The Girl Philippa
you shall be part of her. You are growing so every hour. And when that
finally happens, then this--all this--will become unreal."
"Not _you_."
"We shall see.... Here are the gates of the Chateau des Oiseaux. It is
you who enter, Philippa; but it shall be your inner and real self who
shall go out through the gates one day--God willing."
The girl smiled at him:
"They have but one soul between them," she said. "And that is yours and
God's, I hope."
*CHAPTER XXII*
Madame de Moidrey, strolling with Warner on the south terrace of the
Chateau des Oiseaux, glanced sideways at intervals through the open
French windows, where, at the piano inside, Philippa sat playing, and
singing in a subdued voice ancient folk songs of the lost provinces.
Peggy Brooks, enchanted, urged her to more active research through the
neglected files of a memory still vivid; Philippa's voice was
uncultivated, unplaced, but as fresh and carelessly sweet as a
blackbird's in May. Some of these old ballads she had picked up from
schoolmates, many from the Cabaret de Biribi, where clients were
provincial and usually sentimental, and where some of the ancient songs
were sung almost every day.
Madame de Moidrey had not immediately referred to Philippa when, with
Warner, she had strolled out to the terrace, leaving the two younger
girls together at the piano.
They had spoken of the sudden and unexpected menace of war, of the
initial movements of troops along the Sais Valley that morning; the
serious chances of a German invasion, the practical certainty that in
any event military operations were destined to embrace the country
around them. Warner seemed very confident concerning the Barrier Forts,
but he spoke of Montmedy and of Mezieres with more reserve, and of
Ausone not at all.
They promenaded for a few minutes longer in silence, each preoccupied
with anxious speculations regarding a future which began already to loom
heavy as a thundercloud charged with unloosed lightnings.
From moment to moment the handsome woman beside him glanced through the
open windows of the music room, where her younger sister and the girl
Philippa were still busily interested in working out accompaniments to
the old-time songs.
Philippa sang "J'ai perdu ma beaute":
"I have lost my beauty--
Fate has bereft me,
Fortune has left me,
None owes me duty.
I have lost my lover;
I shall not recover.
Our Lady of Lorraine,
Pity my pain!"
They paused to listen to this naive melody of other days, then strolled
on.
Madame de Moidrey said:
"She is very interesting, your little friend from Ausone."
"I am glad you think so."
"Oh, yes, there is no doubt about her being clever and intelligent....
I wonder where she acquired her aplomb."
"Would you call it that?"
Madame de Moidrey smiled:
"No, it is a gentler quality--not devoid of sweetness. I think we may
label it a becoming self-possession.... Anyway, it is a quality and not
a trait--if that pleases you."
"She has quality."
"She has a candor which is almost disturbingly transparent. When I was
a girl I saw Gilbert's comedy, 'The Palace of Truth.' And actually, I
believe that your little friend, Philippa, could have entered that
terrible house of unconscious self-revelation without any need of
worrying."
"You couldn't praise her more sincerely if you think that," he said.
"She offers virgin soil for anybody who will take any trouble with her."
"Oh," said Madame de Moidrey, laughing, "I thought I was to engage her
to aid me and amuse _me_; but it seems that _I_ have been engaged to
educate her in the subtler refinements of civilized existence!"
"Don't you want to?" asked Warner, bluntly.
"Dear friend of many more years than I choose to own to, have I not
enough to occupy me without adopting a wandering _caissiere de
cabaret_?"
"Is that the way you feel?" he said, reddening.
"Don't be cross! No; it isn't the way I feel. I do need a companion.
Perhaps your friend Philippa is not exactly the companion I might have
dreamed about or aspired to----"
"If you look at it in that way----"
"Jim! Don't be rude, either! I desire two things; I want a companion
and I wish to oblige you. You know perfectly well I do.... Besides,
the girl is interesting. You didn't expect me to sentimentalize over
her, did you? You may do that if you like. As for me, I shall consider
engaging her if she cares to come to me."
"She will be very glad to," he said, coolly.
Madame de Moidrey cast a swift side glance at him, full of curiosity and
repressed amusement.
"Men," she said, "are the real sentimentalists in this matter-of-fact
world, not women. Merely show a man a pretty specimen of the opposite
sex in the conventional attitude of distress, and it unbalances his
intellect immediately."
"Do you imagine that my youthful friend Philippa has unbalanced my
intellect?" he asked impatiently.
"Not entirely. Not completely----"
"Nonsense!"
"What a bad-mannered creature you are, Jim! But fortunately you're
something else, too. For example, you have been nice about this very
unusual and somewhat perilously attractive young girl. Few men would
have been so. Don't argue! I have known a few men in my time. And I
pay you a compliment."
She stopped and leaned back against a weatherworn vase of stone which
crowned the terrace parapet.
"Listen, Jim; for a woman to take into her house a young girl with this
girl's unknown antecedents and perfectly well-known past performances
ought not to be a matter of romantic impulse, or of sympathy alone. What
you tell me about her, what I myself have already seen of her, are
sufficient to inspire the interest which all romance arouses, and the
sympathy which all lonely youth inspires. But these are not enough.
"Choice of companionship is a matter for serious consideration. You
can't make a companion of the intellectually inferior, of one who
possesses merely the lesser instincts, of any lesser nature, whether
cultivated to its full extent or otherwise. You know that. We shun what
is not congenial."
He looked at her very intently, the dull red still flushing his face;
and she surveyed him critically, amiably, amused at his attitude, which
was the epitome of everything masculine.
"What are you going to do about her?" he inquired at last.
"Offer to engage her."
"As what?"
"A companion."
"Oh. Then you _do_ appreciate her?"
Madame de Moidrey threw back her pretty head and laughed with delicious
abandon.
"Perhaps I don't appreciate her as deeply as you do, Jim, but I shall
humbly endeavor to do so. Now, suppose, when you go back to the Golden
Peach, you send Philippa's effects up here, and in the meanwhile I'll
begin my duty of finishing Philippa's education--for which duty, I
understand, I'm engaged by you----"
"Ethra, you are a trump! And I don't really mind your guying me----"
"Indeed, I'm not guying you, dear friend! I'm revealing to you the
actual inwardness of this entire and remarkable performance of yours.
And if you don't know that you are engaging me to finish this young
girl's education while you're making up your mind about your sentiments
concerning her, then it's time you did."
"That is utterly----"
"Please! And it's all the truer because you don't believe it! ... Jim,
the girl really _is_ a pathetic figure--simple, sweet, intelligent, and
touchingly honest.... And I'll say another thing.... God knows what
mother bore her, what parents are responsible for this young thing--with
her delicate features and slender body. But it was not from a pair of
unhappy nobodies she inherited her mind, which seems to seek
instinctively what is fine and right amid the sordid complexities of the
only world she has ever known.
"As for her heart, Jim, it is the heart of a child--with one heavenly
and exaggerated idol completely filling it. _You!_ ... And I tell you
very plainly that, if I were a man, the knowledge of this would frighten
me a little, and make me rather more serious than many men are inclined
to be."
He bit his lip and looked out across the southern valley, where already
the August haze was growing bluer, blurring the low-hanging sun.
She laid a friendly, intimate, half humorous hand on his arm:
"In all right-thinking men the boy can never die. No experience born of
pain, no cynicism, no incredulity acquired through disappointment, can
kill the boy in any man until it has first slain his soul. Otherwise,
chivalry in the world had long since become extinct.
"You have done what you could do for Philippa. I am really glad to help
you, Jim. But from now on, be very careful and very sure of yourself.
Because now your real responsibility begins."
He had not thought of it in that way. And now he did not care to.
To sympathize, to protect, to admire--these were born of impulse and
reason, which, in turn, had their origin in unconscious condescension.
To applaud the admirable, to express a warm concern for virtue in
difficulties, meant merely sincere recognition, not the intimacy of that
equality of mind and circumstance which existed per se between himself
and such a woman as Madame de Moidrey.
The very word "protection" implies condescension, conscious or
unconscious. We may love what we protect; we never, honestly, place it
on a pedestal, or even on a mathematical level with ourselves. It can't
be done.
And so, in a vague sort of way, Warner remained incredulous of the
impossible with which Madame de Moidrey had smilingly menaced him.
Only, of course, she was quite right; he must not thoughtlessly arouse
the woman in the girl Philippa.
But there is nothing in the world that ought more thoroughly to arouse
the best qualities of manhood in a man than the innocent adoration of a
young girl. For if he could really believe himself to be even a shadow
of what she believes he is, the world might really become the most
agreeable of residential planets.
As Warner and Madame de Moidrey entered the music room through the open
French windows, Philippa turned from the piano and her soft voice died
out in the quaint refrain she had been accompanying.
She rose instinctively, which was more than Peggy did, having no
reverence for age in her own sister--and Madame de Moidrey came forward
and took the girl's slender hands in hers.
"Have you concluded to remain with me?" she asked, smilingly.
"I did not understand that you had asked me," said the girl gravely.
"I do ask you."
Philippa looked at Warner, then lifted her grey eyes to the elder woman.
"You are very kind, Madame. I--it will be a great happiness to me if
you accept my services."
The Countess de Moidrey regarded her, still retaining her hands, still
smiling.
"You have a very sweet way of making the acceptance mine and not yours,"
she said. "Let us accept each other, Philippa. Will you?"
"You are most kind, Madame----"
"Can kindness win you?"
"Madame, it has already."
The American widow of the recent Count de Moidrey felt a curious
sensation of uncertainty in the quiet self-possession of this young
girl--in her serenity, in her modulated voice and undisturbed manner.
An odd idea persisted that the graciousness was not entirely on her own
part; that there was something even more subtle than graciousness on the
part of this girl, whose delicate hands lay, cool and smooth, within her
own.
It was not manner, for there was none on Philippa's part; not reticence,
for that argues a conscious effort or a still more conscious lack of
effort. Perhaps, through the transparent simplicity of the girl, the
older woman's intuition caught a glimpse of finer traditions than she