The Sowers - The Sowers Part 61
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The Sowers Part 61

"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 any body. I shall see through it."

There was a little pause. Never had that silent room been so noiseless.

"In after-life," 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 mantel-piece, 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 wolf-hound--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 now while he looked out of the window with his hands in his pockets, saying nothing.

At length Paul moved. He turned, and, coming toward the table, laid his hand on Steinmetz's broad shoulder.

"Are you sure of it?" he asked, in a voice that did not sound like his own at all--a hollow voice like that of an old man.

"Quite; I have it from Stepan Lanovitch--from the princess herself."

They remained thus for a moment. Then Paul withdrew his hand and walked slowly to the window.

"Tell me," he said, "how she did it."

Steinmetz was playing with the quill pen again. It is singular how at great moments we perform trivial acts, think trivial thoughts. He dipped the pen in the ink, and made a pattern on the blotting-pad with dots.

"It was an organized plan between husband and wife," he said.

"Bamborough turned up at Thors and asked for a night's lodging, on the strength of a very small acquaintance. He stole the papers from Stepan's study and took them to Tver, where his wife was waiting for them. She took them on to Paris and sold them to Vassili. Bamborough began his journey eastward, knowing presumably that he could not escape by the western frontier, but lost his way on the steppe. You remember the man whom we picked up between here and Tver, with his face all cut to pieces?--he had been dragged by the stirrup. That was Sydney Bamborough.

The good God had hit back quickly."

"How long have you known this?" asked Paul, in a queer voice.

"I saw it suddenly in the princess's face, one day in Petersburg--a sort of revelation. I read it there, and she saw me reading. I should have liked to keep it from you, for your sake as well as for hers. Our daily life is made possible only by the fact that we know so little of our neighbors. There are many things of which we are better ignorant right up to the end. This might have been one of them. But De Chauxville found it out, and it is better that I should tell you than he."

Paul did not look around. The wolf-hound was still barking at its own echo--a favorite pastime of those who make a great local stir in the world.

"Of course," said Paul, after a long pause, "I have been a great fool. I know that. But--"

He turned and looked at Steinmetz with haggard eyes.

"But I would rather go on being a fool than suspect any one of a deception like this."

Steinmetz was still making patterns on the blotting-pad.

"It is difficult for us men," he said slowly, "to look at these things from a woman's point of view. They hold a different sense of honor from ours--especially if they are beautiful. And the fault is ours--especially toward the beautiful ones. There may have been temptations of which we are ignorant."

Paul was still looking at him. Steinmetz looked up slowly, and saw that he had grown ten years older in the last few minutes. He did not look at him for more than a second, because the sight of Paul's face hurt him.

But he saw in that moment that Paul did not understand. This strong man, hard in his youthful strength of limb and purpose, would be just, but nothing more. And between man and man it is not always justice that is required. Between man and woman justice rarely meets the difficulty.

"Comprendre c'est pardonner," quoted Steinmetz vaguely.

He hesitated to interfere between Paul and his wife. Axioms are made for crucial moments. A man's life has been steered by a proverb before this.

Some, who have no religion, steer by them all the voyage.

Paul walked slowly to the chair he usually occupied, opposite to Steinmetz, at the writing-table. He walked and sat down as if he had travelled a long distance.

"What is to be done?" asked Steinmetz.

"I do not know. I do not think that it matters much. What do you recommend?"