He rode down the hill and through the village, with the light of the setting sun shining on a face where pain and deadly rage were fighting for the mastery.
XXXVIII
A Tale That Is Told
Karl Steinmetz walked slowly upstairs to his own room. The evening sun, shining through the small, deeply embrasured windows, fell on a face at no time joyous, now tired and worn. He sat down at his broad writing-table, and looked round the room with a little blink of the eyelids.
“I am getting too old for this sort of thing,” he said.
His gaze lighted on the heavy riding-whip thrown on the ground near the door where he had released Claude de Chauxville, after the terrible punishment meted out to that foe with heavy Teutonic hand. Steinmetz rose, and picking up the whip with the grunt of a stout man stooping, replaced it carefully in the rack over the mantelpiece.
He stood looking out of the window for a few moments.
“It will have to be done,” he said resolutely, and rang the bell.
“My compliments to the prince,” he said to his servant, who appeared instantly, “and will he come to me here.”
When Paul came into the room a few minutes later Steinmetz was standing by the fire. He turned and looked gravely at the prince.
“I have just kicked De Chauxville out of the house,” he said.
The color left Paul’s face quite suddenly.
“Why?” he asked, with hard eyes. He had begun to distrust Etta, and there is nothing so hard to stop as the growth of distrust.
Steinmetz did not answer at once.
“Was it not my privilege?” asked Paul, with a grim smile. There are some smiles more terrible than any frown.
“No,” answered Steinmetz, “I think not. It is not as bad as that. But it is bad enough, mein lieber!—it is bad enough! I horsewhipped him first for myself. Gott! how pleasant that was! And then I kicked him out for you.”
“Why?” repeated Paul, with a white face.
“It is a long story,” answered Steinmetz, without looking at him. “He knows too much.”
“About whom?”
“About all of us.”
Paul walked away to the window. He stood looking out, his hands thrust into the side-pockets of his jacket, his broad back turned uncompromisingly upon his companion.
“Tell me the story,” he said. “You need not hurry over it. You need not trouble to—spare me. Only let it be quite complete—once for all.”
Steinmetz winced. He knew the expression of the face that was looking out of the window.
“This man has hated me all his life,” he said. “It began as such things usually do between men—about a woman. It was years ago. I got the better of him, and the good God got the better of me. She died, and De Chauxville forgot her. I—have not forgotten her. But I have tried to do so. It is a slow process, and I have made very little progress; but all that is my affair and beside the question. I merely mention it to show you that De Chauxville had a grudge against me—”
“This is no time for mistaken charity,” interrupted Paul. “Do not try to screen anybody. I shall see through it.”
There was a little pause. Never had that silent room been so noiseless.
“In afterlife,” Steinmetz went on, “it was our fate to be at variance several times. Our mutual dislike has had no opportunity of diminishing. It seems that, before you married, De Chauxville was pleased to consider himself in love with Mrs. Sydney Bamborough. Whether he had any right to think himself ill-used, I do not know. Such matters are usually known to two persons only, and imperfectly by them. It would appear that the wound to his vanity was serious. It developed into a thirst for revenge. He looked about for some means to do you harm. He communicated with your enemies, and allied himself to such men as Vassili of Paris. He followed us to Petersburg, and then he had a stroke of good fortune. He found out—who betrayed the Charity League!”
Paul turned slowly round. In his eyes there burned a dull, hungering fire. Men have seen such a look in the eyes of a beast of prey, driven, famished, cornered at last, and at last face to face with its foe.
“Ah! He knows that!” he said slowly.
“Yes, God help us! he knows that.”
“And who was it?”
Steinmetz moved uneasily from one foot to the other.
“It was a woman,” he said.
“A woman?”
“A woman—you know,” said Steinmetz slowly.
“Good God! Catrina?”
“No, not Catrina.”
“Then who?” cried Paul hoarsely. His hands fell heavily on the table.
“Your wife!”
Paul knew before the words were spoken.
He turned again, and stood looking out of the window with his hands thrust into his pockets. He stood there for whole minutes in an awful stillness. The clock on the mantelpiece, a little travelling timepiece, ticked in a hurried way as if anxious to get on. Down beneath them, somewhere in the courtyards of the great castle, a dog—a deep-voiced wolfhound—was baying persistently and nervously, listening for the echo of its own voice amid the pines of the desert forest.
Steinmetz watched Paul’s motionless back with a sort of fascination. He moved uneasily, as if to break a spell of silence almost unbearable in its intensity. He went to the table and sat down. From mere habit he took up a quill pen. He looked at the point of it and at the inkstand. But he had nothing to write. There was nothing to say.
He laid the pen aside, and sat leaning his broad head upon the palm of his hand, his two elbows on the table. Paul never moved. Steinmetz waited. His own life had been no great success. He had had much to bear, and he had borne it. He was wondering heavily whether any of it had been as bad as what Paul was bearing
