Benito PErez Galdos

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.