CHAPTER XX
About noon a British soldier in uniform and mounted on a motor cycle came whizzing up to the Golden Peach.
Warner was in his room writing to his bankers in Paris; Philippa, in her room, was mending underwear; Halkett, who had walked to the school only to learn that Sister Eila had gone to the quarries, came out of the garden, where he had been sitting in silence with Ariadne.
The cyclist, a fresh-faced young fellow, saluted his uniform; Halkett took the dispatches, read them, turned on his heel and went upstairs to make his adieux. First he knocked on Philippa's door, and when the girl appeared he took his leave of her with a new and oddly stiff deference which seemed akin to shyness.
"I am so sorry you are going," she said.
"Thanks, so much. I shan't ever forget my debt to you. I hope you'll be all right now."
"I shall be all right with Mr. Warner, always. I do hope we shall see you again."
"If I come out of this – " He checked himself, embarrassed, then he added hurriedly: "I'll look you up, if I may. I shan't forget you."
His vigorous handclasp almost wrung a cry from her, but she managed to smile, and he went on down the corridor and knocked at Warner's door.
"Well, old chap, good-by and good luck!"
"What! Have your orders arrived?" exclaimed Warner.
"Just now. I've a motor cyclist below. He takes me behind him to Ausone. From there I go by rail."
"I'm glad for your sake, Halkett; I'm sorry for my own. It's been a jolly friendship."
"Yes, considering all the trouble I've put you to – "
"I tell you I liked it! Didn't I make that plain? I was in a rut; I was turning into an old fluff before you came cannoning into me, bringing a lively breeze with you. I've never enjoyed anything half as much!"
"It's kind of you to take it so. You've been very good to me, Warner. I shan't forget you – or the little lady yonder. I'm sure this doesn't mean the end of our friendship."
"Not if it lies with us, Halkett. I hope you'll come through. Good luck, old fellow."
"Thanks! Good luck and good-by."
Their gripped hands parted; Halkett turned, walked toward the stairs, halted:
"I'll send for my luggage," he said.
"I'll look out for it."
"Thanks. And be civil to Ariadne. She's a friendly old thing!"
"I'll cherish her," said Warner, smiling.
So they parted. He took leave of Madame Arlon and reckoned with her in British gold; Magda and Linette were made happy with his generosity.
Out on the roadside they saw him swing up behind the soldier cyclist. A moment later there was only a trail of dust hanging along an empty road.
But Halkett had not yet done with Saïs. At the school he dismounted and ascended the steps.
The schoolroom was empty, the place very still. From a distance came the voices of children. It was the hour of their noonday recreation.
He entered the quiet schoolroom. On the desk stood a vase of white clove pinks. He took one, inhaled its fragrance, touched it to his lips, turned to the door, and suddenly flushed to the roots of his hair.
Sister Eila, on the doorstep, turned her head and looked steadily at the soldier cyclist for a moment. But a moment was enough.
Yet, still looking away from Halkett, she said in her serene young voice:
"Your uniform tells me your errand, Monsieur Halkett. You have come for your papers."
"If I may trouble you – " His voice and manner were stiff and constrained.
She let her eyes rest on him for a moment:
"A British uniform is pleasant to see in France," she said. "One moment – " She stepped past him and entered the schoolroom. "I shall bring you your papers."
He walked slowly out to the road, holding in his hands, which were clasped behind him, the clove pink. Standing so, he looked across the fields to the river willows, from whence the shot had come. Slowly, clear-cut and in full sunshine, the scenes of that day passed through his mind. And after they had passed he turned and walked back to the schoolroom.
Sister Eila was seated at her desk, the papers lying before her.
He took them, buttoned them inside his tunic. She sat looking across the dim room, her elbow on the desk, her chin resting on her palm.
"There is no use trying to thank you," he said with an effort – and stopped.
After a silence:
"You are going into battle," she said.
"I hope so."
"Yes – I hope so… God protect you, Mr. Halkett."
He could not seem to find his voice.
Perhaps the silence became unendurable to her; she fumbled for her rosary, lifted it, and took the metal crucifix between both hands.
"Good-by," he said.
"Good-by." Her eyes did not leave the crucifix.
He stood motionless, crushing his forage cap in his hands. The white flower broke from its stem and fell to the floor. He bent and picked it up, looked at it, looked at her, turned and went his way.
The crucifix in her tightening hand grew indistinct, blurring under her steady gaze. In her ears still sounded the retreating racket of the motor cycle; the echoes lingered, grew fainter, died out in the golden gloom of the room.
Sister Eila extended her arms in front of her and laid her colorless face between them. The room grew very still.
CHAPTER XXI
A line regiment came swinging along from the south, its band silent, but the fanfare of its field music tremendously noisy – bass drums, snare drums, hunting horns and bugles – route step, springy and slouchy, officers at ease in their saddles: but, through the clinging aura of the dust, faces transfigured, and in every eye a depth of light like that which shines from the fixed gaze of prophets.
Rifles slung, equipments flapping, the interminable files trudged by under the hanging dust, an endless, undulating blur of red and blue, an immense shuffling sound, almost melodious, and here and there a handsome, dusty horse pacing amid the steady torrent.
They occupied only half of the wide, military road; now and then a military automobile came screaming past them with a flash of crimson and gold in the tonneau, leaving on the retina a brilliant, glimmering impression that faded gradually.
On the road across the Récollette, wagons, motor trucks, and field artillery had been passing for hours; the barrier of dust had grown much loftier, hanging suspended and unchanging against the hills, completely obscuring them except for a blue summit here and there.
Fewer troops passed on this side of the river. A regiment of dragoon lancers rode by about one o'clock – slender, nervous, high-strung officers, with the horse-hair blowing around their shoulders from their silver helmets; the sturdy, bronzed young troopers riding with their lances swung slanting from the arm loops – and all with that still, fixed, enraptured expression of the eyes, as though under the spell of inward meditation, making their youthful features dreamy.
In some village through which they had passed, people had hung wreaths of leaves and flowers around their horses' necks. They still hung there, wilting in the sun; some, unraveled and trailing, shed dying blossoms at every step.
From the garden wall where she sat knitting beside Ariadne, Philippa plucked and tossed rose after rose down into the ranks of the passing horsemen.
There was no pleasantry, no jesting, scarcely a smile on the girl's lips or on theirs, but as each trooper caught the flung rose he turned his helmeted head and saluted, and rode on with the fresh flower touching his dusty lips.
And so they passed, squadron crowding on squadron, the solid trampling thunder shaking the earth. Not a trumpet note, not a whistle signal, not a voice, not a gilded sleeve upflung, not a slim saber lifted – only the steady, slanting torrent of lances and the running glitter of slung carbines, and a great flowing blaze of light from acres of helmets moving through the haze, as in a vision of pomp and pageantry of ancient days and brave.
Warner came across the fields swinging his walking stick reflectively as the last peloton rode by.
Philippa looked down at him from her perch on the wall, and, unsmiling, dropped him a rose.
"Thank you, pretty maiden," he said, looking up while he drew the blossom through his lapel. "I have something to talk over with you. Shall I go around and climb up to you, or will you come down and walk to the river with me?"
"Either will be a pleasure for me. I desire only to be with you," she said. So frank were her grey eyes that again the dull, inward warning of his increasing responsibility to her and for her left him silent and disconcerted.
In his knowledge of her undisguised affection, and of the glamour with which he realized she had already innocently invested him, he began to comprehend the power over her which circumstances had thrust upon him.
It was too serious a burden for such a man as he, involved too deep a responsibility; and he meant to shift it.
"Come and walk with me, then," he said, " – or we'll take the punt, if you like."
She nodded brightly, rolled up her knitting, looked around at the ladder in the garden behind her, glanced down at him, which was the shorter way.
"If I jump could you catch me?"
"I suppose I could, but – "
"Look out, then! Garde à vous!"
He managed to catch her and ease her to the ground, and, as always, she took possession of his arm with both of hers clasped closely around it, as though he meditated flight.
"While you are absent," she said, "my thoughts are occupied only with you. When I have you by me" – her clasp tightened a little – "such wonderful ideas come to inspire me – you can't imagine! I aspire to be worthy of such a friendship; I feel that it is in me to be good and wise and lofty of mind, and to think and believe generously… Do you understand me? … Petty sorrows vanish – the smaller and selfish desires and aspirations disappear. Into my spirit comes a delicious exultation, as though being with you cleansed my heart and filled my mind with ardent and noble thoughts… I don't know whether you understand. Do you?"
"I understand that you are a very generous friend, who believes that her new friend is everything with which her youthful heart invests him."
"And you are!"
"I've got to try to be, now," he said, laughingly. "There is no unhappiness like that of a broken idol."
"Do I regard you as an idol?"
"Not me, but what your charming fancy pretends is me. I dread the day you find me out."
"You are laughing at me," she said happily, walking beside him with her light, springy step. "You may make fun of me; you may say what you will. I know."
"I think I do, too. And this is what I know, Philippa; you have within you some very rare and delicate and splendid qualities. Also, you are very young, and you need a guide – "
"You!"
"No."
"What! Of course it's you I need to guide me – "
"Listen. You need a woman – older than yourself – "
"Please! – Warner, my friend – "
"I want you to listen, Philippa."
"Yes."
They walked over the clover in silence for a few moments, then, glancing at her, he unconsciously tried his power:
"You like and trust me, don't you?"
The girl lifted her grey eyes, and he looked straight ahead of him while the flush lasted in his face.
He said:
"Because I like and respect you, and because you are my friend, I am ambitious for you. I want you to have your chance. I can't give it to you, rightly. No man could do that very successfully or very prudently.
"While you remain in my employment, of course, we shall see each other constantly; when, eventually, you secure other employment, we can, at intervals, meet. But, Philippa, I don't want that sort of chance for you."
"I don't understand."
"I know you don't. Let me tell you what I have done without consulting you. If it meets with your approval, the problem of your immediate future is in a fair way of being solved."
They had reached the bank of the little river: the punt was drawn up among the rushes; they seated themselves without pushing off.
"Over beyond the woods, yonder," he continued, nodding his head, "is the Château des Oiseaux – a big, old-fashioned country house. A friend of many years lives there with her younger sister – Madame de Moidrey, the widow of a French officer. When she was Ethra Brooks, a little American girl, we were playmates. Her sister, Peggy, attends my painting class. After Mr. Halkett left, I walked across to the Château des Oiseaux, and I lunched there with Madame de Moidrey."
He hesitated: the girl looked up out of clear eyes that read him.
"Yes; I want you to walk over to the Château with me," he said. "Madame de Moidrey has asked me to bring you… And if she likes you, and you like her, she might desire to have you remain as her companion."
The girl remained silent, expressionless. He went on, slowly:
"It would not be like securing employment among strangers. Madame de Moidrey knows that we are friends… And, Philippa, you are very young to go into employment among strangers. Not that you cannot take care of yourself. But it is not a happy experience. Besides, a personal and sympathetic interest will be wanting – in the beginning at least. And that will mean loneliness for you – "
"It will mean it anyway if I am to leave you."
"But I shall see you at the Château – "
"For a little while yet. Then you will be going back to Paris. And then – what shall I do?"
The candid tragedy in her eyes appalled him.
"Dear child," he said, "your duties with Madame de Moidrey will keep you too busy to think about anybody in particular. You will find in her a friend; you will find happiness there, I am very certain – "
"If you wish it, I will go. But when you leave, happiness departs."
"Philippa, that is nonsense – "
"No… And I had supposed, if I earned my living, that you would permit me to live with you – or near you somewhere… Just to know you were living near me – even if I did not see you every evening – would rest me… I had hoped for that, mon ami."
"Philippa, dear, it would not do. That is too Bohemian to be anything safer than merely agreeable. But the surroundings and duties you are going to have with Madame de Moidrey are exactly what you need and what I could have desired for any friend of mine in your circumstances."
The girl's head began to droop, where she was seated on the stern seat of the boat.
He said:
"The influences of such a house, of such a home, of such people, are far better for you than to saunter out and face the world, depending for companionship upon a man not yet too old to arouse that fussy world's suspicion and perhaps resentment. You must have a better purpose in life."
She remained silent for a few moments, then, not lifting her head, and her slim hands nervously plaiting her scarlet skirt:
"Anywhere alone with you in the world would be a sufficient purpose in life for me… No matter how I earned my bread – if, when toil ended with evening, you were the reward – and – consolation – " A single tear fell, glittering; she turned her head sharply and kept it turned.
Deeply touched, even stirred, yet perfectly incredulous of himself, he sat watching her, not knowing how best to meet such childish loyalty, such blindly obstinate devotion.
Out of what had such a depth of feeling been born? Out of gratitude for a pleasant and kindly word or two – an exaggerated sense of obligation for a few services rendered – services that for sheer and loyal courage could not match what she had done for Halkett?
And she seemed to be so sane, so clear-thinking, so competent in most things! This girlish and passionate attachment to him did not conform to other traits which made up her character and made of her an individual, specific and distinct.
He said:
"If you were my daughter, and I were in straitened circumstances and unable to be with you, I should advise you as I have."
Without turning, she answered:
"I am too old and you are too young for us to think of each other in that way… I am not a child… I am unhappy without you. But I care enough for you to obey you."
"And I care enough for you, Philippa, to remain in Saïs as long as you think you want me," he said.
"What!"
She turned, her glimmering eyes radiant, stretching out both hands to him.
"You are so good – so good!" she stammered. "The Château will frighten me; I shall be lonely. The world is a very large place to be alone in… You are so good! – Stay in Saïs a little while yet – just a little while… I won't keep you very long from Paris – only let me know you a little longer… I couldn't bear it – so soon – the only happiness I have ever known – to end – so soon – "
"You dear child, if I thought you really needed me – "
"No, I won't let you be more generous than that! Just a few days, please. And a promise to let me see you again – something to remember – to wait for – "
"Surely, surely, little comrade. You don't suppose I am going to let you slip away out of my life, do you? And I don't understand why you are in such a sudden panic about my going away – "
"But you are going soon! – You were."
"How did you know?"
"Madame Arlon told me that you had already given congé. I didn't care; I thought I was to go with you. But now that you wish me to go to the Château – it – it frightens me."
He rose, stood looking at her for a moment, turned and paced the river bank once or twice, then came back to where she was seated.
"Come up to the Château now," he said. "I give you this promise, anyway; as long as you think you want me and need me in the world, you have only to say so, Philippa. And if I cannot come to you, then you shall come to me."
He hadn't quite analyzed what he was saying before he said it; he felt a little confused and uncertain, even now, as to how deeply his promise involved him. But even while he was speaking, a subtle undercurrent of approval seemed to reassure him that he was not all wrong, not too rash in what he promised. Or perhaps it was the very rashness of the impulse that something obscure within him was approving.
As for the girl, she stood up, tremulous, deep-eyed, trying to smile, trying to speak but failing, and only taking his arm into her possession again and clasping it closely with a childishly unconscious and instinctive sense of possession.
When she found her voice at last, she laughed and pressed her cheek impulsively against his shoulder.
"Tiens!" she said. "Your Château and its chatelaine have no terrors now for me, Monsieur… Did you tell her who I am, and what I have been, and all that you know about me?"
"Yes, I did."
She dropped his arm, but kept step close beside him.
"You know," she said, "it is odd – perhaps it is effrontery – I don't know – but I, Philippa Wildresse – for want of another name – perhaps lacking the right to any name at all – am tranquil and serene at heart in the crisis so swiftly approaching."
"What crisis, Philippa?"
"My interview with a lady of the world, Monsieur – Madame la Comtesse de Moidrey. The caissière de cabaret should feel very humble and afraid. Is it effrontery? What is it that does not disturb me in the slightest?"
"Perhaps it is that other comrade of many years, Philippa – your other and inner self."
"It must be. For she could not hesitate to look anybody in the face – that wonderful and other self – wonderful as a bright dream, Monsieur… Which is all she is, I know."
"You are wrong, Philippa: she is even more real than you. And some day you shall be part of her. You are growing so every hour. And when that finally happens, then this – all this – will become unreal."
"Not you."
"We shall see… Here are the gates of the Château des Oiseaux. It is you who enter, Philippa; but it shall be your inner and real self who shall go out through the gates one day – God willing."
The girl smiled at him:
"They have but one soul between them," she said. "And that is yours and God's, I hope."
CHAPTER XXII
Madame de Moidrey, strolling with Warner on the south terrace of the Château des Oiseaux, glanced sideways at intervals through the open French windows, where, at the piano inside, Philippa sat playing, and singing in a subdued voice ancient folk songs of the lost provinces.
Peggy Brooks, enchanted, urged her to more active research through the neglected files of a memory still vivid; Philippa's voice was uncultivated, unplaced, but as fresh and carelessly sweet as a blackbird's in May. Some of these old ballads she had picked up from schoolmates, many from the Cabaret de Biribi, where clients were provincial and usually sentimental, and where some of the ancient songs were sung almost every day.
Madame de Moidrey had not immediately referred to Philippa when, with Warner, she had strolled out to the terrace, leaving the two younger girls together at the piano.
They had spoken of the sudden and unexpected menace of war, of the initial movements of troops along the Saïs Valley that morning; the serious chances of a German invasion, the practical certainty that in any event military operations were destined to embrace the country around them. Warner seemed very confident concerning the Barrier Forts, but he spoke of Montmedy and of Mézières with more reserve, and of Ausone not at all.
They promenaded for a few minutes longer in silence, each preoccupied with anxious speculations regarding a future which began already to loom heavy as a thundercloud charged with unloosed lightnings.
From moment to moment the handsome woman beside him glanced through the open windows of the music room, where her younger sister and the girl Philippa were still busily interested in working out accompaniments to the old-time songs.
Philippa sang "J'ai perdu ma beauté":
"I have lost my beauty —
Fate has bereft me,
Fortune has left me,
None owes me duty.
I have lost my lover;
I shall not recover.
Our Lady of Lorraine,
Pity my pain!"
They paused to listen to this naïve melody of other days, then strolled on.
Madame de Moidrey said:
"She is very interesting, your little friend from Ausone."
"I am glad you think so."
"Oh, yes, there is no doubt about her being clever and intelligent… I wonder where she acquired her aplomb."
"Would you call it that?"
Madame de Moidrey smiled:
"No, it is a gentler quality – not devoid of sweetness. I think we may label it a becoming self-possession… Anyway, it is a quality and not a trait – if that pleases you."
"She has quality."
"She has a candor which is almost disturbingly transparent. When I was a girl I saw Gilbert's comedy, 'The Palace of Truth.' And actually, I believe that your little friend, Philippa, could have entered that terrible house of unconscious self-revelation without any need of worrying."
"You couldn't praise her more sincerely if you think that," he said. "She offers virgin soil for anybody who will take any trouble with her."
"Oh," said Madame de Moidrey, laughing, "I thought I was to engage her to aid me and amuse me; but it seems that I have been engaged to educate her in the subtler refinements of civilized existence!"
"Don't you want to?" asked Warner, bluntly.
"Dear friend of many more years than I choose to own to, have I not enough to occupy me without adopting a wandering caissière de cabaret?"
"Is that the way you feel?" he said, reddening.
"Don't be cross! No; it isn't the way I feel. I do need a companion. Perhaps your friend Philippa is not exactly the companion I might have dreamed about or aspired to – "
"If you look at it in that way – "
"Jim! Don't be rude, either! I desire two things; I want a companion and I wish to oblige you. You know perfectly well I do… Besides, the girl is interesting. You didn't expect me to sentimentalize over her, did you? You may do that if you like. As for me, I shall consider engaging her if she cares to come to me."
"She will be very glad to," he said, coolly.
Madame de Moidrey cast a swift side glance at him, full of curiosity and repressed amusement.
"Men," she said, "are the real sentimentalists in this matter-of-fact world, not women. Merely show a man a pretty specimen of the opposite sex in the conventional attitude of distress, and it unbalances his intellect immediately."
"Do you imagine that my youthful friend Philippa has unbalanced my intellect?" he asked impatiently.
"Not entirely. Not completely – "
"Nonsense!"
"What a bad-mannered creature you are, Jim! But fortunately you're something else, too. For example, you have been nice about this very unusual and somewhat perilously attractive young girl. Few men would have been so. Don't argue! I have known a few men in my time. And I pay you a compliment."
She stopped and leaned back against a weatherworn vase of stone which crowned the terrace parapet.
"Listen, Jim; for a woman to take into her house a young girl with this girl's unknown antecedents and perfectly well-known past performances ought not to be a matter of romantic impulse, or of sympathy alone. What you tell me about her, what I myself have already seen of her, are sufficient to inspire the interest which all romance arouses, and the sympathy which all lonely youth inspires. But these are not enough.
"Choice of companionship is a matter for serious consideration. You can't make a companion of the intellectually inferior, of one who possesses merely the lesser instincts, of any lesser nature, whether cultivated to its full extent or otherwise. You know that. We shun what is not congenial."
He looked at her very intently, the dull red still flushing his face; and she surveyed him critically, amiably, amused at his attitude, which was the epitome of everything masculine.
"What are you going to do about her?" he inquired at last.
"Offer to engage her."
"As what?"
"A companion."
"Oh. Then you do appreciate her?"
Madame de Moidrey threw back her pretty head and laughed with delicious abandon.
"Perhaps I don't appreciate her as deeply as you do, Jim, but I shall humbly endeavor to do so. Now, suppose, when you go back to the Golden Peach, you send Philippa's effects up here, and in the meanwhile I'll begin my duty of finishing Philippa's education – for which duty, I understand, I'm engaged by you – "
"Ethra, you are a trump! And I don't really mind your guying me – "
"Indeed, I'm not guying you, dear friend! I'm revealing to you the actual inwardness of this entire and remarkable performance of yours. And if you don't know that you are engaging me to finish this young girl's education while you're making up your mind about your sentiments concerning her, then it's time you did."
"That is utterly – "
"Please! And it's all the truer because you don't believe it! … Jim, the girl really is a pathetic figure – simple, sweet, intelligent, and touchingly honest… And I'll say another thing… God knows what mother bore her, what parents are responsible for this young thing – with her delicate features and slender body. But it was not from a pair of unhappy nobodies she inherited her mind, which seems to seek instinctively what is fine and right amid the sordid complexities of the only world she has ever known.
"As for her heart, Jim, it is the heart of a child – with one heavenly and exaggerated idol completely filling it. You! … And I tell you very plainly that, if I were a man, the knowledge of this would frighten me a little, and make me rather more serious than many men are inclined to be."
He bit his lip and looked out across the southern valley, where already the August haze was growing bluer, blurring the low-hanging sun.
She laid a friendly, intimate, half humorous hand on his arm:
"In all right-thinking men the boy can never die. No experience born of pain, no cynicism, no incredulity acquired through disappointment, can kill the boy in any man until it has first slain his soul. Otherwise, chivalry in the world had long since become extinct.
"You have done what you could do for Philippa. I am really glad to help you, Jim. But from now on, be very careful and very sure of yourself. Because now your real responsibility begins."
He had not thought of it in that way. And now he did not care to.
To sympathize, to protect, to admire – these were born of impulse and reason, which, in turn, had their origin in unconscious condescension.
To applaud the admirable, to express a warm concern for virtue in difficulties, meant merely sincere recognition, not the intimacy of that equality of mind and circumstance which existed per se between himself and such a woman as Madame de Moidrey.
The very word "protection" implies condescension, conscious or unconscious. We may love what we protect; we never, honestly, place it on a pedestal, or even on a mathematical level with ourselves. It can't be done.
And so, in a vague sort of way, Warner remained incredulous of the impossible with which Madame de Moidrey had smilingly menaced him.
Only, of course, she was quite right; he must not thoughtlessly arouse the woman in the girl Philippa.
But there is nothing in the world that ought more thoroughly to arouse the best qualities of manhood in a man than the innocent adoration of a young girl. For if he could really believe himself to be even a shadow of what she believes he is, the world might really become the most agreeable of residential planets.
As Warner and Madame de Moidrey entered the music room through the open French windows, Philippa turned from the piano and her soft voice died out in the quaint refrain she had been accompanying.
She rose instinctively, which was more than Peggy did, having no reverence for age in her own sister – and Madame de Moidrey came forward and took the girl's slender hands in hers.
"Have you concluded to remain with me?" she asked, smilingly.
"I did not understand that you had asked me," said the girl gravely.
"I do ask you."
Philippa looked at Warner, then lifted her grey eyes to the elder woman.
"You are very kind, Madame. I – it will be a great happiness to me if you accept my services."
The Countess de Moidrey regarded her, still retaining her hands, still smiling.
"You have a very sweet way of making the acceptance mine and not yours," she said. "Let us accept each other, Philippa. Will you?"
"You are most kind, Madame – "
"Can kindness win you?"
"Madame, it has already."
The American widow of the recent Count de Moidrey felt a curious sensation of uncertainty in the quiet self-possession of this young girl – in her serenity, in her modulated voice and undisturbed manner.