Produced by Al Haines








The Old Blood


By FREDERICK PALMER


AUTHOR OF

"The Last Shot," "My Year of the Great War," Etc.




A. L. BURT COMPANY

Publishers ---- New York


Published by Arrangements with DODD, MEAD & COMPANY




COPYRIGHT, 1916,

By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

      I  A HOME-COMING
     II  TWO GIRLS ON A TRAIN
    III  AN INVITATION
     IV  TOO MUCH ANCESTOR
      V  THE FLAVOUR OF GRAPES
     VI  AT MERVAUX
    VII  A FULL-FACE PORTRAIT
   VIII  ANOTHER PHASE OF HELEN
     IX  A MESSAGE FROM ALSACE
      X  THE VOICE AT HIS ELBOW
     XI  SHE SAID, "YES!"
    XII  THE GUNS SPEAK
   XIII  A MATTER OF GALLANTRY
    XIV  "IF I WISH IT!"
     XV  HELEN ASKS A FAVOUR
    XVI  A CHANGE OF PLANS
   XVII  UNDER FIRE
  XVIII  A RUN FOR IT
    XIX  A CHOICE OF BILLETS
     XX  UNDER ARREST
    XXI  A BIT FROM THE MOVIES
   XXII  VICTORY!
  XXIII  LONGFIELD DECIDES
   XXIV  HELEN ARRIVES
    XXV  HENRIETTE WAITS
   XXVI  A DIRECT HIT
  XXVII  A SMILING HELEN
 XXVIII  A "SITTING CASE"
   XXIX  IN HER PLACE AGAIN
    XXX  PETER SMITHERS IN ACTION
   XXXI  A THOUGHT FOR HELEN
  XXXII  LIGHT
 XXXIII  SPINNING WEBS




THE OLD BLOOD



CHAPTER I

A HOME-COMING

Perhaps a real story-teller, who leaps into the heart of things, would
have begun this story in France instead of with a railroad journey from
the Southwest to New England; perhaps he would have taken the view of
"our Philip's" mother that Phil fought the whole war in Europe himself;
perhaps given the story the name of "The Plain Girl," leaving Phil
secondary place.

A veracious chronicler, consulting Phil's wishes, makes his beginning
with a spring afternoon of 1914, when the Berkshire slopes were
dripping and glistening and smiling and the air, washed by showers and
purified by a burst of sunshine, was like some rare vintage which might
be drunk only on the premises.

Complaining in a familiar way as it followed the course of a winding
stream, which laughed in flashes of pearly white over rocky shallows,
the train ran out into a broad valley--the home valley.  Not a road
that he had not tramped over; not a woodland path that he did not know;
not a mountain trail that he had not climbed.  The scene was bred in
his blood.

If Bill Hurley were at the station the auguries would be right, and
there he was, standing on the same spot where he had stood for twenty
years when the trains arrived; there, too, the stooped old station
agent in his moment of bustling importance.  By the calendar of Bill's
chin it was Tuesday; for Bill shaved only on Sunday and Wednesday
afternoons.  A man of observation and opinion this keeper of the gate
of Longfield, who let the world come to him and took charge of its
baggage and conveyed its persons to their destinations.  He was also a
dispenser of news.

"The Jerrods have got that new porch," he said.  "They'd been talking
about it so long that they're sort of lost-minded and dumb these days.
And Hanks has put in a new soda fountain and plate glass windows.
Ambitious man, Hanks.  Nothing can keep him from branching out."

"And nothing can change you, Bill."

"Me?  I guess not.  May wither a little when the winters are hard, but
you'll find me here fifty years from now.  H-m-m!" after looking Phil
over.  "Bound to happen to young fellers out of college.  Noticed it
often.  Something rubbed off you and something rubbed in out West, I
jedge."

"You have it--and in one of your epigrams, as usual," Phil agreed.

"Folks do say that I have a tolerable understanding of human nature,
not to mention a sententious way of saying things, which I've always
said comes from handling trunks.  Hear you're going to Europe."

"Always well informed!" Phil affirmed.

"Never denied it.  Well, you've earned the trip.  Three years out
there.  Made good, too, everybody says.  Soon as you've seen your folks
and eat your veal, you and me must have a talk about old times.  Trunk
and suit case?  Right!  Have 'em up in a quarter of an hour."

Beyond the station was the old wooden bridge, which spanned the river
here running deep and sluggish under drooping, solicitous willows.
Then the avenue of maples; and at the end of the vista of deep shade,
in the bright light of the little square, the statue of a strenuous
gentleman in bronze who, sword in hand, was charging British redcoats.
For Longfield had a real work of art, though not all Longfield
appreciated the fact yet and certain Puritan sections were inclined to
regard anything called a work of art with suspicion.

In boyhood Phil had heard so much about the hero at home that he seemed
a bore.  To-day that spirited, indomitable figure gave him a thrill.
With a fresh eye he realised its quality and something deeper than that
in a wave of personal gratitude to a famous sculptor, also a son of
Longfield, known in other lands where the ancestor was unknown, who had
taken the commission out of civic pride for a small fee and the
satisfaction of putting his best into a chivalrous subject after having
received a large fee for doing a statesman in a frock for the grounds
of a State capital.

Phil recalled how his father and mother and the Sons of the Revolution,
and also the Daughters thereof, had favoured a full Continental uniform
for the hero.  But the sculptor had had enough of coats.  Not lacking
in that pithiness of expression which is salad to genius, he had told
the family and societies and committees and all such that either he
would have his way or they could employ a mortuary chiseller and a
tailor, who would gratify their conceptions of martial dignity by
clothing a gallant gentleman who had fought free-limbed on a hot August
day in an overcoat, muffler and mittens and two suits of underclothes,
which would have meant death to freedom from sunstroke and that the
Declaration of Independence might be a relic in the British Museum.

Coatless, hatless, sleeves rolled and shirt open at the throat, young
and lean, with every fibre attuned to conflict, the "rebel" who had
helped to found a nation now served the purpose not of stopping a
British charge, but of bringing touring automobiles to a standstill
while their occupants appreciated, either by virtue of their own taste
or by the desire to be in fashion with the taste of their superiors,
what many considered to be the best work of a master, in contrast with
the graveyard effigies, which had the martial spirit of Alaskan totem
poles, from the same mould in other squares, to glorify the deeds of
local regiments in the Civil War.

Longfield was proud of the statue because it attracted so much
attention and because it was Longfield's and yet resentful because it
attracted more attention than the elms.  Tourists thought that other
villages had equally as noble elms as Longfield--equally patched and
scarred.  Longfield knew better.  Its elms were without comparison.
From the selectmen's point of view the cost of nursing was
considerable, too, which gave further merit over the statue, which cost
nothing for upkeep.

Besides, the elms were old when the hero was a child.  They marked the
epoch of the village's birth, even as the maples marked that of the
railroad's coming.  Nothing in Old England is quite as old as New
England.  Not even the pyramids are as old as a New England elm.
Europe may repair and renovate cathedrals; New England repairs and
renovates elms.  The Puritan Fathers planted trees on such broad main
streets as that of Longfield, with stretches of green border of old
turf now curving around the massive trunks that supported their stately
plumes--a street which Phil saw in its age, its serenity and its spring
freshness with the appreciation of one come from the Southwest, plus
the call of old association which absence strengthens.  To him the
Berkshires were the hills of all hills; Longfield the village of
villages; this street the street of streets; and the most majestic elm
stood beside a path which led to the house of houses.  Home-coming had
kindled his sentiment.  He had been long enough out of college not to
be ashamed of a little of it, if he did not have to mention it to
anybody.

It was this mood in its desire to find all home pictures unchanged that
had kept him from naming his train; and he had taken one arriving in
the afternoon in the hope of witnessing the scene which was set for
that hour in the routine of the Reverend Doctor and Mrs. Sanford, of
Longfield.  Their chairs in the accustomed places on the porch, the
father was reading and the mother sewing in their conscious and
unspoken companionship.  What a delightful pair of sequestered old
dears they were!  How worldly he felt beside them!

They had not heard his steps.  He paused until his mother should see
him, for he knew that she would be the first to look up.  When she did,
her little outcry, as she put her hand impulsively on the doctor's knee
to draw the attention of an absent-minded husband, was also entirely in
keeping with his anticipation and with the dependability of habit in
Longfield, which was not the least of its charms.  She was well on her
way to meet him before his father had taken off his spectacles and
placed the marker in his book.  After Philip had embraced them they
were silent, taking in the reality of him who had been so long absent
and possibly a little awed at the presence of this sturdy, tanned only
son--come to them late when they had almost given up ever having any
children--who had been out battling with that world which was confusing
and forbidding to them.

He slipped his arm around his mother's waist.  She took his hand in
hers with a fluttering of mothering impulse, as he directed their steps
by the side path which led to the garden, while the father, brought up
the rear.

"You've been successful, Phillie," she said, the thought uppermost in
mind coming out first.  "It was such an undertaking and we're so
pleased."  She might have said proud, but that was a vain word.
Self-warned about the weakness of parents with only sons, it had been
her rule never to spoil Phil with praise.

"Yes, I've done pretty well for a----" and he glanced around at his
father in the freemasonry of a settled comradeship.

"For a minister's son!" put in the father, chuckling.

"I had to," Philip proceeded.  "I was right up against it.  It was
rough stuff at first and Mexico the limit!"

"What language!" exclaimed the father, who could be a purist on
occasion.

"Very expressive!" said the mother, defending her son.  "It must have
been rough, indeed."  She would have forgiven Philip if he had said
damn that afternoon.

"In other words," observed the Reverend Dr. Sanford, "when it came to
the rough stuff Philip was no piker!  I've been studying up so as to
make you feel at home," he added, with another chuckle.

"What do you think my first job was?" Phil said.  "I didn't tell you
that.  It was cleaning out cattle cars."

"Oh, Phil, no!"  She looked down at her son's hands as if wondering how
such horrors could be.

"He has washed them since," observed the father.

"Now you're both up to your old tricks, teasing me!" she said
admonishingly.  "And, Phillie"--she pressed a point of unsatisfied
maternal curiosity which his letters had never answered--"you never
told us why it was that you did not go to work for Peter--that is, your
side of it.  You seem to have had a quarrel with him."

In a sense Peter Smithers was one of the Sanford family.  He had been a
clever village boy whom Phil's grandfather had taken under his wing
some forty years ago, and the type of clever village boy who does not
need sheltering wings for long.  Middle age found him the head of a
great manufacturing business in New Jersey.  Hieing homeward, New
England fashion, he had built himself a big country place back in the
hills, which he referred to as "my little farm."  People spoke of him
as a millionaire, but he insisted that he was dirt poor.  He was a
bachelor, with no heirs, a fact which Mrs. Sanford, more practical than
the clergyman, could never forget when she thought of the future of her
son.

"What was Peter's side?" Phil asked.

"He said that you didn't want to begin at the bottom of the ladder."

"And yet he began at the bottom of a cattle car," said the father.

"I didn't mind a humble beginning," said Phil, "but from the way that
Peter spoke I was afraid there wasn't in his establishment a place so
humble but if I took it I might be the ruin of his business.  You see,
mother, I was cleaning out those cattle cars on the orders of a
stranger.  I knew that he was not hiring me because my grandfather had
done him a favour."

"Peter did not mean it that way.  It's only his manner," persisted his
mother.  "I think he was really hurt about it.  I suppose you know that
he is going to give all his money for founding a school and club for
his employees.  He talks of nothing else."

"I can hear him, mother."

But there Peter and his eccentricities and philanthropic projects
vanished from mind at sight of an expense of gingham apron filling the
kitchen doorway and covering the ample form of Jane, grinning and
beneficent, who, as she herself said, was no skittish young thing who
didn't know a good place when she had it, which accounted for the
Sanfords having retained their general houseworker.

Diplomacy and gratitude demanded that homage be paid to Jane; and
affection which began with childhood greeted Patrick, the gardener,
leaning on his hoe and sucking in his pipe, as Phil had seen him a
thousand times.  Unchanged the garden with its bounteous colour, its
perfume, and green and budding and flowering promise of plenty in that
little world walled in by larches from the neighbours on either side in
the village world in turn walled in by the hills, gone golden in high
lights and dark in shadows in the recesses of the woods with the
lowering slant of the sun's rays.

"There is no place like it," said Phil.  "My roots are in this soil as
deep as the elms."

Unchanged Patrick, whose articulation was sufficient indication without
explanation that he had not yet brought himself to wear store teeth
except at funerals and on Sundays, or on any other occasion when he
wore a starched collar.

"Strawberries are ripe," said Jane.  "Do you still like strawberry
shortcake, Phillie?"

"M-m-m--yes!"

"That sounds natural.  It's the way you used to say it when you was
little.  Lord, but you did have an appetite down to your soles!  Now,
see here----"  Jane squared herself, eyeing him very sternly.

"Yes, Jane?"

"Do you think that your mother can make better strawberry shortcake
than me?"

"Jane, the excellence of your puddings is known far beyond this valley;
your biscuits would melt in the mouth of a polar explorer, and your
bisque of tomato is surpassed only by your----"

Phil used to talk to her in this way when he was home on holidays, at
once pleasing and convincing her that he was really getting a college
education; but she was not to be put off by any verbal trickery this
time.

"Speak out, sir!" she insisted.

"Then, mother can."

"Good!" said Jane.  "I wouldn't think much of any man who didn't think
his mother could make better strawberry shortcake than any hired girl
that ever lived.  Always stand up for your own flesh and blood, I say,
even if your mother can't make better strawberry shortcake 'n me--which
in my opinion she can't."

Discreetly he withdrew from the miracle-working in the kitchen after
his mother had put on a big apron, and followed Dr. Sanford into the
study.  Among the rows of books which made the wall invisible from
floor to ceiling were several written by Dr. Sanford, which were
considered of some account by students of theology.

"You will be going to England?" he asked, as they sat down.

"Yes, and to France and Germany; a quick trip of it."

"Your first to Europe.  I envy you going in your youth, for I went in
my youth.  Germany, too, eh?  The Teutonic influence is spreading in
all our universities.  We are in the age of materialism.  Of course
you'll visit our cousin in Hampshire.  I have written a letter of
introduction."

He took up an envelope addressed to the Reverend Arthur Sanford, The
Vicarage, Truckleford, Hants, England.  Philip took out the letter and
read:


"MY DEAR COUSIN:

"Since my long letter of a few days ago my son, the bearer, whom I have
so often described that you must feel as if you knew him, has returned
from the West, where his success has been such that he can afford the
trip to Europe which I might not give him myself as I wished after his
graduation from college.  My first thought on learning the news was
that you should see him and that he should pay his respects to you.

"I only hope that you may see your way clear to return with him for a
visit, which would bring you here in time for our sweet corn season and
the autumn colouring.

"My wife's recipe for strawberry shortcake is enclosed, and if
strawberries are still in season with you it is possible for you to
enjoy this American institution at home.  I shall send you another
Virginia ham in the autumn, unless you will come to fetch it yourself.

"With my regards to your Mrs. Sanford, in which my Mrs. Sanford joins,
I am,

"Sincerely yours,
    "FRANKLIN SANFORD.

"P. S. I think you will find that our Philip has a sense both of humour
and of proportion.  If there be any fault to his manners, they come
from his father and not his mother, who has done her best to bring us
both up properly."


The Reverend Arthur, of England, was about the sixteenth cousin of the
Reverend Franklin.  Of course the progenitor of the family came over
with William the Conqueror, whose transports seem to have been as
overcrowded as the _Mayflower_.  But this did not concern Philip,
particularly not while he was in Mexico.

"You may meet two other cousins, the Ribots," said Dr. Sanford,
"younger and more interesting to you, perhaps, than the vicar of
Truckleford."

"Yes, I remember something about them."  Philip was more hazy than ever
about genealogy since he had been in the Southwest.  "Girls, and about
my age, aren't they?"

"Yes.  Henriette is about two years and Helen one year younger than
you.  They have French, English, and American blood.  One of their
grandfathers was French and the other English, which is where the
Sanford comes in, and one of the grandmothers was an American, on their
mother's side, and married a Frenchman.  They live in France and are
very French.  You will find the vicar of Truckleford very English."

"That, I believe, is a characteristic of the English!" said Phil.

"You will have a chance to see a real English home.  It was June when I
was there, too."

Dr. Sanford fell into reminiscence about his own trip of thirty years
ago, until he was interrupted by the arrival of Phil's trunk.

"In the guest room," said the mother, coming in from the kitchen.

"My own old room!" urged Phil, and she capitulated joyously.

Her call came up the stairs when dinner was ready as it had a thousand
times.  The cloth was laid on the side veranda, with the setting sun
their candelabra and their champagne the rare New England air, which
makes one live an hour in a minute.  It is not for history to say how
much shortcake Phil ate.  Jane wondered if he had had anything to eat
all the time he had been away.  He and his mother did the talking,
while Dr. Sanford listened.  The twilight still held when a motor came
up the drive.

"Peter!  I was sure he'd call as soon as he heard you were here," said
the mother.

The nervous little man who came around the corner of the house gave
every sign of surprise at seeing Philip, though his dry, "Back, eh?" as
he shook hands with Phil was hardly effusive.  But Peter was not given
to effusion about anything except his own projects, and they were so
interesting that he could never change the subject.  He was off about
the clubhouse as soon as he sat down, directing his talking to Dr. and
Mrs. Sanford and quite overlooking Phil's presence.

"System is the great thing, system without sentiment!" he began, in his
pet phrase; "systematic economy of space, time, energy, and money,
which means more money.  Got the question of baths settled for my
clubhouse.  Showers--no waste, no favouritism.  You put two cents in
the slot and you get three quarts hot for soaping and another cent and
you get three gallons cold for shower.  Those that don't want to soap
pay only one cent.  Get it?  Those that take only the cold don't have
to pay for heating for the others.  Everybody pays for what he
gets---justice, equality, democracy, and the square deal for all.
Those that don't bathe often can put in another two cents and get six
quarts for soaping, without sponging on the fellows that bathe every
day.  Anybody that wants to remain dirty--individual rights respected.
Took the idea to one of those scientific socialist professors and he
thought it was all right, only, so far as I could make out from his
rigmarole, he thought the State ought to put the cents in the slot and
the employers earn the cents for the State.  I told him Peter Smithers
wasn't any socialist; he didn't believe in a pap-fed proletariat.  Now,
take another thing--I tell you I'm giving a lot of thought to this----"

"Have you laid the cornerstone of the clubhouse yet?" Phil asked.

"Young man, if you knew me well you'd know I never go off half-cocked.
If they don't raise the tariff there won't be any cents to put in the
slots.  I'll have to close the works.  Hear you're going to Europe?
Hear they've promoted you and brought you to the New York office?" he
inquired more affably, as if something were due to Phil, whom he had
regarded sharply, without pretending to, in intervals between sentences.

"And he showed how willing he was to begin at the bottom by what do you
think?--by cleaning out cattle cars!" put in Mrs. Sanford, striving for
reconciliation.

"I thought he would have to come off his high horse before he could
earn a living," Peter replied, feeling himself vindicated.

"No, it's a part of the initiation," said Phil softly, "for youngsters
who are taken on by that railroad after they leave college.  I expected
it and I've had my revenge by setting other graduate engineers at it
myself.  And, Uncle Peter," Phil was smiling and showing a row of
well-set teeth through his tan, "let's you and I understand each other
and be friends.  Perhaps you think that I sometimes think that you'll
leave your fortune to me.  I know that you will not.  Of course, I
should like it, but there's no reason why you should give it to me more
than to any one else.  All I ask is an invitation to the clubhouse when
it's dedicated.  Why, if I had gone to work for you I might have been
thinking that I might inherit something and you might have known I was
thinking that, which would have been most uncomfortable for both of us.
Then if the tariff had ruined the business and you had lost everything,
consider how disappointed I would be and what heartbreak the knowledge
of my disappointment would be to you in your poverty!"

Peter grew red during a silence which was broken by the sound of a
chuckle.  Evidently Dr. Sanford had seen something in the garden that
amused him, for he was looking in that direction.  Mrs. Sanford was
aghast.

"Of all the nerve!" exclaimed Peter.  "I tell you I'm not used to
having anybody talk to me that way!  It's a d----"

"Go ahead, Peter!" remarked Dr. Sanford suavely.  "It's just as bad to
think it.  If you say one hard you may not have a dozen pent-up ones
against you on Judgment Day."

"There seems no pleasing you!" Peter blurted incontinently to Phil.

"Then do you want me to hover about and play the good young man and
agree with everything you say, hoping you will mention me in your will?"

"I--I want you to shut up!" snapped Peter.  "Or, you can keep on
talking if you want to, as it's time for me to go!" and he took his
injured dignity down the walk to his waiting car.

After he had gone Dr. Sanford gave his chuckle such full vent that it
broke into an explosion little short of a snort.

"I suppose there is something of the anarchist in me," he said; "but I
confess to liking to see a self-conscious, self-made millionaire a
trifle miserable, without, I trust, in the least compromising my
standing as a good Christian."

"Peter was certainly funny," assented Mrs. Sanford, smiling now.

Then they forget Peter, these three.  They forget everything but the
fact that they were together.  The detail of their talk Phil could
hardly have recollected the next day, but every sentence of it came to
him when he was prostrate in that noiseless and sightless world in
France.

After the proud old pair were under the coverlets that night their
theme was the same that it had been a thousand times.  Following
generations of professors, doctors, and lawyers had come the man of
action.  Philip had succeeded out in that forbidding world of business
and strife: this was the wonderful thing to them.

"He's changed," said the mother.

"Three years older," said the father.  "The world has humanised him,
made him fonder of us."

"And didn't you think that he looked more like our ancestor?"  Mrs.
Sanford always referred to the man in the square as "ours."

"Yes, the old blood.  Action reappears and likeness of feature.  What
relation are those two Ribot girls?  I was trying to think."

"About seventeenth," said Mrs. Sanford dreamily.

"What a lot of cousins they would make if they all stood in a row!"
mused Dr. Sanford.




CHAPTER II

TWO GIRLS ON A TRAIN

His object being to see England and not to become a member of the
menagerie of home types in a pile overlooking the Thames Embankment,
the hotel that Philip had chosen was a small one, where a truly English
headwaiter, who was not trying to conceal a German accent, treated him
with a lofty courtesy and his bath was brought by a maid instead of by
the labour-saving device of pipes.

"You rise very early," said the young woman in black at the desk.

"The King did not know that I was coming and I do just as I please,"
Phil replied; and she unbent a little from her dignity and almost
laughed.

Against the criterion of all sniffy people who talk of how many times
they have been abroad, which sometimes means only a journey from the
London to the Paris and the Paris to the Berlin menageries, he was
frankly one of the horde of tourists, rising at dawn to make
sightseeing a diligent business, who are assiduously cultivated by
shopkeepers if somewhat neglected by the nobility.  When he moved on
the Tower, Westminster Abbey, or Oxford, he made no attempt to conceal
his red guidebook.  He was at home with schoolmistresses from the
Middle West doing a schedule on a set sum or with the wealthy
acquaintance he had made on board ship who took him for a motor ride to
Canterbury.

Now he was on the way to Truckleford to spend the night, in response to
the invitation of the sixteenth degree cousin.  Up to the moment of
starting he thought that he should have the compartment to himself,
when two young women appeared, both a trifle short of breath.  So
impressionable a tourist as himself could not fail to notice that the
one who entered first was strikingly good-looking, a girl with a
quality of manner and dress which he associated with the Continent,
though he had never been there.

"We caught it, at any rate!" she gasped, dropping into a seat.

"Just about!" said the other, who was as distinctly plain at first
glance as the other was attractive.  "But your run has given you a
lovely colour!" she added admiringly.  If the one wished to be shown up
by contrast for her beauty and the other for her plainness, they had an
object in travelling together.

"My hair must be in a shocking state, though," said the beautiful one,
as Phil already designated her in his mind.

She drew a mirror from her bag, not to look at her colouring, of
course, but to arrange a few strands of hair.  Turning her head this
way and that, she attended to the disarray due to her haste in dressing
perhaps, as well as to her rush for the train.  If a woman's hand and
arm and the particular way she holds her fingers when she shepherds
strands of hair were more awkward, possibly fewer strands would need
attention in public.  There is something confidential in these quick
fondling movements which have drawn a reader's eyelashes above the
margin of a newspaper many millions of times.  This girl made it an
unusually graceful and leisurely function; and once, when her glance
met Phil's, it seemed not to see that any person was opposite to her,
yet it said: "I know that others are not displeased with what I see in
the mirror; then why should I be?"

The plain girl also had some riotously stray strands of hair, but they
did not concern her.  It was not for her to find friendliness in
mirrors.

"Here I am riding the way that the train is going when I like the other
way!" she said, jumping up.  "Let us change places."

"You dear mouse!  You're always so thoughtful!" said the other
beautiful one, complying.

Now she was facing Phil.  Reminded that the suburbs of London were so
uninteresting that he might be caught staring at a face short of the
window instead of looking out it, he began to read his paper
diligently.  When they had left the chimney pots behind, he found that
the plain one's objection to riding the way that the train was going
apparently no longer applied; for she crossed over in a sudden,
impulsive movement which seemed characteristic of a restless nature and
with a sweeping gesture out of the window began talking of familiar
landmarks.

Evidently both had been long absent from England, which was not their
home.  They mixed French with English in that bi-lingual facility which
does not mean an interlarding of words but bursts of sentences.  They
criticised and compared what they saw with the Continent, and of the
two the plain one seemed to get more enthusiasm out of their return.

Having both faces in the tail of his eye, Phil wondered why the plain
one should ever want to travel in the other's company.  He drifted into
a comparative analysis of the two: The one with her masses of black
hair, her small forehead, her luminous eyes, straight nose and
expressive mouth, with its full lips and the oval chin--a classic type
of its kind; the other with chestnut hair also in masses, but brushed
unbecomingly back from the high, broad forehead, the large, black-brown
eyes wide apart, a squarish chin and a lump of a nose.  Yet analysed
there was a resemblance; the genius touch of a sculptor might have
transformed one face if it were plastic into the other.  The features
of one made an ensemble; those of the other were assertively in
rebellion with one another.

But the amazing likeness was in the voices.  Closing his eyes, Phil had
difficulty in telling which one of the two was speaking.  Both voices
were pleasant, though the beautiful girl's voice seemed much the
pleasanter of the two when his eyes were open and the plain one's an
imitation.

He thought he should like to get acquainted, but he had not the
courage.  He could not offer them papers or magazines when evidently
they were not in a mood to read.  Besides, that sort of thing is not
done in England, or, for that, matter, in America, as a rule, on short
train journeys.  Except for that one glance from the beautiful one,
which was to any human being in sight as an audience, he had no sign
that they recognised that there was any one else in the compartment.

"I shall be glad to be in Truckleford again, shan't you?" asked the
plain girl.

"Of course I shall!  I can see Uncle Arthur waiting on the platform for
us now."

"And hear him say Henriette, my dear, and Helen, my dear!"

Then they were surprised by the young man opposite them declaring that
he must be about their seventeenth degree cousin and that he was going
to Truckleford, too.

"Really!" they exclaimed together.

He might have known what they would say.  He had wondered if Americans
used guess as often as the English use really.  There are many kinds of
reallys: forbidding, surprised, sceptical, inquiring.  This was all
kinds.  It was also the kind that leaves the next move with the other
person.

"That is, if the Reverend Arthur Sanford, of Truckleford," Phil
explained, "is my sixteenth cousin and you are Henriette and Helen
Ribot, and my father, the Reverend Franklin Sanford, of Longfield,
Massachusetts, has reckoned accurately."

"It sounds very mathematical," said Helen, the plain one, thoughtfully,
looking toward Henriette to take the lead, which she did charmingly.

"We've heard about you, Cousin Philip Sanford," she said, and her eyes
were sparkling into his in a way that made it difficult to look away;
"let us consider ourselves introduced."

There was a touch of the grand manner about the way she did this; in
part it was mischievous, her eyes said.  But she did it delightfully,
and Helen, who held out her hand in turn, seemed plainer than ever.
But she arrested his attention with her remark:

"I had a suspicion that it was you all the time."

"Why?"

"You'll see, later."  He was conscious of a closer scrutiny of his
features, and she added triumphantly: "Yes, you'll see, later."

Then she sank back on the cushions.  When seventeenth cousin meets
seventeenth cousin for the first time there is enough to say.  Helen
looked from one to the other, listening.  It seemed her natural role.
Phil almost forgot her existence until the train stopped at Truckleford
and they stepped down on the station platform to be welcomed by an
elderly clergyman.

"Taller than your father!  I like the Sanfords to be tall," he said to
Phil.  "And, Henriette, now I have you I'll not let you go all summer.
You can do your painting here."  He gave her a fond glance.  "And you,
Helen, you will have to stay if Henriette stays."




CHAPTER III

AN INVITATION

The tea-table, a damask moon on the lawn of the vicarage, was laid
awaiting their arrival and the white-haired woman who presided welcomed
Phil with the simple cordiality of a near relative.

"You don't have afternoon tea in America, I believe?" she said.

"Please pour me a cup and see an American in England make a brave
effort," Phil said.

"And what do you think of Truckleford?  Is it like what you imagined?"
she asked.

He had a more definite impression of Henriette, who had told him about
the village as they walked from the station, than of the village
itself.  It seemed to him like any other English village.

"The great thing is that my ancestors came from here," he said.  "I
have wondered what the place was like and what they were like.  My
father had given such rosy descriptions of everything that I was afraid
I might be disappointed.  But both of you and the vicarage and the
garden and the church are just as I wanted you and them to be.  It's
like home."

The vicar and his wife exchanged glances of satisfaction.  They were
not displeased with the frank American cousin.

"We come to serious matters," said the vicar.  "I passed the recipe for
strawberry shortcake which your father sent over to my wife.  There my
part ends.  I wait for her to report."

"Cook has the recipe," said Mrs. Sanford.  "I am not responsible for
results."

"Nor I," Phil said, "unless I assist in picking the berries.  Have they
been picked yet?"

"Not yet, I think."

"I'll bring the basket," said Helen Ribot.  "We'll all help, if that is
allowed."

"You wouldn't fully appreciate it if you did not help," Phil assured
her.

"No, I'll bring the basket," Henriette insisted.  "If one did not watch
you you'd never let any one do anything for one's self."

"I foresee a success," said Phil.

He was thinking of the auspices more than of the cook's part as he
watched Henriette pass around the corner of the house.  When she
reappeared his glance happened to be resting on the same spot.  She
stopped, waving her hand in a way that let the sleeve fall back from
the graceful forearm to signify that she was ready, most enchantingly
ready, for the strawberry shortcake adventure.

"Isn't she beautiful!" Helen exclaimed.  "Aren't you proud of your
seventeenth cousin?"

"Helen!" admonished Mrs. Sanford.  "You must not say such things."

"Oh, but I agree, quite enthusiastically!" said Phil.

He had no reason to change his mind as he assisted her in picking the
berries, an operation which brought his head so close to hers that one
of the strands of her hair brushed his cheek.  Her quick gesture
restoring the truant to place prolonged the thrill that had proceeded
from the point of contact, with an intimation of self-consciousness on
her part as well as on his.  Helen was picking, too, but always on the
other side of the basket.  At length she left off in order to answer
questions about her mother and affairs at home in France, which Mrs.
Sanford had foreborne asking at tea.

When the basket was filled the vicar planned to show Phil the graves of
his ancestors in the little churchyard, but Henriette forestalled him
with the suggestion that the younger generation take a walk before
dinner.

"Aren't you coming?" she called to Helen as she started toward the gate
with Phil.

"No.  I'll stay with uncle and aunt," said Helen hesitatingly.

"Seventeenth cousins from America don't appear often," Phil put in,
perhaps a bit luke-warmly.

Helen shook her head.

"Oh, please, that's a good mouse!" urged Heinriette.

"No!" said Helen, a sharpness in her voice unlike Heinriette's now and
a flash of what seemed pent-up irritation in her eyes.

It was not an agreeable exhibition, Phil thought.  But Henriette smiled
as if accustomed to such outbreaks, explaining in an aside:

"Train-riding always tires her.  You mustn't mind her abruptness.  She
has more fire, is more French, than I am."

They had gone only a few steps when Helen ran after them.  She was
flushed, with a singular, penitent look in her eyes, and the voice of
Henriette might have been continuing softly as she said:

"Please, I didn't mean to be tempery.  But I had planned to do
something and I'll arrange the flowers for the table."

"You are always together, quite inseparable, you and Helen," said Phil,
after they were through the gate.

"Yes.  Isn't it lucky to have a sister only a year apart from you?"
said Henriette.  "We're quite different, but surely you've noted the
resemblance in our voices.  I have tried to change mine and she has
tried to change hers, for there was something uncanny about it, but
neither of us could quite.  It's been a greater cross to mother than to
us, though I can't see, why when we are so different in other ways, can
you?"

He could not when Henriette's wonderful eyes were putting the question
to him at the same time as her lips, in a way that made the difference
a contrast.

"I'll show you my favourite walk," she said.

It took them into a lane and on high ground, where the village lay
nestling at their feet, a greyish patch in the pattern-work of hedges.
The beauty of the landscape to him was in its suggestion, no less than
in its appeal to the eye.  Many generations of men had laid their bones
in this earth after having given it their strength in return for life.

"I understand how that first Sanford who went across the water on that
adventure which took rare courage in those days," said Phil, "harked
back to this scene which was bred in his blood, and how other scenes in
other climates became bred in the blood of his grandsons."

"It is much as our ancestors saw it, I fancy," Henriette said.  "I'm
bred into it somewhat, but more into France."

"A little into America, too," he suggested.  "You have some American
blood."

She was thoughtful for a moment, then looked up at him brightly.

"Perhaps.  Why not?  Though I've never been to America.  There is a
walk in the neighbourhood of our chateau at Mervaux which I should like
to show you.  I'm fonder of it than of this, I confess."

"And I've a favourite walk I should like to show you in the
Berkshires," he said.

"A seventeenth cousin reunion in walks, is that it?"  She was smiling
at her own suggestion with a confidential nod.

"Bully!"

"No, you should say ripping in England.  Bully is an American
vulgarism, Cousin Phil."

"Ripping!"

They broke out laughing at this, and the best feature of her laughter
was the persistent radiance in her eyes.  A passing labourer who noted
the pair silhouetted against the skyline thought:

"Life is sweet to them--youth and good looks."

She returned to the subject of walks.

"Before we consider the one in the Berkshires," she said, "you're not
returning to America without coming to France to see us, are you?"

He had carefully allotted every day of his time abroad, which did not
include any visit to Mervaux.  But when the allotment was made he had
not met the seventeenth cousins.

"You can be properly at home and watch Helen draw or me paint," she
went on.  "Helen musses about with charcoals and I with oils.  You will
see what life is like in the French country.  Mother will write
inviting you.  Will you come?"

Her glance was cousinly and insistent.  The glance did it.  He decided
that he would cut out Vienna and go to Mervaux for the second week in
August of that year, 1914.




CHAPTER IV

TOO MUCH ANCESTOR

"Helen's temper again!" exclaimed Mrs. Sanford to her husband, after
Helen's outburst.

"Sometimes I do not wonder that Helen has a temper," said the vicar.

"But when a girl is as plain as she is, really it is the one thing she
should avoid," persisted his wife.

"Yes, I suppose it is bad policy, when Henriette has all the good looks
and the money," he replied.

Helen had now turned toward them and Phil and Henriette were going
through the gateway.  Mrs. Sanford drew a deep breath as one will who
is about to undertake a duty and means to approach it softly.

"Did you give up your idea of becoming a nurse, Helen?" she asked
casually.

It drew another flash from Helen's eyes, accompanied by a shudder of
repugnance.

"I couldn't.  I don't like the horror of it--seeing people cut up and
everything!  I knew I ought to and mother thinks I ought to; but I've
delayed because I----  Oh, I know what you're thinking!"  She stopped
and shook several rebellious strands of hair free with a sudden
movement of her head.

Gentle Mrs. Sanford let her hands drop into her lap, lowering her head
in the relief of one who has tried and failed.

"Sorry!"  Helen's attitude had quite changed.  She kissed her aunt on
the cheek.  "I have an awful temper, haven't I?"  Her change of mood
had been reflected by her irregular features with singular
expressiveness.  "I was going to arrange the flowers for the table for
our seventeenth cousin and also--do you think cook would let me?--try
my hand at the American shortcake thing.  I learned how to cook from
Jacqueline.  I'd rather be a cook than a nurse, if worse comes to
worse.  Cooks get very good pay."

"Helen!  Shocking!" exclaimed Mrs. Sanford.  Many gentlewomen were
nurses.  "You'll have to bargain with cook about the shortcake," she
added.

"Didn't his mother make it back in Massachusetts?  Why not Helen of
Mervaux, if not Helen of Troy, in Hampshire?  Cry Harry, England and
St. George!  In the name of _Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, allons_!"

She was off to the kitchen, whose monarch said, in language of her own,
that the way to eat strawberries was with their stems on and dipping
them in sugar, or else as jam.  In either case they had no relation to
cake, and she was not taking cooking lessons from foreign countries.

"In other words, 'it's not done,' oh, England!" said Helen.

"Whatever you mean by that," began cook.

"It should be on British coats-of-arms instead of _Dieu et mon Droit_,"
Helen explained, without in the least explaining to cook.  "I mean, I
take the responsibility off your shoulders.  If the American is
poisoned I go to the gallows."

"Oh, very well!" agreed cook, as if convinced that a fatal result was
inevitable but satisfied if her alibi were safely established.

Helen went to the task with a confident hand, while cook looked on with
the same scorn that she would have regarded the introduction of _poi_
or birds' nest soup into that loyal British household.  Her task well
under way, Helen returned to the garden to pick flowers for the table,
the while humming French songs.  She had finished with the flowers when
Mrs. Sanford entered the dining-room to find her with her fingers
outspread on the cloth, resting half her weight on them and looking at
one of the family portraits on the wall.

"Still in love with your ancestor, Helen?" asked her aunt.

Helen was startled back from the seventeenth to the twentieth century.

"Yes.  I'm coming in here after dark and teach him to fall in love with
me.  He's the only man who ever will.  Being three hundred years old he
might take me because of my youth."

"My dear, where do you get all your strange ideas?"

"I wonder if he would like the strawberry shortcake thing?" Helen
continued.  "I'm sure he liked rum and took snuff and swore.  And
you'll please not to tell the seventeenth cousin that I made the cake.
I take no risks."

The ring of her laugh remained in the room after she had returned to
the kitchen.  Helen was never more puzzling to her aunt than when she
laughed; for then she was most French, and Mrs. Sanford ascribed much
in Helen to Gallic inheritance.

"Poor dear!" thought her aunt.  She was always thinking "Poor dear!"
but she seldom gave voice to it--not in Helen's presence.  It was the
sure match to her temper.  She would not bear to be "poor deared," as
she called it, even by Henriette.  Now Mrs. Sanford herself was
regarding the portrait intently, and her husband entering joined her in
its study.

"You see the likeness, too?" she asked, with a thrill of pride.

"The moment he alighted at the station.  We'll seat him under it at
dinner--a plot!" said the vicar, smiling, and he caught her hand in his
in a way that would have been pleasant to an observer.  But if there
had been an observer it would not have happened.

Voices were heard on the lawn and they looked out to see Phil and
Henriette returning.  His American accent which had sounded strange at
first grew attractive to Mrs. Sanford.  She herself showed him to his
room to make sure that everything was right.  The hot water "can," as
he would have called it, was standing in the wash basin covered with a
towel to retain the heat.  His bag was unpacked and his toilet articles
were laid out.

"The maids do that for you in England?" he said.

"Don't yours?" she inquired.

"Not Jane in a thousand years.  She would regard me as a mollycoddle if
I permitted it.  Sometimes they do it in country houses which are as
big as hotels on the hills outside Longfield."

"Strange!" she murmured.

"And I am to put my shoes, I mean my boots, outside the door at night?"
he asked.

She was not quite certain of herself, being apprehensive of some
American joke back of the question.

"Of course," she said.

"I'll try, though it is going to give my Puritan conscience a twinge,"
he said drily.  "I'll try if you will not tell Jane when you come to
visit us in America.  Whatever happens, I mean never to lose my
standing with Jane."

She laughed without understanding why, except that she was liking this
frank American cousin better and better.  Indeed, the glow of a new
emotion, sounding through years which had had their omnipresent
sadness, had possessed her since she had looked at the portrait in the
dining-room.  The cheer of it was in her voice as she called outside
Henriette's door to know if she needed anything; and then after she had
passed Helen's door she remembered Helen and called to her also.

Henriette made a leisurely business of her toilet before the mirror.
Why shouldn't she?  It was merely a fit expression of sincere gratitude
for nature's kindness.  She might enjoy the grace of the movement of
her fingers in caressing expertness around the face that she saw as she
arranged her hair.

Helen come up from the kitchen with a blistered finger and her cheeks
hot from the oven heat, saw that same face looking back at her.  Often
she had wished for some magic that would show a new one.  Plain people,
she thought, ought at least to have a change of plain faces for
variety's sake.  If others were as tired of her own as she was, she
wondered how anybody on earth could look at it except as a punishment.

As long as she knew that her face was clean, why should she pay any
attention to it?  She might have made more of her hair, which fell
below her waist in abundant glory; but if she took pains with it she
had that face in front of her during the process.  So she ever gave her
hair a hurried doing in order to escape enforced companionship with her
features.  To-night they insisted on a prolonged glance of attention.
She made a grimace which was reflected back, and then she laughed at
the reflection, making light of her self-consciousness, only to become
more self-conscious and blushing, as if caught in a secret.  For she
saw that she was at her best when she laughed.  Then her mobile
features, including the lumpy nose, made harmony with the beaming
mischief of her eyes and the gleam of her regular teeth.

"If I wore a mask over my nose and a perpetual grin I might be an
advertisement for a dentist, at least!" she thought, only to purse out
her lips in a "Poof!" as she turned away from the mirror.  Then a sigh,
whose prolongation apprised her of its existence and brought a shrug of
disgust.  The next impulse turned her to some charcoal drawings on the
table--her own offspring.  She loved them, punished them, disowned them
at intervals.  Now she took up one after the other, critically turning
her head, wrinkling her brow, grumbling under her breath, and even
sticking out her tongue in indecorous fashion at her own handiwork.

"I never can!" she cried.  "I'm no good!  Oh, cusses!"

So long was she preoccupied with the inspection, oblivious of
seventeenth cousins and the strawberry shortcake thing, that she had to
"jump" into her gown when the gong sounded, which was no new thing for
her.  It was not much of a gown.  That being the case, why not jump
into it?  If it appeared to be thrown on it would be more harmonious
with her style of beauty.  What did it matter, anyway, when the harder
you tried to draw the worse you drew?

The gown which Henriette wore was a good deal of a gown, as even the
eye of the man who grasps effects (which are all that he is meant to
grasp) and not the details which make the effects might see.  Its
simplicity, perhaps, made it as suitable for dinner at the vicarage as
at a more pretentious board.  Experts who charge more for their talents
than for the material they use had fashioned it to make the most of
Henriette, a delightful task because she supplied talent with such a
good start.  However, she was not satisfied with the gown after her
inspection of it before the mirror, though possibly better pleased when
she saw its effect on the seventeenth cousin.

Mrs. Sanford had seated Philip under the portrait across from Helen.
When Henriette was seated at his side, the gown which had set off her
figure so attractively as she entered the room became only the vase
from which rose the flower of her white shoulders and the white column
of neck supporting the small head.  She did not appear to direct the
talk, yet it seemed only natural that she should be its creative
spirit.  Mostly it was between the two.  The vicar and his wife were
glad enough to listen and to exchange glance after glance at the
portrait behind Phil's chair.  Henriette frequently spoke of "we,"
which meant herself and Helen, as if they were inseparable; and if
Helen spoke it was in answer to some reference which her sister made to
her.

"I am the talker, you see," she said, "and Helen is the wise one."

"If I keep still," Helen interjected, "and let Henriette say that I'm
wise, she is so convincing that lots of people think that I really am."

Phil was not the first traveller who hardly realised that he was having
a meal at the same time that he sat next to a pretty girl at dinner.
An exclamation from the others first apprised him that the strawberry
shortcake thing had arrived.  By all external criteria it might have
come from the kitchen at Longfield.  The main body was properly
accompanied by a satellite bowl of crushed berries.

"You cut it," said Helen to Phil.

He did as bidden.

"Now!"

He tasted it with judicial care.

"Amazing!" he declared.  "Let no one say that England's insularity
means lack of adaptability.  Next to my mother's, it is the best I've
ever eaten.  I must give my compliments to the cook."

"I will for you," put in Helen.

"But the object is proselytisation," said Phil.  "I wait on the opinion
of others."

The vicar took a mouthful and then another; his wife followed the same
process; and--well, they both had second helpings.  The strawberry
shortcake thing had won no less a victory at Truckleford than had
Virginia ham.

"It wasn't the taxation without representation on Virginia ham and
shortcake that led to your Declaration of Independence, was it?" the
vicar asked jocularly.

"No, that was tea," Phil replied.  "Afterwards we became a nation of
coffee drinkers, further to prove our independence."

"When you come to Mervaux," Henriette said, "Jacqueline will make you
forest strawberry tartlets as only a French cook can and omelets so
light that they have to be weighed down lest they fly out of the window
when they are brought to table.  We're all for art at Mervaux."

She again had the monopoly of his attention.

"Do you allow spectators?" he asked.  "May I lie on the grass and watch
you paint, or shall I be required to pull up trees and rearrange the
landscape?"

"It depends.  I----" she murmured thoughtfully as she stirred her
coffee.

Helen did not hear what they were saying.  If they were preoccupied
with each other, she was preoccupied with the portrait.  The living
face underneath the frame was in the same pose as its prototype.
Phil's unconsciousness of what was so apparent to other eyes gave
dramatic point to the situation.  At last she could restrain herself no
longer.  She cut into Henriette's sentence with her outcry:

"Look!  You must look!"

For him there was a sudden transition from a concentration of attention
on Henriette to Helen's eyes, flaming with intensity, not lacking in
mischief, as she leaned across the table.

"Where?" he asked.

"I didn't mean to shout as if there were an alarm of fire.  Look at the
portrait behind you!"

He turned and under the lettering of "General Thomas Sanford" he saw a
clear-cut, positive face, lean, with a humorous curve to the mouth and
eyes surveying the world with ready candour.  When he turned back he
was conscious of a silence and that all were watching him.

"Don't you see it?" asked Helen, speaking what was in the mind of the
others.

"The portrait, yes.  What has happened to it?" he asked.  He was a
little wary of something lurking in the eyes of the plain girl opposite
him.  They seemed to have unexplored depths.  If she were having some
joke on him he would feel his way, this stranger in foreign climes, and
leave the next move to her.

"Of course you don't," she said.  "Wait!  Everybody wait!"  She was
gone on the errand of her impulse.

"You never know quite what Helen is going to do next," Henriette
explained.

"Her French blood," murmured Mrs. Sanford.

Helen returned bearing a mirror which she had taken from above her
washstand.

"Of course you didn't see it.  They say that if one met his double in
the street he would be the last to recognise it," she told Phil, as she
held the mirror at such an angle that both General Thomas Sanford's
face and his own were reflected.

Phil drew back startled after a first glance, to look into Helen's eyes
expressive of her intense enjoyment of the situation; and then
irresistibly he looked again in the mirror.  Two and a half centuries
stood between the two Sanfords.  Add thirty years to those of the man
sitting at the table and dress him in the same garb as the man in the
portrait and it would be difficult to tell them apart.  Phil was not
more thrilled than confused.  And then another face appeared beside his
in the mirror.  It was Henriette's, peeping in at the edge, her lips
parted in a teasing smile.

"Very like, isn't it?" she said softly.

"Yes," he murmured to the reflection; and the reflection was gone,
leaving him alone with that of the ancestor.

"The old blood!" exclaimed the vicar, with deep emotion.  "His brother
was the founder of the American family and your father and you and I
are the only male descendants.  Wait!"  And he left the room.

"Which means that the plot thickens, I suppose," Phil remarked, with an
accusing look at Helen.

"Honestly, I'm in the dark about his intentions," she said, still
holding the mirror.  The humour of the situation suddenly smote her,
and she was laughing as she had into that same mirror before dinner.
She noted a shade of surprise in his eyes, and realisation that the
cause of it was his discovery that when she laughed she did have a
certain charm that brought the blood to her cheeks.  She had been
caught posing--nothing less.  The laugh died; not even a smile
remained.  The lump of nose, the irregular features, the broad
mouth--she was her plain, usual self again.

"Go on laughing!" he exclaimed, unconsciously voicing his thought in
his surprise.  "I mean----" embarrassedly, "it's your joke.  I believe
your conscience is already troubling you for the trick."

"It is a mirror conscience," she answered, looking back at him soberly;
and then, from the infection of surprise in his eyes, a gathering,
quizzical smile spread until it broke in another ripple of laughter.

"That is a new kind of conscience, Helen.  Explain!" said her sister.

"To you, too, Henriette?" said Helen.  "I've only just found it,
myself."

"Apparently it is in the backs of mirrors," murmured Henriette.

"I don't blame Henriette for never looking at the back, do you?" Helen
asked Phil.

Phil thought a little revenge was due him for having a mirror set in
front of him for the purpose of a comparison of physiognomies.

"Hardly.  I envy the mirror!" he said, turning to her.  But she had
dropped her gaze to her coffee cup and took a deliberate sip before
looking up.

"It is always pleasant to say foolish things nicely," she remarked.

"But he is sincere.  If he weren't it would be accusing him of
blindness, wouldn't it, cousin?" put in Helen mischievously.

"Absolutely!" he managed to say, conscious that he was not having much
revenge and that things were getting brittle; while Mrs. Sanford,
pretending to smile, could not quite follow the nimble conversation.

Helen laughed again to cover the misadventure of her unruly tongue, and
Phil laughed, too, though he did not exactly know why.  Henriette was
taking another deliberate sip of coffee.  They were not aware of the
vicar's return until he stood behind Phil's chair.

"Look again, cousin!" Helen bade him.

He was of a mind not to, but could not control his curiosity.  The
vicar was holding against the frame beside the face of the ancestor a
photograph of the statue in the square at Longfield.

"Your father sent it to me," he explained.

"Not a double, but a treble!" exclaimed Helen.

"It's the way of the blood," continued the vicar.  "It skips
generations, but it's always there--early in the seventeenth century,
late in the eighteenth, and now early in the twentieth."

"But the one in the eighteenth was a wicked rebel, disloyal to our
German king!" Helen put in again, yielding to temptation.  "Old Thomas,
there, would have disowned him."

"Helen!" admonished her aunt.  "It was only a family quarrel."

"But I believe that old Thomas would have been on George Washington's
right hand," said Helen.  "He looks it."

Meanwhile, Phil was looking at the three faces, so similar that he
might well have been in doubt which was his own.  If he were expected
to rise and make a fitting speech it was beyond his sense of humour.

"Help! help!  Too much ancestor!" he cried out; and half rising he
seized Helen's hands, pushing the mirror away at the same time that he
held her at arms' length.  "You began it!"

She was flushing to the roots of her hair.  How strong he was!  How
silly she had been!

"No, the ancestor!  Ancestors begin everything for everybody!" she
retorted.  "And if you will let go of me I will put the mirror away."

"We all beg your pardon for embarrassing you.  It was not a plot and we
are all very interested," said the vicar, his eyes twinkling.

The photograph of the Revolutionary hero which her uncle laid on the
table Helen took up; and the change of subject so earnestly desired by
every one she wrought in another impulse.

"What do ancestors count," she said, "beside a piece of work like this!
It's the best he ever did and there is not his equal in all this
island--nowhere outside of France.  It's power--the purity of line!
Who wouldn't charge led by such a figure as that!"

"Now, Helen, when you are through with your ecstasy shan't we go out on
the lawn?" said her uncle, patting her hand.

The force of her enthusiasm had something compelling which led Phil to
look at the photograph over her shoulder as if it were something he had
never seen; but upon her uncle's hint he saw a plain, dull face
yielding assent and he was conscious of a vitality suddenly turned limp.

Henriette took the photograph from her sister's hand.

"The best thing of his I have seen," she remarked, examining it.
"Inspired by his subject.  He has just missed the arm, I think.  I
should like to have a copy.  Shall we walk?" she asked Phil, leading
the way.  "We ought to have a portrait of the seventeenth cousin as
well as of the ancestors," she continued.  "I may try portraiture again
when you come to France.  You will find it easier to pose than to tear
up trees, for we have some very large trees at Mervaux, I warn you."

"I hope it will not be in profile," he replied.

Wasn't he going to France to see her?  Perhaps she understood the
intimation, as she pretended to study his face in the light of the
doorway.

"I think a full face will be best!" she decided.  "What a glorious
night!"

Moonlight and the soft air of the English summer time redeem the soggy,
rheumatic winters with their overcast days.  A carpet of sod cut by the
shadows of moon rays which gave lustre to her eyes!  In months to come
there were to be other evenings equally fine by nature's gentle
beneficence, but none like this.  There never could be again; for
something was coming to the world which would leave nothing in human
relations the same.

The cousinly party walked up and down or stopped to chat in changing
groups, Henriette and Phil mostly together and Helen sometimes quite by
herself.  The happiest of all were the vicar and his wife.  They were
old enough to take happiness in its full measure; to enjoy that of
their own years and by reflection that of youth.

"Are you pleased with him?" asked Mrs. Sanford when two white heads,
much like the two at their dinner three thousand miles away, rested on
their pillows.

"Yes, my dear.  I shall write to Dr. Sanford that we claim part of his
son.  He is our Philip, too."

"Our Philip!" she repeated.  "The family does not die out," she said,
in relief at some of the weight of an old burden lifted.

"It survives very worthily over the seas," said her husband.

"How beautiful Henriette was to-night.  She grows more charming as she
matures, though I confess young people of this age puzzle me.  I
couldn't help thinking what a splendid pair they made.  Ah, blood will
tell!"

"And Helen grows more temperamental."

"Poor dear!  I don't know what will become of her."

With accustomed leisure Henriette had taken off her gown.  It had
served well that evening.  To her delicate sense it was a living thing,
a servant subject to praise and reproach.  Caressingly she laid it
aside.  The buckles of her slippers smiled at her, and she held the
foot which she withdrew arched and turned it for inspection before
thrusting it into the softer slipper fitted to enjoy the bare intimacy
of such a small foot.  Still more leisurely she undid her hair and
brushed it, conscious that the picture in the frame before her was the
same that she had momentarily set in the mirror beside a seventeenth
cousin's at table.

Helen--poor dear!--hung up her gown carefully enough, though with no
more interest than if it were a towel; and she kicked first one of her
slippers almost ceiling high and caught it and then the other, in
enjoyment of an old trick of hers.  Mirrors were of no use to her in
undoing and brushing her hair; yet as she laid the brush back on the
table she had a glimpse of herself and it was the smiling self.  She
laughed at that self, only to find that it was less plain-looking than
the smiling self; and then she was angry.  The mirror conscience
stabbed her with the thought that she was posing, trying to be
attractive.

"He must have fancied that I was flirting!" she mused.  "I flirt with
anybody!"

When she went to bed it was to toss and think of many things,
consequent and inconsequent, and of no one thing for long, and when she
found herself sobbing she turned on the light and took up her
charcoals.  But they seemed crude and self-accusing, and she turned to
drawing pictures out of her fancy, which at last made her eyelids heavy
as it had on many other occasions.




CHAPTER V

THE FLAVOUR OF GRAPES

When Helen came down to breakfast she was wan and years older in
appearance than Henriette, who was blooming and cheerful.

"Working again!  Confess--I saw the light in your room," said
Henriette.  "You try too hard."

"There's no doubt of it," agreed Helen.  "I can't help it.  It's the
fault of mistaking taste for talent in moments of impulse, and some
kind of a knot in my brain."

"Poor dear!" said Mrs. Sanford in instinctive sympathy before she could
catch herself.  Then she drew back in her chair, prepared for the
tempest.

But this time Helen did not appear even irritated; she had become more
than ever inexplicable to her aunt.

"Poor dear!" she repeated absently.  "If one talks about one's self one
must expect to be talked about."

The vicar turned to Phil's experiences in the Southwest.  Was it really
wild?  And how did one live?  As Phil pictured his life in swift, broad
strokes, Helen was listening intently and some of the fire returned to
her eyes.

"There is one thing I have not told," he said gravely, as they went out
on the lawn.  "I think that it ought to be told even in the presence of
the ancestor, though he may disown me."

"More American humour," thought Mrs. Sanford, convinced that she now
knew the signals and prepared to laugh even if she did not understand
the joke.

"My first task was cleaning out cattle cars!"

But Mrs. Sanford did not laugh.  She was aghast.  Even the vicar was
visibly shocked.  Helen spoke first.

"I hope you did it well," she said.

"No fear!" he rejoined.

"We wondered why you did not go to work for Peter," said the vicar.

They, too, knew of Peter Smithers.  Even in England Philip could not
escape the shadow of the rich man who might leave him a fortune, which
Mrs. Sanford had already imagined as restoring the estate in Hampshire.
Perhaps Phil guessed as much, for he related with relish the essence of
his last interview with Peter.  The vicar and his wife looked
depressed; they longed to tell him that he had been unwise.

Helen was laughing as she had last night into the mirror, at the
picture which she conjured of Peter stamping down the path at Longfield
in anger.

"Splendid!" she exclaimed, almost hilariously; and then was still, as
their eyes met.

"You'll make your own fortune, which is better," said Henriette.

"A hundred a week is all there is in sight at present," Phil replied.

"We have little time before the train goes if----" the vicar urged.

It was the ancestors again.  The warrior of the portrait had the cool
and damp distinction of having his bones under a stone in the church
floor which had been trod by generations of worshippers.  Later cousins
were in the churchyard, their chiselled names grown faint.  The vicar's
kindly face glowed as he indulged in his favourite topic of genealogy.
Helen imagined the ancestors in the garbs and prejudices of their time
come to life and passing in review before the transplanted and
surviving branch.

"I suppose," she suggested, in the way she had of speaking aloud to
herself, as if the thought were not worth considering by other people
but pleased her, "I suppose that Peter Smithers would say that these
are all dead ones and it's the live ones that count."

Of course she should not make such remarks.  Still, she would and
people would stare at her in wonder, even as the vicar and his wife
were staring at that moment.  Phil looking hard at a tombstone had a
quiver to his lips which he would have denied bore any relation to a
smile.

"I was only thinking how much nicer it must be to be alive and touring
Europe for the first time with the money you had earned, instead of
being an ancestor," she explained.  "I like Peter for giving his money
to the clubhouse.  Ancestors did nothing for him."

"You don't seem to care for ancestors?" Phil suggested.

"Oh, yes, lots--generically," she answered.  "They built cathedrals and
churches like this and had a horrid good old human time in the doing of
it.  As for one's own ancestors, it depends upon how much they have
done for you."

"You are quite surpassing yourself at iconoclasm to-day," said her
sister gently and sympathetically.

Helen nodded as if she knew it, and could not help herself.

"Everything depends upon the flavour of the grapes," she replied.  The
sisters were searching each other's eyes in a new and surprising way to
both.  The grapes were sweet to Henriette; they were sour to Helen.

"It is the hard work last night," said Henriette, slipping her arm
around her sister.  "Those charcoals may come right yet."

Helen was silent, unresisting, unresponsive, her face like ill-moulded
clay, and Henriette a personification of apology to Phil.

"According to story-books, Peter may yet fall on his knees and beg you
to take his fortune," she added to Phil.  "So much for Peter Smithers.
He doesn't worry you, does he?  It's delightful having seventeenth
cousins like you."

"And like you!" he replied to the challenge.  "And you will not let me
miss the train."

They had time to walk and his bag had already gone.  Helen was subdued,
remaining with her uncle behind Phil and Henriette.

"Remember at Mervaux, the sixth of August!" Henriette called from the
platform.

"I await your mother's invitation," Phil replied.

His last view of her was the uplifted arm as she waved her
handkerchief.  Of course he had said that he would return to
Truckleford now that he had found the way and the vicar even talked of
accepting the invitation to Longfield, which is the way of such
partings.  But America is far away.

Philip was alone in the compartment, very much alone as pictures
recollected from the down journey passed before his mind.  The glance
across the aisle at the first meeting; Henriette's face reflected in
the mirror beside his; her figure preceding him along the path as they
ascended the hill above the village; little confidences on the walk to
the station.  These are well-known symptoms.  Acting as his own
diagnostician, this modern youth only four weeks from the cactus
country thought:

"I wonder if I have been hit!  And Helen?  I don't quite make her out.
She's not uninteresting, though.  I wonder how long it will take
Henriette to do a portrait!  I hope she is one of those painstaking
artists who has intervals of rest and conversation.  But maybe Madame
Ribot won't write to me," scepticism which he dismissed as unpleasant.
It stood to reason that the mother of such a girl as Henriette would do
anything that she wanted.  "I should, myself," he decided.

To him as an American the assassination of the heir to a European
throne and his consort, which he read in the newspapers that evening,
had the thrill of horror of a railroad or a steamship disaster.  It
could have none of the seriousness that it had to every European, who
had that "balance of power," as they called it, in the back of the head
of his individual existence.  He read; he sympathised in a generic
twinge of pity, and was little further concerned.  In the afternoon of
the next day he should be in Holland and in the evening, had he not
chosen to spend a few days with Rembrandt and wooden shoes, he could
have been in Berlin, a journey in distance equivalent to that from
Buffalo to New York or Chicago to Omaha.

What contrast in language and people!  Miss Wooden Shoes was as boyhood
pictures made her: and leisurely England, too; but where was the
phlegmatic old German with his china-bowl pipe?  He realised the energy
of the new Germany, galvanised by some higher will of leadership, with
the resentment of its _verboten_ system which is inevitable to all
Americans who have not been educated in Germany and themselves fallen
into step, and particularly to a Sanford of New England.

He met Americans wherever he went, in hotels, on trains, and in picture
galleries, catered to for the dollars they dropped by the way into open
palms, privately criticised for the very liberality which made them
welcome, not to mention also for their brusqueness, their air of
success and sometimes their spread-eagleism.  But they did not care as
long as they had the freedom of the playground.  European politics or
world politics did not concern them, come from the fatness of their new
world beyond the seas.  The last tourist summer of its kind!

Philip studied the newspapers with the help of college German which is
good enough on grammar but floundering in passing the time of day.  His
keen mind began to catch the sense of how an assassination affected
that balance of power; he felt the pressure in the air before a cloud
burst; the suspense of the sparks running along the fuse from Sarajevo
to the powder magazines--but all objectively, with no presage of how
subjective it was to become to him.

Then one day all the youth of that nation moved as with one thought and
purpose, as the football eleven goes onto the gridiron--which was the
simple comparison that he made.  For forty years they had been drilling
for this struggle and all the years and days and hours of the forty
years broke in cumulative force for the blow.  How it made him think;
that a people could act together in this fashion; that a million and
two million men could go each to his place as the fireman to his on an
alarm!  It seemed as if they should sweep all the world before them,
like the breaking of a dam down a river bed.

Youth was not bothering how to get home.  It was on the scene and that
was enough.  But about Mervaux and seventeenth cousins?  Should he see
either?  While in Berlin he had received so insistent a letter of
invitation from Madame Ribot that he had decided to spend less time in
Paris and more in Mervaux than originally planned, if it were agreeable.

Somehow he got on board a train in Switzerland, and sitting up all
night in a stifling second-class compartment he reached Paris.  His
fellow-passengers were thinking of how to obtain money on letters of
credit and how to find berths on a transatlantic steamer.  His own
passage had already been engaged on a French ship from Havre.

In Paris was a man who was more important to Phil than kings and
generals.  The manager of the corporation which had promoted him and
paid the wage that gave him the holiday had just arrived from Vichy by
automobile.  Mr. Ledyard was in a state of mind!  The credit of the
world thrown out of gear; no answers to his cablegrams; stock markets
closed, while the passage he had engaged from Boulogne on a German
steamer was of about as much use to him for crossing the Atlantic as a
team of Esquimaux dogs.  When Phil entered the room Ledyard had been
ringing in vain for a servant, who was already with the colours.  He
was glad of some one to talk to, this man of power whom Phil had met
only twice: once on being employed and again on his return from the
Southwest to promotion.

"Business will go to the devil!" said Ledyard.  "Everybody is going to
draw in and wait to see whether or not the world is coming to an end.
I'd like to drive the Kaiser's war bonnet down over his head and
strangle him.  I confess that I never felt so helpless in my life.  I
can't even get a second-class passage.  Steamship company paid no
attention to my wires.  First come, first served."

"I have a passage on a French liner for the sixteenth," said Phil, "two
in the cabin, if it will be any use to you, sir."

"Will it be any use?  Taken, if it's six in the cabin," said Mr.
Ledyard.  "And you return when you can get a comfortable passage; your
salary goes on."  He considered the favour worth Phil's salary for
years.  "I shouldn't stay in Paris if I were you," he went on.  "You
might be caught in a siege.  These people can't hold the Germans.
Manufacturing power and efficiency will be the big factors in this war,
and the Germans are ready.  You have seen that, haven't you?"

"Yes.  Amazing--it's a lesson."

"My English friends won't see Germany; they live too close to her.  But
an American ought to, even if he resents her.  It's between the Germans
and the British navy.  The French can't stand up to it.  I only wish
they could."

Phil could not agree.  It was a different atmosphere which he had found
in Paris from that in Berlin, but no less impressive.  Here was the
wall to hold the battering-ram which he had seen in movement for the
shock on the other side of the frontier.  The emotional French were
going silently to their places no less promptly than the Germans;
democracy against Kaiserdom, the closed shops with "_Sous le drapeau_"
chalked on the shutters, the quietness of prayer and resolution which
possessed all France as one human being had taken possession of him.

All the world at war, and he was walking down the Champs-Élysées, the
greatest street in the world, its pavement white in the moonlight and
silent except for an occasional footfall.  Somewhere over the hills in
the direction of Rheims was Mervaux.  If the Ribots were still there
and wanted him, he would pay them at least a call.




CHAPTER VI

AT MERVAUX

The trace of American blood in Madame Ribot's veins was only an echo,
yet its presence kept her from being entirely European.  She had never
visited America; even her English had more than a touch of French
accent.  America was vast, distant, noisy, and little concerned her.
Nothing much concerned her except her comfort.  Her small, shrewd eyes
served the ends of a sluggish disposition.  In girlhood they had not
kept her from being beautiful and in middle age they sat guardian over
her health and the business of preserving the freshness of features
which were strikingly like Henriette's.

Her phlegm, if phlegm it were, was reaction from days when she had
enjoyed Monte Carlo no less than Paris.  They were days that she never
mentioned.  Possibly they had brought prematurely the wrinkles which,
in a later phase, she massaged as unpleasant landmarks.  She fought to
retain youth, while reliving it in Henriette.

M. Ribot, who was in the Argentine, belonged to the past, and the
income dating back to an arrangement between lawyers came regularly
from a lawyer and would come till her death or till she married again.
There had been a grandfather who lived in a villa overlooking the
Mediterranean.  He had been fond of Henriette and said that his son,
Henriette's father, was a fool and a blackguard and his daughter-in-law
was a lucky, selfish, spoiled child.  When he died he left Henriette an
independent fortune.

The rest was wrapped in mystery and eccentricity, with Helen a sort of
appendage.  She and Henriette indistinctly remembered a quarrel between
their parents in an apartment in Paris, which they overheard from an
adjoining room without knowing what it meant.  Later, the grandfather
came and the father went away, without Madame seeming to mind his
going.  Helen did remember her mother saying to the father:

"You may have Helen, if you wish, but I shall keep Henriette;" and the
grandfather added: "Yes, she stays in France.  I shall stay in France,
myself."

As the father would not have plain little Helen, the mother kept her.
After her separation from her husband, Madame Ribot settled in the
chateau at Mervaux and Henriette's money maintained a small apartment
in Paris, where the family went in winter that Henriette might study
painting; for all agreed that she had talent.

Helen wandered in the fields and talked to the peasants and kept on
trying to draw.  Her only lessons were from an old artist who had
become interested in her when she was fifteen.  His technique was
excellent.  He knew how, but he could not do it, as he said.

"You keep on drawing and drawing," were his last words, "and don't
bother if any one thinks you an ugly duckling."

She did not mind the old artist calling her an ugly duckling.  These
two believed in the truth, the truth of art.  No one had ever seen so
much of the charm of her smile as he when they walked beside the Seine,
went to the Louvre, browsed in old print shops, and he criticised her
work, her miserable charcoals, as she called them.  When he died Helen
felt that she had lost her best friend and she went regularly to put
flowers on his grave, smiling the while, even if her eyes were moist,
as he who had no friends except her would have wished.

Her smiles were for the byways.  She had many for the peasants and the
villagers.  They liked the strange, moody Helen better than the
beautiful, gracious Henriette, and they liked to pose for her.  Mère
Perigord who sat outside her door crocheting on sunny days had been
drawn a score of times by Helen.

"Keep on drawing and drawing!"  This was really all of Helen's life.
Henriette painted and Madame Ribot massaged her wrinkles, read many
novels, took a long time to dress for dinner, a longer time to get up
in the morning, and exchanged reminiscent letters with men and women
who had belonged to the early period of her life.  One might think that
she was preparing to marry again, but the peasants and the servants
knew better.  They had dismissed the gossip over the thought in
connection with the Count de la Grange, a neighbour of acceptable age
but quite poor, and also in connection with General Rousseau, a major
in the war of '70, another neighbour who was fairly well-to-do.

For years the thing had been going on.  Almost every day the Count and
the General called or came to dinner.  Madame Ribot was their social
world.  They were ever telling her how young she kept; the Count with
an indirection which was the most delicate flattery and the General
with the brusqueness of a soldier, which had the charm of contrast with
the Count's method.  The two vying in gallantries of an old-fashioned
kind made a situation all to Madame Ribot's taste, as her shrewd eyes
turned from one to the other.  Imagination and recollection, with the
basis of the past to work on, completed her satisfaction.

When she received the letter from Henriette asking her to invite the
seventeenth cousin to Mervaux, her characteristic of making much of
little by reflection, which was as French as it was innate, enlarged it
to a significant event.  Thanks to the vicar of Truckleford, she was
not uninformed of the statue in the square at Longfield; and she was
not without pride in her blood.  Her American mother had not been of
the _nouveaux_, and from what Henriette said about Phil she grasped
that he was of that breed of American sufficient unto itself, in the
pride of a new nationality which does not need the label of nobility as
assurance of quality.  She could write a gracious letter and it pleased
her to take some pains with the invitation to Philip Sanford.

The letter posted, she had a twinge of loneliness.  She missed
Henriette.  Her affection for her daughter was compounded with
selfishness.  She liked the sight of Henriette at her easel; Henriette
in her morning gown; Henriette in dishabille, throat and shoulders bare
and her figure worthy of her features.  Thus she herself had looked in
youth, she knew.  If she had only had Henriette's eyes!  She was
pleased that her daughter had fine eyes, yet almost envied them.
Still, Henriette was a part of herself; a flower from her stem; a
pleasant reminder of youth which kept her young.  As an inheritance
Henriette had her mother's gift with men, plus her own gift of art; for
it was art that made her different from her mother.

Henriette's letter from Truckleford had made no mention of the thing
that Madame Ribot had had most in mind as the object of the girls'
visit to the Sanfords.  Helen, who had written only once and at other
times sent love through Henriette, had not mentioned it, which was more
suspicious still.  So Madame Ribot wrote directly to Mrs. Sanford, who
answered that "Helen was in such a temper at mention of the subject
that I did not pursue it."

"The little devil!" exclaimed Madame Ribot.

It was not the first time that she had made such reference to Helen.
In the fulness of irritation she started a letter to Helen, peremptory,
upbraiding; but did not finish it.  The recollection of three days
which she had once spent nursing her husband in a hotel room, when they
were travelling in Algeria where no nurse could be obtained, rose
before her.  Besides, anger was wrinkle-making.  And what was the use?
She tore up the letter and turned from her desk to her manicure set.

Her plan had been for Helen to remain in England and enter a training
school for nurses.  England was a better place for that sort of thing
than France and it meant that Helen would be established quite
independently some distance from home and earning her living in an
honourable way.  Not that she had put the plan as clearly as this to
Helen, but she had written it to Mrs. Sanford, trusting to that gentle
soul's persuasion to carry it into effect.

"If Helen only had a little grit!" thought Madame Ribot.  "Now if it
were Henriette----"

Awaiting the girls' return, on the mantelpiece of the dining-room, with
a number of letters for Henriette was a letter from Paris for Helen.
When she opened it she forgot any twinge of suffering because her
mother had kissed Henriette on both cheeks and embraced her, while
giving the other daughter a dab on one cheek.  Helen was breathing very
hard and holding the letter so tight in her fingers that it trembled.
She had read it through twice to make quite certain that her eyes were
not deceiving her, before her cry of delight made Madame Ribot and
Henriette, who was running through her own letters to see which she
should open first, turn.

"Oh, it is good--good--good!" she repeated.  "M. Vailliant is coming to
look at my charcoals to see if I have enough for an exhibition.  If I
have that means I shall make a lot.  You're bound to, everybody says,
at one of his exhibitions."

Neither Madame Ribot nor Henriette had spoken.  They seemed startled by
the violence of her enthusiasm.

"Aren't you glad?" Helen asked, suddenly becoming very still.

"Glad!  Who should be glad if not I?" said her mother feelingly.

Henriette slipped her arm around Helen's waist.

"And I, you dear mouse, when you've worked so long and hard!  It's a
triumph," she said.

Helen nestled her head on her sister's shoulder and drew deep, long
breaths, while Madame Ribot took up the letter.

"I don't want you to be too set-up for fear you may be disappointed,"
she said.  "M. Vailliant says if there are enough to be worth while.
He is only coming to look over your work."

"Yes--yes," said Helen, sobering.  "I had the exhibition already open.
Enough and worth while!  We'll see--you will help me to decide.  I'll
bring them all down and we can go through them together.  From the way
he writes he may come to-day."

She hurried away and returned directly with the first portfolio of the
drawings which she had kept--for she had destroyed many in moments of
depression--and having laid them on the table went for another and
still another.

"I never realised that I had done so many!" she exclaimed, in amazement
at the size of the stack.

"Mère Perigord twenty times!" smiled Henriette.

Madame Ribot was appalled by the task, though she had seen and heard so
much of Helen's charcoals.  She and Henriette stood by perfunctorily,
while Helen turned severe critic.  None of them seemed good to her, as
she thought of how they would look on a wall at an exhibition, with
connoisseurs picking them to pieces.

"Oh, cusses!  I can't do it!  I never can!" she declared.  "My fate is
to wear a white cap and feed people broth and keep their temperature
chart in order!"  She slapped one Mère Perigord in the face in disgust.

"Remember," said Henriette, "that charcoal is very limited."

In the midst of the selection a limousine rolled up to the door and a
roly-poly little man, with close-cropped beard and eyes as shrewd as
Madame Ribot's own, alighted and sent in the card of "M. Vailliant, Art
Dealer."

Madame Ribot received him.  As he entered the room Henriette was
standing by the near side of the table in front of Helen, in whose
heart was great fear, any faith she might have had in her charcoals
shrivelling in his presence.  M. Vailliant bowed to both, his glance
swiftly moving about the room as if counting the number of the
scattered drawings; but to Henriette, whose beauty dominated her
surroundings, he made a particularly low bow.

"Mademoiselle, I see that you are ready for me," he said, with still
another bow to Henriette.  And Helen felt the shrivelling sensation
more deeply.

"Both my daughters are artists, and one paints," said Madame Ribot,
with the reflection of pride in the tribute which M. Vailliant had
instinctively paid to Henriette, some of whose paintings were on the
walls.  Indeed, they were everywhere about the chateau.  "I am rather
fond of this one, myself," she added, nodding toward a landscape which
faced the dealer.  It had had honourable mention at the Salon, but it
had not sold.

Looking from Henriette to the picture and then back at Henriette, the
art dealer breathed an "Ah!" in a way that implied that a place in the
Salon was the obvious one for Henriette.

"Naturally, I know of your work," he said, with another bow.

"My daughter has never had an exhibition, though she has quite enough
pictures now," went on Madame Ribot.  "There are others in the next
room.  Perhaps you would like to see them, too."

Most charming Madame Ribot was when she was interested in any purpose,
and she led the way into the room, Henriette meantime standing in the
doorway and studying M. Valliant's face.  Helen remained beside her
pile of charcoals, trying to resist the desire to fly to the fields
away from the whole business.  She could feel her heart pounding and
her temples throbbing.  When she had a glimpse of herself in the mirror
over the mantelpiece she realised that it was from herself that she
particularly wanted to escape.

"Excellent technique," M. Vailliant remarked.  "But an exhibition of
paintings--that is a great undertaking.  One of the big houses will
take you up one day and make your vogue.  There is no hurry."

"It was mother who was speaking of the exhibition, not I," said
Henriette casually.  "You came to see my sister's charcoals."

"So I did," agreed the dealer.  "Charcoals are more in keeping with the
modest pretensions of my establishment.  Quick returns and small
profits, as they say at the Bon Marché."

"You will stretch a point for her, won't you?" said Henriette, as she
drew aside to allow him to return to the other room.  "She's worked so
hard and it means so much to her."

But Helen had overheard.  A dash of red shot into her cheeks, as her
shoulders gave a nervous shrug.  The dealer looked from the beautiful
to the plain girl with that sense of contrast between the two which
Helen had felt a thousand times.

"Where do I begin?" he asked, almost perfunctorily.

Some one had told Helen that one should blow one's own trumpet to an
art dealer; that many an artist had been started on a career by making
the most of his personality.  But when she was conscious of how poor
her drawings were she could not play the herald of her own skill.  As
for personality, one must have something to start with.

"Those four I picked out for the least bad," she said, handing them to
him.

Not a sign on the dealer's face, as he looked them through, while her
temples throbbed.

"More academic than the one I had seen--better drawing, but----" he
shook his head.

The throbbing ceased.  Helen knew the truth.  There would be no
exhibition.  She felt faint; there was no heart left in her.

"And these?" asked M. Vailliant, looking at a time-coloured board on
top of a pile on a chair.

"Discarded.  They were too awful--some of them just dashed off for fun."

"Oh!"

M. Vailliant spread his legs as he bent over the pile; he puffed out
his lips and sucked them in, his only sign of emotion, as he began
separating the drawings into two piles% Then he applied the same
process to those on the table, without question or comment.  Helen did
not know what to make of him.  She was dizzy with curiosity and hope.
When he was through, still silent like some general over a war-map,
this master of artistic fate, who knew that the real master was the
public who paid his rent, made a single pile of those which he had
chosen.

"And these?"  He found he had missed some against the wall behind a
portière.

"Oh, cartoons I call them--not a bit worth while!" said Helen.
"Caricatures, perhaps.  I just did them for the sport of it."

M. Vailliant did not seem to hear her.  He went through the cartoons
twice, still keeping up that motion of his lips as if he were
alternately blowing soap bubbles and sucking in a string.

"Have you ever tried etching?" he asked.

"No.  I'd like it, but--I----" gasped Helen.

"I would if I were you," he said, so very matter-of-factly that she was
puzzled.  "Ever tried painting?"

"I--yes----" she faltered.  His shrewd eyes were looking at her sharply.

"Have you anything that you've done?"

"Yes, but it's awful--just splotches of colour.  I see colour that way.
Shall I get it?" she asked.

"Why not?  Let's see the whole shop while we are at it."

Helen ran upstairs, wondering if he were making fun of her.  Not one
word of praise had he spoken.  He had given no sign of enthusiasm.  Yet
he had asked her if she had ever tried etching and wanted to see this
painting which she drew from under a pile of clothes on the cupboard
shelf.  Well, if the great art dealer had come from Paris to see the
whole shop, then he should see it.  Let him be amused.  She did not
care.  He could not hurt her feelings; he should not see that she
minded when he told her the worst.

"Helen's painting is only for fun," Henriette was explaining to M.
Vailliant as they waited for Helen's return.  "Please don't be too
critical.  She is very sensitive."

"Oh, no.  I realise that she is not a serious painter like you,
Mademoiselle.  I thought I should like to see what ideas of colour she
had.  Why not?" M. Vailliant mused, as he picked out two from the pile
of charcoals on the table and laid them on top in a sort of bored,
add-six-and-multiply-by-four manner.

When Helen returned with her painting, a little thing of a wet shepherd
and his dog in a burst of soft, apologetic sunlight through the mist,
he took it from her with a casual nod and having set it on the
mantelpiece stepped slowly backward and resumed his lip-movements,
which he interrupted long enough to ask Helen if she had had any
lessons in painting.

"I've only watched Henriette and taken some of her colours and
splotched, as I call it," she replied almost defiantly.

But he only muttered, "Impressionistic!" between his puffs and suckings.

"Yes, that is what I should say!" put in Henriette.

"I know it!" exclaimed Helen, with an abruptness that startled him out
of his mannerism into an intense glance at her.  She was laughing, her
chin up, the regular teeth showing in a white line.  If ever eyes had
invited any critic to shoot his sharpest darts they were hers.  "And
the exhibition?" she demanded.  "Shall we hold it in the Salon itself
or at the Louvre?"

M. Vailliant opened his mouth as if he were about to say something
emotional; then rubbed his chin and stepped to one side to have another
look at the painting.

"Of course I don't think it is as good as Millet--not quite," Helen
proceeded, forcing her measure a trifle.  "Isn't it wonderful to find a
genius at Mervaux so unexpect----"  She broke off her satire helplessly.

"Quite!" said M. Vailliant, looking at her and rubbing his chin again.
"I'll put the painting on the back wall to lighten up the gallery--good
contrast, line and colour," he went on.  "This is the lot I have chosen
for the exhibition," he said, indicating the pile on the table.

"You mean it!  You mean it!"

But the smile on M. Vailliant's face told her without words that he
did; and reaching across the table, in her quick impulse, she took his
hands in hers.  He felt their pressure tighten so that his soft palms
were almost doubled over as, unheeding her mother's exclamation at the
action, she demanded:

"Do you think that I ought to go and learn to be a nurse, or can I make
my living drawing these things?"  And as suddenly as she had seized his
hands she drew away and spread out hers in an appeal: "Honest!  No nice
little phrases, but honest!"

"Nursing!" exclaimed the dealer, lifting his hands with outstretched
fingers, horror written on his face.  "Giving sick people medicine and
adjusting bandages!  You, my girl!  No!  Who ever suggested it?"

She seemed to draw nearer, though she stood motionless, such was the
intensity of her inquiry.

"A living, I mean!  I must decide!  I can't stand it any longer!"

M. Vailliant rubbed his chin again and became the business man.

"I'm willing to give you the chance," he said.  "We'll hold the
exhibition--provided there isn't war.  War!  That's the end of
everything--no art sold then.  And the news is bad, very bad to-day.
Yes, I'll give the exhibition if you will agree to terms.  Talking
business and no nonsense, now."

The terms were that he should have the disposal of all her work for
three years on the regular commission basis.  Helen agreed in a voice
that sounded hollow in her own ears.

"If there were not a prospect of war----"  He looked again at the
painting.  "Well, even if there is going to be war I'll buy these two
top drawings and the painting for a thousand francs.  Check now.  Do
you agree?"

Then M. Vailliant permitted himself to smile without rubbing his chin;
and he kept on smiling as he wrapped up the painting and the charcoals.

"I think we'll make them go," he said.  "If there isn't war I'll come
down and get the others for the show and we'll have a talk together,
young woman, about the future.  If there is war"--he gave his shoulders
a Gallic shrug.  "I go to join the colours.  Who knows?  There is only
France, then."

Leaving behind a contract and a check and a young woman still and
wide-eyed, he rode away.  Not until he was out of the grounds did he
permit himself a long-drawn breath of satisfaction, as he leaned back
on the cushions and lighted a cigarette, this cold trader in art.

"My emotion got away from me again!" he said.  "I'll never be a real
dealer if I can't control it.  Why, if you discovered a Rembrandt you
oughtn't to let on!  It didn't matter with that girl, though.  Nice
chateau.  Mother seemed well-to-do, but how eager the girl was for the
thousand francs!  One never knows.  Probably oughtn't to have mentioned
etching.  Better for her to stick to charcoals and make a vogue.  My
enthusiasm again!  Splotches of colour, as she says--not enough.  But I
think there is more to come.  As for the other's painting--faint stuff,
without soul; teacher-taught-me stuff--pouf!  But if Mlle. Helen only
had her sister's beauty I'd have a dry point of her for the exhibition,
introduce her about--surely would be a go.  But no beautiful woman can
ever paint.  Everybody admires her so much as a subjective work of art
that she can never improve in her objective art.  Why should she?  One
good thing that Mlle. Helen is so plain--no danger of her ever
marrying.  She's suffered, that's it--that's the quality you must have!
And the likeness in voice between those two girls, except when she was
laughing or became emotional.  Then she was rather attractive.  The
fire in her, her talent, shone out of her eyes and made you forget how
plain she is.  She wouldn't be so plain, either, if it weren't for the
nose.  Some enemy wished that nose on her!  Well, I made her happy.
Think of that, you hard-headed Parisian, you brought triumph for that
girl!"

Triumph was not the word to describe Helen's feelings after M.
Vailliant's departure, as in the reaction of exhaustion, which required
that she dab the moisture out of her eyes, she leaned against the wall.
Relief, joy, gratitude!  Through a mist she saw her mother and
Henriette looking at her, their strange, puzzled expression not
defined.  She grasped only the fact of them and their nearness.  All
rancour had passed out of her heart.  Her vitality surging back, she
put her arms impetuously around her mother's neck and kissed her.

"Don't choke me!" gasped Madame Ribot.

"I didn't mean to!  But I shall you, Henriette!" and she embraced her
sister, in turn.

"I should say you would!" gasped Henriette.

"I'm afraid that repose is foreign to your nature," said her mother.

"It must be," returned Helen, as she released Henriette.  "Oh, I've
been ugly to you sometimes, because I couldn't help drawing and knew I
ought to, but I'll never be again!  It's all too good.  I want to be
alone with it!"

Emancipation was the real word.  She went forth into the open air,
freed from the cage, to test her wings.  More strands of hair loosing
as she raced along, she struck the fields and through the village,
calling out to all the people she knew, but not stopping to talk, and
on up to a hilltop, where the plotted glory of the farmlands lay before
her, with the fields of grain waving gold.

A thousand francs! was her mundane thought.  She could live on that a
long time in Paris, drawing and studying.  It did not matter how plain
she was.  She might have a nose as big as a prize potato and yellow
eyes and rat teeth.  People were not going to look at her, but at her
pictures.  Her face need never hurt her again.  She did not know that
she had a face when she was drawing.  She was young, with the long span
of years stretching straight before her--straight, straight, like the
great main roads of France!  It was all clear--unless war came.  But it
could not come.  It was too hideous a thought.  The world was too
beautiful to be drenched with blood; too wise to be so foolish.

Returning homeward she thought of many things; even of that seventeenth
cousin and how she would like to do a charcoal of him.  She would,
while Henriette painted him.  With no idea of the time that had
elapsed, dust-covered, a rent in her gown from a thorn-bush, she burst
in on her mother and sister, who were halfway through dinner.

"You are a sight!" said Madame Ribot.  "Do change before you sit down!"

Upstairs in her room she looked into her mirror with a new sense of
defiance.

"Oh, you are plain, but do you think that matters?"  She held her hands
up in front of her face.  "Five fingers like everybody else and they
can hold a crayon or a brush!  Silly!"  She laughed again and the
mirror laughed back in the glorious secret of--triumph was the word,
this time.

"M. Valliant must really think highly of your charcoals," said
Henriette at table, "or he wouldn't have taken the painting."

"Yes, that was very surprising," said Madame Ribot.

"But remember I got the thousand francs!  Isn't that the proof of the
pudding from an art dealer.  I'll set up a studio in Paris, a tiny one
in a garret, and get my own meals--thrifty me!  And I'll be away from
home, mother, as much as if I were nursing--I mean, I'll be
independent, as I ought to be."

She went on talking about her plans, unconscious that Henriette and
even her mother were slightly inattentive.




CHAPTER VII

A FULL-FACE PORTRAIT

But the war did come.  It came, perhaps, to teach the foolish people of
a beautiful world how beautiful it was and how foolish they were.

Helen did not have to wait on the note from M. Vailliant to know that
there would be no exhibition.  The war had killed her little ambition,
along with millions of others.  Widespread human tragedy enveloped the
personal thought.  Some other person in some other age seemed to have
done those charcoals, which still lay stacked on the corner table in
the sitting-room.  Her thoughts went forth with the able-bodied
villagers who had left their harvests to fight for France.  Their going
was, as yet, Mervaux's only direct contact with the war.  The sky
remained the same; the sunshine was equally glorious; the shade equally
pleasant at mid-day; and Jacqueline was making equally good omelets.

What were the Ribots to do?  The girls thought that they ought to try
to help France.  Everybody ought when France was about to fight for her
life.  But Madame Ribot decided to the contrary.  She was irritated
with the war and she meant that it should trouble her as little as
possible.

"But not to be in Paris in a time like this!" protested Henriette.

"How lucky to be out of Paris!" said Madame Ribot.  "All the trains
full of soldiers, and there will be trouble about passes, General
Rousseau says."

She placed great reliance on the General.  He said that there was no
danger.  This time the tables would be turned on the Prussians.  She,
too, believed in a French victory.  It was not as it had been in '70.
The French were ready.  Where could the war disturb her as little as at
Mervaux, in the lap of the hills a mile away from the main road?

"Then I'll go, mother," said Helen.  The objections to Henriette's
going to Paris could not apply to her.

"No, we shall all stay here," Madame Ribot replied.

"But I have my thousand francs," said Helen.  "I'll run up for only two
or three days."

"No.  You would not go when I thought it best," said Madame Ribot
pettishly.  "Now when I need you, you want to go.  You were always very
contrary."

"Oh--I--forgive me!  I did not know that you thought of it in that
way--that you needed me."

"We must all be together.  I should worry about you."

"Of course you would!  I didn't think of that.  Oh, mother!"

It was something new in her mother's voice which sent her across the
room to put her arm around her mother's neck and press her own cheek
against hers.  Helen had been hungry for affection all her life, plain
girls being quite human and wanting what they do not receive.  In
answer she had a pressure of her hand which was real, and she kissed
her mother again and again on the cheek.  Perhaps her mother had always
loved her, but had not shown it.

Madame Ribot felt the tight grip of her daughter's hand with a sense of
reassurance.  There was something strong about Helen.  She would be
dependable in a crisis.

"If we stay here together and don't trouble the war, probably the war
will not trouble us," Madame Ribot continued.  It was the maxim
expressive of her temperament.

"Oh!  I hadn't thought of it in that way!" Helen gasped.

"Besides, if you went to Paris and got into trouble I should have to
come up and get you out."  She was weary of having her daughter's arm
around her neck and feeling that strange resentment against the world
which she always suffered after looking long at Helen's features.

Helen drew away, her peculiar sensitiveness conscious of the old
barrier.

Life for the next few days continued much as usual at the chateau, so
far as Madame Ribot and Henriette were concerned.  Henriette went on
painting.  But Helen could not draw.  She wandered over the fields, her
mind ever on the war.  She was with the Belgians at Liége; with the
French in Alsace.  All three wondered, as the time approached, if the
seventeenth cousin would come to Mervaux.

"Hardly," said Henriette.

"But I think he will," said Helen.

"Why should he?  It's war time."

"Yes, why?" repeated Helen, with a searching look at Henriette, who
lowered her eyes in a way that her sister well understood.  Many young
men had come to Mervaux for the same reason.  Many had gone away trying
to conceal their dejection.  Henriette had enjoyed the visits, but not
more than Madame Ribot who, looking on, lived over her own successes.

"Henriette does not know yet what it means to fall in love," thought
her mother.  "I hope that she will not for a few years more.  A woman
may do that only once.  And Helen had not fallen in love, either.  Poor
Helen!"  At intervals she could be sorry for herself by being sorry for
Helen.

It was no surprise to her that the war did not keep the seventeenth
cousin away from Mervaux or that his note was addressed to Henriette.
As the mails were now so irregular, he wrote, he would not wait for a
reply, but would arrive on the morning of the day set, and should he
find that the war interfered with their arrangements he could return to
Paris in the afternoon.  Helen rather waited to hear that he had
included his regards to her, but Henriette made no mention of it.

Phil had had a glimpse of an English home and now he was to have one of
a home in France, an intimacy which seldom falls to the lot of the
tourist.  Smiling as she knew how, a hostess with the charm of French
manner, Madame Ribot received him, taking in, without seeming to do so,
every detail, from the state of his nails to the cut of his clothes.
Her judgment of people was that of appearance and manner and position.
There were Americans who were nice and who were not nice and Englishmen
and Frenchmen who were nice and who were not nice.  She would have
preferred a nice villain to an ill-mannered saint.  For she had decided
when quite young that it was not worth while wasting one's time with
anybody who was not nice.  At the same time, she insisted that she was
not a snob and the great appeal to her of the French was their
democracy.  What she really liked about the French was their
politeness, their cooking, their novels and their art of living.  She
decided that Phil was one of the nice Americans, though she had
foreseen that he must be or Henriette would not have wanted to invite
him to Mervaux.  Helen never invited anybody.  When quite young she had
failed to distinguish between the nice and the unnice people.

The morning train from Paris to Mervaux had been taken off and the
afternoon train was late.  Henriette had met Phil at the station and
Helen was away from the house when they arrived.  After his glimpse of
armed Europe rushing to conflict, after seeing and feeling the
straining effort of the nations with every human being drawn into the
maelstrom of one emotion, he had hardly conceived it possible that
nature could have tucked away any three people in a spot so completely
sequestered from the war.

He would not have come to Mervaux if it had not been for Henriette.  He
had admitted as much to himself going down on the train.  When a man
has seen a girl for an afternoon and a morning and keeps rehearsing the
incidents of their meeting on his first holiday in Europe, he may well
look forward to seeing her again with a certain personal curiosity.
Sometimes the second impression is convincing of a temporary squint in
the eye at the time of the first.  He had remarked on the way from
Truckleford to London that he had been hit rather in the spirit of
banter; but four weeks later he was in need of disillusioning.  Though
parenthetically it may be said that he did not put the situation to
himself in such bold terms.

The stroll through the grounds of the chateau in the hour before dinner
should have brought the disillusioning process well into being.  But if
it had even started it was arrested when Henriette picked a rosebud and
fastened it in his buttonhole, an old form of illusioning or of
reinforcing an illusion which loses nothing of its charm if the young
woman be beautiful and smiles up at you when the rose is in place.

"We shall begin the portrait to-morrow, shan't we?" she asked, as they
turned leisurely back toward the house.

"You still want to do it, despite the war?  Won't it take some time?"
he said.

"No longer than if there were no war.  Mother will not let you go away
immediately.  Besides, didn't I hear you say that you could not get a
sailing for some time?  At least, we can make a start."

"I'm quite ready," he agreed.  He was ready, even if the portrait took
much longer than expected.

"And I keen to begin, painter fashion, when I have a subject that I
enjoy.  Then the likeness to the ancestor--you see, the Sanfords very
much want one of you to hang opposite the ancestor's.  I promised it to
them and I thought I'd make a copy of the ancestor to send to your
father.  Would you like it?  Would he?  We cousins when we are
seventeenth through such a grand old ancestor must stand together."

Phil tried to find words of acceptance adequate to the offer.

"The favour is really on my side; it's an opportunity," she pursued.

He was conscious that she was looking intently at his profile, and when
he glanced toward her she lowered her long lashes and raised her hand
to brush back a strand of hair which was really not much out of place.
Then she looked back at him thoughtfully, as one who had been engrossed
in a problem.

"I'm not sure but a profile one would be better," she said.

"I thought we had settled that point," he parried.

"It would make you different from the ancestor."

"That's an advantage, but----"

"Well----"

"Can't you make it full face?  The ancestor's not quite that."

They had stopped and were looking directly at each other in the
enjoyment of this verbal fencing.

"As you are now?" she suggested.

"Exactly!"

"I think it would be excellent," she admitted, after a pause of further
thoughtful observation, squinting her eyes ever so little, then opening
them wide as she passed final judgment.

"Good!  It's so much more companionable."

"Yes, we can talk as I paint."

"Which is bound to give the subject life!" he concluded, as they
started on.

"And the painter, too," she added.

As they drew near the house he saw Helen standing in the doorway.  She
seemed not to see him, but bent down to pull some burrs off her gown
and then ran her hand with a sweeping motion across her forehead.  She
had watched the scene between Henriette and Philip on the walk and to
her it had the familiarity of an habitual process of the life of her
family.  It was not the first time that she had had to greet a guest
who accepted her only because she was Henriette's sister.

Her self-consciousness was not minimised by her disarray after her
walk, though its depths were in the recollection of her tempers at
Truckleford and her absurd action about the portrait and of having
yielded to tears in her room, all as part of some strange influence
which she could not understand.  Without calling to him she advanced,
with something of the manner of a culprit who expects reproof.

"We are glad to see you at Mervaux," she said, holding out her hand.

Phil was reminded with a start almost of fresh discovery how like
Henriette's was Helen's voice.  But her face, without a sign of
expression, seemed characterless.  How could this girl belong to the
same family as Henriette and the well-groomed mother?  At the same time
he felt a certain pity for her.  She excited his curiosity in that
awkward moment of silence after she had spoken her set phrase of
welcome.

"You look tired, Helen.  You have walked too far," said Henriette,
solicitously slipping her arm in her sister's.

This, too, was as something foreseen by Helen; the next speech in the
play.  She was unresponsive at first, her own arms hanging by her side.
Then spasmodically, as one who comes out of a fit of absent-mindedness,
she raised her hand and pressed it over Henriette's against her waist,
a look as for pardon in her eyes.  It was not for Phil to note all the
little signs that count.  He had looked away from Helen to Henriette.

"Some of your pictures?" he said to Henriette when they entered the
house, nodding toward the walls.

"Yes.  Mother insists on a permanent exhibition," she replied
deprecatingly.

He went from one to another, admiring, listening to her comments, and
when they had been through the rooms he turned to her, saying:

"It's very wonderful to me.  I stand a little in awe of you--you who
have been in the Salon.  I have great luck in cousins and I am luckier
still in having an invitation to Mervaux."

She had not expected him to speak of the pictures in any critical
fashion.  How could he know anything about art?  She liked his simple
attitude.  It was always more satisfactory than that of those who
pretended to know and did not.

"And it's time for me to dress for dinner," she said, "though you need
not hurry.  Dinner at eight."

He had not thought of Helen while he had been looking at the pictures.
After Henriette had gone he saw Helen huddled in the depths of a big
chair in a corner half hidden by the open door, reading.  With the
brilliant light of Henriette departed, smaller lights became visible.
Helen also was his cousin.  But he felt a peculiar awkwardness in
speaking to her.  He was even afraid that one of her tempers might
break on him.  He hesitated, as he thought of something to say, and his
glance fell on the pile of charcoal drawings on the side table.

"Are those your drawings?" he asked.

"I plead guilty," she responded equivocally.

"May I look?"

"Of course.  Please do, if you would like to," she said.  "They explain
themselves," she added, without rising, "and it's at your own risk."

He took up one of the drawings.

"But I think it corking!"

"Honestly?" she asked.  "Let me see which one it is!"  She sprang up
and looked over his shoulder, suddenly changed into a being of glowing
vitality.




CHAPTER VIII

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 _vivandiére_?  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 Liége?"

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.




CHAPTER IX

A MESSAGE FROM ALSACE

Quite a sensational thing happened in the Ribot household.  Usually
Madame Ribot had breakfast in her room and about ten went for a walk in
the garden.  The morning after Phil's arrival she was on hand to pour
coffee in the dining-room and to serve one of Jacqueline's omelets.

"Mother, this is epochal!" said Henriette.

"An inspiration!" said Madame Ribot, who could never be accused of the
hypocrisy of feigning strenuosity.  She was a frank advocate of repose
and it had not deserted her even with this departure from custom.  "I
did it for our seventeenth cousin.  I want him to feel at home."

She liked the seventeenth cousin.  He was good-looking; he had good
manners.  His American quality appealed to her French quality.  She
would have liked to show him to her friends as a seventeenth cousin,
which would have been proof of the quality of her own origin on the
American side.

"You are to stay as long as you please," she went on.  "If Longfield is
your American home and Truckleford your English home, then Mervaux is
your French."

"Not as long as I please," Phil replied.  "One must have a sense of
self-denial."

"Very well said," she countered.  It was worth while coming down to
breakfast to hear him say it.  "Perhaps I shall insist that it be as
long as the hostess pleases.  What then?"

Yes, what would he say to that?  Her shrewd eyes reflected a teasing
spark which when she was young must have been as effectual as
Henriette's.

"But I might not know the signs," he said, "and mistake my pleasure for
yours."

"I should tell you."

"Does that mean that you think I should have to be told?"  He was
enjoying this play of words as much as she.

"No, not you, cousin.  You are the kind to whom one would always hate
to say _au revoir_ and could never say good-bye."

"This is almost a flirtation," said Henriette.  "At least he must stay
till the portrait is finished.  We shall start at once."

"I begin to feel awfully stuck on myself, as we say at home!" said
Phil.  "Do I sit for both portraits at the same time?" he asked,
turning to Helen.

Henriette also looked at her sister rather quickly.  Helen's eyes
smiled above her coffee cup, which hid the lump of nose; they, too, had
a teasing spark.

"No," she replied.  "Oils take much longer than charcoal.  Let
Henriette get started before I butt in.  Isn't that it--butt in?"

"Yes, the correct American for your meaning--though a little archaic
now--but not for mine," he said.  "I'm ready for all the artists.  Let
them come."

"Not this morning," Helen concluded.

She had already put on her sun hat and gone when Madame Ribot smilingly
from the doorway watched Henriette and Phil, her easel under his arm,
going up the path.  The bordering trees of the little estate were on a
terrace which gave a broad view.  Here Henriette set up her easel and
put Phil in a rustic chair in the position that pleased her, his only
condition that he sit facing so he could watch her at work being
granted.  She was the real picture to him; the one that made it worth
while to pose.  He could look past her over the fields rolling away to
the horizon, with the rows of trees of the main road marching across
the foreground.

Human specks dotted the fields, women, old men, and boys who had been
at work since dawn harvesting the grain, since the able-bodied men were
away at war.  A figure which he recognised approached a nearby group.
The bent backs straightened.  Faintly he could hear their voices as
they passed the time of day, and then a laugh all round as Helen became
one of them in effort as well as in spirit, raking and binding the
sheaves.

For the time being he said nothing about it to Henriette, but
occasionally his glance stole away from her toward Helen, who kept on
with her labour.  The breeze carried her voice and laugh, which was
like a rich echo of Henrietta's, and at length he heard her singing a
French song, in which the other workers joined.  Time passed rapidly
watching the figures in the field and Henriette--too rapidly.

"We are started, though there is nothing to see," said Henriette
finally.  "We will rest till after luncheon."

The peasants, too, had stopped work.  They were seating themselves on
the sheaves or sprawling on the hard, dry, yellow stubble for their
mid-day meal.  He heard them laugh at some sally of Helen's before she
started across the field toward where he was sitting.  Flushed from the
sun and exercise, she cried out, as she approached:

"They say I do it like a veteran!  It was great fun--and I was helping
France!"

Phil had been envying her the exercise and told her so.

"There's room for volunteers," she suggested.  And she looked at him
and then at Henriette.  "I dare you both to come out there this
afternoon!" she added.

"Done--if your sister will let me off!  Will you?"

Henriette shot one of her quick glances at Helen.

"Perhaps you will volunteer, too," Helen parried.

"Why not?  I'm game!" Henriette replied.

"Good!  It's the best way of helping that I know.  They are very hard
pressed to get the grain cut before it is overripe.  It will be
straight sickling this afternoon on the Pigou patch.  Poor Madame
Pigou's son is at the front and she has only Jean who is but ten to
help, and she's too poor to hire a reaper."

When Madame Ribot heard the plan she smiled and nodded approval,
reminding Henriette that she must wear gloves in order not to blister
her hands.  She herself, under her parasol, walked out to see them
begin.

Madame Pigou, with deep wrinkles around her kindly mouth and hands
already stiffened by labour at forty, protested at first.

"Such work is not for you," she said to Henriette.  "Nothing takes it
out of your back more than sickling, unless it's hoeing."

"Oh, none of us expects to be as adept as you," replied Henriette, "or
as Helen, who has a natural talent for such things."

"Mademoiselle Helene," said Madame Pigou, with an affectionate smile of
fellowship at Helen, "is one of us.  Thank you all--thank you for the
sake of Armand.  I shall write him how you helped," she added.

"Mind that you don't overdo!" Madame Ribot warned Henriette as she
started back to the chateau.

Henriette did not overdo.  With skirt tucked above her slim ankles and
an old pair of gloves up to her elbows, she used her sickle much as she
had her brush, cutting her small swaths handily after she had learned
the trick and often stopping to deride her own efforts or to boast of
them very merrily, holding the attention of every one on herself.  It
was no cross to her that she did not keep up with the others.  Madame
Pigou complimented her for another reason.  It was wonderful that
Henriette should cut even a single sheaf; the condescension of a
beautiful princess who used a real trowel and some real mortar in
laying the cornerstone of a public building.

Helen, humming snatches of song, kept her swath even with Madame Pigou.
Her plain features as she bent to her work seemed in keeping with it.
There was truth in Madame Pigou's saying that she was "one of us."  But
Madame did not set a fast pace, for she saw that Helen meant to hold
her own.

When Phil had finished a swath he turned and cut toward Henriette in
hers, and thus they met face to face as he nipped the last straws from
in front of her sickle; her face flushed, too, with exercise, as they
both stood erect, he with head bare, his sleeves rolled, drawing a deep
breath and stretching his supple, square shoulders.

Helen pausing to rest had a glimpse of him thus; and it occurred to her
how he must have looked far away in the Southwest when he was directing
the workmen in railroad-building.  Then she sent the sharp knife
athwart the bundle of straws that she had gathered in her hand.

"A good, straight man!" whispered Madame Pigou.  "He knows how to work."

"So I was thinking," murmured Helen absently.  Then, a sheaf finished,
she looked up again to see them standing in quite the same position of
confidential comradeship.  "Cousin, more praise!" she called, and
repeated in English what Madame Pigou had said of him.

"A real compliment, this!" he replied.

"And tell him that he should put on a hat," said Madame Pigou.  "The
sun is hot."

"Not so.  Not to me.  I like it.  I play tennis in August bare-headed."

"The Americans stand the sun better than we," said Madame Pigou.

"But he is not an Indian.  He is white," Helen explained.  "American
summers are hotter."

For Madame thought that most of the population of the States were
Indians.  Phil caught what she was saying.

"A white Indian, but not savage!" he called.

It had all been as good as play to young Jean, watching these grand
people from the chateau reaping, until a distant sound on the road
attracted his attention.  It was the faint tramp of men and the rumble
of guns.  As the head of a column of infantry appeared past the screen
of a stretch of woodland, he cried out, "Soldiers!" and ran.

The cry was taken up far and near over the fields.  Most of the
harvesters started toward the road and with them went Henriette and
Helen and Phil.  But not Madame Pigou.  She stood watching the figures
all of a pattern in their uniforms, moving like automatons sharp cut
against the skyline, and then bent to her work.  Her son could not be
among these battalions.  She knew that he was in Alsace.  Buxom peasant
girls and toothless old men and women standing by the roadside called
out the joyful God-speed of their hearts to the soldiers of France.

The men in their red trousers and blue coats knew nothing of where they
were going; and the gunners astride their horses and seated on the
gun-carriages and caissons looked as if they did not care, if only
action soon came.  Still they kept coming, that myriad-legged, human
caterpillar, its convolutions following the grade of the road in either
direction to the horizon.  It seemed a creature of irresistible
man-power and still coming, when the cousins started back to their
field.

"They are between us and the Germans, those brave fellows!" said Madame
Pigou, her features in a transport of joy, with a long look toward the
moving blue silhouettes sharpened now by the low sun.  What more was
there to say?

"I hope we shall not see them driven back," Helen whispered in English.

She took the lead in insisting that Madame Pigou stop work.  If she did
not, they would not help her to-morrow.  They walked back to the
village with her.

"In America the women do not work in the fields," Phil managed to say
in French.

"What do they do?" asked Madame Pigou.  "Ah, I understand.  They are
all rich."

Jean who had gone ahead came running toward them with a letter which
the postman had left during the day at the cottage.  There was an
inarticulate explosion of breath from Helen.  She had recognised the
nature of the letter, though the peasant woman had not.

"The first in our village!" Helen whispered to Phil.

He understood her meaning.  How could they ease the blow for the mother
was their thought, as her calloused fingers tore open the envelope?
There was no way.  They had to watch it fall.

"Dead on the field of honour!" she repeated to herself.  She half
closed her eyes as silently she adjusted herself to fate's decree, then
folded the message and placed it in her bosom.  "It is for France!  It
is war!" she said, this woman of a race that knows well what war is and
what it brings.  "Jean, you must be my man, now.  Armand is dead!"

Jean, hoarse from cheering the battalion on the road, nestled against
his mother.

"Thank you for helping me!" she said simply, turning to the others.

Her stoicism seemed to have its roots in the soil itself, tilled and
fought for by centuries of ancestors.  But the suppressed suffering in
her eyes as she spoke had brought the war nearer to Mervaux than the
throb of marching infantry and the thunder of guns and nearer to Phil
than anything he had seen or felt before.

"Letters of that kind are dropping all over France," said Helen, when
she described the incident to her mother.

"Don't!" said Madame Ribot.  "Don't let us dwell upon it!"

So it was not mentioned at dinner.  Yet though the food was equally
good, Madame Ribot equally genial and Henriette equally sparkling, none
could help thinking of Madame Pigou; and the fact of that column on the
way to the front brought a suggestion of possibilities.

"Remember that you are to remain as long as you please," said Madame
Ribot to Phil as she bade him good-night.  "I feel some way that--well,
you give us a sense of security."




CHAPTER X

THE VOICE AT HIS ELBOW

Why no more news of the brilliant advance into Alsace?  What meant the
official silence about Mulhausen and Liége?  At Mervaux they read the
papers no less helplessly than elsewhere.

The three cousins assisted Madame Pigou in finishing her harvest.  No
more soldiers passed along the road; Henriette went on with her
painting, and Helen was absent on other missions.  Phil was drifting
and he found drifting pleasant, though it was carrying him onto the
rocks.

"I ought to go or I'll be hit for good!" he thought, in moments of
sanity.

Seventeenth cousinship was all very well, but he had better face the
facts.  He was a young man who had to earn his own living three
thousand miles away; and here was a young woman in a chateau forty
miles from Paris who had been bred in French ways.  He saw only
Henriette; he lived Henriette; and Madame Ribot who watched him
realised better than he how serious was his case.  But how could he go
with the portrait unfinished?  How could he go when he did not want to
go; when he was perfectly willing to allow Henriette to go on for
months painting his portrait?

Sometimes Helen broke her rule of leaving the two to themselves, to
come and stand for a while and watch her sister at work.  Phil grew
rather to resent her presence on such occasions, for she was usually
silent and Henriette became silent, too, as if under restraint.  A fear
that he had shown signs of regarding Helen as an intruder led him to
remind her one morning at breakfast that she had not yet kept her
promise to make a charcoal portrait as a companion to Henriette's
painting to take back to Longfield.  He realised that the suggestion
was consummate egoism as soon as he had made it; the more so as she
received it with a naïve, baffling surprise.

"You have forgotten it!" he said.

"Almost," she replied thoughtfully.  "You are very polite."

For an instant she regarded him with fixed inquiry; then out of the
depths of her eyes he saw the mischief bubbling forth as it had when
she held the mirror up to him across the table at Truckleford.  In that
mood he knew that he must expect any unconventional sally.

"Portraits which please a father and mother proud of a handsome son are
not exactly in my line," she said.  "I like wrinkles and irregular
features.  It's a sort of specialism with me to pick out these as the
salient points.  There's no telling what I might do with you."

"Of course, Helen's forte is caricature," Henriette explained.  "I
quite understand her reasons"--she paused, lowering her head and
looking at Phil through her lashes, daring a thrust--"after having
spent days with your features."

"Not to mention that I have spent days with yours!" he thrust back.

"The penalty of not having had a profile view!"

"It is I who am to make the profile--I had forgotten that," said Helen.
"We'll do it this morning.  I feel in the mood."

He was not long in doubt as to the nature of the mood.  It was an
abandon of fanciful humour.

"Mind, you are not to look around at me, but at Henriette!" she said
warningly, as they went up the path.  "I'm strictly unofficial."

He had hardly settled himself in his pose when she broke out laughing.
He looked around inquiringly.

"You are breaking the rules!" she cried.  "Remember, you got yourself
into this and you must play the game.  I'm making a profile."

"I can't help it, can I, because I am so fond of myself that I want
more and more pictures of myself?" he complained quizzically.  "Posing
may yet become a disease with me."

"You will be crying too much cousin as well as too much ancestor," said
Henriette, entering into the spirit of the occasion.  He was at their
mercy.

"It's the third degree of cousinship!" he said.

What would the class of 1911, let alone P. O'Brien, the foreman of the
construction gang at Las Palmas, say if they saw him now?  P. O'Brien,
at least, would not call it "a man's job."  There were two voices in
his ears: one from lips he could not see and the other from those he
could.

Leisurely, Henriette mixed her colours, inclining her head this way and
that as she did when she looked at her hair in the mirror.  Then the
graceful arm rose and the slim fingers, holding the brush daintily, put
a dab on the canvas.

"Did you wear spurs?" asked the voice of the unseen person.

"What?"

"Don't look around!  I mean, did you wear spurs when you were in the
Southwest?  Of course you did, hugeous Spanish spurs and an enormous
sombrero and woolly sheepskin trousers."

"As you say!" Phil replied.

"You see, I am doing cartoons of our hero's life," Helen explained.
"Here he is as he saw himself and the Rocky Mountains when he first
arrived, with his college diploma under his arm."

Only lines of hieroglyphic simplicity, and Phil in enormous spurs and
sombrero, with a great roll of parchment under his arm, was looking
down on some ant-hills.  Only lines, but the nose and the chin under
the sombrero's were unmistakably Phil's.

"Now, as our hero sees himself roping his first steer--and as he really
was!" she went on.  "We are all for realism."

A Phil with one arm akimbo, who roped the steer with his thumb and
little finger holding a thread, was followed in the next scene by a
Phil fluttering heaven high and a steer romping across the prairie.

"What next in the hero's progress?" she continued.  "Undaunted, he goes
on his way, our _conquistadore_--is that the right word in Spanish,
cousin?"

"Yes," admitted Phil, who could not see the drawings or confess his
curiosity about them.

Henriette went on painting, with intermissions when she lowered her
head behind the easel to hide her amusement, perhaps, and others when
she murmured an apology for Helen; but she was charming all the time.

"Yes, I have it!" said Helen.  "He saves pretty Pepita, the stern, old
governor's daughter, from the revolutionista bandittistas--copyright
reserved, plot perfectly original.  But how does he save Pepita?  With
one fell glance of his eye?"

Phil moved a trifle restlessly, but said nothing.

"No, there are too many revolutionistas!  He might subdue four or five,
but not all of them--not even he, particularly when he has left his
college diploma in his tent--and the dark Spanish girl must be saved.
It shall be six-shooters--big six-shooters!  'Tis done!"

Phil was seeing Henriette's face and hearing a voice like Henriette's,
but with a richness, a variety of tonal range, and a whimsicality and
infectiousness which hers lacked.  It went perfectly with Henriette's
smile at times, for she was enjoying the situation.

"Our hero triumphs!" Helen continued.  "He restores the beautiful belle
to her true lover, but with rare nobility of soul hides the mortal
wound which her eyes have given him.  For she is not for him.  Now he
starts for home to found some more American colleges and foreign
missions, his pockets bulging with gold--thus--home to his first love,
the girl in the kitchen at Longfield who makes strawberry shortcakes.
Here he eats a strawberry shortcake as big as a mountain.  Yet another
transition--he is in Europe.  Majestic he sits and the little cousins
look up at him and worship this Gibson man from the United States of
Amerikee.  Thus he and thus the little cousins!  This is triumph,
indeed!  Now our story is told.  We depart."

"Wait!" cried Phil, springing up.  "For what I have suffered I want to
see the result."

He faced a Helen shaking with laughter, teasing, delightful, in its
spontaneous ring.  Every fibre in her body seemed to be laughing.  She
would not have been unattractive then, even had her nose been lumpier
than it was.

"It will be painful, I warn you!" she said.  He was looking over her
shoulder.  "How do you like the local colour?  I put in one cactus for
that."

"That is enough for Mexico," he agreed.  "And may I have them?  Father
will double up when he sees them and Jane will roar."

"I was doing them to make myself laugh," she said soberly, turning her
head.  He caught a gleam from her eyes baffling in its brightness, as a
sharp sunbeam through a lattice.  "If they make other people laugh, so
much to the good in war time."

"Which means that I may have them?"

"Yes.  But I have yet to make my charcoal of you; so back to your pose,
please.  This is a serious business."

He recognised that it was by the unattractive way that she drew down
her lips as she ceased smiling.  A serious business!  Though he did not
look at her, he could feel her presence; the intensity that she put
into her work.  He could hear the "Oh, cusses!" muttered under her
breath, which were only interjections in the course of series of
questions and comments, jumping from Longfield and back again.  He
found himself interested in answering.  He betrayed his enthusiasms,
his ambitions, and his love for his country, which was as simple and as
inherent as that of the peasants in the fields for their France.

"America is to-morrow!" he said.

This voice of the girl unseen had transformed him from the atmosphere
of cartoons to that of a fine reality.  He was speaking better than he
knew and answering Helen's questions to the enchanting face of
Henriette who, in her rapt listening while her brush was still, urged
him on no less by her smile and charm than Helen with her voice of
emotion.

"America is to-morrow!" repeated Helen.  "I like that thought.  You
take in all who come to give them a chance for your to-morrow;
amalgamate the prejudices that made this war.  You live for the rising
rather than the setting sun and you love your country not in a boasting
way, but in the blood.  Is that it?"

"Yes, it's in the blood after all these generations; and we want to
breed it into the blood of every newcomer."

"Even the Germans--the Huns?"

"They should cease to be Germans in America in the same way that my
ancestors gave up their European allegiance and fought in order that
the newcomers should be free from it.  If they prefer to be German, let
them stay in Germany."

The afternoon wore on as under a spell wrought unconsciously for him
with the beauty of Henriette before him and a certain magnetic force at
his elbow--which suddenly snapped as Helen said:

"I don't know--probably I'll never do it any better!  Thank you!"

By this he understood that the drawing was finished.  He rose as one
will when the end of an incident impels physical release.

"Enough for to-day!" said Henriette, a touch of sharpness in her voice
as she rose, too.

Helen looked exhausted and numb.  She had put all her vitality into a
sheet of cardboard.

"You, too, Henriette!" exclaimed Phil, as he looked at the result.

At the bottom of the drawing of Henriette, with arm uplifted as about
to lay brush to canvas, and of himself in the pose which Helen had
arranged, was scrawled, "Seventeenth cousins."  Both Henriette and Phil
flushed, and Helen looked from one face to the other lingeringly,
keenly.  She had caught the grace and charm of her sister as something
inviting, vivid and finished as art itself, and the note of the man was
of a downright simplicity of clear profile which seemed to see nothing
except the face before him.

"You think it bad!" said Helen.  "It is--it is!  But I warned you that
I can't do anything but put the person as I see him into line."

In the resulting impulse, which had a certain desperation about it, she
grasped the edge of the cardboard in both hands to tear it in two.

"No!" said Henriette peremptorily.  "I never liked anything you have
done better."

"But I'm used to tearing up things when they displease me!" persisted
Helen stubbornly.

"At least, wait!" remonstrated Phil.  "It is wonderful of Henriette."

"And of you, cousin!" said Henriette.

Phil took the picture from Helen's hands, which now released it in the
relaxation of philosophical disinterestedness.  What he saw was a man
in love with a woman at an easel, and the man was himself.  The truth
hit him fairly between the eyes.

"Sometimes I don't know what comes out in my own pictures till I look
at them a second time--and this is not so bad for me.  Have it if you
want it," Helen added, as she bent to pick up her drawing materials,
"and I'll go and wash my smudgy hands."  Rather hurriedly, as if some
one or something were pursuing her, she went toward the house.

In a quandary Phil watched her out of sight.  When he turned again to
Henriette her back was toward him and she was taking her canvas off the
easel.  How like was her figure to the one which had disappeared under
the trees!

"Helen has a distinct gift, hasn't she?" Henriette remarked.

"Yes, and a distinct character," Phil replied thoughtfully.

"A touch of melancholy.  Even mother and I never know what she will do
next."

He folded the easel and took it under one arm, carrying Helen's
charcoal under the other, while Henriette carried the portrait, and
they started slowly back to the house.

"It was wonderful what you said about America," she said, looking at
him with appealing seriousness.

"Why?" he asked.

"It was a breath of the real America," she answered.  "I've fallen into
the provincial French view.  America is to-morrow!  I like that.
You've made me feel the call of America; aroused the dormant American
corpuscles in my blood," she continued, gazing thoughtfully at the path
and then up at him.  "I want to go to America.  I'd like to see those
Rocky Mountains and I'd like to pay a return visit from Mervaux to
Longfield."

"You would?  But you'd find it quiet--little to do."

"Is there much to do at Mervaux?  Shouldn't I have my painting?  My
American corpuscles would make me feel at home."

She had carried him a stage farther on his course, dispelling the
doubts which had occurred to him as a warning to pause.

"I--I----" he began.  His throat seemed out of order; he was
stuttering.  Madame Ribot's call from the doorway of the house came as
a mixture of relief and unwelcome interruption.

"Somebody will be late for dinner if they do not hurry," said Madame
Ribot.  "And the news is not good.  Even Count de la Grange, who has
just been here, admits that it is not.  However, he doesn't think that
anything will happen to disturb us here."




CHAPTER XI

SHE SAID, "YES!"

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!




CHAPTER XII

THE GUNS SPEAK

Was the war making her mad?  Her "Yes!" was repeating itself in Helen's
ears in a haunting, beating refrain as she hurried toward the house.
She had played a lie; she had made a mockery of a man in his most
serious mood!  She had accepted an offer of marriage in Henriette's
name!  How was she to explain?  What was she to do?  With every turn of
her groping flashes of thought for some solution, the wickedness and
agony of her situation grew worse.

In the doorway she met Henriette just coming out.  Helen drew back as
if she had been struck, cowed, her cheeks burning, her lips twitching,
her eyes dull as with torture before an accuser.  Henriette could only
surmise that some accident had happened.

"What is it?  Why don't you speak?" she demanded.

Henriette was going out into the garden and Phil might come to her with
the words, "Don't forget; you said yes!" precipitating an awkward
crisis.  The force which he had put into his words was proof that he
was no faint-hearted lover.

"Why don't you speak?  You look as if you had seen ghosts!" Henriette
persisted.

Helen's way of mending the error of one impulse had ever been with
another impulse.

"Not here!" she gasped.  "In my room!  Yes, Henriette, you must know!"

When they were in the room and Helen, haggard and choking, faced
Henriette, calm and wondering, the contrast between the two was at a
climax.  Something like appeal for sympathy appeared in Helen's eyes as
she struggled for a beginning.  Then without beginning she broke into
laughter, which was prolonged until she was forced to wipe her eyes.

"Well, I hope you have not gone out of your head!" said Henriette.  "I
refuse to see the fun of the thing until I know what it is."

Laughter had pointed the way for Helen.

"It would be funny if it were not so awful," she said.  Between laughs,
hectic laughs, she told the story of what had happened under the tree.
"The joke was too good, shameful as it was.  I couldn't help it.  I
said only a few words and looking the other way--it was so dark--he
mistook my voice for yours--and what is to be done now?"

Henriette's eyes were narrow slits, become like her mother's, and her
lips tightly compressed made her mouth a short gash and drew down her
nose till the cartilage of the thin bridge showed white.

"Yes, what to do!" she said icily.  "Why do you come to me?"

"I--I don't know," Helen answered.

"Oh!" said Henriette.

Helen tried to smile, but it was a poor effort.

"I couldn't resist the temptation.  Don't you see, Henriette?  It's the
knot in my brain, I suppose."

"But, I repeat, why do you come to me?"

Helen was in an agony of confusion under her sister's glare.

"I thought you'd like to know what he did intend for you--I----"

"Leave my affairs to me!"

"It was only one of my foolish impulses, Henriette!"

Confined anger flashing rage from Henriette's eyes carried her forward
a step.  A storm burst on Helen's head.

"Impulses!" exclaimed Henriette.  "Not that--spite!  Yes, and jealousy
and sour grapes and stolen goods!  You wanted to know what it was like
to have a man make love to you!  You could not resist the novelty, the
temptation.  Am I to blame because I am good-looking and you are not?
Because I have money?  He thought it was my voice, you say.  How do you
think it makes me feel to have a sister with a voice like mine always
with me?  Humble as a mouse and as cunning, pretending to efface
yourself, working in the fields with the peasants, the plain girl who
cannot afford good clothes, and your very unpretentious charcoals--yes,
you know your part!  Cunning and spite, that is it, and jealous of my
work--and always with me--I----"

The upshot of Henriette's anger was a blow on Helen's cheek, so sharp
that she staggered under it; but it was the least of the blows she had
received in that revelation of her sister's feeling.

"I'll not engage in a boxing match with you, Henriette," she said
coolly, after two or three hard swallows.  "If I do appear that way to
other people it's time I knew it.  Perhaps there is a little truth in
it.  I'm a woman, yes.  I should like to be good-looking--at least, not
as plain as I am.  It does hurt me that I have such a kill-joy of a
face."

"If I were as plain as you I'd accept the fact and be a nurse or
something.  Anyway, I'd try to make the best of it by----"

"Try to make myself as attractive as possible, you mean."

"Oh, you don't neglect that!  You've found out that you are least
unattractive when you grin and laugh.  One may try to overdo that and
be silly."

A faint and peculiar smile twitched Helen's lips, and sad, too.

"I've tried to avoid that temptation.  I remembered the fable about the
donkey who tried to caper and the old saw about seeing yourself as
others see you."

"It's time!" said Henriette mercilessly; but her features had resumed
their calm.

"I am going away, Henriette," Helen went on, "and if you will wait I'll
find Cousin Phil and confess the trick that I played.  That is what I
should have done at once."

"Suppose that I saved you the humiliation--and it must be humiliation
even to such a practical joker as you," Henriette replied, smiling now.
"Suppose that I let it stand that he has proposed to me and I have
accepted?"

"Henriette!"  Helen put accusation into the word.

"Well!"

"That will mean that you have agreed to be his wife--to go to America
with him!  Would you do that?"

"Perhaps he will come to Europe to live."

"That was not his expectation."

"So you have arranged the details for me, too?"

"No, I have told you all.  What I mean is that he is not like the other
men.  He is down-right and not used to such affairs.  I--I mean, his
heartbreak might last."

"By which you imply that I am a flirt.  Is that it?"

"No, not that you mean to be.  But one so charming as you and so used
to attention finds it very easy to win men."

"And"--Henriette smiling quite sweetly took an excruciatingly long time
to say it--"you love him yourself.  Is that it?"

Helen was silent, her eyes downcast, feeling all the blood in her body
running to her face.  To have the question put bluntly--this question
which she had never put to herself!

"How you blush!" Henriette remarked.  "Oh, I've watched you plotting!
I know!"

Helen looked up and her glance was so steady and prolonged that
Henriette averted hers.

"No, I have not plotted.  I plot for such a purpose!  One does not know
what is in one's heart and one does not say 'no' or 'yes' if it means
lying.  I am going away, so I'll leave it to you.  He shall not know
that it was not you."

"On the contrary, on thinking it out I've concluded to win my own
proposals--I think I'm capable of it," she smiled charmingly, "and not
to work in pairs in affairs of this kind."

"That is better," Helen agreed.  "It's more straightforward for me."

"And gives you a chance, too," said Henriette benignly.  "As it's dark,
perhaps he may take pity and elope with you to-night."

"In that case," Helen replied, with an effort at humour, "we shall be
breakfasting in Paris and not at Mervaux."

As she held the door open before starting on her errand she hesitated,
thinking that perhaps Henriette might ask forgiveness for the blow
which still stung her cheek.  But Henriette gave no sign for contrition
and Helen made no further overture.  Sturdily as a grenadier she
marched down the stairs and out into the grounds to have the agony of
her confession to Philip Sanford over as speedily as possible.  She was
suffering horribly, but the spirit of a new freedom possessed her.  She
blessed that thousand francs and uttered a silent prayer for M.
Vailliant, out there in his place among the walls of men trying to stem
the tide of invasion, in a way that would have made him feel that he
had not been an art dealer in vain.

The Rubicon was crossed, and plain girls no less than Cæsar feel
relieved after a decision which makes the path to battle clear and
chooses the enemy.  The thousand francs would take her to America.
Perhaps if M. Vailliant had liked her charcoals well enough to exhibit
them, some one in New York would take them up.  If not, well, she had
seen those enormous American papers with pages and pages of cartoons.
Might not she sell enough of her conceits to make a living?  With the
American strain in her blood she ought to be able to adapt herself to
conditions.  She recalled the saying of her old teacher: "Don't be
afraid.  Make the fight.  Crusts earned by pot-boilers taste sweet if
true art is in your heart."

She felt a new strength in her limbs; the very breaths in her lungs
going deeper, as true warriors' must when they cross the Rubicon.  But
ahead of her was a duty which was humiliation in every fibre for any
woman; yes, the more so the plainer she was.  For she was a woman,
quite full grown; she thought of herself in this way for the first time.

Her courage was screwed to the sticking point until she reached the
terrace and, on the spot where that afternoon she had drawn cartoons of
jest and the true picture of him and Henriette, saw Phil standing, his
figure outlined in the rays of the moon which had at last freed itself
of obscuring clouds.  She stopped, numb, cold.  Then she drew a deep
breath, drove her fingers into her palms, and Phil turned at the sound
of a merry "Hello!" to see Helen before him, laughing softly as she had
over her work in the afternoon.  She hurried her speech, with
interludes of laughter which asked for forgiveness.

"You know how mischievous I am--and--well--mind, I'll keep the secret,
and my voice is like Henriette's and my figure, too, they say--and when
you began to--well, to be eloquent to me on the bench, taking me for
Henriette, I couldn't resist.  I--I'm ashamed, but it was such a
joke--I couldn't help it!" she finished with a peal of laughter.

He had guessed the truth before she came to the climax and he rose to
his part in answering laughter; lame, but still it was laughter, for
which she thanked him from her heart and brain, now giddy with relief.

"The joke is on me!" he agreed.

"It was wicked--there isn't the slightest excuse!" she proceeded.

"Personally, I don't see how you could have resisted it," he said.
"Honestly not."

"It's--it's awfully good of you!" she replied.  "I don't feel quite so
shameful now that you take it that way.  You're a brick!"

She was pleased with the way that she was carrying it out, thanks to
having crossed the Rubicon and put all illusions behind her.

"Acting for Henriette, I believe that you said yes," he resumed
quizzically.

Laughter was the cue here, too.  She was prompt with it.

"Did I?  You were so eloquent I thought that I ought, instead of
spoiling the play.  It was the quickest way.  I was getting embarrassed
with my own joke."

"You are a brick, too, my seventeenth cousin!" he said.  "No harm done,
as you have told nobody else."

"Oh, but I have!" She could not help letting the truth go.  "I told
Henriette."

"Oh!"  Phil was thoughtful.  "What did she say?"

"To tell you--that is--I mean, the sense of it--that she was not acting
by proxy in such matters."

"Naturally not," he replied.  "However, she knows," he concluded.

"All's well that ends well," said Helen.

"Yes."

It was on her tongue's end to tell him of her resolution to go to
America, but she changed her mind instantly and finally.  She would not
ask his help, not after this affair under the tree.  And she would
start to-morrow.  She would not, could not, spend another day at
Mervaux.  The resolution had occupied her in a moment of silence.
Awakening from it, she saw that he had turned as one drawn by something
of intense interest and was gazing out across the fields.  Far away on
the horizon was a flash and another flash and then many flashes.  It
was like sheet lightning.

"There must be a storm in the distance!" she exclaimed.

"Listen!" he said sharply.

From that direction came a sound like thunder, yet not like thunder,
for its dull peals had a booming regularity.

"And there--where my finger points!"

She stepped a little behind him and looked along his arm.  Beyond the
fingers' end, breaking out of the mantle of night, were
one-two-three-four bright, sharp flashes in regular succession,
followed by reports, one-two-three-four.

"Listen!"

There was a rumble of wheels on the main road, mingled with the shouts
of men, very audible once one's mind was centred on it.

"The near, sharp flashes are from the French guns!  The others are the
burst of shells!  They are fighting there--there in sight of us!" Helen
exclaimed, gripping Phil's arm.  "The war has come to Mervaux!  This
will be terrible for mother!  We must be careful how we break the news
to her."

"Yes, she must go," said Phil.  "Wait!"

He was straining his eyes at something which she could net see.
Finally she made out a moving, lumpish sort of procession coming from
the road.  As it drew nearer she recognised it as a battery of guns,
which stopped behind a clump of woods in a hollow.  She heard the
commands and saw the groups of horses swing round and then go to the
rear.

"I'll speak to them.  Perhaps they can tell us what to expect," said
Phil.

"Shan't I go with you?  My French may help."

"Yes, that's so.  Shall I never forget that everybody doesn't speak
English and that only the English really understand my French?"

Together they walked across the dewy fields till an officer of the
battery flashed his electric pocket lamp in their faces, as he stepped
from among his men busy emplacing the _soixante-quinze_ for action.

"Monsieur!  What is your business here?  Who are you?" he asked.

"I am an American stopping at the chateau over there and this is my
cousin," Phil managed to say in his school French.

"His accent is not German, you will agree, _mon capitaine_!" put in
Helen.

"Nor yours, but Parisian, Mademoiselle!"  He was very polite, but the
voice was tired.  "You had better go back to the chateau and stay, lest
your purpose be misunderstood.  We are very sharp about such things in
war time."

"How is it going?"  They asked the question together; the question of
all France.

"It is not for an artilleryman to say; but if I were you and you have
the means I'd get away--not that the Germans may come here, but there
may be shell-fire.  If you remain and there is shelling, go into the
cellar.  And don't alarm the villagers.  They glut the road with their
carts."

"You are very kind.  Good luck for France!"

"For France!  _Au revoir, Monsieur_!"

The two cousins were startled by the crashes of a salvo from the
battery before they were halfway back to the chateau grounds.




CHAPTER XIII

A MATTER OF GALLANTRY

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 the _soixante-quinze_ from 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_!" the
_noblesse_ remarked 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.




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.




CHAPTER XV

HELEN ASKS A FAVOUR

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 the _préfect_ or 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.




CHAPTER XVI

A CHANGE OF PLANS

Count de la Grange was in the yard with his trap and a peasant's cart
for the baggage soon after dawn.  He was fretting a little lest his
passengers should be late, but relieved to find that the General was
absent.

"There will be a crush.  All the village knows.  Everybody is trying to
get away," he said.

Jacqueline had coffee ready and insisted that they must take it before
they started.  Madame Ribot wore a veil and had too much powder on her
face; but nothing was lacking in hers or the Count's manners.  Not
until he had helped her into the trap, and they were well started on
the way, did it occur to any one to ask where Helen was.

"She is walking to the station," said Madame Ribot, with ready ease,
"as she wanted to see some one in the village."

"It is the last train," said the Count, "but I told the station master
not to say so to the public or the station might be mobbed.  I have the
tickets.  Though I've been up all night I feel quite fresh."

"I knew that I could depend upon you, even if the General did not
come," Madame Ribot assured him.

"I wonder where the General is?" remarked the Count, confidentially
flicking the venerable horse with the whip and holding the reins in the
manner of one driving a four-in-hand.

"He had other business, I was told," said Madame Ribot casually.

At that moment, indeed, the General was concerned with whether it was
better to put a basket of carrier pigeons under his bed or in a closet
off the kitchen, and this old soldier of France was little concerned
with any rivalry with the Count or with Madame Ribot's affairs.  He had
forgotten their existence.

It was well that the Count had the tickets or he could hardly have got
past the crowd of old men and women and children and their belongings
in every kind of portmanteau or knotted in handkerchiefs, towels and
sheets, and well that he had influence with the station master which
took the party onto the platform before the others.  Places were found
in the train for Madame Ribot and Henriette to sit down, while the
Count and Phil stood, with bundles and children around their legs.

"But Helen has not come!" exclaimed Phil.

"Nor will she!" said Madame Ribot, weary and irritated.  She had not
risen before nine for many years and loathed travelling even in a
first-class compartment alone, to say nothing of the present
disgustingly crowded conditions.  "Her walking to the station was a
ruse.  She is going to remain at Mervaux to look after our things."

"Alone, with the Germans coming?" Phil demanded.  He also showed signs
of irritation to match hers.

"She begged to," Madame Ribot explained.  "Some one ought to stay, and
she said it would give her subjects for her drawings."

"A fine courage, but----"

Already the station master was ringing his bell.  Phil dragged his bag
from under the seat and sprang out onto the platform.

"I'll bring her by the next train!" he called.

"There will be no next train!" put in the Count.

"At any rate, she must not be left alone to receive the German army!"

"Perhaps she doesn't want you!" put in Henriette, rising and leaning
out of the window in protest.  "I wouldn't.  It's Helen's own idea and
I know Helen.  Come to Paris with us!"

"No, I'm going to Mervaux to see the Germans!" Phil replied promptly.

Henriette gave her mother a swift glance, then one at Phil.

"If Helen, why not I?" she exclaimed.

"But----" gasped Madame Ribot.  She half rose, put out her hand to
arrest Henriette who had taken up her own bag, but was jerked back to
her seat by the motion of the starting train.

"To Mervaux, now we've seen you safe on your way!" said Henriette.
"It's what I wanted to do all the time."

She passed her bag to Phil and held out her hand to him as he ran
beside the train.  He caught her literally in his arms as she whirled
around when she alighted, and she was smiling up into his eyes with
adventure's call in her own after she was firm on her feet, her face
close to his.

"Thank you, cousin!  Well done!" she murmured.

Madame Ribot had collapsed, her head bent, her hands drooped in her lap.

"We are off!  You need have no worries now, Madame," said the Count.
"No army can travel as fast as a railroad train."

But she did not hear him and was all unconscious of her surroundings.
Just one thing was clear in her mind: the look that Henriette had given
Phil when she made her decision.  The mother and probably she alone,
though a thousand people had looked on, would have recognised its
meaning.  The thing had come and in the way she had dreaded.  She who
had relived her youth in her daughter had seen the last chapter of her
own story reflected in the feature which she had most dreaded.  She had
flirted with many men without more than a flutter of the heart and so
had Henriette.  Then she had fallen in love suddenly, without reason,
and in headstrong insistence had married, to repent afterward.

One cause alone had sent Henriette back to Mervaux: the man who was
returning there in order that Helen should not be alone.  After all the
chances she had had and played with, Henriette, too, had acted without
reason when the impulse came.  Helen was to blame.  It was partly
jealousy with Henriette, as it had been with Madame Ribot; the desire
for conquest baffled by some humbler person.  Her daughter was "running
after" this cousin from America who had nothing to offer except
America; but so had she herself run after a man who, at least, was not
poor.

Back with Phil in face of all the proprieties which Madame Ribot held
in such esteem in her later years!  All her hopes and plans ruined!  It
was wicked, ungrateful, shameful--and due to the damnable war.  But she
had done her best for Henriette.  Why worry?  She had to live.  She had
had no sleep.  She was in a wretched state and she must look a hundred
years old.  Worry made wrinkles.  Her conscience was clear and--yes,
she had to live.  Experience was the only teacher.  Henriette would
have to repent at leisure as she herself had done.

"You arranged it all wonderfully," she said, as she looked up with one
of her choice smiles to the Count.

"Madame, the object of my service made it a delight," said the Count.

He tried to arrange the baggage to give her feet more freedom and at
the same time to keep from twitching from twinges of gout.  He felt
twice as old as Madame Ribot.

Back in his little house the General, who had decided to keep the
pigeons under his bed, felt as young as he had at Gravelotte.  Such is
the way of war.




CHAPTER XVII

UNDER FIRE

Yes, an awkward business, this, of a man and two girl cousins in a
country house.  Phil was sensible of it as he started to walk back from
the station with Henriette, carrying her bag and his own.

"We have Jacqueline," she said, as if divining what was in his mind.
"A most dependable person, Jacqueline.  Mother is quite safe and we
shall see the war.  Besides, we simply could not leave Helen alone."

Coming to the top of a rise they stopped short.  The steady thunder of
the guns became suddenly audible and against the green background of
distant woods little puffs of smoke that seemed born of nothing were
breaking and spreading into a mist which was as innocent-looking as a
fleecy cloud on a summer day.

"One cannot realise what is going on there," remarked Phil, "though we
shall if it comes to us."

"Then we go into the cellar, don't we, and wait?"

"I believe that is the rule," he said.  "You've a good spirit."

"That is easy when a woman has a man along whom she can rely upon," she
replied cheerfully.  "We have not been used to having a man at Mervaux."

When they entered the house they found that Helen was still absent.
Jacqueline did not know where she had gone.

"I suppose the first thing is to settle down again," said Henriette.

Phil took her bag upstairs.  When he returned to the sitting-room Helen
was just entering.

"You!" she exclaimed.  "I----" and she paused, no words coming to her.
When she had thought that the house, the world, and the battle were
hers came this intrusion by the one person whom she did not wish to see
again!  She ought to welcome him and she could not break silence.

"We could not let you remain here alone when we heard that you were
going to stay," he explained.  "In fact, could you expect any decent
cousin to do otherwise?" he added.

Her eyes which had been stonily dull gave their first signal.  It was
smiling mischief, which developed into one of her laughs.

"It was such a surprise that I must have looked as if I were seeing
ghosts," she said.  "It's a tribute to Jacqueline's omelets.  You see,
I relied on them to keep the Germans from looting the house.  I meant
to meet the invader with an omelet instead of an olive branch."

She carried the part off well once she was started, leaving him puzzled
and wishing that she would continue her mood--any mood that livened her
features.

"Oh, I didn't think I could stand at the door and defy the German
hosts!" he explained.  "Only, being a man, well--I----"

"You were going to play the masculine part of protector.  I do feel
more safe.  Any woman must, being a woman and subject to conventional
sex inheritances"--this with a trifle of condescension, which was
shattered by utter astonishment as Henriette appeared.

"I did not mean to make you jump out of your shoes," said Henriette.

"Mother was aboard the train all right?" Helen asked.

"Yes; quite."

"Did she want you to come back, too?"

"No.  What kind of a sister did you think I was, you brave, foolish
Helen?  Did you think I would go to Paris and leave you here?"

She had slipped her arm around Helen's waist with a rallying burst of
affection, which concluded with a kiss and a nestling of her cheek
against Helen's as she looked at Phil.  The two faces were close
together, Henriette smiling devotedly and Helen quite still in
contrast; the one at her best and the other at her worst.  Then Helen
looked around at her sister studiously and back at Phil.

"I'm glad you both came," she said.  "I--is there another train to
Paris?" she asked abruptly.

"No, that was the last," Phil answered.

"So we are here together, come what will," she said slowly, with an odd
emphasis.  "I just came back for my drawing things.  The French are
retreating along the road and the German shells are coming nearer.  I
can't afford to waste a minute."

She took up her drawing materials from the table.  As she turned to
leave the room, something in her attitude made Phil arrest her.

"You are not going into danger?"

"No, not in the least; to sketch is all," she replied.

"I think that my part is to keep watch of you," he said.  "May I go
with you?"

"And I want to see, too!" Henriette put in.

"Come on, then.  If you are going to look after us both we must not be
separated," said Helen.

She walked ahead, however, leaving them to follow.  From the terrace
they cut across the fields behind the battery.  Its commander was too
busy to pay any attention to them and the rider with the caissons
galloping over the field with more shells, careening and slewing as the
knowing hands guided the horses, did not give even passing notice to
the young man and two young women.

Helen dropped on the ground with her back to a shock of wheat and began
to sketch the battery.  She was in action no less than the gunners of
the _soixante-quinze_, whom she made live in lines drawn by her swift
fingers on white paper.  Phil, unable to tell what was the gunners'
target or which if any of the white balls of smoke in the distance were
made by the screaming messengers they sent, looked around at her and it
seemed quite in keeping that she should be present, her shoulders drawn
in, her lips moving, as she sketched, with Phil and Henriette in the
role of spectators.

"Now for the road!" she said, rising.

There, mistily through the dust, blue coats and red trousers showed in
a moving stream to the rear between intervals of transport.  The guns
had had something of the splendour of war, but not these weary men
leaving the soil of France behind to the enemy, beards from four weeks'
campaigning white and brown with dust, eyes sunken, feet hobbling and
sore, plodding on to the rear.

From this point of high ground a small town was visible in another lap
of the hills, where French towns prefer to lie snug from the wind.  The
air was clear; sound carried far.  A scream different from that of the
shells from the mouth of French guns was heard; a scream that came
toward them and ended in a crash, as if a steel ball had split into
fragments, as it had.  Over the house-tops of the town rose a cloud of
dust and black smoke.  Then another, and, sound travelling slower than
sight, they again heard the rush of the projectile and its burst.
Henriette gripped Phil's arm, but said nothing.

An officer of infantry looked around and nodded at the burst over the
town in understanding.  He spoke to an old colonel with white moustache
who seemed asleep on his horse.  The colonel shook his head as much as
to say that there was no danger; that nothing could reach them at that
range.

Helen had not seen the bursts in the town.  She was trying to get the
old colonel, the wounded men on the tops of wagons, the wounded on
foot, in lines which should tell of the meaning of retreat in the
suggestiveness of types.

"I'm not sure that we ought to remain here," said Phil.

"Why not?" asked Helen.

He pointed to the bursting shells.

"Oh, I couldn't go away!" was her only response.

Then the pencil dropped from her hand.  Phil ducked as instinctively as
if some one had struck the back of his neck and Henriette clung close
to him with a cry of terror, for that approaching scream which had been
distant was coming straight for them in the growing volume of a horror
that froze the marrow.  All the men on the road struck for one side or
the other, their ducking forms flashing immutably on the retina of the
eye in that awful second before a cloud of earth and dust spouted from
an explosion on the other side of the road.

They were still alive.  It was miraculous that they should be when they
had died a score of deaths in that second.  Helen tried to pick up her
pencil and Henriette moaned: this much of an impression before the
second shell came.  It was nearer; death this time, without doubt.  But
it burst a hundred yards in front of them and some fragments whizzed by
their ears.

Phil looked around for cover; for anything which would give them some
protection.  There was nothing near except wheat shocks.  He swung
Henriette around on the other side of him from the direction of the
shells and called out to lie down.  He could think of nothing else
unless they ran.  But which way should they run?  The next burst was
between them and the house; the next on the other side of the road.
That was four.  He remembered that batteries had four guns and fired in
salvos.  The target was evidently the road and the thing to do, then,
must be to get away from the road.

"Run for it!" he cried.  "That gully!"

Helen sprang up.  Henriette tried to rise and could not.  She was
numbed with terror.  Her eyes in mortal appeal spoke her helplessness.
He was almost glad of this.  It made him seem of some use as a
masculine being in face of this hellish burst of destruction, which
made unarmed men as feeble as a fly under a hammer.  He did the natural
thing, picked her up in his arms.  She seemed very light, very yielding
and trembling and strangely pale, beautiful, and trusting.

"Hurry on, Helen!  I'll keep up with you, I'm so scared!" he called.

His voice sounded quite merry, as he meant it should.  What travesty!
He wished that he were back in Longfield or Mexico, anywhere than in
that particular portion of France which a German battery was pounding.
Other figures were running, too.  The world seemed full of skurrying
figures.  Flight was the fashion.

More screams, ending in explosions, and with every one the figure in
his arms trembled.  But each scream was farther behind them as they
hurried on.  When he reached the gully he laid his burden on the grass
at the bottom of it.  If the target were the road they ought to be
safe.  At least, he could take a minute to decide what next to do.  He
looked back toward the road and saw the soldiers forming line in the
fields under the direction of their officers.  The old colonel sitting
erect on his horse still remained beside the road, shouting his
commands.  A black cloud hid him and when it cleared away he and the
horse were gone and there was a hole in the road where they had been.
Then a crack overhead drew Phil's attention from the road.  There was a
whizzing through the air and little spurts of dust rose from the earth,
and over all a puff of smoke like those he had seen in the distance
against the green hills.  Phil understood that this was shrapnel and
the other which burst in the earth was a high explosive.

What next?  The gully was not long.  Should he attempt another run?
But a shrapnel bursting over the other end of the gully made him
hesitate.  The two girls were hugging the bank and he dropped down
beside Henriette, who caught his hand in hers, trembling again with new
fear.  Helen was lying face downward, holding fast to her portfolio.
She looked toward him and in her eyes was the mischievous challenge and
on her lips was playing the same humour he had seen across the table at
Truckleford.

"Now don't you wish you had gone on to Paris?" she asked.

"Not unless you came," he answered.  "Look there!"

Another high explosive had burst, and where they had been sitting
beside the road a rising column of smoke showed a hole.

"I--I----" whispered Henriette, and her eyes spoke what her lips could
not.

But was the road the target?  Another scream straight for them and
again they thought: "This is death!" The explosion twenty or thirty
yards short of the gully covered them with dust.  A human something,
red and blue, half rolled, half tumbled down the bank at their feet and
lay there inert, stunned.  A gash showed on the soldier's cheek and his
hand reached for his arm where the torn flesh was trickling red.  With
the other he fumbled instinctively for a first field dressing.

Here was something positive to do.  Phil, who had envied the cool
officers directing their men in the preoccupation of action, tore down
the sleeve and opened the dressing.  There was silence now; no screams
in the air; no explosions.  Yes, utter silence had settled over the
field except for the officer's commands.  Drops of blood fell from the
soldier's cheek on Phil's hands as he applied the first aid and
Henriette's fingers were aimlessly hovering about trying to assist.

"You are a good spirit, Mademoiselle," said the soldier, happy in the
realisation of life and the cessation of the shell-fire.

"Yes, Henriette," Phil added.

"I will go on," said the soldier, scrambling to his feet.  "It is
nothing."

"But are you strong enough?" Phil protested.

"I was not hit in the legs.  A little farther along the road I'll get
on a wagon," he said.  "And you, Monsieur, you and the ladies run to
the nearest cellar.  That one has fainted, Monsieur--and thank you!"
He was gone.

Phil turned to see Helen prostrate, her head on her portfolio.  But she
recovered herself as he started toward her, looking up at him vaguely;
then with a surge of vitality and a gesture of disgust she sat up.

"It was the sight of blood," she said.  "I could not bear that.  I'm
very ashamed, but quite all right, now," she concluded, with a toss of
her head and a smile.

"I helped dress his wound, poor fellow!" Henriette murmured.




CHAPTER XVIII

A RUN FOR IT

Phil leapt up the side of the gully, with a view to finding which was
the safest and quickest way back to the chateau.  The scene before him,
so clear in its meaning even to his unknowing civilian eye, held his
attention for the instant to the exclusion of his object.  Those little
moving spots coming over a hill this side of the town, scattering under
puffs of shrapnel, must be the French rearguard; and the shells from
the battery behind the woods bursting over the hill beyond must be
aimed at German infantry.  To the end of the gully and then sharp to
the right across the open was the best route for the chateau.

"And for us it is double quick, before we get more shells!" he called
to the girls as he dropped back into the gully and gave his hand to
Henriette to assist her to rise.  Helen was already on her feet, quite
herself again.

"As they say in America, we must beat it!" she exclaimed.

So they ran to the end of the gully and then across the field.  The
German guns seemed to have lost interest in that part of the world.
They stopped on the terrace by common impulse, so keen is curiosity
when danger seems out of reach but is still at large within view; the
girls breathless and flushed and Phil with that indescribable relief of
a man who has been under fire with women and sees them safely out of
it.  Of course they were only comparatively safe.  They were within the
range of many guns and at any minute that a German commander would
choose, another tornado would break over their heads.

The French could be seen still more distinctly now, trickling over the
landscape in retreat, in and out of the cover of valleys and woods,
with puffs of shrapnel smoke in vicious pursuit.  It all seemed like
some game, until another one of those hideous screams ended in a crash
in front of the woods that hid the French battery.  The next was in the
woods.  This was enough to tell the battery commander that his
hiding-place was located.  In a race with death, the battery horses
galloped up and away went the guns, with the German shells smashing the
emplacements which had just been vacated.  But the tenacious, skilful
gunners did not go far--only behind the next ridge, where they began
again to pour death into the advancing German infantry.

"I thought so!" came a voice breaking in upon the little group.
"Nobody is so foolhardy as a woman!" said General Rousseau, shaking his
finger at Helen and Henriette.  "When I heard that you were staying
behind I came at once to warn you.  That is not fireworks out there;
it's death.  Any minute it may be turned on these woods or on the
chateau.  Your place is the cellar, both of you, till this is over, do
you hear?" he thundered, "or I'll take my stick to you!"  He was so
peremptory that Henriette turned to go, but Helen hesitated.

"And you, too, Mademoiselle!" he commanded.

"Attention!  About face!  March!" said Helen, saluting and clicking her
heels together.

"Promise me you will not go wandering about the village making sketches
till all firing is stopped!"

"My business is making sketches, not making promises!" replied Helen.

"You----"  The General made for her threateningly with his stick and
she ran on down the path.

"This was her doing, sticking on here, wasn't it?" asked the General.
"I've known her, Monsieur, since she was a child," he added
thoughtfully.

Professional instinct crowded her out of mind as he swept the field
with '70 field glasses which were slung over his shoulder.

"No rout--an orderly retreat!" he said.  "We are not beaten.  Joffre
having failed to bar the way in Belgium is going to fight on the Marne.
I have seen our corps commander and talked to him.  Oh, it was very
fortunate to find that I knew him.  He was one of my lieutenants when I
was a captain.  I'm very happy, Monsieur, for I feel that I still
serve--yes, serve France!"

"I wish I could!" exclaimed Phil.  "It hurts to see those blue coats
and red trousers coming back; but I don't believe they will go far."

"Then you are for France!  I am glad!  But only a Frenchman can know
how a Frenchman is for France!"

A shrapnel broke over the woods, its bullets slittering through the
leaves.

"We had better see if those young women have gone into the cellar,"
said the General.  Another shrapnel crashed its ugly message even
nearer, a fragment striking at his feet.  "Women are the very devil
under fire," he added.  "They will never take cover.  A soldier
considers it duty.  Now if that does not send them into the cellar," he
continued, as a heavy reverberation came from the direction of the
village, "they have no sense at all.  You have young legs.  Run on and
look after them."

Phil found it no effort to run; his only regret was that he could not
fly.

"Never did have much respect for shell-fire!" mumbled the General.  "I
hope they don't hit my pigeons.  I'd better go home and look after
them."

He walked on at a dignified pace, while the shells continued to burst
over the woods and occasional high explosives in the village.  Phil met
him at the door of the house and reported:

"Your orders are obeyed, sir.  They are in the cellar."

"Excellent!"

"And they have sent orders to you.  You are to come into the cellar,
too, sir!"

"I must look after my pigeons.  I never had much respect for
shell-fire----"  He stopped short, struck by a thought.  "If I were hit
it would be just as serious as if my pigeons were hit.  I----"

"Quite so!" put in Phil.  He had taken a liking to the General, whom
war, to his mind, had transformed from a gallant old fussbudget of a
beau to a brave and simple gentleman.

"You have guessed my secret--the secret of my pigeons?" gasped the
General in alarm.

"Have I?  Yes, I'm afraid I have, and I----"  Something caught in his
throat as he looked into the piercing grey eyes of the General.  "I
hope you know that the secret is safe."

"I do.  You are a man of honour and you have said that you are for
France.  And the only way to do my duty to France is to keep alive.  I
go into the cellar."

As they passed through the kitchen a pane of glass fell with a tinkling
crash as a shell-fragment hit it and a saucepan rattled.

"Jacqueline will object to the Germans making omelets in her kitchen,"
said the General.  "No one has ever appreciated Madame Ribot's cellar
more than myself," he remarked as he descended the stairs.  "Her wines
are excellent.  H-m, they are shelling the village pretty freely,
though we have no troops there--a joke on the Germans."

"But the people--what of them?  Are they safe?  Will they know enough
to take cover?" asked Helen.

"Of course," said the General.

"It's horrible to think that Mère Perigord and the children should be
exposed out of ignorance!"  Helen sprang past the General and up the
stairs.

"This is where I intervene!" said Phil, starting after her.

"I told you women were the very devil under fire," murmured the
General.  "No sense of fear like men."

"And why not I?"  Henriette, too, was going.

But the General stopped the way.

"No, young woman," he said.  "I'm looking after you and if I had been
your mother----"

"You'd have spanked me!" put in Henriette, making a charming grimace
and dropping back into her seat against the wine bin.  "Helen will be
the death of Cousin Phil yet," she added.  "She's in an awful state of
nerves."

"Seems perfectly normal," remarked the General.  "I've always liked
Helen," he added tartly.


When Helen and Phil came out into the village street not a soul was in
sight.  The little community of peasants' houses with its old church
was as dead as Pompeii.  They went into Mère Perigord's living-room and
looked into the bedroom without finding her.  When Helen called down
into the cellar a quavering voice answered:

"Of course, you goose, and do you go right back to your own cellar or
come down here.  What do you think we are--fools?  Why, one goes to a
cellar as naturally as one puts up an umbrella in a rain!"

The shelling had stopped when Helen and Phil reached the street again.
Soon faces began to appear in the doorways and the village came to life.

"It reminds me of prairie dogs ducking for their burrows," said Phil.
"I ought to explain that----"

"Oh, I know what prairie dogs are," replied Helen.  "But, seriously,
there is a question I want to ask."  She was smiling faintly, but her
eyes had a defiant spark.  "Are you going to follow me wherever I go?"

"Yes, if you are in danger."

"Is that fair?" she demanded.

"It's cousinly," he replied.

"But what if Henriette and I go in different directions?" she continued
methodically.

"In that case, I see that you prefer that I go with Henriette.  I--I
think you know better how to take care of yourself."

She flushed and looked down.  It had not occurred to her whither the
questions were leading.

"Yes, of course," she said.

"Then I shall follow her, unless she remains in the cellar.  In that
case I'll follow you."

"Very well," she assented, with a shrug; and looking up again: "I'm
ashamed of myself for fainting this afternoon.  It was the sight of
blood.  I haven't thought of that.  It makes me afraid, and war means
that, and I had wanted to see war."

They met the General coming out of the chateau, and Phil noted again
how straight he was and how confident and happy.  It was a picture of
the old warrior which he was ever to remember.  Indoors they found
Jacqueline, now that the shell-fire had ceased, busy preparing
_déjeuner_, while she abused the Germans for having dented a saucepan.
War or no war, people must eat.  Her business was to cook and she went
about her business, French fashion.  The result of being up all night
and under fire, as the General or any other old campaigner could have
told them, was that the three cousins were ravenously hungry.  They had
a surprising sense of security, though guns and rifle-fire could be
heard around them.  In a few hours they had become habituated to war.

Helen was silent, thinking in pictures, the multitude of pictures that
she had seen that morning.  It seemed to her that she had enough
material to keep her drawing for a lifetime.

"That black hole is the place where we sat beside the road," said
Henriette, looking across to Phil with a grateful smile.  Then she
referred to the scene in the gully and spoke of how brave and cheery
the wounded soldier had been, even as blood was dropping from his
cheeks.

"Don't!" exclaimed Helen, with a shudder.

"Sorry, dear!" said Henriette, and changed the subject.

After exhaustion and hunger, food; and after food nature, even within
sound of the guns, will assert itself on an August day.  If one of the
shells bursting half a mile away had burst in the garden, then nature
would have yielded to nervous excitement, which may manifest itself in
outward calm or in chattering teeth.  In either instance, the strain is
there.

"I confess to feeling sleepy," said Henriette, nodding, her long lashes
drooping after the meal.

"And you, Helen?"

"Perhaps.  I'd like to try."

"Then do try, both of you," said Phil.  "There's no telling how much we
shall be kept awake when the Germans come.  And I am going to exact a
promise from you," he added, as they rose from the table, "that you do
not leave the house or run any further risk to-day."

"And you?" the girls exclaimed together.  There was something more than
the usual start of surprise on the part of both when two people find
that they have the same thought and have given utterance to it.  Helen
slipped out of the room, leaving the scene to Henriette.

"There is no dodging those big shells," she said, "so you must agree to
take care, too.  You see," she lowered her lashes thoughtfully and then
looked up at him with a world of frank solicitude, "as you saved my
life I feel an interest in yours."

"Not to mention that I have an interest in yours!" he interjected.

"I'm glad if you feel that way," she said; then added, as he bent
toward her, under the spell of her beauty, "I promise!  You promise!"
She gave him her hand in sealing the bargain, but drew it away before
his closed too tightly and smiled over her shoulder, saying, "I'm
really sleepy," as she withdrew.

Phil was left with this vision of her to compare with that of her as
she rested in his arms while he carried her from the roadside to the
gully.  Then he marvelled once more at the situation.  How long should
he be here with these two cousins?  What was going on out there amidst
the sound of the guns?  With all the world around in action, it was not
in his nature to remain still.

"Jacqueline, if any more shells come," he said, putting his head in at
the kitchen door, "will you see that those two girls go into the cellar
and stay?"

"I'll take a saucepan to them if they don't!" Jacqueline replied.  "As
for you, I suppose you are going out to try to be killed, like all the
other foolish men in the world," she added, without any effort to
restrain him.

On reaching the terrace Phil found himself with the last line of the
French.  In wait as for game, dust-laden figures were lying behind
trees and in the open behind little banks of earth which they had
spaded.  They were firing and the rattle of rifles and the penetrating
rat-tat of a French machine-gun from the woods at the other side of the
village joined in the refrain.  A thousand yards away he saw something
as green as the fields, but visible on the grey ribbon of the road,
melt into the earth under this burst of bullets.  These must be the
Germans.  Sharp whistles and cracks about his ears--the answer from the
rifles of the German skirmish line--made him leap to the cover of the
largest tree-trunk in sight.

"We forced them to deploy!" he heard an officer say.

Then commands were given and the Frenchmen slipped backward on all
fours till they were below the skyline, when they became running red
legs under humped backs of blue as they hurried away according to
plan--and just in time.  For now the German guns, which had the signal,
loosed their wrath on the village and the neighbouring woodland, where
it was thought that the French infantry meant to make a stand in force.
Phil stuck to his tree-trunk.  But it did not seem of much use when he
saw another tree cut in half as by a lumberman's axe with a curling
black burst of smoke; and bark and limbs in all directions were being
gashed by shell-fragments and shrapnel bullets.

Were the girls in the cellar?  He had a sense of deserting his post of
duty.  He did not care to make the run to the house, but felt that he
must; when his honest desire was to drop into the centre of the earth
and close an armoured door behind him.  So he started, having in mind
that he had been second in the hundred-yard dash at college, but might
have been first if he had had the incentive of the present moment.

There seemed an end of the outburst--probably an airman had signalled
that the French were out of the woods--when one belated, harrowing
scream seemed to have the pit of his stomach as a target just as he saw
the white of a woman's gown, the wearer's face hidden by a branch.
Then the crash came in front of him.  Black smoke and a fountain of
earth and shivered tree-roots hid the approaching figure and enveloped
it, for it was nearer to the burst than he.  Stunned, half thrown off
his feet, as he regained them and realised that he was alive it was
with the dagger thrust of horrible foreboding.

The thing which he might have prevented must have happened.  He rushed
into the smoke, stumbled into the shell-crater and clambered wildly out
of it, to see Helen rising unhurt and shaking the fresh, moist loam and
splinters from her gown.  Her hair had been blown almost free of its
fastenings by the blast.  She threw back her head at sight of him, her
startled eyes glowing with the wonder of her escape and the supple
figure drawn up as if testing the unscathed existence of muscle and
nerve.  She might be unnerved at the sight of blood, but she was not
afraid of shells.

"Thank heaven!" gasped Phil, and admiringly.  "But what are you doing
here?" he demanded, in the reaction of anger over her folly.

"You--I came to see what you were doing--yes, what you were doing
here!" she said, between deep breaths.  "Why not?"  She broke into
laughter, that of the challenge across the table at Truckleford, that
of even a more reckless humour.

"And your promise to stay in?" he asked.

"I made none!"

"And Henriette?"

"In the cellar."

"Thank heaven!  But why are we talking here?" he added.

"Yes, why?" she said, turning to go.

Shells were still screaming far over the tree-tops.

"I think we are safe enough, for the German guns are firing over our
heads at the French infantry," he said.  "We are between the lines."

Helen said nothing, but walked on rapidly.

"We were very lucky," he continued.  "I had a glimpse of you before the
burst.  It was an awful moment of suspense."

"If we had been a few yards further along or had started a few seconds
sooner--how simple!" she added.  "I mean, some more people would have
been killed in this war--I mean--well, here we are!" and she looked up,
smiling.

"None came near the house?" he asked.

"One burst outside the dining-room just as I was leaving," she
answered, "but it couldn't have hurt anybody in the cellar.  You see
the house is quite intact," she added, as they came in sight of it.
"I'm sure that Henriette is safe--and I must add another cartoon to the
history of the surviving Sanford, how he dodged the shells!"

She gave him a full look this time which was all mischief.  How could
any woman be so cool after such a shock?  But women can be cool even
when their underlips are trembling, as Helen's was.  In danger or out
of danger, they keep to their parts.  Phil could only feel that he had
two wonderful cousins and that it was useless to speculate about
anybody or anything.  Splinters from the branches slashed by shells
still clung to Helen's hair; they were a kind of crown of glory for her.

"Now for Henriette!" he said as they entered the house.

A moaning sob from below ceased when he called, and the answer came
back, "All right!" an answer that was thick but genuine in its relief.
Henriette met him at the foot of the cellar stairs trembling.

"It was awful being here alone!" she said convulsively.  "One does like
company.  Do you think it's all over?  And I was worried about Helen
when that one burst so close and shook the whole house."

"Helen had a close call, but here she is," said Phil.

Jacqueline was in the dining-room.  The wreckage of doors blown from
their hinges by the explosion she had piled against the walls and was
now engaged in sweeping up the earth and plaster.

"This is what a woman has to do when men go away to make war instead of
staying at home and getting in the harvest!" she grumbled.  "Nice mess
they have made.  So there you are, you foolish girls!  I have about
lost patience with you both.  As I told Mademoiselle Henriette when she
was moaning so, she might have been in Paris if she hadn't----"

"I was not moaning!" said Henriette sharply.

"No, _ma chère_, you were not.  Thank God, you are alive!  Though I
don't know but we'd all be better dead than having our homes beaten
down about our ears.  Look at that!" as the broom disclosed a gash in
the oak from a shell-fragment.  "This floor I've been polishing for
years.  And you," she turned on Phil, "I thought that you were going to
look after these young ladies and keep them from showing off!  But like
all men you had to go out and make war and show how brave you were."

"I give my word," said Phil, "that they will not escape again.  If
necessary I'll arm myself with one of your saucepans."

"The one that the Germans dented, if you wish," she replied.  "I can't
spare another."

"And the Germans will be here very soon," Phil added, to see what the
effect would be.

"It's time.  They've sent enough calling cards!" replied Jacqueline.
"The dirty, worthless, murderous, savage beasts, eating, swilling,
killing other women's boys and destroying other people's property!
Now, if you don't bother me it's likely that you will get a better
dinner after I've cleaned up."

Advisedly they withdrew into the sitting-room, where Phil became a
Roman sentinel on guard.  Soon they had glimpses of green figures with
cloth-covered helmets working their way through the grounds and along
the village streets.  But the figures seemed to be too busy to pay any
attention to the house.  Then shells began to break over the village
and grounds again, French shells into the advancing German infantry,
which once more sent the cousins to the cellar.  When they returned
upstairs Jacqueline met them, highly excited.

"I saw it with my own eyes!" she exclaimed.  "I couldn't keep indoors
when our shells were coming.  Yes, I saw one burst right in among the
beasts and knock a lot of them over!  Three never will get up again and
they carried the others away, back to the Kaiser!"

Put a red cap on Jacqueline, and with the flashing of her black eyes
she would have needed no further make-up for the storming of the
Bastille.




CHAPTER XIX

A CHOICE OF BILLETS

With the French guns withdrawn from range, nothing interfered with the
remorselessly steady tramp of the column of infantry passing the gate;
and out on the main road an unending stream of men, guns, and transport
flowed, eyes on the goal of Paris.  The chateau and its grounds were an
island in the green advancing tide planning to overflow the world.

The three had little appetite for dinner, which Jacqueline prepared
earlier than usual.  They had finished when one of the green units
detached itself from the procession of armed power.

"We billet here to-night," he said in French to Phil, who met him at
the door.  "How many of you are there?  Three?  Keep to your bedrooms
and leave the rest of the house to us.  And you, are you English?"

"No, American."

"And what are you doing here?"

"I am here with my cousins," he answered.  "We managed to get their
mother away to Paris."

"Keep to your rooms!" was the warning.

A few minutes later a dozen dusty officers with baggage and orderlies
arrived.  Their guttural voices seemed to fill the rooms.  When they
wanted to occupy the kitchen Jacqueline was inclined to show fight, but
Phil dissuaded her and after her first temperamental outburst she
yielded to Cæsar and put her saucepans at the service of Cæsar's
minions, who were already rummaging among the preserves and the wines.
It was war, a matter of course.  Jacqueline being bred of a military
race accommodated herself to the fact, with a deadly hate in her heart.

By the wish of the two girls, who plainly preferred not to be alone,
they all made Henriette's bedroom a sitting-room.  There they sat,
listening to the heavy footsteps below, the loud talk with references
to Paris, the clinking of glasses and toasts of exultant militarism.
Phil's anger was hard to control.  He was not of a military race.
These men were highwaymen and burglars to him, outraging a home.

A brigadier-general slept in Madame Ribot's room; captains had the
sofas and lieutenants the floor.  Not until there was silence below did
the three separate.  Before dawn they were aroused by the harsh
gutturals and the noise of packing and hurried breakfasts, before the
officers again took their places with their commands and the green
river moved on after the few hours' rest which even German discipline
had to concede to the limitations of the human machine.  Half-empty
preserve jars and wine bottles were on the tables and sausage grease
had been ground into the floors.  In the littered kitchen industrious
Jacqueline had already begun putting things to rights and in due course
prepared the morning coffee as usual.

"I feel as if the house had been tainted!" she said.

"They have taken what they wanted," said the curé, who came to tell
them that the mayor was made hostage for the good behaviour of the
villagers, which meant that all must remain indoors.  "I fear, I fear!"
he said, as he went away.  "They are very strong, these barbarians!"

At breakfast the cousins spoke only in monosyllables.  A pall was over
their thoughts.  They could hear the steady tramp of men or the creak
of gun-carriages and caissons passing, like a march of fate that would
never end.  Something was gone from their hearts and minds, from the
house, the garden, the air, the world--which was still with them as
long as a French soldier stood between them and the enemy.  There was
nothing to do but stay indoors.  The chateau and its grounds became a
prison.

Helen took a chair out behind a bush by the gate, where she could look
through an opening, and began sketching.  Henriette tried to read a
novel.  Phil walked in the grounds.  What were the old father and
mother in Longfield thinking had become of him?  How long should he be
here?  He had turned to go into the house when steps on the walk, with
the jingle of spurs, arrested him and he looked around to see a young
officer of distinctly Prussian pattern approaching.

Lieutenant von Eichborn, aide to Lieutenant-General von Stein, division
commander, was probably four and twenty.  From the peak of his helmet
to his spurs he thought well of himself and poorly of everybody else in
the world who was not Prussian and of his caste.  This person in front
of him was a civilian.  Since August first civilians had been of no
account on the continent of Europe.  Besides, it was a nuisance to have
the owner of a chateau about.

"Do you live here?" he asked.

"Yes, for the present," Phil replied.

"English?" von Eichborn shot at him and in English.

"American!"  Phil politely gave monosyllable for monosyllable.  He did
not like von Eichborn.

"I am going to look over the chateau with a view to making it staff
headquarters," said von Eichborn, starting toward the door past Phil.

"Evidently," said Phil.

Von Eichborn wheeled on him.

"Take care!" he said.  "I am an officer."

"I judged that you were," Phil replied, with studied politeness.

Von Eichborn stared, frowned.  Phil neither stared nor frowned; he
smiled.

"What else am I to say?" he added.  "I am not used to military customs."

Von Eichborn strolled on into the hall.

"Pleasant place.  I think it will do--the best in this neighbourhood,
anyway.  But I'll go through it."

Henriette rose from her chair as he entered the sitting-room and the
aide of General von Stein who thought so well of himself, startled, put
up his eye-glass, dropped it, and made a low bow.

"The chateau belongs to Mademoiselle Ribot's mother," Phil explained.

"Most charming place, most charming!" said von Eichborn, speaking
French now, while he was looking into Henriette's eyes and smiling.

"We think so," Henriette replied, and she smiled, partly in response to
his admiration, perhaps, as well as for policy's sake.

"Madame, your mother is not here?"

"No.  She succeeded in getting away on the last train to Paris."

"Perhaps I shall see her there," von Eichborn remarked.

"You are quite sure?" Henriette flashed.

Her spirit seemed to please him; at least, he smiled again.  A
straight, fine figure of militarism he made, his head inclined toward
her; but the thickish lips, the rather outstanding ears with heavy
lobes, and the straight line from neck to crown marked him as a brute.

"Then you are quite alone here?" he continued.

"My sister and Cousin Phil are here."

"Oh!"  He glanced back at Phil casually.

"I hope that we may be disturbed as little as possible," she ventured.

"We are not such barbarians as you think," he said, with a laugh.  "As
a matter of fact, I do not see why you should be disturbed at all.
There is another chateau on the list which belongs to the Count de la
Grange, and as I have the say for my uncle, the General, I do not see
why that will not serve as well."

"Yes, the Count is away!" put in Henriette quickly.  "Thank you very
much!"  This with a gracious smile as a livelier expression of her
acknowledgment of his courtesy.

"Done!" he answered promptly, smiling back at her.  "I shall see that
you are quite undisturbed, I promise you, unless some one has to billet
here.  We may be crowded and may be here some time if your scepticism
about our taking of Paris is well-grounded."  He made the bow of a
Berlin salon, his heels clicking together, as he withdrew.

Phil went into the grounds with him.

"It's very good of you," he managed to say.

"Don't mention it!" replied von Eichborn.  "A very charming cousin.
She speaks French like a Frenchwoman and looks like one.  And you are
an American?"

"A distant cousin;" and Phil tried to explain a situation whose
awkwardness von Eichborn only emphasised the more by one or two subtle
remarks.  Phil bit his lip and reminded himself that he was in the
presence of Prussian force.

"A peculiar position for an American," von Eichborn observed.  "I hope
your papers are all right."

"Quite!"

"That is fortunate.  You may be interrogated.  The secret service is
very watchful, you know.  Good-morning!"

Phil watched the ramrod form to the tune of the jingling spurs
disappear past the gate-post.  He was disgusted and thoughtful.

"I am very glad that you are here with us," said Henriette soberly,
when he returned to the house.  She, too, had been thinking.




CHAPTER XX

UNDER ARREST

An hour later a Prussian sergeant and two privates marched into the
grounds.  The sergeant mounted the steps and having rung the bell
proceeded to hammer on the door.  Phil answered the call, and was not
long in realising that he was under arrest.  The sergeant could not say
why, such details not being in his orbit of duty.  His orders were to
bring one young man from the chateau to headquarters.  The only thing
for Phil was to take the situation philosophically.

"I never did like melodrama," he said, as he stood by the steps under
the guard of the two privates, while the sergeant was searching his
room for incriminating evidence.

"Don't!" pleaded the girls together.  "Don't joke about it!"

"And answer all their questions politely," added Helen.  "If we don't
hear anything by to-night we'll come to headquarters or get the curé to
go there."

"I'll be as polite as pie," said Phil.  "And don't you be too serious
about it," he added warningly, in turn.  "When I show my papers to some
one in authority I'll be all right."

"It was I who got you into this!" Helen exclaimed, beset by a new
thought.  "If I hadn't stayed----"

Perhaps a better "if" would have referred to Henriette's beauty.

"Nonsense!  It's all a mistake!" said Phil.

"Plot complete!" he added, as the sergeant appeared with the letters
and papers that he had found in Phil's room carefully tied up and
announced, with barrack-room gruffness that it was time to march.

Phil could only smile over his shoulder as he was faced about under the
escort of the two privates.  From Helen he had an encouraging smile in
response; from Henriette a look of fright and appeal.  Inwardly he was
boiling.  It was the first time that he or any Sanford for many
generations had known the loss of liberty for five minutes.  This
callous old sergeant, these two men with fixed bayonets walking on
either side of Phil, had no business in France.  They were invaders.

On through the village street beside the gorge of transport he was
conducted, then down the long avenue of trees to Count de la Grange's
chateau.  There he was halted and every scrap of paper in his pockets
removed.  He stood for a time, while officers and messengers passed up
and down the steps, before he was taken indoors.

At the end of the long hall, its ceiling cracked and yellow from the
neglect of impoverished nobility, its walls hung with family portraits,
sat General Rousseau under guard, his aquiline nose and finely-moulded
chin in bold relief.  As Phil was directed along the hall, the sound of
his steps on the marble flooring drew the General's attention.  The
glances of the two met.  Phil was about to speak, when his impulse was
stayed by the fact that he was looking at a profile which seemed
oblivious of his presence.

"He is in trouble and does not want to recognise me lest he get me in
trouble," Phil thought, "or I might get him into deeper trouble."

The General sat stiffly erect, a space between his coat back and the
chair back, something distinguished and calm in his manner, with a
smiling turn to his lips which completed an air of quiet triumph
unaffected by his surroundings.  Directly an officer came out from one
of the rooms and motioned to the General to enter the open door in
front of him.  Phil was then moved up to the seat thus vacated, whence
he could look into the salon, with its long French windows open on the
garden.  Before a table sat a German general of fifty-five or so, his
bullet head close-cropped and his profile as set as if it were carved
out of stone.  On the wall at his back was a large map with blue pencil
markings.  In front of him stood old Rousseau, head up, his lips still
having the turn of a faint smile.

Division Commander von Stein was reading from a paper, which stated
that the General had given information to the enemy by means of carrier
pigeons.

"What have you to say?" demanded von Stein.

"That I am not a lawyer; but, speaking as a soldier," replied General
Rousseau in an even voice, "I am happy to say that my last pigeon went
before you could intercept it."

"As a soldier you knew what to report," said von Stein rather affably.
"It was clever of you and you must have sent some valuable information."

If he could learn the nature of the information it might enable him to
counteract some of its results; but General Rousseau's smile broadened
a little at this obvious bait of flattery.

"I'm even a good enough soldier not to tell you that," he replied.
"Perhaps your soldiers are learning this moment," he added proudly.

"As you have confessed----" von Stein rapped out in irritation.

"Yes," replied the General calmly, almost sweetly.

"You know the penalty?"

"Yes.  I expected it.  I found a way to serve France and I am ready."

Without waiting on further instructions, closing the interview himself
with a certain disdainful impatience, he saluted and turned toward his
guard.  The full light through the large windows limned his fine,
aristocratic profile and his gaunt, tall form.  He was victorious in
that moment and a gentleman; and the man in the chair, conscious of
some quality in the Frenchman lacking in himself but admiring as
soldier to soldier, exclaimed, "It is war!" and rose to his feet,
saluting the man whom he had condemned, in turn.

Phil had the call to disregard his own position and rush to General
Rousseau's side in his tribute of admiration.  It seemed horrible at
first thought to see that gallant veteran go to his death without a
friendly word.  But two girls were waiting at the chateau for Phil's
return.  He imagined that the General preferred to be alone.  Nothing
could equal the knowledge of his deed for France in comforting him.
Still disdainful of the Prussian, lips still turned in a smile, he was
marched out into the grounds--which is the full explanation of why
Madame Ribot had only the Count for an escort to Paris.

Since an old man had been caught releasing pigeons which carried
information to the French as to the location of three divisions of
German troops and might cost the Germans five thousand men, von Stein
was taking a hand in the espionage problem himself.  Phil was summoned
and, standing on the same spot where General Rousseau had stood, he saw
all his letters and his diary lying on the Commander's table.  Two
officers were standing on either side of him.  One of them went out
after the Commander had signed some papers, and through the open door
Phil had a glimpse through other open doors of rooms with walls hung
with maps and of telegraph instruments and officers writing and
conferring.  Here was the inner circle of a division command directing
all the action of guns and men which he had seen from the terrace at
Mervaux, with office routine in a secluded chateau; while von Stein,
the man with the responsibility of decisions, sat aloof in the salon.

The remaining officer, a major, evidently had something to do with
Phil's case.  Phil recalled Helen's advice: Answer all their questions
politely.  This he would do; and, with the example of General Rousseau
as an inspiration, he waited for the first move.  Von Stein looked up
slowly, raising his bushy eyebrows to see what sort of dirt this was in
front of him, and then regarded Phil with a sweeping glance of
ferocity.  It was the very thing to give Phil smiling confidence.

"Old Frightfulness is going to try to scare me!" he thought.

Having been both in Germany and in the Southwest, he recognised that
the tactics of a master hand in the world's greatest military machine
might be humanly the same as those of a bandit leader across the Rio
Grande.

"So you are the spy!" von Stein growled.

"Not at all, sir!" Phil replied.

"Be careful!  You are on oath."

"So I understand."

"Are you English?" demanded von Stein, with an access of roaring
emphasis.

From the frequency of this question and its venom Phil gathered that
the English could not be popular in German military circles.

"No, American."

"Prove it!"

"As you have all my papers there, may I suggest that you have the
proof?"

Von Stein mumbled an ejaculation through his moustache, while the
corrugations between the bushy brows and the grey line of
closely-clipped hair twitched.

"What are you in Europe for?"

"To see Europe--and I'm seeing more of it than I bargained for,"
answered Phil.

"Do not joke!  War is war!  What do you mean, you a foreigner, an
American, you say, by being here when our army came?"

"Your army came so fast that I could not get away from it," said Phil
drily, as he might on a hot day in cactus land.

"Hur-r-r!" or something like it, escaped through von Stein's moustache
and he wiggled his lips in a way that might have meant an effort to
control a grin.  "Why are you in that chateau?"

Phil explained quite clearly, even telling how Helen had remained
behind and he had returned to look after her and to find that it was
impossible to get away before the army came.

"What is your business in America?"

Phil told this, too.

"As you say; but how can we tell that what you say is true?"

"As obviously neither my own statement nor appearance counts, by
investigation of my references at home through my government, if my
papers and letters are not sufficient."

"Hur-r-r!" again mumbled von Stein.  Then he broke out with fearful
frightfulness: "Don't you know that we can have you shot as a spy?" he
thundered.

As Phil had previously remarked, he had never liked melodrama.  It had
quite gone out of fashion at home, except in motion pictures of the
Southwest as shown in New York and of New York as shown in the
Southwest.

"Considering the number of your soldiers, not to mention the number of
your guns and that I am unarmed, I should venture, with all respect, to
say that that is a safe statement," said Phil, and he was smiling
pleasantly.

"Hur-r-r!" again through the moustache; but in von Stein's grey eyes
appeared an irresistible twinkle and this time he actually grinned.  He
was not without a sense of humour.  He read the _Fliegende Blatter_
every week.

"It agrees with my examination of his papers," put in the Major,
indicating the exhibit on the table.  "One of these letters is from his
employer, a big man on the other side," he added; and Phil, who knew
German better than French, understood the remark.

The General took three or four minutes to run his eye over the letters
and the diary, grumbling the while, and finally snorting with disgust
as he picked them up and handed them to Phil.

"Who brought these charges?" he demanded of the Major.  Up to that time
he had read only the presentment of the case and the object of his
questions had been to trip the accused.

"Lieutenant von Eichborn, sir."

Now Phil saw what Prussian rage was like; the rage against
inefficiency, against disobedience and waste of time.

"Fool!  Puppy dog!  Pampered jackanapes!" he roared.  "Tell that
worthless nephew of mine to come here!  I'll deal with him for the last
time!"

"He is out, sir.  He went to see about a billet for himself," said the
Major very officially, but in his eyes was a satisfied gleam as the
General literally choked with rage against not only all the un-Prussian
crimes already mentioned, but worse.

"Out!  A personal aide out without my permission in time of war!
Billeting away from this chateau!  If there are no beds, let him sleep
on the floor at my door ready for my call!  Out--when we are fighting a
battle!"

"Possibly you will find him at Mervaux," Phil could not help saying,
"engaged in persecuting my cousin--which accounts for my impatience at
being here under false charges."

"Take care, sir!" said von Stein, turning his ferocity on Phil.  "You
are a civilian making accusations against a Prussian officer and
gentleman!"

"A suggestion only.  Am I acquitted?  I am in haste to return."

Von Stein lowered his brows, with a searching look at Phil.

"Of course you think we are Huns," he said.  "The English have told you
so.  Huns!"  The very word irritated him, yet he seemed to like to
repeat it.  "Huns!  We bring order wherever we go.  We are fighting in
our defence in a war that was forced upon us!"

There, Phil let his Southwestern sense of humour eclipse discretion.

"Yes, the English and the French secretly prepared against you!  They
made thousands of new guns and marched into Belgium and invaded
Germany!" he said.

The Commander's eyes blazed.  He stammered, Phil thought that he had
done for himself; and then that old professional soldier grinned.

"Huns, are we?  You go back to your chateau and stay there.  Not a
thing on the premises will be harmed.  You will be as safe as you are
at home.  Everybody is.  If you are not, let me know.  And tell your
friends in America that we are not Huns."

For after the orgy of Belgium orders had come from the Most High which
had America in mind.  Even the Most High realised the moral force of
the hundred million people across the water.  Even the Most High had
found that there was a thing called world public opinion.

"Stood up to it, that young man!" muttered von Stein after Phil had
gone.  Having been used to ordering inferiors about all his life, he
had had a diversion.  "Now!" as another officer came into the room with
a report.

He was the cool man of judgment and precision as he went to the map,
drew some lines with his pencil, and gave some orders.  After this
officer had departed he was alone in the big room.  Leaders out on the
battle line had been told what to do and they must do it on his
responsibility.  He could give no further orders till he knew the
result.  Opening the door to the adjoining room he asked:

"How long will it take to run to the chateau of Mervaux?"

"Five minutes, sir!"

"Good!  I'll be back in a quarter of an hour and I am to be found there
or on the road."

He strode out to the powerful motor-car that was always in waiting for
him.




CHAPTER XXI

A BIT FROM THE MOVIES

Without any regard to melodrama, when Henriette looked out of the
window after von Eichborn had rung the bell and saw him on the steps
she was frightened.  The look in his eyes as he left her had been
burning in her recollection--the kind of look a woman never forgets.
His smile as he bowed to her now was characteristic of his good opinion
of himself.

"Having an idle moment I came to call," he said.

"Oh, thank you!" she answered wildly.

He waited for her to come to the door, but she stood still, pressing
her fingers to her temples in blank quandary.  Possibly a sense of
self-accusation heightened her distraction.  She had been polite to
him; she had rather opened the way to this visit.  How was she to
escape?  She looked around at her wits' end and saw that Helen was in
the room.

"I can't see him, I can't!" she exclaimed.  "You must get me out of it!
I never want to speak to him again!"

She turned to the door opening onto the stairway and ran through it,
leaving Helen looking after her in doubt as to what it all meant.

Von Eichborn, having formed the habit in a month of war of walking into
chateaux without formality, waiting no longer for Henriette to come
into the hall, entered the sitting-room.  Helen's back was turned to
him and he easily mistook her figure for Henriette's.

"I accepted the invitation from the window, which I found very
charming," he said, "though from your present attitude I might be led
to think that I am not welcome."

Rather slowly Helen turned, possibly in a certain cynical anticipation
of his visible surprise when he saw her face instead of the one which
had led him, an aide, to absent himself from the General's side.  Even
that martial self-possession of a darling of Berlin drawing-rooms was
temporarily thrown off its balance.

"Oh!" gasped von Eichborn.

"Yes," said Helen, thoughtfully looking him over with a lift of her
chin, "I'm Henriette's sister."  Inwardly she was "fighting mad," but
her eyes were coldly staring.

"Your voices are alike, but you do not look alike," von Eichborn
managed to say.  He screwed his eyeglass into his eye.

"Really!  You have quick perceptions!" she remarked.

Von Eichborn dropped his eyeglass and flicked his gloves, which he was
carrying in his hand, against the table.

"And the sister?  I came to see her."

"She does not want to see you, and I'm sure I don't.  You would be a
dreadful bore."  All quite judiciously as she looked him over; the
Helen of impulses, when she ought to have been diplomatic for Phil's
sake, according to melodramatic ethics.

"Bore!"  That darling of Berlin salons a bore!  "Look here, you
shrewish, homely little brute, I've nothing to do with you!" he
blurted.  "Tell your sister I'm here--if she is your sister.  I think
you're only a servant."

Still Helen was looking him over with cool, superior eyes.

"Very bad-mannered, too!" she remarked.

"But perceptions correct.  Shrewish and homely, yes!"

Nobody on earth had ever spoken to him in this fashion before.  He did
not think such disrespect was possible.  He was red-faced and
stuttering as he took a step toward her, raising his gloves as if he
would strike her as he often had struck his soldier servant; but his
hand dropped in face of her unflinching stare.

"Look here!  Do you know that I am an officer on the staff of the army
in possession of this village?  I'm going to be billeted here and I
propose to choose my room."

He moved toward the door that led to the stairs.

"Certainly!" she answered, passing through it ahead of him.  He was
dumbfounded at her compliance and suspicious of its promptness.
"Henriette, the beast is going to billet himself here!" she shouted up
the stairs.  "You pass through the other way and I will meet you
outside and we'll go to the curé, who will speak to the General in
command about it.  The General may be a decent, respectable man."

Von Eichborn drew back from the doorway.  Again he tried to fasten his
eyeglass in his eye; again it would not stick.  As Helen looked around
at him after her call to her sister, with that in her stare which made
him appear the most ridiculous little puppy that ever left a kennel, he
mumbled:

"Unnecessary!"

Then she saw Phil hurrying across the grounds.  She only knew how glad
she was to see him and that she felt limp in her relief as he appeared
in the room, looking so strong and ready for any eventuality.  It was
another picture of him that she would never forget.

Von Eichborn, as he turned in surprise and stood there between the two,
was sheepish and confused as a human being, before his sense of
authority and position vented its truculence with a snarling irony of
inference.

"You seem not to have been looking after your cousins," he said.  "I
judge that the pretty one is quite devoted to you and the shrew here
keeps guard in your absence."

Something carried Phil a step nearer to von Eichborn involuntarily; and
what came into his eyes was distilled of that old blood and tempered by
three years in the Southwest.

"And you, I judge," he replied, "are a cowardly beast, going about
sneaking into homes when no men are present and others in your uniform
are under fire!"

Cowardly was the word that sent von Eichborn out of his head with
anger.  He struck at Phil's face with his gloves, but missed.  The rest
was very simple.  Von Eichborn went sprawling.  His descent was rapid
and unexpected and the stunning effect of the impact was accentuated by
the way his head hit the floor.

"Good! good!" Helen cried, clapping her hands.  "It was never done
better in the movies!  Good! goo----"  The word was unfinished, her jaw
dropping aghast with the seriousness of the situation.

When von Eichborn came to and realised what had happened, that he had
been brutally knocked down by a civilian, he reached for his revolver.
There was murder in his little eyes.  But Phil had already taken the
revolver out of its holster.

"You have struck a Prussian officer on duty!" he stammered as he got to
his feet.  "That is death, as you will find out as soon as I can bring
some men."

He was going past Phil out of the door; but Phil barred the way.

"Wait!"

And von Eichborn had to wait.  The position was strange.  Here was the
darling of Berlin salons and the aide of the General who commanded a
division of troops which possessed the land balked by a mere civilian,
a mere tourist; neither being armed.  It was humiliating, disgusting,
shameful.  Von Eichborn could not try to force his way to the door for
fear that he might be knocked down again.

"Yes, wait and consider," Phil added.  "Let's not do anything rash, but
think it over.  Now----"

"Phil, don't!" Helen broke in wildly.  "You, an American, don't
realise.  He can have you shot for striking him."

"After he struck me?"

"That has nothing to do with it!" put in von Eichborn hoarsely.  "I'm
an officer!"

"It's all true what he says!" said Helen.  There was no banter of
melodrama about her now.  The scene had become tensely real and
horrible.

"But it does not stand to reason!  It's----"

"Don't smile in that way!" she pleaded.  "We'll lock him in a closet
and I'll stand guard.  That will give you time to run for it--or some
other plan--anything so they will not get you--please, please!"

"Very moving picture-ish that, Helen," he said.  "No.  I'll go with von
Eichborn to see his General and explain that an officer invading a
private house struck me and I struck him back, that being a custom of
my country and I being ignorant of the customs of foreign countries.
Come!"  As he led the way out of doors he added to von Eichborn: "Some
men in your position might want to forget the whole experience."

"Not that you struck me when in uniform!  Never!" von Eichborn said.
"My uncle will punish that.  You will be shot, as Belgians were for the
same offence."

Helen followed them.  Henriette was already in the grounds, having come
down from her room by the other stairway.  Thus von Stein, alighting
from his car, had the whole group before him as he approached.  At
sight of him, von Eichborn murmured something under his breath and
clicked his heels together as he saluted.

"So there you are, you scoundrel!" called out the General.

Von Eichborn knew how to deal with the rage of an uncle who had no son
of his own.

"Yes, sir," he said humbly.  "I came to interrogate these two young
women about this man's case."

"Without leave!" put in von Stein sternly.

"Time was important.  The Major said you would not need me.  You were
busy."

"No excuse!" blurted von Stein.

"Sorry, sir!" replied von Eichborn.  "Then this man returned to the
house and struck me with his fist!"

"You struck an officer!"  Von Stein turned on Phil, Prussian
indignation overwhelming every other idea.  "Why didn't you shoot him?"
he demanded of von Eichborn.

"He took away my revolver when I was down and stunned," explained von
Eichborn.

"Baby!" roared von Stein.  "And you--" to Phil, "you struck an officer!
That is settled!"

"After he had struck at me!" replied Phil steadily.

"Yes, at his face with his gloves!" put in Helen, stepping forward and
looking squarely at the General.  "I saw it.  And he was not here to
interrogate us.  He wanted to go upstairs where my sister was.  Then
our cousin came."

Von Stein gave the two girls a scrutinising look.  There was truth in
Helen's eyes as surely as Henriette was beautiful.  He liked Helen, not
having much use for beautiful women, being unhappily married to one.
But aside from her evidence he knew that his nephew was lying, as he
had before to get himself out of a scrape.

"Did you try to go upstairs?  Answer!" he said to von Eichborn, who
understood from experience that confession was best when his uncle
spoke in that fashion.

"Yes, sir!"

"And you struck at him?"

"Yes, he insulted me."

"After his insult!" interrupted Phil.  "I----"

"Silence!" von Stein roared to Phil.  "I'll attend to your case later.
Now, as for you," to von Eichborn, "first, aide of a division general
absent without leave in time of action; second, billeting himself
without consent of his superior; third, wasting his superior's time
with a set of foolish charges against a civilian for a mean personal
motive; fourth, an offence to two young women alone in a house.  All
entirely in keeping with previous reprehensible conduct, without the
excuse of drunkenness this time."

Thus Prussian system established the case, while von Eichborn stood
stock-still, heels together, and trembling.

"You have played on my sensibilities for the last time," continued von
Stein.  "No matter how your mother pleads, you go back to your
regiment, where you will have the chance to die like a soldier if
there's any good in you.  Go to the car!"

Von Eichborn saluted and obeyed.

"You have seen Prussian justice done," von Stein said, turning to Phil.
"But you--you struck a Prussian officer with your fist!"  His anger
grew as he thought of the offence against the military caste.
"You--you go to the car, too!"

"The custom of my country!" said Phil, without moving.  "We have our
code of personal honour as well as you.  I could not have done
otherwise and ever looked my friends in the face.  When they hear the
story and your view, sir, well----"

"The barbarians will call us Huns!" von Stein interrupted savagely.

"Yes, I should think so!"

It seemed unreal, this situation.  But there was the Foreign Office in
Berlin and the instructions from the Most High since the whirlwind of
American indignation about Belgium.  And this young man acted as if he
were somebody of importance.

"I'll show you what Prussian clemency is," said von Stein.  "Because
you are a foreigner and ignorant, I will overlook the offence.  Keep to
the grounds, as I told you, and nobody will interfere with you!"

After he had gone, sitting on the back seat of the car with the
expression of one who was conscious of an act of noble toleration, with
von Eichborn on the front seat beside the chauffeur, the three cousins
stared at one another wonderingly, Henriette's eyes radiant of her
appreciation.

"You saved my life, first, and this time----"

She did not need to finish the phrase except with her eyes.

Helen, whose relief had been so personal, rallied herself a little
nervously with a return to banter.

"That was surely a bit from the movies, serio-comic!" she said.  "Still
another cartoon of our hero's progress in Europe!  We'll call it, 'And
he shot his strong right arm out and the villain bit the dust.'"

"Helen, one of these days I'll----" Phil fumbled for words in his
embarrassment.

"Do something else grand and I'll make a cartoon of that, too!" she
said as she went into the house.  When she looked into the mirror again
it was with smiling self-congratulation.  "Plain face, you were of some
use once, anyway!" she said.




CHAPTER XXII

VICTORY!

A Prussian command had been given.  The three would be undisturbed in
their retreat as long as they remained within the grounds of the
chateau.  Of itself this was no great hardship; its irritation deep
from the fact that it was by Prussian command.

Any sense of awkwardness in their personal situation had passed.  It
seemed quite natural that they should be there together with Jacqueline
and her saucepans.  Their story as a story halted, even as the
heartbeats of mankind halted, while it waited for the result of the
Marne.

How quiet the house!  How quiet the shaded paths!  The roads were empty
now of all save transport feeding man and gun and of ambulances
returning with German wounded.  Quiet here and hell far away over the
hills, where the destiny of France and the world was being settled in
the toss with death.  Be it the three, or the children and the women
and the old men in the village, the personal thought had been submerged
in straining inquiry of how the battle was going.

Sound was its barometer.  Farther and farther the voice of the guns had
travelled, but never out of hearing.  It hovered at one point as the
titanic struggle came to a decision.  The three talked little;
consciously or unconsciously, they were always listening for something
from the distance.  No newspapers; no letters; no telegrams!  Only
flagellating wonder and suspense!  All the world behind dense curtains
of secrecy, not knowing whether, when they were drawn, there would be
sunlight or black night outside.

Helen went on with her sketching or pretended to, but found herself
staring at the paper and listening and praying for France.  Twice
Henriette attempted to continue with the portrait, but she made no
progress.  All three read a good deal, Helen by herself, slipping away
from the other two when they were together.  They awakened and they
went to sleep to the echo of low thunder, thunder marching in a
treadmill.  Then there were lapses when the guns were not heard, and
something seemed to catch in their throats.  Had the Germans won?  When
the wind changed and the rumble became distinct again, what relief!

Their steps seemed always to lead to the terrace, for there they could
hear more plainly; and there they would walk up and down after dinner,
the dew-moist air soft against their faces, Phil in the middle, with
the voices of the two girls so alike that they seemed to express a
delightful cousinship in one personality.  He had ceased to think of
the future.  Everything waited on the result of the battle.  At times
he wished for action; that he, too, might be striking some kind of a
blow.

Those strolls in the darkness and the voice in his ears, now Helen's,
now Henriette's, seemed to have become a part of his life; something
from which he would never be disassociated.  It was the symbol for
Henriette, frightened and helpless, as he carried her to the gully and
for Helen emerging, with triumph shining in her eyes, from the dust and
smoke of the shell that had exploded between them.  Helen had a little
prayer for France which she used to repeat, sometimes softly, again
belligerently with hands clenched.

"As if prayers did any good!" she said.  "Only killing counts!  A
butcher boy from Berlin could fire a shell that would destroy the Venus
di Milo."

"France will win because there is still a God in heaven!" was the
rallying judgment of Jacqueline, when everybody was blue.

Up at dawn, sweeping, dusting, and scouring, it was she who brought the
first glorious word.  She burst into Helen's room, awakening her with a
cry of:

"It's nearer--nearer!  Listen!"

Helen ran to Henriette's room and then she pounded on Phil's door.
Could imagination be deceiving them again? Phil slipped into his
clothes and hurried out to the terrace.  He could see the burst of
light smoke once more against the green of the hills which had hidden
the battle, and transport going to the rear along the road was more
numerous.  Only ammunition trucks and ambulances were moving forward.
He ran back to the house in schoolboy delight, shouting the news.

"They will dent my saucepans, will they," said Jacqueline, "and rub
sausage grease into my floors!"

She, too, went to the terrace to watch that unfolding panorama of
German retreat; of cavalry which was covering it caught in the hot
breath of the _soixante-quinze_; of guns which were covering it forced
back from position to position.

Staggering through the village street came the conquerors of yesterday,
their glazed eyes under heavy lids, keeping dogged step from force of
long discipline--they who were not to see Paris!  French shell-fire
kept approaching till shrapnel began to break over the village.  Again
the three had to take to the cellar, where for a while they heard the
rattle of rifle and machine-gun fire and an occasional cheer--a kind of
cheer that sounded strangely familiar to Phil.  When they came upstairs
the figures passing in the village street were no longer in green, but
in khaki.  The remnants of the little British army which had retreated
from Mons was tasting the joy of pursuit.

Everybody in the village was out, lining the road; everybody, from Mère
Perigord to infants in arms, displaying the smiles they had been
conserving while they had been glaring at the Germans.  The children
gathered flowers and tossed them to _les Anglais_ before their eyes in
the life, looking just as they had looked in the picture papers.

"How do you like being a conquering hero, Bill?" one _Anglais_ called
to another, as he stuck a rose in his cap and relit the "fag" cigarette
stump which he had been saving behind his ear in the midst of charges
and shell-fire.  Plodding stoically on, these regulars, taking the
day's work as it came, and this was a day's work to their liking.  "Are
we down-hearted?  No!"  Every one of them looked at Phil.  There was no
mistaking him; he must speak English.  The lean, tired officers waved
their hands in greeting to the young man and two girls who were beaming
the welcome of their hearts.

"Sorry we can't stay to tea!" one called merrily.

It was a suggestion.  Afternoon tea for the English!  An opportunity
for the chateau to furnish an important British munition of war, as the
battalion halted waiting orders from somebody up ahead! Jacqueline made
a pail of tea, which the three passed out, along with slices of bread
spread with jam as long as there was any left.

"Jolly good of you!" said the officers.  "Such good tea, too--and jam!
This takes a bit of beating.  Thanks awfully!"

The battalion passed on with the tide of battle.

"This is the only time that I have not felt perfectly helpless," said
Helen.  "There is so little a woman can do when fighting is all that
counts."

"I was thinking of that myself," said Phil.  "How helpless I am, though
an able-bodied man!"

"But you did knock a German down!" said Helen, with one of her
mischievous glances.

From the terrace they could now see the French everywhere, in the
ravines and on the roads, sweeping across the fields in the wonderfully
ordered system of a great army which had had generations of training.

"It is good--good--good!" said Helen.

They had recovered something which they had lost: the sense of freedom.
The chateau and the grounds were once more their own; their minds and
their souls were their own.  Jacqueline's exaltation expressed itself
in an amazingly good dinner; Helen's in a series of fresh cartoons over
their coffee, which included "our hero" from the Southwest knocking
down the German.

A call from the curé brought word that trains would begin running to
Paris on the morrow, which was a reminder to all that their period of
isolation was over; and for Phil a strange and memorable holiday would
be at an end.  Helen went out with the curé and Phil and Henriette
turned up the path.  After they had watched the flashes of the guns in
the distance for a while, they started walking slowly back and forth.

"I don't know what we should have done if you had not been here," she
said.

"At least, I kept you in the cellar!  Are you glad that you came?" he
asked.

"I would not have missed it for worlds!" answered Henriette.  "And I
owe it to you."

"No, to Helen.  But for her we should have been in Paris."

"Yes, that's true," she replied thoughtfully.  "And what would have
become of her if we had not come?"

"Gone on sketching until a shell hit her, I should say."

"Or until she saw a wounded man and fainted!  But there is something
that I do owe to you and to you alone," Henriette went on softly.  "I
am appalled when I think of it--of the obligation.  I--well----" now
one of her trickling, enchanting laughs.  "There's the portrait to
repay you!  I think that we might have a sitting in the morning."

Here a white figure appeared around the corner of the path, and they
were face to face with Helen.  She drew back in the embarrassment of
one conscious of more than a mere inadvertent intrusion.

"I was going to look at the gun-fire for a minute," she said.  It might
have been Henriette's voice suddenly changing the subject.  She had on
the simple gown whose cut was the same as Henriette's, who had dressed
for dinner that evening with her usual care.  Something in Helen's
distraitness, a sense of her loneliness, aroused an impulse in Phil.

"Make it three!" said he.  He went to her, took her hand and drew her
arm into his.  She seemed to resist slightly and then to yield almost
tremblingly.  Henriette also slipped her arm into his.

"Cousins!" she exclaimed, a happy thought in view of the situation in
more ways than one.

They paced on together, two white slippers moving from under white
skirts against the dark earth in unison with his own steps.  Cousins!
But any reason for his remaining at Mervaux was past.

"Now I shall go to Paris to-morrow," said Phil, "and inform your
mother, wherever she is, that you are all right, and get off a cable to
an old couple in Longfield which will stop their worrying."

"I think that we had better go with you," said Henriette.  "Don't you,
Helen?"

"Yes, to Paris!" said Helen, with such definiteness that it surprised
her sister.  Her mind was no less fixed than when she had decided to
remain alone at Mervaux.  She and her thousand francs and her sketches
were going to America in the hazard of new fortunes.  "I only ran up to
see the gun-fire and I think I'll look in on Mère Perigord and get her
views on the state of affairs in France," she added, starting to
withdraw her hand; but Phil held it fast.

"Our last night together at Mervaux," he said.  "Let Mère Perigord
wait."

Something strong and irresistible in his grip made her yield; but he
could not see the twinge in her features hidden by the darkness.  It
was torture for her, this promenade with the man to whom she had said
"Yes."  The desire for flight had never been so strong; flight from
Mervaux and all old associations to new worlds.

They had ceased to talk as they kept on rhythmically pacing in the
dark, each with his own thoughts.  Phil, looking backward now when the
strain had passed, saw the whole experience at Mervaux with a sense of
personal incompetency; as a helpless spectator of action.

"I'm getting sleepy!" Helen pleaded at last.

"So am I," Phil replied.  "Four more turns!"

He did not like to part with their companionship in the faint starlight
this last evening at Mervaux.

"You will go straight to America?" Henriette asked, as they started
toward the house.

"I think so, if I can catch a steamer.  I imagine that not one-tenth of
the homeward rush has been accommodated yet."

Not until they reached the door did the three unlink arms.  Helen,
blinking into the lamplight of the hall, bent her head.  She was
swallowing as if she would try her voice before she said "Good-night!"
with the faintest smile, as for an instant her eyes looked into his and
he saw something that reminded him of the brilliancy and fearlessness
that had shone when she rose from the ground after the shell-burst, but
now veiled.

Henriette paused and, as the door closed behind Helen, held out her
hand to say her own good-night.  After looking into Helen's eyes he was
looking into Henriette's, which had the wondering gratitude of the
moment when he had laid her on the turf in the gully, and her smile, as
her eyelashes flickered, added the touch of exquisite charm to her
appealing beauty.  Involuntarily in answer to it he drew her hand
toward him.

"Henriette!"

She turned her head, her profile with parted lips toward him, and her
cheek so near that impulse pressed his lips to it.  At this she drew
away, not quickly but steadily, looking back into his eyes, and after a
tightening of her fingers drew them free.  Then in a flutter, her own
eyes luminous with surprise, she precipitately turned toward the door.
In her room, smiling into her mirror which smiled back, she was pleased
with the way the thing had been done; but to Phil her figure, as it
passed through the doorway, became unaccountably the figure of Helen.




CHAPTER XXIII

LONGFIELD DECIDES

How Madame Ribot travelled third-class all night to Boulogne, where she
was crowded on board a steamer with Belgian refugees and American
tourists, whom she found equally objectionable in interfering with her
comfort, and then finally to London and Truckleford, was a narrative
which excited such sympathy in the simple vicarage that life there was
soon adapted entirely to her habits.  News that her daughters were safe
was a relief to her: but the announcement that they were on their way
to join her brought a premonition of overcrowding.

The same kind of journey that she had made the three cousins made.
From London Henriette went on to Truckleford, but Helen astounded her
sister by remaining in town, giving as her reason that she wanted to
see if she could not sell some of her sketches.  She said nothing of
her trip to America, which she realised once she saw the crowds of
stranded Americans must be given up for the present for want of steamer
accommodation.  Her _au revoir_ to Phil had been spoken at the Victoria
Station; a handshake, with the understanding that they would meet at
Truckleford.  Thus they parted without his knowing her hotel.  A few
hours later she was sitting beside the desk of an agent while he looked
over her few finished sketches.  As businesslike as M. Vailliant, he
told her to go home and do more, and he would try to dispose of those
that were completed.

Something which had been working in Phil's secret brain had come to a
head.  The recollection of having been marched up a village street
between two Prussian bayonets did not sit easily in the blood of his
inheritance of freedom.  The French were fighting against that kind of
tyranny; those poor Belgian women and children on the steamer were the
victims of it.  When he stepped ashore at Folkestone it was with the
thrill of relief of one who has come to the home of another kind of
principle, which was that of his inheritance.  Here they were speaking
his own tongue; here the system was individualism.  The green pastures
and hedges had an appeal which they lacked before he crossed the
Channel.  On the train an _attaché_ of the Paris Embassy whom he knew
had introduced him to a general, who had asked Phil to look in at the
War Office.  In London the press and the hoardings called to arms.  War
was in the air; and he was young.  Instead of trying to push his way
through the crowd in front of the steamship offices, he went to a cable
office and sent a despatch to Longfield:

"With your permission I am going to fight.  Answer."

Dr. Sanford received this message only twenty-four hours later than one
from Paris announcing that Phil was on his way to London.  The girl in
the telegraph office saw the Doctor passing along the street on his
afternoon constitutional just after the despatch had been clicked in
from New York.  It was not her business to know what was in telegrams
once she had transcribed them; but this one was like a hot breath from
the cataclysm shot across the Atlantic into a quiet New England
village.  She pretended to be busy as she watched the Doctor.  On this
occasion his spectacles happened to be in the right-hand trousers'
pocket, which was the last one that he investigated.  Ever since he had
had to wear spectacles he had tried in vain to establish a system of
carrying them in the same pocket; but in order to have it work he must
think which was the right pocket when he put them in, rather than when
he came to look for them.

The girl was amazed when he gave no indication of excitement after the
reading, let alone a start of surprise, which "certainly beat me," to
put it in her own language, "considering how he worshipped Phil and
Phil was asking permission to be killed in Europe like he was asking
permission to go fishing.  People are queer, and never so queer as when
they get notice of sudden death or an elopement!"

When she asked, belying her gasping curiosity, if there was any answer,
the Doctor said "None!" in his quiet, absent-minded way, as he folded
the telegram and this time put the spectacles in his inside coat pocket.

"I must think this over a little before I speak to mother about it," he
thought, after he had turned into the street and as soon as he was
capable of thinking--such had been the blow of the message.  The shadow
of the statue lay across his path at the time.  He looked up at the
ancestor questioningly.  The ancestor kept on charging British redcoats.

Dr. Sanford took a long way around back to the house.  Every familiar
landmark seemed to recall some boyhood anecdote of Phil.  If only there
had been two boys or a girl!  With all of his thinking he was
blank-minded when he sat down in his favourite chair on the porch.

"What's happened, dear?" Mrs. Sanford asked at once.  She knew his
signs of emotion better than the telegraph girl.

"Why, I have another cable from Phil," he replied.

"Is he ill or hurt?  Don't hold back--I want to know!"

"No, he's well.  It isn't that.  It's--well--it's asking our
permission----"

"I know!  He wants to fight!"

Now, how could she guess that?  But she was an amazing woman, as he had
often said.

"Yes."  He passed the cablegram to her.

"I'm not surprised," she said, after reading it.  "I'd been fearing it
all along."

"Yes, he could not stand by and see such wrong done without wanting to
strike his blow.  I honour him for it."

"But he's Phil--the only boy we have!"

"I am leaving it to you," the Doctor concluded.  "He will not if you
say not."

"We'll think it over," said Mrs. Sanford.

When they broke silence and began a discussion of the pros and cons it
was only to return to silence; for they were merely rehearsing the
heads of trains of thought that occurred to both of them in a vicious
circle.  At the supper table Jane realised that something was wrong,
and poignantly wrong.

"If it's about Phil," she blurted out, "I guess I'm entitled to know!"

When they told her, she said:

"Against that thieving Kaiser and for them poor little Belgiums!  He
just couldn't help it!  That's Phil all over.  But it ain't the United
States' war, it's Europe's; and all I've got to say is that maybe he'll
never come back.  He'll just be killed and buried over in them furrin
parts."

"We've thought of that, Jane," replied Mrs. Sanford.

"You're going to let him do it!" gasped Jane.  "He won't, though, if
you say not."

"Buried in furrin parts!" Jane repeated in fresh horror.  This was the
most awful aspect of it to her.  If one insisted on being killed it
ought to be at home, where he could be laid in the family plot.

After supper the Doctor and Mrs. Sanford went into the study, though it
was early September and hot.  There they sat silent as the flow of
still waters which run deep.

"I leave it to you and to him," she said quietly, after a time.

Dr. Sanford hunted in his desk and found a telegraph blank, and rapidly
in his fine, small hand which was suggestive of his mental
self-possession when he had a pen between his fingers, he wrote:

"Yes, by Jehovah, fight if your heart is in the cause and you are not
fighting for fighting's sake."

After Mrs. Sanford, who had been sitting very still, had read it she
nodded.  The decision was made.  It takes such occasions as this to
prove that fortitude still survives in quiet people who live on quiet
village streets.

Before going to bed Dr. Sanford wrote to the vicar of Truckleford:

"It has been our aim to teach Phil self-reliance and to decide for
himself.  He is going to fight for the same kind of a cause that the
ancestor fought for, this time with the British.  He is very far away
from us, but we are happy to think that he will have a second home with
you."

He showed the letter to Mrs. Sanford, who approved it.


As soon as Phil received the cable he moved on the War Office.  As he
approached that enormous pile of stone he felt his inconsequence and
quizzically wondered if anybody had ever laughed inside its solemn
halls.  Would the General whom Phil had met on the train see him?  An
august person who attended at the door allowed him to write his name on
a slip of paper, and after a while a messenger conducted him to the
General's office, through the long, gloomy corridors, which seemed to
protest against the activity which the war had brought.

The General was doing the work of five men because there were so few
officers who knew how to do that kind of work and trying, English
fashion, not to make any show of it, in order to preserve his
appearance of poise and leisureliness.  He asked Phil what his training
had been and then stepped into an adjoining room, where he spoke to
another general.  The door had been left open, so that the other
general could look over the slim figure, with its well-moulded
features, which stood awaiting the result.

"Rather got me, his wanting to fight, so different from the usual
soldier of fortune type," he said.  "Nice chap, well set up, from one
of the great American colleges.  Just the man for the guns.  That
_attaché_ fellow said he came from good old stock, which you can see
for yourself."

He returned, after the other general had written the name of Philip
Sanford on a sheet of paper, to say that Philip Sanford would be
gazetted a second lieutenant of artillery.  They were making second
lieutenants rapidly at the War Office in those days.  Phil did not know
anything about guns, but, then, he knew as much as many other second
lieutenants of artillery.

"You will get word when and where to report," said the General.  "And
jolly fine of you, I must say!"

The thing was done; no turning back, now.  The next step was to send a
cable announcing his decision to his employer, who replied:

"Go ahead.  We'll keep your job for you!"




CHAPTER XXIV

HELEN ARRIVES

Phil enclosed his father's cablegram in a letter to the vicar of
Truckleford, which was answered by a telegram reminding him that he was
expected "home" very soon.  With only thirty-six hours which he could
call his own before he reported for duty, he set out by the early
afternoon train.  He had bought all the textbooks of gunnery that he
could find in the shops, and had sat up cramming the previous night.
Four of them were in his bag and one was under his arm, along with some
magazines that he had bought at the stall, as he followed the porter
down the platform of the station.

His recollection of all that had happened since he had taken that same
train two months ago was startled by one of the associations of the
first journey in the life entering a compartment just ahead of him.
Helen Ribot, too, was going to Truckleford.  He wondered how he should
interpret her start, with its long-drawn "Oh!" at sight of him; but she
hastened to make her own interpretation when she had recovered from her
surprise.

"It's the first time I've been down," she said, "and I'm going only for
a day, as I'm very busy and living regularly in London, now."

There was a cheery tone of independence in the closing statement, for
statement it was.  In the midst of war Miss Helen Ribot had made her
own start in the world.  Then some commonplaces.  Yes, her mother was
still at Truckleford and Henriette with her.  Both were well.  Had he
heard from home?  Yes, it looked as if the Germans had made a decided
stand on the Aisne.

"I see that you are prepared to read.  So am I," she concluded
pleasantly, as she took a book out of her bag.

Puzzled by this new Helen, so poised and affable but somehow
uncousinly, there was nothing to do but follow her suggestion.  As he
turned the leaves of one of the big illustrated weeklies he noted
something so distinctively familiar with the first glance at the double
page, that he would have recognised a single figure of the drawing of
the Germans in retreat from the Marne, without having the confirmation
of Helen Ribot's signature in the lower right-hand corner.

"Caught!" he exclaimed triumphantly, as he turned the page about and
held it up before her.  "The fell secret of Mervaux revealed to the
public at large!  Congratulations!"

Helen lowered her head, flushing at this accusing broadside of
publicity staring her in the face, while he was as happy as if the
picture were his own.

"It's corking!" he said.

"Yes, the agent liked it, and he has sold others, too," she said,
looking up, the magic of the whole business in her eyes.  "And they
want more.  Think of that!  And the agent is going to send them to
America and thinks that they will sell there!"

It would be false to say that Helen was over set-up with her success;
but she was human.  Better, that double page was a token of freedom
earned and gained.  Henceforth, she could be herself.

"Cartoons, too!" she added, when she saw how interested he was.  "They
particularly want cartoons, some of the editors.  I did a series of
that old von Stein after I showed the one of you knocking von Eichborn
down."

"Good heavens!  You----"  Would print it, he was going to say, but
broke off, for she was laughing in a way that saved him from gulping
down the bait.

"But I'm not going to sell any cartoons unless I need to in order to
pay the rent.  I mean, it spoils the fun I get out of them."

"So we are earning our own living, now," he said.  His admiration was
transparent.  He had earned his and knew what it meant to get a start.

Helen nodded.

"I've got forty pounds already to go with the thousand francs.  Let's
see, that is almost four hundred dollars in American money!  I'm a
proud wage-earner and even consider becoming a bloated bond-holder!"

She was smiling and laughing all the time, this changed, this free
Helen, still uncousinly, a person apart, and buoyantly happy--until she
caught a glimpse of herself in the small panel mirror opposite.  Then
her features relaxed.

"And you?" she asked, putting out her hand for her book, which she had
laid on the seat.  "Have you got passage back to America yet?"

"No.  I----"  And he told her briefly what he had done.

With the very announcement, the mirror warning and another warning
which sprang from the memory of the scene under the tree at Mervaux
were forgotten in the impulse which made her lean across the aisle in
passionate interest.

"It was like you!" she exclaimed.  "The old father and mother at home,
what did they say?"  She wanted to know all about it.  "And Peter
Smithers?" she added.

"Not heard from yet," Phil replied.  "It's surprising how you recollect
Peter."

"I'd like to make a cartoon of Peter; I don't know why, for I've never
heard a dozen sentences about him.  And in the artillery!  Then you'll
be doing the sort of thing we watched the _soixante-quinze_ doing at
Mervaux.  And you're a real sub-lieutenant!  Aren't you proud?"

"Oh, fit to burst!"

"And you will be ordering people about and others will be ordering you
about," she continued, returning to the mischievous vein.  "I shall
have to make another cartoon of how our newest subaltern looked to
himself the first time he had on his uniform and how he felt when the
general came to inspect his battery for the first time."

Just then it occurred to Helen that she had talked enough; but it had
not occurred to her to tell him that she had put her name down on a
list which would ensure her wearing a uniform and working in a
hospital--she who dreaded the sight of blood.  No, this was her
business.  Now she took up her book again with a sense of relief, and
settled well down in the corner of the seat, as if to make herself as
small as possible.  She held the book well up, her lowered lashes just
showing above the cover's edge.

Phil glanced up from his artillery cramming at times to find her still
reading, or, if she were looking away from the page, it was out of the
window, unconscious of his presence.  At such moments her eyes would
open wide as some object interested her vividly, most vividly for an
instant, seeing pictures, making pictures, always.  A fine nobility
about the forehead; indeed, a beautiful forehead, with its rich, dark
eyebrows under the crowning glory of the hair that seemed to hold the
particles of sunlight that filtered through the glass, and small,
delicately-shaped ears set close to the head.  There was more in that
head than he had ever guessed.  Only a small part of its infinite
variety came out of the fingers' ends on to white paper.

Why he did not know, but the scene under the tree came into his mind.
Her abounding sense of humour could not resist the trick when he was
making that serious, patternlike lover's speech which he swore he would
never make again in the same way.  She had had the best of many jokes
on him, whether the irresistible mood of mischief possessed her to make
a cartoon or to draw him gazing lovelorn into Henriette's face.  For it
had not occurred to him what she thought must be so palpable--the true
character of that "Yes," which excoriated her whenever she was with him
alone.

He glanced at the drawing on the open page at his side, took it up to
look at it again, amazed afresh at its quality and atmospheric reality,
and put it down without attracting her attention.  She was happy; she
had succeeded in the one thing she cared for.  It was pleasant to be
there opposite her in her triumph on this September day, flying past
English hedges, thinking of many things, including the destiny that had
sent him to Europe on a holiday to become a soldier; and it was with a
touch of regret that he noted a landmark which told him that the train
was drawing into Truckleford.  She slipped the book back in her bag and
the face he saw was that of the plain Helen, singularly dull and
lifeless till she drew a sigh and in her eyes appeared a peculiar
light, as she explained:

"Here we are at last!"

Mrs. Sanford, as well as the vicar and Henriette, was on the platform
to welcome him; but Madame Ribot had found the weather quite too warm
for walking.  Henriette waved her hand as she smiled her welcome when
the train ran past them.  The vicar took Phil's hand in his and held it
affectionately in a long clasp; and Mrs. Sanford flushed when he kissed
her.

"We are very proud!" she murmured.  "But we fear that we have done
wrong in not trying to prevent it."

"But his father said 'Yes, by Jehovah!'" put in the vicar.  He did not
tell Phil that he was having that telegram framed to hang under the
portrait of the ancestor.

Henriette and Helen were left to follow, as the vicar and his wife took
possession of Phil.

"Oh, we've heard all about it from Henriette!" said Mrs. Sanford.
"And--and I must confess that what I particularly liked was the way
that you knocked that beast of a Prussian down."

"Yes," said the vicar, stiffening out of his usual stoop and stopping.
"But what was it?  I am very curious.  Er--I boxed a little myself when
I was young.  Just a straight lead with the right?"

"No," said Phil, turning and holding up his finger at Henriette.  "I've
a bone to pick with you for telling!"

"Later!" she smiled back.

"If not a straight lead with the right, what was it?" persisted the
vicar.

"An upper cut to the jaw!" Phil murmured awkwardly.

"Very effectual, always!" replied the vicar.  "Now, he was standing
about like this, and you ducked like this to let his blow by?"

"My dear, this is positively shocking!" gasped his wife, mindful that
they were in the village street at the time.

"Then you gave it to him like this----" and there the vicar of
Truckleford brought his fist up in correct fashion and pressed it
against the correct section of Phil's physiognomy.  "Exactly!" he
concluded, chuckling.  "I remember once I used it in a little
row--before I had taken orders, my dear, before I had taken orders!"

When they turned in at the vicarage gate they found Madame Ribot at
ease on a lawn chair in the shade near the tea-table, looking as
charming as usual and with a novel on her lap as usual.

"Now I may thank you in person for the part of a brave gentleman that
you have played!" she said to Phil in her delightful way.  "And you, my
truant Helen, you've found time to come and see your mother, too," she
added, as she embraced Helen.

"But have you seen this?" demanded Phil when all were seated around the
tea-table.  "We have a distinguished person with us.  I had the honour
of riding down in the train with her from London--with none other than
that celebrated artist who is now sipping tea out of a cup just like
any everyday person."

He held up the double page for all to see.  Helen continued to look
into her teacup as they passed the picture around.

"Very timely!  Just what the editors wanted," said Henriette.  "I'm so
glad, Helen!"

Madame Ribot seemed most surprised of all at the actuality of the
thing.  She drew a long breath of realising satisfaction.

"And you did this in the midst of all that shellfire, you poor dear--I
mean----" exclaimed Mrs. Sanford.

"Oh, I don't mind being called poor dear!" said Helen in a soft,
impersonal way.  "What a bad-tempered person I have been!" she added.

The vicar rose from his chair and went over to Helen, taking her hand
in his and patting her on the head.  In his heart he had ever been as
fond of Helen as had General Rousseau, though fondness for Helen was
not the fashion among the friends of the Ribots.  A little success had
made her almost important.

"And the shell that hit between us, did you hear about that?" Phil went
on.

"No," said the vicar.  "Henriette didn't mention that.  What about it?
We heard how Helen fainted when she saw the wounded soldier."

"No fainting this time--a coal box, bang in our faces!  I thought that
our artist was gone forever."

"If you keep this up," said Helen, "you will make people think that it
was I who was the hero of the movies and knocked the villain down; and
in that event I shall have to publish the cartoon of you doing it as
documentary evidence to the contrary.  Beware of the power of the
press!"

He had won one of her laughs and a full tilt of challenge from her eyes.

"And who cried good and clapped her hand?" he asked.

"The assembled hero-worshipping multitude!" she replied.

For the moment in their banter they had taken possession of the
conversation.  Suddenly Helen realised it.  She had been teased and she
was giving him as good as he sent.  The smile died on her lips; the
flame out of her eyes.  She was plain Helen drinking tea in silence and
wishing that she was not there.  When her mother made some remark, she
slipped away into the house and out by a side entrance into the lane,
glad to be alone.

It had all passed by the ears of the vicar and his wife as young
people's nonsense, pleasant to hear.  These two could think of only one
thing: the fact of Phil's presence; the fact that there was a Sanford
to fight for the cause.

As he turned to Henriette, Madame Ribot was watching, while pretending
to look at the pictures in the weekly.  She wanted to know the effect
of the ten days which they had spent at the chateau together.  Scarcely
perceptible the set frown on her brow, which was only erased when an
automobile stopped at the gate.  Madame Ribot liked the low purring of
costly motors.  It was as rich and delectable to her as the rustling of
silk.

The Marquis of Truckleford had come to see the vicar about Belgian
refugee plans and other war work, which, for the first time in weeks,
had not been the principal topic of conversation at the vicarage
tea-table.  Phil was not used to meeting marquises; few work on
construction gangs in the Southwest or are seen in New England
villages.  He did not know how you "My Lorded" or "Your Graced" them,
or whatever it was, or how often; but he talked to the Marquis without
self-consciousness, just as he would to any other human being, and the
results seemed quite satisfactory.  The Marquis inquired about the
identity of the general whom Phil had seen at the War Office.

"So Duggy made you a second lieutenant!" said the Marquis.  "Sound
chap!  So, so!  I'll write a letter about you to Starrow, who is a peg
above Duggy.  Must say I liked the way that you knocked that Hun down.
The vicar and I were puzzled.  What was it, a straight lead with the
right?"

"No, an upper cut, like this!" interrupted the vicar, giving another
exhibition of how it was done.

"Just as I said from the start!" declared His Lordship.  "Pleased the
old chap in the frame in the dining-room, wouldn't it?"




CHAPTER XXV

HENRIETTE WAITS

At dinner Phil was seated again under the English ancestor, only to
find that this did not mean an escape from ancestors, as he was facing
the American.  The vicar had had the photograph of the statue at
Longfield framed, and on the opposite side of the room the man of
Massachusetts seeking the blood of British redcoats was charging toward
the man of Hampshire, who, with uptilted chin, was defying all comers.

"At breakfast some morning you may find the table overturned, chairs
broken and the dining-room all gory," Phil said.

"Really!" gasped Mrs. Sanford.  She was so serious about the ancestors
that at first she took him literally.

"The American is better dressed for such an affair," Phil continued,
"but I fancy that the Briton did his fighting in shirt-sleeves, too.
He was in that ornate get-up only when he posed for his portrait."

"They would both be in shirt-sleeves for this cause!" declared the
vicar.

"Yes, and perhaps for the cause for which the American fought, too,"
Phil suggested.

"Very likely.  I am proud of them both!" said the vicar.

But he and Mrs. Sanford were proudest of the living Sanford who was
going to fight in the cause of the moment.  The hour was the living
hour of blows.  Here was one who was about to strike a blow for a
childless pair, who had never so much wanted a son as then in order
that they might give him for their country.  A son of their blood had
come to them, now.  They wanted to know more about him, his boyhood,
his school-days, and the campaigns of the revolutionary
ancestor--everything that put links in the chain of inheritance.  Phil
complied when he realised the genuineness of their interest, but found
himself stumbling in details.

"Father knows everything he did," he said.  "In fact, we have his
diary; but I confess----"

"Too much ancestor!" put in Helen.

It was the first that she had spoken, and even this exclamation was
casual and disinterested.  Seated across from him as she had been at
the first dinner, her plain part in her plain gown was much the same as
then, only she was more subdued.  Henriette was by his side, in the
same part of beautiful woman and beautiful gown.  She added her
questions to the vicar's.  Madame Ribot's only question was about Peter
Smithers.

"We must get him to Europe," she said, when the vicar and Mrs. Sanford
were declaring that now Phil's father and mother would surely come to
England on their long-promised visit.

"I'd like to see Peter in Europe," said Phil.

"So should I!" declared Helen irresistibly.  "I should like to have
seen him having a set-to with von Stein."

What a cartoon!  A whole series of Peter Smithers in moods of rage and
humility; Peter shaking his fist; Peter threatened with firing squads
and blank walls; Peter and old von Stein--there you had a contrast!
Her eyes were dancing; she was laughing to herself as the pictures
flitted before her vision, only to bite her lip when she noticed her
mother's stare and lapse into the marking-time attitude which she had
planned to take her through the meal.

"Yes, of course we must invite Peter," said Madame Ribot.  "Do write to
Dr. Sanford about it."

"Do, please!" chimed in Henriette.

The vicar was looking to Phil for his lead in the matter.

"By all means!" he said.

Just then his glance happened to meet Helen's, and hers seemed to
convey a repressed irony, which melted into that blankness of
expression with its self-effacement that always puzzled him.  Always
the artist--always changing, he thought, while Henriette's charm was
unvarying.

"And you will stay on here?" he said to Henriette.

"No.  I, too, am going to do my bit," she replied.

She was to take a course in nursing and go to France with Lady
Truckleford's hospital unit.

"You were so good at binding up the wounded soldier's arm in the gully
that I foresee a great success," said Phil.

She flushed slightly, averting her glance.  Always her blushes were
accompanied by the appropriate manner and gesture.  When she looked
back at him her face was in repose, her lips parted faintly, her eyes
deep wells of grateful recollection--the Henriette whom he had carried
from the roadside to the gully.

"We shall both be in France," she said; "you fighting and I
nursing--both doing our bit."

In that deliciously pregnant second before she took a last sip of
coffee her smile implied more than her words.

When they went out on the lawn Madame Ribot asked Helen to fetch a
shawl, and after she had placed its silken folds around her mother's
shoulders she slipped away into the darkness, the others in their
preoccupation not missing her.  Madame Ribot at ease in a long chair,
the others walked up and down until again came a motor's purr to the
gateway and Lady Truckleford appeared to talk of war relief.  She was
bubblingly talkative, was Lady Truckleford, delightfully fussed over
her hospital project, and demonstrative over Henriette, who seemed to
have won her affections completely.  It was quite late when she
departed.

"We'll renew that walk to-morrow, shall we?" Henriette said to Phil as
they parted on the stairs.  While she was undressing her mother came
into the room.

"You were very beautiful to-night, dearie," said Madame Ribot, taking
her daughter's hands in hers.  "And it's settled between you and Cousin
Phil?"

Henriette smiled.

"That means that it is?"

Again Henriette smiled, in a confident way.

"It is!" said Madame Ribot.  "Well----" and she kissed Henriette
good-night, closing the scene without further inquiry, as became a wise
woman who knew or thought she knew her daughter.  "It's splendid about
Helen," she added, pausing in the doorway.

"Very!" Henriette replied.  "Yes, she's found her place drawing for the
press."

Helen, who had thought that she had conquered happiness, was far from
it.  She had cried out to her mirror: "Oh, if it weren't for that nose
I wouldn't be such a fright!" only to call herself a fool.  The result
of her conflicting emotions was to hurry downstairs and look up the
railroad timetables.  Then she went to her mother's room, a pale,
distrait figure of impatience, with face drawn.

"I'm going to take the seven-o'clock train in the morning," she said.
"It's my work, you see."

She had come quite close to her mother's side so abruptly that it was
disturbing to her mother's composure.

"You know best about that," said Madame Ribot, looking up at Helen's
features with a return of the old wonder that Helen should be her child.

"Please explain and say good-bye to the others, won't you?"

"Yes.  And, Helen, it's all settled between Henriette and Cousin Phil,
isn't it?"

"If she wishes."

"If she wishes!  What do you mean by that?"  Madame Ribot had turned in
her chair with a penetrating glance from her little eyes.

"Why, what I say.  But I don't know.  I----"

Helen wavered.

"You were with them all the time at the chateau?"

"Yes.  If she wishes," was all that Helen could say, her voice
crackling in its dryness.

"That she has not wished it on other occasions.  I see!" murmured
Madame Ribot.  "She does this time."

"Good-bye!"

"Good-bye!  You've done wonderfully, Helen.  Of course, it is better
than nursing if you continue to make it go.  You see, I was anxious
about you if anything happened to me."

"And I've been very trying sometimes.  I'm sorry!"

There was something whose place even successful drawings for the press
could not supply--affection.  Helen was singularly hungry for it
to-night.

"Of course you will write us and come down to see us!" said Madame
Ribot.

"Of course!" Helen repeated.

She wished to be taken into her mother's arms, but it did not happen.
And she was glad when the dawn, which found her awake, came and she
softly glided downstairs on her way to the station.


Peter Smithers on his "little farm" in Massachusetts, walking about and
surveying the latest improvements and his high-bred cattle and swine,
was hardly conscious that a woman leisurely undoing her hair in a
vicarage in Truckleford was thinking of him.  He had a fortune, poor
man; and he was not unused to being the object of plots as the result
of its possession.  In her day Madame Ribot had been as fond of
spinning webs of intrigue as she had of late the threads of
recollection which had helped to pass the time.

"Phil will come out of this war with European habits formed," she
thought.  "His Longfield will seem very tame to him, then.  He may win
distinction--but his family is enough.  The one other thing
needful"--it was the thing that Peter Smithers had.  As a loving and
dutiful mother her part was clear.  "Peter Smithers must be brought to
Europe; and then I----"  Madame Ribot smiled at herself in the mirror,
conscious that a long lapse of inaction need not necessarily have
weakened her powers.  She could already hear the soft purr of Peter
Smithers's powerful car at the gate.

Nor did Peter, looking through the hothouses of that miserable little
farm of his, know that the two white heads of an English vicar and his
wife were thinking of him.

"That ten days in the chateau seem to have had one result, unless my
eyes deceive me," said the vicar in a half-whisper, as if the secret
held back for this family conclave might be overheard by the walls.

"You saw it, too?" said Mrs. Sanford.  "Of course, as a woman I saw it
at once.  And, Franklin, don't forget about inviting Peter Smithers.
Hasn't it all turned out wonderfully!  And Helen, too!"

"Oh, it's ripping about Helen, ripping!" exclaimed the vicar.  "That
little warrior!  I always believed in her."

"But her mother did seem to me anything but appreciative."

"She never is, except when she is ordering people about."

"Yes, so I've found!" assented Mrs. Sanford.

"And you have done your best to make her happy in that respect," said
the vicar.

"It's the easiest way, my dear, and she is our guest."

The next day the two did not allow any interruption from them to
interfere with Henriette's walk with Phil, but rather gave their
blessing of smiles.  Henriette set the direction, which was to the same
hill as before; and the quiet scene of Hampshire valleys in September
had an appeal to him that it had not had before the war.  For a remote
ancestor of his had fought for this as the later one had fought for his
New England valleys.

"I feel the call of both this and France," said Henriette.  "How can
one think of painting!"  Indeed, the portrait lay with its back against
the wall at Mervaux.  She had forgotten to bring it and had never been
more dissatisfied with anything that she had done.

The spell of the art in which she really excelled was upon Phil; a
deeper one than ever, owing to her more serious mood and the serious
business before him, and it grew all the way from valley to hilltop and
afterward in the leisurely descent.  He spoke of his fortune.  All he
had was his pay as a second lieutenant.

"You have fortune enough," she said, pausing and giving him a long,
full glance; "the fortune of war!  It is the same that it always has
been.  The man goes away to fight!"

"And the woman waits!" he said.

"Yes, she waits!" she replied.  Her smile was gentle and wonderful.
"Isn't that enough?" she asked, giving him her hand in a prolonged
clasp and then turning her cheek for the pressure of his lips.

"Quite!" he agreed.

She liked the way of it much better than a speech in the moonlight.
Anything but that!




CHAPTER XXVI

A DIRECT HIT

The letter which the Marquis of Truckleford wrote to the general who
was a peg above "Duggy" gave Phil an early introduction to Flanders
mud.  An upstanding man the major to whom he reported.  Fresh from the
retreat of Mons and the fighting on the Aisne, he had been brought home
to mould human clay into gunners.  Then there was Jaffers, the regular
sergeant, who regarded all recruits as children of his strict
parenthood.  Treating fledgling young officers with the respect due to
their rank, he would whisper to them the right thing to do, the while
he stood stiff at the salute.

"They will learn fast under fire," said Jaffers.  "It's the blooming
Boche shells that'll teach them to be quick about their lessons!"

By the hundred of thousands untrained men were drilling and waiting for
uniforms and rifles.  Every time that a gun was finished or a shell
came out of the shops, a thousand hungry hands seemed to reach across
the Channel for it.  Phil became one of a myriad of units in a tiny
orbit; a cog in one of the many little organisations which were to be
assembled into a whole.  His technical training stood him in good
stead.  At first, the battery drilled with heirlooms of the Victorian
epoch, which might be useful for home defence against a bow-and-arrow
invasion.

Then, one day somebody in the War Office signed a paper which meant
that four tubes of steel were to give all the horse-drill and men-drill
of Phil's battery a proud reality.  New four-inch howitzers could not
be kept long away from France in those days.  They were needed in the
Ypres salient, where the British were holding on by their teeth with
their faces to the Germans and their backs to Calais.

Phil's letters about his daily existence ought to have cured an old
pair in Longfield of any idea that he was fighting the whole war
himself according to the methods of the revolutionary ancestor; though
his mother to this day has never been convinced to the contrary.
"Mud--and shells at the Germans and from the Germans; and more mud, a
great deal more mud, and more shells at the Germans and more from the
Germans," was the way that he described it.  "I know that I shall never
choose to spend a winter holiday in Flanders after the war is over," he
said.

The business of the gunners was to hide their "hows" from prying German
eyes by land and air and on telephone summons to pump destruction at
some unseen point on the map, according to tabular calculations.  At
other times they might walk about in the mud or sit in the mud inside
their dug-outs.  It was enough to make a bold knight of olden story,
who carried a Toledo or a Damascus blade, fall in a fit, as Phil
remarked.  Should the Germans locate them, a tornado of "krumps"
descended on their position and they sat in the dug-outs considering
whether or not everybody there would be "done in," as the English say,
by a direct hit.

Then they moved to another place through the mud and built more
dug-outs in the mud and began the daily grind over again, the vacancies
caused by casualties being filled by recruits.  But they had intervals
in billets, where they crowded together in peasants' houses out of the
zone of shell-fire, and smoked and read and waited for the mail, and
expatiated on how it would seem to have a real bath in a real tub in a
land where there was no mud.

Spring did come, though there were soldiers in the British army who
thought that it never would.  They could not comprehend how anything so
pleasant could ever happen in war time in Flanders.  It found Phil with
a bit of white and blue ribbon on his blouse, which had been given for
what other people, including a division commander, said was a gallant
deed showing exceptional initiative.  He was willing to accept their
view as official, though he could not honestly agree with it.  However,
it was the source of enormous happiness in Longfield and Truckleford.

Once he had been back at Truckleford on leave for a week; and, after
the mud, he did not mind if the vicar and Mrs. Sanford made as much
fuss over him as if he were a real hero.  Madame Ribot had returned to
Paris.  He had seen neither Henriette nor Helen, though Henriette wrote
to him regularly.  She was at one of the hospital bases not more than
three hours' motor ride away; but if he had had ten motors he could not
have gone to see her.  Each tiny cog of the machine must keep in its
place.  None may go moving about at will.

He came to watch for Henriette's handwriting and the postmarks of
Longfield as the two links with the world; and Truckleford had also
become a part of his existence.  Henriette seemed the adjutant of Lady
Truckleford, devoted to her work.  Her letters ever revived the
thousand pictures of her from Truckleford to Mervaux and back again and
the spirit of them was expressed in the words: "The woman waits while
the man goes out to fight."  Her references to Helen, who seemed to be
at the same base but with another unit, were the only news he had of
the other cousin except her drawings, which continued to appear in the
weeklies.  Helen, Henriette said, was still trying to get used to the
sight of blood.

People were coming to know Helen's name.  Phil wrote to her in
congratulation and the answer he received hardly invited further
correspondence.  It was unlike her, uncousinly, and it troubled him.
She was very busy and very happy.  She made a point of that--very
happy.  New memories of Mervaux occurred to him with the peculiar
distinctness of details appearing, after what seemed a long lapse of
time, with the freshness of sudden discovery in some recess of the
mind.  He was thinking that he should not mind sitting again for his
portrait on the terrace, with Henriette smiling at her easel and Helen
laughing over her cartoons of his proud career.

Spring not only came to Flanders, but the mud dried; the fields were
carpeted with the tender green of young grain, and the canopies of
foliage gave better cover for the "hows."  Green, yes, but flat that
vista from the gun-positions, while the graceful slopes of the
Berkshires might be dripping and glistening as they had on the
afternoon that he returned from the Southwest.  Bill Hurley was at his
accustomed place on the station platform, no doubt; Hanks, the
druggist, was still branching out, no doubt.  But Truckleford had the
greater call of the two for him that day; for he had received a letter
that his father and mother had at last undertaken their pilgrimage and
had arrived at the vicarage, where they were waiting until he had
another week's leave.

Another bit of news, too.  Peter Smithers, without any warning to the
War Lord, was about to visit Europe to see things for himself.  Peter's
only expressed view of Phil's action in going to war had been:

"About what you would expect.  I gave him up long ago.  So Ledyard's
keeping the job for him--hm-m-m!  Well, Ledyard's business isn't the
sport of a lot of jockeying politicians."

Sometimes Phil had thought what if a shell should take off an arm or a
leg, or otherwise maim him for life.  Hundreds of thousands of others
had thought the same.  The merciful bullet through the heart or the
wound that heals leaving one whole--these are a part of the game.  But
that jagged, tearing piece of shell-fragment--this was the devil of the
new psychology of war.

It was a glorious morning that he went up to the trench to take his
turn at observation.  The sun made the wings of the planes overhead
shimmer with silver and gold under a fleckless sky.  The birds were
singing their song in the midst of the song of bullets.  It hardly
seemed possible that death could lurk in the soft puffs of shrapnel
smoke playing around the planes.  Death should have no part in such a
day.  It was a day of life.  Soft air to breathe, gentle breezes,
kindly sunshine, and youth.  Phil enjoyed the fact of existence as some
superb privilege which deserved gratitude to earth and sky, and
particularly to the sky, which was all that he could see as he entered
the winding communication trench.

"Good-morning!"

The cheery greetings were exchanged between fellow-officers as if the
game were not with death, but with racquets on an English lawn.

"They are strafing a bit up there," said one; which meant that there
was some shelling in the front line, where little mirrors were set up
on parapets of sandbags.  Through these bits of glass you could look
out on a field of weeds across to another line of sandbags, Britain
burrowing on one side and Germany on the other of No Man's Land.  Phil
took the place of another lieutenant at the O.P., or Observation Post.
Here he was in touch by telephone with his battery.  He watched black
bursts of smoke, which were the shells from its guns, and reported
their proximity to the target.  It was a matter of eyesight and
judgment and speaking into a black disk--nothing dramatic about it.

Since he was at Mervaux he had learned much about those bursts of black
smoke.  He had seen many men knocked over by them.  One monster had
come even closer to him than the shell which had exploded between him
and Helen, and on that occasion he had been dug out from under a
tumbled parapet with a spade.  When the Germans increased their
shell-fire on any section of the British trenches, the British
increased theirs on the Germans; then, in turn, the Germans increased
theirs and the British increased theirs.  Thus it happened on this
particular morning, perhaps because the light was good for artillery
observation.  He was not looking to see what the German shells did to
the British trench, but what his shells were doing to the German
trench!  "Right on!"  He had announced the result of a shot when he
heard the hurtling, growing scream of a nine-inch coming straight
toward him.

After that the end of all sensation; oblivion, which had come to many
another man from the burst of a nine-inch whether or not he ever awoke
to life in this world.

After he knew not how long Phil felt some one pulling at his body,
which seemed to rest under a great weight.  This was all, and this only
for a fleeting moment; he was uncertain whether he was in this world or
the other.  Then he was bumped against something and felt his hand
brush the hard earth.  Vaguely he reasoned that stretcher-bearers were
carrying him around the traverse of a trench.  A hot, moist sponge
seemed pressed into his throat and something besides air was coming
into his lungs and he was trying to cough it out.  Utter darkness
encompassed him and there was no sound.

All volition, all muscular and nerve-initiative had been beaten out of
him.  He could only try to breathe through that hot sponge and to keep
that other trickling thing out of his lungs.  It was not his mind that
made this effort; only a body detached from his mind, acting
involuntarily like the flouncing of a fish out of water.  He lost
consciousness again before he realised where he was hit; and the
litter-bearers bore him on to the casualty clearing station.  They did
not know whether or not he was dead.  Sometimes cases like that were
and sometimes they were not when they reached the station.

"Better be, though," said the one who had the rear handles of the
stretcher.

"Yes.  I'd want to be," said the man in front.




CHAPTER XXVII

A SMILING HELEN

The War Office must foresee everything; that men must be drilled before
they know how to fight and that when they fight some will be wounded.
There must be experts in salvage as well as in preparation; depots to
mend broken parts in the immense, complicated machine.

On a hillside where they would miss none of the rare winter sunshine,
the summer breezes, or the tonic of fresh spring air, rows of long,
green barracks had risen.  Gravelled paths connected them between
stretches of transplanted sod and geranium beds.  Women in nurses'
uniforms, and surgeons twiddling stethoscopes, and hospital corps
attendants bearing trays of food, went along the paths.  Sometimes the
surgeons stopped to talk about this or that case, in their professional
jargon.  Some were youngsters who had not yet begun practice; others of
the old regular service had looked after the health of Mr. Thomas
Atkins in India and out-of-the-way places, where flies and mosquitoes
are busy in tropical heat with their wicked occupations; and still
others were grey-haired, eminent specialists from London used to
receive fees that gave the youngsters a giddy feeling, but now working
for a lieutenant's pay.  All the talent and skill of the medical and
surgical world were at the service of this repair shop of damaged men.

Indoors the X-ray "sharp" was always busy locating bits of steel as
black points on hazy photographs; still forms were wheeled into the
operating-room so softly that it seemed as simple a business as
slipping a paper into a drawer; the beds in the wards were in rows
between a broad aisle, with screens moved here and there by the
noiseless sleight-of-hand of nurses trained to their part no less than
infantry in the use of the bayonet.

One of the nurse's duties is to smile.  However tired she is she must
smile, just as a soldier must salute and obey orders with alacrity.  A
smile in passing for the fellow with one eye showing through a swathe
of bandages, for him with splinted legs held fast by weights, or the
one dreamily convalescent, and particularly for the one quivering with
pain.  The man who awakes from a sweet sleep or the one who has been in
a nightmare with a dozen machine-guns playing on him and bombs bursting
all around, is greeted by a smile as he returns to the world of reality.

The nurse has life, strength, tenderness in her facile, confident
attention to those who are without strength and dependent as children.
She makes each patient feel that he is the only one in the world, which
is the way that patients like to feel.  All the nurses without
exception seemed good-looking, even the plain ones when you looked into
their kindly eyes as they turned toward you.

The sometime tempery and the sometime morbid Helen was always smiling
these days; smiling from the depths of her fine eyes as well as with
her lips.  Her personality glowed with opportunity and grew with it.
Every day she worked so long and hard that when night came she fell
asleep as soon as her head was on the pillow.  This was good, too, as
it prevented any fiends of melancholy from tugging at her heart.

It is not only surgery and medicines and leaving nature to do the rest,
as the grey-haired specialists knew, which brings recovery; it is also
the desire to live which surroundings may induce.  There are perfectly
good nurses with perfectly good smiles who do everything required of
them, not to say that there are slack nurses and possibly nurses who
flirt with young officers.  Then, as in other walks of life, there is
occasionally a person who has what one of the grey-haired specialists
called the gift, when he spoke of Helen.

She had fancy, as we know, and she could put her fancy on paper with a
quickness and sureness of stroke which had led M. Vailliant to think
that she might do dry points.  All the talent she had, all her heart,
belonged to the wounded.  She was comrade to Mr. Atkins, whether
rosy-cheeked boys of the "Kitcheners" or a stoical old regular, who
accepted fighting as his job, had no home, and refused to be a hero.

"At first I didn't think you was what you'd call a beauty!" said one,
who got red after he had blurted out the fact.

"I'm not.  You've good eyesight," she replied.

"But now I think you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen!" he
added; and this statement was as honest as the first.  It made Helen
infinitely happy; for there was nothing that she so much desired in her
inmost heart as to be good-looking.

She drew a long series of cartoons for that gallant who had been hung
up in the barbed wire in the moonlight, played at bombs back and forth
with the Germans around "Wipers," and been pulled out of mudholes and
buried by shells.  The cartoons were her best card in the pack of her
hospital cheer.  One anecdote illustrated called for another.  Helen
knew more about the life of the army in Flanders than the "brass hats,"
the staff and all the war correspondents.  For these survivors of hell
did not want gloomy pictures.  Reality was enough without adding to its
horrors that of long faces.  They liked something to make them smile
even when death was at their elbow.  They sent her cartoons home in
their letters, or if they had no homes, put the sheets away with their
treasures.  One even cautioned his wife not to be jealous, because this
jolly nurse drew cartoons for everybody; and he had the rank of major.

Helen kept on doing what she called real drawings, which were appearing
the world around.  Even the censors could not find any military secrets
in them, particularly after she sent the chief censor a cartoon of her
imaginary portrait of a censor in his most diabolical mood of
evisceration.  Some of the cartoons, too, got into print, bringing more
requests from editors, which she could refuse now in view of the checks
coming in for the real drawings.  M. Vailliant, who had been wounded
and was now convalescent, had gathered up some of the floating strands
of his affairs and wrote his congratulations to Helen, hoping that she
would not go to America after the war.  Let America come to her in
Paris.

"You are trying to swell my head," she wrote back; "and I do believe
that it is a little larger.  How can it help being!"

Nevertheless, that tugging at her heart would come at times.  When she
ought to be perfectly happy she was not, as she found whenever her work
gave her a moment to search her inner self.

All this about Helen, when Henriette was just across the road with what
the doctors and nurses in Helen's unit referred to as "Lady
Truckleford's lot."  Sometimes the doctors when they looked in that
direction said something almost profane about volunteer organisations
and people who had influence.  Lady Truckleford flitted back and forth
to London, where she was on a number of boards and lists of patronesses
without knowing what they were all about unless she asked honourable
secretaries, which was a bore, as the honourable secretaries could not
be along when somebody gave you a poser.  However, she did not allow
such details to disturb her placidity for long.

If you were a young officer whose people were of some account and you
were only slightly wounded, "Lady Truckleford's lot" was a most
delightful lot to be with; and in addition you were certain of
attention from real trained nurses who were also a part of the
establishment.  In charming company you could sit in the same sun and
breathe the same air as the convalescents of the professional unit and
look out to sea and watch the boats coming and going across the
channel; and you could also make trips in automobiles to the
neighbouring seaside resort, where once French and English people came
in the holidays of peace before the world's game was war.  Aside from
Henriette among Lady Truckleford's lot was Lady Violet Dearing,
characterised by doll-like beauty and a lisp.  She was poor and
dependent on her friends; and despite her lisp and her attractiveness
she had had no luck in making any definite attachment though she was
twenty-eight, which is a desperate age for doll-like beauties.

Occasionally Helen went to see Henriette; oftener, indeed, than
Henriette came to see her sister.  Once Helen made some cartoons for
the young wounded officers at tea-time, who thought that they were
"ripping."  Lady Violet quite agreed with their view, but Henriette was
cool to her sister when they parted.  Helen made no more cartoons for
Lady Truckleford's lot.

Gossip ran its rounds in this as in other communities.  Lady
Truckleford's lot knew that there was a young American by name of
Sanford, who was Henriette's seventeenth cousin; and Lady Violet teased
Henriette about the seventeenth cousin when she had been the object of
too much attention from the young officers.  If anybody who was
somebody in the Truckleford world was wounded, the Truckleford lot soon
knew it; and if he were interesting it was still possible, in those
early days before the hideous old War Office became utterly
inconsiderate of all the nicer human feelings, to have him transferred
to "more congenial surroundings."




CHAPTER XXVIII

A SITTING CASE

"Yes," murmured the doctor at the casualty clearing station, after he
had listened to Phil's heartbeats and examined an opening in a bandage
of gauze and cotton.  "Yes, another one of the miracles.  They say that
the Boches in such cases----"

He wiped his brow, his sentence unfinished, as Phil gave another
involuntary cough to keep the trickling thing out of his lungs.  The
appeal of nature, struggling for self-preservation, brought the doctor
back to the definite.

"No chance if he is left lying down!" he exclaimed.  "We'll make a
sitting case of it.  Hold him up all the way."

They lifted the limp figure into the ambulance, where two other sitting
cases were waiting for further passengers.

"Now, you're off!"

The swift, kindly-springed ambulance sped on out of the zone of
shell-fire along the hard roads between the avenues of poplars in the
glorious sunshine.

Phil realised that some one was keeping him from slipping and that he
would slip and keep on slipping to the very bottom of things if left to
himself.  Little hammers were beating on his brain.  Their tat-tat kept
him from any continuity of thought.  As soon as he had an idea they
crushed it while it was only fluttering in vagueness.  Indeed, they
moved about over his brain on the lookout to crush any conscious grasp
of anything.  He would outwit them; he would know what all this was
about.  Straining his eyelids open--they were as heavy as steel
doors--there was only a black curtain in front of his eyes as the
reward of the effort.  This must mean--but the hammers would not let
him find out what it meant.  He tried to listen and there was a void
beaten by noiseless hammers which were striking into pulp--his brain.
He was afraid of something; something ghastly indefinable.

Again he was slipping.  He would just let himself slip.  That was best.
When you slipped the hammer-blows became muffled.  They did not hurt so
much; only when you slipped you had to cough to keep back the trickling
thing.  The strong arm of the hospital corps man straightened him up.
Apparently some one did not want him to slip.  This must be the man who
ran the hammers and wanted to keep them busy--those noiseless,
merciless hammers in the black night.

"It's lucky just to get it in the leg," said one of the two sitting
cases opposite, with a red spot on a white wrapping showing through his
slit trousers' leg.

"Bang in the middle of the head's better than that," said the other,
who had his arm in a sling.

"God, yes!"

Up and down hill the ambulance, its green curtains drawn on its
secrets, ran smoothly on past the long trains of motor-trucks that fed
the army, past well-muscled, comely, eager, whistling, and singing
youth on the march, through villages and towns, through the orderly
world of health and action to that quiet world where the nurses smiled,
inside the long, low buildings connected by gravelled paths.

Phil knew that he had arrived because he had been lifted down from
somewhere onto something, which was a signal for the hammers to do a
snaredrum dance which made him unconscious for a moment.  The hammers
did not like him to be unconscious.  Having beaten him out of
consciousness, they beat him back to it with a different kind of
tattoo.  Then, he was being carried along in a sort of cradle.

"Keep his head up!" said the little ticket which came with all who were
sent to the human repair shop.

"Very particular about that!" insisted the tired medical corps man, who
had held Phil up for the whole journey.

Phil had only the sense of being laid on something soft, with his
shoulders propped up against something still softer.  Then they were
taking off his clothes.  These people were very kind, but they could
not stop the hammers; nothing could.  Perhaps they would let him slip
down, down, down, on that downy pillow till the hammers stopped.  He
would tell them about the hammers; then they would understand why he
wanted to slip.  So he tried to speak, though he was uttering only a
gurgle and he could not have heard his own voice if he had been
articulate.  The hammers were drowning his voice with their beat.  They
did not mean to let him slip.  If he could not hear his own voice, how
could he expect the kind people to hear it?

A young surgeon used his stethoscope; then waited on his superior, Dr.
Smythe, to come before attempting any redressing.

"An eighth of an inch more would have done it!" said Dr. Smythe, as
they removed the bandages.  "Why not the fraction?  It would have been
more merciful."

"The Boches, they say, in such cases----" began the young doctor.

"We can't---and won't!" was the reply of the senior.

Phil felt that the hot sponge had been removed.  He could breathe more
freely.  More air in his lungs revived him.  Shooting pains ran out in
forked tongues from the hammer-beats, bringing an acute consciousness
of why the sponge had been there.  His hand went up involuntarily,
quickly, on its mission of discovery.  The doctors, realising his
purpose, reached for it in common impulse, to save him from the truth,
but too late.  The sense he had left, that of touch as acute as ever,
felt the moist and fractured horror.  His arm hung a dead weight in the
surgeons' grip as they laid it back by his side on the cot.  His brain
had been struck another stunning blow, such as it had received from the
shell.  It rebounded with wild consciousness as he tried to lift
himself forward in delirious effort.  But a strong hand was pressing
his forehead; other strong hands were forcing him back into place.  The
hand on his forehead said to him: "It is useless; you cannot."  And the
hammers had it, there in that soundless, dumb, sightless world of
torture.

Now he must pretend to yield; yes, he must keep one thing in mind.
They might hold his head up, but this would not prevent him from
slipping.  He would will that he should slip and keep on willing it
till he reached the bottom of things.  Yes, that had been done before
and he could do it.  They could not make him live under the
hammers--live for such a monstrous future as he foresaw.  Yes, just
will it and it would not take long to die; no, not long--a few hours,
perhaps.  He was sure of this.  Beat on, hammers, while you may; the
harder, the sooner the end.

"It's a chance for Bricktop to make good," said Dr. Smythe.  "We've
heard so much of his wonders.  Send for him."

Already word had passed through the ward and even across the way to
Lady Truckleford's lot that there was a terrible case at Number Four,
gunner officer, named Sanford.  It reached Henriette when she was at
tea and Helen when she was at her quarters off duty and drawing.  The
young doctor who had gone for Bricktop met them coming in at the door
and noted their startled, anxious faces.

Henriette leading, they came down the aisle.  When Dr. Smythe, whose
form hid Phil, drew aside and Henriette saw what lay against the white
pillow she screamed and placed both hands over her eyes to hide the
sight and turned away, reeling and shuddering.

"Let me go!" she cried, stumbling toward the door.

"The screen!" exclaimed Dr. Smythe.

Helen, too, had her hands over her eyes; she, too, was shuddering but
not moving.  She brought her hands down with a kind of wrench,
stiffened her chin, and then stepped behind the screen.

"Cousin Phil!" she said, striving to keep her voice steady--and she saw
that his glazed eyes were sightless.

"He is quite deaf from shell-shock, too!" said Dr. Smythe.

So this was Helen's cousin; therefore, Henriette's.

For a moment she was silent, with deep breaths, as if between impulses,
before she dropped down beside the cot.  Those hammers could not
prevent Phil from knowing that a woman's hand was grasping his, a soft
palm and slim fingers were pressing his tight, as if they would send a
current of cheer through him.  She could do that when he was so
monstrous!  If only the shell had finished him.  With her other hand
she was rolling up his sleeve; then she slipped her left hand in place
of the right in his.  Dr. Smythe and the nurse in attendance looked on
in a spell of tragic curiosity.

Now Phil felt a finger moving on his arm.  Sensitive little nerves--he
had never known that there were such sensitive ones--followed the
movement and carried the sense of their progress to the brain in spite
of the hammers.

"I am trying to write so you will understand," she slowly traced the
letters.  "If you do, two pressures of the hand is yes."

"Yes," came the signal.

"He does!" said Helen, smiling up to Dr. Smythe in triumph.

"Ripping!" he said.

She repeated the message aloud, firmly, confidently, as she slowly
wrote:

"I have good news.  You will recover your hearing, speech, and sight
completely.  We have a miracle man here who will make you whole again,
just the same that you were before except for a few little scars that
will go away.  You must just want to get well, in order to give the
miracle man his chance and for the sake of your father and mother and
those who love you."  And after the last word she hesitated, then wrote
the letter "H."

Each letter surging along those sensitive nerves, and letters slowly
spelling words.  She could look at the monstrous sight that he was, at
that gaping wound, and ask this of him!  _She_ wanted him to live!  So
be it.  He would not try to slip.  The miracle man should have his
chance.  It was between the hammers on one side and her and the miracle
man on the other.

"Wonderful!  I admire your courage in saying it!" Dr. Smythe remarked
thickly.

"But it will and must come true!" said Helen sturdily, as she rose to
her feet and looked straight into his eyes, her own aflame with
resolution.  "No one must even think the contrary."

Another person had overheard the message written on Phil's arm as he
looked around the corner of the screen.  Lean he was and angularly
built.  His hair was brick-red, his face freckled, his age about
thirty-five, and he had a smiling turn to the corners of his mouth.  He
had come down the aisle with a noiseless step, as if propelled by
inexhaustible nervous vitality, and he had the air of a man with
distinctly eccentric qualities, who would never stop on a street corner
to ask anybody to tell him how to do his work.  No second glance would
be required to see that he was American--"corn-fed and from Kansas," to
use his own words.

"Well, picture girl, you seem to have put it up to me!" he said
cheerily.  "You've made a lot of promises in my name; but that's just
the kind of talk that helps."

Bricktop examined the wound, while Helen studied his features; but she
could tell nothing by them.  She knew that there were cases which he
refused to undertake, and nothing could change his mind.  Too many
"possible" cases came back from the front behind the green curtains for
him to waste time on the "impossible."

"Remember he is an American!" she whispered.

"So?  What part?"

"New England and the Southwest."

"That makes an all-round man.  Not that gunner Sanford?"

"Yes."

"Peter Smithers--but this is a little world."

All the while his mind was on that wound: his talk an incidental byplay
of his intense concentration.  He began making quick, nervous little
movements with his hands as if he were illustrating a mechanical
process in pantomime.  When he had first appeared at the hospital this
habit was considered gallery play; but most of the doctors had learned
to believe in him, though some were still sceptical, as was Smythe in a
measure.  Here was a test.  When Bricktop looked up he met professional
inquiry in Smythe's eye.

"Can you?"

"Now, if I said that I could," Bricktop replied, "and I didn't, all the
stick-in-the-muds would say there was one on me.  I'm going to try.
It's amazing how bad it is and yet what there is to work with.  But
there's one thing--I don't know.  Never had anything like it before.  I
can make him as good as he was--or it's a complete failure.  I want him
brought over to my place immediately.  And you, picture girl, you are
going to stand by and write cheerful messages on his arm?"

"Yes, always!" said Helen.

"As for his ears, eyes, and vocal chords--that is up to other sharps,"
said Bricktop.

Phil was lifted up again and placed on something not so soft as the bed
and by the motion he comprehended that he was making another journey.
It was to an entrance with the sign "Oral Surgery."  As Bricktop said,
"This means Yours Truly!"  Here he was autocrat, this stranger from
Kansas by way of New York.  On the door of a room fitted out with
dentist's accessories and many little drawers was painted "William
Smith, D.D.S."  He was always glad to tell people about himself,
because, as he said, this saved them from wasting time in guessing and
allowed him the start in the kind of information which was being passed
around about him.

"Glad father and mother, who were sensible people, had a sense of
harmony or something like that," he would say, "and didn't name me
Decourcey or Charlemagne Smith.  Good old name, Smith!  Everybody knows
how to spell it.  Makes the inside of the city directory look
companionable.  But usually," he pointed to his hair, "I'm known as
Bricktop.  At school they called me Bill Bricktop; but I considered
that too illiterate and undignified after I hung out my shingle.
D.D.S.--I'm a dental surgeon; dental surgeon--surgeon, mind, and some
other kinds of a surgeon, too.  When I get time I'm going to do a book
on jaws.  'Bricktop on Jaws'!  Sounds like the personal memoirs of a
henpecked husband, eh?"

Not only dentist, but surgeon!  That was the fact that he kept beating
into the British mind, which seemed to him somewhat opaque at times,
when he was fighting to get the opportunity to do the work that he was
now doing.  He had an air of not caring for anybody, this William
Smith, with his bright grey eye and smiling mouth, which frequently
leads to professional success and even to average mortals being
regarded as geniuses.  In New York his reputation for delicate and
original work brought him many rich patients, which he never allowed to
interfere with his hospital experiments on jaws.  He made enough money
to take care of the little Smiths as they arrived, one, two, three,
four, and all red-headed.

"I should have been rather disappointed if they hadn't been," he said.
"There's something in the very fact of being a red-headed Smith that
ought to give any kid a start in life."

When the war broke out and he read about the havoc wrought by bursting
shells he set out for Europe, believing in himself and his mission to
do more good in the world repairing fractured jaws than by making up
the deficiencies of nature in the mouths of the rich; but because he
believed in himself that was no reason why the War Office should
believe in him.

The first permission that he had secured after arriving in England was
to look around the hospitals for bad cases and then to go ahead with
one which everybody had given up.  When he transformed an officer
condemned to wear a black cloth over his face for life into a
presentable human being, he had a walking testimonial of his skill
which gave him an entry into the big hospital in France.  What an
amazing lot of things he required: laboratories and X-ray apparatus and
the more the authorities gave him, the more he wanted--this William
Smith, D.D.S.  When equipment was not forthcoming through the regular
official channels, he went into his own pocket for the funds to buy it.
His bank account depleted, he was relieved from a fit of depression by
a draft from an angel in New York for twenty thousand dollars.

"Now, don't say that angels cannot draw drafts," he told Dr. Braisted,
the great eye specialist from London, "or I'll think that the English
have no sense of humour at all."

Braisted was as extremely British as Bricktop was American.  Possibly
this was why they got on so well together.  Being a big man himself who
had given up a practice of a hundred thousand dollars a year to save
soldiers from blindness, Braisted could appreciate Bricktop's
professional eagerness and altruism; and after a half-hour's talk with
the American he understood that the American had a thorough groundwork
of training, plus a gift.  This made him one of Bricktop's early
partisans.  Another was Helen.  There was no criticising William Smith,
D.D.S. when she was about.  She knew the subjects of his skill.

"You sit down and draw for them and they forget their jaws ache," he
told her, as he nodded to the figures with faces and jaws swathed in
bandages in the courtyard of his kingdom.

As soon as their wounds healed he had them again under the knife, for
the next process in reconstruction.  Those little contrivances
fashioned in his laboratory which they had to wear caused intense pain;
but they bore it with noble patience.  Whenever he appeared their eyes
followed him with a beautiful gratitude, a childlike confidence.  He
was changing them from monstrosities into whole men.

"Better pay than you get filling teeth for millionaires!" said
Bricktop.  "Stopping teeth, I should say; that's English."

It was a familiar thing for the men in the court to see stretchers
wheeled into the operating-room.  After this they watched for that
red-headed man with the smiling mouth to walk across from his office,
as another part of the regular routine of their existence, and their
sympathy went out to the fellow on the stretcher as no one else's could.

The picture girl walking beside the stretcher this afternoon did not
even look up at them, let alone send them a smile as usual.  When
Bricktop came across from the office she was waiting at the door of the
operating-room, and they noted the appeal in her eyes as she spoke to
him.  Very observing those maimed men who could not speak, but still
had their eyesight.  Whoever was on that stretcher must mean a great
deal to the picture girl.  Afterward, while the operation was on, she
came over to them and talked, but they felt that her mind was inside
the operating-room and that she was suffering.  That was the thing
about her: she could feel how others suffered.  It did them more good
than her drawings.

After he was through with the preliminary probing and splicing and
wiring, which he foresaw must be followed by many other sessions,
Bricktop had what he called one of his "blow-outs."

"Fine business, war; so sensible, so logical, so considerate of
everybody's feelings!" he stormed.  "A man who had a robber baron for
an ancestor and who likes to see his picture in the papers and wear a
uniform and thinks that everything is his by divine right, when what he
needs is a swift kick, wants some more glory!  So he puts on his
war-bonnet and starts the glorious old game, with
improvements--sidewipes with jagged bits of steel that make a mess like
this!  Enough money fired away in one day to give everybody good teeth.
Think of that--if everybody had decent teeth and well-shaped mouths!
But they can't afford it.  It's the killing season.  The good old sport
must be kept up!"

The nurses were familiar with the "blow-outs," which usually came with
the reaction after a trying operation, when those skilful fingers had
been so certain in their touch under an eye which was like the steel of
the instruments that he used.

Phil had awakened to find that they had taken away the thing over his
nose that had put him to sleep.  And they had put back the sponge-like
thing in his mouth; but he could breathe better than before.  Then they
were taking him on another journey and propping him up in bed again, in
his world of silent night.  He knew, instantly her hand touched his,
that it was she again.  She was writing:

"It went all right.  The miracle man is pleased."

"Brave little liar!" thought Bricktop, whose pessimism with the first
results had made his "blow-out" particularly bitter.

"I am writing to your father for you and telling him that you will be
as good as ever," she continued.  "The miracle man says that the pain
will be bad, and if it is too bad, clap your hands and they will stop
it.  But he would rather not, if you can endure it."

Phil gave her hand two pressures to signify that he understood, and had
a pressure in response before she withdrew her hand with a fluttering,
nervous quickness.  This return pressure helped.  It was like
comradeship in battle.  He was not making the fight alone.

Next, they were doing something to his eyes, which were finally covered
with a compress.  The people out in that silent blackness were divided
into classes: She and they.  Then they were doing something to his
ears.  The eye and the ear experts said the same as Bricktop.  Both
would try; for all three were big men, who said just what they meant.
Phil, guessing their purpose, waited for the message on his arm.

"It is all right," she wrote again.  "They say you will see again and
hear again as well as ever."

He believed her with the faith of those men in the court who followed
Bricktop with their confident eyes.  Soon the pain came; needlelike
shoots of broken nerves that had been numbed by shock.  A thousand
needles sewing, pricking, leaping, burning, drowning the hammer-beats!

"But I'll stick it!" thought Phil.




CHAPTER XXIX

IN HER PLACE AGAIN

The numbing horror of it--and to have come into her life--hers!
Enveloping horror, the horror of war personified, drove Henriette out
of the ward, on with mechanical steps toward a deserted part of the
beach, where she could be alone and think before she faced Lady
Truckleford's lot.

Her gospel of life had been a gospel of beauty: a delight in her own
beauty as a source of power; a dislike of all things that were not
comely; a choice of surroundings in the fashioning of a beautiful
world, selected and detached in a charming egoism, where she was
supreme.  Phil had come from afar and played a knightly part; she had
fitted him into that world.  It was the end--the end of upward glances
into his eyes; of profile turned in the certainty of holding his
impelled, prolonged regard of admiration; of sauntering in woodland
paths; of rhythmic swing in step across the fields; of fair afternoons
with him posing and herself posing as she leisurely played with her
brush--of the most delectable of all her experiences.

Those finely-chiselled features which she had painted, which had been
the security of masculine strength in her fright as he carried her to
the cover of the gully, their elation when she spoke of the woman who
waited when the man went out to fight--and that monstrous fact against
a pillow in the hospital!

War had made its test in kind.  All the soft, pampered years were in
reckoning for her, as the suffering years were for Helen.  Her instinct
was to fly to her quiet studio in Paris, as a child flies indoors to
its mother from a storm dragon; but public opinion, personified to her
distraction by Lady Truckleford's lot, would not permit this.  Her
friends knew that he was her cousin; and Lady Violet's teasing had been
the reflection of general knowledge of the situation between the two.
No one would more quickly appreciate than they in their own beautiful
world that any conventional outcome would now be impossible, yet none
readier to point the finger at heartlessness.  They would expect
devoted attention to him for a certain period in his ghastly misfortune.

Had she courage?  Could she bear standing by his bedside and looking at
his bandaged face?  She must!  Her part became clear.  Her cousin and
friend had been maimed; she pitied him; suffering should go with her
grief for him in a way that would engage the sympathy of all.  What
were they saying at Lady Truckleford's at this minute?  Their opinion
had come to mean much to her.  They knew only that she had put her
hands to her eyes and screamed and staggered out of doors.  Was not
this the natural result of such a shock?  And the next?  It would be to
inquire about him.

Starting back to the ward, a new horror presented itself on the way.
All her life she might be known as the woman who was waiting for a man,
who returned to her a blind, deaf wreck.  He would exist, haunting her
memory, invading her beautiful world with a mutilating hand.  If
only--she shuddered at the thought which easily became familiar in an
era when the quick became the dead as a matter of course out where the
guns were firing.  Perhaps he was already gone.  She gasped and halted
as she found the possibility hastening her steps.  The man for whom she
had waited, though they had not really been engaged as she kept
reminding herself, would have fallen in action and the slate would be
clean.

She was at the door of the ward and heard her voice asking a nurse how
he was.

"He's transferred to Dr. Smith.  There's been an operation.  I've not
heard the result," replied the nurse coldly; for a woman finds it as
easy to speak coldly to another woman who is beautiful as a man finds
it difficult.

"And my sister?" asked Henrietta.

"She went across with the stretcher."

As Henriette made a turn in the path which brought her in sight of the
Oral Surgery sign, Helen was passing under it and coming toward her.
She was pale and faint with exhaustion from the strain which had ended
with that final tax on her strength, as she put all she had into the
message of optimism which she had written on Phil's arm.  So near had
she been to him, so bound up with him in thought and feeling, that
coming suddenly face to face with Henriette affected her strangely.
She had a tightening in her throat and Henriette a stifling constraint
along with her suspense.  After a silence, Helen was the first to speak.

"He stood the operation well," she said.

"And he will live--live?" Henriette asked, her breath catching on the
words.

Helen remembered now how her sister had put her hands over her eyes and
screamed.  Afterwards she had not thought of Henriette, only of him.
It had been too horrible for Henriette to bear.  Henriette loved him
and he loved her, and her eyes to Helen's revealed her suffering in the
past two hours.  Now she had come back as one in a dream, afraid to ask
how he was.

"Yes, he will live, Henriette--oh, how awful it has been for you!  His
body is as good as ever.  He will live and make the fight.  He has
promised--such a hard fight!"

"Then he had wished to die?  He was going to, you mean, and--and----"
Henriette wrenched out the words.

"Yes, and the doctor says that he would have died.  It is all a matter
of will-power.  But we told him that he would get his sight and hearing
back and except for some little scars will be the same as before."

"Will he?"

"He must!  We must not allow him or ourselves to think anything else.
Just must--must!"

"Yes!" Henriette breathed faintly.

"Will you go in and see him?"

"I----"  Henriette hesitated.  "No, not to-night!" she concluded.

The two sisters walked along the path in silence, which was a gripping
silence for both.  When they came to the parting of the ways to their
quarters, Helen took Henriette's hand in hers.

"There is another reason why he wants to live.  You asked him to," she
said.

"I--I could not bear it--I went out.  How could I?  What do you mean?"

"The will was everything in the crisis, as I said.  Often such
cases--well--some one had to speak to him and tell him it would all
come out right when it was so hard for him to breathe, or he would not
have tried to breathe any more.  So I wrote on his arm and asked him to
live for--for the sake of those who loved him--and he could not see
that it was I--and I signed it H!"

Henriette withdrew her hand from Helen's in a spasm which shook her
frame.  She opened her lips to speak, but would not trust her own
tongue and whirling brain.

"Again you took my place!" she exclaimed, at last.

"It was for you--to give him hope to inspire him for the fight!" Helen
replied, with passionate conviction.

"Yes--yes, I understand.  I can't think!  It's too horrible!  Go on
taking my place--you can--it's easier for you!  Yes, go on!  It
unstrings me too much now to see him--yes, look after him, encourage
him.  Go on--only don't tell any one the ruse that you are playing!"
she concluded, with a burst of emphatic coherency before she bolted
along the path, murmuring to herself: "Yes, that is it--that is the way
out!"

Over at Lady Truckleford's lot they had been thinking of little else
but Henriette.  How would she take it?  The lot was gathered in the
reception-room before going into dinner, and when Henriette entered all
eyes were covertly or openly upon her.  Lady Violet took the lead by
springing up and kissing Henriette on the cheek.

"You poor dear!" breathed Lady Violet.  "Of course we've heard, and
we've all felt for you!"

Henriette, pale in her distress, had never seemed more beautiful to
Captain Landor, who had had a bullet through the arm.  Usually
Henriette cut his meat for dinner; but to-night Lady Violet was assured
of the privilege.

"I have just come from inquiring as to the result of the operation,"
said Henriette.  "He is resting easily.  As you know, he is really a
distant cousin of Helen's and mine and we were all fond of one another.
We had such good times together at Mervaux.  It was so fine of him to
stay and fight instead of going home.  Then this!  You can't imagine
the shock of it!"

"Terrible!" gasped Lady Violet.  "We all know what it means to you."

"And even more to Helen!" said Henriette.  "Poor Helen!  She was
utterly devoted to him and he to her.  She has stood by so bravely,
insisting that he will get his sight and hearing back and that Bricktop
will remake him as good as new.  When I think of him as I last saw him
and how Helen is suffering--it's too horrible!"

With a weary drooping of her lashes, she said that she was too tired to
think of coming down to dinner and went to her room, where, after she
had bathed her face and taken down her hair, her reflection in the
mirror in its faultless outline was a reflection of something in her
cosmos which could have no part with deformities of any kind, and her
relief was infinite over the gate that Helen had providentially opened.
She hastened to write to her mother, the letter a symbol of cutting a
chain with the past:

"... I saw it--a monstrous wound of the jaw.  He is deaf, blind,
speechless.  They say that he will live.  I need not tell you what a
day it has been for Helen and me!  When I thought of his gallant
conduct at Mervaux in refusing to leave Helen there alone, of our fun
over the portrait and the cartoons, and all that he meant to his father
and mother, the thought of what has happened to him was too horrible
for words.  I am glad that when he became _épris_ I did not encourage
him.  Now I see that his real fondness was for Helen.  He asks for her,
wants her near him.  She is a great comfort to him and her feeling for
him is deeper than either of us realised.  I hope you will give up your
trip to Truckleford, travelling conditions are so abominable."

To which Madame Ribot consented, as she was no longer interested in
Peter Smithers's visit.

Helen, after she had separated from her sister on the path, had thought
little of what had passed between them.  Her mind was too intensely
objective.  Anything to make Phil well!  It did not matter how it was
done or who did it.  Upon her return to her room she gathered up her
drawing materials, which seemed to belong to her in some other
incarnation, and put them in a drawer.  It was as if her life was
Phil's; his wound hers.  She wrote the promised letter to Truckleford,
and then she prayed for Phil; and after she had prayed to the God
above, she clenched her fists and murmured: "Will!  Must!" in the face
of all the hard little gods below who seem to get a good deal out of
the hand of the God above.




CHAPTER XXX

PETER SMITHERS IN ACTION

Two white heads bent over the tombstones in the cemetery at Truckleford
and talked genealogy; two white heads strolled on the lawn and had
tilts in theology, or sat in the library and discussed English and
American viewpoints.  The vicar of Truckleford believed in a State
church, while Dr. Sanford held that this meant mixing religion and
politics, which was a bad business.  Sanford of England, who had cheeks
ruddy from the moist climate, brought his sentences to a close with a
rising inflection; and Sanford of New England had a dry complexion,
with sharp little wrinkles around his eyes, and brought his sentences
to a close with a falling inflection.  They seemed a trifle strange to
each other at times, though they were speaking the same language; and
either would have been highly complimented if you had told him that you
recognised him for the Englishman or the American he was at once?  They
rambled from philosophy to politics, from scientific versus classical
education to the future of humanity generally, rich in words and ideas
if not in money.

Then, two other white heads pottered about the flower and kitchen
gardens, both clicking their knitting needles industriously for
soldiers the while.  In England, roses were not often frost-killed or
burned by the hot sun of summer, which brightened the sunflower and the
goldenrod fringeing the roadsides with yellow in autumn at home.  Two
white heads discussed the servant problem in both countries; and
England thought it pretty bad at home until she heard of the state of
affairs in America.  It was the particular care of the two English
heads, plotting together in their nightly conferences, that the
American cousins should feel at home when English facility in this
respect, however insular and offish the islanders may seem abroad,
requires no calculation.

The visit at last come true had the aspect of romance under the
circumstances.  It required a certain amount of courage for Dr. and
Mrs. Sanford to cross the Atlantic in the midst of submarine activity
quite in keeping with ancestral Pilgrim daring in crossing in the
seventeenth century.  From Jane came an occasional letter on the state
of affairs in Longfield.  "Things can't be right personally with you
away," she wrote.  "I am getting too fat and lazy for words.  But
things exteriorly, as Phil would say when he got hifalutin, are just
the same.  Garden doing fine except the cauliflowers, which look
peaked; but they will pick up, Patrick says, as cauliflowers have a way
of looking peaked and ragged before they get a start.  No hyphenates
and few potato bugs in Longfield this year.  I put up thirty jars of
currant jelly and it looks licking good.  That is more than you can
eat; but sure, unless you change your habits, it isn't more than you
can give away.  I expect you're putting your shoes outside your door
every morning to be blacked, like the lords do.  Well, when you come
home you will find the blacking-brush in the same old place and that
Jane has not changed.  I am writing a letter to Phil himself.  With
best regards,

"Your truly, JANE."


There was one subject which knit the cousinship of the four ever
closer--Phil.  The local postmaster was convinced that there was no
danger of one officer starving, if soldiers could live on cake, judging
by the number of packages which went through the parcels post to Second
Lieutenant Philip Sanford.  Their thoughts were those of hundreds of
thousands of other households in England.  The pride of it for the
vicar and his wife was that they, too, had a son at the front.  They
would not waive the claim that he was partly theirs and their guests
did not ask it.  Every day they wrote to Phil, and his cheerful letters
in answer, always making sport of the mud and minimising the
dangers--long letters when the battery was in billets--brought the four
heads into communion of spirit whenever the envelopes arrived.  Always
there was the fear--the fear over hundreds of thousands of households,
no less poignant in each because of the hundreds of thousands of
others--the fear which they never mentioned and never forgot.

The postman brought Helen's letter, the only one in the post that trip,
to Dr. Sanford when he was alone on the lawn, thinking that a point had
occurred to him which would give him the better of the argument with
the vicar the next time they resumed a certain discussion.  After he
had opened the envelope and read the first sentence, he folded the
sheet and walked away into the garden to be undisturbed.  He must think
how to break the news to his wife.

"This time Cousin Phil is not writing to you himself, but I am writing
for him," Helen wrote.  "Though I have never seen you, it seems as if I
knew you and I think, as Phil's father and mother, you are the kind who
might suffer more in the end if some of the truth were held back by
clever phrases than if it were all told at first.  He loves you so much
and you love him so much that it is the only honest way.

"He is as whole as ever in body, his mind quite clear, despite the
wound in his jaw from a shell-fragment; but he must remain here at the
hospital for many months, while a miracle man of a surgeon will make
his jaw as good as ever.  As the result of shell-shock he is also, for
the moment, both blind and deaf; but other miracle men will bring back
his sight and hearing.  All the great ones are prepared to spoil him
with attention, he is so brave.

"As he cannot write himself, I shall write for him every day.  But you
must not be impatient; as these modern miracle men, unlike the Biblical
ones, must take time to perform their wonders.  Write him as many
letters as you can and I'll spell out every word of them to him.  Yes,
go on writing just as if he were making a fight at the front and that
will help him in the new fight he is making in the dark against pain
and for you.  When he returns he will be the same as when he left you,
only dearer to you as you will be to him.  He will recover completely.
Depend on this."

"Brave little liar!" as Bricktop had said.  Yet Helen believed every
word.

Dr. Sanford continued to walk up and down after he had finished the
letter.  Mrs. Sanford, coming out of doors and seeing him, knew that
something had happened to Phil, though the Doctor looked only
customarily thoughtful and calm.  She went toward him, followed by the
vicar and his wife; they, too, divining from her attitude that tragedy
had come to Truckleford.

"I am ready!  What is it?" asked Mrs. Sanford.

He read the letter aloud, thinking that this would soften the message
for her.  She listened with a white face and still eyes.  When he had
finished she took his hands in hers; then in silence the two started
walking up and down, arm in arm.  Two other white heads in the
background, quite as if it were their son, also walked up and down, arm
in arm.  Silent, very silent, the garden, except for the occasional hum
of a bee.

The mother was looking the worst fairly in the face, with
characteristic fearlessness.

"We have a little money--enough if----"  If Phil should be in the
eternal night they could care for him, was the first thought of her
love.  But after they were gone----

The other two white heads were thinking the same.  Phil had done this
for their cause.  They had a little money; he should not want.  When,
finally, the first two came toward the vicar, he was suddenly mindful
that Helen had written the letter; rather than Henriette--which was
very odd.

"She would state all the truth, Helen would," said the vicar.  "It's
her merit.  She could not help doing so.  When she says that Phil will
be as right as ever again, you may depend upon it."

"We do!" said Phil's mother.  "He will get well!  He must!  We'll not
think anything else.  He will!"  There was a quiet, tense vitality in
her declaration akin to Helen's own.

"He will!" said Dr. Sanford.

"That sounds better," said the vicar.  "It is worthier of the ancestors
and Phil."

"We must go to him!" said the mother.

The next morning this pair of old children set out, holding hands in
the compartment a good portion of the way to London.  Cities always
confused Dr. Sanford.  Only the call to his son would have given him
courage to enter the portals of that sombre War Office, which was only
one of many doors whence he took his plea.

Every one was sorry and kindly, too, when they looked over the old
clergyman and he told his tale.  If they let one parent go to a great
hospital in the military zone in France, then they would have to let
thousands; but one official, with a sly wink, suggested that he get a
note from his Ambassador.  Going to the Embassy simply as an American
gentleman, without any letters of introduction, he waited in the
reception-room a long time till somebody returned from luncheon; and
the somebody, who was a young person with a Burke's Peerage under his
arm, said that it was quite out of the question for the Embassy to
interest itself in his case.

"It's the rules, I suppose," said Mrs. Sanford.

"Yes.  We can't go behind the rules," said the Doctor.

It was a sad journey for the old children back to Truckleford and their
hand-clasp was tighter than before as they looked out at the hedges
slipping by.  Awaiting them were letters from Helen, long letters, less
matter-of-fact than the first one, with a chant of optimism running
through the sentences; and a telegram from Peter Smithers, who had
arrived at Liverpool and was coming to see them.

Automobiles were difficult of hire in England then; yet Peter arrived
in one, a high-powered one at that.  How could he travel by train when
he was on the verge of poverty from keeping up that miserable little
farm?  The way he came through the gate heralded a dynamic advent at
the vicarage.

"Glad to meet you, sir, and you, too, Mrs. Sanford!" he said.  "Suppose
you four have all the ancestors looked up and card-indexed by this
time.  And what about Phil?  Still wallowing in the mud for the
pleasure of being shot at?  What!"

The look in all four faces drew a sharp, penetratingly anxious
exclamation from him.

"Tell me!" he demanded, and the whole aspect of the man had changed in
an instant.  "Tell me!"

He dropped in a chair at the news; but no sooner was he down than he
jumped up, jerking a cigar out of his pocket and chewing at it as he
began pacing back and forth with pounding steps.

"Bricktop can do it if anybody can!" he said excitedly.  "I'd back
Bricktop against anybody or anything!  Bricktop over there operating on
Phil!  It's a small world.  Bricktop will do it; and if there aren't
specialists over there big enough to bring back Phil's sight and
hearing, we'll get them, by George!"  Peter took another turn, chewing
at his cigar, and then whirled around.  Decision was in his eyes and in
every one of the definite wrinkles of his face.  "I know what you've
been thinking--if the worst should happen!"

"Yes, we had!" admitted Mrs. Sanford.

"But it won't, not to Phil!  He'll pull out.  George!  I'd have given a
thousand to have seen him knock that Prussian down!  Whatever happens,
I want you to know that all I have is back of him and every cent I
have, if that farm doesn't break me, goes to him--and there's three
millions, anyway."

Let it be recorded that the effect of this sudden declaration on four
white heads was indescribable, particularly on the vicar and his wife,
who had a feeling that they were witnessing some sort of a
Christmas-time extravaganza.  Phil's mother said that it was quite in
keeping with Peter's reputation for making vital decisions promptly.
At the same time she only gasped, "Peter!" while Dr. Sanford blinked
like one who tries to look the sun in the face.

"Surprises you!  I expect it is surprising," said Peter.  "Never had
any other idea since he was a little shaver.  Always had my eye on him,
but wasn't going to ruin him by making him think he didn't have to go
out and clean cattle cars and knock down Prussians on his own account.
Wanted to leave my fortune to a man, and the way to become a man is to
go out and scratch gravel.  Was kind of backing him when Ledyard took
him on, but don't you tell him; it would make him mad.  Now Ledyard
says he won't let him go; but Ledyard doesn't own the whole United
States.  Remember last time I saw Phil and I was talking about my
employees' clubhouse--he gave me such a slam that my indignation was
real."

Misfortune to Phil had cracked the Smithers burr and revealed the sweet
kernel inside.

"Peter, I----"

"Peter, we----"

The Longfield Sanfords were at last trying to utter their thanks.  As
for the Truckleford Sanfords, they still expected to see Peter toss a
rope skyward and climb up it out of sight.

"Bless you for a pair of the best old dears that ever lived!" said
Peter.  "If it hadn't been for your father, Doctor, I might be holding
Bill Hurley's job driving the local 'bus.  Now, what you want to do is
to get to Phil, don't you?"

"Yes!  Oh, above everything!" exclaimed Mrs. Sanford.

"I gadded all over London trying," said the Doctor, who narrated his
experiences.

"That baby boy at the Embassy, with his little accent and his little
moustache turned up, and afraid he might slip on his little shadow,
that's Levering's son," said Peter.  "Levering started driving a donkey
in a mine and left about two hundred thousand dollars and got heart
disease making it, while his wife was in Paris.  She couldn't stay at
home in Cokeville because she had no social standing there.  He used to
see her once a year, if he could spare two weeks to cross the pond.
But I'm wasting a lot of words on him, though it's time somebody gave
him a twist.  Now, I'll go back to London to-night."

"But you must stay to dinner!" begged the vicar.

"Sorry.  But we want to see Phil.  Is there a telegraph office here?
Good!  Might as well start things moving.  I'll get dinner at one of
those little inns.  First-rate meat and potatoes; that's all a man
wants--only the English never season anything.  Put a pile of salt on
the side of their plate and dab every mouthful in it, which means
irregular distribution and a waste of time."

He was shaking hands all around preparatory to going, when he had a
reminder.

"I want to see that ancestor of ours," he said.  "Mine by adoption!
You don't mind?  I see your family isn't large and there ought to be
enough of him to go round."

"We welcome you!" said the vicar, chuckling.  This interest in
genealogy convinced him that both Peter and the three millions must be
real.

Peter looked the ancestor over with the eye of one who knows men.

"I'm proud of him!" he concluded, with a wink to the vicar.  "You can
see that he had his teeth set firmly in their sockets.  Most ancestors
have, and those of later generations get wiggly.  Well, I'm off!"

When Peter had gone four white heads gazed at one another and swallowed
and gazed.  Three million dollars!  Peter confessed it!  And all for
Phil!

"Hm-m--let the cat out of the bag!" he mused on his way to London.
"Couldn't help it!  Enjoyed it!  What the professors call the
psychological moment!  Enjoyed keeping it secret before--enjoyed
letting it go.  Phil will keep that farm running after I'm gone--if it
doesn't break me before I pass over the border."

Now Peter did not go to the War Office and beat a table and argue; but
he set things in motion by sending cablegrams and telegrams.  He did
not even send up his card to the Ambassador until the Ambassador had
received messages from four United States senators, from the man to
whom he owed his appointment, and from the Secretary of State, that
Peter Smithers was in London.  Nobody was out at luncheon when he went
to the Embassy, where he was at once given a note to some one on high
who would immediately communicate to some one at the War Office.  But
before leaving he reminded the Ambassador that one of the Embassy
chore-boys, ought to be taught civility as well as manners.

Nor did Peter go to the War Office until the General who was above the
General who was above the General that Phil had first seen also had
heard from several quarters about the importance of Peter Smithers.
The Great One at the War Office was most cordial, and Peter talked to
him as if he were used to meeting Great Ones.  Both were leaders and
organisers of men.

"I think there will be no difficulty," said the Great One.  "We'll make
a special case of it on account of his having to remain a long time at
a base hospital in France.  I'd heard about that young man before.
Fine chap!  Hope he'll pull through.  A relative of yours?"

"Nephew!" Peter replied truthfully.

Hadn't he formally adopted himself as Phil's uncle?




CHAPTER XXXI

A THOUGHT FOR HELEN

"Bricktop!"

"Peter!"

They took a grappling hold of each other, as if about to engage in a
wrestling match to prove which was the more jubilant over this meeting;
for Peter was a man after Bricktop's own heart and Bricktop after
Peter's.

"You're red-headed as ever!" said Peter.

"What did you expect?  That I'd dip my locks in a dye-barrel?  Needed
all the red I had and some more to deal with some of the
stick-in-the-muds, who would not believe that I am a surgeon.  Say, but
you're good for sore eyes and nostalgia!"

"Think of you being over here and operating on Phil!" Peter held
William Smith, D.D.S., off at arm's length in respectful admiration.

"If you hadn't sent me that twenty thousand I wouldn't have had the
equipment for the job," Bricktop replied.

"You don't mean that that twenty thousand--maybe it's saved Phil!"

"Exactly what I do mean!"

"Think of that!"  Peter swallowed hard and blinked.  "But don't you
tell him about it--not yet.  Here I am talking, when there is somebody
outside that----"  He did not finish his sentence, but drew Bricktop
out of his office into the reception-room, where Dr. and Mrs. Sanford
were waiting.

"I don't need any introduction.  You're his father and mother!"
Bricktop exclaimed.

"Yes, we are here, thanks to Peter," said Mrs. Sanford.  "He has a
wonderful way of managing things."

"Peter was born to manage things!" said Bricktop.  "He gave me my
start."

"Just as Dr. Sanford's father gave me mine.  And we are here because
Phil's is a special case which cannot be moved over to England.  Merely
had to make the authorities see the light.  But it seems to me,
Bricktop, you and I are doing a lot of gassing, when what we want is to
see Phil.  How is he getting on?"

Peter had hesitated to put that question, thinking of what this day
meant to the Sanfords.  Bricktop looked into the honest, serene eyes of
the old pair and seeing that they were not afraid of it, told the truth.

"In two or three days I'll come to the big test," he said.  "If that
operation succeeds, the rest will be easy."

Then a soft voice, which had the very melody of cheer, added:

"And it will succeed!"

Helen, coming into the room, had overheard Bricktop's opinion, and
impulsively reinforced it with her faith.  Dr. and Mrs. Sanford for the
first time looked into the eyes of the woman who had written to them
for Phil and about Phil.  Their transparent depths reflected the
quality which they had associated with her.  Something told her that
she was not plain to them, and the thought gave her a thrill of
happiness.

"What beautiful eyes!" exclaimed Mrs. Sanford involuntarily.  "They are
like your spirit!"

"I----"  Helen flushed.  No one had ever said this to her except the
old artist teacher.  That any one should think that anything about her
was beautiful!

"I'm afraid I was personal!" murmured Mrs. Sanford; and both were
embarrassed.

"It was a very nice way to be personal," Helen stammered, finding her
smile.  "How happy he will be to see you!  How he loves you!"

"And his sight and hearing and speech?" asked Mrs. Sanford.

"A long treatment, but they will come back," replied Helen.

She led the way into the ward where Phil was in a big chair, a comely
figure of youth up to his chin.  The rest of him was a ball of white,
with a harness of silver woven in with bandages for his lower face, and
bandages over his eyes.

"Your father and mother have come," Helen wrote on his arm.

They sat down without any demonstration, one on each side of his chair,
and each took one of his hands, receiving a strong answering clasp.
Peter "filled up," as he put up, and went out into the court to pace up
and down.  When he returned they were in the same position.

This hand in his own left hand Phil knew was his father's, because it
was larger and bonier than the one in his right, which was soft and
yielding.  He was thinking of Longfield; seeing the village street
under the old elms, the garden and the porch, and the glory of sunrise
and sunset in the Berkshires; relieving the joys of sight.  In turn, in
that silent communion, Dr. and Mrs. Sanford saw him coming up the path
to the porch at all ages and on all occasions.

"That wiggle of his right foot," said Helen, "means that he wants to
talk.  Oh, we've developed a remarkable code and we've not gone in for
the blind raised letters because he never will need them."

She brought a pencil, which she slipped between his fingers, and a pad,
which she fixed on a slanting table fastened to the chair.

"He's becoming wonderfully good at it," she said, "though at first he
was always getting off the track and writing one line over another."

Slowly but quite clearly he wrote his big letters on small pages, which
Helen passed to the father and mother.

"Some family reunion, this!  It is a cinch that I get well--father,
pardon the language!"

This was the first sheet.  The two looked at each other and smiled.
"It's Phil, all right!" murmured Peter, echoing their thoughts.

"When I get my new countenance, new eyes and ears, and descend on
Longfield, even Jane will admit I'm grown up.  I am going to show Hanks
that he is not the only one who can branch out"--this on the second
sheet.

"Peter arranged it so you could come, I hear," came the third.  "Tell
him he has been so kind that I almost regret I did not go to work for
him and ruin his business."

There was something very like a snort from the direction of Peter, who
was caught grinning when the others looked around.

"Tell Bill Hurley, who is for the Allies but a pessimist about their
chances, that the Allies are going to win the war.  And you are coming
often, aren't you?  Won't they let you?  This conversation is getting
one-sided."  He pulled up his sleeve, which was a signal to Helen.

"Yes," she wrote, at Dr. Sanford's dictation.  "Peter has got a little
house for us and permission to stay near you."

"This is just simply HAPPINESS"--Phil spelled out the word in capitals.
"Tell Peter he is certainly some arranger.  Isn't he going to come and
see me, too?"

Peter was swallowing hard--a habit that he had formed since he had
arrived at the hospital.  He advanced to Phil's side.

"Peter is here," Helen wrote.

Phil's hand went out, searching in the darkness, and Peter's leapt
toward it and the two clasped in a firm, prolonged grip.

"Shall I tell him that every cent I have is his, when he expected
nothing?" Peter put the question to Helen.

She knew only the vague outline of their story, yet understood the
principle involved, and she hesitated.  Peter studied her face with his
shrewd glance.

"I guess not," he said.  "He's fighting for something worth more than
three millions and money won't make a fellow of Phil's calibre fight
any harder.  I guess it would be kind of cheap to do it now.  I'll wait
till he can see me, or till we know that he is not going to----"

"He will!" put in Helen sharply.

"Say," Peter said admiringly, "they ought to put you in command of an
army corps out there!  You've got the kind of spirit that would break
the line."

"Spirit has nothing to do with it," Helen replied.  "It is simply a
fact."

"I'd make it the whole army!" said Peter, who belonged to the school
which believes that if you make up your mind to do a thing you will do
it.

Phil was writing again, his fingers moving more rapidly than usual, his
writing less distinct, as if he were under the pressure of strong
emotion:

"I should have slipped if it had not been for her.  It is a thing one
can't talk about--the great thing of all, that makes me bear the pain
and make the fight--what Henriette has done for me."

"Henriette!"

Dr. and Mrs. Sanford and Peter uttered the word together and stared
involuntarily at Helen, in blank inquiry.  She looked away quickly at
the floor and murmured:

"Yes, Henriette!"

There was a silence then, while she took the pad and pencil from Phil
and removed the little table, which provided her with the relief of
movement.

"Not too much at one time, lest we tire him," she said.

She went with them through the court, where the seeing men in their
pain watched them passing; and on the way her glance hovered into
theirs beseechingly and her lips were parted as if about to speak, but
she could not find words until they were on the path.

"You would make me any promise, wouldn't you," she asked, "in order to
save him?"

Now she told the secret which only she and Henriette knew, how she had
been mistaken for her sister.

"You must not undeceive him, or think of it, or speak of it!  You will
promise?"

Her nostrils were quivering and her eyes had the steady light of
command.  As they nodded, the father and mother felt a trifle in awe of
her, this woman in a warrior's mood who had been a link between them
and their son.  She gave them a smile of thanks; then, in the flutter
of an impulse, kissed Mrs. Sanford on the cheeks and abruptly started
back to the ward, where she gave Phil a hand-clasp to signal her return
and two clasps to learn if he wanted anything.  He asked for his pad:

"It's pretty hard on them.  Did I cheer them up?"

"Yes, and they know that you are going to get well."

"Good!  Aren't they dears?  Shall we take a constitutional?  It tired
the old head-piece a little, all that excitement."

The constitutionals were promenades up and down the court, with
digressions sometimes out onto the paths when he felt particularly
venturesome.  Her arm through his, wheeling on him as a pivot when they
came to the turns, he feeling the touch of her hand upon his wrist, she
realising the helplessness of that tall form without some one to guide
it, they had paced back and forth so many times now that these
promenades had become a part of their existence.  His silence she must
share.  They might think each his own thoughts in the nearness, the
interdependence, of that strange companionship.  Sometimes he carried
on imaginary conversations with her and she with him; and the great
things to both were the unspoken things, rather than those written on
his arm or on the pad.  When the revelation should come that she was
not Henriette--but Helen never thought of that.  It was the bridge on
the other side of the promised land of his recovery.

She was not surprised when she saw Henriette enter the court just as
they were turning toward the ward.  Henriette came faithfully every day
to inquire how he was and reported her visit at dinner with Lady
Truckleford's lot.  These were practically the only occasions when the
sisters met.  Henriette's manner was that of affectionate sympathy for
Helen and pity for Phil.

"His father and mother have been to see him?"

"Yes.  It made him very happy."

"And Peter Smithers was with them?"

"Yes."

Phil, who knew only that Helen had stopped to speak with some one, had
no means of knowing who.  She was the same to him as any other person
of millions in his silent night, unseen, unheard.  His circle of actual
human beings consisted of Helen, or Henriette, as he thought, Bricktop,
the nurses, the specialists, and now his parents and Peter.  They were
the visible stars in the darkness.  And Helen was taking him back to
his chair now.

"You've heard that Smithers will leave all his fortune to Cousin Phil,
willy-nilly?" said Henriette, following them indoors.  "Mother wrote it
from Paris.  She had it from Truckleford."

"Only they have not told him," Helen said.

"Why not?  I should think that if there were anything that would make
him want to live it would be the thought that he was to have three
millions."

"Mr. Smithers decided not," Helen replied.

"And how has he stood the day?" Henriette asked the stereotyped
question of her sister.

"Very well!" was the answer.  "I'm afraid it may have tired and excited
him, though."  She was careful not to let him overtax himself; and now,
when he wanted his pad, she added: "I must not let him write much."

If Henriette prolonged her visits it was when Helen was writing him
messages or he was writing to her.  The process seemed to fascinate her.

"There is a question I want to ask," Phil wrote.  "I have wondered
about it a good deal.  Helen never sends me any messages.  She has not
even shaken my hand and said hello to her seventeenth cousin.  I can't
see her new cartoons, but I remember all of her old ones.  Tell me!"

Henriette had been looking over his shoulder as he wrote, Helen
standing to one side till he had finished the first sheet.  A number of
times before he had asked where Helen was, and after a strange thrill
that dried her throat she had replied:

"Drawing and in her ward.  She inquires about you every day."

It was Henriette who reached for the first sheet this time.  When he
had finished the second sheet she passed both to Helen, with a studious
inquiry on her face and without speaking.  Then she looked around the
room.  It was empty, save for one form asleep on a cot in the far
corner.  Helen did not look up.  She was motionless, staring at the
sheets.  He was hurt because she had never shaken his hand--she who had
no thought except him!  And, yes, he had thought of her for herself a
little--a part of his kindness even when he was racked with pain.  She
folded the sheets gently, but without the stir of so much as an
eyelash, when Henriette's voice brought her out of her daze.

"The hoax seems complete," said Henriette.  "He is wholly convinced
that you are I."

"Yes," said Helen.  "You wished it, didn't you, and it has helped
him--yes, he has said that it kept him alive!"

"Kept him alive!" repeated Henriette, in a monotone.

"Yes, you, not I, kept him alive!"

When people knew this!  Henriette was thinking of the Lady Truckleford
lot.  There were pitfalls ahead which she had not foreseen.

"Why didn't you undeceive him?" she demanded.

"I--I could not.  It meant so much to him.  As soon as he is well then
I shall tell him."

"And if he never gets well----"

"He will!" Helen insisted.  "But taking the view that he will not," she
added, "only his father and mother know and Peter Smithers.  They found
it out inadvertently and have sworn to keep the secret."  Henriette
half closed her eyes thoughtfully as the two sisters looked at each
other.

"It seems safe," breathed Henriette, raising her lashes and smiling in
relief.

Phil was writing again:

"You do not answer.  Helen wrote only one letter to me while I was at
the front.  I fear that I have offended her.  Won't you tell me?"

"I--I must explain in some way!" said Helen.

"Let me!" Henriette interposed.  "I've never tried writing on his arm,
but I think that I know how from watching you."

She rolled up his sleeve and taking his hand to hold up the arm, as she
had seen Helen do, traced the letters, slowly announcing each word as
she wrote it:

"This is Helen.  She has just come to see you and has come often and
thinks that you are making the bravest kind of a fight."

He caught her hand in both of his and shook it warmly in his happiness.

"You don't write as well as Henriette," he wrote in reply, "but I have
a lot of experience and could read it.  What are you drawing?  What
cartoons are you making?  What mischief are you up to generally?"

"I will tell you when I can write better.  Now I shall be going so as
not to tire you.  Good-night!"

She gave his hand another clasp and turned to Helen, smiling, as she
said: "I'm in your place, now, as well as you being in mine!" not
forgetting to press her lips to Helen's before withdrawing.

She had gone through it all with a graceful facility and self-command,
while Helen had found herself unable even to murmur "Good-night."  For
an instant, again alone with Phil, she felt that she also was groping
in a noiseless and sightless world and that she, too, was maimed.
Henriette was beautiful--oh, very beautiful!  It was no wonder that men
fell in love with her.  Just to look at her must make any man want to
live.  Only to the blind could she herself be beautiful.  If his sight
should come back, it would be the end of the walks in the court and the
writing of messages for him.  There was dreadful mockery in the thought
when he became well he might think that she who had shared his pain in
the dark night cared more for making cartoons than for him.  For an
instant revolt flamed up in her mind; but only for an instant.  It was
smothered by the appeal of his helplessness as she looked around at him.

Now he began writing again, and her thoughts were bound up in his
finger-ends, in the glow of the comradeship which was sufficient unto
itself from day to day.  She had learned to tell his mood and if the
pain were particularly bad by the way he wrote.  The letters were
coming slowly, ponderingly, from his pencil-point.  Something puzzled
him.  She looked over his shoulder just as his first sentence was
finished.

"Her message did not sound like Helen," he had written.

Every nerve taut with suspense, she waited with quick breaths for what
was to follow.

"There was a certain style about everything that she did and said.  I
think that I could tell her hand from yours since I have become so
sensitive to touch; though I suppose that with all the pain and the
blindness I imagine all sorts of things which are not real."

A leaping something within her that was for the moment irresistible,
quick desire shining in her eyes, made her stretch out her hands toward
him.  Then her heart seemed to stop beating and she checked herself in
the reaction of one who finds herself on the verge of treason.  What
might have been the effect on him if she told him the truth!  All her
work might have been undone.  She gathered her wits, mastered her
emotion, and lashed them together with her will.

"It's time for you to close the writing and thinking shop for the day,"
she wrote on his arm; but when she started to take his pencil and pad
he clung to them.  He had something more which he must say, and it was
best to yield to his wish, as she had learned.

"The shutters of darkness are always down on that shop," he wrote, "but
there is always a light within--you!"

A glow came into her cheeks at the compliment.  The light was the face
of Henriette, her charm and grace, and the labour of Helen.  It proved
the wickedness of the impulse to tell him the truth.  How dependent he
was upon Henriette in his fight!

"Now, that writing and thinking shop idea was like Helen," he was
thinking--and thinking was much faster than writing and gave lazy minds
more freedom to wander.  "Isn't it odd?  No, it's because I can't hear
or speak or see--and I am tired."

"Good-night!" said her hand-clasp out there in the darkness, but
bringing her very near him.

"Good-night!" his return clasp signalled back.  Soon he was dozing.
The pain was not sharp just then.  He was nearly healed enough for
another operation.

"He ought to sleep well," Helen said to the night nurse as she went
out, with a peculiar relief in going, such as she had never felt before.

When she reached her room, for the first time since she had put them
away the night after the ambulance brought Phil to the hospital she
took her drawing materials out of her trunk, in answer to some tangent
demand of the distraction that possessed her, only to put them back in
and the unanswered demands of editors with them, as if she had no
concern with them now.  There was nothing to do but to keep on marching
and fighting, without bothering what bridges were to be crossed on the
other side of the promised land of his recovery.

Phil had no idea how long he had dozed when the head pain devil, who
sat on the point of his jaw directing the operations of all the little
devils on the lines of communication, prodded him awake.  For him the
little pain devils were articulate.  He lived in a world of imagined
voices.

"What if you should never get well?  What if we should keep you
always?" said the Fiend General Commanding.  "We are a trifle weak now,
but you wait till after the next operation.  Then we shall have a rare
old dance of it.  What if it should be just one operation and another
and another forever?  Let your wounds heal and get back your strength,
only for another bout!  What if you should never see green fields or
hear the birds sing again?"

On such occasions there must be prompt "counter battery work," as they
say at the front, or he would go out of his head.  His answer was to
call upon his memory for the ammunition of battle; to relieve happy
incidents of the past.  His father and mother and Peter Smithers and
all his friends must help him.

His thoughts ran in leaping waves of half-consciousness from one
picture of recollection to another...  Yes, it was Helen who had been
to see him last...  What a ninny she had made him appear when he
proposed to her by mistake under the tree!...  How the mischief would
leap out of her eyes!...  How many kinds of Helen were there?
Sometimes he had thought that she suffered because she was plain.  No,
all she cared for was to make drawings.  How would she and Peter get
along?  They would be a pair!  She would be certain to cartoon him...
The terrace at Mervaux!  That last night when the three had walked up
and down together in the dusk.  White slippers moving in unison with
his own steps--odd that he should remember that!  Two voices were so
alike that either girl might have been speaking.  Why, it was quite the
same as if he had his hearing back and could not see...

Henriette smiling from her easel at him--how good she was to look at!
Helen with her quips as she was drawing the cartoons!  Helen in her
intensity as she made the real drawing!  Henriette silent, smiling, her
lips parted as if she were speaking and Helen's words seeming to be
here!  Oh, afternoon of afternoons!  Air sweet to the nostrils and
genial sunlight!  All the senses in tranquil enjoyment!...

And Henriette!  Oh, he had been hard hit that day.  It was enough for
any woman to be as beautiful as she was!  But how little he realised
her worth then!  Her beauty had dimmed her other qualities.  She was
all of Helen and Henriette, too...  That glorious courage of Henriette
in face of the shells!  The woman who had waited had not been afraid.
When she had only to raise her finger to bring the strong and the well
to pay her court, her loyalty had not faltered when he was too horrible
to remain alive.  If he had not been wounded he would never have known
her true worth...

How had such luck come to him?  Silence, you pain devils!  It had--it
had!  The messages of her sturdy determination that had fortified him
and of the nonsense that cheers which she had written on his arm were
recalled.  Now he was imagining the touch of her fingers on his arm
writing good news.  Any minute he might feel her hand-clasp announcing
her return.  For he had no idea of time; her comings and goings set his
calendar.  This Henriette made the other seem only a doll.  She said
that he would get well.  He should.  It was too good a world for his
sight not to come back in order that he might feed it on the beautiful
vision of her--now that suffering had taught him how to appreciate her.

"You are very eerie this afternoon," whispered the Fiend General
Commanding, beaten down to a grumbling complaint.  "If we could only
stop you from thinking of her we'd soon have you."

"You never will!" Phil replied.  "She has the measure of such imps of
hell as you."

And he slept.




CHAPTER XXXII

LIGHT

Either Helen or Phil had given the eye expert the name of Mr. Eyes and
the ear expert that of Mr. Ears, which these great men who had
honourific alphabetical court trains to their names did not mind.  As
guardian of the nerve which enables us to know whether the tenor is in
good voice or not and to tell the notes of the lark from those of the
nightingale or, what was more important in the latest European
operations, the cough of the _soixante-quinze_ from the rattle of a
machine-gun, Mr. Ears was champion of silence in the hospital, which
might have been as noisy as a boiler factory without disturbing Phil.

The ambulances ran softly up to the door; the nurses spoke low; they
did not rattle the dishes when they brought food from the diet
kitchens.  After Phil's nurse had placed his tray in front of him
preparatory to feeding him, she was called to the other end of the room
for something, when she heard a crash behind her.  She turned to see
broken glass and crockery scattered on the floor.  Extraordinary!  This
had never happened before to him.  As she bent over to wipe up the
small delta of milk she saw Phil's foot wiggling energetically,
demanding his pad--a rare request unless he knew that Helen was present.

"Did it make a noise?" he asked.

"Of course, and an awful mess!" she replied.  "How did it happen?"

"Experiment!" he wrote.

Experiment?  It was a plain case of being out of his head.  She hoped
that Helen would come soon, as she always brought him around if he gave
signs of delirium.  Meanwhile, she must be on the watch lest he tear
off his bandages, as other of Bricktop's patients had done, but her
apprehensions were quite groundless.

The downfall of the tray was a test after vague intimations that sound
was entering Phil's silent world.  It was as loud to his ears as the
crackling of a sheet of newspaper.  His elation over the discovery was
so great that he had a reaction when the nerve-devils began plying him
with their scepticism.

"Well-known psychological illusion!" they said, using professional
language which they had picked up from long association with hospitals.
"Imagination played you a trick.  You knew it was going to crash!"

Very likely they were right.  Hadn't he imagined that he could see the
interior of the ward and how Henriette looked when she bent over him to
write on his arm?  Hadn't he sometimes heard her steps in imagination
around his chair?  He set all his mind into his ears, straining for
some other sound.  There was none.

"This torture is called hope unfilled!" chirruped the nerve-devils.
"Oh, what a dance we shall give you to-morrow after the operation!  The
operation is to-morrow, isn't it?"

Of course the nurse related the whole affair to Helen when she arrived.

"'Experiment,' he said.  How extraordinary!" exclaimed the nurse, who
was still more astounded when Helen gave an outcry of joy and, leaning
over, puckered her lips and uttered a sharp whistle--which was one of
her accomplishments--in Phil's ear.

Here was real test!  No imagination about this, if he had heard.  She
drew back, quivering with suspense.  Phil was wiggling his foot almost
violently for his pad and pencil.

"Did somebody whistle in my ear?" he asked.

"I did!  I did!" she repeated wildly, as she wrote her reply.

"They said it was imagination"--she knew who "they" were, those
"Boches" of nerve-devils.

"Score one for the Allies!" she wrote on his arm.  "I'm off to tell Mr.
Ears!"

The Great Man came swinging along the gravel path, half running to keep
up with Helen.  After the scientific test which he promptly applied he
felt as triumphant as a brigadier who had taken the first line trenches
on a front of a thousand yards in the Ypres salient.

"Only a question of time, he says," Helen wrote.

"Hurrah!" Phil replied.  "If anybody has a steam siren handy and blew
it in my ear it would be all the more comforting."

"Soon I shall not have to write on your arm any more," she told him.

"That will be odd."

"Yes, very!" she said.

Mr. Ears had gone to tell Bricktop, who said that it would hearten Phil
for the operation the next day and then despatched a messenger to the
parents and Peter Smithers.  The news travelled fast about the
hospital.  It was across the street with the Trucklefords in half an
hour.

"Clever of him, wasn't it, dropping the tray?" said Lady Violet.  "And
so American!"

Of course the Truckleford lot had met Peter Smithers by this time.  He
and the Sanfords had even had tea over there on the primary invitation
of Henriette, renewed unanimously by all present.  He was a card, this
dry American worth three millions, which were to go to that poor fellow
struggling to become a whole human being again without yet knowing that
he was to be the heir.  Phil's case took on fresh interest.  So he
could hear a little!  And the big operation was to-morrow!  If that
should succeed and he should recover his sight!


Dr. and Mrs. Sanford sat on one of the benches in the court, at times
furtively clasping hands as they thought of what was going on in the
operating-room.  Peter Smithers and Helen were walking up and down; and
they, too, were silent.  All felt their helplessness.  Everything was
with the skill of that red-headed dental surgeon.  The eyes of the men
in pain lying on the grass or resting on other benches were bright with
sympathy, peering out from the white balls of bandages.  Phil's was the
worst case ever admitted, and theirs had been bad enough.  The magician
they knew had only made the attempt for the sake of those two old
people sitting as quiet as if they were of stone.

Surprise appeared in the faces of the Sanfords, Peter, and Helen as
Henriette came under the Oral Surgery sign.  She met their glances with
one of appealing inquiry, as she stood hesitant, looking from one to
another.  It occurred to Dr. and Mrs. Sanford how beautiful she was,
and again for the thousandth time to Helen.  The father and mother
could not help thinking of the thing that they had promised to keep out
of mind, as they saw the contrast between the two, with the
well-moulded features of Henriette and the irregular ones of Helen in
repose.

"Nothing yet!" said Peter.  "We wait."

There was a glint of passing sharpness in his shrewd eye.  She smiled
in the face of it as one will who asks not to be misunderstood; then
joined him and Helen in their pacing.

"You have been so wonderful to Cousin Phil," she said to Peter.

"Bricktop will do it!" remarked Peter, closing his fist and giving it a
little shake.  "Wonderful, did you say?  Me?"

"Yes," she smiled up at him.  "I did not know that there could be such
men as you in the world."

"Lots of them in America!" replied Peter.  "Growing them is one of our
national industries!  Competition is hard and they knock one another
about so much some of 'em get calloused, I suppose."

"How worthy Phil is of all your generosity we found at Mervaux,"
Henriette continued.

"Yes.  He's in there!" Peter concluded, nodding toward the
operating-room.

"Yes!" she murmured.  "It's too awful!"

She, too, was silent, taking her cue from his evident desire.  As she
paced beside him she had an atmospheric feeling of the power of the man
as something absolute and indomitable, centred on fighting with his
will for a decision in favour of Phil.  He made talk of any kind seem
petty.

When the door of the operating-room opened they heard its swing,
noiseless as were its hinges.  Dr. and Mrs. Sanford rose mechanically
in answer to that signal; the others turned in their tracks.  As
Bricktop appeared in the doorway two pairs of old eyes saw him
indistinctly through a swimming haze.  They were going to learn now if
Phil would ever be to their sight as he was before, or----  Bricktop's
round face drawn with effort lighted with a smile, as he held up his
hand.

"You've done it!  By God, you've done it, Bricktop!" Peter cried,
rushing toward him.

"Right!" said Bricktop.  "Unless there is some setback in the next two
or three days.  I don't think there will be.  Expect to make him as
good as new, only a few little scars!"

Two pairs of old eyes still saw that red head like a sun through a fog,
but they had heard his words.  They did not cry out; their only
demonstration was to clasp hands.  Helen could not speak, only look at
Bricktop with glorious wonder in her eyes, which he was quick to see.

"We beat the Boches to it, eh?" he said to her.

Peter, too, had become silent in his inexpressible happiness, after he
had wrung Bricktop's hand.

"If now he should recover his sight!" Henriette exclaimed abstractedly,
her words apparently the beginning of a train of thought too rapid to
be expressed in speech.

"He will!" said Helen and Peter together.

Phil was being wheeled from the operating-room back to the ward.
Bricktop beckoned the waiting group to come in; then bade them pause at
the door until Phil was transferred from his carriage to the bed.  The
nurse said that he had recovered consciousness, though there was no
sign of it in his motionless form.

"You tell him!" said Bricktop to Helen.

"Bricktop has done it!  You win!" she wrote on his arm.


Many days awaited him, with the pain devils in their last big dance,
but with every day meaning less torture.  His hearing had become
distinct enough to perceive an ordinary conversation around his chair
as a faint hum.  The silver harness still clinched his jaw and the
bandages were still over his eyes.


"Quite as he was before--only a few scars," Bricktop, whom Henriette
had met coming out of his office, said in answer to her inquiry when
she was on her way to Phil.

Mr. Eyes happened to be coming along the path at the time.  Henriette
joined him and together they crossed the court.

"What hope?" she asked.  She put the question to him with increased
fervour every time that she saw him; and of late she had chanced to see
him frequently.

"I am going to change the bandages," he replied.

Sometimes the great man had doubts about the system of bandages, which
nine out of ten specialists would not have favoured, perhaps; but when
he considered an operation he fell back on them as the only way.
Shell-shock was baffling, freakish, in its results, and the truth was
that he was groping in professional darkness to save Phil from eternal
darkness.  Yesterday he had strengthened the application.  A matter of
daily routine the change of the bandages.  It brought him every
afternoon to the ward and always Helen was there to receive him, the
same look of confident anticipation in her eyes, as yet unfulfilled.

He pressed his hand on Phil's forehead, and this Phil had long ago come
to recognise as Mr. Eyes' private signal which preceded the removal of
the bandages.  He was particularly welcome to-day, as Phil had had a
kind of restless sensation back of his eyeballs.  As the medicated pad
was withdrawn, a gurgling outcry rose from his throat and he leaned
convulsively forward, fingers outstretched, opening and closing as if
he were trying to grasp at a reality that might escape.

"It's not true!  Imagination again!" snarled the pain devils; but they
could not deceive him about this.

Light had come into his black night, soft, dreamy, vague, amazing
light--just light, light, light!  There were no people in it, no
houses, no trees, only light which seemed like silver gauze hung before
his eyes and yet to stretch to the ends of the world.  It had brought
something dead to life as by miracle, with a touch as soft as
eiderdown, sending little thrills knitting in and out all through him.
Light for the first time since he had heard that hurtling scream of the
shell!  Light was in his brain, his veins, his tissue, singing and
frolicking as it opened the doors of dark places.  He wanted to embrace
it, fondle it, run it through his fingers with a miser's greed of gold
and gather a store of it while he might.  Out of the light, as if
traced by the hand of light, a message was being traced on his arm.

"What is it, Phil?" Helen asked him.

He would not attempt to speak again.  He had forgotten himself when he
made that gurgling outcry.  It was one of the idiosyncrasies of his
sick man's pride that he would not try to talk before the one who wrote
on his arm.  The sounds that he emitted through the bandages and silver
harness must be like a stuttering idiot's lisp, as he expressed it, and
he thought of himself as repulsive enough to her brave eyes without
that.  Speech would return normally, the throat expert had said, when
the removal of Bricktop's apparatus should give it a chance.

"Light!" he wrote.  "Just light, without seeing you or where I am.  It
seems as if I were hung up in the ether, without seeing sky or earth
and light held me up and I ate it and drank it and breathed it.  Oh, it
is good, good!"

"Yes, good!" repeated phlegmatic, kindly Mr. Eyes, who had brought
light to many people for large fees from the rich and for nothing for
those who live in the alleys.  Light was his business.  Yet he, too,
must find some outlet for his emotion, which was to pat Helen on the
head.  General Ears had taken only a thousand yards, while General Eyes
felt as triumphant as if he had taken five miles of first line trench,
ten thousand prisoners and a hundred guns.  It was the knock-out blow
for the little pain devils.

When he had made some experiments and put on fresh compresses and was
about to go, he said, choosing his words carefully:

"I think that I may safely say, barring unforeseen complications, that
he will entirely recover his sight with time.  How about that?" he
added, to Helen.

Her eyes were moist with happiness.  She was incapable of speaking.
Her first coherent thought was that Phil himself did not yet know.

"Victory!" she wrote on his arm.  "You will completely recover your
sight, on the high authority of Mr. Eyes himself."

For a space he made no movement.  His consciousness was absorbing a
transcendent fact.  Helen sat beside him, waiting.  Henriette, who had
remained all the while in the background, silent except for a prolonged
cry of delight, came nearer and stood on the other side of him, also
waiting.  At length he wrote:

"Soon I shall see you!"

"Yes," Helen replied.

"And father and mother, too.  Tell them quick--and Peter and Bricktop
and Helen--everybody!"

"Yes.  I will go instantly."

She should have thought of this before, she said to herself, as she
hurried away on her mission.

Henriette was left alone with Phil.  She regarded him with lashes
half-closed and with her lips set in a way much like Madame Ribot's.
As she grew older she would more and more resemble her mother.  A step
and another, slowly, gracefully, as she bent her lithe figure, her eyes
opening now in venturesome inquiry as she took the place which Helen
had just vacated.  She had written on his arm a good deal of late and,
fascinated by the accomplishment, had even practised on her own arm in
her room.  Phil received the hand-clasp which signalled Helen's return.

"A messenger has gone," she wrote.  "Wouldn't you like to take a walk
in the court?"

"Yes," was the answer.  "It will make the happiness still more real to
feel my legs under me."

She directed his steps as Helen had directed them many times.  The men
of pain lounging in the court looking out through the holes in balls of
white, watched two figures pacing in rhythmic step which was familiar
when their backs were turned; but when facing them, the girl who was
like a picture was in place of the picture girl.  They wondered about
it; wonder was a habit of their tired minds.  She was beautiful,
surpassingly so, soothing to the eyes, and she played Helen's part,
too, by smiling at them as she passed.  Her smile was more radiant than
Helen's.  It was a better short-acquaintance smile, one of them
thought, while Helen's sent a warming, lasting glow all through you and
was better for easing pain.  Of the two, they would rather have Helen
about every day.  The men of pain were not articulate, but little that
passed in the court escaped their eyes.  If a sparrow lighted on a roof
or a nurse appeared at a window, they knew it.

Then, just as Phil and Henriette had made a turn with their backs to
them, they saw Helen appear under the sign and something happened that
puzzled pain-weary heads.  At the very point where the court was in
view the picture girl stopped short at the sight of the two who were
promenading.  For an instant she was perfectly still, only an instant,
as she looked at the backs of Phil and the girl who was like a picture.
Then she put her hand up to her head abruptly, as one will who
recollects something, and turned away before the two had wheeled to
walk back toward the Oral Surgery sign.

It was a pantomime that set the men into a prolonged quandary.  Some
had an idea, from the way that Helen put her hand up to her head, that
there had been a flash of pain as sharp as any they had ever known
through it; others thought that she was relieved to find another in her
place.  Perhaps both were right, and all kept thinking of it after Phil
and Henriette had gone indoors.

When she had led him to his chair and drawn the coverlet over his legs
as she had seen Helen do, she gave him the hand-clasp which meant
"good-night."  In answer, he gripped her hand tightly and drew her
toward him.  The other hand moved slowly back and forth in the air till
its fingers touched her hair.  Then, with the feathery touch of the
blind, he traced the line of her forehead.  A frown like her mother's
gathered as he went on to her eyes, her nose, her lips, and her chin.

"It is the first time that you ever did that," she wrote on his arm.

When she brought his pad and he began writing, her head was bent, lips
tight, eyes squinting with intensity, as she watched the tracing of
each word.

"Yes.  I often wanted to----"  Her frown had gone.  Her head rose as
she drew a deep breath and smiled as she would at herself in the
mirror.  His pencil hesitated, then went on.  "----but thought that you
might think I was rude.  You don't think so, now?"

"No.  You did it beautifully, wonderfully," she replied.  "It was the
next best thing to knowing that you could really see me.  And soon you
shall."




CHAPTER XXXIII

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 naïvely.  "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 _succès 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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