The Girl Philippa
"You know that girl--the cashier, I mean--is extraordinarily pretty.
Have you noticed her, Warner?"
Warner turned again:
"I've been looking at her. She's rather thickly tinted, isn't she?"
"Yes. But in spite of the paint. She has a charmingly shaped head.
Some day she'll have a figure."
"Oh, yes; figures and maturity come late to that type.... If you'll
notice, Halkett, those hands of hers are really exquisite. So are her
features--the nose is delicate, the eyes beautifully drawn--she's all in
good drawing--even her mouth, which is a little too full. As an
amateur, don't you agree with me?"
"Very much so. She's a distinct type."
"Yes--there's a certain appeal about her.... It's odd, isn't it--the
inexplicable something about some women that attracts. It doesn't
depend on beauty at all."
Halkett sipped his Moselle wine.
"No, it doesn't depend on beauty, on intelligence, on character, or on
morals. It's in spite of them--in defiance, sometimes. Now, take that
thin girl over there; her lips and cheeks are painted; she has the
indifferent, disenchanted, detached glance of the too early wise. The
chances are that she isn't respectable. And in spite of all that,
Warner--well--look at her."
"I see. A man could paint a troubling portrait of her--a sermon on
canvas."
"Just as she sits there," nodded Halkett.
"Just as she sits there, chin on palm, one lank leg crossed over the
other, and her slim foot dangling.... And the average painter would make
her seem all wrong, Halkett; and I might, too, except for those clear
grey eyes and their childish indifference to the devil's world outside
their ken." He inspected her for a moment more, then: "Yes, in spite of
rouge and other obvious elementals, I should paint her as she really is,
Halkett; and no man in his heart would dare doubt her after I'd
finished."
"That's not realism," remarked Halkett, laughing.
"It's the vital essence of it. You know I'm something of a gambler.
Well, if I painted that girl as she sits there now, in this noisy,
messy, crowded cabaret, with the artificial tint on lip and cheek--if I
painted her just as she appears to us, and in all the insolently
youthful relaxation of her attitude--I'd be gambling all the while with
myself that the soul inside her is as clean as a flame; and I'd paint
that conviction into her portrait with every brush stroke! What do you
think of that view of her?"
"As you Americans say, you're some poet," observed Halkett, laughingly.
"A poet is an advanced psychologist. He begins where scientific
deduction ends."
"That's what makes your military pictures so convincing," said Halkett,
with his quick smile. "It's not only the correctness of details and the
spirited drawing and color, but you _do_ see into the very souls of the
men you paint, and their innermost characters are there, revealed in the
supreme crisis of the moment." He smiled quietly. "I'll believe it if
_you_ say that young girl over there is quite all right."
"I'd paint her that way, anyhow."
The singing on the stage had ceased from troubling, and the stringed
orchestra was playing one of the latest and most inane of dance steps.
A clumsy _piou-piou_ got up with his fresh-cheeked partner; other
couples rose from the sloppy tables, and in another moment the dancing
floor was uncomfortably crowded.
It was a noisy place; a group of summer touring students from Louvain,
across the border, were singing "La Brabanconne"--a very patriotic and
commendable attempt, but it scarcely harmonized with the dance music.
Perspiring waiters rushed hither and thither, their trays piled high;
the dancers trotted and spun around and galloped about over the waxed
floor; the young girl behind her wire wicket swung her narrow foot to
and fro and gazed imperturbably out across the tumult.
"Philippa!" cried one of the Louvain students, hammering on the table
with his beer glass. "Come out from behind your _guichet_ and dance
with me!"
The girl's grey eyes turned superciliously toward the speaker, but she
neither answered nor moved her head.
The young man blew a kiss toward her and attempted to climb upon the
zinc table, but old man Wildresse, who was prowling near, tapped him on
the shoulder.
"Pas de betise!" he growled. "Soyez sage! Restez tranquille, nom de
Dieu!"
"I merely desired the honor of dancing with your charming cashier--"
"Allons! Assez! It's sufficient to ask her, isn't it? A woman dances
with whom she chooses."
And, grumbling, he walked on with his heavy sidling step, hands clasped
behind him, his big, hard, smoothly shaven face lowered and partly
turned, as though eternally listening for somebody just at his heels.
Always sidling nearer to the table where Warner and Halkett were seated,
he paused, presently, and looked down at them, shot a glance across at
the girl, Philippa, caught her eye, nodded significantly. Then,
addressing Warner and his new friend:
"Well, gentlemen," he said in English, "are you amusing yourselves in
the Cafe Biribi?"
"Sufficiently," nodded Warner.
Wildresse peeped stealthily over his shoulder, as though expecting to
surprise a listener. Then his very small black eyes stole toward
Halkett, and he furtively examined him.
"_Jour de fete_," he remarked in his harshly resonant voice. "Grand
doings in town tonight. Do you gentlemen dine here this evening?"
"I think not," said Warner.
"I am sorry. It will be gay. There are dance partners to be had for a
polite bow. You should see my little _caissiere_ yonder!" He made a
grunting sound and kissed his blunt fingers to the ceiling. "M-m-m!" he
growled. "_She_ can dance! But I don't permit her to dance very often.
Only a special client now and then----"
"May we consider ourselves special clients?" inquired Warner, amused.
"Oh, I don't say yes and I don't say no." He jerked his round, shaven
head. "It all depends on _her_. She dances with whom she pleases. And
if the Emperor of China asked her, nevertheless she should be free to
please herself."
"She's very pretty," said Halkett.
"Others have said so before you in the Cabaret de Biribi."
"Why do you call your cabaret the Cafe Biribi?" asked Warner.
"Eh? By God, I call it Biribi because I'm not ashamed of the name."
Halkett looked up into his wicked black eyes, and Wildresse wagged his
finger at him.
"Supposition," he said, "that your son is a good boy--a little lively,
but a good boy--and he comes of age and he goes with his class for two
years--three years now, and to hell with it!
"Bon! Supposition, also, that his sergeant is a tyrant, his captain an
ass, his colonel an imbecile! Bon! Given a little natural ardor--a
trifle of animal spirits, and the lad is up before the
council--bang!--and he gets his in the battalions of Biribi!"
His voice had become a sort of ominous growl.
"As for me," he said heavily, "I mock at their council and their
blockhead colonel! I accept their challenge; I do not conceal that my
son is serving in a disciplinary battalion; I salute all the battalions
of Biribi--where there are better men in the ranks than there are in
many a regiment of the line, by God! And I honor those battalions by
naming my cabaret 'Biribi.' The Government gets no change out of me!"
The man asserted too much, swaggered too obviously; and Halkett, not
suspicious but always cautious, kept his inquiring eyes fixed on him.
Warner said with a smile:
"You have the courage of your convictions, Monsieur Wildresse."
"As for that," growled Wildresse, casting another stealthy glance behind
him, "I've got courage. Courage? Who hasn't? Everybody's got courage.
It's brains the world lacks. Excuse me, gentlemen--affairs of
business--and if you want to dance with my little cashier, there is no
harm in asking her." And he shuffled away, his heavy head bent
sideways, his hands tightly clasped behind him.
"There's an evil type," remarked Halkett. "What a brute it is!"
Warner said:
"With his cropped head and his smooth, pasty face, and those unpleasant
black eyes of his, he looks like an ex-convict. It doesn't astonish me
that he has a son serving in the disciplinary battalions of Africa."
"Does it astonish you that he is the employer of that girl behind the
counter?" asked Halkett.
Warner turned to look at her again:
"It's interesting, isn't it? She seems to be another breed."
"Yes. Now, what do you make of her?"
Warner hesitated, then looked up with a laugh.
"Halkett," he said, "I'm going over to ask her to dance."
"All right; I'll hold the table," said the Englishman, amused. And
Warner rose, skirted the dancers, and walked around to the cashier's
desk, aware all the while that the girl's indifferent grey eyes were
following his movements.
*CHAPTER III*
Warner tucked his walking stick and straw hat under one arm and,
sauntering over to the cashier's desk, made a very nice and thoroughly
Continental bow to the girl behind it.
Her impartial and uninterested gaze rested on him; after a moment she
inclined her head, leisurely and in silence.
He said in French:
"Would Mademoiselle do me the honor of dancing this dance with me?"
She replied in a sweet but indifferent voice:
"Monsieur is too amiable. But he sees that I am _caissiere_ of the
establishment."
"Yet even the fixed stars of heaven dance sometimes to the music of the
spheres."
She smiled slightly:
"When one is merely a fixture _de cabaret_, one dances only to the music
of the _Sbires_! You must ask Monsieur Wildresse if I may dance with
you."
"He suggested that I ask you."
"Very well, if it's a matter of business----"
Warner laughed.
"Don't you ever dance for pleasure?" he asked in English.
She replied in English:
"Is it your theory that it would give me pleasure to dance with you?"
"It is," he said, still laughing. "But by demonstration alone are
theories proven."
The girl hesitated, her grey eyes resting on him. Then she turned her
head, drew a pencil from her chestnut hair, rapped with it on the
counter. A head waiter came speeding to her.
"Aristide, I'm going to dance," she said in the same sweetly indifferent
voice. "Have the goodness to sit in my chair until I return or Melanie
arrives."
She slid to the floor from her high seat, came out, through the wire
gate, and began to unpin her cambric apron.
The closer view revealed to him her thinness in her black gown. She was
not so tall as he had thought her, and she was younger; but he had been
right about her cheeks and lips. Both were outrageously painted.
She handed her daintily embroidered apron to the waiter, laid one hand
lightly on Warner's arm; he led her to the edge of the dancing floor,
clasped her waist and swung her with him out into the noisy whirl
beyond.
Thin, almost immature in her angular slenderness, the girl in motion
became enchantingly graceful. Supple as a sapling in the summer wind,
her hand rested feather-light in his; her long, narrow feet seemed like
shadows close above the floor, never touching it.
The orchestra ceased playing after a few minutes, but old man Wildresse,
who had been watching them, growled, "Go on!" and the music recommenced
amid plaudits and shouts of general approval.
Once, as they passed the students' table, Warner heard the voice of old
Wildresse in menacing dispute with the student who had first shouted out
an invitation to Philippa.
"She dances with whom she chooses!" roared Wildresse. "Do you
understand, Monsieur? By God, if the Grand Turk himself asked her she
should not dance with him unless she wished to!"
Warner said to her jestingly:
"Did the Grand Turk ever ask you, Philippa?"
The girl did not smile.