The Frontier Part 12

It was as though her action had loosed in her a long-contained fury and wicked instincts which she was no longer able to control. She rushed forwards and madly kicked and raged at the broken pieces of the statue.

He tried to interfere and took her by the arm. She turned upon him:

"I won't have you touch me!... It's your fault.... Let me go ... I hate you!... Yes, it's all your fault!..."

And, releasing herself from his grasp, she fled towards the house.

The scene had not lasted twenty seconds.

"Hang it!" snarled Philippe, though he was not in the habit of swearing.

His irritation was so great that, if the poor plaster G.o.ddess had not already been reduced to fragments, he would certainly have flung her from her pedestal. But, above all things, he was swayed by one idea: to go away, not to see Suzanne again and to have done with this nonsense, of which he felt all the hatefulness and absurdity.

He also quickly made his way back to the house. Unfortunately, knowing no other outlet by which to escape, he went through the pa.s.sage. The dining-room door was open. He saw the girl sitting huddled in a chair, with her head between her hands, sobbing.

He did not know how artificial a woman's tears can be. Nor did he know the danger in those tears for him who is moved by the sight of their flowing. But, had he known it, he would just the same have stayed; for man's pity is infinite.

CHAPTER VII

EVE TRIUMPHANT

"There!" she said, after a few minutes. "The storm is over."

She raised her beautiful face, now lit with a smile:

"No black on my eye-lashes, you see," she added, gaily. "No rouge on my lips.... Take note, please.... Nothing that comes off!"

This versatility of mood, the despair, which he had felt to be real, followed by a light-heartedness which he felt to be equally sincere; all this bewildered Philippe.

She began to laugh:

"Philippe! Philippe! You look as though you did not understand much about women ... and even less about girls!"

She rose and went to the next room, which was her bedroom, as he saw by the white curtains and the arrangement of the furniture; and she returned with an alb.u.m, in which she showed him, on the first page, the photograph of a child, crying:

"Look, Philippe. I haven't changed. At two years old, just as now, I used to have great big sorrows and eyes that flowed like taps."

He turned the pages of the alb.u.m. There were portraits of Suzanne at all ages: Suzanne as a child, Suzanne as a little girl, Suzanne as a young girl; and each was more bewitching than the last.

At the bottom of one page, he read:

"_Suzanne, twenty._"

"Lord, how pretty you were!" he muttered, dazed by that image of beauty and gladness.

And he looked at Suzanne, in spite of himself.

"I have grown older," she said. "Three long years...."

He shrugged his shoulders without replying, for, on the contrary, he thought her lovelier still; and he turned the pages. Two loose photographs slipped to the floor. She put out her hand to take them, but did not complete the movement.

"May I?" asked Philippe.

"Yes, certainly."

He was much astonished when he examined one of the portraits:

"This," he said, "makes you look older than you are.... How funny! And why that old-fas.h.i.+oned dress?... That quaint way of doing your hair....

It's you ... and yet it's not you.... Who is it?"

"Mamma," she said.

He was surprised, knowing Jorance's persistent rancour, that he should have given his daughter the portrait of a mother whom she had been taught to believe long dead. And he remembered the riotous adventures of the divorced wife, now the beautiful Mme. de Glaris, who was celebrated in the chronicles of fast society for her dresses and her jewellery and whose photographs were displayed in the shop-windows of the Rue de Rivoli for the admiration of the pa.s.sers-by.

"Yes," he said, awkwardly and not quite knowing what he was saying, "yes, you are like her.... And is this also ...?"

He suppressed a movement of astonishment. This time, he clearly recognized Suzanne's mother, or rather the Mme. de Glaris of the Rue de Rivoli, bare-shouldered, decked in her pearls and diamonds, shameless and magnificent.

Suzanne, who kept her eyes raised to his face, did not speak; and they remained opposite each other, motionless and silent.

"Does she know the truth?" Philippe asked himself. "No ... no ... it's not possible.... She must have bought this photograph, because of the likeness to herself which she saw in it, and she does not suspect anything...."

But he was not satisfied with his surmise and he dared not question the girl, for fear of touching upon one of those mysterious griefs which become more acute when once they are no longer secret.

She put the two portraits back in the alb.u.m and locked the clasp with a little key. Then, after a long pause, laying her hand on Philippe's arm, she said to him, in words that corresponded strangely with the thoughts that troubled him:

"Do not be angry with me, dear, and, above all, do not judge me too severely. There is a Suzanne in me whom I do not know well ... and who often frightens me.... She is capricious, jealous, wrong-headed, capable of anything ... yes, of anything.... The real Suzanne is good and sensible: 'You're _my_ daughter to-day,' papa used to say to me, when I was a little girl. And he said it in such a happy tone! But, the next day, I was his daughter no longer; and, struggle and fight as hard as I might, I could not become so again.... Things prevented me; and I used to cry because papa seemed to hate me.... And I wanted to be good....

And I still want to and I always do.... But there is nothing in the world so hard ... because the other ... the other one does not want to.... And besides ..."

"What?"

She waited a moment, as though hesitating, and continued:

"And, besides, what she wants, what the other Suzanne wants does not appear to me so very unreasonable. It is an immense longing to love somebody, but to love madly, boundlessly, to love too well.... Then it seems to me that life has no other object ... and all the rest bores me.... You know, Philippe, even when I was ever so small, that word love used to upset me. And, later ... and now, at certain times, I feel my brain going and all my soul seeking, waiting...."

She hid her face again, as though seized with a sudden feeling of bashfulness, and Philippe saw, between her fingers, her crimson forehead and cheeks.

His pity swelled within him. Through those desultory confidences, he saw Suzanne as she was, ignorant, ill-informed about herself and about the realities of life, troubled with desires which she took for unsatisfied feelings, torn by the implacable duel between contrary instincts and possessing nothing to counteract her woman's nature but a wayward and melancholy virtue.

How good it would be to save her! He went up to her and, very gently, said:

"You must get married, Suzanne."

She shook her head: