A STRUGGLE WITH THE ANGEL.
Our hero, whom we have found to be almost always grave and silent
in the midst of the events and personages that surrounded him,
performing as it were a wordless rôle with the weary air of a
tired-out actor, and who hitherto has betrayed but a very small part
of his thoughts and feelings, was this evening more occupied than
usual with his own affairs, and was taking anxious counsel with
himself. When he had moved the invalid to the eastern side of the
garden he had taken a turn round the house; he could hear the chatter
of the servants in the yard, and the laughter of the girls and women,
who were sitting out in the street to breathe a little fresh air
and carrying on a flirtation with the coachmen and grooms from next
door. The noise disturbed him, and he went on along the winding path
through the vines; then, seating himself on a bench facing the north,
with his eyes fixed on the sky, he remained for a long time, his
elbow on the back of the seat, his hand supporting his head, and his
limbs stretched at ease.
He was learned in astronomy, and he longed for something that might
divert his mind from the gnawing pain that oppressed it. What better
respite could he find than in the contemplation of the unchanging
heavens--the covenant of promise of our high destiny--and in the
regularity and order of their motion--the emblem of eternity? His
saddened spirit flew away through those shoreless depths as to its
native element, and revelled in the thought of those incomprehensible
distances and unimaginable masses. High in front of him, solitary,
apparently motionless, watching, as it were, from its sublime
immutability the endless circling of the other stars, he saw the Pole
Star, the Alpha of the great scroll. Round it rolled the Great and
Little Bears, Cassiopeia and the rest, and his eye rested on Vega,
loveliest of the stars, with a mysteriously melancholy, tearful
gaze--a star so beautiful that we long to grasp it--if only we had
an arm 1,000,330 times as long as that which would enable us to
light a cigar at the sun. To the west sparkled the diamond fires
of the Northern Crown, dancing hand in hand as it were, and always
in pursuit of the glorious Arcturus--one of the grandest of those
distant suns, blazing serenely as if smiling in proud consciousness
of its splendour. It was growing late and Arcturus was sinking on
the horizon; but opposite rose Pegasus, then the hapless Andromeda,
reaching out towards Perseus with the Gorgon’s Head in his hand.
Capella alone by the shoulder of Auriga, shedding angry rays like
arrows and looking down on us from a distance of 170 billions of
leagues. Its burning glance takes seventy-two years to reach us.
Close followed the twinkling tangle of the tearful Pleiades, flying
from the hot pursuit of Aldebaran. Leon calculated how soon Orion
would appear, the glory of the heavenly panorama, and Sirius, before
whose splendour minor fires pale. His eye sought the coy glance of
Antares and the Scorpion’s head and tail; it lingered on the more
conspicuous nebulae, wandered along the Milky Way, where the Eagle
spreads its wings and the Swan displays its shining cross; he let all
this beauty and glory sink into his soul, reflecting how hard it must
be to the uninitiated to conceive of it as a dense dust of stars,
till at length he was tired of gazing. Something in the background of
his mind seemed to recall him to earthly cares, and a presentiment of
terror; he rose and went indoors.
Going from one room to another he presently heard voices; they were
those of María and her brother, talking in the garden, close to
the dining-room window. The subdued broken voice, interrupted by
coughing, sounded in his ear like María’s plaintive muttering and
sighing when she told the beads of her rosary. Going close to the
window he could hear more distinctly, and though he hated himself
for listening, a feeling, something like the morbid curiosity of a
criminal, rooted him to the spot. His eyes stared horror-stricken on
the couple in the garden and he turned pale as a guilty man might
who hears his doom. The very acuteness of his indignation made him
presently start from the window and set him wandering about the empty
rooms, every door and window having been left open for air; his
drooping figure was reflected in the mirrors as he passed, as if they
were tossing it from one to another; the birds that were asleep in
their cages fluttered as they heard him, and the curtains waved aside
to admit him as if he had been some important visitor.
At length he flung himself on a sofa in the library that was now used
as the invalid’s sitting-room, resting his head in his hands. Now and
then he muttered something to himself, or exclaimed as if he were
addressing some other person. Then he laughed--a laugh of scorn, of
mockery, or more probably of anger--for anger at its bitterest has
its sense of humour--and at last a phenomenon occurred in his brain
which is not uncommon when wrath and grief meet to work their will on
a man in solitude, darkness, and silence.
With his eyes shut--and this is the strangest part of it--he saw the
room in which he was sitting and himself just as he sat. Before him
stood a queer Japanese-looking figure, black, definite and distinct
against a background of brilliantly-lighted colours. The haggard form
was seated and as rigid as an inquisitor, the pallid passive face
was pinched and disfigured by a constant habit of putting on a sour
and mystical expression; the eyes, with greenish lights, were raised
to the ceiling or wandered round the room, gazing with indifference
at the drawings, maps and prints that covered the walls, or at the
matting on the floor.
Leon was asleep--that painful sleep which supervenes on the acuter
paroxysms of a suffering so deep that it cannot rise to the surface,
but makes itself a channel to the very depths of our being. There
was some one else in the room. Who were the group sitting there in
solemn conclave? These were Arcturus, Aldebaran, Vega, Capella,
Orion, Antares and, glorious above all, Sirius himself.... In his
delirious dream Leon saw himself start up, raging with fury and
courage; he flung himself on the gaunt dark figure; without a word of
warning he clutched him in his arms, shrieking: “Viper you have come
to rob me of my last hope! Die....”
The viper fixed on him a gaze of intense anguish, writhing and
groaning in his iron grasp, and his frail ribs gave way, cracking
like a nutshell.
“Who bid you interfere in the government of another man’s home?”
said Leon blind with rage. “Who gave you a right to rob me of what
is my own? Who are you? Where did you come from, with your hideous
boast and hypocrisy of virtue? Of what avail is it that you should
flay yourself alive if you have no true spirit of charity?” and the
hapless creature, gasping for breath and helpless with anguish,
closed its eyes in death under his crushing embrace. Leon, mad
with fury, still tightened his clutch; his victim seemed to fall
to pieces in his arms; nothing remained but a black bundle with
shrunken shanks, bony grasping fingers and a limp body--broken like a
cardboard manikin in the hands of a child....
Then, suddenly, the starry conclave laughed aloud and vanished, each
to his proper place; the lifeless mass slipped from the murderer’s
grasp and was transfigured before him. Its squalor turned to
grandeur, its feebleness became strength; it rose and grew stately;
a glory crowned its brow, shining wings grew from the dusty form; he
saw it stand before him on bare white feet unstained by the dust of
earth, and lift its muscular right arm holding a sword of fire. He
put his hand to his girdle--he, too, had a flaming sword and he drew
it forth and waved it with threatening defiance.
“Coward! do you think I fear your blade?”
“Impious wretch! Die!”
And then between them, her beauty illuminated by the glare of the
swords, stood María, lovely and seductive, her eyes glowing with
passion while her lips affected a peevish hypocrisy.
“Priest!” she cried, “leave him to me! Do you not see that he is
mine--that I love him?”
“Wretch, begone....”
“Oh! what wild raving,” exclaimed Leon, passing his hand across his
forehead which was damp with cold sweat, and shaking off the hideous
vision. Then he heard his wife’s voice calling him.
That cry: “Leon, Leon!” rang in his ears like a knell. He rose, and
slowly, slowly--grudgingly, almost revengefully--he went into the
garden.