with a visible effort, to blurt out —

“First of all, I must ask you a question. Have you invariably shown my wife, Alexandra Petrovna, due regard and respect?”

“I don’t understand what you mean, Vladimir Yefimovich,” replied Romashov; “but I, too, have a question…”

“Excuse me,” interrupted Nikoläiev in a sharp tone, “our questions ought, to avoid confusion, to be put in turn – first I, then you. And now let us talk openly and without restraint. Answer me this question first. Is it a matter of supreme indifference to you that my wife – that her good name – has been the subject of scandal and slander? No, no, don’t interrupt me. You can hardly deny, I suppose, that on my part you have never experienced anything but goodwill, and that, in our house, you have always been received as an intimate friend – nay, almost as a relation.”

Romashov made a false step and stumbled on the loose ground. In an embarrassed tone he mumbled in reply —

“Be assured, Vladimir Yefimovich, that I shall always feel grateful to you and Alexandra Petrovna.”

“Ah, that’s not the question,” said Nikoläiev, angrily interrupting him. “I am not soliciting your gratitude. I’ll only tell you that my wife has been the victim of dirty, lying scandal in which” (Nikoläiev almost panted out the words, and he wiped his face with his handkerchief) – “well, to put it shortly, a scandal in which you, too, are mixed up. We both – she and I – are greeted almost every day with the most shameless anonymous letters. It is too disgusting to me to put these letters before you, but you shall know a good deal of their contents.” Nikoläiev broke off his speech, but, in the next minute, he continued with a stammer. “By all the devils – now listen – they say that you are Alexandra Petrovna’s lover, and that – how horrible! – secret meetings daily take place in your room. The whole regiment is talking about it. What a scandal!”

He bit his teeth in rage and spat.

“I know who has written these letters,” answered Romashov in a lowered voice, and turned away.

“Do you?” Nikoläiev stopped suddenly and clutched Romashov’s arm tightly. It was quite plain now that his forced calm was quite exhausted. His bestial eyes grew bigger, his face became blood-red, foam began to appear at the corners of his mouth, and, as he bent in a threatening manner towards Romashov, he shrieked madly —

“So you know this, and you even dare to keep silence! Don’t you understand that it is quite plainly your bounden duty to slay this serpent brood, to put a stop at once to this insidious slander? My – noble Don Juan, if you are an honourable man and not a – ”

Romashov turned pale, and he eyed Nikoläiev with a glance of hatred. He felt that moment that his hands and feet were as heavy as lead, his brain empty, that the abnormal and violent beating of his heart had sunk still lower in his chest, and that his whole body was trembling.

“I must ask you to lower your voice when you address me,” he interrupted him by saying in a hollow voice. “Speak civilly; you know well enough I do not allow any one to shout at me.”

“I’m not shouting,” replied Nikoläiev, still speaking in a rough and coarse, though somewhat subdued tone. “I’m only trying to make you see what your duty is, although I have a right to demand it. Our former intimate relations give me this right. If Alexandra Petrovna’s unblemished name is still of any value to you, then, without delay, put a stop to these infamies.”

“All right. I will do all I can as regards that,” was Romashov’s dry answer.

He turned away and went on. In the middle of the pathway, Nikoläiev caught him up in a few steps.

“Please wait a moment.” Nikoläiev’s voice sounded more gentle, and seemed even to have lost some of its assertiveness and force. “I submit, now the matter has at last been talked about, we ought also to cease our acquaintance. What do you say yourself?”

“Perhaps so.”

“You must yourself have noticed the kindness and sympathy with which we – that is to say, Alexandra Petrovna and I – received you at our house. But if I should now be forced to – I need say no more; you know well enough how scandal rankles in this wretched little provincial hole.”

“Very well,” replied Romashov gloomily. “I shall cease my visits. That, I take it, was what you wished. I may tell you, moreover, that I had already made up my mind not to enter your door again. A few days ago I paid Alexandra Petrovna a very short call to return her some books, but you may be absolutely certain that was the last time.”

“Yes, that is best so; I think – ”

Nikoläiev did not finish the sentence, and was evidently anything but easy in his mind. The two officers reached the road at this moment. There still remained some three hundred yards before they came to the town. Without uttering another word or even deigning to glance at each other, they continued on their way, side by side. Neither of them could make up his mind either to stop or turn back, and the situation became more awkward every minute.

At length they reached the furthest houses of the town. An isvostschik drove up and was at once hailed by Nikoläiev.

“That’s agreed then, Yuri Alexievich.” Nikoläiev uttered these words in a vulgar, unpleasant tone, and then got into the droshky. “Good-bye and au revoir.”

The two officers did not shake hands, and their salute at parting was very curt. Romashov stood still for a moment, and stared, through the cloud of dust, at the hurrying droshky and Nikoläiev’s strong, white neck. He suddenly felt like the most lonely and forsaken man in the wide world, and it seemed to him as if he had, then and there, despoiled himself of all that had hitherto made his life at all worth living.

Slowly he made his way home. Hainán met him in the yard, and saluted him, from a distance, with his broad grin. His face beamed with benevolence and delight as he took off his master’s cloak, and, after a few minutes, he began his usual curious dance.

“Have you had dinner?” he asked in a sympathetic, familiar tone. “Oh, you have not. Then I’ll run to the club at once and fetch some food. I’ll be back again directly.”

“Go to the devil!” screamed Romashov, “and don’t dare to come into my room. I’m not at home to anybody – not even to the Tsar himself.”

He threw himself on the bed, and buried his face in the pillow. His teeth closed over the linen, his eyes burned, and he felt a curious stabbing sensation in his throat. He wanted to cry. With eager longing he waited for the first hot, bitter tears which would, he hoped, afford him consolation and relief in this dark hour of torture and misery. Without pity on himself, he recalled once more in his mind the cruel events of the day; he purposely magnified and exaggerated his shame and ignominy, and he regarded, as it were, from outside, his own wretched Ego with pity and contempt.

Then something very strange happened. It did not seem to Romashov that he slept or even slumbered for an instant, but simply that he was for some moments wholly incapable of thinking. His eyes were shut, but, all of a sudden, he felt he had regained full consciousness, and was suffering the same anguish as before. It was completely dark in the room now. He looked at his watch and discovered to his indescribable astonishment that this mysterious trance had lasted more than five hours.

He began to feel hungry. He got up, put on his sabre, threw his cloak over his shoulder and started for the officers’ mess. The distance there from Romashov’s door was scarcely two hundred yards, and besides, he always made use of a short cut through unbuilt-upon plots and fenced-in kitchen-gardens, etc.

A bright gleam issued from the half-open windows of the salle-à-manger, billiard-room, and kitchen, but the dirty backyard, blocked up with and partly covered by all sorts of rubbish, was in thick darkness. Every moment one heard loud chatter and laughter, singing, and the sharp click of billiard balls.

Romashov had already reached the courtyard steps when he recognized his Captain’s angry and sneering voice. Romashov stopped at once, and cautiously glancing into one of the open windows of the salle-à-manger, he caught sight of Captain Sliva’s humped back.

He was stammering: “All my c-c-company m-m-marches as one man.” Sliva marked time by raising and lowering the palm of his hand. “But th-that d-d-damned fool m-must upset everything.” Sliva made with his first finger several clumsy and silly motions in the air. “But, g-gentlemen, I s-said to him, ‘M-march to another c-c-company, my f-fine f-f-fellow, or s-still b-better m-march out of the regiment. Who the devil will have s-such an officer?’”

Romashov shut his eyes, and shrivelled up with shame and rage. He feared that, at the next movement on his part, all the officers at mess would rush to the window and discover him. For one or two minutes he did not stir; then with his head hidden in his cloak, and scarcely venturing to breathe, he stole on tip-toe along the wall, out through the gate to the street, the moonlit portion of which he crossed by a couple of brisk jumps so as to reach the deep protecting shadow of the high hoarding on the other side.

Romashov sauntered for a long time that evening about the streets of the town. Often he did not even know where he was. Once he stopped in the shadow right under Nikoläiev’s house, the green-painted sheet-iron roof and white walls of which were brilliantly illumined by the moon’s clear bright rays. Not a soul was in the street, not a sound was audible. The sharply marked outlines of the shadows from the houses opposite divided the street into two halves.

Behind the thick dark-red curtains in one of the rooms at the Nikoläievs’ a lamp was burning. “My beloved,” whispered Romashov, “don’t you feel how near I am to you, how much I love you?” He pressed his hands to his chest, and had much difficulty in restraining his tears.

Suddenly, however, he got the idea that, in spite of the distance and the house’s thick walls, he might possibly make Shurochka notice his presence. With closed teeth and hands so tightly clenched that the nails were driven into the flesh, and with a sensation as if icy-cold ants were creeping over his body, he began to concentrate all his will-power to a single object. “Get up from your sofa. Come to the window. Draw the curtain. Look, look through the window out into the street. Obey. I command you; come to the window at once.”

But the curtain remained motionless. “You don’t hear me, then,” whispered Romashov, with sorrow and indignation in his heart. “You are sitting by the lamp beside him, calm, indifferent, and as beautiful as ever. Oh, my God, my God, how wretched I am!”

He sighed deeply, and with bowed head and crippled with weariness he continued his melancholy wandering.

He even passed Nasanski’s place, but it was dark there. It seemed to Romashov as if a white spectre had quickly fluttered past one of the house’s dark windows. A shudder ran through him, and he dared not call to Nasanski.

Some days later Romashov remembered this fantastic – nay, idiotic – ramble as a strange, far-off dream which, nevertheless, could not be forgotten. He had even been in the Jewish cemetery, but how he got there he could not tell himself. This silent and mysterious burial-ground lay beyond the town, on a height, and was surrounded by a low white wall. From the luxuriant, slumbering grass arose the icy-cold gravestones, simple, unadorned, like each other, and casting behind them long, narrow shadows. And over all this gloomy place reigned the grave, solemn, austere note of solitude.

After this he saw himself in another quarter of the town, but this, nevertheless, was perhaps only a dream. He stood in the middle of a long, carefully constructed dam that divided the River Bug across its entire breadth. The dark-hued water ran slowly and lazily away beneath his feet, and now and then it, as it were, strove to render a well-known melody by its capricious splashing. The moon was mirrored on the lightly curled surface of the river, like an infinitely long, trembling pillar, around which you might fancy you saw millions of fishes playing in the water whilst they slowly withdrew and disappeared in the direction of the distant shore, which lay afar off, silent, dark, and deserted. Wherever he might be, whether in or out of the town, he was followed by a faint, sweet, aromatic scent from the white acacia flower.

Wonderful thoughts entered his brain this night – thoughts sometimes sad and melancholy, at other times childishly ridiculous. Most frequently he reasoned like the inexperienced gambler who with the frivolity and optimism of youth pondered upon the fact that he had in a single night played away all he possessed. Thus Romashov tried again and again to delude himself into believing that the wretched events of the past day had absolutely no importance – nay, he even succeeded in resuscitating that “irresistible” Sub-lieutenant Romashov who so ideally conducts his parade march under the General’s critical eyes, who at the front is the object of the General’s thanks and admiration, and who afterwards drains his goblet of wine among his rejoicing comrades. But the next moment he hears Federovski’s furious threats, his chief’s insulting words, Nikoläiev’s painful questions and complaints, and he is once more the disgraced and hopelessly ruined Sub-lieutenant Romashov.

An irresistible force from within brought him back in the course of his nocturnal wandering to the place where he came upon Nikoläiev after the review. Here he walked about meditating suicide, though by no means seriously, but only – according to his ingrained habit – to pose in his own worthy person as a martyr and hero.

Hainán comes rushing out of Romashov’s room. His countenance is distorted with terror. Pale and trembling all over, he hurries on to the officers’ salle-à-manger, which is full of people. At the sight of Hainán all spontaneously get up from their places. “Your Excellencies – the lieutenant has – shot himself,” Hainán at last stammers out. General uproar; dismay is to be read in the faces of all. “Who has shot himself? Where? What lieutenant?” Finally somebody recognizes Hainán. “Gentlemen, this is Hainán, you know – Lieutenant Romashov’s servant. It’s the Circassian, you know.” All hurry to Romashov’s house; some do not even give themselves time to put on their caps. Romashov is discovered lying on his bed; on the floor beside him is a large pool of blood, in which is found a revolver of the Smith and Wesson celebrated make. Through a crowd of officers, who occupy every corner of the little room, Znoiko, the regimental surgeon, pushes his way with some difficulty. “Shot in the temple,” he says amidst a general hush. “All is over, nothing can be done.” Some one among the bystanders says in a lowered voice, “Gentlemen, uncover your heads before the majesty of Death!” Many make the sign of the Cross. Viätkin finds on the table a note on which the deceased has written in a firm hand a few lines in pencil. Viätkin reads them out —

I forgive all. I die of my own free will. My life is intolerable. Break the news gently to my mother.

    GEORGI ROMASHOV.

All gaze at one another, and each reads on his neighbour’s countenance the unuttered thought: “We are his murderers.” Softly rocks the coffin covered with gold brocade and carried by eight comrades. The entire corps of officers takes part in the procession. After the officers comes the 6th Company. Captain Sliva frowns gloomily. Viätkin’s kind face is disfigured by tears, but now in the street he makes an effort to compose himself. Lbov – oh, heart of gold! – weeps incessantly without blushing for his emotion. Like deep, heavy sighs sound the hollow strains of the Dead March. There stand all the ladies of the regiment, including Shurochka. “I kissed him,” she thinks with despair in her heart. “I loved him – I might have saved him.” “Too late!” thinks Romashov, with a bitter smile. The officers accompanying their dead comrade to the grave softly converse with each other. “Ah,” thinks each of them to himself, “how sorry I am for him, poor fellow. What an excellent comrade, what a handsome and capable officer! – Yes, yes, that is true, but we did not appreciate him.” Loud and more touching sound the strains of the Dead March. It is Beethoven’s immortal music, “By a Hero’s Bier.” But Romashov is lying in his coffin, cold and still, with an everlasting smile on his lips. On his chest rests a modest bouquet of violets, but no one knows from where they came. He has forgiven all – Shurochka, Sliva, Federovski, Shulgovich – all. But they waste no tears. He is better off where he is now; he was too pure, too good for this world.