"Yes. Mother insists on a permanent exhibition," she replied deprecatingly.
He went from one to another, admiring, listening to her comments, and when they had been through the rooms he turned to her, saying:
"It"s very wonderful to me. I stand a little in awe of you--you who have been in the Salon. I have great luck in cousins and I am luckier still in having an invitation to Mervaux."
She had not expected him to speak of the pictures in any critical fashion. How could he know anything about art? She liked his simple att.i.tude. It was always more satisfactory than that of those who pretended to know and did not.
"And it"s time for me to dress for dinner," she said, "though you need not hurry. Dinner at eight."
He had not thought of Helen while he had been looking at the pictures.
After Henriette had gone he saw Helen huddled in the depths of a big chair in a corner half hidden by the open door, reading. With the brilliant light of Henriette departed, smaller lights became visible.
Helen also was his cousin. But he felt a peculiar awkwardness in speaking to her. He was even afraid that one of her tempers might break on him. He hesitated, as he thought of something to say, and his glance fell on the pile of charcoal drawings on the side table.
"Are those your drawings?" he asked.
"I plead guilty," she responded equivocally.
"May I look?"
"Of course. Please do, if you would like to," she said. "They explain themselves," she added, without rising, "and it"s at your own risk."
He took up one of the drawings.
"But I think it corking!"
"Honestly?" she asked. "Let me see which one it is!" She sprang up and looked over his shoulder, suddenly changed into a being of glowing vitality.
CHAPTER VIII
ANOTHER PHASE OF HELEN
Possibly Philip did know something about art, as the result of a good deal of reading and his visits to galleries. Possibly, too, he had an innate appreciation of it. To Helen, his interest had momentarily rekindled the enthusiasm for her work which the war had stifled. As they took up drawing after drawing, she rather than he was the critic.
"Bad, but I like that part, there!" she went on. "This is sensational--not really good. Oh, cusses! Every time I look at that one it seems worse, and I thought it was so good at the start! Smudgy, but if you hold it off like that it"s more like what I meant to do.
One knows what one wants to do and then one"s stupid fingers will not."
He was interested and more than interested, if silent. He was looking at her drawings and not her face. The effect was of the quality of her mind wrought by the cunning of her hand, and her voice was that of Henriette with a more emotional intonation than Henriette"s, revealing the quality which even the cunning of her hand could not interpret.
There was more than he had supposed in this cousin.
"Haven"t you ever exhibited?" he asked.
As he looked around it was almost with the expectation of seeing Henriette"s face, which should go with Henriette"s voice and the fervour of her talk; Henriette in the glory of enthusiasm, the enthusiasm which he knew she must possess and which he would like to arouse. But it was the face of Helen, sunburned and plain--almost too plain to have done such drawings.
"You think that I ought to?" she asked soberly. It was odd that she should seek his opinion when she had had that of M. Vailliant. "I was going to when the war came," she went on, still soberly. Then came the burst of confidence and her features lighted, their mobility alive with recollection as she told about the scene in the dining-room, forgetting herself, mimicking M. Vailliant and her own fears and the climax. She boasted of the thousand francs. She told him what she meant to do with that perfectly enormous sum; how she was going on drawing as long as she lived, caring for nothing else.
"Why wasn"t she always like that?" Phil wondered. She ought to let her emotions always shine out of her eyes, play in her features. Was she really plain? He was unconscious of it; conscious only of her amazing vitality which had a magnetism that made him the kind of rapt listener which is the best urging to another flow of talk.
"Here you are holding that drawing like a waiter with a card on a salver who can"t get my lady to look up from her knitting!" she finally exclaimed.
"Then I"ll look at another," he said. "I certainly have luck in cousins."
After her confidences the drawings had even more appeal. He seemed to understand them better; her talk made him a sort of comrade in their making. But she did not offer to do a charcoal of him. He suggested it himself, as a companion souvenir for the portrait by Henriette.
"A profile!" she said.
"You choose," he agreed. He would like that better; and he hoped that she would talk about her troubles in making her fingers obey her mind while she was doing it.
"I could do it now! Twilight is just right on your face--yes, yes!"
She drew a long breath as she studied the profile in a moment of silence, which was broken by a voice which might have been her own.
"Haven"t you loiterers started to dress yet?" It was Henriette in the doorway, a warning finger raised. The doorway made a perfect frame for her; all surroundings seemed to suit her. "I don"t wonder you forgot time was pa.s.sing if you caught Helen in one of her enthusiasms," she added. "Did she tell you how the war stopped her exhibition?"
"I"m going to have two portraits now," said Phil. "I begin to think well of myself! It won"t take me ten minutes to dress."
"Nor me!" said Helen. "A wager! I"ll be down first!" She preceded him, two steps at a time, up the stairs. "Do your best and see!" she called, as she darted into her room.
Her image in the mirror confronted her and she gave a cry as of amazement at it, which, however, did not permit her to waste any time.
She came out of her room at the same instant that Phil opened his door, forgot her part again, and laughing in challenge dashed past him to the stairway, calling over her shoulder:
"Down first! Victory!"
What she wore was something in white to Phil, but the figure in its suppleness and grace--how like Henriette"s it was!
Madame Ribot, who had put on her best gown and been an hour with a maid"s a.s.sistance in the dressing, sat the guest opposite her, feeling that glow of satisfaction which aroused many recollections at having an agreeable man at the function of all functions to her--dinner as cooked by Jacqueline. Yet she would have dressed with equal care if she had been going to eat alone and her finger-nails would have been equally shiny with over-attention; for self-respect"s sake, as she would have said. But all who rehea.r.s.e like an audience when the curtain rises.
Helen was silent--her part. Plain girl in plain gown, she might have been the family governess or a companion. Time had drilled her well in the part, time with the memories of pin-p.r.i.c.ks behind the scenes.
It was through guests that Madame Ribot kept in touch with the world, which was an easier way in this era of her existence than to go to the world. Phil was soon aware that she expected him to tell of his tour of the warring nations. From Henriette came occasional questions and from Helen an infrequent "Yes," as of pa.s.sion suppressed, until they came to coffee. Then she let go of herself with questions of her own.
"Were the women just as mad as the men in Germany?"
"Quite."
"And the men in the troop trains, with "Nach Paris" chalked on the wagon doors--the men who were singing, singing as they went out to kill--if one had to go alone up a road to try to murder or be murdered, would he sing then?"
"Hardly!"
"And it would be murder, then. It isn"t now!"
"The distinction between war and homicide," Phil replied.
Helen was leaning her elbows on the table, her chin cupped in her hands, all eyes, and eyes on fire. She compelled his attention.
"Did you see any one who was stopping to think why they were going to war--why? why? Not what the papers print and the professors say and the Kaiser prays--why in their own hearts? The reason that all the other nonsense hides?"
"The Kaiser tells them that they are fighting in defence," said Phil.