The Girl Philippa
"Come to the window; it's worth seeing," said Halkett.
It was worth seeing. Through the still morning sunshine, from the
southward came an immense sound wave; the rustle and clash of steel, the
clink-clank of iron-shod hoofs.
Leaning from the window, Warner looked down the road. A high column of
white dust stretched away into perspective as far as he could see.
Under it, emerging from it, rode the French heavy cavalry, the morning
sun a blinding sheet of fire on their armor.
On they came at a leisurely walk, helmets and breastplates blazing
silvery fire under a perpendicular forest of lances canopied by the
white dust.
They were terribly conspicuous; a cloudless sky exposed every detail of
their uniforms--the gold epaulets of their officers, the crimson
epaulets and breeches of the troopers, the orange-red whalebone plumes
that flew like the manes of horses from the trumpeters' helmets.
On they came, riding at ease, accompanied by dust and by a vast and
confused volume of assorted noises--the tintinnabulation of their armor,
the subdued clash of sabers, the rattle and clash of equipments, the
solidly melodious trample of thousands of horses.
But Warner looked down at them with anxious eyes and lips compressed.
"Good God!" he said under his breath to Halkett. "Are they going into
battle dressed that way? I thought they had learned something since
1870!"
"War has caught France unprepared in that particular matter," said
Halkett gravely.
"I didn't know it. I understood that Detaille had designed their
campaign dress. It's a dreadful thing, Halkett, to send men into fire
dressed in that way!"
"It is. But look, Warner. Is there anything more magnificent when in
mass formation than a brigade of French cuirassiers?"
As they rode clanging under the windows of the inn, officers and
troopers looked up curiously at the man in his bathrobe, in friendly
surprise at the young man in the British field uniform; but when the
upturned, sunburned faces caught sight of the next window beyond, a
quick, gay smile flashed out, and dark blue sleeves shot up in laughing
greeting and salute.
"It's Philippa," whispered Halkett. "Look!"
Warner turned: Philippa, wearing the scarlet and black peasant dress of
a lost province, sat sideways on her window sill, knitting while she
watched the passing cavalry below.
The velvet straps and silk laces of her bodice accented a full
chemisette of finest lawn; a delicate little apron of the same was
relieved by the scarlet skirt; the dainty, butterfly headdress of black
silk crowned her hair, which hung in two heavy braids.
And, as the cavalry column passed, every big cuirassier, looking up from
the shadow of his steel helmet, saw Alsace itself embodied in this
slender girl who sat knitting and looking down upon France militant out
of quiet, proud eyes.
There was no fanfare, no shouting, no boasting, nothing theatrical. The
troopers looked up from their saddles and rode by, still looking; the
girl knitted quietly, her steady eyes gazing gravely over the needles.
And it was as though Alsace herself were speaking a silent language from
those clear, grey eyes:
"I am waiting; I have been waiting for you more than forty years. Take
what time you need, but come. You will always find me waiting."
Every officer understood it; every giant rider comprehended, as the
squadrons trampled past through a thickening veil of dust which grew
denser, dulling the sparkle of metal and subduing the raw, fierce colors
to pastel tints.
The brigade passed up the valley leisurely, without halting; dust hung
along the road for many minutes after the last cuirassier had walked his
big horse out of view.
Philippa, who had been seated on the window sill with her back toward
Warner's window, left her perch; and Warner turned back into his room to
bathe and dress.
"How long have you been up?" he asked Halkett, who had dropped on a
chair by the window.
"Since sunrise. Madame Arlon is back. She behaved very nicely about
the damage. She doesn't wish me to pay for it, but I shall. Did you
know that your Harem left in a body for Paris yesterday afternoon?"
"Very sensible of 'em," said Warner with a sigh of relief. "How about
you, Halkett?"
"I don't know yet. I'm expecting orders at any moment now."
"How do you know that your country has gone into this war?"
"I learned it last night at the Boule d'Argent. The news had just come
over the wire.
"That precious pair, Meier and Hoffman, whom I had followed to the Boule
d'Argent, were seated there in the cafe reading the newspapers when the
telegram was posted up.
"They got up from their chairs with the other guests who had clustered
around the bulletin to read what had been posted up. I watched their
faces from behind my newspaper, and you should have seen their
expressions--utter and blank astonishment, Warner! Certainly Germany
never believed until the last moment that we had any real intention of
going in."
"I didn't, either, to tell the truth."
Halkett smiled:
"It was inevitable from the very beginning. The hour that Austria flung
her brutal ultimatum into the face of Servia, every British officer knew
that we were going in. It took our politicians a little longer to
realize it, that's all."
Warner finished dressing, and they went downstairs together and across
the grass to the arbor in the garden, where Philippa sat knitting and
talking under her breath to Ariadne, who gazed at her, brilliant-eyed,
purring.
The girl had her back toward them and they made no sound as they
advanced across the turf which bordered the flowers.
"She's talking to the cat; listen!" murmured Halkett.
"--And after many, many years," they heard Philippa saying, "the sad and
patient mother of the two lost children sent out for her five million
servants. 'Go,' she said, 'and search diligently for my little daughters
who were stolen by the fierce old giant, Bosche. And when you come to
where they are imprisoned, you shall know the place, because there is no
place on earth so beautiful, no mountains so tender a blue, no fields so
green and so full of flowers, no rivers so lovely and clear.
"'Also, you shall recognize my little children when you discover them,
because they dress as I am dressed today, in red and black and wearing
the black butterfly. So when you see them behind the bars of their
prison, you shall call to them by name--you shall call out, Alsace!
Lorraine! Be of good courage! Your mother has sent us here to find you
and deliver you from the prison of the Giant Bosche!
"'Then you shall draw your broad, bright bayonets and fix them; and you
who are mounted shall unsling your long, pointed lances; and you who
feed the great steel monsters that roll along on wheels, shall make
ready the monsters' food; and others of you who put on wings and who
mount clattering to the clouds, shall wing yourselves and mount; and you
others who look out over oceans from the tops of tall, steel masts shall
signal for all the anchors to be lifted.
"'Thus you shall prepare to encounter the Giant Bosche, who will come
thundering and trampling and flaming across the horizon, with his black
banners like storm clouds, and advancing amid a roaring iron rain.
"'Thus you shall meet him and hold him, and turn him, and drive him,
drive him, drive him, back, back, back, into the fierce, dark, shaggy
places from whence he crept out into the sun and stole away my little
children.
"'And when that is done, you shall bring me back my children who were
lost, and you shall be their servants as well as mine, dwelling with us
as one family forever, in happiness and honor, dedicating ourselves to
generous and noble deeds as long as the world shall last!' ...
"That, _minette_, is the fairy story which I promised you if you would
be a good cat and wait patiently for breakfast. And you have done so,
and now I have kept my promise----"
She lifted her eyes from her knitting, turned her head over her
shoulder, and saw Warner and Halkett gravely listening.
"Oh," she said, blushing. "Did you hear the story I have been telling
to Ariadne?" She held out her hand to Warner and then to Halkett,
inspecting the latter critically, much interested in his uniform.
"You saw our cuirassiers?" she asked, as they seated themselves at the
table. "So did I. Also, they saw me. I wished them to see me because
I was dressed in this dress. We understood each other, the 'grosse
cavalerie' and I."
"We saw what was going on," said Halkett. "I should say that about two
thousand suitors have been added to your list this morning, Philippa."
She turned shy and a little grave at that, but seeing Warner laughing,
laughed too.
"If I were a great lady," she said, "you might be right. Only from the
saddle could any man dare hope for a smile from me now."
Linette, with the bright color of excitement still brilliant in her
cheeks, brought out the breakfast tray.
"On the quarry road, across the river," she said, "our _fantassins_ are
marching north--thousands of them, messieurs!--and the dust is like a
high white wall against the hills!"
So they hastened with their coffee and rolls; Warner fetched the garden
ladder and set it against the east wall, and all three mounted and
seated themselves on the coping.
What Linette had reported was true: across the Recollette a wall of
white dust ran north and south as far as they could see. Under it an
undulating column tramped, glimmering, sparkling, flowing northward--an
endless streak of dusty crimson where the red trousers of the line were
startlingly visible through the haze.
Watching the stirring spectacle from a seat on the wall beside Philippa,
Warner turned to her presently:
"Do you feel all right this morning?"
"Yes, thank you."
"Your lip is still a trifle swollen."
"I feel quite well." She looked up at him out of her honest grey eyes.
"It is the happiest morning of my life," she said in a low voice.
"Why?"
"For two reasons: I am to remain with you, that is one reason; I have
lived to see what I am looking at yonder, that is the other reason."
"You have lived to help what is going on yonder," remarked Halkett.
She turned, the question in her eyes; and he answered seriously:
"We British are your allies, now."
"Since when, Monsieur?"
"Since yesterday. So what you did for me when you saved my papers, you
did for a friend to France."
Her sudden emotion left her silent; she bent her head and looked down at
her knitting, and leisurely resumed it, sitting so, her legs hanging
down from the wall, the sun striking her silver shoe buckles.
"Do you hear, Philippa?" asked Warner, smiling. "You have added reason
to be proud of the wound on your lip."
She flashed a look at him, laughed shyly, and became very busy with her
knitting and with watching the passing column across the river.
Halkett had unslung his field glasses to inspect them at closer range.
The dusty _fantassins_ were swinging along at a smart route step, rifles
slung, red kepis askew, their bulky luggage piled on their backs and
flopping on their thighs--the same careless, untidy, slipshod infantry
with the same active, tireless, reckless, rakish allure.
Their smartly mounted officers, smartly booted or gaitered, wearing the
smart tunics and gold-laced caps of their arm of the service, seemed
merely to accent the gayly dowdy, ill-fitting uniforms of the little
_fantassins_.
No British officer could, on his soul and conscience, subscribe to such
flapping, misfitting, fag-ends of military accouterments; and as Halkett
watched them a singularly wooden expression came over his pleasant,
youthful features; and Warner, glancing sideways at him, knew why.