The Old Blood Part 10

"I'll put the painting on the back wall to lighten up the gallery--good contrast, line and colour," he went on. "This is the lot I have chosen for the exhibition," he said, indicating the pile on the table.

"You mean it! You mean it!"

But the smile on M. Vailliant's face told her without words that he did; and reaching across the table, in her quick impulse, she took his hands in hers. He felt their pressure tighten so that his soft palms were almost doubled over as, unheeding her mother's exclamation at the action, she demanded:

"Do you think that I ought to go and learn to be a nurse, or can I make my living drawing these things?" And as suddenly as she had seized his hands she drew away and spread out hers in an appeal: "Honest! No nice little phrases, but honest!"

"Nursing!" exclaimed the dealer, lifting his hands with outstretched fingers, horror written on his face. "Giving sick people medicine and adjusting bandages! You, my girl! No! Who ever suggested it?"

She seemed to draw nearer, though she stood motionless, such was the intensity of her inquiry.

"A living, I mean! I must decide! I can't stand it any longer!"

M. Vailliant rubbed his chin again and became the business man.

"I'm willing to give you the chance," he said. "We'll hold the exhibition--provided there isn't war. War! That's the end of everything--no art sold then. And the news is bad, very bad to-day.

Yes, I'll give the exhibition if you will agree to terms. Talking business and no nonsense, now."

The terms were that he should have the disposal of all her work for three years on the regular commission basis. Helen agreed in a voice that sounded hollow in her own ears.

"If there were not a prospect of war----" He looked again at the painting. "Well, even if there is going to be war I'll buy these two top drawings and the painting for a thousand francs. Check now. Do you agree?"

Then M. Vailliant permitted himself to smile without rubbing his chin; and he kept on smiling as he wrapped up the painting and the charcoals.

"I think we'll make them go," he said. "If there isn't war I'll come down and get the others for the show and we'll have a talk together, young woman, about the future. If there is war"--he gave his shoulders a Gallic shrug. "I go to join the colours. Who knows? There is only France, then."

Leaving behind a contract and a check and a young woman still and wide-eyed, he rode away. Not until he was out of the grounds did he permit himself a long-drawn breath of satisfaction, as he leaned back on the cus.h.i.+ons and lighted a cigarette, this cold trader in art.

"My emotion got away from me again!" he said. "I'll never be a real dealer if I can't control it. Why, if you discovered a Rembrandt you oughtn't to let on! It didn't matter with that girl, though. Nice chateau. Mother seemed well-to-do, but how eager the girl was for the thousand francs! One never knows. Probably oughtn't to have mentioned etching. Better for her to stick to charcoals and make a vogue. My enthusiasm again! Splotches of colour, as she says--not enough. But I think there is more to come. As for the other's painting--faint stuff, without soul; teacher-taught-me stuff--pouf! But if Mlle. Helen only had her sister's beauty I'd have a dry point of her for the exhibition, introduce her about--surely would be a go. But no beautiful woman can ever paint. Everybody admires her so much as a subjective work of art that she can never improve in her objective art. Why should she? One good thing that Mlle. Helen is so plain--no danger of her ever marrying. She's suffered, that's it--that's the quality you must have!

And the likeness in voice between those two girls, except when she was laughing or became emotional. Then she was rather attractive. The fire in her, her talent, shone out of her eyes and made you forget how plain she is. She wouldn't be so plain, either, if it weren't for the nose. Some enemy wished that nose on her! Well, I made her happy.

Think of that, you hard-headed Parisian, you brought triumph for that girl!"

Triumph was not the word to describe Helen's feelings after M.

Vailliant's departure, as in the reaction of exhaustion, which required that she dab the moisture out of her eyes, she leaned against the wall.

Relief, joy, grat.i.tude! Through a mist she saw her mother and Henriette looking at her, their strange, puzzled expression not defined. She grasped only the fact of them and their nearness. All rancour had pa.s.sed out of her heart. Her vitality surging back, she put her arms impetuously around her mother's neck and kissed her.

"Don't choke me!" gasped Madame Ribot.

"I didn't mean to! But I shall you, Henriette!" and she embraced her sister, in turn.

"I should say you would!" gasped Henriette.

"I'm afraid that repose is foreign to your nature," said her mother.

"It must be," returned Helen, as she released Henriette. "Oh, I've been ugly to you sometimes, because I couldn't help drawing and knew I ought to, but I'll never be again! It's all too good. I want to be alone with it!"

Emanc.i.p.ation was the real word. She went forth into the open air, freed from the cage, to test her wings. More strands of hair loosing as she raced along, she struck the fields and through the village, calling out to all the people she knew, but not stopping to talk, and on up to a hilltop, where the plotted glory of the farmlands lay before her, with the fields of grain waving gold.

A thousand francs! was her mundane thought. She could live on that a long time in Paris, drawing and studying. It did not matter how plain she was. She might have a nose as big as a prize potato and yellow eyes and rat teeth. People were not going to look at her, but at her pictures. Her face need never hurt her again. She did not know that she had a face when she was drawing. She was young, with the long span of years stretching straight before her--straight, straight, like the great main roads of France! It was all clear--unless war came. But it could not come. It was too hideous a thought. The world was too beautiful to be drenched with blood; too wise to be so foolish.

Returning homeward she thought of many things; even of that seventeenth cousin and how she would like to do a charcoal of him. She would, while Henriette painted him. With no idea of the time that had elapsed, dust-covered, a rent in her gown from a thorn-bush, she burst in on her mother and sister, who were halfway through dinner.

"You are a sight!" said Madame Ribot. "Do change before you sit down!"

Upstairs in her room she looked into her mirror with a new sense of defiance.

"Oh, you are plain, but do you think that matters?" She held her hands up in front of her face. "Five fingers like everybody else and they can hold a crayon or a brus.h.!.+ Silly!" She laughed again and the mirror laughed back in the glorious secret of--triumph was the word, this time.

"M. Valliant must really think highly of your charcoals," said Henriette at table, "or he wouldn't have taken the painting."

"Yes, that was very surprising," said Madame Ribot.

"But remember I got the thousand francs! Isn't that the proof of the pudding from an art dealer. I'll set up a studio in Paris, a tiny one in a garret, and get my own meals--thrifty me! And I'll be away from home, mother, as much as if I were nursing--I mean, I'll be independent, as I ought to be."

She went on talking about her plans, unconscious that Henriette and even her mother were slightly inattentive.

CHAPTER VII

A FULL-FACE PORTRAIT

But the war did come. It came, perhaps, to teach the foolish people of a beautiful world how beautiful it was and how foolish they were.

Helen did not have to wait on the note from M. Vailliant to know that there would be no exhibition. The war had killed her little ambition, along with millions of others. Widespread human tragedy enveloped the personal thought. Some other person in some other age seemed to have done those charcoals, which still lay stacked on the corner table in the sitting-room. Her thoughts went forth with the able-bodied villagers who had left their harvests to fight for France. Their going was, as yet, Mervaux's only direct contact with the war. The sky remained the same; the suns.h.i.+ne was equally glorious; the shade equally pleasant at mid-day; and Jacqueline was making equally good omelets.

What were the Ribots to do? The girls thought that they ought to try to help France. Everybody ought when France was about to fight for her life. But Madame Ribot decided to the contrary. She was irritated with the war and she meant that it should trouble her as little as possible.

"But not to be in Paris in a time like this!" protested Henriette.

"How lucky to be out of Paris!" said Madame Ribot. "All the trains full of soldiers, and there will be trouble about pa.s.ses, General Rousseau says."

She placed great reliance on the General. He said that there was no danger. This time the tables would be turned on the Prussians. She, too, believed in a French victory. It was not as it had been in '70.

The French were ready. Where could the war disturb her as little as at Mervaux, in the lap of the hills a mile away from the main road?

"Then I'll go, mother," said Helen. The objections to Henriette's going to Paris could not apply to her.

"No, we shall all stay here," Madame Ribot replied.

"But I have my thousand francs," said Helen. "I'll run up for only two or three days."

"No. You would not go when I thought it best," said Madame Ribot pettishly. "Now when I need you, you want to go. You were always very contrary."

"Oh--I--forgive me! I did not know that you thought of it in that way--that you needed me."

"We must all be together. I should worry about you."

"Of course you would! I didn't think of that. Oh, mother!"