Part 50 (1/2)

”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, G.o.d, 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 sh.e.l.l-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 embarra.s.sment 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 embarra.s.sing 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!