Complete weird tales of.., p.857
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 857
Presently, and partly to herself, she said:
“Pour ça — no. So far. But it has never before occurred to me that I look like a cocotte.”
She turned, and, resting one arm on the gunwale, gazed down into the limpid green water.
“Have you a fresh handkerchief?” she asked, not turning toward him.
“Yes — but — —”
“Please! I must wash my face.”
She bent swiftly, dipped both hands into the water, and scrubbed her lips and cheeks. Then, extending her arm behind her for the handkerchief, she dried her skin, sat up again, and faced him with childish resignation. A few freckles had become visible; her lips were no longer vivid, and there now remained only the faintest tint of color under her clear, cool skin.
“You see,” she said, “I’m not attractive unless I help nature. One naturally desires to be thought attractive.”
“On the contrary, you are exceedingly attractive!”
“Are you sincere?”
“Perfectly.”
“But I have several freckles near my nose. And I am pale.”
“You are entirely attractive,” he repeated, laughing.
“With my freckles! You are joking. Also, I have no pink in my cheeks now.” She shrugged. “However — if you like me this way — —” She shrugged again, as though that settled everything.
Another punt passed them; she looked after it absently. Presently she said, still watching the receding boat:
“Do you think you’ll ever come again to the Café Biribi?”
“I’ll come expressly to see you, Philippa,” he replied.
To his surprise the girl blushed vividly and looked away from him; and he hastily took a different tone, somewhat astonished that such a girl should not have learned long ago how to take the irresponsible badinage of men. Certainly she must have had plenty of opportunity for such schooling.
“When I’m in Ausone again,” he said seriously, “I’ll bring with me a canvas and brushes. And if Monsieur Wildresse doesn’t mind I’ll make a little study of you. Shall I, Philippa?”
“Would you care to?”
“Very much. Do you think Monsieur Wildresse would permit it?”
“I do what I choose.”
“Oh!”
She misunderstood his amused exclamation, and she flushed up.
“My conduct has been good — so far,” she explained. “Everybody knows it. The prix de la rosière is not yet beyond me. If a girl determines to behave otherwise, who can stop her, and what? Not her parents — if she has any; not bolts and keys. No; it is understood between Monsieur Wildresse and me that I do what I choose. And, Monsieur, so far I have not chosen — indiscreetly — —” She looked up calmly. “ —— In spite of my painted cheeks which annoyed you — —”
“I didn’t mean — —”
“I understand. You think that it is more comme il faut to exhibit one’s freckles to the world than to paint them out.”
“It’s a thousand times better! If you only knew how pretty you are — just as you are now — with your soft, girlish skin and your chestnut hair and your enchanting grey eyes — —”
“Monsieur — —”
The girl’s rising color and her low-voiced exclamation warned him again that detached and quite impersonal praises from him were not understood.
“Philippa,” he explained with bored but smiling reassurance, “I’m merely telling you what a really pretty girl you are; I’m not paying court to you. Didn’t you understand?”
The grey eyes were lifted frankly to his; questioned him in silence.
“In America a man may say as much to a girl and mean nothing more — important,” he explained. “I’m not trying to make love to you, Philippa. Were you afraid I was?”
She said slowly:
“I was not exactly — afraid.”
“I don’t do that sort of thing,” he continued pleasantly. “I don’t make love to anybody. I’m too busy a man. Also, I would not offend you by talking to you about love.”
She looked down at her folded hands. Since she had been with him nothing had seemed very real to her, nothing very clear, except that for the first time in her brief life she was interested in a man on whom she was supposed to be spying.
The Gallic and partly morbid traditions she had picked up in such a girlhood as had been hers were now making for her an important personal episode out of their encounter, and were lending a fictitious and perhaps a touching value to every word he uttered.
But more important and most significant of anything to her was her own natural inclination for him. For her he already possessed immortal distinction; he was her first man.
She was remembering that she had gone to him after exchanging a glance with Wildresse, when he had first asked her to dance. But she had needed no further persuasion to sit with him at his table; she had even forgotten her miserable rôle when she asked him to go out to the river with her. The significance of all this, according to her Gallic tradition, was now confronting her, emphasizing the fact that she was still with him.
As she sat there, her hands clasped in her lap, the sunlit reality of it all seemed brightly confused as in a dream — a vivid dream which casts a deeper enchantment over slumber, holding the sleeper fascinated under the tense concentration of the happy spell. Subconsciously she seemed to be aware that, according to tradition, this conduct of hers must be merely preliminary to something further; that, in sequence, other episodes were preparing — were becoming inevitable. And she thought of what he had said about making love.
Folding and unfolding her hands, and looking down at them rather fixedly, she said:
“Apropos of love — I have never been angry because men told me they were in love with me.... Men love; it is natural; they cannot help it. So, if you had said so, I should not have been angry. No, not at all, Monsieur.”
“Philippa,” he said smilingly, “when a girl and a man happen to be alone together, love isn’t the only entertaining subject for conversation, is it?”
“It’s the subject I’ve always had to listen to from men. Perhaps that is why I thought — when you spoke so amiably of my — my — —”
“Beauty,” added Warner frankly, “ — because it is beauty, Philippa. But I meant only to express the pleasure that it gave to a painter — yes, and to a man who can admire without offense, and say so quite as honestly.”
The girl slowly raised her eyes.
“You speak very pleasantly to me,” she said. “Are other American men like you?”
“You ought to know. Aren’t you American?”
“I don’t know what I am.”
“Why, I thought — your name was Philippa Wildresse.”
“I am called that.”
“Then Monsieur Wildresse isn’t a relation?”
“No. I wear his name for lack of any other.... He found me somewhere, he says.... In Paris, I believe.... That is all he will tell me.”
“Evidently,” said Warner in his pleasant, sympathetic voice, “you have had an education somewhere.”
“He sent me to school in England until I was sixteen.... After that I became cashier for him.”
“He gave you his name, and he supports you.... Is he kind to you?”
“He has never struck me.”
“Does he protect you?”
“He uses me in business.... I am too valuable to misuse.”
The girl looked down at her folded hands. And even Warner divined what ultimate chances she stood in the Cabaret de Biribi.
“When I’m in Ausone again, I’ll come to see you,” he said pleasantly. “ — Not to make love to you, Philippa,” he added with a smile, “but just because we have become such good friends out here in the Lys.”
“Yes,” she said, “friends. I shall be glad to see you. I shall always try to understand you — whatever you say to me.”
“That’s as it should be!” he exclaimed heartily. “Give me your hand on it, Philippa.”
She laid her hand in his gravely. They exchanged a slight pressure. Then he glanced at his watch, rose, and picked up the pole.
“I’ve got to drive to Saïs in time for dinner,” he remarked. “I’m sorry, because I’d like to stay out here with you.”
“I’m sorry, too,” she said.
The next moment the punt shot out into the sunny stream.
CHAPTER IV
WARNER AND THE girl Philippa reëntered the Cabaret de Biribi together the uproar had become almost deafening. Confetti was thrown at them immediately, and they advanced all a-flutter with brilliant tatters.
The orchestra was playing, almost everybody was dancing, groups at tables along the edge of the floor sang, clinked glasses, and threw confetti without discrimination. The whole place — tables, floor, chandeliers, and people — streamed with multi-colored paper ribbons. Waiters swept it in heaps from the dancing floor.
Philippa entered the cashier’s enclosure and dismissed the woman in charge. Seated once more on her high chair she opened her reticule and produced a small mirror. Then she leaned far over her counter toward Warner.
“Is it permitted me to powder my nose?” she whispered with childlike seriousness; but she laughed when he did, and, still laughing, made him a gay little gesture of adieu with her powder puff.
He stood looking at her for a moment, where she sat on her high chair behind the cage, intently occupied with her mirror, oblivious to the tumult around her. Then, the smile still lingering on his features, he turned to look for his new acquaintance, Halkett.
Old man Wildresse sidled up to the cashier’s desk, opened the wicket, and went inside. Philippa, still using her tiny mirror, was examining a freckle very seriously.
“Eh, bien?” he growled. “Rien?”
“Nothing!”
“Drop that glass and talk!” he said harshly.
She turned and looked at him.
“I tell you it was silly to suspect such a man!” she said impatiently. “In my heart I feel humiliated that you should have set me to spy on him — —”
“What’s that!”
“No, I’ve had enough! I don’t like the rôle; I never liked it! Are there no police in France — —”
“Little idiot!” he said. “Will you hold your tongue?”
“It is a disgusting métier — —”
“Damnation! Hold your tongue!” he repeated. “We’ve got to do what the Government tells us to do, haven’t we?”
“Not I! Never again — —”
“Yes, you will! Do you hear? Yes, you will, or I’ll twist your neck! Now, I’m going to keep my eye on that other gentleman. Granted that the man you pumped is all right, I’m not so sure about the other, who seems to be an Englishman. I’m going over to stand near him. By and by I’ll address him. And if I wink at you, leave your caisse with Mélanie, come over, and sit at their table again — —”
“No!”
“Yes, you will!”
“No!”
“Yes, you will. And you’ll also contrive it so the Englishman asks you to dance. Do you hear what I say? And you’ll find out where he comes from, and when he arrived in Ausone, and where he is going, and whatever else you can worm out of him!” He glared at her. “Disobey if you dare,” he added.
She was silent.
After a moment he continued in a softer voice:
“Do you want to see me in prison and my son in New Caledonia? Very well, then; do what the Government tells you to do.”
“I — I’ve done enough — filthy work — —” she stammered. “Why must I? I have never done anything wrong — —”
“Did you hear what I said? Do you want to see Jacques in Noumea?”
“No,” she said sullenly.
“Then do what I tell you, or, by God, they’ll ship him there and me too!”
And he clasped his hands behind his back, peered sideways at her, shrugged, and went shuffling out of the enclosure.
Groups at various tables were singing and shouting; the floor seethed with sweating dancers. On the edge of this vortex the girl Philippa, from her high chair, looked darkly across the tumult toward the table where Halkett sat.
Something seemed to be happening there; she could see Wildresse gesticulating vigorously; she saw Warner making his way toward his friend, who was seated alone at a table, a lighted cigarette balanced between his fingers and one arm thrown carelessly around the back of the chair on which he sat.
He was looking coolly but steadily at three men who occupied the table next to him; Wildresse now stood between the two tables, and his emphatic gesticulations were apparently directed toward these three men; but in the uproar, and although he also appeared to be shouting, what he was saying remained inaudible.
Warner went over and seated himself beside Halkett; and now he could distinguish the harsh voice of the Patron raised in irritation:
“No politics! I’ll not suffer political disputes in my cabaret!” he bawled. “Quarrels arise from such controversies. I’ll have no quarrels in my place. Now, Messieurs, un peu de complaisance!”
One of the men he was exhorting leaned wide in his seat and looked insolently across at Halkett.
“It was the Englishman’s fault,” he retorted threateningly. “I and my friends here had been speaking of the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Serajevo. We were conversing peaceably and privately among ourselves, when that Englishman laughed at us — —”
“You are mistaken,” said Halkett quietly.
“Did you not laugh?” cried the second of the men at the next table.
“Yes, but not at what you were saying. I’m sorry if you thought so — —”
The man half rose in his chair, exclaiming:
“Why shouldn’t I think it natural for an Englishman to laugh at the murder of an Austrian arch-duke — —”
“Stop that discussion!” cried Wildresse, angrily jerking his heavy head from Halkett to the three men at the other table. “Let it rest where it is, I tell you! The English gentleman says he did not laugh at what you were saying. Nom de Dieu! Nobody well brought up laughs at murder!” And to Halkett and Warner: “Be amiable enough, gentlemen, to carry this misunderstanding no further. I’ve had sufficient trouble with the police in my time.”
Warner laid one hand lightly on Halkett’s arm.
“All right,” he said to Wildresse; “no trouble shall originate with us.” And, to Halkett, in a lowered voice: “Have you an idea that those men over there are trying to force a quarrel?”
“Of course.”
“Have you ever seen them before?”
“Not one of them.”
Warner’s lips scarcely moved as he said:
“Is it the matter of the envelope?”
“I think so. And, Warner, I don’t intend to drag you into any — —”
“Wait. Are you armed?”
Halkett shook his head.
“That’s no good,” he said. “I can’t afford to do anything conspicuous. If I’m involved with the authorities I’m done for, and I might just as well be knocked on the head.” After a moment he added: “I think perhaps you’d better say good-by to me now, Warner — —”
“Why?”
“Because, if they manage to force a quarrel, I don’t mean to have you involved — —”
“Do you really expect me to run away?” asked Warner, laughing.
Halkett looked up at him with a faint smile:
“I’m under very heavy obligations to you already — —”
“You are coming to Saïs with me.”
“Thanks so much, but — —”
“Come on, Halkett. I’m not going to leave you here.”
“My dear chap, I’ll wriggle out somehow. I’ve done it before. After all, they may not mean mischief.”
Warner turned and looked across at the three men. Two were whispering together; the third, arms folded, was staring truculently at Halkett out of his light blue eyes.
Warner turned his head and said quietly to Halkett:
“I take two of them to be South Germans or Austrians. The other might be Alsatian. Do any of these possible nationalities worry you?”
“Exactly,” said Halkett coolly.
“In other words, any trouble you may expect is likely to come from Germans?”
“That’s about it.”
Warner lighted a cigarette.
“Shall we try a quiet getaway?” he asked.
“No; I’ll look out for myself. Clear out, Warner, there’s a good fellow — —”
“Don’t ask me to do a thing that you wouldn’t do,” retorted Warner sharply. “Come on; I’m going to drive you to Saïs.”
Halkett flushed.
“I shan’t forget how decent you’ve been,” he said. They summoned the waiter, paid the reckoning, rose, and walked leisurely toward the door.
At the caissière’s desk they turned aside to say good-night to Philippa.
The girl looked up from her accounts, pencil poised, gazing at Warner.
“Au revoir, Philippa,” he said, smilingly.
The girl’s serious features relaxed; she nodded to him gayly, turned, still smiling, to include Halkett. And instantly a swift change altered her face; she half rose from her chair, arm outstretched.
“What is that man doing behind you!” she cried out — too late to avert what she saw coming. For the man close behind Halkett had dexterously passed a silk handkerchief across his throat from behind and had jerked him backward; and, like lightning, two other men appeared on either side of him, tore his coat wide, and thrust their hands into his breast pockets.
Warner pivoted on his heel and swung hard on the man with the silk handkerchief, driving him head-on into the table behind, which fell with a crash of glassware. Halkett, off his balance, fell on top of the table, dragging with him one of the men whose hand had become entangled in his breast pocket.
The people who had been seated at the table were hurled right and left among the neighboring tables; a howl of anger and protest burst from the crowd; there came a shout of “Cochon!” — a rush to see what had happened; people mounted on chairs, waiters arrived, running. Out of the mêlée Halkett wriggled and rose, coughing, his features still crimson from partial strangulation. Warner caught his arm in a grip of iron and whisked him out of the door. The next instant they were engulfed in the crowds thronging the market square.
