The Old Blood Part 17

"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.

"h.e.l.lo!" he called, stooping to pa.s.s under the branches.

"h.e.l.lo!" 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 a.s.sociated 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 pa.s.sion 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."