SPINNING WEBS
War, which shakes human beings of all sorts and conditions together as
dice in a box, had placed Peter Smithers and Madame Ribot side by side
flying over a main highway of France in the automobile which, with his
gift for managing things, he had at his disposal. Her own gift for
managing things had secured a vehicle of transit from Paris on a visit
to Henriette all to her taste, with companionship all to her purpose.
She was gowned with the simplicity which the war mode required, but
most effectively. During the last week her mirror signs had been most
favourable, while return to action after many years of retirement had
quickened her wits and brightened her smile. Thanks to the way that
she had kept her hand in with General Rousseau, Count de la Grange and
others, the technique of her art had not deteriorated and she was
practising on Peter with a finesse of adaptability to the subject of
Henriette's tailor. It was an axiom of the circle in which she had
been trained that no one was more susceptible to old world charm of her
kind than self-made American millionaires.
"A good-looking woman," thought Peter, "and lots of style."
He was delighted to be better acquainted with her, as he must become in
that five hours' ride. The car was a limousine, the cushions soft, the
autumn day fair, and Madame Ribot was spinning webs as the rubber tires
spun over the road.
"America must be wonderful," she said.
"It's a growing country," Peter replied. "Always growing out of its
clothes and too many political tailors down in Washington changing the
styles. But it's my country, all right, and we haven't got any Kaisers
with their war bonnets on romping around over there."
"And such bold, creative, organising men"--she liked the adjectives and
gave them a purring sound--"as you have made America."
"Well, America was there first, but we've certainly stuck a few
skyscrapers about on the redskins' hunting preserves."
She smiled as Peter glanced around and the nature of his smile in
return was the authority for a confidential tap-tap of the sole of her
shoe on the hassock under her foot. Convenient hassock! Powerful,
speedy car! Three millions!
"In England, where they recognise men of worth, they would have made
you a peer," she remarked, with a sigh. She was putting it on thick,
but was convinced that Peter liked it that way. For that matter, Count
de la Grange liked it thick, too; and men were much alike.
"Do you think so?" he asked thoughtfully.
"I am certain of it."
"And then they would call me 'My Lord'?" he continued after a pause,
almost coyly.
"Yes."
Peter smiled again to himself and at the back of the chauffeur's head.
"Such leaders as you in America do not make their money for sordid
purposes. It means power," she went on.
"Perhaps," replied Peter, who remained thoughtful. "You have a way of
putting things, Madame Ribot," he added, with another smile.
"You build in the joy of building; and with you, I should think that it
was the joy of giving, too. It was easy to see when he was at Mervaux
how devoted Phil was to you. He was always speaking of you."
"Was he?" Peter inquired eagerly. "Was he?" he repeated, with a touch
of surprise in his tone.
"But it was admiration for you as a man, while it was clear that he
meant to make his own way. How fond I became of him! How chivalrous
he was to Henriette! How brave he had been! And now they say he will
quite recover. I hope so, for his sake."
"He will!" replied Peter.
Tap-tap on the hassock! Soft, inaudible tap-tap!
"It's like some fairy tale, his story, isn't it?" she murmured; "his
and yours. I can understand your happiness in seeing him make good, as
you say in America, where you are giving the sturdy English language
something of French piquancy, and your happiness in having him for your
heir. It was as if you had found a son."
"He has not been told yet," Peter said quickly. The shoe pressed down
nervously on the hassock in the interval before Peter, as he looked
around at her again, added, almost sharply: "I am going to tell him
myself when the time comes."
"And without his expecting it--that all is going to him?" she asked,
quite casually.
"Yes. I've given my word," Peter replied. "All to be his to do with
as he pleases when I'm gone--all except,--you see," again he looked
around and Madame Ribot's lashes flickered, so steady was his glance,
"you see, I believe in men or I don't. I back them or I don't, and I'm
backing Phil, his character, his judgment--all except----"
he paused, still looking at her. It was not caressing time for the
hassock. "All except some bequests of a few hundred thousand. And I
guess," drily, "that Phil won't mind. He might waste it himself
keeping up that farm if I don't waste it for him first."
He chuckled as he thought of the farm. Tap-tap went the shoe on the
hassock in a riot of reassurance.
"How I should like to see your farm!" she murmured.
"Perhaps you will. I'd like to show you around," said Peter.
"Delightful! Henriette feels that she already knows it and Longfield."
Longfield was near Lenox and there were delightful people at Lenox. In
case that she and Henriette went to the Berkshires they might not find
it altogether a bore.
"The American in Henriette's blood is coming out," remarked Peter.
"She resembles you very much; only," Peter smiled a little
embarrassedly, "you seem too young to be her mother."
"Do I? I----" Madame Ribot flushed and looked down. Possibly it is
not the male sex alone that likes it thick.
"Yes. I could hardly believe it at first," he added, with simple
candour.
Tap-tap on the hassock, oh, most softly and confidentially! Would he
make Phil an allowance? No doubt take him into partnership! And Phil
would doubtless prefer to live mostly abroad--but not too fast!
"France is beautiful, isn't it?" mused Madame Ribot.
"Well, the people made it that way," he answered. "For sheer beauty as
it was in the days of the fellows who got their meal tickets with bows
and arrows you can't beat the Berkshires or the Blue Ridge. Yes, it's
work, and these French have been at it a long time. They like to see
things growing and so do I. Want everybody and everything busy and
smiling, including the land. That's pretty good gospel."
"And we who live in Europe enjoy all the beauty which countless
generations have made."
"Yes, like Phil will my farm," Peter replied. "But where I get even is
in making the farm. Nearly ruined me, that farm!"
"You express everything so well!" exclaimed Madame Ribot admiringly.
"Do I?" Peter said, almost naively. "Well, you know that depends upon
whom you are talking to," he added, in another burst of simple candour.
Madame Ribot's eyelashes flickered and tap-tap on the hassock! His
compliments were different from the Count's, but none the less
diverting. They flattered her with a sense of personal power in tune
with the luxurious humming of the motor.
"It's been a most enjoyable journey," he remarked gallantly, as he
assisted her to alight at Lady Truckleford's; while he thought: "Five
hours of that was enough, and I think I gave her as good as she sent!"
"Henriette is absent for the moment," said Lady Truckleford to Madame
Ribot. "She has gone to bring her Cousin Phil for tea."
The bandages off for another examination by Dr. Braisted, the autumn
sunlight which kissed the tree-tops and cathedral spires and gave the
Channel, which was calm that day, a gossamery sheen, was soft to Phil's
irises in its caressing promise that next time the bandages were
removed he should see even better.
People were now dim moving shadows to him; the windows of the ward
bright squares in faintly perceptible walls. His hearing was good
enough to differentiate in tones but not to make out words unless they
were shouted. His pride still refused to let him speak and kept him
not unhappily to his pad; for he had been so long without speech that
his pencil was an old comrade to whom he disliked in a way to say
good-bye. The pain devils' power had become so ineffectual that they
were disregarded, pin-pricking grumblers at convalescence.
This afternoon both Henriette and Helen were present when the bandages
were removed. He could see their figures dimly as two persons in a
mist and hear their voices. He could tell the day nurse from the night
nurse when either was speaking. But the voices of the two cousins were
the same. He knew if either were at his side without discerning which;
and marooned in his own world he often thought of this. He thought of
many things, sometimes lazily, again acutely.
"Better, still better!" some one wrote on his arm after Dr. Braisted
had gone.
"This is Henriette, isn't it?" he wrote, as it was. She wrote most of
the messages these days.
"I'll sign my name after this," she wrote in reply, "so you will know.
Helen is going, now."
"No cartoons to-day?" he asked.
"Not to-day," Helen herself wrote. "You have nearly won your brave
fight," she added, using the phrase that Henriette had several times
used.
"Yes. Good-bye, for the present."
She gave his hand the shake that was the signal of parting, and she was
glad to go, glad to be on the move in the restlessness of the last few
days which seemed to urge only flight. Feeling his hand close tightly
she trembled under its grasp, but could not resist as he drew her
nearer. His fingers groped about till they rested on her hair. Now he
traced her features with the same feathery touch of the blind as he had
Henriette's, down the smooth, high brow, past the long eyelashes and
over the lump of nose, to the lips, which she pressed tight to keep
them from quivering.
"I wanted to see if it were really you, Helen," he wrote. "Forgive me
such bad manners!"
"Yes, it is I," she answered aloud, as she released his hand; and
though she came to her feet convulsively she appeared quite steady as
she said to Henriette:
"Any day when the bandages are off he may see so well that he can tell
one person from another."
There was a brittle silence, with Henriette motionless and looking past
her sister at a fixed point.
"It's done! It has all come out right," continued Helen, her fingers
driven into her palms and a triumphant sort of stoicism in her tone.
Still Henriette looked past her and said nothing.
"I----" There she stopped herself. "I must be going," she added, the
words coming in a burst as she went toward the one thing distinct to
her eyes, the stream of light from the open door, with the precipitancy
of one who has been giddily crossing a narrow bridge and hastens the
last steps as loss of equilibrium threatens.
"Any day he may see so well that he can tell one person from another!"
Henriette repeated. "Well," with a shrug after a pause. Then she
smiled as she would into her mirror as she wrote on Phil's arm:
"Shall we walk over to Lady Truckleford's for tea?"
"Yes," he replied.
He had been there twice already. It was the longest journey he had
made on foot since he had been wounded; a welcome change of routine; a
bold undertaking. Dr. and Mrs. Sanford, who were coming to see him,
met the two as they were crossing the court. Henriette greeted them
with her winning smile and insisted that they, too, must come to the
Trucklefords'. The gravelled path was too narrow for the four to walk
abreast and the father and mother fell in behind the erect figure of
their son, arm in arm with Henriette.
"She is very beautiful!" whispered Mrs. Sanford to her husband.
"Yes."
Their looks met and held, but they said nothing. Phil's wish was
theirs and they had made a promise. At the crossing of the road they
met Peter, who could not wait for Phil to come to the Trucklefords',
but must go to him; and Henriette stopped to tell him how much better
Phil's eyes were and to learn about her mother's journey from Paris.
Every word reflected her radiant delight at seeing him again. Then he
dropped to the rear to talk with the Sanfords, who glanced at the two
ahead and then at him significantly.
"Resembles her mother," said Peter. "Inherited her good looks."
"We shall see her, too?" said Mrs. Sanford, as if awed at the thought.
"Yes. All we need for a family reunion is the old pair at Truckleford."
"And Helen!" put in Mrs. Sanford.
"And Helen!" said Peter absently. He was not in talking mood. He did
not utter a syllable, but chewed at his under lip till they were in the
grounds of the old chateau which had been transformed into a hospital.
"I'm backing Phil!" he muttered stubbornly to himself, then.
Madame Ribot hurried forward to embrace Henriette, while Lady
Truckleford made sure that the shy old clergyman and his wife felt at
home. Although her ideas might be vague about the nature of the
charities which she patronised, she was a genuine and discerning
hostess.
"It's clear who is the hero here," she said, nodding toward the group
forming around Phil. Madame Ribot was most demonstrative of all over
him. She insisted herself upon writing on his arm how brave he was and
how every one admired him.
"She certainly does put it on thick!" thought Peter. "And likes it
thick!" he added, in recollection of the ride from Paris.
"My arm blushes!" Phil wrote on his pad in reply.
"How clever!" exclaimed Lady Violet.
She must write on his arm, too. Writing on Phil's arm bid fair to
become a fad with the Truckleford lot. What was she to say? She never
had an idea when she wanted one, which was something understood by her
friends but most puzzling to herself. All she could think of was three
millions.
"This is Lady Violet Dearing, and I don't know of anything that has
ever appealed to me so much as the wonderfully brave fight you have
made," she wrote at last. "Every day that Henriette brought news that
you were better I felt like cheering, it was so splendid."
"Thank you, Lady Violet," he replied.
Talk ran around him but always had him in mind, this man with head
swathed in bandages, unable to speak or see or hear for present
purposes, who had become a romantic figure since it was known that he
would inherit three millions.
"And he does not know!" exclaimed Madame Ribot suddenly. "It does seem
a pity." She smiled her best with a kind of challenge to Peter.
"Well," he responded and in a way that made everybody silent. This
business of the giving of three millions was in nowise as wonderful to
him as to them. He had long ago decided on the gift and merely bided
the time of announcement. "Well," he repeated as he rose; and, with a
peculiar smile to Madame Ribot, added: "I think he is well enough now.
You may write it, Miss Ribot, as I dictate it. So: 'Peter is speaking,
Phil, and he is telling you that he has made a will that makes you his
heir when he goes over the river--but with the exception of two or
three hundred thousand dollars in bequests and what I waste on my
farm.'"
"Peter!" Phil muttered the one word through the bandages. Then his
hand went out searching for Peter's and held it fast for a long time;
while for once everybody on the lawn at tea at the Trucklefords' was
silent. Finally he wrote on his pad: "I shall try to be worthy of it.
Yes, I'll assist you in ruining the farm in any way you say."
"It's Phil, all right!" exclaimed Peter, with a satisfied laugh. "I am
backing him!" That was all there was to it--this dramatic episode.
"Ripping!" remarked one of the young officers.
Madame Ribot's foot was softly tapping the sward as she watched Phil on
Henriette's arm leaving the grounds. Dr. and Mrs. Sanford and Peter
followed, and silently until they passed under the Oral Surgery sign,
when Peter said:
"I did not mean to do it that way. I was going to let Helen tell it
for me, but someway she makes three millions seem insignificant. They
were interested in the three millions over at the Trucklefords'. I had
passed my word, and if I didn't tell it might look--well, it gave them
something to pass the time at tea, and I'm backing Phil. That's all
there is to it, backing Phil, leaving it to him."
On her way back to her quarters Helen was conscious that she was
following the path; conscious of having answered the greeting of people
whom she knew in passing. She would not have noticed the letter
waiting for her on the table in the hall of the nurses' quarters unless
her attention were called to it. She took it up with only a casual
glance until she had closed the door of her room when the firm's name
on the left-hand corner of the envelope recalled the fact that she had
an exhibition of drawings on in New York. This was the first steadying
fact, a life-buoy to grasp at, in the misery that had overwhelmed her.
When she tore open the envelope a number of newspaper clippings
fluttered out. On one she caught a glimpse of the name of Ribot in a
headline, which had such a banal effect that she let the clipping lie
where it had fallen.
"As I have written already, the first week in October was the only time
I had open," she was reading the manager's letter mechanically at
first. "But it does not seem to matter when Miss Helen Ribot exhibits.
As for your _succes d'estime_, read the enclosed reviews. More to the
point, perhaps, is that I have already sold fifteen of your drawings.
Thinking that this might be as welcome as the clippings, I enclose a
check for a thousand dollars on account.
"As to your question about settling in America, I know that M.
Vailliant advises against it; but my answer to him is that art is
international and any artist works best in the surroundings which he
likes best. One does or does not become an American. If you catch our
spirit, as I think you will, then your place is secure, whether you do
what you call real drawings or something more popular. I prefer your
real drawings--and more of them, please.
"I want another exhibition in the spring and shall reserve the last
week in February for you unless I hear otherwise, hoping, however, that
you will be with us before then. Let me know your steamer and I shall
meet you at the pier. My wife joins me in asking you to stay with us
until you have found a satisfactory studio.
"P.S. Won't you send a photograph of yourself? One of the magazines
which is making a special article on your work wants it. Perhaps you
have something which some friend has drawn of you; or, better, which
you have done of yourself."
The letter pointed the way; it threw out the bridge on the other side
of the promised land.
"And a picture of myself!" she thought, when she caught a glimpse of
herself in the mirror. "No, I'll not send that." They would have to
see her, though, and they would say in America, as everywhere else, How
plain she is!
"I don't have to exhibit my face, though!" she declared defiantly. "I
needn't meet people except those who have to do with my work."
Those unfinished sketches which she took out of her trunk for
examination still seemed to have been done by another hand. She had
lost her zest. The world wanted her drawings and she was not caring
whether or not she ever made another one--that was the truth of her
mood to-night. But she thought of herself as tired. A long walk after
dinner and a good sleep would clear the cobwebs out of her mind. Yet
she was looking out of her window at the stars after midnight and saw
the sun-up after a restless night.
Once in America she would begin afresh; all her old verve and love of
art would return. She could not start too soon. Leave to go to Paris,
first! Bricktop could arrange this and meanwhile she could get her
discharge from the hospital. She would go--go! She could not wait
another day.
"Well, soon I'll have his harness off and then Phil can speak," said
Bricktop, who had a slack half-hour and was in a talking mood, which
meant that you had to follow his lead or rather trail on his swell like
a small boat in tow of a fast cruiser. "And let me tell you that if he
hadn't had a good constitution and a nerve of steel there wouldn't have
been a chance. Another thing--you! You gave the inspiration to his
will that kept the blood going out into the veins of all that tissue
that had to wait to be fitted into its place. Why, you and I, Helen,
have done a stunt that makes me wonder if the good Lord did not give a
special dispensation to my clumsy old fingers in this case!"
She had heard this before. It helped her now and it hurt, too, as she
listened, trying to smile.
"And he----"
"Yes, while I get my breath you may put in a word edgewise," continued
Bricktop, with a gesture of amused condescension.
"He will be quite as he was before?"
"Quite, as I keep repeating. A few little scars that will go away in
time. You see, it was a peculiar kind of side-wipe; doesn't need much
skin grafting. Why, what you can do with people's faces! If everybody
were taken young nobody need be bad-looking. We straighten crooked
teeth, reconstruct mouths. Why not faces? Why, there was a woman in
New York who felt badly about her face and I gave her a brand-new one.
Could have had plenty of patients of that kind and made loads of money.
It might have been 'Bricktop on Beauty' instead of 'Bricktop on Jaws.'
Suggestion was too alliterative--I stuck to jaws."
Helen was laughing. One had to laugh when Bricktop, red-headed,
freckled, with a manner as distinctly his own as any great comedian's,
was going full tilt. Besides, they were comrades, these two; they
understood each other.
"Why shouldn't everybody be pleasing to the eye? They will be, one of
these days," he went on excitedly. "Why, Helen, I could make you
good-looking----"
He clapped his hand over his mouth.
"My mother said that I would talk myself to death some day!" he gasped.
"Well, I've said it!"
She was smiling at his confusion in a way that cured it.
"You could! You could!" she exclaimed banteringly, as if she were
teasing him for such a good opinion of himself.
"Yes, you bet I could!" he declared.
"Even my nose?" she said, with a defiant sort of scepticism.
Before she could prevent him he had thumb and forefinger on that nose
and was pinching it and feeling of it in a way that made her cry out,
"Stop!" indignantly and draw away.
"Perfectly easy! You have the cartilage for a Number One nose," he
went on, his professional eagerness undisturbed. "All that happened
was that the good Lord intended to make you fine-looking--and only the
nose stands in the way--and was called off on a hurry case before He
had sculped down the material. There's too much of it!"
"I know it!" proclaimed Helen defiantly.
Bricktop was making gestures in his habitual fashion to indicate what
he would do with that curse of hers if he were to have a chance.
"Why, I wouldn't need to leave any scar except just in the dip of the
nostril and under the point, where they wouldn't show." His
professional ambition was excited; a greedy look was in his eyes.
"Shame! Absolute shame not to do it! Unfair to your friends, unfair
to yourself--to everybody!"
"Of all the ridiculous----" gasped Helen, breaking again into laughter
of the kind that hides that undercurrent of seriousness which often
gives to badinage its cutting edge.
"Come on! It's a cinch!" pleaded Bricktop. "Just bandages over your
nose for two weeks, then bandages off and everybody saying what a
good-looking woman Helen is. Come on!"
People would say that she was good-looking, all for the ridiculous
business of making some cuts in her nose! Imagine her going about
while her nose was bandaged! Preposterous! But in America, where
nobody knew her? Some little scars that nobody would notice!
"Can you get me leave? Can I go away somewhere?" she asked.
"Yes. You are attached to my shop, now."
"And then to America!" she exclaimed.
"What! To America! You!"
"I'm going to become a citizeness."
"Good!" cried Bricktop. Back of his enthusiasm was more than welcome
to his native land. It meant that she could not be heart-broken
because there was another in her place--or, didn't it mean that?
"When will you do the starting?" she asked. "The sooner the better!"
"Now!" answered Bricktop. "And I'll send you away in my car--needn't
go to bed!"
"I'll run and pack my things--and I'll say good-bye to Cousin Phil, for
I shan't see him again!"
She was proud of the matter-of-course manner of the remark. This
perfectly fantastic business of having her nose remodelled had put her
in the mood which should make light of everything.
It took her only a half-hour to pack. Her wardrobe was simple and her
speed in keeping with that of people who have simple wardrobes was
heightened by a delirious excitement. She was going, going! She did
not want to wait another day, another hour. In America all would be
right--fortune and new friends; another Helen Ribot. The determination
and courage which had faced Phil's wound and helped to bring him back
to life had not allowed her to think of him, except that she must say
good-bye to him. She was galvanised by her own will, compelling a
philosophy which should let nothing interfere with its light-hearted
measure as she entered the ward.
There he was, sitting in his chair as she had seen him for many weeks.
An end of all writing of messages; of the hand-clasps of good-morning
and good-night; of a texture of existence woven into his--but "Stop!"
said will. The thing was over! Hurry down the curtain! Avoid
melodramatic anti-climaxes! How glad she was that he had thought of
her as visiting him rarely and as more interested in her drawings than
in him! And she was more interested in them than in any man that ever
was or would be! There was no joy, no career for her except to make
white paper live with her touch. Now she knew herself. That letter
had closed all doors behind her and opened doors into another
existence. She had wrought herself into a state of mind which enabled
her to take his hand in the accustomed way, with no more thrill than if
it were any one else's. She was proud of the firmness as she wrote:
"It is Helen. I'm in great luck. My exhibition in New York is a
success and I am going to America immediately. I came to say good-bye."
"Helen!"
He had not waited to write the word. It came out quite clearly. He
was drawing her nearer to him with his hand-clasp, as he had before.
Now he would be touching her hair as he had before; but instead, his
other hand, groping, had caught her arm. She was in a vise, dazed.
Then all that she had reasoned out of herself came surging back in
consuming possession of her. Oh, God, why would he do that! What did
he mean? It could not be--no, it could not be! She tried to draw
away, but the effort was only a quiver.
"I can write better. My pad, please," he murmured.
It seemed very heavy and then very light to her as she brought it,
tremblingly, wonderingly. A peal of bells was ringing soft notes in
her ears and her brain was numb. She watched each letter as it was
written, tracing out her fate. For she had admitted the thing to her
heart, now. She could never put it out.
"It is hard to explain, but something told me that it was you--your
spirit, your touch, that first day when I should have slipped but for
you--and yet I knew it could not be. The pain devils never let me
think quite clearly. Then you had seemed to avoid me and Henriette had
said she would wait. It was understood with Henriette. It must be
she; it was her place--and all the while your spirit, your touch, you
in my mind and her face, her presence, and it hurt me to think that you
neglected me. This awful wound--and you said that you were Henriette
when I could not see and it should have been Henriette. And I was
always thinking, musing, in my poor, hazy way of the girl with her
cartoons and sketches--of you as I saw you seated against the wheat
shock, across the table at Truckleford, rise on the other side of the
shell-hole--everywhere you, the spirit of you--that, well, it had me.
Then I found out what the plot was and I was happy and about to tell
you, when the pain devils interfered. Then I concluded to wait. Being
shut up in my own world, perhaps I liked to watch the play. If you
could take Henriette's place and deceive me, how could you care for me?
I enjoyed the comedy yesterday at Lady Truckleford's with something
akin to your own mischievousness. But when you say that you are going
away--well, I can't let you go if there is any way of keeping you.
Only you must not go without knowing that it is you, your spirit, which
has pulled me through--you that I love. And you--do _you_ care?"
"Big and little, all kinds of yes, in every language!" she replied.
"Yes, every hour through all these weeks and long before that."
"I like the way you say it--it is so like you!" he wrote in answer.
And he drew her close to him again and held her so for a long time.
"I was about to----" Mischief and happiness were mixed in her
explanation of the thing that Bricktop was about to undertake on her
behalf.
"It does not matter to me--not if your nose were twice as large."
"But it does to me," she replied. "I am tired of feeling that I am
looking over a mountain top every time that I tie my shoe-laces. Phil,
we'll be getting our new faces at the same time, and I want to be as
pleasing to you as I can. I'm a human woman."
He was smiling inwardly at this, if he could not yet with the muscles
that nature intended for the purpose.
"And by the time that you can see me it will be the same Helen, only
the Helen I want you to see always," she said, in final decision of her
purpose not to delay acting on such a good impulse.
"I'm ready--and I'm so happy! Come on, Mr. Bricktop on Beauty!" she
said, as she entered his office.
Bricktop emitted what he would have called a Comanche yell, which was
utterly against the regulations about noise in that smooth-running,
quiet British hospital; and the cause of it was not due to her
readiness for the operation, but rather to his prompt diagnosis of the
reason for the happiness beaming and rippling in her eyes.
When Henriette heard the news which her mother brought to her room to
avoid the embarrassment of her hearing it first from Lady Violet, who
was babbling it in loud whispers right and left, Madame Ribot drew back
in face of her daughter's anger, else she might herself have been the
victim of such a blow as Helen had once received. Madame Ribot,
irritatingly convinced that Peter Smithers had been having quiet fun at
her expense on the ride from Paris, was inclined to lay the blame for
the embarrassing situation at the door of this unspeakable vulgarian.
She meant to cut him dead if she saw him again; but when it occurred to
her that he would not mind, she was only the more irritated. Now she
was concerned with the effect of defeat on Henriette, who, after her
tempest, was silent, with eyes half closed and staring.
"Yes," said Henriette finally. "I'm not surprised." Her pride would
not allow her to say so, but the battle from the first had been, to her
mind, between her beauty which, by her criterions, ought to conquer,
and something in Helen which frustrated it. "Yes," she repeated,
turning to her mirror to arrange a strand of hair. She smiled into the
mirror in her old conceit of self and the mirror smiled back. There
are many fish in the sea!
"Good!" exclaimed Madame Ribot. "And Helen gets a great fortune," she
added.
"Yes."
"I must go and see her!" said Madame Ribot.
But Helen was not at her quarters. No one knew where she had gone,
except Bricktop, who said that he had sent her away in Peter's car for
a rest. But after her plea of parental right he directed her to the
little house which Peter had taken for the Sanfords.
Helen was sitting in a long chair in the small garden, punctuating the
happiness of two white heads and of Peter himself by her remarks about
her nose, which was in bandages, and how she was going to help Peter
ruin his farm; which he said she could ruin in any way she pleased
without regard to priority of claim in that line by either himself or
Phil.
Instead of cutting Peter, when she was actually in the presence of the
personified millions Madame Ribot was most affable to him, as well as
to the Sanfords, speaking of the common feelings of mothers when she
embraced Mrs. Sanford. To Helen she was demonstratively maternal,
kissing her on the forehead and cheek many times and stroking her hand;
and Helen reciprocated, the light in her eyes welcoming belated
affection long craved, which crowned her happiness. When they spoke of
her coming to America, Madame Ribot expressed her delight, but in her
inner consciousness, despite her flare, something cold and logical
built of the past and her predilections told her that she would never
go. And that same day she slipped away to Paris and back to her old
routine.
The next time that Phil sat under the portrait of the English ancestor
and facing the American ancestor the Jehovah cablegram, now framed, was
also on the wall. There were still some patches of plaster on his
chin, but otherwise he looked the same; only there had come to him a
great experience of battle, of suffering, of reflection, taking youth
over the boundary into a manhood which still might be boyish.
Across from him in her old place was Helen, while Peter made the
seventh of the party. Phil could see her as clearly as the first night
that he was at Truckleford; he could hear every inflection in her
voice, though the doctors said that he must have a long rest, free from
shocks. In the lamplight the tiny scars on the lobes of her nose did
not show, and he rather wished that they did. He did not want them to
go away.
"You know, Helen is really very good-looking," the vicar had said again
and again to his wife, who kept replying that it was perfectly evident.
The high white forehead, the fine eyes, the glorious hair--they were no
longer under a handicap, as Peter put it. Mischievous challenge was
still the privilege of the eyes and the expressive mouth seemed always
smiling these days. The Helen that the world saw was the real Helen,
radiant with the spirit that had kept a man from slipping and cried
"Good!" after that upper cut, which was still a source of many chuckles
to the vicar and the Marquis of Truckleford.
The call was home. She was eager for her first glimpse of the valley
of Longfield; to be welcomed at the station by Bill Hurley. "One
becomes an American, or he does not;" she was one already.
"I should not need any one to direct me," she said. "Across the
bridge, up Maple Avenue, turn to the left in front of the ancestor
along the path under the elms--and that is it, a simple, old frame
house in a yard facing the biggest elm of all."
"Don't forget the farm!" Peter suggested. "I don't mean to be as
lonely as I have been."
She smiled to Peter in the way that he liked to have her smile at him.
"For that, you follow the main road past the ancestor on up the hill.
Turn in between two great stone pillars and keep along a winding drive
which gives you glimpses of herds grazing, and you will come to another
simple frame house. Then keep along another drive on that little farm
past screens of larches and the garage and you will come to the stables
and the dairy and the barns."
"Right!" said Peter. "By George! I believe it's time I enlarged that
house or built a new one, or the big barn will get ashamed of it."
The two white heads of Truckleford felt that they, too, knew Longfield.
Their promise was given that one day they would undertake that
formidable journey from their insular home across the Atlantic and
taste Virginia ham and sweet corn on their native heath. Peter had
told them how he would send them spinning over the highways to the
suburbs of Boston, to Cape Cod and the White Mountains, and skirting
the gleaming silver of the Hudson to Manhattan, where the skyscrapers
rise from their granite beds.
Only the presence of Bricktop was needed to round out this dinner party
at the vicarage; but he was too busy in France making the relatives and
the sweethearts of other maimed men rejoice, to accept any invitations.
"I was backing Phil," Peter mused, after he had lighted his cigar; and,
as Bill Hurley had repeatedly said, Peter was "nobody's fool."
"Phil ain't, either," Bill concluded, after he saw the girl that Phil
brought home from the wars.
THE END
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Abner Daniel . . . . . . . . . . . . . Will N. Harben
Adventures of Gerard . . . . . . . . . A. Conan Doyle
Adventures of a Modest Man . . . . . . R. W. Chambers
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes . . . . A. Conan Doyle
After House, The . . . . . . . Mary Roberts Rinehart
Ailsa Paige . . . . . . . . . . . Robert W. Chambers
Alternative, The . . . . . . . George Barr McCutcheon
Alton of Somasco . . . . . . . . . . Harold Bindloss
Amateur Gentleman, The . . . . . . . . Jeffery Farnol
Andrew The Glad . . . . . . . Maria Thompson Daviess
Ann Boyd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Will N. Harben
Annals of Ann, The . . . . . . . . . Kate T. Sharber
Anna the Adventuress . . . . . E. Phillips Oppenheim
Armchair at the Inn, The . . . . . F. Hopkinson Smith
Ariadne of Allan Water . . . . . . . . Sidney McCall
At the Age of Eve . . . . . . . . . Kate T. Sharber
At the Mercy of Tiberius . . . . Augusta Evans Wilson
Auction Block, The . . . . . . . . . . . . Rex Beach
Aunt Jane of Kentucky . . . . . . . . Eliza C. Hall
Awakening of Helena Ritchie . . . . Margaret Deland
Bambi . . . . . . . . . . . . Marjorie Benton Cooke
Bandbox, The . . . . . . . . . . . Louis Joseph Vance
Barbara of the Snows . . . . . . . Harry Irving Green
Bar 20 . . . . . . . . . . . . . Clarence E. Mulford
Bar 20 Days . . . . . . . . . . Clareace E. Mulford
Barrier, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rex Beach
Beasts of Tarzan, The . . . . . Edgar Rice Burroughs
Beechy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bettina Von Hutten
Bella Donna . . . . . . . . . . . . . Robert Hichens
Beloved Vagabond, The . . . . . . . . . Wm. J. Locke
Ben Blair . . . . . . . . . . . . . Will Lillibridge
Beth Norvell . . . . . . . . . . . . Randall Parrish
Betrayal, The . . . . . . . . E. Phillips Oppenheim
Better Man, The . . . . . . . . Cyrus Townsend Brady
Beulah (Ill. Ed) . . . . . . . . . . Augusta J. Evans
Black Is White . . . . . . . . George Barr McCutcheon
Blaze Derringer . . . . . . . . Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.
Bob Hampton of Placer . . . . . . . Randall Parrish
Bob, Son of Battle . . . . . . . . . Alfred Ollivant
Brass Bowl, The . . . . . . . . . Louis Joseph Vance
Britton of the Seventh . . . . . Cyrus Townsend Brady
Broad Highway, The . . . . . . . . . . Jeffery Farnol
Bronze Bell, The . . . . . . . . . Louis Joseph Vance
Buck Peters, Ranchman . . . . . Clarence E. Mulford
Business of Life, The . . . . . . Robert W. Chambers
Butterfly Man, The . . . . . . George Barr McCutcheon
By Right of Purchase . . . . . . . . Harold Bindloss
Cabbages and Kings . . . . . . . . . . . . . O. Henry
Cab No. 44 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . R. F. Foster
Calling of Dan Matthews, The . . . Harold Bell Wright
Cape Cod Stories . . . . . . . . . Joseph C. Lincoln
Cap'n Eri . . . . . . . . . . . . Joseph C. Lincoln
Cap'n Warren's Wards . . . . . . . Joseph C. Lincoln
Caravaners Author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden
Cardigan . . . . . . . . . . . . . Robert W. Chambers
Carmen . . . . . . . . . . (Geraldine Farrar Edition)
Carpet From Bagdad, The . . . . . . Harold MacGrath
Cash Intrigue, The . . . . . George Randolph Chester
Castle by the Sea, The . . . . . . . H. B. M. Watson
Claw, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cynthia Stockley
C. O. D. . . . . . . . . . . . Natalie Sumner Lincoln
Colonial Free Lance, A . . . . Chauncey O. Hotchkiss
Coming of the Law, The . . . . . . . Chas. A. Seltzer
Conquest of Canaan, The . . . . . . Booth Tarkington
Conspirators, The . . . . . . . . Robert W. Chambers
Counsel for the Defense . . . . . . . . Leroy Scott
Crime Doctor, The . . . . . . . . . . E. W. Hornung
Cry in the Wilderness, A . . . . . . . Mary E. Waller
Cynthia of the Minute . . . . . . Louis Joseph Vance
Dark Hollow, The . . . . . . . . Anna Katharine Green
Dave's Daughter . . . . . . . . Patience Bevier Cole
Day of Days, The . . . . . . . . . Louis Joseph Vance
Day of the Dog, The . . . . . George Barr McCutcheon
Depot Master, The . . . . . . . . Joseph C. Lincoln
Desired Woman, The . . . . . . . . . . Will N. Harben
Destroying Angel, The . . . . . . Louis Joseph Vance
Diamond Master, The . . . . . . . . Jacques Futrelle
Dixie Hart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Will N. Harben
El Dorado . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Baroness Orczy
Elusive Lsabel . . . . . . . . . . . Jacques Futrelle