The Girl Philippa
His words were obliterated in the rush and clatter of horses outside.
Dragoons were galloping up the stony rue d'Auros, squadron on squadron,
and behind them rattled three high-angle guns harnessed to teams driven
by dragoons.
"Attention there!" shouted an officer, reining in and halting a peloton
of horsemen. "Fire at will from your saddles!"
Warner sprang to the window; the street and the market square was full
of halted cavalry firing skyward. They had several high-angle guns there
too; the ear-splitting detonations became continuous; and all the time
the solid earth was shaking under terrible detonations from the fort's
cupolas, where the big cannon were concealed.
From everywhere came the treble clink and tinkle of broken glass; people
in the hotel were running to the windows and running away from them; the
building itself seemed to sway slightly; dust hung in the air, greying
everything.
Warner drew Philippa to him and said calmly, but close to her ear:
"The thing to do is to get out of this at the first opportunity. I had
no idea that anything would happen as near----"
His voice was blotted out in a loud report, shouts, a woman screaming,
the rumble and tumbling roar of bricks. Another shattering report
almost deafened him; the air was filled with whizzing, whining noises;
the entire front of a shop diagonally across the street caved in with a
crystalline crash of glass, and the cornice above it lurched outward,
swayed, crumpled, and descended in a pouring avalanche of bricks and
mortar.
Somebody in the hotel lobby shouted:
"An aeroplane is directly over us. They are dropping bombs!"
"Go to the cellar!" cried another.
An officer of gendarmerie came in, followed by a trooper.
"Stay where you are!" he said. "It's safer."
Another explosion sounded, but farther away this time.
"Their Taube is steering toward the fort," continued the same
quiet-voiced officer who had spoken. "Don't go out into the streets!"
The uproar in the square had become terrific; high-angle guns poured
streams of fire into the sky; dragoons sitting their restless horses
fired upward from their saddles; an engine escorted by brass-helmeted
pompiers arrived and a stream of water was turned on the debris of the
shop across the street, where already pale flames flickered and played
over the dusty ruins.
"Somebody has been killed," whispered Philippa in Warner's ear.
He nodded, watching the Red Cross bearers as they hastened up with their
stretchers, where the firemen were uncovering something from beneath the
heap of smoking debris.
A staff officer, attended by a hussar lancer, and followed by two
mounted gendarmes, rode into the street just as the dragoons, forming to
whistle signal in column of fours, rode out of the street at a gallop.
There came another clatter of hoofs; an open carriage escorted by six
_gendarmes-a-cheval_ rolled through the rue d'Auros. In it was a
white-haired gentleman wearing a top hat and a tri-colored sash.
"The mayor," nodded Warner, as carriage and escort passed rapidly in the
direction of the Hotel de Ville.
The sky-guns had ceased firing, now; three of them were limbered up and
dragged away toward the Boulevard d'Athos by dragoons. More Red Cross
brassards appeared in the street, more stretchers. Two double-decked
motor ambulances drew up; others, following, continued on toward the
Place and the railroad station. Then three grey military automobiles
full of officers came whizzing through the rue d'Auros with terrific
blasts of warning; and sped on, succeeded by others filled with infantry
soldiers, until a steady stream of motor cars of every description was
rushing past the windows, omnibus motors, trucks, hotel busses,
furniture vans, private cars, of every make and varying capacities, all
loaded with red-capped _fantassins_ and bristling with rifles.
Warner opened the window and leaned far out, one arm around Philippa.
Eastward, on the Plaza Sainte Cassilda, masses of lancer cavalry were
defiling at a trot, dragoons, hussars, and _chasseurs-a-cheval_, and the
rue d'Auros was filled with onrushing motor cars as far as he could see.
Westward, parallel with the stream of automobiles, field artillery was
crossing the Place d'Ausone, battery after battery, the drivers whipping
and spurring in their saddles, the horses breaking from trot to gallop.
"Something unexpectedly serious is happening," said Warner, trying to
make his voice audible in the din from the fort. "Look into those
alleys and lanes and cross streets! Do you see the people hurrying out
of their houses? I must have been crazy to bring you here!"
"I can't hear you, Jim----" Her lips formed the words; he pointed
across the street into the alleyways and mews; she nodded comprehension.
"Until these automobiles pass we can't cross--can't get across!" He
found himself almost shouting; and he emphasized his meaning with
pantomime and gesticulation.
She nodded, undisturbed. Now and then, when soldiers in automobiles
looked up at them, she tossed white flowers from her bouquet into the
tonneau and nodded a gay response to the quick salutes. One lily
remained; she drew it through the laces that held her scarlet and black
bodice, then, resting her hand on Warner's shoulder, looked gravely down
at the rushing column underneath.
The tremendous concussions from the fort had loosened plaster and broken
window glass everywhere in the hotel; a smarting mist drifted through
the open window; the room behind them was obscured as by a fog, and
every shock from the guns added to the thickening dust veil.
The _gerant_, Francois, ghastly pale but polite, came presently to
inform Warner by signs that a chimney had fallen in on the lumber room
and that at present it was not possible for the porter to enter and find
the canvases stored there.
Warner understood, catching a word or two here and there, and shrugged
his indifference to what might become of his sketches.
"All I want," he shouted into the _gerant's_ ear, "is to get this young
lady out of Ausone!"
Francois nodded, pointed toward the cross streets which were now
swarming with people preparing for flight. There came a sudden lull in
the cannonade, and almost at the same time the last motor filled with
soldiers sped through the street below.
Instantly the street, now occupied only by firemen and Red Cross
soldiers, was filled with citizens. Groups formed, surged hither and
thither, mingled with other groups and became a swaying crowd. Already
hand-carts and wheelbarrows appeared, piled with bedding and household
furniture; the open carriage of the mayor repassed, was halted, and the
aged magistrate stood up and addressed the people; but Warner could not
make out what he was saying, and in a moment or two the carriage
continued toward the Boulevard d'Athos, escorted by gendarmes.
"It's plain enough that the Germans are pretty close," said Warner
carelessly. "If you're ready, Philippa, I think we'd better get back to
Sais."
"And your beautiful pictures! Oh, Jim, I can't bear to have them left
here----"
"Which do you imagine I consider the more valuable, Philippa, you or
those daubs of mine? Come, dear; let's clear out if we can before that
fort begins to converse again with Germans."
He paid his reckoning at the desk, where _patron_, _gerant_,
_caissiere_, and staff had gathered in calm consultation concerning
eventualities. Nobody seemed excited; everybody was polite, even
smiling; servants were already busy with dusters, brooms, and pans; the
porter carried down luggage for departing guests.
"Monsieur Warner, are you leaving us?" inquired Francois smilingly.
"Perhaps it is better; they say that the Germans are now in range of the
fort. Sais is likely to be more peaceful than Ausone tonight. If the
Bosches don't bombard us, I think your pictures will be quite safe with
us."
He bowed them to the door; Philippa, clinging to Warner's arm, went out
into the stony street, which was now crowded with hurrying people, all
preparing for flight.
As they set foot on the pavement, a frightful detonation shook the town,
another, another; and on the heels of the thunderous shock the first
German shell fell in Ausone, plunged through the roof and exploded in
the transept of the Church of Sainte Cassilda, blowing the altar and
choir stalls to dust and splinters.
Before Philippa and Warner could make their way to the river, three more
shells came plunging into the town, one exploding with a deafening din
in the empty market, another stripping a shop open from roof to basement
and literally disemboweling it, and a third blowing up the eastern end
of the rue d'Auros, where its whistling fragments tore right and left
through a huddled group of women and children.
Then, as they ran toward the quay, the soldiers on guard there came
hastening toward them, warning them back. For a few moments the Place
d'Ausone streamed with terrified people in confused and purposeless
flight, forced back from the river by line soldiers who kept shouting
something which Warner could not understand.
But in another moment he understood, for the old stone bridge across the
Recollette split in two, vomiting great masses of stone into the air,
and the earth rocked with the roar of dynamite.
Half stunned, balked, hesitating, Warner stood in the market place with
his arm around Philippa, looking about him for a chance; while shell
after shell fell into the town, and the racket of their detonations
resounded from the railroad station to the boulevard.
"The river," he said; "it's the best way out of this, I think!"
She nodded, clasped his arm, and they started once more toward the quay.
Below the parapet their punt, still tied fast, lay tossing and rocking
on the agitated river. Down the stone stairs they ran; Philippa sprang
on board, and the next moment Warner cast off and drove the punt swiftly
out into the current of midstream.
Then, directly ahead of them, parallel to the Impasse d'Alcyon, a shell
fell with the whistling screech of a steamer's siren; there came a
deadened roar; a geyser of water and gravel rose in mid-river, hurling
rocks, planks from the landing, and splintered rowboats in every
direction.
Great limbs from the willow trees hurtled earthward, a muddy maelstrom
of foam whirled their punt, caught it on a comb of seething water, flung
it from wave to wave.
Warner, beaten from his balance, had fallen to his knees. As the
plunging punt swept downstream, he continued to use his pole
mechanically. Around them debris still rained into the discolored
river, branches, fragments of sod; the surface of the water was covered
with floating boards, sticks, green leaves, uprooted reeds and rushes; a
mangled and bloody swan floated near, its snowy neck and head under
water.
Philippa crouched on the bottom of the punt, deadly pale, her hands over
her ears, her grey eyes riveted on Warner.
When his voice was under control, he said:
"Are you all right, dear?"
She read his lips, nodded, tried to smile, fell to trembling with both
hands still convulsively crushed over her ears.
Current and pole had already swept the punt out past the _banlieu_, past
the suburban cottages, past the farms and the cattle and the
clotheslines where the wash hung drying.
Behind them lay the town, amid a hell of exploding shells; the hills and
woods reechoed the infernal crash; and, high overhead, above the
dreadful diapason of the guns, rose the crazy treble hooting of incoming
projectiles, dominating the awful roar on earth with a yelling bedlam in
the sky.
Again and again he looked aloft, fearfully attempting to trace and trail
and forestall some whistling screech growing louder and louder and