The Frontier. Leblanc Maurice
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saw that love went for little with Philippe, a studious man, much more interested in mental speculation and social problems than in any manifestation of sentimental feeling. She therefore loved him as he wished to be loved, stifling within herself, like smothered flames, a whole throbbing passion made up of unsatisfied longings, restrained ardours and needless jealousies and allowing only just so much of this to escape her as was needed to give him fresh courage at times of doubt and defeat.
Short, slender and of delicate build, she was plucky, hardened to trouble, fearless in the face of obstacles, proof against disappointment after a check. Her bright, dark eyes betokened her energy. In spite of all the influence which Philippe wielded over her, in spite of the admiration with which he inspired her, she retained her personality, her own standpoint towards life, her likes and dislikes. And, to such a man as Philippe, nothing could be more precious.
"Won't you try and sleep a little?" she asked.
"No. I am going down to him."
"To your father?" she asked, anxiously.
"Yes, I don't want to put it off any longer. As it is, I have almost done wrong in coming here and embracing him without first letting him know the exact truth about me."
They were silent for a while. Philippe seemed undecided and worried.
He said to her:
"Don't you agree with me? Or do you think I ought to wait till to-morrow?.."
She opened the door for him to pass:
"No," she said, "you are right."
She often had those unexpected movements which cut short hesitation and put you face to face with events. Another would have launched out into words. But Marthe never shirked responsibility, even where it concerned but the smallest facts of ordinary life. Philippe used to laugh and call it her daily heroism.
He kissed her and felt strengthened by her confidence.
Downstairs, he was told that his father was not yet back and he resolved to wait for him in the drawing-room. He lit a cigarette, let it go out again and, at first in a spirit of distraction and then with a growing interest, looked around him, as though he were trying to gather from inanimate objects particulars relating to the man who lived in their midst.
He examined the rack containing the twelve rifles. They were all loaded, ready for service. Against what foe?
He saw the flag which he had so often gazed upon in the old house at Saint-Élophe, the old, torn flag whose glorious history he knew so well.
He saw the maps hanging on the wall, all of which traced the frontier in its smallest details, together with the country adjoining it on either side of the Vosges.
He bent over the shelves of the little book-case and read the titles of the works: The War of 1870, prepared in the historical section of the German General Staff; The Retreat of Bourbaki; The Way to prepare our Revenge; The Crime of the Peace-at-any-Price Party…
But one volume caught his attention more particularly. It was his own book on the idea of country. He turned the pages and, seeing that some of them were covered and scored with pencil-marks, he sat down and began to read:
"It's as I thought," he muttered, presently. "How are he and I to understand each other henceforth? What common ground is there between us? I cannot expect him to accept my ideas. And how can I submit to his?"
He went on reading and noticed comments the harshness of which distressed him beyond measure. Twenty minutes passed in this way, disturbed by no sound but that of the leaves which he turned as he read.
And, suddenly, he felt two bare arms round his head, two cool, bare arms stroking his face. He tried to release himself. The two arms clasped him all the tighter.
He made an abrupt effort and rose to his feet:
"You!" he cried, stepping back. "You here, Suzanne!"
A most attractive creature stood before him, at once smiling and bashful, in an attitude of provocation and fear, with hands clasped, then with arms again outstretched, beautiful, white, fragrant arms that showed below the short sleeves of her fine cambric blouse. Her fair hair was divided into two loose waves, whose rebellious curls played about at random. She had grey, almond-shaped eyes, half-veiled by their dark lashes; and her tiny teeth laughed at the edge of her red lips, lips so red that one would have thought – and been quite wrong in thinking – that they were painted.
It was Suzanne Jorancé, the daughter of Jorancé the special commissary and a friend of Marthe, who knew her when she was quite a child at Lunéville. Suzanne had spent four months, last winter, in Paris with the Philippe Morestals.
"You!" he repeated. "You, Suzanne!"
She replied, gaily:
"Myself. Your father came to call on us at Saint-Élophe. And, as mine was out for a walk, he brought me back with him. I have just got out of the carriage. And here I am."
He seized her by the wrists, in a fit of anger, and, in a hollow voice:
"You had no business to be at Saint-Élophe. You wrote to Marthe that you were going away this morning. You ought not to have stayed. You know quite well that you ought not to have stayed."
"Why?" she asked, quite confused.
"Why? Because, at the end of your visit to Paris, you spoke to me in words which I was entitled to interpret … which I took to mean … And I would not have come, if you had not written that you were…"
He broke off, embarrassed by the violence of his own outburst. The tears stood in Suzanne's eyes and her face had flushed so deep a red that her crimson lips seemed hardly red at all.
Petrified by the words which he had uttered and still more by those which he had been on the verge of uttering, Philippe suddenly, in the girl's presence, felt a need to be gentle and friendly and to make amends for his inexplicable rudeness. An unexpected sense of pity softened him. He took the small, ice-cold hands between his own and said, kindly, with the intonation of a big brother scolding a younger sister:
"Why did you stay, Suzanne?"
"May I tell you, Philippe?"
"Certainly, or I shouldn't ask you," he replied, a little nervously.
"I wanted to see you, Philippe… When I knew that you were coming … and that, by delaying my departure by one day … just one day… You understand, don't you?.."
He was silent, rightly thinking that, if he answered the least word, she would at once say something that he did not want to hear. And they no longer knew how to stand opposite each other and they no longer dared look each other in the face. But Philippe felt those small hands turn warm at the touch of his and felt all the life rush once more through that turbulent young being, like a source that is released and brings back joy and strength and hope.
Steps were heard and a sound of voices rose in the hall outside.
"M. Morestal," Suzanne whispered.
And old Morestal shouted, long before entering the room:
"Where are you, Suzanne? Here's your father coming. Quick, Jorancé, the children are here. Yes, yes, your daughter, too… I brought her back with me from Saint-Élophe… But how did you come? Through the woods?"
Suzanne slipped on a pair of long suède gloves and, at the moment when the door opened, said, in a tone of implacable resolve and as though the promise must needs fill Philippe's heart with delight:
"No one shall ever see my bare arms again… No one, Philippe, I swear to you… No one shall ever stroke them…"
CHAPTER III
THE VIOLET PAMPHLET
Jorancé was a heavy and rather unwieldy, pleasant-faced man. Twenty-five years before, when secretary to the commissary at Noirmont, he had married a girl of entrancing beauty, who used to teach the piano in a boarding-school. One evening, after four years of marriage, four years of torture, during which the unhappy man suffered every sort of humiliation, Jorancé came home to find the house empty. His wife had gone without