"Yes. But I have yet to make my charcoal of you; so back to your pose, please. This is a serious business."
He recognised that it was by the unattractive way that she drew down her lips as she ceased smiling. A serious business! Though he did not look at her, he could feel her presence; the intensity that she put into her work. He could hear the "Oh, cusses!" muttered under her breath, which were only interjections in the course of series of questions and comments, jumping from Longfield and back again. He found himself interested in answering. He betrayed his enthusiasms, his ambitions, and his love for his country, which was as simple and as inherent as that of the peasants in the fields for their France.
"America is to-morrow!" he said.
This voice of the girl unseen had transformed him from the atmosphere of cartoons to that of a fine reality. He was speaking better than he knew and answering Helen"s questions to the enchanting face of Henriette who, in her rapt listening while her brush was still, urged him on no less by her smile and charm than Helen with her voice of emotion.
"America is to-morrow!" repeated Helen. "I like that thought. You take in all who come to give them a chance for your to-morrow; amalgamate the prejudices that made this war. You live for the rising rather than the setting sun and you love your country not in a boasting way, but in the blood. Is that it?"
"Yes, it"s in the blood after all these generations; and we want to breed it into the blood of every newcomer."
"Even the Germans--the Huns?"
"They should cease to be Germans in America in the same way that my ancestors gave up their European allegiance and fought in order that the newcomers should be free from it. If they prefer to be German, let them stay in Germany."
The afternoon wore on as under a spell wrought unconsciously for him with the beauty of Henriette before him and a certain magnetic force at his elbow--which suddenly snapped as Helen said:
"I don"t know--probably I"ll never do it any better! Thank you!"
By this he understood that the drawing was finished. He rose as one will when the end of an incident impels physical release.
"Enough for to-day!" said Henriette, a touch of sharpness in her voice as she rose, too.
Helen looked exhausted and numb. She had put all her vitality into a sheet of cardboard.
"You, too, Henriette!" exclaimed Phil, as he looked at the result.
At the bottom of the drawing of Henriette, with arm uplifted as about to lay brush to canvas, and of himself in the pose which Helen had arranged, was scrawled, "Seventeenth cousins." Both Henriette and Phil flushed, and Helen looked from one face to the other lingeringly, keenly. She had caught the grace and charm of her sister as something inviting, vivid and finished as art itself, and the note of the man was of a downright simplicity of clear profile which seemed to see nothing except the face before him.
"You think it bad!" said Helen. "It is--it is! But I warned you that I can"t do anything but put the person as I see him into line."
In the resulting impulse, which had a certain desperation about it, she grasped the edge of the cardboard in both hands to tear it in two.
"No!" said Henriette peremptorily. "I never liked anything you have done better."
"But I"m used to tearing up things when they displease me!" persisted Helen stubbornly.
"At least, wait!" remonstrated Phil. "It is wonderful of Henriette."
"And of you, cousin!" said Henriette.
Phil took the picture from Helen"s hands, which now released it in the relaxation of philosophical disinterestedness. What he saw was a man in love with a woman at an easel, and the man was himself. The truth hit him fairly between the eyes.
"Sometimes I don"t know what comes out in my own pictures till I look at them a second time--and this is not so bad for me. Have it if you want it," Helen added, as she bent to pick up her drawing materials, "and I"ll go and wash my smudgy hands." Rather hurriedly, as if some one or something were pursuing her, she went toward the house.
In a quandary Phil watched her out of sight. When he turned again to Henriette her back was toward him and she was taking her canvas off the easel. How like was her figure to the one which had disappeared under the trees!
"Helen has a distinct gift, hasn"t she?" Henriette remarked.
"Yes, and a distinct character," Phil replied thoughtfully.
"A touch of melancholy. Even mother and I never know what she will do next."
He folded the easel and took it under one arm, carrying Helen"s charcoal under the other, while Henriette carried the portrait, and they started slowly back to the house.
"It was wonderful what you said about America," she said, looking at him with appealing seriousness.
"Why?" he asked.
"It was a breath of the real America," she answered. "I"ve fallen into the provincial French view. America is to-morrow! I like that.
You"ve made me feel the call of America; aroused the dormant American corpuscles in my blood," she continued, gazing thoughtfully at the path and then up at him. "I want to go to America. I"d like to see those Rocky Mountains and I"d like to pay a return visit from Mervaux to Longfield."
"You would? But you"d find it quiet--little to do."
"Is there much to do at Mervaux? Shouldn"t I have my painting? My American corpuscles would make me feel at home."
She had carried him a stage farther on his course, dispelling the doubts which had occurred to him as a warning to pause.
"I--I----" he began. His throat seemed out of order; he was stuttering. Madame Ribot"s call from the doorway of the house came as a mixture of relief and unwelcome interruption.
"Somebody will be late for dinner if they do not hurry," said Madame Ribot. "And the news is not good. Even Count de la Grange, who has just been here, admits that it is not. However, he doesn"t think that anything will happen to disturb us here."
CHAPTER XI
SHE SAID, "YES!"
Distinctly it was triumph that the eyes from the mirror reflected back into Henriette"s in her room. For dinner Henriette chose a gown which she had not worn since Phil"s arrival. She had kept it hanging in the far corner of the closet, possibly owing to the fact that the cut was the same as that of Helen"s one dinner gown. Though made of richer material than Helen"s, it heightened the similarity of the two girls"
figures and emphasised the contrast between the beauty of the one and the plainness of the other. Either seemed appropriate to its wearer; to Henriette by right of her vivacious charm which was particularly in evidence that evening, and to Helen by the predestination of nature.
Henriette talked of a visit to America; she would talk of nothing but America. Her mother"s shrewd little eyes hovered between her and Phil questioningly, with a trace of frown at intervals.
"I shall claim you for a stroll in the garden," said Madame Ribot to Phil after dinner, "and then I shall retire very early." She did not say so, but she was going to pack some of her most precious things for departure in case of necessity.
Phil had an idea that she wished to speak to him and to him alone of something on her mind; he knew that he had something on his mind which he would like to mention to her. They walked some distance along the path in that silence which makes two people conscious of wanting to know what it is that the other"s hesitation prevents him from saying.
On this occasion it was never spoken; for Madame Ribot broke the silence by remarking how extremely dark it was. The moon was behind a cloud.
Then the war again! She mentioned a letter which she had received that afternoon about the death of the son of an old friend. It was all very terrible; the world would never be the same again. She hoped that they were safe at Mervaux. Surely with the British and the Russians fighting with the French there was no danger of another siege of Paris.
As they approached the house on their return, Phil saw a figure moving along another path, so dim that it was hardly more than a shadow. Yet it recalled to him with a thrill the Henriette with an appeal in her eyes for an invitation to America. She was walking very slowly. The moon showing a gleam of light as it pa.s.sed between two clouds revealed the figure with its head bowed and hands clasped behind, the face indistinct. Was she thinking of what he was thinking?
When he said good-night at the door to Madame Ribot, he remarked that it was too early to retire and he would take another stroll.
"I think you will find Henriette about the grounds somewhere," she said. Phil caught himself starting at mention of the name. "Probably Helen, too," she added.