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 _vivandiere_? 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 Liege?"
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.