Part 7 (1/2)

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 Hamps.h.i.+re.

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 wors.h.i.+ppers. 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 pa.s.sing 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.”