"That's all right. Heaven help the man who does make love to her, if he means it. That girl's a riddle to me. I used to think she cared a little for her father; but it's my belief that Frida Tancred cares for nobody, not even herself. She simply doesn't know what love is, and she doesn't want to know. Why am I saying these alarming things to you? I'm saying them because I'm old enough to be your mother, and because I like you. You're clever, and you've got a sense of humor, too, though I can't say it's been much use to you since you came here. But, with all your cleverness, you'll never understand Frida Tancred. She's not like other women, the sort you've flirted with so much. Don't tell me you haven't; for you have. She can't help it. Her mother was a queer fantastic creature, and Frida's just like her, only stronger, much stronger, and deeper, which makes it worse. I'm sorry for her, because you see I'm very fond of her, and I think there's nothing—positively nothing—I wouldn't do to help her."
"It's an intolerable existence for her."
"Intolerable? Ah, my dear Mr. Durant, you're delightfully young; so is Frida, though you mightn't think it; and you young people are all so tragic. Frida's absurd about her father; she's always been going about with that face of hers, playing at being Antigone, and as the poor, dear Colonel is as blind as What's-his-name? he naturally doesn't see it. She's brought it all on herself. She looks on her father as her fate, and treats him accordingly—in the grand style—and it doesn't suit him. What a subject like the Colonel wants is a light touch. With me, for instance, he's a dear."
"Is he? I thought he rather bored you," said Durant maliciously.
"When did you think that? Oh, that first night when we all laughed so much, except poor Frida. I wasn't bored—not a bit; on the contrary, I was amused at the expression of your face, and at your atrocious manners and still more atrocious puns. Nothing ever bores me. It's only you young people who let yourselves be bored. Tragedy again. Too much tragedy for my taste."
Mrs. [Fazakerly] paused to let her communications sink in and take root. There was a deep hush on the landscape, as if in deference to her awful confidences. A deer stood knee-deep in the grass and gazed at them inquiringly. And as Mrs. Fazakerly stared unabashed into the face of Nature, Durant thought of Frida's remark, and wondered if she found it "soothing."
"Mind you, I don't mean to say that she's cold. On the contrary, I believe she's capable of a tremendous passion for something—I don't quite know what. It might be a person,"—she rose—"but let me tell you it's much more likely to be a thing."
They were talking quite innocently about art and literature when they appeared at the house.
Durant vainly tried to unravel the possible motives for her confidence. They were so many and so mixed. It was possible that she honestly suspected him of a dawning passion for Frida and that she meant to warn him of the hopelessness of such an attachment; apparently she understood her friend. Or the conversation may have been designed as an apology for her own future conduct. Durant knew that she would not refuse to marry Colonel Tancred if he made the offer; he knew, or thought he knew, her inmost opinion of that ridiculous person. She must be aware that her own dignity was considerably compromised by the situation; perhaps she hoped by rehabilitating the Colonel's behavior to justify her own. But why that insistence on the enigma of Frida Tancred's? Why this superfluous and elaborate cover for her own very simple meaning?
Unless, indeed, she was not quite so simple as she seemed. In courtship the Colonel had shown himself vacillating, to say the least of it. If Mrs. Fazakerly wanted to bring him to the point it was obviously her interest to get Miss Tancred out of her way. In other words, to throw her in Durant's way. His delicacy shrank from the baseness of this conjecture, but his reason, as well as his experience, suggested that the thing was not impossible. Mrs. Fazakerly had been studying him, and she was shrewd enough to see that the surest way to interest him in Miss Tancred was to set his intellect to work on her. She had doubtless observed his fin de siècle contempt for the obvious, his passion for the thing beyond his grasp, his worship of the far-fetched, the intangible, the obscure. Thus she thought to inflame his curiosity by hinting that Frida Tancred was incomprehensible, while she touched the very soul of desire by representing her as unattainable. All this was no doubt very clever of Mrs. Fazakerly; but it was not quite what he had expected of her.