The Girl Philippa
they'll give you some straw to sleep on, and then they'll lock the door.
What I'll do with you or to you I don't know yet. But I'll know by
morning."
Vignier knocked at the door. Behind him came a stableboy with a tub.
"Take care of that rat," said Warner briefly; and went out into the
night.
His hands were slightly discolored, and one had bled at the knuckles.
He went directly to the room, changed his linen, made a careful toilet
with a grimace of retrospective disgust, then adjusting and brushing out
his crumpled attire, took a look at himself in the glass and discovered
no incriminating evidence of his recent pugilistic activity.
But when he went downstairs he discovered that the family had retired;
lights flickered low in the west drawing-room, a lamp remained burning
in the staircase hall, but the remainder of the house was dark.
As he stood at the drawing-room door, undecided whether to carry the
hallway lamp to the library and find a book, or to return to his room
and bed, a slight noise on the stairway attracted his attention.
Philippa, in boudoir robe and slippers, her chestnut hair in two braids,
sat on the carpeted stairs looking down at him through the spindles.
"What on earth are you doing there?" he demanded, smiling up at her.
"You have been away over two hours!"
"I know it: I'm so sorry----"
"You said you were going to find a wrap for me. You didn't return."
"I'm sorry, Philippa. I was detained at the garage--a matter which had
to be arranged with Vignier.... You should go back to bed."
"I was in bed."
"Why did you get up?"
"I wished to find out whether you had come in."
"But, Philippa," he protested laughingly, "you don't feel that you have
to sit up for me, do you?--As though we were ma----" He checked himself
abruptly, and she caught him up where he had stopped.
"Yes, I do feel that way!" she said emphatically. "When the only man a
girl has in the whole world goes out and doesn't return, is it not
natural for that girl to sit up until he does return?"
"Yes," he said, rather hastily, "I suppose it is. Speak low, or people
can hear you. You see I'm all right, so now you had better go to
bed----"
"Jim! I don't want to go to bed."
"Why not?" he demanded in a guarded voice.
"I am lonely."
"Nonsense, Philippa! You can't be lonely with real friends so near.
Don't sit up any longer."
She sighed, gathered her silken knees into her arms, and shrugged her
shoulders like a spoiled child.
"I am lonely," she insisted. "I miss Ariadne."
"We'll go and call on her tomorrow----"
"I want her now. I've a mind to put on a cloak and some shoes and go
down to the inn and get her."
"Come!" he said. "You don't want the servants to hear you and see you
sitting on the stairs when the household is in bed and asleep."
"Is there any indiscretion in my sitting on the stairs?"
"Oh, no, I suppose not!"
"Very well. Let me sit here, then. Besides, I never have time enough
to talk to you----"
"You have all day!"
"The day is not long enough. Even day and night together would be too
short. Even the years are going to be too brief for me, Jim! How can I
live long enough with you to make up for the years without you!" she
explained a trifle excitedly; but she subsided as he made a quick
gesture of caution.
"It won't do to sit there and converse so frankly," he said. "Nobody
overhearing you would understand either you or me."
The girl nodded. One heavy braid fell across her shoulder, and she took
the curling, burnished ends between her fingers and began to rebraid
them absently. After a moment she sighed, bent her head and looked down
at him between the spindles.
"I am sorry I have annoyed you," she whispered.
"You didn't."
"Oh, I did! It wouldn't do to have people think--what--couldn't be
true.... But, Jim, can't you forgive a girl who is entirely alone in
the world, clinging to every moment of companionship with her closest
friend? And can't you understand her being afraid that something might
happen to him--to take him away--and the most blessed friendship
that--that she ever even dreamed of in--in the dreadful solitude which
was her youth?"
"You dear child--of course I understand.... I never have enough of you,
either. Your interest and friendship and loyalty are no warmer than are
mine for you.... But you mustn't become morbid; nothing is going to
alter our regard for each other; nothing is going to happen to either
you or me." He laughed. "So you really need not sit up nights for me,
if I happen to be out."
She laughed too, framed her cheeks in her hands, and looked down at him
with smiling, humorous eyes which grew subtly tender.
"You do care for me, Jim?"
"Why should I deny it?"
"Why should _I_? I don't. I know I care for you more than everything
else in the world----
"Philippa!"
"Yes, Jim?"
"You know--people happening to overhear you might not understand----"
"I don't care! It's the truth!" She rose, bent over the banister to
look down at him, discovered that he was not annoyed, smiled adorably.
"Good night! I shall sleep happily!" she whispered, gathering her
boudoir robe around her.
At the top of the stairs she turned, leaned over, kissed the palm of one
slim hand to him, and disappeared with a subdued and faintly mischievous
laugh, leaving in his eyes of an artist a piquant, fleeting, and
charming picture.
But upon his mind the impression she left began to develop more
slowly--the impression of a young girl--"clean as a flame," as he had
once said of her--a lovely and delicate personality absolutely in
keeping with the silken boudoir gown she wore--in keeping with the
carven and stately beauty of her environment in this ancient house.
Philippa not only fitted into the very atmosphere of such a place; it
seemed as though she must have been born in it, so perfectly was she a
harmonious part of it, so naturally and without emphasis.
Centuries had cooerdinated, reconciled, and made a mellow ensemble of
everything within this house--the walls, the wainscot, mantels, lusters,
pictures and frames, furniture and dimmed upholstery.
In the golden demi-light of these halls Philippa moved as though she had
known no other--and in the sunlight of music room or terrace she
belonged as unquestioned as the sunlight itself; and in lamplit spaces
where soft shadows framed her, there also she belonged as certainly as
the high, dim portraits of great ladies and brave gentlemen peering down
at her through their delicate veils of dust.
Thinking of these things beside the open window of his bedroom, he
looked out into the south and east and saw in the sky the silvery
pencilings of searchlights on the Barrier Forts, shifting, sweeping in
wide arcs, or tremblingly concentrated upon the clouds.
There was no sound in the fragrant darkness, not a breath of air, not a
leaf stirring.
His inclination was not to sleep, but to think about Philippa; and he
sat there, a burned-out cigarette between his fingers, his eyes fixed so
persistently on the darkness that after a while he became conscious of
what his concentration was delicately evoking there--her face, and the
grey eyes of her, shadowy, tender, clear as a child's.
*CHAPTER XXVI*
Warner awoke with a start; somebody was knocking on his door. As he sat
up in bed, the solid thudding of the cannonade filled the room--still
very far away, but deeper and with a heavier undertone which set the
windows slightly vibrating.
The knocking on his door sounded again insistently.
"All right!" he called, throwing on a bathrobe and finding his slippers.
The rising sun had not yet freed itself from the mist that lay over hill
and plain; wide, rosy beams spread to the zenith and a faint glow tinged
the morning fog, but the foreground of woods and fields was still dusky
and vague, and his room full of shadows.
He tied the belt of his robe and opened the door. In the semi-obscurity
of the corridor stood Philippa, hair disordered, wrapped in her chamber
robe.
"Jim," she said, "the telephone in the lower hall has been ringing like
mad. It awoke me. I lay and listened to it, but nobody seemed to hear
it, so I went down. It's a Sister of Charity--Sister Eila--who desires
to speak to you."
"I'll go at once--thank you, Philippa----"
"And, Jim?" She was trotting along beside him in her bare feet and
bedroom slippers as he started for the stairs. "When you have talked to
her, I think you ought to see what is happening on the Ausone road."
"_What_ is happening?" he demanded, descending the stairs.
She kept pace with him, one hand following the stair rail:
"There are so many people and carts and sheep and cattle, all going
south. And just now two batteries of artillery went the other way
toward Ausone. They were going at a very fast trot--with gendarmes
galloping ahead to warn the people to make room----"
"When did you see this?"
"Now, out of that window as I stood knocking at your door."
"All right," he said briefly, picking up the telephone. "Are you there,
Sister Eila? Yes; it is Warner speaking."
"Mr. Warner, where can I communicate with Captain Halkett?"
"I don't know, Sister."
"Could you find out?"
"I haven't any idea. He has not written me since he left."
"He left no address with you?"
"None. I don't imagine he knew where he could be found. Is it anything
important?"
"Yes. I don't know what to do. There is an Englishman--a soldier--who
has been hurt and who says he must send word to Captain Halkett. Could
you come to the school?"
"Of course. When?"
"Just as soon as you can. I am so sorry to awaken you at such an
hour----"
"It's quite all right, Sister. I'll dress and go at once.... And tell
me, are there a lot of people passing southward by the school?"
"Oh, yes, Mr. Warner, ever since dawn. Everyone is leaving Ausone and
the villages along the Recollette.... I must not use the telephone any
longer. I had permission to use it only because the business was of a
military nature. Come as soon as you can----"
The connection was abruptly broken--probably by some officer in control.
Warner rose; Philippa had vanished. He walked out to the music room,
opened the long windows, and stepped through them to the south terrace.
The muffled roll of the cannonade filled his ears. Except for that
dominating and unbroken monotone, the sunrise world was very still, and
mist still veiled the glitter in the east.
But below in the valley of the Recollette, the road lay perfectly
distinct in the clear, untinted and transparent light of early dawn.
Along it people and vehicles swarmed, moving south--an unending stream
of humanity in pairs, in family groups, their arms filled with packages,
parcels, bundles tied up in sheets, and bedquilts.
Peasant carts piled with dingy household effects bumped and jolted
along; farm wagons full of bedding, on which huddled entire families
clasping in their arms cheap wooden clocks, earthen bowls, birdcages,
flowerpots, perhaps a kitten or a puppy; and there was every type of
vehicle to be seen--the _charrette a bras_, the _tombereau_ dragged by
hand, dilapidated cabriolets, wheelbarrows, even baby carriages full of
pots and pans.
Here and there some horse, useless for military purposes, strained under
a swaying load, led by the head; sometimes a bullock was harnessed with
a donkey.
Companies of sheep dotted the highway here and there, piloted by boys
and wise-looking, shaggy dogs; there were dusty herds of cattle, too,
inclined to leisurely straying but goaded continually into an unwilling
trot by the young girls who conducted them. On the river, too, boats