The Girl Philippa
Ethra de Moidrey went into the house to keep her promise to Gray, and
found him tired but none the worse for his participation at dinner.
Philippa and Warner had come in to visit him; the Countess found the
book from which she had been reading to him since his arrival. He
turned on his pillow and looked at her, and she seated herself beside
the bed and opened the book on her knees.
"Do you remember where we left off?" she asked, smiling.
"I think it was where he was beginning to fall in love with her."
The Countess de Moidrey bent over the book. There was a slight color in
her cheeks.
"I had not noticed that he was falling in love," she observed, turning
the pages to find her place.
Philippa said to Warner:
"Could we walk down and see the searchlights? They are so wonderful on
the water."
"Probably the sentinels won't permit us outside our own gates," he
replied. "I know one thing; if you and I were not considered as part of
the family of the Chateau, the military police would make us clear out.
It's lucky I left the inn to come up here."
The Countess had begun reading in a low, soft voice, bending over her
book beside the little lamp at the bedside, where Gray lay watching her
under a hand that shaded his pallid face.
Something in her attitude and his, perhaps--or in her quiet
voice--seemed subtly, to Philippa, to exclude her and the man with her
from a silent entente too delicate, perhaps, to term an intimacy.
She touched Warner's arm, warily, not taking it into her possession as
had been her unembarrassed custom only yesterday--even that very day.
Together they went out into the corridor, down the stairway, and
presently discovered Peggy on the southern terrace gazing very earnestly
at the stars.
That the young girl was wrapped, enmeshed, in the magic of the great web
which Fate has been spinning since time began, they did not know.
Still stargazing, they left her and walked down the dark drive to the
lodge where, through the iron grille, they saw hussars _en vedette_
sitting their horses in the uncertain luster of the planets.
Overhead the dark foliage had begun to stir and sigh in the night
breeze; now and again a yellowing leaf fell, rustling slightly; and they
thought they could hear the Recollette among its rushes--the faintest
murmur--but were not sure.
He remembered her song, there in the river meadow:
Hussar en vedette
What do you see?--
And thought of the white shape on the bank--a true folk song, unfinished
in its eerie suggestion which the imagination of the listeners must
always finish.
Yet he said:
"_Was_ he killed--that _vedette_ on the Recollette, Philippa?"
She knew what he meant, smiled faintly:
"Does anybody see Death and live to say so?"
"Of course I knew," he said.
They turned back, walking slowly. He had drawn her arm through his, but
it rested there very lightly, scarcely in contact at all.
"What a fine fellow Halkett is!" he said.
"Your friends should be fine, Jim. Our friends ought to reflect our own
qualities and mirror our aspirations.... That was written in one of my
school-books," she added with that delicate honesty which characterized
her.
"You reflect my aspirations," he said, unsmiling.
"Oh, Jim! I? Do you imagine I believe that?"
"You might as well. It's true enough. You have just mirrored for me my
hopeless aspiration toward that perfect and transparent honesty which I
haven't attained, but which seems always to have been a part of you."
Sister Eila passed them in the starlight, her young head bent over the
rosary in her hands, moving slowly across the lawn.
Their passing on the drive did not seem to arouse her from her
meditation; she seated herself on a stone bench under a clump of yews;
and they moved on in silence.
As they reached the terrace a shot sounded down by the river; another
echoed it; the rattle of rifle fire ran along the valley from, north to
south; a rocket rose, flooding the hill beyond the quarry road with a
ghastly light.
Peggy Brooks, white as death, came over to Philippa and took her hands
into both of hers.
She had begun to learn what love meant, with the first blind shot in the
dark, and all the passion and fear within her was concentrated in
wondering where those leaden messengers of death had found their
billets.
She said in a ghost of a voice:
"Is there going to be a battle here?"
"Not now," replied Warner. "Probably it's nothing at all--some nervous
sentry waking up his equally nervous comrades.... What a horrible light
that rocket shed!"
The shots had died away; there was no more firing.
Vignier had come around; he was an old soldier, and Warner spoke to him.
"Perhaps a cow," he said with a shrug, "--the wind in the bushes--a
hedgehog rustling. Young soldiers are like that in the beginning. And
still, perhaps they have caught a prowler out there--an Uhlan, maybe, or
a spy. One never knows what to expect at night."
"Do you think that our valley will see any fighting, Vignier?"
"Does that not depend, Monsieur, on what is to happen beyond the Vosges?
They have dug line after line of trenches across the valley and the
plateau as far as Dreslin. Those are positions being prepared in
advance, to fall back upon in case of disaster in the east."
"I thought that was what this trench digging meant."
"That is what it means, Monsieur Warner. They tell me that our soldiers
are going to operate the cement works day and night to turn out material
for platforms and emplacements. I know that they have gone into our
western woods with loads of cement and crushed stone. The forest is
full of _fantassins_ and _chasseurs-a-pied_. It is certain that some
general will make our Chateau his headquarters _en passant_."
He had scarcely spoken when, far away in the darkness, a noise arose.
It came from the direction of the lodge gate, grew nearer, approaching
by the drive.
The Countess, reading to Gray, heard it, laid down her book to listen.
Gray listened too, raising himself on his pillows.
"Cavalry have entered the grounds," he said quietly.
"I shall have to go down," she said. At the door she paused: "Will you
remember where we left off, Captain Gray?"
"I shall remember. It is where he has completely fallen in love with
her."
The Countess de Moidrey met his calm gaze, sustained it for a moment,
then with a smile and a nod of adieu she turned and went out into the
corridor. As she descended the stairs she placed both hands against her
cheeks, which burned slightly.
The hall below was already crowded with officers of somebody's staff;
the pale blue tunics of chasseurs and hussars were conspicuous against
the darker dress of dragoons. The silver corselet of a colonel of
cuirassiers glittered in the lamplight; twisted gold arabesques
glimmered on crimson caps and sleeves; the ring of spur and hilt and the
clash of accouterments filled the house.
As the Countess set foot in the hall, a general officer wearing the
cross of the Legion came forward, his red cap, heavy with gold, in his
gloved hand.
"Countess," he said, bending over the hand which she smilingly extended,
"a thousand excuses could not begin to make amends for our
intrusion----"
"General, you honor my roof. Surely you must understand the happiness
that I experience in reminding you that the house of De Moidrey belongs
to France and to the humblest and highest of her defenders."
The General, whose clipped mustache and imperial were snow-white, and
whose firm, bronzed features denied his years, bent again over the
pretty hand that rested on his own.
Then, asking permission to name himself, in turn he presented the
members of his military family.
Included was a thin blond man of middle height, with a golden mustache
twisted up, cinder-blond hair, and conspicuous ears. He wore a monocle,
and was clothed in a green uniform. General of Division Delisle
presented him as Major-General Count Cassilis, the Russian Military
Observer attached to division headquarters.
For a few moments there was much bending of tight-waisted tunics in the
yellow lamplight, much jingling of spurs and sabers, compliments spoken
and implied with a gay smile and bow--all the graceful, easy formality
to be expected in such an extemporized gathering.
Peggy and Philippa appeared, followed by Warner; presentations were
effected; servants arranged chairs and brought trays set with bottles of
light wine and biscuits, preliminary to an improvised supper which was
now being prepared in the kitchen.
General Raoul Delisle had known Colonel de Moidrey; he and the Countess
formed the center of the brilliant little assembly where half a dozen
officers surrounded Peggy and Warner.
But the effect of Philippa on the Russian Military Observer, General
Count Cassilis, was curious to watch.
From the instant he laid eyes on her, he had continued to look at her;
and his inspection would have had all the insolence of a stare had he
not always averted his gaze when hers moved in his direction.
When he had been named to her, he had bowed suavely, and with
characteristic Russian ceremony and empressement; but the instant her
name was pronounced the Russian Observer had straightened himself like a
steel rod released from a hidden spring, and his fishy blue eyes widened
so that his monocle had fallen from its place to swing dangling across
the jeweled decorations on his breast.
And now he had managed to approach Philippa and slightly separate her
from the company, detaining her in conversation, more suave, more
amiably correct than ever.
Already in her inexperience with a world where such men are to be
expected, the girl found herself vaguely embarrassed, subtly on the
defensive--a defensive against something occult which somehow or other
seemed to menace her privacy and seemed to be meddling with the natural
reticence with which, instinctively, she protected herself from any
explanation of her past life.
Not that Count Cassilis had presumed to ask any direct question; she was
not even aware of any hint or innuendo; yet she was constantly finding
herself confronted with a slight difficulty in responding to his gay,
polite, and apparently impersonal remarks. Somehow, everything he said
seemed to involve some reference on her part to a past which now
concerned nobody excepting herself and the loyal friends who
comprehended it.
And, from the beginning, from the first moment when this man was
presented to her, and she had looked up with a smile to acknowledge the
introduction, she experienced an indefinite sensation of meeting
somebody whom she had seen somewhere years before--years and years ago.
As he conversed with her, standing there by the table with the lighted
lamp partly concealed by his gold-slashed shoulder, the vague impression
of something familiar but long forgotten came at moments, faded,
returned, only to disappear again.
And once, a far, pale flicker of memory played an odd trick on her, for
suddenly she seemed to remember a pair of thin, conspicuous ears like
his, and lamplight--or perhaps sunlight--shining behind them and turning
them a translucent red. It came and vanished like the faint memory of a
dream dreamed years and years ago. As she looked at Count Cassilis, the
smile died out in her eyes and on her lips, and the slightest feeling of
discomfort invaded her.
Toasts were offered, acknowledged, compliments said, glasses emptied.
The General of Division Delisle spoke diffidently of quarters for
himself and his military family, and was cordially reassured by the
Countess.
There was plenty of room for all. It was evident, too, that they had
ridden far and must be hungry. Servants were summoned, rooms in the east