Now, there would have been nothing to say about it, unless the conditions themselves of the duel had been so fixed that the latter resembled an ordinary execution: fifteen paces distance, and the fight to last till one of the duellists was hors de combat.
This is only on a par with ordinary slaughter, is it not?
But hear what followed.
On the duelling-ground stood all the officers of the regiment, many of them with ladies; nay, they had even put a photographer behind the bushes!
How disgusting!
The unfortunate sub-lieutenant or ensign—as Volodya usually says—a man of your youthful age, moreover the party insulted, and not the one who offered the insult—received, after the third shot, a fearful wound in the stomach, and died some hours afterwards in great torture.
By his deathbed stood his aged mother and sister, who kept house for him. Now tell me why a duel should be turned into such a disgusting spectacle.
Of course the immediate consequence” (Shurochka almost shrieked these words) “was that all those sentimental opponents of duelling—eugh, how I despise these ‘liberal’ weaklings and poltroons!—at once began making a noise and fuss about ‘barbarism,’ ‘fratricide,’ how ‘duels are a disgrace to our times,’ and more nonsense of that sort.”
“Good God! I could never believe that you were so bloodthirsty, Alexandra Petrovna,” exclaimed Romashov, interrupting her.
“I am by no means bloodthirsty,” replied Shurochka, sharply.
“On the contrary, I am very tender-hearted.
If a beetle crawls on to my neck I remove it with the greatest caution so as not to inflict any hurt on it—but try and understand me, Romashov. This is my simple process of reasoning:
‘Why have we officers?’
Answer: ‘For the sake of war.’
‘What are the most necessary qualities of an officer in time of war?’
Answer: ‘Courage and a contempt of death.’
‘How are these qualities best acquired in time of peace?’
Answer: ‘By means of duels.’
How can that be proved?
Duels are not required to be obligatory in the French Army, for a sense of honour is innate in the French officer; he knows what respect is due to himself and to others. Neither is duelling obligatory in the German Army, with its highly developed and inflexible discipline.
But with us—us, as long as among our officers are to be found notorious card-sharpers such as, for instance, Artschakovski; or hopeless sots, as our own Nasanski, when, in the officers’ mess or on duty, violent scenes are of almost daily occurrence—then, such being the case, duels are both necessary and salutary. An officer must be a pattern of correctness; he is bound to weigh every word he utters.
And, moreover, this delicate squeamishness, the fear of a shot!
Your vocation is to risk your life—which is precisely the point.”
All at once she brought her long speech to a close, and with redoubled energy resumed her work.
“Shurochka, what is ‘rival’ in German?” asked Nikolaiev, lifting his head from the book.
“Rival?”
Shurochka stuck her crochet-needle in her soft locks.
“Read out the whole sentence.”
“It runs—wait—directly—directly—ah! it runs: ‘Our rival abroad.’”
“Unser auslandischer Nebenbuhler” translated Shurochka straight off.
“Unser,” repeated Romashov in a whisper as he gazed dreamily at the flame of the lamp.
“When she is moved,” thought he, “her words come like a torrent of hail falling on a silver tray.
Unser—what a funny word! Unser—unser—unser.”
“What are you mumbling to yourself about, Romashov?” asked Alexandra Petrovna severely.
“Don’t dare to sit and build castles in the air whilst I am present.”
He smiled at her with a somewhat embarrassed air.
“I was not building castles in the air, but repeating to myself ‘Unser—unser.’
Isn’t it a funny word?”
“What rubbish you are talking! Unser.
Why is it funny?”
“You see” (he made a slight pause as if he really intended to think about what he meant to say), “if one repeats the same word for long, and at the same time concentrates on it all his faculty of thought, the word itself suddenly loses all its meaning and becomes—how can I put it?”
“I know, I know!” she interrupted delightedly.
“But it is not easy to do it now. When I was a child, now—how we used to love doing it!”
“Yes—yes—it belongs to childhood—yes.”
“How well I remember it!
I remember the word ‘perhaps’ particularly struck me.
I could sit for a long time with eyes shut, rocking my body to and fro, whilst I was repeatedly saying over and over again,
‘Perhaps, perhaps.’ And suddenly I quite forgot what the word itself meant. I tried to remember, but it was no use.
I saw only a little round, reddish blotch with two tiny tails.
Are you attending?”