"That's just like men; they must be paid, and immediately too, for doing their duty."
[CHAPTER II]
It was half-past eleven o'clock when Armand de Querne left the house in the Rue de La Rochefoucauld. The wind had swept away all the clouds, and the sky was filled with stars. "What a beautiful night!" said Armand to himself; "I shall walk home." It was a long way, for he lived in the Rue Lincoln, in the upper part of the Champs-Élysées. Here, on the second floor of a wing projecting upon a garden, he had rooms which he had once amused himself with furnishing in quaint and exquisite fashion with all kinds of old-fashioned trifles. But how long had he ceased to spend the evening in this "home?"
He was following the pavement of the Rue St.-Lazare, which, after quite a narrow and slender beginning, suddenly, like a river swelled by tributaries, widens after the Place de la Trinité, when it receives, one after the other, the flood of passengers and vehicles drifting through the Rue de Chateaudun, the Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin, and the Rue de Londres. Cabs were plying, omnibuses were changing horses, the crowd was surging. Sometimes a girl came out from the corner of a doorway, and with obscene speech accosted the young man, who put her away gently with his hand.
Was it the contrast between the intimacy of the little drawing-room and the swarming infamy of the pavement? Armand felt deeply melancholy. He could not help seeing Alfred's face again in thought, with Helen's close beside it. Yet, was he jealous? No. Pictures of childhood came back to him as they had done just before, but with increased precision, showing him Chazel dressed in the uniform of the "Vanabosteans"—a small jacket similar to that of the Barbistes. They always went side by side in the ranks. Poor Chazel! he was not rich. The head of the establishment had taken him as a foundationer, with a view, to making a show-pupil of him—a machine for winning prizes in competitions. How many times had Armand paid for him at the little wicket, when the porter sold to the pupils sweetmeats, fragments of iced chestnuts, cakes, and Parisian creams—tablets of chocolate having a thick and oversweet liquid inside!
They had gone through all their classes together from the fourth up, and had together passed through the evil days of the Commune, when, on returning both of them from the country, after the siege, they found themselves blockaded in Paris. Alfred had afterwards entered the École Polytechnique. And when he came on Wednesdays and Sundays to visit his old schoolfellow, who had already crossed the Seine and begun to lead the life of a rich and idle young man, how ludicrous he was in his military dress, embarrassed by his sword, not knowing how to set his hat upon his head, and invariably scarred with clumsy razor-cuts!
While Alfred was at the School of Bridges, Armand was travelling. He had gone round the world in the society of an amateur artist. On his return he found that his friend was no longer at Paris. The letters passing between them became rare. Could they have told why? Armand perhaps might. There was only one point left in common between Alfred's life and his own. Alfred had married Mademoiselle de Vaivre. They had made a trip to Paris, and Armand well remembered how he had been deliciously surprised by Helen's distinguished demeanour, when he had expected to find her awkward, pretentious, and a fright. But at this period he was taken up with another woman, little Aline, a mistress of his for whom he had cherished the only genuine passion of which he was capable—painful jealousy blended with delirium of the senses.
Later on, some one had spoken to him of Helen Chazel, and told him ugly stories about her. And who was it that had done so? Another school-fellow—big Lucien Rieume, who had been educated at the Vanaboste establishment like Alfred and himself—during one of these tête-à-tête luncheons when an opening of the heart usually accompanies that of the oysters between two college companions; and Lucien—cordial, indiscreet, intolerable—had talked a great deal, pouring out pell-mell whatever he knew concerning former friends. Armand could again hear him chuckle, leaning forward somewhat with kindled eye and humid lip:
"Poor Chazel, he hadn't a head worth a fig! It seems that his wife is tricking him. I heard the gentleman's name: Marades, Tarades—just wait a moment—yes, De Varades, an artillery officer. It was the talk of Bourges. He was never out of the house."
It was an unfortunate trait in Armand's character that he was unable to withstand the tempting of mistrust. When evil was asserted to him, he preserved an indelible impression of it. He did not altogether believe in it, and yet he believed in it sufficiently for a suspicion, and a busy suspicion, to be planted within him. When the Chazels had come to settle in Paris, ten months previously, and Armand had begun to interest himself in Helen, the scruples of an old friendship might perhaps have been stronger than his freak of curiosity if big Rieume's words had not risen before his recollection.