CHAPTER XIV
"IF I WISH IT!"
When the two sisters went upstairs, Henriette turned to go to her room, then whirled and followed Helen.
"Well, did you tell him?" she demanded, with a kind of ferocity.
"Yes," replied Helen, foreseeing fresh torture.
"And how did he take it?"
"In the mood that I gave it—good-naturedly, as a joke."
"Oh, a joke! Yes, a joke!" Henriette played on the word harshly. "He did not renew the proposal to you? Strange!" she laughed. "And did you tell him that you had told me?"
The question was so piercingly put that Helen recoiled slightly.
"Yes," she said.
"Another joke, that! Did you think of the position it put me in?"
"But he asked me. I could not lie to him!"
"No, never! You could not lie!" Henriette rejoined. "No, you did not think what kind of a position it put me in—or him. I know that he has meant to propose to me. He knows that I know. Delightful situation! Acting for me, did you say that I would accept or refuse?"
"I said nothing. He said nothing."
"Quite nothing?" Henriette persisted. "Nothing about poor, little, plain, much-abused sisters?"
"No. I don't know what you mean, Henriette. The war is here. We are both on our nerves. And—he will propose again. He loves you."
Henriette smiled with something of her usual sweetness, touched with a bantering acidity.
"If I wish it!" she said, turning abruptly to go.
"Henriette, please not to-night! We don't know what may happen to-morrow," Helen pleaded.
"I must pack," replied Henriette rather irrelevantly, and was gone.
Irritating enough this task at all times, let alone when you may take only a small box and everything that you leave behind may fall into the hands of a conqueror. Henriette looked into the big closet at the array of gowns and the row of shoes under the drooping skirts and spread out her hands hopelessly.
"I can buy new gowns," she said. "It's the laces and jewelry and the mementoes that must go."
She unlocked an old carved chest and in turn unlocked a drawer within which was crammed full of bundles of letters, each tied with a bit of pink ribbon. There must have been a dozen bundles and she smiled at their number.
"When I am so young, too!" she mused. "Why take them? Why not leave them locked up? But the Germans might break open the chest and read them. No, they must go—at the very bottom of the trunk;" where she laid the trophies of conquest before she thought of anything else.
The firing had died down. All sense of fear had departed. After slipping into her kimono she moved about the room swiftly, gathering her most precious things. She had forgotten to draw the shade and Phil, returning from the terrace, saw her figure flitting about as he came down the path. Pausing to regard the trunk which was already giving signs of the limit of its capacity, she heard the sound of his step on the gravel. Leaning out of the window she called to him.
"Have you been out to see the battle again? I suppose you felt you might go as long as the General remains on the sofa to guard us poor, lone women!"
"He went on some errand and begged me to express his regrets if he does not see you again," Phil replied.
"My packing has gone on so fast that I am coming down and going to the terrace for a look for myself." She gave a glance in the mirror. The kimono was good enough; it was particularly becoming, besides. "Aren't we giving you more entertainment than we promised at Mervaux?" she asked merrily, as she joined him.
"But oughtn't you to sleep?" he suggested. "Seven is a pretty early hour. There's no telling how much rest you'll get to-morrow."
"Sleep?" She looked at him, with the light of the lamp from the hall dancing in her eyes. "One must be sleepy in order to sleep."
"I see that you are not."
"Was Helen very frightened when the guns began firing?" she asked.
"Not a bit," he replied.
"Why should she be? Why should any one be?"
As they passed the dark spot under the tree where Helen had been sitting when he had stolen up behind her, mistaking her for another, it might have occurred to both that it would be an awkward stroll if the monstrous fact of the war's proximity had not dwarfed personal concerns. From the terrace they could hear the creaking of wheels on the road, though the battery behind the trees was silent. No movement of the gunners, who had dropped asleep in exhaustion. In the distance were still occasional flashes. Hundreds of thousands of men were moving over there under cover of darkness or sleeping on the dew-moist fields before the morrow's action.
"And one does not know when one will ever be here again," she said.
"The portrait unfinished, too," he suggested.
"Yes. What a happy time we have had doing it!" she exclaimed.
"You had, too?" he asked.
"Of course I had. And we are going to finish it, aren't we, cousin, at Truckleford? Won't you come there?"
She put her hand on his arm with a slight pressure—a cousinly privilege. The moonlight was strong enough to make her features visible; the dark hair and brows, the shining eyes and the smiling lips. She was very beautiful, unreally so, there in the moonlight. She knew and he knew that she knew what had happened three hours ago, before the war had come to Mervaux. Her hand was still on his arm. He took it in his and she did not protest.
"Yes! How could I resist?" he exclaimed. "I——"
"Agreed! You've promised!" she cried triumphantly, giving his hand a shake and drawing away. "Now to finish the infernal trunk and on to Truckleford!"
"Isn't there some packing I can do?" he asked when they reached the house. "I feel utterly helpless."
"Nothing, unless you can put more gowns into my trunk than I can," she replied.
"But all the bric-à-brac and your pictures! I can put them in closets and lock the door. And the china, too!"
But Jacqueline already had this in hand.
"I'll help you!" said Phil.
"Come on, then," said the businesslike Jacqueline. "We need a man who can fetch and carry."
"And who'll obey orders, I see. I await your commands."
"And I'll join you later!" called Henriette.