"It is a mirror conscience," she answered, looking back at him soberly; and then, from the infection of surprise in his eyes, a gathering, quizzical smile spread until it broke in another ripple of laughter.
"That is a new kind of conscience, Helen. Explain!" said her sister.
"To you, too, Henriette?" said Helen. "I"ve only just found it, myself."
"Apparently it is in the backs of mirrors," murmured Henriette.
"I don"t blame Henriette for never looking at the back, do you?" Helen asked Phil.
Phil thought a little revenge was due him for having a mirror set in front of him for the purpose of a comparison of physiognomies.
"Hardly. I envy the mirror!" he said, turning to her. But she had dropped her gaze to her coffee cup and took a deliberate sip before looking up.
"It is always pleasant to say foolish things nicely," she remarked.
"But he is sincere. If he weren"t it would be accusing him of blindness, wouldn"t it, cousin?" put in Helen mischievously.
"Absolutely!" he managed to say, conscious that he was not having much revenge and that things were getting brittle; while Mrs. Sanford, pretending to smile, could not quite follow the nimble conversation.
Helen laughed again to cover the misadventure of her unruly tongue, and Phil laughed, too, though he did not exactly know why. Henriette was taking another deliberate sip of coffee. They were not aware of the vicar"s return until he stood behind Phil"s chair.
"Look again, cousin!" Helen bade him.
He was of a mind not to, but could not control his curiosity. The vicar was holding against the frame beside the face of the ancestor a photograph of the statue in the square at Longfield.
"Your father sent it to me," he explained.
"Not a double, but a treble!" exclaimed Helen.
"It"s the way of the blood," continued the vicar. "It skips generations, but it"s always there--early in the seventeenth century, late in the eighteenth, and now early in the twentieth."
"But the one in the eighteenth was a wicked rebel, disloyal to our German king!" Helen put in again, yielding to temptation. "Old Thomas, there, would have disowned him."
"Helen!" admonished her aunt. "It was only a family quarrel."
"But I believe that old Thomas would have been on George Washington"s right hand," said Helen. "He looks it."
Meanwhile, Phil was looking at the three faces, so similar that he might well have been in doubt which was his own. If he were expected to rise and make a fitting speech it was beyond his sense of humour.
"Help! help! Too much ancestor!" he cried out; and half rising he seized Helen"s hands, pushing the mirror away at the same time that he held her at arms" length. "You began it!"
She was flushing to the roots of her hair. How strong he was! How silly she had been!
"No, the ancestor! Ancestors begin everything for everybody!" she retorted. "And if you will let go of me I will put the mirror away."
"We all beg your pardon for embarra.s.sing you. It was not a plot and we are all very interested," said the vicar, his eyes twinkling.
The photograph of the Revolutionary hero which her uncle laid on the table Helen took up; and the change of subject so earnestly desired by every one she wrought in another impulse.
"What do ancestors count," she said, "beside a piece of work like this!
It"s the best he ever did and there is not his equal in all this island--nowhere outside of France. It"s power--the purity of line!
Who wouldn"t charge led by such a figure as that!"
"Now, Helen, when you are through with your ecstasy shan"t we go out on the lawn?" said her uncle, patting her hand.
The force of her enthusiasm had something compelling which led Phil to look at the photograph over her shoulder as if it were something he had never seen; but upon her uncle"s hint he saw a plain, dull face yielding a.s.sent and he was conscious of a vitality suddenly turned limp.
Henriette took the photograph from her sister"s hand.
"The best thing of his I have seen," she remarked, examining it.
"Inspired by his subject. He has just missed the arm, I think. I should like to have a copy. Shall we walk?" she asked Phil, leading the way. "We ought to have a portrait of the seventeenth cousin as well as of the ancestors," she continued. "I may try portraiture again when you come to France. You will find it easier to pose than to tear up trees, for we have some very large trees at Mervaux, I warn you."
"I hope it will not be in profile," he replied.
Wasn"t he going to France to see her? Perhaps she understood the intimation, as she pretended to study his face in the light of the doorway.
"I think a full face will be best!" she decided. "What a glorious night!"
Moonlight and the soft air of the English summer time redeem the soggy, rheumatic winters with their overcast days. A carpet of sod cut by the shadows of moon rays which gave l.u.s.tre to her eyes! In months to come there were to be other evenings equally fine by nature"s gentle beneficence, but none like this. There never could be again; for something was coming to the world which would leave nothing in human relations the same.
The cousinly party walked up and down or stopped to chat in changing groups, Henriette and Phil mostly together and Helen sometimes quite by herself. The happiest of all were the vicar and his wife. They were old enough to take happiness in its full measure; to enjoy that of their own years and by reflection that of youth.
"Are you pleased with him?" asked Mrs. Sanford when two white heads, much like the two at their dinner three thousand miles away, rested on their pillows.
"Yes, my dear. I shall write to Dr. Sanford that we claim part of his son. He is our Philip, too."
"Our Philip!" she repeated. "The family does not die out," she said, in relief at some of the weight of an old burden lifted.
"It survives very worthily over the seas," said her husband.
"How beautiful Henriette was to-night. She grows more charming as she matures, though I confess young people of this age puzzle me. I couldn"t help thinking what a splendid pair they made. Ah, blood will tell!"
"And Helen grows more temperamental."
"Poor dear! I don"t know what will become of her."
With accustomed leisure Henriette had taken off her gown. It had served well that evening. To her delicate sense it was a living thing, a servant subject to praise and reproach. Caressingly she laid it aside. The buckles of her slippers smiled at her, and she held the foot which she withdrew arched and turned it for inspection before thrusting it into the softer slipper fitted to enjoy the bare intimacy of such a small foot. Still more leisurely she undid her hair and brushed it, conscious that the picture in the frame before her was the same that she had momentarily set in the mirror beside a seventeenth cousin"s at table.
Helen--poor dear!--hung up her gown carefully enough, though with no more interest than if it were a towel; and she kicked first one of her slippers almost ceiling high and caught it and then the other, in enjoyment of an old trick of hers. Mirrors were of no use to her in undoing and brushing her hair; yet as she laid the brush back on the table she had a glimpse of herself and it was the smiling self. She laughed at that self, only to find that it was less plain-looking than the smiling self; and then she was angry. The mirror conscience stabbed her with the thought that she was posing, trying to be attractive.
"He must have fancied that I was flirting!" she mused. "I flirt with anybody!"
When she went to bed it was to toss and think of many things, consequent and inconsequent, and of no one thing for long, and when she found herself sobbing she turned on the light and took up her charcoals. But they seemed crude and self-accusing, and she turned to drawing pictures out of her fancy, which at last made her eyelids heavy as it had on many other occasions.
CHAPTER V