Czytaj książkę: «The Girl Philippa», strona 18

As he stood at the drawing-room door, undecided whether to carry the hallway lamp to the library and find a book, or to return to his room and bed, a slight noise on the stairway attracted his attention.

Philippa, in boudoir robe and slippers, her chestnut hair in two braids, sat on the carpeted stairs looking down at him through the spindles.

"What on earth are you doing there?" he demanded, smiling up at her.

"You have been away over two hours!"

"I know it: I'm so sorry – "

"You said you were going to find a wrap for me. You didn't return."

"I'm sorry, Philippa. I was detained at the garage – a matter which had to be arranged with Vignier… You should go back to bed."

"I was in bed."

"Why did you get up?"

"I wished to find out whether you had come in."

"But, Philippa," he protested laughingly, "you don't feel that you have to sit up for me, do you? – As though we were ma – " He checked himself abruptly, and she caught him up where he had stopped.

"Yes, I do feel that way!" she said emphatically. "When the only man a girl has in the whole world goes out and doesn't return, is it not natural for that girl to sit up until he does return?"

"Yes," he said, rather hastily, "I suppose it is. Speak low, or people can hear you. You see I'm all right, so now you had better go to bed – "

"Jim! I don't want to go to bed."

"Why not?" he demanded in a guarded voice.

"I am lonely."

"Nonsense, Philippa! You can't be lonely with real friends so near. Don't sit up any longer."

She sighed, gathered her silken knees into her arms, and shrugged her shoulders like a spoiled child.

"I am lonely," she insisted. "I miss Ariadne."

"We'll go and call on her tomorrow – "

"I want her now. I've a mind to put on a cloak and some shoes and go down to the inn and get her."

"Come!" he said. "You don't want the servants to hear you and see you sitting on the stairs when the household is in bed and asleep."

"Is there any indiscretion in my sitting on the stairs?"

"Oh, no, I suppose not!"

"Very well. Let me sit here, then. Besides, I never have time enough to talk to you – "

"You have all day!"

"The day is not long enough. Even day and night together would be too short. Even the years are going to be too brief for me, Jim! How can I live long enough with you to make up for the years without you!" she explained a trifle excitedly; but she subsided as he made a quick gesture of caution.

"It won't do to sit there and converse so frankly," he said. "Nobody overhearing you would understand either you or me."

The girl nodded. One heavy braid fell across her shoulder, and she took the curling, burnished ends between her fingers and began to rebraid them absently. After a moment she sighed, bent her head and looked down at him between the spindles.

"I am sorry I have annoyed you," she whispered.

"You didn't."

"Oh, I did! It wouldn't do to have people think – what – couldn't be true… But, Jim, can't you forgive a girl who is entirely alone in the world, clinging to every moment of companionship with her closest friend? And can't you understand her being afraid that something might happen to him – to take him away – and the most blessed friendship that – that she ever even dreamed of in – in the dreadful solitude which was her youth?"

"You dear child – of course I understand… I never have enough of you, either. Your interest and friendship and loyalty are no warmer than are mine for you… But you mustn't become morbid; nothing is going to alter our regard for each other; nothing is going to happen to either you or me." He laughed. "So you really need not sit up nights for me, if I happen to be out."

She laughed too, framed her cheeks in her hands, and looked down at him with smiling, humorous eyes which grew subtly tender.

"You do care for me, Jim?"

"Why should I deny it?"

"Why should I? I don't. I know I care for you more than everything else in the world —

"Philippa!"

"Yes, Jim?"

"You know – people happening to overhear you might not understand – "

"I don't care! It's the truth!" She rose, bent over the banister to look down at him, discovered that he was not annoyed, smiled adorably.

"Good night! I shall sleep happily!" she whispered, gathering her boudoir robe around her.

At the top of the stairs she turned, leaned over, kissed the palm of one slim hand to him, and disappeared with a subdued and faintly mischievous laugh, leaving in his eyes of an artist a piquant, fleeting, and charming picture.

But upon his mind the impression she left began to develop more slowly – the impression of a young girl – "clean as a flame," as he had once said of her – a lovely and delicate personality absolutely in keeping with the silken boudoir gown she wore – in keeping with the carven and stately beauty of her environment in this ancient house.

Philippa not only fitted into the very atmosphere of such a place; it seemed as though she must have been born in it, so perfectly was she a harmonious part of it, so naturally and without emphasis.

Centuries had coördinated, reconciled, and made a mellow ensemble of everything within this house – the walls, the wainscot, mantels, lusters, pictures and frames, furniture and dimmed upholstery.

In the golden demi-light of these halls Philippa moved as though she had known no other – and in the sunlight of music room or terrace she belonged as unquestioned as the sunlight itself; and in lamplit spaces where soft shadows framed her, there also she belonged as certainly as the high, dim portraits of great ladies and brave gentlemen peering down at her through their delicate veils of dust.

Thinking of these things beside the open window of his bedroom, he looked out into the south and east and saw in the sky the silvery pencilings of searchlights on the Barrier Forts, shifting, sweeping in wide arcs, or tremblingly concentrated upon the clouds.

There was no sound in the fragrant darkness, not a breath of air, not a leaf stirring.

His inclination was not to sleep, but to think about Philippa; and he sat there, a burned-out cigarette between his fingers, his eyes fixed so persistently on the darkness that after a while he became conscious of what his concentration was delicately evoking there – her face, and the grey eyes of her, shadowy, tender, clear as a child's.

CHAPTER XXVI

Warner awoke with a start; somebody was knocking on his door. As he sat up in bed, the solid thudding of the cannonade filled the room – still very far away, but deeper and with a heavier undertone which set the windows slightly vibrating.

The knocking on his door sounded again insistently.

"All right!" he called, throwing on a bathrobe and finding his slippers.

The rising sun had not yet freed itself from the mist that lay over hill and plain; wide, rosy beams spread to the zenith and a faint glow tinged the morning fog, but the foreground of woods and fields was still dusky and vague, and his room full of shadows.

He tied the belt of his robe and opened the door. In the semi-obscurity of the corridor stood Philippa, hair disordered, wrapped in her chamber robe.

"Jim," she said, "the telephone in the lower hall has been ringing like mad. It awoke me. I lay and listened to it, but nobody seemed to hear it, so I went down. It's a Sister of Charity – Sister Eila – who desires to speak to you."

"I'll go at once – thank you, Philippa – "

"And, Jim?" She was trotting along beside him in her bare feet and bedroom slippers as he started for the stairs. "When you have talked to her, I think you ought to see what is happening on the Ausone road."

"What is happening?" he demanded, descending the stairs.

She kept pace with him, one hand following the stair rail:

"There are so many people and carts and sheep and cattle, all going south. And just now two batteries of artillery went the other way toward Ausone. They were going at a very fast trot – with gendarmes galloping ahead to warn the people to make room – "

"When did you see this?"

"Now, out of that window as I stood knocking at your door."

"All right," he said briefly, picking up the telephone. "Are you there, Sister Eila? Yes; it is Warner speaking."

"Mr. Warner, where can I communicate with Captain Halkett?"

"I don't know, Sister."

"Could you find out?"

"I haven't any idea. He has not written me since he left."

"He left no address with you?"

"None. I don't imagine he knew where he could be found. Is it anything important?"

"Yes. I don't know what to do. There is an Englishman – a soldier – who has been hurt and who says he must send word to Captain Halkett. Could you come to the school?"

"Of course. When?"

"Just as soon as you can. I am so sorry to awaken you at such an hour – "

"It's quite all right, Sister. I'll dress and go at once… And tell me, are there a lot of people passing southward by the school?"

"Oh, yes, Mr. Warner, ever since dawn. Everyone is leaving Ausone and the villages along the Récollette… I must not use the telephone any longer. I had permission to use it only because the business was of a military nature. Come as soon as you can – "

The connection was abruptly broken – probably by some officer in control.

Warner rose; Philippa had vanished. He walked out to the music room, opened the long windows, and stepped through them to the south terrace.

The muffled roll of the cannonade filled his ears. Except for that dominating and unbroken monotone, the sunrise world was very still, and mist still veiled the glitter in the east.

But below in the valley of the Récollette, the road lay perfectly distinct in the clear, untinted and transparent light of early dawn.

Along it people and vehicles swarmed, moving south – an unending stream of humanity in pairs, in family groups, their arms filled with packages, parcels, bundles tied up in sheets, and bedquilts.

Peasant carts piled with dingy household effects bumped and jolted along; farm wagons full of bedding, on which huddled entire families clasping in their arms cheap wooden clocks, earthen bowls, birdcages, flowerpots, perhaps a kitten or a puppy; and there was every type of vehicle to be seen – the charrette à bras, the tombereau dragged by hand, dilapidated cabriolets, wheelbarrows, even baby carriages full of pots and pans.

Here and there some horse, useless for military purposes, strained under a swaying load, led by the head; sometimes a bullock was harnessed with a donkey.

Companies of sheep dotted the highway here and there, piloted by boys and wise-looking, shaggy dogs; there were dusty herds of cattle, too, inclined to leisurely straying but goaded continually into an unwilling trot by the young girls who conducted them. On the river, too, boats were passing south, piled with bedding and with children, the mother or father of the brood doing the rowing or poling.

The quarry road on the other side of the river was too dusty and too far away to permit a distinct view of what was passing there. Without the help of his field glasses, Warner merely conjectured that cavalry were moving northward through the dust that hung along the river bank.

But the spectacle on the Ausone road below was ominous enough. The northern countryside was in flight; towns and villages were emptying themselves southward; and the exodus had merely begun.

He went back to his room, shaved, bathed, dressed in knickerbockers and Norfolk, and, scribbling a note for Madame de Moidrey, pinned it to his door as he closed it behind him.

On his way through the lower hall, somebody called him softly, and he saw Philippa in the music room, carrying a tray.

"Did you think I was going to let you go out without your breakfast?" she asked, smiling. "I have prepared coffee for us both, you see."

He thanked her, took the tray, and carried it out to the terrace.

There, as the sun rose above the bank of mist and flashed out over miles of dewy country, they had their breakfast together – a new-laid egg, a bowl of café-au-lait, new butter and fresh rolls.

"May I go with you?" asked the girl.

"Why – yes, if you care to – "

She said seriously:

"I don't quite like to have you go alone on that road, with so much confusion and the air heavy with the cannonade – "

His quick laughter checked her.

"You funny, absurd, sweet little thing!" he said, still laughing. "Do you expect to spend the remainder of your life in seeing that I don't get into mischief?"

"If you'll let me," she said with a faint smile.

"Very well, Philippa; come along!" He held out his hand, laughing; the girl clasped it, a half humorous, half reproachful expression in her grey eyes.

"I don't mind your laughing, as long as you let me be with you," she said.

"Why, Philippa!" he said gayly. "What possesses you to be afraid that anything is likely to happen to me?"

"I don't know what it is," she replied seriously. "I seem to be afraid of losing you. Let me be with you – if it does not annoy you."

"You dear child, of course it doesn't annoy me. Only I don't want you to become morbid over the very nicest and frankest of friendships."

They were passing the garage now; he dropped her hand, asked her to wait for him a moment, turned into the service drive, went toward the stable. A sleepy groom responded to the bell, unlocked the doors, and fetched the key to the harness room.

Warner said to the groom:

"Give that fellow in there his breakfast and turn him loose. Tell him I'll kill him if I ever again catch him hanging around here."

The groom grinned and touched his cap, and Warner turned on his heel and rejoined Philippa.

They had to awaken the old lodge keeper, who pulled the chain from where he lay in bed.

Through the wicket and across the road they went, over a stile, and out across country where the fields flashed with dew and the last shreds of mist drifted high among the trees of the woods which they skirted.

Philippa wore her peasant dress – scarlet waist and skirt with the full, fine chemisette; and on her chestnut hair the close little bonnet of black velvet – called bonnet à quartiers or bonnet de béguin– an enchanting little headdress which became her so wonderfully that Warner found himself glancing at her again and again, wondering whether the girl's beauty was growing day by day, or whether he had never been properly awake to it.

Her own unconsciousness of herself was the bewitching part of her – nothing of that sort spoiled the free carriage of her slender, flexible body, of the lovely head carried daintily, of the grey eyes so clear, so intelligent, so candid, so sweet under the black lashes that fringed them.

"Very wonderful," he said aloud, unthinking.

"What?" asked Philippa.

He reddened and laughed:

"You – for purposes of a painter," he said. "I think, if you don't mind, I shall start a portrait of you when we return. I promised Madame de Moidrey, you know."

Philippa smiled:

"Do you really suppose she will hang it in that beautiful house of hers – there among all those wonderful and stately portraits? Wouldn't that be too much honor – to be placed with such great ladies – "

"The dead De Moidreys in their frames need not worry, Philippa. If I paint you as you are, the honor of your presence will be entirely theirs."

"Are you laughing at me?"

He looked up sharply; the girl's face was serious and rather pale.

They were traversing a corner of a woodland where young birches clustered, slim and silvery under their canopy of green which as yet had not changed to royal gold.

He picked up her hand as they emerged into the sunlight of a field, raised it, and touched his lips to the delicate fingers.

It was his answer; and the girl realized instantly what the old-fashioned salute of respect conveyed; and her fingers clung to his hand.

"Jim," she said unsteadily, "if you knew – if you only could realize what you have done for me – what you are doing for me every moment I am with you – by your kindness, your gentleness, your generous belief in me – what miracles you accomplish by the very tones of your voice when you speak to me – by your good, kind smile of encouragement – by your quiet patience with me – "

Her voice broke childishly, and she bent her head and took possession of his arm, holding to it tightly and in silence.

Surprised and moved by her emotion, he found nothing to say for a moment – did not seem to know quite how to respond to the impulsive gratitude so sincerely exaggerated, so prettily expressed.

Finally he said:

"Philippa, I have nothing to teach you – much to learn from you. Whoever you are, you need no patronage from anybody, no allowances, no concessions, no excuses. For I never knew a cleaner, braver, sweeter character than is yours, Philippa – nor a soul more modest, more simple and sincere. What does it matter how you come by it – whether God gave it, or whether what you are has been evolved by race – by generations of gentle breeding?

"We don't know; and I, for one, don't care – except for any satisfaction or consolation it might afford you to know who you really are.

"But, for me, I have learned enough to satisfy myself. And I have never known a lovelier character than is yours, Philippa; nor a nobler one."

She continued walking beside him, clinging very tightly to one of his arms, her head lowered under its velvet bonnet.

When she looked up at last, her eyes were wet with tears; she smiled and, loosening her clasp, stretched out her hand for his handkerchief.

"The second time I have borrowed from you," she managed to say. "Do you remember – in the boat?"

He laughed, greatly relieved that the tense constraint was broken – that the tension of his own emotion was relaxed. For he had become intensely serious with the girl – how serious and how deeply in earnest he now began to realize. And whether his own ardent tribute to her had awakened him, while offering it, to all that he was praising, or whether he had already discovered by cooler research all that he now found admirable in her, he did not know.

They came to a hedge; she returned his handkerchief, placed her hand in his, mounted the stile with lithe grace, and he climbed up beside her.

Below them ran the Ausone road, grey with hanging dust; and through the floating cloud tramped the fugitives from the north – old men, old women, girls, little children, struggling onward under their burdens, trudging doggedly, silently southward.

Philippa uttered an exclamation of pity as a man passed wheeling a crippled child in a wheelbarrow, guiding it carefully along beside a herd of cattle which seemed very difficult to manage.

For a few minutes they stood there, watching the sad procession defiling at their feet, then Warner jumped down to the high, grassy bank, lifted Philippa to the ground – which was not necessary, although he seemed to think so, and the girl thanked him very sweetly – and then they went forward along the hedge of aubépine until, around the curve of the road just ahead, he caught sight of the school.

"We can enter by the rear and keep out of that crowd," he said to Philippa. "You don't know Sister Eila, do you?"

"No."

"Nor Sister Félicité?"

"No, Jim. Are they nuns?"

"Sisters of Saint Vincent de Paul. Here is the garden gate. We can go through the kitchen."

But before they had traversed the little vegetable garden, Sister Eila came to the kitchen door.

Warner said:

"Sister Eila, I am so glad that you are to know my friend, Mademoiselle Philippa Wildresse, who, as I am, is a guest of Madame de Moidrey at the Château."

Sister Eila came forward, her clear eyes on Philippa, took the girl's offered hand in both of hers, stood silent for a moment, then turned to Warner.

"It was most kind of you to bring her, Mr. Warner. I hope that we shall become friends – " turning to Philippa – "if you also wish it."

Philippa's grey eyes looked steadily at Sister Eila.

"Yes, I do," she said in a low voice.

Sister Félicité appeared from the schoolroom, greeting and presentation were made, and then the elder Sister took Philippa away to the schoolroom where recitations were in progress; and Sister Eila led Warner through the kitchen, up the uncarpeted stairs, and into a room where, on an iron bed, a man lay.

He was young, fair-haired, and very pallid under his bandage, and the eyes he turned on Warner as he entered were the eyes of a sick man.

Sister Eila seated herself on a stool which stood beside the bed; Warner drew up the only other chair and sat down.

The young man turned his hollow eyes from Warner and looked questioningly at Sister Eila.

"Yes," she said, "this is Mr. Warner, an American, who is Mr. Halkett's friend. You may trust him; Mr. Halkett trusted him."

Warner said with a smile, and leaning toward the sick man:

"Is there anything I can do for you? Halkett and I became the very best of friends. I should be very glad of the opportunity to do anything for his friends – " he hesitated, smiled again – "or for any British officer."

"I'm Gray," said the man on the bed, in a weak voice.

"I think Halkett was expecting somebody named Gray the first night he spent at the Saïs inn. Was it you?"

"Yes."

"I think he telephoned you."

"Yes. You are Mr. Warner?"

"I am."

"Halkett spoke of you – your kindness."

"Oh, it was nothing – "

"I know what it was," said Gray quietly. "How much did Halkett tell you?"

"About what?"

"About me."

"Very little, Mr. Gray. I understood that you were to come to Saïs on a motor cycle, carrying with you a very important paper. Halkett waited day after day. He seemed to be under a very great strain. All he said to me was that something serious must have happened to you, because the paper you carried was necessary to supplement the one he carried."

"And Halkett has gone!"

"Yes. But somehow or other he got possession of the paper you had in your charge – or a copy of it."

Gray's youthful face quivered with excitement.

"How did he get it?" he asked.

"A messenger came. Halkett was alone. The messenger pretended to come from you, and he gained Halkett's confidence by giving him the paper you carried, or a copy of it.

"The moment Halkett was off his guard, the fellow knocked him insensible, and would have robbed him of both papers if a young girl – a Miss Wildresse – had not tackled the fellow, and held him off with magnificent pluck until I came in and found what was going on. Then the fellow cleared out – got clean away, I regret to say. That is how the thing happened. I'm very glad to be able to reassure you, Mr. Gray."

"Thanks, awfully. It's been hell not to know. You see, I was hurt; the beggars got me. I've been lying in a cottage down the road a bit – I don't know where. I was badly knocked out – knocked silly, you know – fever and all that… I woke up the other day. Couldn't get the people to stir – tried to make 'em hunt up Halkett. They were just stupid – kind, but stupid. Finally one of their kiddies, who comes to school here, told Sister Eila that there was a sick Anglais in his daddy's cottage – " He looked up at her as he spoke and she smiled. " – And Sister Eila, being all kinds of an angel of mercy, came all the way there to investigate… And she wheeled me back here in a charette! What do you think of that, Mr. Warner?"

"He was in such a state, poor boy!" said Sister Eila. "Just think, Mr. Warner! They had not even washed him when they put on their dreadful poultices – good, kind, ignorant folk that they are! So of course I insisted on bringing him here where Sister Félicité and I could give him proper attention."

Gray smiled tremulously:

"I've been bathed, cleansed, patched, mended, beautifully bandaged, fed, and spoiled! I don't know what you think of the Grey Sisters, but I know what I think."

"There's no difference of opinion in the world concerning them," said Warner, and Sister Eila smiled and blushed and held up an admonitory finger:

"It is I who am being spoiled, gentlemen." Then, very seriously to Warner: "Have you seen the pitiable procession which has been passing along the Ausone road since before dawn? Is it not heartbreaking, Mr. Warner? What is happening in the north, that all these poor people come hurrying southward? I thought the cannonade was from our own forts."

Gray looked up at him curiously.

"I don't yet know what is happening north of Ausone," said Warner quietly. "There were three fires burning last night. I think they were villages in flames. But it was far to the north. The Ausone Fort was not engaged – except when an aëroplane came within range. Then they used their high-angle guns."

There was a silence. Listening, Warner could hear the cannonade distinctly above the shuffle of feet and the childish singsong of recitation in the schoolroom underneath.

Presently, glancing up, he caught Sister Eila's eye, rose, and followed her to the window.

"I don't know what to do," she said. "Sister Félicité is going to try to keep the children here, but a gendarme came day before yesterday, saying that the school might be required for a military hospital, and that the children were to remain at home. I have telephoned to Ausone; I have telegraphed to the rue de Bac; I have done all I could do. But I am directed, from the rue de Bac, to prepare for field service, at the front. And from Ausone they telephone Sister Félicité that she may keep the children until the last moment, but that, when needed, she must turn over our school to the military authorities. And so, Mr. Warner, what am I to do with that poor boy over there? Because, if I go away, Sister Félicité cannot properly attend to him and care for the children, too."

Warner stood thinking for a moment. Then:

"Could you get me permission to use your telephone?" he asked.

"Only for military purposes. It is the rule now."

Warner walked over to Gray:

"You are a British officer, I take it."

"Yes."

"Captain?"

"Yes."

Sister Eila, listening, understood and took Warner to the telephone. For a few moments he heard her soft voice in conversation with the military operator, then she beckoned him and he gave the number he desired and waited.

Presently he got the Château des Oiseaux, and after a few moments Madame de Moidrey came to the telephone.

"Ethra," he said, "would you care to be hospitable to a British officer who has been injured?"

"Certainly! Where is he?"

"At Sister Eila's school. Is there anything left to harness up and send for him?"

"Yes; there is a donkey and a basket wagon. I'll have a groom take it over at once. Is the officer badly hurt?"

"I don't know. I think he merely needs bandaging and feeding. He's the comrade of my friend, Captain Halkett. Gray is his name, and he's a captain or something or other. May I tell him that you will receive him?"

"Of course, Jim. You need not have asked; you could have brought him here immediately."

The military operator cut in:

"A thousand thanks to Madame la Comtesse for her kindness to our allies, the English! Madame, I regret, very much that I must switch off – " click!

Warner smiled and turned to Sister Eila:

"Madame de Moidrey takes him!"

"I am so thankful! I will go up and make him ready."

"What is the matter with him?"

"Think of it! He was coming on his motor cycle full speed toward Saïs through the night, when right ahead he saw a car drawn up beside the road, and four men standing in it with pistols aimed at him. Only one bullet hit him, making a deep furrow over his temple. He remembers losing control of the motor cycle, of being hurled through the air. Then, evidently some time afterward, he found himself struggling under a thin covering of dirt and sticks and lumps of sod – fighting for air, pushing, creeping, crawling out of the hasty and shallow grave where they had flung him beside his ruined motor cycle. He thinks that the frame of the motor cycle kept him from being suffocated by the sod and earth piled over him.

"It was early morning; a peasant was breaking ground in another field not far away, and Mr. Gray managed to crawl near enough to make the man hear. That is all he remembers until he regained consciousness once more in the man's cottage."

"Good heavens, what a ghastly experience!" muttered Warner.

"It is dreadful. If they knew that his heart still beat, it was inhuman of them to do such a thing as that. But perhaps they considered him dead. He may have appeared so. I have had to bandage both arms and both knees where he was hurled over the ground when he fell. He has a fracture of the left wrist which is doing nicely, and two broken ribs are mending without trouble. As for the scar on his temple, it is nearly closed now. I think all will be well with him. Now, I shall go and prepare him for his little journey."

At the foot of the stairs she paused, turned slowly to Warner, and he thought her lovely face had become somewhat pale.

"I think you said over the telephone that you have had no word from Mr. Halkett?"

"Not a word, Sister Eila."

"Thank you."