CHAPTER III
AN INVITATION
The tea-table, a damask moon on the lawn of the vicarage, was laid awaiting their arrival and the white-haired woman who presided welcomed Phil with the simple cordiality of a near relative.
"You don"t have afternoon tea in America, I believe?" she said.
"Please pour me a cup and see an American in England make a brave effort," Phil said.
"And what do you think of Truckleford? Is it like what you imagined?"
she asked.
He had a more definite impression of Henriette, who had told him about the village as they walked from the station, than of the village itself. It seemed to him like any other English village.
"The great thing is that my ancestors came from here," he said. "I have wondered what the place was like and what they were like. My father had given such rosy descriptions of everything that I was afraid I might be disappointed. But both of you and the vicarage and the garden and the church are just as I wanted you and them to be. It"s like home."
The vicar and his wife exchanged glances of satisfaction. They were not displeased with the frank American cousin.
"We come to serious matters," said the vicar. "I pa.s.sed the recipe for strawberry shortcake which your father sent over to my wife. There my part ends. I wait for her to report."
"Cook has the recipe," said Mrs. Sanford. "I am not responsible for results."
"Nor I," Phil said, "unless I a.s.sist in picking the berries. Have they been picked yet?"
"Not yet, I think."
"I"ll bring the basket," said Helen Ribot. "We"ll all help, if that is allowed."
"You wouldn"t fully appreciate it if you did not help," Phil a.s.sured her.
"No, I"ll bring the basket," Henriette insisted. "If one did not watch you you"d never let any one do anything for one"s self."
"I foresee a success," said Phil.
He was thinking of the auspices more than of the cook"s part as he watched Henriette pa.s.s around the corner of the house. When she reappeared his glance happened to be resting on the same spot. She stopped, waving her hand in a way that let the sleeve fall back from the graceful forearm to signify that she was ready, most enchantingly ready, for the strawberry shortcake adventure.
"Isn"t she beautiful!" Helen exclaimed. "Aren"t you proud of your seventeenth cousin?"
"Helen!" admonished Mrs. Sanford. "You must not say such things."
"Oh, but I agree, quite enthusiastically!" said Phil.
He had no reason to change his mind as he a.s.sisted her in picking the berries, an operation which brought his head so close to hers that one of the strands of her hair brushed his cheek. Her quick gesture restoring the truant to place prolonged the thrill that had proceeded from the point of contact, with an intimation of self-consciousness on her part as well as on his. Helen was picking, too, but always on the other side of the basket. At length she left off in order to answer questions about her mother and affairs at home in France, which Mrs.
Sanford had foreborne asking at tea.
When the basket was filled the vicar planned to show Phil the graves of his ancestors in the little churchyard, but Henriette forestalled him with the suggestion that the younger generation take a walk before dinner.
"Aren"t you coming?" she called to Helen as she started toward the gate with Phil.
"No. I"ll stay with uncle and aunt," said Helen hesitatingly.
"Seventeenth cousins from America don"t appear often," Phil put in, perhaps a bit luke-warmly.
Helen shook her head.
"Oh, please, that"s a good mouse!" urged Heinriette.
"No!" said Helen, a sharpness in her voice unlike Heinriette"s now and a flash of what seemed pent-up irritation in her eyes.
It was not an agreeable exhibition, Phil thought. But Henriette smiled as if accustomed to such outbreaks, explaining in an aside:
"Train-riding always tires her. You mustn"t mind her abruptness. She has more fire, is more French, than I am."
They had gone only a few steps when Helen ran after them. She was flushed, with a singular, penitent look in her eyes, and the voice of Henriette might have been continuing softly as she said:
"Please, I didn"t mean to be tempery. But I had planned to do something and I"ll arrange the flowers for the table."
"You are always together, quite inseparable, you and Helen," said Phil, after they were through the gate.
"Yes. Isn"t it lucky to have a sister only a year apart from you?"
said Henriette. "We"re quite different, but surely you"ve noted the resemblance in our voices. I have tried to change mine and she has tried to change hers, for there was something uncanny about it, but neither of us could quite. It"s been a greater cross to mother than to us, though I can"t see, why when we are so different in other ways, can you?"
He could not when Henriette"s wonderful eyes were putting the question to him at the same time as her lips, in a way that made the difference a contrast.
"I"ll show you my favourite walk," she said.
It took them into a lane and on high ground, where the village lay nestling at their feet, a greyish patch in the pattern-work of hedges.
The beauty of the landscape to him was in its suggestion, no less than in its appeal to the eye. Many generations of men had laid their bones in this earth after having given it their strength in return for life.
"I understand how that first Sanford who went across the water on that adventure which took rare courage in those days," said Phil, "harked back to this scene which was bred in his blood, and how other scenes in other climates became bred in the blood of his grandsons."
"It is much as our ancestors saw it, I fancy," Henriette said. "I"m bred into it somewhat, but more into France."
"A little into America, too," he suggested. "You have some American blood."
She was thoughtful for a moment, then looked up at him brightly.
"Perhaps. Why not? Though I"ve never been to America. There is a walk in the neighbourhood of our chateau at Mervaux which I should like to show you. I"m fonder of it than of this, I confess."
"And I"ve a favourite walk I should like to show you in the Berkshires," he said.
"A seventeenth cousin reunion in walks, is that it?" She was smiling at her own suggestion with a confidential nod.
"Bully!"
"No, you should say ripping in England. Bully is an American vulgarism, Cousin Phil."