After he had gone Dr. Sanford gave his chuckle such full vent that it broke into an explosion little short of a snort.
"I suppose there is something of the anarchist in me," he said; "but I confess to liking to see a self-conscious, self-made millionaire a trifle miserable, without, I trust, in the least compromising my standing as a good Christian."
"Peter was certainly funny," a.s.sented Mrs. Sanford, smiling now.
Then they forget Peter, these three. They forget everything but the fact that they were together. The detail of their talk Phil could hardly have recollected the next day, but every sentence of it came to him when he was prostrate in that noiseless and sightless world in France.
After the proud old pair were under the coverlets that night their theme was the same that it had been a thousand times. Following generations of professors, doctors, and lawyers had come the man of action. Philip had succeeded out in that forbidding world of business and strife: this was the wonderful thing to them.
"He"s changed," said the mother.
"Three years older," said the father. "The world has humanised him, made him fonder of us."
"And didn"t you think that he looked more like our ancestor?" Mrs.
Sanford always referred to the man in the square as "ours."
"Yes, the old blood. Action reappears and likeness of feature. What relation are those two Ribot girls? I was trying to think."
"About seventeenth," said Mrs. Sanford dreamily.
"What a lot of cousins they would make if they all stood in a row!"
mused Dr. Sanford.
CHAPTER II
TWO GIRLS ON A TRAIN
His object being to see England and not to become a member of the menagerie of home types in a pile overlooking the Thames Embankment, the hotel that Philip had chosen was a small one, where a truly English headwaiter, who was not trying to conceal a German accent, treated him with a lofty courtesy and his bath was brought by a maid instead of by the labour-saving device of pipes.
"You rise very early," said the young woman in black at the desk.
"The King did not know that I was coming and I do just as I please,"
Phil replied; and she unbent a little from her dignity and almost laughed.
Against the criterion of all sniffy people who talk of how many times they have been abroad, which sometimes means only a journey from the London to the Paris and the Paris to the Berlin menageries, he was frankly one of the horde of tourists, rising at dawn to make sightseeing a diligent business, who are a.s.siduously cultivated by shopkeepers if somewhat neglected by the n.o.bility. When he moved on the Tower, Westminster Abbey, or Oxford, he made no attempt to conceal his red guidebook. He was at home with schoolmistresses from the Middle West doing a schedule on a set sum or with the wealthy acquaintance he had made on board ship who took him for a motor ride to Canterbury.
Now he was on the way to Truckleford to spend the night, in response to the invitation of the sixteenth degree cousin. Up to the moment of starting he thought that he should have the compartment to himself, when two young women appeared, both a trifle short of breath. So impressionable a tourist as himself could not fail to notice that the one who entered first was strikingly good-looking, a girl with a quality of manner and dress which he a.s.sociated with the Continent, though he had never been there.
"We caught it, at any rate!" she gasped, dropping into a seat.
"Just about!" said the other, who was as distinctly plain at first glance as the other was attractive. "But your run has given you a lovely colour!" she added admiringly. If the one wished to be shown up by contrast for her beauty and the other for her plainness, they had an object in travelling together.
"My hair must be in a shocking state, though," said the beautiful one, as Phil already designated her in his mind.
She drew a mirror from her bag, not to look at her colouring, of course, but to arrange a few strands of hair. Turning her head this way and that, she attended to the disarray due to her haste in dressing perhaps, as well as to her rush for the train. If a woman"s hand and arm and the particular way she holds her fingers when she shepherds strands of hair were more awkward, possibly fewer strands would need attention in public. There is something confidential in these quick fondling movements which have drawn a reader"s eyelashes above the margin of a newspaper many millions of times. This girl made it an unusually graceful and leisurely function; and once, when her glance met Phil"s, it seemed not to see that any person was opposite to her, yet it said: "I know that others are not displeased with what I see in the mirror; then why should I be?"
The plain girl also had some riotously stray strands of hair, but they did not concern her. It was not for her to find friendliness in mirrors.
"Here I am riding the way that the train is going when I like the other way!" she said, jumping up. "Let us change places."
"You dear mouse! You"re always so thoughtful!" said the other beautiful one, complying.
Now she was facing Phil. Reminded that the suburbs of London were so uninteresting that he might be caught staring at a face short of the window instead of looking out it, he began to read his paper diligently. When they had left the chimney pots behind, he found that the plain one"s objection to riding the way that the train was going apparently no longer applied; for she crossed over in a sudden, impulsive movement which seemed characteristic of a restless nature and with a sweeping gesture out of the window began talking of familiar landmarks.
Evidently both had been long absent from England, which was not their home. They mixed French with English in that bi-lingual facility which does not mean an interlarding of words but bursts of sentences. They criticised and compared what they saw with the Continent, and of the two the plain one seemed to get more enthusiasm out of their return.
Having both faces in the tail of his eye, Phil wondered why the plain one should ever want to travel in the other"s company. He drifted into a comparative a.n.a.lysis of the two: The one with her ma.s.ses of black hair, her small forehead, her luminous eyes, straight nose and expressive mouth, with its full lips and the oval chin--a cla.s.sic type of its kind; the other with chestnut hair also in ma.s.ses, but brushed unbecomingly back from the high, broad forehead, the large, black-brown eyes wide apart, a squarish chin and a lump of a nose. Yet a.n.a.lysed there was a resemblance; the genius touch of a sculptor might have transformed one face if it were plastic into the other. The features of one made an ensemble; those of the other were a.s.sertively in rebellion with one another.
But the amazing likeness was in the voices. Closing his eyes, Phil had difficulty in telling which one of the two was speaking. Both voices were pleasant, though the beautiful girl"s voice seemed much the pleasanter of the two when his eyes were open and the plain one"s an imitation.
He thought he should like to get acquainted, but he had not the courage. He could not offer them papers or magazines when evidently they were not in a mood to read. Besides, that sort of thing is not done in England, or, for that, matter, in America, as a rule, on short train journeys. Except for that one glance from the beautiful one, which was to any human being in sight as an audience, he had no sign that they recognised that there was any one else in the compartment.
"I shall be glad to be in Truckleford again, shan"t you?" asked the plain girl.
"Of course I shall! I can see Uncle Arthur waiting on the platform for us now."
"And hear him say Henriette, my dear, and Helen, my dear!"
Then they were surprised by the young man opposite them declaring that he must be about their seventeenth degree cousin and that he was going to Truckleford, too.
"Really!" they exclaimed together.
He might have known what they would say. He had wondered if Americans used guess as often as the English use really. There are many kinds of reallys: forbidding, surprised, sceptical, inquiring. This was all kinds. It was also the kind that leaves the next move with the other person.
"That is, if the Reverend Arthur Sanford, of Truckleford," Phil explained, "is my sixteenth cousin and you are Henriette and Helen Ribot, and my father, the Reverend Franklin Sanford, of Longfield, Ma.s.sachusetts, has reckoned accurately."
"It sounds very mathematical," said Helen, the plain one, thoughtfully, looking toward Henriette to take the lead, which she did charmingly.
"We"ve heard about you, Cousin Philip Sanford," she said, and her eyes were sparkling into his in a way that made it difficult to look away; "let us consider ourselves introduced."
There was a touch of the grand manner about the way she did this; in part it was mischievous, her eyes said. But she did it delightfully, and Helen, who held out her hand in turn, seemed plainer than ever.
But she arrested his attention with her remark:
"I had a suspicion that it was you all the time."
"Why?"
"You"ll see, later." He was conscious of a closer scrutiny of his features, and she added triumphantly: "Yes, you"ll see, later."
Then she sank back on the cushions. When seventeenth cousin meets seventeenth cousin for the first time there is enough to say. Helen looked from one to the other, listening. It seemed her natural role.
Phil almost forgot her existence until the train stopped at Truckleford and they stepped down on the station platform to be welcomed by an elderly clergyman.
"Taller than your father! I like the Sanfords to be tall," he said to Phil. "And, Henriette, now I have you I"ll not let you go all summer.
You can do your painting here." He gave her a fond glance. "And you, Helen, you will have to stay if Henriette stays."