The Girl Philippa
"Certainly I want to see you," he replied smilingly. "But to punt up
stream to Ausone this afternoon is going to take you quite a long
while----"
"As for that," she remarked, "it need not concern us. I am not going
back to Ausone."
"Not going back!"
"Listen, please. Monsieur Wildresse and I have had a disagreement----"
"Nonsense!"
"No, a serious disagreement. I am not going back to Ausone. Shall I
tell you all about it?"
"Yes, but listen to me, Philippa. You can't run away from your home
merely because you have had a disagreement with your Patron and
guardian."
"Shall I tell you why we disagreed?"
"If you choose. But that doesn't justify you in running away from your
home."
The girl shook her head:
"You don't yet understand. In our cafe the French Government compels us
to spy on certain strangers and to report whatever we can discover.
Always it disgusted me to do such a thing. Now I shall not be obliged
to do it any more, because I am never going back to the Cabaret de
Biribi."
"Do you mean to say that you and Monsieur Wildresse are in the secret
service of your Government?" he asked, astonished.
"That is too dignified an explanation. I have been an informer since I
was seventeen."
"A--a _paid_ informer?"
"I don't know whether the Government pays Monsieur Wildresse."
"But he doesn't do such things for the pleasure of doing them."
"Pleasure? It is an abominable profession! It is unclean."
"Then why do you do it?" he demanded, amazed.
"I am not perfectly sure why. I know that the Patron is afraid of the
Government. That, I suppose, is why we have been obliged to take orders
from them."
"Afraid? Why?"
"It's partly on Jacques' account--his son's. If we do what they ask of
us they say that they won't send him to New Caledonia. But I believe it
is all _blague_." She looked up at Warner out of her troubled grey
eyes. "Espionage--that has been my _metier_ since I was taken out of
school--to listen in the cabaret, to learn to keep my eyes open, to
relate to the Patron whatever I saw or heard concerning any client the
Government desired him to watch.... Do you think that is a very
pleasant life for a young girl?"
His face became expressionless.
"Not very," he said. "Go on."
She said thoughtfully:
"It is a horrible profession, Mr. Warner. Why should I continue it?
Are there no police? Why should I, Philippa Wildresse, do their dirty
work? Can you explain? _Alors_, I have asked myself that many, many
times. Today, at last, I have answered my own question: I shall never
again play the spy for anybody! C'est fini! Voila!"
Warner remained silent.
"Why, it is revolting!" she exclaimed. "Figurez-vous, Monsieur! I was
even signaled to spy upon _you_! Can you conceive such a thing?"
"On _me_?" he repeated, bewildered and angry.
"Certainly. That is why I danced with you. I am permitted to dance
only with clients under observation."
Her unflattering candor sent a flush to his face. His latent vanity had
been rather rudely surprised.
"Afterward," she continued, "I knew you could not be the man they
wanted----"
"What man did they want?"
"Somebody who had stolen documents in America, I believe. But I was
sure that you were honest."
"Why?"
Philippa lifted her grey eyes:
"Because you were honest with _me_."
"How, honest?"
"You did not make love to me. Dishonest men always regard women as a
pastime. To make advances is the first thing I expect from them. I am
never disappointed. All men are more or less dishonest--excepting you."
"This is a sorry school you have been brought up in," he said grimly.
"Do you mean that I have had my schooling by observing life?"
"Yes--a life in a cabaret full of _rastaoqueres_ and _cocottes_--a
rather limited and sordid outlook, Philippa. The world lies outside."
"Still--it is life. Even a _cocotte_ is part of life."
"So is disease. But it isn't _all_ there is in life."
"Nor is life in a cabaret all corruption. A cabaret is merely the world
in miniature; all types pass in and out; they come and go as souls are
born and go: the door opens and closes; one sees a new face, one loses
it. It is much like birth and death."
She made an unconsciously graceful gesture toward the white clouds
overhead.
"A cabaret," she went on seriously, "is a republic governed by the
patron, audited by the _caissiere_, policed by waiters. Everybody goes
there--even you, Monsieur. All languages are spoken there, all
questions discussed, all theories aired, all passions ventilated. Every
trait of human nature is to be observed there; the germ of every comedy;
the motive of every tragedy.... Yet, as you say, it is a saddening
school.... Wisdom is too early acquired there. One learns too quickly
and too completely in such a school. Such an education means precocity.
It foreshadows the early death of youth, Monsieur.... If I remain
there, all that is still young in me will die, now, very quickly."
"You poor child!"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Therefore," she said, "I am leaving. Now do you understand?"
He sat looking at her, wondering uneasily at her intelligence and her
ability to express herself. Here was a maturity of mind unexpected in
this girl. So far it had not visibly altered the youth of her, nor
impaired her sweetness and honesty.
In spite of the appalling surroundings amid which she had matured, her
mind and heart still remained young.
Biting a tasselled grass stem reflectively, she sat thinking for a few
moments, then she reverted to the subject of Wildresse and his son.
"I am convinced that it is all _blague_," she repeated, "--this threat
of Noumea. Unless Jacques misbehaves very seriously in Biribi, nobody
can send him to La Nouvelle. Besides, if his father chooses to oblige
the Government, what does it matter about me? No; I have had enough of
degradation. An hour on the river with you was enough to settle it."
"But what do you intend to do, Philippa?" he inquired.
She looked up at him with her winning smile:
"I came to ask _you_ that. Please tell me what I am to do."
"You must not ask _me_----"
"Of course. You are the first man who ever pleased me. You please me
more and more. Why should I not come to you in my perplexity and say,
'What am I to do, my friend?'"
He reddened at that; found nothing to answer. The sudden and grotesque
responsibility which this young girl was so lightly placing upon his
shoulders might have amused if it had not disconcerted him. But it did
not disconcert her.
"What am I to do, Mr. Warner?" she repeated with a smile of perfect
confidence.
"Why, _I_ don't know, Philippa. What _can_ you do down here at Sais?"
"Tell _me_!" she insisted with undisturbed serenity.
"You couldn't very well remain here. You will have to go back to Ausone
and consider this matter more seriously----"
"Ah, ca--non! I shall _not_ go back!"
"What do you propose to _do_?"
She bit her grass stem:
"I don't know. I have my trunk in the punt----"
"What!"
"Certainly, I brought my effects! I have some money--not very much. I
shall go to the inn and remain there until you have decided what it is
best for me to do."
The situation began to strike him as sufficiently ludicrous--the tragic
mask is always on the verge of a grin--but he did not feel like smiling.
For a few minutes he occupied himself with collecting, strapping, and
slinging his kit; and when he was ready to go, he looked down at the
girl Philippa, where she was seated watching him out of her trustful
grey eyes.
"I can employ you as a model," he said, "until Monsieur Wildresse sends
for you. What do you think of the idea?"
"As a--a _model_, Monsieur?" she stammered.
"Yes. You could pose for me, if you like."
A delicate scarlet flush slowly mounted to her hair.
Perplexed, he watched her.
"Don't you like the idea?" And suddenly he divined what was troubling
her. "Not that sort of model," he said, amused. "You shall wear your
clothes, Philippa."
"Oh.... Yes, I should like it, I think."
"It's about the only excuse which would enable you to remain at the inn
until you have come to some conclusion regarding your future," he
explained.
"A painter may always have his models? It is expected, is it not?"
"Oh, yes, _that_ is always understood. But nobody would understand your
coming to live at the Golden Peach merely because you and I happened to
be good friends," he added laughingly.
"I understand," she said in a grave voice. "I am to be your model, not
your friend."
He nodded carelessly, looking away from her. After a moment, he lighted
a cigarette. It relieved him considerably to recollect that the Harem
had gone to Ausone.
"Now," he said, "if you are ready to walk back to the inn with me, I'll
explain you to Madame Arlon, the _patronne_."
"And my punt?" she inquired, rising from the grass.
"Oh, Lord! I forgot."
"My trunk is in it."
"Where is your punt?"
She pointed across the meadow to where the river sparkled:
"It is my own punt; the _Lys_. I took nothing from Monsieur Wildresse
that did not belong to me. It will be agreeable for us to have a punt
here, will it not?"
"Very," he said uneasily.
They turned eastward across the blossoming meadow, over which already
the swallows were soaring in their late afternoon flight. A _vanneau_
or two rose from moist spots, protesting, and flapping away on
greenish-bronze wings; a _becassine_ went off like a badly-balanced
arrow, and his flat, raucous, "squack! squack!" rang through the sunny
silence. Higher, higher his twisting flight carried him toward the sky,
where he dwindled to a speck and vanished; but out of the intense blue
zenith his distant cry still rang long after he had disappeared from the
range of human vision.
*CHAPTER XI*
When Warner and the girl Philippa arrived at the Golden Peach, they
found that Madame Arlon, profiting by the prospective temporary absence
of the Harem, had gone to visit relatives near Nancy for a day or two.
But Linette smilingly took charge of Philippa and her luggage.
Warner, entering the southern end of the walled garden, discovered
Halkett at the other extremity, still seated under the latticed arbor.
A letter lay spread upon the table beside his elbow. Over this letter,
with pencil and paper, he pored as though he were working out a problem
in hieroglyphics.
But when Warner appeared, the Englishman leisurely folded and pocketed
the papers on which he had been working, nodded pleasantly, and handed
to Warner a copy of the _Petit Journal d'Ausone_.
"It came after you left," he said. "There's nothing really new in
it--Germany's ultimatum to Russia, that's about all.... I am feeling
rather anxious about a friend of mine, Reginald Gray. He was to have
arrived here last night or early this morning on his motor cycle. No
word has come from him _personally_, and it is now nearly night again."
Warner seated himself, glanced over the inky little provincial
newspaper, then laid it aside. There was in its columns nothing
definite concerning the threatened rupture of the peace of Europe.
"Halkett," he said almost solemnly, "this crime with which they say our
civilization is menaced can never be consummated. There will be no
World War, because the world dares not acquiesce in such an outrage.
The eleventh hour has struck, I know; but salvation exists only because
there is a twelfth hour on the dial; otherwise the preordained end of
everything would be hell."
Halkett smiled slightly.
"I've just had another letter," he said. "I'm likely to remain here for