Better Than Byron

Friends and Foes

VIII

The heart is like the sky, a part of heaven; But changes night and day too, like the sky.

-Lord Byron

The following morning brought Antoine Vallois back to the Academy. As Margaret shyly entered the parlour, she saw him sitting on the window seat, caressing her old cat.

"C'est un chat joli," he murmured, perceiving her entering. He rose from his window seat and approached her, producing a small velvet box from his waistcoat pocket and holding it out to her. "Tenez – pour vous."

As Margaret looked down at it, she hesitated whether or not to accept it – would he seize her wrist and dive in for an impertinent kiss, or simply stare contentedly at her as she unveiled the gift?

"You do not trust me?" he asked, shifting to English.

"Whatever it is, I cannot accept it."

"Because it is from me?" He stepped closer to her. She looked indignantly into his eyes, but did not move an inch.

"You are trying to impose yourself on me, monsieur, and that is highly ungentlemanly."

"Then why do you not draw back?" he asked with a triumphant smile.

"Because I do not wish to appear intimidated by your pitiful attempts at seduction." A cloud passed over his brow at this abrupt utterance and he seized her waist, holding it fiercely to his. He looked searchingly into her steely eyes, but finally set her at liberty when his grip squeezed nothing more out of her.

"I see you are as stubborn as ever... but you once loved me."

"M. Vallois," she said, betraying no emotions whatever. "Be so good as to leave my parlour – my house – and my country."

He replied, between laughs, "Ah, the English! You shall always hate the French, no? It is in your very nature."

"I said nothing of hatred, monsieur," she shrugged, folding her arms across her chest. "Come, M. Vallois. I do not wish to part with you on such inimical terms. Shake hands with me." He fervently clasped her hand, responding, "À l'anglaise? Comme toujours. Good-bye, Marguerite. I shall dedicate my next play to you."

"Do," she said with calm indifference, showing him to the door. "It would gratify me beyond expression. Now I bid you good morning, sir."

"Au revoir, ma chère," he sighed, leaving with what he had come – nothing.

*

That night, Edgar's old mistress came to him in a dream. He had been thinking of Margaret all day, and yet it was Brigitte he saw in his mind's eye. He saw her as she had looked the first day they had met at a friend's soirée: tall, tanned, charming, and cunning. She looked like a ravenous social animal on the prowl for rich men. He had been one of Brigitte Beale's many victims, and yet upon leaving her, she had made such a scene that he was convinced that her trifling and mercenary attraction had developed into something more profound. But the despairing disappointment so theatrically displayed had sprung merely from her past conviction of having full sway over him – that no matter how many times he left her, he would always come back. And yet he never did.

She was like a nightmare: confrontational, grotesque, and tormenting. In spite of her charms, Edgar started out of sleep feeling disgusted. "Filthy," he muttered, seized by an overpowering urge to rinse his hands. He crept out of his bed and frantically plunged his hands into the water basin. "Oh, the fresh air!" he exclaimed, throwing himself at the window and opening it wide, his hands stretched out as if reaching for something that was out of his range.