CHAPTER VI

WAS POUFAILLE RIGHT?

Once outside, Phil breathed easier. It seemed to him that the open air was driving away his nightmare, as the sun drives the darkness before it.

“Poufaille is either crazy or drunk,” he said to himself, as he went through the fair with his paint-box in his hand. “Suzanne won’t have him! I have nothing to do with it! Is that a reason to take tragically a childish love-making? And why should Suzanne interfere? Helia has never even breathed a word of it to me, and I’ve seen her often enough since. Surely, love must be muddling Poufaille’s brain, if it is not the blows of the broomstick. He forgets that I am no longer the little boy to whom Suzanne was a great actress, Poufaille a great sculptor, Caracal a great psychologist, and Socrate a painter-poet-thinker-philosopher! There’s been a change since then—and I alone am judge of it.”

Phil acknowledged to himself that he had been a little troubled. Poufaille, with all his simplicity, was candor itself, and incapable of lying. Yes,—Phil repeated it over as if it gave him relief: Poufaille was drunk; the least beer-drinker would see ten wine-drinkers like that under the table! He did Poufaille too much honor by listening to him; and Suzanne was a scatterbrain. Leave Suzanne her salad, and Poufaille his pig’s-rump and garlic and wine! Leave every one to his own trade, and let them stop minding his affairs! Think of it! Now that he was a man, just when he had fallen in love with a young girl whom no one could approach, unless with a pure conscience—it was now that Poufaille would bring him down to the ground, reproaching him with having proved false to an oath,—with having been cowardly and mean, as if he had taken up with Helia to amuse himself with her and then cast her away! Poufaille, stupid and drunken, had said as much!

The absurdity of the idea, even more than the open air and gay sunlight, drove from his memory the sculptor’s idle tales.

Phil hastened his steps, for he wished to finish the little picture which he had in his box. It was a nook of the landscape out beyond the last scattering houses of the town—a charming spot which they had discovered one day in the automobile. It was a place which had greatly pleased Miss Ethel.

She had said: “There are spots which you see for the first time, and yet they impress you like old friends. Would it not be delightful to have a little cottage here, and take care of one’s own flowers. But no! one must have autos and horses—Longchamps and Epsom and Haymarket—ah! what fools these mortals be!”

The snorting forty-horse-power machine bore them afar while she was still building her little cottage.

“If I were a painter,” she added, “that is what I would paint. With the simplest subject you can make a masterpiece. This nook has pleased me, and I shall come back to it, be sure!”

Phil said nothing at the time; but he determined to paint the nook which had pleased Ethel so much, and to give the picture to her as a surprise before they left for Morgania.

Phil passed through the parts of the town which were between the open country and the fair. They were like the outskirts of other towns, with little boxes of houses and grimy wine-shops, and with great bare spaces where goats, the cows of the poor man, bleated despairingly. Just beyond was the full, open country. He approached the spot chosen by Miss Ethel. The noise of the town was no longer heard; before him were the gently rising hills crossed by flowering hedges and great leafy groves, in which the birds were playing.

Phil set up his easel in a shady spot, where Ethel had lingered. It was by a hedge above a slope leading down to a footpath. He opened his box, prepared his colors, and set to work. At times he leaned back to judge better the effect of the whole picture. At times he bent over to put in a touch; and as he painted, he let his mind wander as it would.

He could not help thinking of the morrow—of the _chasse à courre_, the mounted deer-hunt with dogs, with which the Comtesse de Donjeon was honoring the camping-party. It seemed to him that he was already there, taking in all its details. Even his costume occupied his mind—the Chantilly boots, the full white breeches, the double-breasted coat, the high felt hat—the things which constitute the true huntsman’s costume. It would become him well; and how charming she would be, with her blond hair under the three-cornered marquise hat!

Phil already fancied himself hearing the joyful notes of the hunting-horn, and watching the unrestrained galloping beneath the great trees,—a vision of the Middle Ages, with plumed knights and gentle ladies on their palfreys. Oh! there was one gentle lady who would follow the hunt with him,—and, lover as he was, Phil thought there would be monstrous daring in his wish to offer Miss Rowrer a nosegay of wild flowers,—for certainly she would see his trouble of soul, and he would betray himself as he offered it. Miss Rowrer could not be offended, of course! she had been too much courted in society not to allow a little of it in the country. It was the business of bores in society life; but supposing she saw what he meant, would she deign to encourage him?

All this preoccupied Phil, as he put the finishing touches to his landscape. The place inclined to reverie. While he was there, scarcely two or three persons had passed along the road below. They could not see him; it would be necessary to climb up the slope and break through the hawthorn hedge. For two hours Phil had been working. He had reached the time, so dangerous for the artist, when a few strokes too much spoil the picture. He resolved to leave it as it was, without any working up, in all its freshness of first inspiration. He was preparing to close his box and fold his easel before going back to Camp Rosemont; but two persons appeared in the lane below. He gave them no more attention than he had given to others. It seemed to him that a man was speaking, and a woman replying. He did not see them; but when they came near him he recognized their voices.

He stopped motionless and listened again, thinking he must have been mistaken. He leaned over and looked through the branches of the hedge. It was indeed they—Helia and Socrate.

Phil felt a chill at his heart. He would like to have had Poufaille there for a moment—only for a moment—yet no! he would be the only witness! He would see falling away before him, dropping to the dust, petal by petal, the flower of his childish love. He was going to hear Helia talking sweetly, arm in arm, with the painter-thinker. His little Saint John of other days, so pure and simple, he would hear her; but, ah, how he wished that he was not there, that he could not hear!

But he heard everything. Bits of conversation mounted up to him as if torn asunder by the thorns of the hedge.

“Listen to me!” Socrate was saying.

“I know what you are going to say,” answered Helia. “Begone!—I have told you—no!”

“Yet you were so good to me,” continued the tearful voice of Socrate, using the familiar “thou.”

“Socrate, I tell you once again, you are to say ‘you’ when you speak to me,” Helia interrupted firmly. “Any one listening to you might think you had rights over me!”

“But no one is listening!”

“I hear you!”

There was a moment of silence. They had stopped and Phil looked at them. He was astounded by the change in Socrate. His beard was unkempt, and he lowered his head with an air at once humble and aggressive. He spoke to Helia with looks which he tried to render touching. On his ragged garments were bits of straw, as if he had slept in a stack. It was clear that Socrate had been wandering around the neighborhood for several days, waiting for Helia. He must have met her by chance and, yielding to his entreaties, she had followed him to have, alone with him, a final explanation.

Helia was pale, tired from her journey, as Poufaille had said. Her black eyes shone feverishly. In her modest black gown she seemed to Phil more beautiful than ever, and more refined. She scarcely turned her head toward Socrate; and her glance at him was that of scornful pity.

“You who were so good to me,” the tearful voice went on.

“Too good, it is true!” answered Helia. “I saw your wretchedness,—that you were starving,—and I believed in your genius. I would have been proud to help a poet,—to have had something to do, no matter how little, with the production of a masterpiece. I sinned by pride; I thought I could lift myself in the eyes of others—especially in _his_ eyes,” she added slowly. “I thought I was acting for the best; I was wrong!”

“Why were you wrong?”

“It is wrong to aid one who does nothing!”

“Ah!” replied the man, with his look of a beaten dog, “it is not my fault if I have not fulfilled my dream. Society is pitiless to thinkers! Those who march to a lofty goal are disdained by the common herd!”

Socrate, as he spoke, clenched his fist. Phil could see his fingers working spasmodically—ah! if he could only strangle the whole world! Helia did not let her eyes fall so low. She fixed them on the face of Socrate, scorning his impotent gestures.

“Silence! You are only grotesque!”

“Be it so, I have made a mistake,” the voice went on. “But I can make amends for my wrong-doing. Ah! if you only were willing—if you were willing, I could make you happy. I would occupy myself with your affairs; you should be rid of every care. You would have a sure friend, and I, too,—I would become an artiste!”

“You—an artiste!”

She drew herself up to her full height and looked at the great empty forehead, at the chicken-necked and round-shouldered Socrate, at his sallow skin, his moral hideousness, this rag of a painter and poet and thinker and philosopher.

“An artiste—you! Why, you would not be capable even to show a shaved bear, or a sick dog, or a two-headed calf! Oh, I know you! You’d like to be a professor and train Sœurette with strokes of the whip, if you were allowed! And you’d always be there at my side, to steer me through life like a devoted friend, would you? Just as you used to do before. And when I think that people may have said as much, and perhaps believed that I was your—friend,—and when I remember that you advised me to frequent the company of a rich duke and forget the friend of my childhood,—when I think of all that, it is enough to make me die of shame!”

Socrate gnashed his teeth.

“So it’s the friend of your childhood, is it?—always he?”

“Always he!” said Helia, simply.

“Yet you know—I have told you—that he loves another.”

“I know it.”

“And that he no longer cares for you.”

“I shall believe it when he tells me so himself,” was Helia’s answer.

Socrate put his hands to his head, as if to say: “Can one be such a fool!”

“But, really,” he said aloud, “since you love him so much, why do you not use the weapons you have to bring him back to you?”

“Weapons!”

“His letters!”

“You are a miserable fellow! See—here are his letters!” And Helia took from her breast a few yellowed envelopes. “They might, indeed, fall into the hands of a wretch like you.” And opening them, she tore the pages in small pieces.

“But there’s a fortune in them for you!” gasped Socrate. “You don’t know what you are doing!”

“There’s what I care for such a fortune!” said Helia; and she opened wide her hand. It might have been a flight of white butterflies. The light breeze scattered the fragments on every side. Some seemed to hesitate, as if issuing from a warm nest, and then mounted upward, whirling around in space. Others fell on the hedge. All these poor little things which had been promises of love, and held in themselves an entire youth, were scattered at once by a breath from heaven.

“Yet I loved them well,” she said. “Only it is better so.”

Then, speaking to Socrate, she added proudly: “I will not have him love me for fear,—I wish him to love me for love’s sake!”

Blushing for shame, she turned her back to Socrate, and walked away without a look behind. The man began following her. She turned back a last time, stopped him with an imperious gesture, and disappeared in the lane.

Socrate, in his fury, growled like a wolf. Phil saw him turn his head rapidly, to make sure there was no one near, and then put his hand quickly to his pocket, as if to take out a knife. But no doubt what he sought was not there; and his hand came forth empty—luckily for Socrate, since Phil would have leaped the hedge with a bound and fallen on him like a thunderbolt. Then Socrate disappeared among the trees with a furtive look.

Phil remained alone. He put everything in order, folding his things together, and went away. He felt a sort of embarrassment—a shame that made him hurry his footsteps as if to flee from himself.

Was Poufaille right? Phil passed his hand across his forehead. A thousand things came back to him now; a bright light was thrown on the abyss where his youth had perished. The flight of the white butterflies had been a seed of remembrance to him—the remembrance of the love of his boyhood. Had it been the romantic passion of an ignorant heart? No; there had been broken promises and contempt of oaths!

Well, even in such a case, drunken Poufaille had exaggerated; Helia was more reasonable. She must understand that it was impossible. She could not deceive herself to such a degree, nor keep on pursuing imaginations never to be realized. Her own words, “I shall believe it when he tells me so himself,” were a confession. She would submit to the inevitable. How was she going to take the final rupture? Phil, in his heart, trembled to think of it, but it had to be! He would tell her everything; he would take back the word he had given. He would speak to her, lowering his eyes, hunting for his words; low, as when one begs for forgiveness. Never mind, he would tell her! He would act as with a somnambulist, commanding: “Awake! it was a dream!”

Yes; Helia would understand, without need of insisting. They would part with a loyal shake of the hand, like the good friends they were, and would follow separate destinies.

Phil walked on, without looking behind, like one escaping. He felt easier in his mind. No, there was not such a tragedy in it all as Poufaille had led him to foresee. Things would go on simply, Phil mused within himself. For him it was the time of slanting sophisms which issue from the folds of the heart like crabs from under a rock. He was more sincere and manly when he put aside with a gesture all his anguish and uncertainty and, setting his jaw, lifted his head as he said to himself: “It is too late! Fate has willed it; all society would be on my side; they would say I was right. Even if Helia’s tears should flow, even if I should see in her eyes a mute malediction for the slayer of her illusions, I could do no otherwise; it is too late!”

Phil breathed deeply, as if his breast had been lightened of a heavy load. He looked around him with the air of a man to whom the future belongs.

Lowering his eyes, he saw upon his shoulder one of the poor little fragments of torn letters. Phil threw it from him with a snap of his finger.