Distinctly it was triumph that the eyes from the mirror reflected back into Henriette's in her room. For dinner Henriette chose a gown which she had not worn since Phil's arrival. She had kept it hanging in the far corner of the closet, possibly owing to the fact that the cut was the same as that of Helen's one dinner gown. Though made of richer material than Helen's, it heightened the similarity of the two girls' figures and emphasised the contrast between the beauty of the one and the plainness of the other. Either seemed appropriate to its wearer; to Henriette by right of her vivacious charm which was particularly in evidence that evening, and to Helen by the predestination of nature.
Henriette talked of a visit to America; she would talk of nothing but America. Her mother's shrewd little eyes hovered between her and Phil questioningly, with a trace of frown at intervals.
"I shall claim you for a stroll in the garden," said Madame Ribot to Phil after dinner, "and then I shall retire very early." She did not say so, but she was going to pack some of her most precious things for departure in case of necessity.
Phil had an idea that she wished to speak to him and to him alone of something on her mind; he knew that he had something on his mind which he would like to mention to her. They walked some distance along the path in that silence which makes two people conscious of wanting to know what it is that the other's hesitation prevents him from saying.
On this occasion it was never spoken; for Madame Ribot broke the silence by remarking how extremely dark it was. The moon was behind a cloud.
Then the war again! She mentioned a letter which she had received that afternoon about the death of the son of an old friend. It was all very terrible; the world would never be the same again. She hoped that they were safe at Mervaux. Surely with the British and the Russians fighting with the French there was no danger of another siege of Paris.
As they approached the house on their return, Phil saw a figure moving along another path, so dim that it was hardly more than a shadow. Yet it recalled to him with a thrill the Henriette with an appeal in her eyes for an invitation to America. She was walking very slowly. The moon showing a gleam of light as it passed between two clouds revealed the figure with its head bowed and hands clasped behind, the face indistinct. Was she thinking of what he was thinking?
When he said good-night at the door to Madame Ribot, he remarked that it was too early to retire and he would take another stroll.
"I think you will find Henriette about the grounds somewhere," she said. Phil caught himself starting at mention of the name. "Probably Helen, too," she added.
"I'll look for them," he replied.
She smiled and nodded to herself, as he turned away; but the frown which had shown itself on her brow at dinner returned and remained long after she was in her room.
"If—if history should repeat itself!" she murmured.
Phil started up the path which the figure he was seeking had taken. The moonbeams held until on a bench under a tree they revealed her with head turned away and bent, still in thought.
"Hello!" he called, stooping to pass under the branches.
"Hello!" was the answer of surprise.
"Do I disturb a brown study?" he asked.
"Almost black in this darkness—no, not black—just human!" she answered, without looking around.
Very sweet that voice in the darkness, resonant with fellowship. No man ever knows why the impulse comes; but most men know the incident that let it go. With Phil it was the voice associated with a face in front of an easel. They had the night and the world to themselves, there under the tree. He might best have made his speech looking into her eyes under another tree where she was making a portrait; but it did not happen that way, such things being always as they happen.
"I have something to say to you. Please listen!"
He was resting his knee against the bench and his hand pressed hard on the bark of the tree as he confessed that he was past the point of resisting what had seemed folly to him till hope had overcome judgment.
She was very still as she listened. Her silence had the effect of urging him on. And he had the question fairly out, now. Was the call of America strong enough to win her to go back to America with him?
Sudden and wild came the answer of, "Yes!" Then her hand with a desperate quickness rose to her face which was still turned from him, and she sprang to her feet and with a frightened cry disappeared into the darkness.
Phil remained where he was, as inanimate as the tree itself. Yes—and then flight! Yes, with the ring of life and passion in it—and then flight!
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 thesoixante-quinzefor 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.
After Helen had left the room, Henriette staring at the closed door suddenly swept toward it and swung it half open, only to shut it with a bang. Doubtfully she turned, then sprang to the window as if to call Helen back. She had a glimpse of her sister on the path, but again her impulse was arrested.
Now she sat down on the edge of the bed, pressed her fingers to her temples, and for a while was motionless except for the restless tapping of her foot on the floor. At length her hands dropped to her side, the tapping ceased and, with a shrug of her shoulders, she rose, turned on the lights and looked at herself in the mirror, where she had always found the solution of the few problems that had ever vexed her. As reassuring this in her present mood as for the miser to find his gold still there when he opens his strong box upon returning from a journey. She smiled at the mirror and the mirror smiled back, and she allowed herself a prolonged, luxurious sigh.
In the cup of valley where the chateau was hidden, surrounded by walls of trees, the sound of the distant artillery duel was inaudible; but the sharp blasts of thesoixante-quinzefrom behind the clump of woods prevented any second sigh. She flew to the window. Outside the silence of the night and again that unmistakable sound. She leaned against the casement for support, trembling.
Madame Ribot, also looking into a mirror, had also sprung to the window and also leaned against the casement in a convulsion of trembling. At almost the same instant mother and daughter, such was their likeness of nature, recovered their volition in the demand for companionship in danger. Even with men it is largely the herd instinct which makes armies brave. The two women met on the landing and involuntarily clasped each other's hands, and the fact of being together took the tremor out of their limbs. Madame Ribot became articulate. It was her duty as the elder, the parent, to show initiative.
"Where is Cousin Phil?" she asked.
"Out in the grounds."
"And Helen?"
"With him."
There was reassurance to her strictly feminine mind in the utterance of that masculine pronoun. The guns were silent for the time being; out of doors was only the moist stillness of night.
"We must find them," said Madame Ribot, starting down the stairs.
As they reached the sitting-room the battery began a vicious spasm of drum-head fire. Madame Ribot grasped the nearest thing to steady herself, which was the table. She broke into a petulant rage which defied her fears with the truth of her heart.
"Truckleford! That's it! There's no war in England. Truckleford and the bore of an old parson and his wife! I have nothing to do with this beastly war. Why couldn't they keep it away from Mervaux?"
"Yes, Truckleford!" assented Henriette.
"If we can get there," continued her mother. "We don't know what may happen. The Germans are blowing chateaux and villages to pieces. If we can get there! Why doesn't Helen come? Doesn't that cousin know we are here alone? He probably thinks all this is another spectacle for an American tourist."
The firing ceased as suddenly as it had begun, her words sounding shrewish in the silence and uttered in the face of Phil and Helen as they entered together. Phil was smiling in a way that was helpful and Helen's manner was that of the elation of a great experience.
"It must have been awful for you, not knowing what it all meant and coming so suddenly!" she said, at sight of her mother's drawn features. Briefly she told what the battery commander had said; and then naturally, for the first time in her life, became the family leader. "The thing is for everybody to pack," she added, "and I'll find out about the trains and getting a cart to the station."
"Yes, the government takes all the horses and the trains and even then they can't stop the Germans!" Madame Ribot complained.
"At least you will let me look up the starting time," Phil urged. "I know enough French for that."
"You could not ask without alarming the village," she replied. "I know whom to go to for a conveyance."
Further concern on this score was abated by the arrival of two gallants, neck and neck, for Count de la Grange and General Rousseau, breathless, reached the chateau together. They addressed themselves to Madame Ribot in characteristic fashion; the General as became a soldier, the Count as became the old noblesse come to the succour of a lady in distress.
"The French army will hold," said the General. "We are only drawing the Germans on; but being in the sphere of operations, it will not be comfortable for you here and, though you are in no danger, I think an early departure advisable."
"The government has left Paris," said the Count, not failing to appear important, "as I have just learned through trustworthy sources." (The station master had told him.)
"Politicians! Cravens!" growled the General.
"What does one expect from a republic?" demanded the Count.
"I have served both the republic and the empire, but I always served France!" replied the General. "The army will hold. Madame Ribot, pack such things as you need. Rest perfectly assured. I am at your service."
"And I shall have my trap here to take you to the first train. It goes at seven," said the Count, with a side glance of triumph at the General, who had no conveyance. "I have some influence and I shall see that you have a place—and I shall drive you myself."
Madame Ribot, completely reassured, gratified that she had not taken down her hair for the night and not unconscious that a dressing-gown became her well, smiled at the Count with a charming gratitude.
"You take it all so calmly, Madame, as I knew you would," he said. "Like a true Frenchwoman. It is women who are brave, not men."
The General was tugging at his moustache. Thanks to one dilapidated old trap, he who had led charges in '70 and fought from Gravelotte to Paris was holding a small hand; but he was still a strategist, who now had a Napoleonic flash of initiative.
"Madame, while as a soldier I think there is no danger," he said, "I feel it my duty to remain at the chateau overnight, so that you will know I am near in case there should be an unexpected crisis which in time of war only a soldier knows how to face. I shall take forty winks on the sofa here as I have done many times in my tent on campaign. Ah, those days! And you will find me here in the morning," he concluded, turning triumphantly to the Count.
Ever impartial, Madame Ribot now bestowed her smile on the General.
"But Madame is not afraid," put in the Count. "I fear she will take your offer, General, as an indication that she is."
"On the contrary," said Madame Ribot, "it takes crises like this to prove what good neighbours one has. You have assured my reaching the station"—with a smile to the Count—"and you have assured that some one is on guard," with a smile to the General.
"But you will have to pack, you forget that,mon general!" thenoblesseremarked to the army, with extreme politeness.
"I pack! I go!" the General snorted. "I shall not let the Germans drive me from my house!" he said. "I remain! I know that the army will hold!"
"And I shall see Madame safely to Paris, feeling that a Frenchman can serve France best not with the Germans but with the French," remarked the Count pithily.
"Sometimes a soldier too old to fight can serve in other ways," replied the General.
"Madame, I am sorry that it is to be at such an early hour," the Count concluded, as he kissed Madame Ribot's hand and withdrew. The General also kissed it; and Madame Ribot, quite stately, ascended to her room.
"We also must pack," said Henriette to Helen.
They, too, went upstairs and left America and the French army together.
"A fine woman, Madame Ribot!" said the General. "Ah, our guns! Hear them! Our guns—and I a gouty old man—a bag of bones! But this old heart," he placed his hand over it, "has all the desire it ever had."
"You can see the guns from the upper terrace," suggested Phil.
"Come on, then, Monsieur," exclaimed the General. "You will forgive me," he added, as they started up the path, "for intruding myself when there was already a man here, a young, self-reliant man, as I see you are. But that pestiferous Count!" he exclaimed belligerently; then he chuckled philosophically. "Ah, he and I play a game which pleases Madame and pleases us, we who live on memory—though she need not if she were not so selfish. I do not like to allow the Count to score—it makes him so jealous when you score off him. Then, one must be amused in the country when time hangs idle on the hands and one grows old."
The great main road was now dark with transport and infantry under the moonlight, and across the fields squadron of cavalry could be seen going at the trot. Every gun-flash near and far, every movement, had its message for General Rousseau. He talked of '70, ran on in reminiscence as he stared out into the night; and finally was silent, as if a great weight had been laid on his heart. Phil understood that the signs which the old soldier read were not good.
"They are the lucky ones, our officers and men who are fighting," he said. "It's so simple—fighting! You forget everything. You do your all for France. I was twice wounded, Monsieur. All night I crawled and hid in a barn till I got stronger; and then I worked my way through the German lines and fought till I was too weak to stand in the siege. Yes, that was good—so simple!"
Was it to be '70 over again? His army, his France to submit to the old fate? A second and final tragedy coming?
"Yes, yes—and," said the General, a new note in his voice, as if an inspiration had come to him, "and I may still serve not only France, but you in America—all democracy, all civilisation. Monsieur, you will tell Madame Ribot if she does not see me again that I had to look after an important affair. I am going to locate some commander of ours who will pass me onto the staff. Yes, tell Madame that I kiss her hand."
His old legs seemed to have found new life as he parted from Phil.
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.
The glow of satisfaction which Madame Ribot had enjoyed during the gallantries of the General and the Count soon passed when she was behind the scenes. Between directions to the maid and continual changes of mind as to what she would and would not have packed, she scolded the war.
"Why couldn't thepréfector the army authorities have told us in time, so we could have got away like Christians?" she grumbled. "Wasn't it their business to know that the Germans were coming? It's shameful, indecent, barbarous! Well?"—this last irritably in answer to a rap at her door. "Come in!"
When she saw that it was Helen her frown deepened. It was a petulant frown which would have surprised the Count and the General; yet, perhaps it would not. They were wise old men, particularly the General.
"More bad news?" exclaimed Madame Ribot. She had been used to regarding Helen as a harbinger of bad news since her birth. "It must be! You look as if you regarded the whole thing as a lark. Of course you would. Everything goes by contraries with you!" she continued. "Well?"
Helen was elate, despite the scene with Henriette; elate with decision.
"I came to ask a favour," she said. It was hardly a diplomatic beginning, considering her mother's state of mind.
"A favour! At this time! That is like you, too."
"Some one ought to look after the house while we are gone," Helen went on hurriedly.
"Jacqueline—and the mayor and the curé. What do we have officials and priests for?"
"I meant myself, too."
"You? I should not call that a favour. You mean to be here alone when the Germans come?"
"I don't think they will harm me," said Helen soberly.
Madame Ribot gave her daughter a sweeping look, which was cuttingly significant.
"No, not you!" she exclaimed; and noting the two red spots which appeared in Helen's cheeks she added: "You know how to look after yourself."
Her mother's thought so quickly comprehended had cut deep, but only for an instant. Then it gave urgency to her desire. Her words came panting, as if she were striving for a goal.
"Mother, it's my chance—the chance that comes only once! You see, I am what I am and this is the thing that I want to do. I'll see real war and the soldiers and the villagers in the midst of it—and the Germans, too! Oh, how I can draw! I'll not need to be clever, the subject is so great." The daughter's intensity communicated its directness to the mother. "It will not be necessary to say a word to Henriette or Cousin Phil, or anybody about the plan," she went on. "You see, I shall start to walk to the station. You will all be aboard, the train will go and I shall be left behind."
But Helen's self-reliant precision was too valuable. Madame Ribot did not like to part with it in such a crisis.
"And desert me when I need you! What kind of a mother do you think I am to permit such an arrangement as this?"
"The Count will see you safely on the train to Paris and I can finish packing all your things and put them in the garret under lock and key, and you will return to find nothing disturbed."
Madame Ribot's glance followed Helen's around the litter of clothing on the floor.
"Really, one of us ought to stay and look after the things!" Helen urged. "Please!"
"Very well. Do, my dear!" her mother agreed.
She breathed a sigh of relief, and Helen drew a deep breath which filled the depths of her eyes with the triumph of freedom from the memory of the scene under the tree and of more things than her mind could catalogue. Even Madame Ribot was susceptible to the glory of those eyes. It occurred to her that Helen did have moments when she was not plain.
"Thank you, mother!" she said. "I—I——" and she caught her mother's hands in hers and kissed her on the forehead. "And not a word to anybody!"
The desire for movement which always came to her when she was happy called for the open. She did not know where she should go, but somewhere out into the night under the stars, in sight of the gun-flashes. Below, she found Phil and Jacqueline gathering bric-à-brac and china and wrapping it in papers and putting it in a chest.
"You're through packing?" Phil asked.
"Quite ready," said Helen. He was the one person she did not want to meet.
"Then sleep for you! No telling whether you'll get any to-morrow."
"I could not—not to-night!" The joy of her decision still remained in her eyes and her exclamation sounded a vitality that seemed to live on itself.
"In that case, Jacqueline and I will welcome an assistant," said he.
She could hardly go moon-gazing when there was something to do, so she joined in their task. They rolled up rugs; they took down Henriette's pictures and put all in a closet, which was locked when it was full to overflowing. It was strange doing this when she would be there to-morrow, and stranger still working with him in view of what had happened. At length it became oppressive, even torturing in its fellowship of talk and laughter. For she found herself laughing a number of times when their glances met as he passed her something and she relied on his masculine strength and he on her deftness of fingers in their work.
"Enough! There's little left that the Germans can harm. I really believe I could sleep now!" she exclaimed.
"We can lie down for a couple of hours, anyway," he said.
They went upstairs together and parted at the landing.
"Good-night—or is it good-morning?" he said.
"Good-morning!" she answered. For an instant of silence both seemed arrested as they looked at each other; then Helen turned abruptly toward her room.