CHAPTER XII
THE GUNS SPEAK
Was the war making her mad? Her "Yes!" was repeating itself in Helen's ears in a haunting, beating refrain as she hurried toward the house. She had played a lie; she had made a mockery of a man in his most serious mood! She had accepted an offer of marriage in Henriette's name! How was she to explain? What was she to do? With every turn of her groping flashes of thought for some solution, the wickedness and agony of her situation grew worse.
In the doorway she met Henriette just coming out. Helen drew back as if she had been struck, cowed, her cheeks burning, her lips twitching, her eyes dull as with torture before an accuser. Henriette could only surmise that some accident had happened.
"What is it? Why don't you speak?" she demanded.
Henriette was going out into the garden and Phil might come to her with the words, "Don't forget; you said yes!" precipitating an awkward crisis. The force which he had put into his words was proof that he was no faint-hearted lover.
"Why don't you speak? You look as if you had seen ghosts!" Henriette persisted.
Helen's way of mending the error of one impulse had ever been with another impulse.
"Not here!" she gasped. "In my room! Yes, Henriette, you must know!"
When they were in the room and Helen, haggard and choking, faced Henriette, calm and wondering, the contrast between the two was at a climax. Something like appeal for sympathy appeared in Helen's eyes as she struggled for a beginning. Then without beginning she broke into laughter, which was prolonged until she was forced to wipe her eyes.
"Well, I hope you have not gone out of your head!" said Henriette. "I refuse to see the fun of the thing until I know what it is."
Laughter had pointed the way for Helen.
"It would be funny if it were not so awful," she said. Between laughs, hectic laughs, she told the story of what had happened under the tree. "The joke was too good, shameful as it was. I couldn't help it. I said only a few words and looking the other way—it was so dark—he mistook my voice for yours—and what is to be done now?"
Henriette's eyes were narrow slits, become like her mother's, and her lips tightly compressed made her mouth a short gash and drew down her nose till the cartilage of the thin bridge showed white.
"Yes, what to do!" she said icily. "Why do you come to me?"
"I—I don't know," Helen answered.
"Oh!" said Henriette.
Helen tried to smile, but it was a poor effort.
"I couldn't resist the temptation. Don't you see, Henriette? It's the knot in my brain, I suppose."
"But, I repeat, why do you come to me?"
Helen was in an agony of confusion under her sister's glare.
"I thought you'd like to know what he did intend for you—I——"
"Leave my affairs to me!"
"It was only one of my foolish impulses, Henriette!"
Confined anger flashing rage from Henriette's eyes carried her forward a step. A storm burst on Helen's head.
"Impulses!" exclaimed Henriette. "Not that—spite! Yes, and jealousy and sour grapes and stolen goods! You wanted to know what it was like to have a man make love to you! You could not resist the novelty, the temptation. Am I to blame because I am good-looking and you are not? Because I have money? He thought it was my voice, you say. How do you think it makes me feel to have a sister with a voice like mine always with me? Humble as a mouse and as cunning, pretending to efface yourself, working in the fields with the peasants, the plain girl who cannot afford good clothes, and your very unpretentious charcoals—yes, you know your part! Cunning and spite, that is it, and jealous of my work—and always with me—I——"
The upshot of Henriette's anger was a blow on Helen's cheek, so sharp that she staggered under it; but it was the least of the blows she had received in that revelation of her sister's feeling.
"I'll not engage in a boxing match with you, Henriette," she said coolly, after two or three hard swallows. "If I do appear that way to other people it's time I knew it. Perhaps there is a little truth in it. I'm a woman, yes. I should like to be good-looking—at least, not as plain as I am. It does hurt me that I have such a kill-joy of a face."
"If I were as plain as you I'd accept the fact and be a nurse or something. Anyway, I'd try to make the best of it by——"
"Try to make myself as attractive as possible, you mean."
"Oh, you don't neglect that! You've found out that you are least unattractive when you grin and laugh. One may try to overdo that and be silly."
A faint and peculiar smile twitched Helen's lips, and sad, too.
"I've tried to avoid that temptation. I remembered the fable about the donkey who tried to caper and the old saw about seeing yourself as others see you."
"It's time!" said Henriette mercilessly; but her features had resumed their calm.
"I am going away, Henriette," Helen went on, "and if you will wait I'll find Cousin Phil and confess the trick that I played. That is what I should have done at once."
"Suppose that I saved you the humiliation—and it must be humiliation even to such a practical joker as you," Henriette replied, smiling now. "Suppose that I let it stand that he has proposed to me and I have accepted?"
"Henriette!" Helen put accusation into the word.
"Well!"
"That will mean that you have agreed to be his wife—to go to America with him! Would you do that?"
"Perhaps he will come to Europe to live."
"That was not his expectation."
"So you have arranged the details for me, too?"
"No, I have told you all. What I mean is that he is not like the other men. He is down-right and not used to such affairs. I—I mean, his heartbreak might last."
"By which you imply that I am a flirt. Is that it?"
"No, not that you mean to be. But one so charming as you and so used to attention finds it very easy to win men."
"And"—Henriette smiling quite sweetly took an excruciatingly long time to say it—"you love him yourself. Is that it?"
Helen was silent, her eyes downcast, feeling all the blood in her body running to her face. To have the question put bluntly—this question which she had never put to herself!
"How you blush!" Henriette remarked. "Oh, I've watched you plotting! I know!"
Helen looked up and her glance was so steady and prolonged that Henriette averted hers.
"No, I have not plotted. I plot for such a purpose! One does not know what is in one's heart and one does not say 'no' or 'yes' if it means lying. I am going away, so I'll leave it to you. He shall not know that it was not you."
"On the contrary, on thinking it out I've concluded to win my own proposals—I think I'm capable of it," she smiled charmingly, "and not to work in pairs in affairs of this kind."
"That is better," Helen agreed. "It's more straightforward for me."
"And gives you a chance, too," said Henriette benignly. "As it's dark, perhaps he may take pity and elope with you to-night."
"In that case," Helen replied, with an effort at humour, "we shall be breakfasting in Paris and not at Mervaux."
As she held the door open before starting on her errand she hesitated, thinking that perhaps Henriette might ask forgiveness for the blow which still stung her cheek. But Henriette gave no sign for contrition and Helen made no further overture. Sturdily as a grenadier she marched down the stairs and out into the grounds to have the agony of her confession to Philip Sanford over as speedily as possible. She was suffering horribly, but the spirit of a new freedom possessed her. She blessed that thousand francs and uttered a silent prayer for M. Vailliant, out there in his place among the walls of men trying to stem the tide of invasion, in a way that would have made him feel that he had not been an art dealer in vain.
The Rubicon was crossed, and plain girls no less than Cæsar feel relieved after a decision which makes the path to battle clear and chooses the enemy. The thousand francs would take her to America. Perhaps if M. Vailliant had liked her charcoals well enough to exhibit them, some one in New York would take them up. If not, well, she had seen those enormous American papers with pages and pages of cartoons. Might not she sell enough of her conceits to make a living? With the American strain in her blood she ought to be able to adapt herself to conditions. She recalled the saying of her old teacher: "Don't be afraid. Make the fight. Crusts earned by pot-boilers taste sweet if true art is in your heart."
She felt a new strength in her limbs; the very breaths in her lungs going deeper, as true warriors' must when they cross the Rubicon. But ahead of her was a duty which was humiliation in every fibre for any woman; yes, the more so the plainer she was. For she was a woman, quite full grown; she thought of herself in this way for the first time.
Her courage was screwed to the sticking point until she reached the terrace and, on the spot where that afternoon she had drawn cartoons of jest and the true picture of him and Henriette, saw Phil standing, his figure outlined in the rays of the moon which had at last freed itself of obscuring clouds. She stopped, numb, cold. Then she drew a deep breath, drove her fingers into her palms, and Phil turned at the sound of a merry "Hello!" to see Helen before him, laughing softly as she had over her work in the afternoon. She hurried her speech, with interludes of laughter which asked for forgiveness.
"You know how mischievous I am—and—well—mind, I'll keep the secret, and my voice is like Henriette's and my figure, too, they say—and when you began to—well, to be eloquent to me on the bench, taking me for Henriette, I couldn't resist. I—I'm ashamed, but it was such a joke—I couldn't help it!" she finished with a peal of laughter.
He had guessed the truth before she came to the climax and he rose to his part in answering laughter; lame, but still it was laughter, for which she thanked him from her heart and brain, now giddy with relief.
"The joke is on me!" he agreed.
"It was wicked—there isn't the slightest excuse!" she proceeded.
"Personally, I don't see how you could have resisted it," he said. "Honestly not."
"It's—it's awfully good of you!" she replied. "I don't feel quite so shameful now that you take it that way. You're a brick!"
She was pleased with the way that she was carrying it out, thanks to having crossed the Rubicon and put all illusions behind her.
"Acting for Henriette, I believe that you said yes," he resumed quizzically.
Laughter was the cue here, too. She was prompt with it.
"Did I? You were so eloquent I thought that I ought, instead of spoiling the play. It was the quickest way. I was getting embarrassed with my own joke."
"You are a brick, too, my seventeenth cousin!" he said. "No harm done, as you have told nobody else."
"Oh, but I have!" She could not help letting the truth go. "I told Henriette."
"Oh!" Phil was thoughtful. "What did she say?"
"To tell you—that is—I mean, the sense of it—that she was not acting by proxy in such matters."
"Naturally not," he replied. "However, she knows," he concluded.
"All's well that ends well," said Helen.
"Yes."
It was on her tongue's end to tell him of her resolution to go to America, but she changed her mind instantly and finally. She would not ask his help, not after this affair under the tree. And she would start to-morrow. She would not, could not, spend another day at Mervaux. The resolution had occupied her in a moment of silence. Awakening from it, she saw that he had turned as one drawn by something of intense interest and was gazing out across the fields. Far away on the horizon was a flash and another flash and then many flashes. It was like sheet lightning.
"There must be a storm in the distance!" she exclaimed.
"Listen!" he said sharply.
From that direction came a sound like thunder, yet not like thunder, for its dull peals had a booming regularity.
"And there—where my finger points!"
She stepped a little behind him and looked along his arm. Beyond the fingers' end, breaking out of the mantle of night, were one-two-three-four bright, sharp flashes in regular succession, followed by reports, one-two-three-four.
"Listen!"
There was a rumble of wheels on the main road, mingled with the shouts of men, very audible once one's mind was centred on it.
"The near, sharp flashes are from the French guns! The others are the burst of shells! They are fighting there—there in sight of us!" Helen exclaimed, gripping Phil's arm. "The war has come to Mervaux! This will be terrible for mother! We must be careful how we break the news to her."
"Yes, she must go," said Phil. "Wait!"
He was straining his eyes at something which she could net see. Finally she made out a moving, lumpish sort of procession coming from the road. As it drew nearer she recognised it as a battery of guns, which stopped behind a clump of woods in a hollow. She heard the commands and saw the groups of horses swing round and then go to the rear.
"I'll speak to them. Perhaps they can tell us what to expect," said Phil.
"Shan't I go with you? My French may help."
"Yes, that's so. Shall I never forget that everybody doesn't speak English and that only the English really understand my French?"
Together they walked across the dewy fields till an officer of the battery flashed his electric pocket lamp in their faces, as he stepped from among his men busy emplacing the soixante-quinze for action.
"Monsieur! What is your business here? Who are you?" he asked.
"I am an American stopping at the chateau over there and this is my cousin," Phil managed to say in his school French.
"His accent is not German, you will agree, mon capitaine!" put in Helen.
"Nor yours, but Parisian, Mademoiselle!" He was very polite, but the voice was tired. "You had better go back to the chateau and stay, lest your purpose be misunderstood. We are very sharp about such things in war time."
"How is it going?" They asked the question together; the question of all France.
"It is not for an artilleryman to say; but if I were you and you have the means I'd get away—not that the Germans may come here, but there may be shell-fire. If you remain and there is shelling, go into the cellar. And don't alarm the villagers. They glut the road with their carts."
"You are very kind. Good luck for France!"
"For France! Au revoir, Monsieur!"
The two cousins were startled by the crashes of a salvo from the battery before they were halfway back to the chateau grounds.