"They take their reasons from him."
"Pardon me, that is no answer."
"Because the Germans are pigs--all are!" interjected Madame Ribot. "I have never met one who wasn"t, even their princes. They are spoiling the Riviera."
"Conquest, though Rome, as I read my history, never called it that,"
Phil went on, keeping to Helen"s theme. "They want their neighbours"
fields. It"s a get-rich-quick sort of game in internationalism."
"And the French?"
"Only want to keep their fields, to keep their France!" he said. "This was in every face, it seemed to me: to keep their France."
"So the French are in the right, not because we live with them and love them, but at the very bar of justice!" said Helen. "All the peasants in Mervaux are in the right! Oh, I"m glad that I am not a German! And here we sit over our coffee so comfortably and those millions rushing to death! What poor little mortals we are! How lacking in imagination! Each with his little concerns in his own little hole--I grieving because the war spoils my exhibition! No one thinks of the agony of black years for the mult.i.tude of mothers and wives. It is too ghastly! Not one wants to die! Who should want to die when the world is so beautiful? Yet they go out to die!"
"Helen, you are overwrought!" said her mother. "There must be wars; there always have been wars."
"One might say that about thistles," Helen replied half inaudibly, staring at the tablecloth.
"And what can we do?" persisted Madame Ribot, who had held back her protests less because of the spell of Helen"s fervour than from a hostess"s politeness due to Phil"s evident interest. "Yes, what would you do, my dear? Become a _vivandiere_? Surely not nurse! You have admitted that your nerves could not stand the sight of blood----"
Madame Ribot broke off. She did not like to think of the sight of blood herself.
"Perhaps they would now," said Helen with some determination, after a pause. "This is different."
"I am not sure!" Madame Ribot replied promptly, for her decision was made that Helen should remain at Mervaux during the war. "And shan"t we go out of doors?"
"You feel very deeply," said Phil to Helen as they pa.s.sed into the grounds where, in utter stillness, the trees cast long shadows from the light of the half moon.
"Every one does," she replied, "only I forget and blurt out my feelings. Perhaps--oh, that is the great hope--the war will do good in its way--good to those who survive!"
"We"ll not talk about the war!" said Madame Ribot.
With the soft air of a summer evening, the sense of security and seclusion, the glow after a good meal and bedtime approaching, Madame Ribot had not the slightest desire to think of horrors. She was content to be as she was and where she was, serene, unworried. They were not going to speak of the war, but they did, as every one would while it lasted, no matter how strong his resolution. The war was here in Mervaux, at Truckleford, at Longfield, everywhere and in every mind.
It was a maelstrom, drawing all thoughts toward it.
"When the troops come back triumphant, I want to see them march under the Arc de Triomphe," Henriette said. "I hope it will be in the spring, when the horse-chestnuts are in bloom."
"You are sure that they will win?" Phil asked.
"Aren"t we already in Alsace and aren"t the Germans stopped at Liege?"
It did look like early victory then. Hadn"t General Joffre issued his manifesto from Mulhausen? But could Madame Ribot have foreseen what was coming along the great main road one day she would not have been so serene and Helen would not have felt that she was pinioned in her helplessness in the midst of tragedy.
For Phil it was singularly restful. He had been on the go for weeks.
He had collected impressions without digesting them; and the prospect of the coming days at Mervaux was sufficient for him.
Helen had kept silence faithfully after they were out of doors. As she said good-night the hand that she gave him was strangely lifeless and her voice lacked its customary vibrant quality. When she reached her room she stood motionless for a long time, looking out at the moon.
The change which the war had wrought was not the only inexplicable one that had come over her.
"I hope that he does not stay!" she said at last.
CHAPTER IX
A MESSAGE FROM ALSACE
Quite a sensational thing happened in the Ribot household. Usually Madame Ribot had breakfast in her room and about ten went for a walk in the garden. The morning after Phil"s arrival she was on hand to pour coffee in the dining-room and to serve one of Jacqueline"s omelets.
"Mother, this is epochal!" said Henriette.
"An inspiration!" said Madame Ribot, who could never be accused of the hypocrisy of feigning strenuosity. She was a frank advocate of repose and it had not deserted her even with this departure from custom. "I did it for our seventeenth cousin. I want him to feel at home."
She liked the seventeenth cousin. He was good-looking; he had good manners. His American quality appealed to her French quality. She would have liked to show him to her friends as a seventeenth cousin, which would have been proof of the quality of her own origin on the American side.
"You are to stay as long as you please," she went on. "If Longfield is your American home and Truckleford your English home, then Mervaux is your French."
"Not as long as I please," Phil replied. "One must have a sense of self-denial."
"Very well said," she countered. It was worth while coming down to breakfast to hear him say it. "Perhaps I shall insist that it be as long as the hostess pleases. What then?"
Yes, what would he say to that? Her shrewd eyes reflected a teasing spark which when she was young must have been as effectual as Henriette"s.
"But I might not know the signs," he said, "and mistake my pleasure for yours."
"I should tell you."
"Does that mean that you think I should have to be told?" He was enjoying this play of words as much as she.
"No, not you, cousin. You are the kind to whom one would always hate to say _au revoir_ and could never say good-bye."
"This is almost a flirtation," said Henriette. "At least he must stay till the portrait is finished. We shall start at once."
"I begin to feel awfully stuck on myself, as we say at home!" said Phil. "Do I sit for both portraits at the same time?" he asked, turning to Helen.
Henriette also looked at her sister rather quickly. Helen"s eyes smiled above her coffee cup, which hid the lump of nose; they, too, had a teasing spark.
"No," she replied. "Oils take much longer than charcoal. Let Henriette get started before I b.u.t.t in. Isn"t that it--b.u.t.t in?"
"Yes, the correct American for your meaning--though a little archaic now--but not for mine," he said. "I"m ready for all the artists. Let them come."
"Not this morning," Helen concluded.
She had already put on her sun hat and gone when Madame Ribot smilingly from the doorway watched Henriette and Phil, her easel under his arm, going up the path. The bordering trees of the little estate were on a terrace which gave a broad view. Here Henriette set up her easel and put Phil in a rustic chair in the position that pleased her, his only condition that he sit facing so he could watch her at work being granted. She was the real picture to him; the one that made it worth while to pose. He could look past her over the fields rolling away to the horizon, with the rows of trees of the main road marching across the foreground.
Human specks dotted the fields, women, old men, and boys who had been at work since dawn harvesting the grain, since the able-bodied men were away at war. A figure which he recognised approached a nearby group.
The bent backs straightened. Faintly he could hear their voices as they pa.s.sed the time of day, and then a laugh all round as Helen became one of them in effort as well as in spirit, raking and binding the sheaves.