The Frontier Part 38

PART III

CHAPTER I

THE ARMED VIGIL

"Ma'am!"

"What is it? What's the matter?" asked Mme. Morestal, waking with a start.

"It's I, Catherine."

"Well?"

"They have sent from the town-hall, ma'am.... They are asking for the master.... They want instructions.... Victor says the troops are being mobilized...."

The day before, after his fainting-fit at the b.u.t.te-aux-Loups, old Morestal was carried back to the Old Mill on a litter by the soldiers of the detachment. Marthe, who came with him, flung a few words of explanation to her mother-in-law and, without paying attention to the good woman's lamentations, without even speaking to her of Philippe and of what could have become of him, ran to her room and locked herself in.

Dr. Borel was hurriedly sent for. He examined the patient, diagnosed serious trouble in the region of the heart and refused to give an opinion.

The house was at sixes and sevens during the evening and all through that Sunday night. Catherine and Victor ran to and fro. Mme. Morestal, generally so level-headed, but accustomed to bewail her fate on great occasions, nursed the sick man and issued a multiplicity of orders.

Twice she sent the gardener to the chemist at Saint-elophe.

At midnight, the old man was suffering so much that Dr. Borel was called in again. He seemed anxious and administered an injection of morphia.

There followed a few hours of comparative calm; and Mme. Morestal, although tortured at Philippe's absence and fearing that he might do something rash, was able to lie down on the sofa.

It was then that Catherine rushed into the room, at the risk of disturbing the patient's rest.

Mme. Morestal ended by bundling her off:

"Hold your tongue, can't you? Don't you see that your master's asleep?"

"They're mobilizing the troops, ma'am.... It's certain that we shall have war...."

"Oh, don't bother us with your war!" growled the good woman, pushing her out of the room. "Boil some water for your master and don't waste your time talking nonsense."

She herself went to work at once. But all around her was a confused noise of murmurs and exclamations, coming from the terrace, the garden and the house.

Morestal woke up at nine o'clock.

"Suzanne! Where's Suzanne?" he asked, almost before he opened his eyes.

"What! Suzanne!..."

"Why, yes ... why, of course, Suzanne!... I promised her father.... No one has a better right to live in this house.... Philippe's not here, I suppose?"

He raised himself in bed, furious at the mere thought.

"He has not come in," said his wife. "We don't know where he is...."

"That's all right! He'd better not come back!... I've turned him out....

And now I want Suzanne.... She shall nurse me ... she alone, do you understand?..."

"Come, Morestal, you surely wouldn't ask ... It's not possible for Suzanne to ..."

But her husband's features were contracted with such a look of anger that she dared not protest further:

"As you please," she said. "After all, if you think right...."

She consulted Dr. Borel by telephone. He replied that the patient must on no account be thwarted. Moreover, he undertook to see the girl, to point out to her the duty that called her to the Old Mill and to overcome any reluctance on her part.

Dr. Borel himself brought Suzanne to the house at about twelve o'clock.

Red with shame, her eyes swollen with tears, she submitted to Mme.

Morestal's humiliating reception and took her seat by the old man's bedside.

He gave a sigh of content when he saw her:

"Ah, I'm glad!... I feel better already.... You won't leave me, will you, my little Suzanne?"

And he fell asleep again almost at once, under the action of a fresh injection of morphia.

As on the previous evening, the dining-room at the Old Mill remained empty. The maid took a light meal on a tray to Mme. Morestal and, next, to Marthe. But Marthe did not even answer her knock.

Marthe Morestal had not left her room during the morning; and all day she stayed alone, with her door bolted and her shutters closed. She sat on the edge of a chair and, bent in two, held her fists to her jaws and clenched her teeth so as not to scream aloud. It would have done her good to cry; and she sometimes thought that her suffering was about to find an outlet in sobbing; but the relief of tears did not come to moisten her eyes. And, stubbornly, viciously, she went over the whole pitiful story, recalling Suzanne's stay in Paris, the excursions on which Philippe used to take the young girl and from which they both returned looking so happy and glad, their meeting at the Old Mill, Philippe's departure for Saint-elophe and, the next day, Suzanne's strange att.i.tude, her ambiguous questions, her spiteful smile, as of a rival endeavouring to hurt the wife and hoping to supplant her. Oh, what a cruel business! And how hateful and wicked life, once so sweet, now seemed to her!

At six o'clock, driven by hunger, she went down to the dining-room. As she came out, after eating a little bread and drinking a gla.s.s of water, she saw Mme. Morestal going down the front-door steps to meet the doctor. She then remembered that her father-in-law was ill and that she had not yet seen him. His bedroom was close by. She crossed the pa.s.sage, knocked, heard a voice--the voice of a nurse, she thought--say "Come in," and opened the door.

Opposite her, at a few steps' distance, beside the sleeping man, was Suzanne.

"You! You!" fumed Marthe. "You here!..."

Suzanne began to tremble under her fixed gaze and stammered:

"It was your father-in-law.... He insisted.... The doctor came ..."

And, with her knees giving way beneath her, she said, over and over again:

"I beg your pardon.... Forgive me ... forgive me.... It was my fault....

Philippe would never have ..."

Marthe at first listened without stirring. Perhaps she might have been just able to restrain herself. But, at the name of Philippe, at the name of Philippe uttered by Suzanne, she gave a bound, clutched the girl by the throat and flung her back against the table. She quivered with rage like an animal that at last holds its foe. She would have liked to destroy that body which her husband had clasped in his arms, to tear it, bite it, hurt it, hurt it as much as she could.

Suzanne gurgled under the onslaught. Then, losing her head, Marthe, stiff-fingered, clawed her with her nails on the forehead, on the cheeks, on the lips, those moist, red lips which Philippe had kissed.