Part 13 (2/2)
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 b.u.t.t in. Isn't that it--b.u.t.t 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 pa.s.sed 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.
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