The Girl Philippa
"They're very picturesque if a painter handles them properly," he
remarked, amused. "You know what De Neuville did for them."
Philippa, not comprehending, continued to knit and to gaze out of her
lovely grey eyes upon her beloved _fantassins_.
Ariadne, seeing her three friends aloft, presently mounted to the top of
the wall beside them, and sat gravely blinking into space through
slitted eyes.
A glazier had come across the fields from some neighboring hamlet,
bringing with him under his ragged arm some panes of glass and a bag of
implements.
He was in a hurry, because he was expecting that his class would be
called to the colors, but the spectacle of the passing infantry across
the river so fascinated him that he made but a slow job of it.
Toward noon a mounted gendarme, who seemed to know him personally,
shouted, as he rode by, that his class had been called. The little
glazier nodded, smeared the last strip of putty under the last window
pane to be replaced, climbed down from the sill, lifted his hat to the
three people on the wall--possibly including Ariadne in his
politeness--and trotted away across the fields to tie up a few
possessions in a large red handkerchief, and then trot away toward
Chalons, where France needed even the humblest and most obscure of the
children she had nourished through many years for such an hour as was
sounding now.
Philippa, looking after him, was unconsciously stirred to express her
thoughts aloud:
"There must be _something_ I can do," she said.
"You have been among the very first to do something," rejoined Warner.
"Oh, _that_? That was nothing." She pursed up her lips and stared
absently at the troops across the Recollette. "I can knit socks, of
course.... I don't know what else to do.... If anybody wants me I am
here."
"_I_ want you, Philippa," said Warner.
"_Mon ami_, Warner----" She gave him a swift, adorable smile and laid
her hand lightly on his arm for an instant.
Such candid gratitude for friendship he had never read in any eyes
before; the quick response of this friendless girl touched him sharply.
"Of course I want you," he repeated. "Never forget, Philippa, that
where I am you are welcome--not tolerated--_wanted_!"
She continued to knit, looking down steadily. Halkett lowered his field
glasses and glanced at her, then with an odd look at Warner leveled the
glasses again and resumed his study of the distant column.
After a few minutes' silence the girl raised her eyes, and Warner caught
the glint of unshed tears in them.
"It is only happiness," she said in a low voice. "I am not accustomed
to it."
He did not know what to say, for the grey eyes were stirring him very
deeply, and her attitude and their new relationship touched him and
confused him, too.
The responsibility which he had assumed so impulsively, so lightly yet
warmly, began to wear a more serious aspect to him.
Every few moments some new vein of purest metal was unconsciously
revealed in her by her own transparent honesty. He began to understand
that she had not only right instincts, but that her mind was right, in
spite of what she had been since released from school--that her
intelligence was of a healthy order, that she thought right, and that,
untaught or taught otherwise, her conclusions were as direct and sane as
a child's.
"I think, Philippa, we ought to have a business talk this morning," he
said pleasantly.
"To discuss our affairs," she nodded contentedly. "I have my little
account book in my trunk. Shall I get it for you?"
He smiled:
"I didn't intend to examine your financial situation----"
"Oh, but we had better be very clear about it! You see, I have just
_so_ much saved--I shall show you exactly!--and then we can compute
exactly what economies it will be necessary for me to make in order to
maintain myself until we can find employment for me----"
"But, Philippa--" he tried to maintain his gravity--"you need not have
any concern in that regard. First of all, you are on a salary as my
model----"
"Please! I did not wish to be paid for aiding you----"
"But it is a matter of business!"
"I thought--I am happy in being permitted to return a little of your
kindness to me--I do not want anything from you----"
"Kindness!"
"You have let me find a refuge with you----"
"Dear child, I offer you employment until something more suitable
offers. Didn't you understand?"
"Yes, but I did not expect or wish you to pay me--except with
friendship. It is different between us and others, is it not?--I mean
you are my _friend_.... I could not take money from you.... Let it be
only friendship between us. Will you? I have enough to last until I
can find employment. Only let me be with you. That is quite enough for
me, Warner."
Halkett, who had been gazing fixedly through his glasses, remarked that
the column across the river had now passed.
It was true; the wall of dust still obscured the blue foothills of the
Vosges, but the last _fantassin_ had trotted beyond their view and the
last military wagon had rolled out of sight.
Halkett descended from the ladder and went through the house and down
the road in the direction of the schoolhouse, a smart, well-groomed,
well-set-up figure in his light-colored service uniform and cap.
Philippa gathered her knitting into one hand, placed the other in
Warner's, and descended the ladder face foremost, with the lithe,
sure-footed grace of Ariadne, who had preceded them.
"Come to my room," she said, confidently taking possession of Warner's
arm; "I want to show you my account book."
Madame Arlon, who was coming through the hallway, overheard her, gazed
at her unsmilingly, glanced at Warner, whose arm the girl still
retained.
Philippa looked up frankly, bidding the stout, florid landlady a smiling
good morning, and Madame Arlon took the girl's hands rather firmly into
her own, considered her, looked up at Warner in silence.
Perhaps she arrived at some silent and sudden conclusion concerning them
both, for her tightened lips relaxed and she smiled at them and patted
Philippa's hands and went about her affairs, still evidently amused over
something or other. She remarked to Magda in the kitchen that all
Americans were mad but harmless; which distinguished them from
Europeans, who were merely mad.
Upstairs in her bedroom, Philippa was down on her knees rummaging in her
little trunk and chattering away as gay as a linnet to Warner, who stood
beside her looking on.
And at first the pathos of the affair did not strike him. The girl's
happy torrent of loquacity, almost childish in its eagerness and
inconsequential repetition of details concerning the little souvenirs
which she held up for his inspection, amused him, and he felt that she
was very, very young.
All the flimsy odds and ends which girlhood cherishes--things utterly
valueless except for the memories evoked by disinterring and handling
them, these Philippa resurrected from the confused heap of clothing in
her trunk--here a thin gold circlet set with a tiny, tarnished
turquoise, pledge of some schoolmate's deathless adoration--there an
inky and battered schoolbook with girls' names written inside in the
immature chirography of extreme youth and sentiment. And there were
bits of inexpensive lace and faded ribbons, and a blotting pad full of
frail and faded flower-ghosts, and home-made sachets from which hue and
odor had long since exhaled, and links from a silver chain and a few
bright locks of hair in envelopes.
And every separate one of these Philippa, on her knees, held up for
Warner to admire while she sketched for him the most minute details of
the circumstances connected.
Never doubting his interest and sympathy, she freed her long-caged heart
with all the involuntary ecstasy of an escaped bird pouring out to the
clouds the suppressed confidences of many years.
Names, incidents, circumstances almost forgotten even in her brief
solitary life, were now uttered almost unbidden from her ardent lips;
the bright or faded bits of ribbon were held aloft, identified with a
little laugh or sigh, tossed aside, and another relic uncovered and held
out to him.
On her knees before these innocent records of the past, the girl was
showing him everything she knew about herself--showing him herself, too,
and her warm, eager heart of a child.
He was no longer merely amused; he stood listening in silence to her
happy, disjointed phrases, evoked by flashes of memory equally
disconnected.
The happiness connected with her girlish souvenirs faded, however, when
they represented the period following her removal from school.
And yet, for all the loneliness and unhappiness--for all the instinctive
mental revolt, all the perplexity and impatience of these latter
years--their souvenirs she handled tenderly, describing each with that
gentleness and consideration born of intimate personal association.
And at last she discovered her account book, strapped with rubber bands,
and she rose from the floor, drew the only chair up for Warner, and
seated herself on her bed, laying the book open across his knees.
Here, under his eyes, columns of accurately kept figures told the story.
Here everything had been minutely set down--her meager salary, her few
expenses, her rigid economies, her savings during the years of her
employment by Wildresse--a record of self-denial, of rigid honesty, of
childlike perseverance.
As he slowly turned the clearly written pages on his knees, Philippa,
leaning against his shoulder, her fresh young face close to his, pointed
out and explained with her forefinger tracing the written figures.
After he had examined her accounts, she unstrapped her thin little pass
book for him. It was in order and balanced to the end of July.
He closed the books, rested his clasped hands on them, and sat thinking.
His preoccupied expression left her silent, too--or perhaps it was the
slight reaction from her joyous indulgence in loquacity. Reticence
always follows--and always this aftermath of silence is tinged with
sadness.
He was thinking, almost in consternation, how lightly he had assumed
responsibility for a young soul in the making. All of her was still in
the making; the girl was merely beginning to develop in mind and spirit;
and in body her development had not ended.
Her circumstances aside--whatever her origin, whatever her class or
position might have been--he suddenly realized that for him the
responsibility was too great.
Whatever her origin, in her were the elements and instincts of all
things upright. Whatever her place in the social scale, her
intelligence could not be questioned. And, if her recent years had been
passed amid sordid and impossible surroundings and influences, these had
not corrupted her. In her there was no hint of depravity, nothing
unwholesome, nothing spoiled.
Life and endeavor and the right to hope still lay before her; a
theoretical future opened uncontaminated; opportunity alone was her
problem; and his. And he realized his responsibility and was perplexed
and troubled.
"Philippa," he said, looking up at her where she sat on the iron bed,
her cheek resting on her clasped hands, "I am not very aged yet. Do you
realize that?"
"Aged?" she repeated, puzzled.
He laughed and so did she.
"I mean," he said, "that if you and I go about together in this rather
suspicious world, nobody is likely to understand how very harmless and
delightful our friendship is."
She nodded.
"Not that I care," he said, "except on your account. A girl has only one
real asset, as assets and liabilities are now figured out by what we
call civilization. It won't do to have any suspicion attach to this