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 passing 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 assistance 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 rehearse 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-pricks 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 passion 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. "They take their reasons from him."
"Pardon me, that is no answer."
"Because the Germans are pigs—all are!" interjected Madame Ribot. "I have never met one who wasn't, even their princes. They are spoiling the Riviera."
"Conquest, though Rome, as I read my history, never called it that," Phil went on, keeping to Helen's theme. "They want their neighbours' fields. It's a get-rich-quick sort of game in internationalism."
"And the French?"
"Only want to keep their fields, to keep their France!" he said. "This was in every face, it seemed to me: to keep their France."
"So the French are in the right, not because we live with them and love them, but at the very bar of justice!" said Helen. "All the peasants in Mervaux are in the right! Oh, I'm glad that I am not a German! And here we sit over our coffee so comfortably and those millions rushing to death! What poor little mortals we are! How lacking in imagination! Each with his little concerns in his own little hole—I grieving because the war spoils my exhibition! No one thinks of the agony of black years for the multitude of mothers and wives. It is too ghastly! Not one wants to die! Who should want to die when the world is so beautiful? Yet they go out to die!"
"Helen, you are overwrought!" said her mother. "There must be wars; there always have been wars."
"One might say that about thistles," Helen replied half inaudibly, staring at the tablecloth.
"And what can we do?" persisted Madame Ribot, who had held back her protests less because of the spell of Helen's fervour than from a hostess's politeness due to Phil's evident interest. "Yes, what would you do, my dear? Become a vivandiére? Surely not nurse! You have admitted that your nerves could not stand the sight of blood——" Madame Ribot broke off. She did not like to think of the sight of blood herself.
"Perhaps they would now," said Helen with some determination, after a pause. "This is different."
"I am not sure!" Madame Ribot replied promptly, for her decision was made that Helen should remain at Mervaux during the war. "And shan't we go out of doors?"
"You feel very deeply," said Phil to Helen as they passed into the grounds where, in utter stillness, the trees cast long shadows from the light of the half moon.
"Every one does," she replied, "only I forget and blurt out my feelings. Perhaps—oh, that is the great hope—the war will do good in its way—good to those who survive!"
"We'll not talk about the war!" said Madame Ribot.
With the soft air of a summer evening, the sense of security and seclusion, the glow after a good meal and bedtime approaching, Madame Ribot had not the slightest desire to think of horrors. She was content to be as she was and where she was, serene, unworried. They were not going to speak of the war, but they did, as every one would while it lasted, no matter how strong his resolution. The war was here in Mervaux, at Truckleford, at Longfield, everywhere and in every mind. It was a maelstrom, drawing all thoughts toward it.
"When the troops come back triumphant, I want to see them march under the Arc de Triomphe," Henriette said. "I hope it will be in the spring, when the horse-chestnuts are in bloom."
"You are sure that they will win?" Phil asked.
"Aren't we already in Alsace and aren't the Germans stopped at Liége?"
It did look like early victory then. Hadn't General Joffre issued his manifesto from Mulhausen? But could Madame Ribot have foreseen what was coming along the great main road one day she would not have been so serene and Helen would not have felt that she was pinioned in her helplessness in the midst of tragedy.
For Phil it was singularly restful. He had been on the go for weeks. He had collected impressions without digesting them; and the prospect of the coming days at Mervaux was sufficient for him.
Helen had kept silence faithfully after they were out of doors. As she said good-night the hand that she gave him was strangely lifeless and her voice lacked its customary vibrant quality. When she reached her room she stood motionless for a long time, looking out at the moon. The change which the war had wrought was not the only inexplicable one that had come over her.
"I hope that he does not stay!" she said at last.