Part 5 (1/2)

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 pa.s.sed 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 grat.i.tude 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 companions.h.i.+p 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 blus.h.i.+ng, 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 fas.h.i.+oned 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.”