Chapter V

THE DAY AFTER THE WEDDING.

It may easily be imagined that Steinfeld, brave as he unquestionably was, did not feel particularly pleased at finding himself called upon to risk his life in a profitless duel, at the very moment when that life had acquired fresh value in his eyes, through his acquisition of a pretty wife and a handsome fortune. The former, it is true, the baron, whose utter selfishness made him incapable of love in the higher sense of the word, prized only as a child does a new plaything, or an epicure a fresh dish presented to his sated palate. Pretty and attractive as his bride was, her personal charms weighed far less with him than her golden ones. Even in these he had been somewhat disappointed. Although considerable, they were less than Fatello’s round-numbered generalities had led him to expect; and, moreover, when the time came to discuss the settlements, the banker fought hard to secure his sister-in-law’s fortune upon her own head and that of her children. This, however, Steinfeld vigorously resisted, urging the necessity of extricating his estates from pawn; and Sebastiana, enamoured of her handsome bridegroom, and whose ardent and jealous imagination drew a romantic picture of a tête-à-tête existence in a secluded chateau, far from the rivalries of a capital, expressed so strongly her will to apply her fortune in the manner Steinfeld desired, that Fatello, after much opposition, and with no good grace, was compelled to yield the point. The sum thus placed in the Austrian’s power, although less than he had anticipated, was yet so large to a man in his position, that its possession threw a pleasant rose-coloured tint over his existence, of which the prospect of poverty and the annoyances of duns had for some time past deprived it. So that when, upon his wedding-day, Fatello fiercely taxed him with his perfidy, repeated the words of insult he had addressed to him on the morrow of the masquerade, and insisted upon a duel, the baron did all in his power to pacify him, urging their new but near connection as an insuperable obstacle to a quarrel, and even humbling himself to express contrition for his offence, which he persisted, however, would have been viewed as but a venial one by any but so morbid, jealous, and vindictive a person as Fatello, and which, in no case, considering the relation they now stood in to each other, could be held to justify them in seeking each other’s life. But to his expostulations, apologies, and arguments, Fatello replied with such savage invective and ungovernable violence, taunting the baron with cowardice, and threatening him, if he refused the reparation demanded, with public exposure and manual chastisement—threats, of whose execution Fatello’s intemperate character and colossal frame (the latter still muscular and powerful in spite of the disease mining it) allowed very little doubt—that Steinfeld saw there was no alternative but to accept the meeting; and, assuming the cold and haughty tone of an injured man, he briefly arranged with Fatello its principal conditions. To avoid scandal, and to insure, as far as possible, the safety of the survivor, the duel was to take place in the grounds of a country-house belonging to the banker, at about a league from Paris, and the seconds and surgeon were to be pledged to the strictest secresy. Fatello named Captain Carcassonne, and Steinfeld the Viscount Arthur de Mellay, between whom the details of the affair were to be settled.

Both the principals, however, in this singular duel, were destined to experience difficulties from the friends they had fixed upon to second them. Captain Carcassonne, who himself cared no more for a duel than an English prizefighter does for a round with the gloves, and who never slept a wink the fewer, or ate a mouthful less breakfast before going out to fight one, was seized with a sudden trepidation when he learned that his friend, whom he well knew to be unskilled in fence and fire, was to enter the field with a man reputed expert in both. At first he would not hear of the meeting taking place, swearing, in direct opposition to what he had just before said, that he should not think of fighting for such a trifle. When this plea was overruled, a bright idea struck him. He would pick a quarrel with Steinfeld, and wing him with a pistol-shot, or spoil his beauty with a sabre cut, just as Fatello chose; ay, would kill him outright, if nothing less would satisfy his vindictive friend. But Fatello, whose morbid desire of revenge had assumed the character of a monomania, rejected all the captain’s plans; and Carcassonne, whose affection and deference for his old companion and benefactor were unbounded, ceased to make objections, and fixed his thoughts solely upon the necessary preliminaries. As to Fatello’s announcement of the danger his life was in from lurking disease (a danger more remote, but also more certain than that he would incur upon the morrow), it would deeply have grieved the worthy captain had he attached the least credit to it; but his contempt for doctors and their prognostications prevented his dwelling on it longer than to give a smile to the credulity of his friend. Meanwhile Steinfeld had some trouble with de Mellay. It not being the fashion in France for newly-married couples to escape from the place of their wedding as fast as four posters can carry them, the baron had taken his bride to his house in the Rue St Lazare, which a little arrangement had adapted for their residence during the few days that were to elapse before their departure for Germany. There, upon the evening of his wedding-day, he had a conference with the viscount, who, startled, like Carcassonne, at the news of the projected duel, insisted on full explanations before consenting to render Steinfeld the service required of him. These explanations Steinfeld was compelled to give; and although he spread over them a varnish favourable to himself, de Mellay plainly saw that the part the Austrian had played in the whole affair did him no credit, and that Fatello’s extraordinary vindictiveness, if not justified, was in some degree extenuated, by his adversary’s perfidious manœuvres and gross breach of hospitality. He at first insisted on attempting a reconciliation, but Steinfeld having convinced him of its impossibility, he would not refuse to stand by an intimate friend and companion, who had more than once gone upon the ground with him. He suggested, however—almost, indeed, made it a condition—that the baron should fire wide, or not at all, the first time, in doing which he ran little risk, for Fatello was known to be unskilled with the pistol. De Mellay resolved to place the duellists as far apart as possible, and to make them fire together. He made sure Fatello would miss the first shot, and that then, if Steinfeld had not fired, the affair could easily be made up.

It was three in the afternoon, and the snow lay thick upon the ground, when Steinfeld and his second entered a small door in the paling of the banker’s park, at a short distance from which they had dismissed their hackney coach. Fatello, Carcassonne, and Dr Pilori, had preceded them in the banker’s carriage. The five men met upon a bowling-green surrounded by trees, which, although leafless, were so thickly planted as to form an impervious screen. More for form’s sake and the satisfaction of conscience, than with hope of success, the seconds essayed a reconciliation. The attempt was rendered fruitless by Fatello’s firm determination; and after a brief conference between the viscount and Carcassonne, the combatants were placed at twenty paces. It was agreed they were to fire together, when six had been counted. The seconds stepped aside. Carcassonne counted. When he came to “six,” a single report followed. Steinfeld staggered. De Mellay ran to him.

“Nothing,” said the baron. “My dear brother-in-law shoots better than I thought, that is all.” And he showed a rent made by Fatello’s bullet in the front of his tightly-buttoned surtout, near the waist. A button had been cut away, and the ball had grazed the skin, but without drawing blood.

“This shall not avail you, sir,” cried Fatello, in a tone of indescribable exasperation. “We came to fight, not to play. Fire, sir!” And he stood sideways, expecting his adversary’s bullet.

Steinfeld smiled bitterly. Then, raising his pistol, he took aim at a redbreast, which, scared from the bough by Fatello’s fire, had again settled, tamed by cold and hunger, upon a sapling five-and-twenty paces off. Bark and feathers flew at the same time, and the unlucky little bird lay disembowelled upon the snow. Carcassonne and de Mellay exchanged a word or two, and advanced towards Fatello.

“Enough done, my dear Sigismund,” said the captain. “After the baron’s forbearance, this can go no farther.”

Fatello’s reply was a torrent of imprecations. His eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks pale as death; he was insane with passion. The captain in vain endeavoured to soothe and calm him. He raged and stormed like a madman.

“Monsieur Fatello,” said de Mellay with surprise—almost with disgust—“for heaven’s sake compose yourself. This persistence is unworthy of you. What injury have you received to justify such malignity? Neither your second nor myself can let this affair proceed, otherwise than to a reconciliation.”

There was a decision in the young man’s tone and manner that seemed to strike Fatello and check his fury. For a moment or two he gazed silently at the viscount, as if recalled to reason by his remonstrance. It was the trick of the maniac, to put the keeper off his guard. Suddenly pushing Carcassonne aside, he reached, in two bounds, a pistol-case that lay open at a short distance, and, seizing one of the weapons, levelled it at Steinfeld. With a cry of horror, de Mellay and Carcassonne threw themselves before the baron.

“This is murder!” exclaimed the viscount.

“Stop!” said Steinfeld, pale, but quite calm. “Wait a moment, sir, and you shall be satisfied. There is no alternative, my dear de Mellay. Monsieur Fatello insists. Give me the other pistol.”

De Mellay hesitated, and looked at the captain.

“Ma foi!” said Carcassonne, shrugging his shoulders, as if he thought a bullet more or less hardly worth so much discussion—“if they will have it!” The principals resumed their ground, and the word was again given. This time both pistols were discharged. Steinfeld stirred not, but Fatello fell to the ground and lay there without motion. Dr Pilori ran forward, and, kneeling beside him, unbuttoned his coat. There was a small blue spot on the breast, from which oozed a drop or two of blood. The doctor seized the wrist of the fallen man. Steinfeld and the seconds gazed anxiously in his face, awaiting his verdict.

“I aimed at his arm,” said Steinfeld gloomily, “but the cold made my hand shake.”

Carcassonne seemed not to hear the remark. De Mellay glanced at the baron, and then at the bird that lay upon the blood-sprinkled snow more than twenty yards off.

“Quite dead,” said Pilori, letting the arm fall. “It is a painful thing to kill a man,” added the materialist doctor to Steinfeld, who stood regarding his victim with a moody and regretful gaze. “It may be satisfactory to you to know that he could not have lived six months longer.”

In France, a few years ago, duels, even when fatal in result, did not necessarily entail strict judicial investigation, unless such investigation was provoked by the friends of the fallen man. In the instance here recorded no one thought proper to take vindictive steps. Fatello’s coachman was instructed, and largely bribed, to say that his master had been struck with apoplexy in his carriage, and that, on discovering his condition, he had at once driven him to Dr Pilori. The physician’s arrival at the house, in company with the corpse, and the absence of hemorrhage from the wound, rendered it easy to conceal the latter, and gave plausibility to the story, which found general credit. It was not till several days afterwards that a report spread of the real cause of the banker’s death. Even then it attained little publicity, and by many was looked upon as a malicious fabrication. Before it got wind, however, the survivors of the domestic drama we have narrated, were far from its scene. By a will made a month before his death, Fatello had left the whole of his great riches, with the exception of some munificent donations to public charities, and of an ample legacy to Captain Carcassonne, to a cousin of his own name in Alsace. But he could not alienate his wife’s fortune, or deprive her of the splendid jointure secured to her by her father’s cautious greediness; and these constituted very large wealth, with which his widow, shortly after his death, left Paris for her native country. Her Parisian friends and acquaintances were edified, in the highest degree, by the grief she displayed at Fatello’s decease. She was disconsolate; and, for at least a day and a half, “cette pauvre Madame Fatello” was the prevailing topic of conversation, and the object of universal sympathy. Henpecked husbands held her up as a model of conjugal affection; and wicked wives secretly wondered at the poignant regret shown by such a young, rich, and handsome widow, for so ugly, unprepossessing, and morose a man. But it occurred to no one to seek the cause of her excessive grief in a bridal wreath instead of in a funeral shroud; to trace the source of her sorrow to the loss of an expected husband whom she passionately loved, not to that of a departed one, whom she never regretted.

Although little apprehensive of persecution, many motives concurred to render Paris an undesirable residence for the survivor of the duel in which Fatello met his death. The day after the fatal meeting, a travelling carriage left Paris by the road to Brussels. It contained Ernest von Steinfeld and his bride. In spite of some practice in duelling, and of the triple armour of selfishness in which he was habitually cased, there was a cloud upon the baron’s brow which change of scene and the caresses of his young wife did not always suffice to dissipate. And, although sensible to his bride’s beauty and fascination, and grateful, as far as it was in his nature to be so, for the passionate affection she showed him, it may be doubted whether he would not have repulsed her endearments, and spurned her from him, had he detected a secret that lay buried in the innermost recesses of her heart—had he recognised, in Sebastiana Gonfalon, the writer of the two anonymous letters that tended so materially to bring about her marriage, and the violent death of Sigismund Fatello.

As it was, the Baroness von Steinfeld had not long to congratulate herself on the success of her culpable manœuvres, whose sole extenuation was to be found in the fiery passions of her race, and in a moral education totally neglected. Doubtless, when planning and carrying out her guilty scheme, the possibility of so terrible a result never occurred to her; and it were attributing improbable depravity to one so young to doubt that she felt remorse at the catastrophe. She did not long await her punishment. Bright as were her hopes of happiness when led to the altar by the man she adored, she soon was bitterly convinced, that no true or permanent felicity could be the consequence of a union achieved by guilty artifice, and sealed with a brother’s blood. A few months were sufficient to darken her destiny and blight her joys. Her fortune swallowed up by Steinfeld’s debts and extravagance, her person speedily became indifferent to the sated and cold-hearted voluptuary; and whilst her reckless husband, faithful to nothing but to his hatred of matrimonial ties, again galloped upon the road to ruin, in the most dissipated circles of the Austrian capital, she saw herself condemned to solitude and unavailing regrets, in the very castle where she had anticipated an existence of unalloyed bliss.