“I have nothing against you, old Poufaille.”
“Shall we see you again soon?”
“Who knows!” answered Phil; adding within himself: “Perhaps never!”
As he went out he cast a farewell look on the empty benches, on the white ladder and great globe, on the saddles and the maillots which were drying, and on the clowns’ costumes. They were like old acquaintances whom he should see no more.
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.