The Girl Philippa
placed among the matchless company looking down on them from the walls
through a delicate bloom of dust.
What he had done belonged here, as she herself belonged here between
these old-time walls and the ancient roof above. And every corridor,
every room, every terrace, would be the sweeter, the fresher, for her
lingering before she passed on her life's journey through an old and
worn-out world.
"Philippa passes," he said, thinking aloud.
She looked up, smiled.
"Only where you lead her, shall Philippa pass," she murmured.
"It is to be the title of your portrait.... Would you care to look at
it now? There is not so much more to do to it, I think...."
She came around and stood silently beside him.
"Is it you?" he asked.
"My other self.... I had not supposed you knew her--so deeply--so
intimately--more intimately than I myself seem to know her."
He laughed gently.
"Heart of a child," he said, half to himself.
"Heart of a man," she answered. "What have I done to deserve you? How
can you be so patient with me? ... You, a man already grown,
distinguished, ripe with wisdom.... I don't know why you should annoy
yourself with me.... It is too wonderful--why you should be my
friend--my friend----"
"There is something far more wonderful, Philippa--that you should be my
friend. Didn't you know it?"
She laughed.
"I wonder if you know what I would do for you? There is nothing you
could ask of me that I would not do----"
She ceased, her voice threatening unsteadiness, but her eyes were clear
and she was smiling.
"Words are idle things," she added calmly, "and not necessary, I think,
between you and me.... Only, sometimes I feel--a need of telling
you--of my devotion.... There have been lonely years--friendless--and a
heart sickens under eternal silence--needing an opportunity for
self-expression----"
"I know, dear."
"I know you do.... You are very kind to me."
"Philippa, I care more for you than I do for any living person!"
The lovely surprise in her face flushed her to her hair. She looked at
him out of confused, incredulous eyes, strove to smile, caught her
trembling lip between her teeth.
"Didn't you know it?" he said in a low voice.
She tried to answer, turned sharply and faced the windows with blurred
eyes that saw only a glimmering sheet of light there.
He stood motionless, looking at her, intent upon the sudden confusion in
his own brain, realizing it, trying to explain it, analyze it coolly,
calmly account for it.
If it were any emotion resembling love which was so utterly possessing
him, he chose to know it, to inform himself as to the real significance
of this loss of logical equilibrium, this mental inadequacy which began
to resemble a sort of chaos.
Was he in love with this girl? Was it love? Was this what it all had
meant--all, from the very beginning, through all its coincidences,
accidents, successive steps and stages?
And suddenly a terrible timidity seized him. Suppose she knew what he
was thinking about! What would she think? What would she do? Where
would her confidence go? What would become of her trust in him? What
would happen to her implicit faith in him?
Of one thing he was suddenly and absolutely certain; love had never
entered her mind, never lodged in her heart, never troubled that candid
gaze, never altered her fearless smile. With all her devotion to him,
all her passionate attachment of a child, never had anything as
deep--never had any emotion as profound as love disturbed the mystery of
depths where dwelt in virginal immaturity the soul of her, "clean as a
flame--"
As for himself--where he now stood--whither he was being led by
something which was not reason, not intention, he did not seem able to
understand.
The light in the room had become too uncertain to paint by; he released
his canvas and carried it away behind a tapestry, setting it slanting,
face to the stone wall.
The brushes, mediums, palette, he left on the palette table and pushed
it into a corner behind a sofa, where nobody was likely to fall over it
before he gave brushes and palette to Asticot to clean.
All the while Philippa stood looking out of the window over the tree
tops, her young heart and brain on fire with happiness and throbbing
with the wonder of her first innocent passion.
With it, for the first time, had come something she never before had
known with Warner--something indefinite, new, inexplicable--a vague
sense of shyness almost painful at instants--a consciousness of herself
that she had never known--a subtle, instinctive realization of her own
maturity which left a faintly delicious sensation in her breast.
Now, for the first time since she had known him, her instinct was not to
go to him, not to face him. She did not understand why--did not
question herself. From the window she looked out over the forest; she
heard him moving quietly about behind her; listened with an odd content
in his proximity, but with no desire to turn and join him--no wish to
move or stir from the spell which held her there in the enchanted
silence of a happiness so wonderful that sky and earth seemed to
understand and share it with her.
"Philippa?"
She turned slowly as in a dream.
It was perhaps as well that he had a record on canvas of what she had
been--of the young girl he had been painting in all her lovely
immaturity. Perhaps the girl who faced him now from the window was even
lovelier, but she was not the Philippa of "Philippa Passes."
Truly that Philippa had passed, vanished silently even as she had stood
there with her eyes on the window; faded, dissolved into thin shadow,
leaving, where she had stood, this slender, silent, deep-eyed girl
looking at him out of the new and subtle mystery which enveloped her.
He thought that it was he himself who saw her differently and with new
eyes; but she herself had changed. And, for the first time, as they
passed slowly toward the terrace together, he was conscious of a
freshness that seemed to cling to her like a fragrance--and of the
beauty of her as she moved beside him, not touching him, keeping clear
of contact, her head a trifle bent.
*CHAPTER XXXIII*
Warner, dressing for dinner, stood looking down from his window at the
Sais road. Halkett, in his smart but sober field uniform, sat sideways
on the window sill, chatting with his friend and surveying the lively
panorama below, where, through the fading light, endless columns of
motor lorries rolled ponderously eastward.
In every direction bicycle and motor cycle messengers were speeding,
north and south on the Sais road, west toward Dreslin by the mill,
eastward over cow-paths and sheepwalks, and across the pontoons, or by
the school highway and quarry bridge, southeast toward a road crowded
with motor lorries, and through that gap in the foothills which narrows
into the Pass of the Falcons.
Warner, leisurely buttoning his waistcoat, stood looking out of the
window at the scenes passing under the plateau, and listening with the
greatest interest to Halkett's comments on these preliminaries for a
campaign about to open.
"Then, in your opinion, it is invasion?" he said.
Halkett nodded:
"I can make nothing else of this movement, Warner. Our General, Pau, is
at Nancy. What you see down there is part of a perfectly complete and
coherent army, and it is certainly moving on the Vosges passes.
"Metz, Strassburg, Colmar, lie beyond; our alpinists are swarming around
the Donon. Under it lie the lowlands of Alsace and Lorraine.
"Already we have seized the pass of Saales; Thann and Danemarie are
menaced; the valley of the Bruche lies before us, Saarburg and the
railroad to Metz invite us.
"Does it not all seem very logical, Warner?"
"It sounds so."
"It is good strategy. The logic is sound logic. If we carry it
through, it will be applauded as brilliant strategy.
"The Germans want a decisive battle on French soil in the vicinity of
Rheims. If they beat us there, they pivot on Verdun, half-circle on the
Oise, and Paris lies before them. They have today a million men within
striking distance of the French frontier."
"Are we fully mobilized?"
"Our concentration is slower; we are massing between Bar-le-Duc and
Epinal. We have, so far, only seven _corps d'armee_ concentrated, and
twenty-one more on the march. But do you know what we have done
already?
"Listen; this isn't generally known yet, but we have taken the passes of
Bonhomme and Sainte Marie; _we have taken Muelhausen_----"
"_What!_"
"Yes, it's ours. More than that, we have entered Dinant. At
Mangiennes, Moncel, Lagarde, we drove the Germans. Our line of battle
stretches two hundred miles from a point opposite Tongres to Nancy. We
smashed the Germans at Altkirch and left them minus thirty thousand men!
"And this great counter-offensive which our General is planning is
already exercising such a pressure on their advance toward Brussels that
they have begun to detach entire army corps and send them post haste
into Alsace. What do you think of that, Warner?"
"Fine!" exclaimed the American. "It's simply splendid, Halkett. You
see, we here in the valley couldn't know anything about it. All we had
to go by was that the German guns were booming nearer and nearer, that
Ausone is in ruins, that Uhlans were riding the country as impudently as
though they were patrolling their own fatherland. I tell you, old chap,
it's a wonderful relief to me to hear from you what is really going on."
He turned to his mirror, lighted a cigarette, and began to fuss with his
tie.
Halkett said, grimly amused:
"Oh, yes, we all ought to feel immensely relieved by capturing a
mountain and a couple of unfortified German towns, even if there are
today in Europe seventeen million men under arms and seventeen million
more in reserve, all preparing to blow each other's heads off."
Warner came back slowly to the windows:
"It _is_ a ghastly situation, Halkett. The magnitude of the cataclysm
means nothing to us, so far. Nobody yet has comprehended it. I don't
think anybody ever really can--even when it's over and the whole
continent is underplowcd and fertilized with dead men from the Channel
to the Carpathians--no single mind of the twentieth century is ever
going to be able to grasp this universal horror in all its details. In
a hundred years, perhaps----" He shrugged, threw away his cigarette,
and picked up his evening coat to inspect it before decorating his
person with it.
Halkett said:
The scale of the whole business is paralyzing. Here's a single detail,
for example: Germany is in process of launching six huge armies into
France. The Crown Prince, the Grand Duke of Wuerttemberg, Generals von
Kluck, von Buelow, von Hausen, and von Heeringen command them.
"Three of them have not yet moved; three are on their juggernaut way
already--the Army of the Meuse, based at Cologne, is marching through
Belgium on a front thirty miles wide, its right flank brushing the Dutch
border at Vise, its left on Stavelot, its center enveloping the Liege
railroad.
"The Moselle army, based on Coblenz, has made a highway of the Grand
Duchy and is in Belgium. The Rhine army has its bases at Strassburg and
Mayence, and started very gayly to raise the devil on its own account,
but we've stung it in the flank already and it's squirming in
uncertainty.
"And that is the situation so far, old chap, as well as I can understand
it. And I understand it fairly well because of my position with this
French army. You don't quite understand how I happen to be here and what
I am doing, do you?"
"Not exactly. I know you have a Bristol aeroplane here and that you are
attached to the British Flying Corps."