The Revolt of the Angels/Chapter 29
CHAPTER XXIX
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HE angel was pleased with his lodging. He worked of a morning, went out in the afternoon, heedless of detectives, and came home to sleep. As in days gone by, Maurice received Madame des Aubels twice or thrice a week in the room in which they had seen the apparition.
All went very well until one morning Gilberte, having, the night before, left her little velvet bag on the table in the blue room, came to find it, and discovered Arcade stretched on the couch in his pyjamas, smoking a cigarette, and dreaming of the conquest of Heaven. She gave a loud scream.
“You, Monsieur! Had I thought to find you here, you may be quite sure I should not . . . I came to fetch my little bag, which is in the next room. Allow me. . . .” And she slipped past the angel, cautiously and quickly, as if he were a brazier.
Madame des Aubels that morning, in her pale green tailor-made costume, was deliciously attractive. Her tight skirt displayed her movements, and her every step was one of those miracles of Nature which fill men’s hearts with amazement.
She reappeared, bag in hand.
“Once more—I ask your pardon. . . . I never dreamt that . . .”
Arcade begged her to sit down to stay a moment.
“I never expected, Monsieur,” said she, “that you would be doing the honours of this flat. I knew how dearly Monsieur d’Esparvieu loved you. . . . Nevertheless, I had no idea that . . .”
The sky had suddenly grown overcast. A brownish glare began to steal into the room. Madame des Aubels told him she had walked for her health’s sake, but a storm was brewing, and she asked if a carriage could be called for her.
Arcade flung himself at Gilberte’s feet, took her in his arms as one takes a precious piece of china, and murmured words which, being meaningless in themselves, expressed desire.
She put her hands over his eyes and on his lips, and exclaimed, “I hate you!”
And shaking with sobs, she asked for a drink of water. She was choking. The angel went to her assistance. In this moment of extreme peril she defended herself courageously. She kept saying: “No! . . . No! . . . I will not love you. I should love you too well. . . .” Nevertheless she succumbed.
In the sweet familiarity which followed their mutual astonishment she said to him:
“I have often asked after you. I knew that you were an assiduous frequenter of the playhouses at Montmartre,—that you were often seen with Mademoiselle Bouchotte, who, nevertheless, is not at all pretty. I knew that you had become very smart, and that you were making a good deal of money. I was not surprised. You were born to succeed. The day of your”—and she pointed at the spot between the window and the wardrobe with the mirror—“apparition, I was vexed with Maurice for having given you a suicide’s rags to wear. You pleased me. . . . Oh, it was not your good looks! Don’t think that women are as sensitive as people say to outward attractions. We consider other things in love, There is a sort of—— Well, anyhow I loved you as soon as I saw you.”
The shadows grew deeper.
She asked:
“You are not an angel, are you? Maurice believes you are; but he believes so many things, Maurice.” She questioned Arcade with her eyes and smiled maliciously. “Confess that you have been fooling him, and that you are no angel?”
Arcade replied:
“I only aspire to please you; I will always be what you want me to be.”
Gilberte decided that he was no angel; first, because one never is an angel; secondly, for more detailed reasons which drew her thoughts to the question of love. He did not argue the matter with her, and once again words were found inadequate to express their feelings.
Outside, the rain was falling thick and fast, the windows were streaming, lightning lit up the muslin curtains, and thunder shook the panes. Gilberte made the sign of the Cross and remained with her head hidden in her lover’s bosom.
At this moment Maurice entered the room. He came in wet and smiling, confident, tranquil, happy, to announce to Arcade the good news that with his half-share in the previous day’s race at Longchamps the angel had won twelve times his stake. Surprising the lady and the angel in their embrace, he became furious; anger gripped the muscles of his throat, his face grew red with blood, and the veins stood out on his forehead. He sprang with clenched fists towards Gilberte, and then suddenly stopped.
Interrupted motion was transformed into heat. Maurice fumed. His anger did not arm him, like Archilochus, with lyrical vengeance. He merely applied an offensive epithet to his unfaithful one.
Meanwhile she had recovered her dignified bearing. She rose, full of modesty and grace, and gave her accuser a look which expressed both offended virtue and loving forgiveness.
But as young d’Esparvieu continued to shower coarse and monotonous insults on her, she grew angry in her turn.
“You are a pretty sort of person, are you not?” she said. “Did I run after this Arcade of yours? It was you who brought him here, and in what a state, too! You had only one idea: to give me up to your friend. Well, Monsieur, you can do as you like—I am not going to oblige you.”
Maurice d’Esparvieu replied simply, “Get out of it, you trollop!” And he made a motion as if to push her out. It pained Arcade to see his mistress treated so disrespectfully, but he thought he lacked the necessary authority to interfere with Maurice. Madame des Aubels, who had lest none of her dignity, fixed young d’Esparvieu with her imperious gaze, and said:
“Go and get me a carriage.”
And so great is the power of woman over a well-bred soul, in a gallant nation, that the young Frenchman went immediately and told the concierge to call a taxi. Madame des Aubels, with a studied exhibition of charm in every movement, took leave of them, throwing Maurice the contemptuous look that a woman owes to him whom she has deceived. Maurice witnessed her departure with an outward expression of indifference he was far from feeling. Then he turned to the angel clad in the flowered pyjamas which Maurice himself had wom the day of the apparition; and this circumstance, trifling in itself, added fuel to the anger of the host who had been thus shamefully deceived.
“Well,” he said, “you may pride youself on being a despicable individual. You have behaved basely, and all for nothing. If the woman took your fancy, you had but to tell me. I was tired of her. I had had enough of her. I would have willingly left her to you.”
He spoke thus to hide his pain, for he loved Gilberte more than ever, and the creature’s treachery caused him great suffering. He pursued:
“I was about to ask you to take her off my hands. But you have followed your lower nature—you have behaved like a sweep.”
If at this solemn moment Arcade had but spoken one word from his heart, Maurice would have burst into tears, and forgiven his friend and his mistress, and all three would have become content and happy once again. But Arcade had not been nourished on the milk of human kindness. He had never suffered, and did not know how to sympathise with suffering. He replied with frigid wisdom:
“My dear Maurice, that same necessity which orders and constrains the actions of living beings, produces effects that are often unexpected, and sometimes absurd. Thus it is that I have been led to displease you. You would not reproach me if you had a good philosophical understanding of nature; for you would then know that free-will is but an illusion, and that physiological affinities are as exactly determined as are chemical combinations, and, like them, may be summed up in a formula. I think that, in your case, it might be possible to inculcate these truths, but it would be a difficult task, and maybe they would not bring you the serenity which eludes you. It is fitting, therefore, that I should leave this spot, and——”
“Stay,” said Maurice.
Maurice had a very clear sense of social obligations. He put honour, when he thought about it, above everything. So now he told himself very foreibly that the outrage he had suffered could only be wiped out with blood. This traditional idea instantly lent an unexpected nobility to his speech and bearing.
“It is I, Monsieur,” said he, “who will quit this place, never to return. You will remain here, since you are a refugee. My seconds will wait upon you.” The angel smiled.
“I will receive them, if it gives you pleasure, but, bethink you, my dear Maurice, I am invulnerable. Celestial spirits even when they are materialised cannot be touched by point of sword or pistol shot. Consider, my dear Maurice, the awkward situation in which this fatal inequality puts me, and realise that in refusing to appoint seconds I cannot give as a reason my celestial nature,—it would be unprecedented.”
“Monsieur,” replied the heir of the Bussart d’Esparvieu, “you should have thought of that before you insulted me.”
Out he marched haughtily; but no sooner was he in the street than he staggered like a drunken man. The rain was still falling. He walked unseeing, unhearing, at haphazard, dragging his feet in the gutters through pools of water, through heaps of mud. He followed the outer boulevards for a long time, and at length, fordone with weariness, lay down on the edge of a piece of waste land. He was muddied up to the eyes, mud and tears smeared his face, the brim of his hat was dripping with rain. A passer-by, taking him for a beggar, tossed him a copper. He picked it up, put it carefully in his waistcoat pocket, and set off to find his seconds.