Complete weird tales of.., p.873
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 873
“It’s Philippa,” whispered Halkett. “Look!”
Warner turned: Philippa, wearing the scarlet and black peasant dress of a lost province, sat sideways on her window sill, knitting while she watched the passing cavalry below.
The velvet straps and silk laces of her bodice accented a full chemisette of finest lawn; a delicate little apron of the same was relieved by the scarlet skirt; the dainty, butterfly headdress of black silk crowned her hair, which hung in two heavy braids.
And, as the cavalry column passed, every big cuirassier, looking up from the shadow of his steel helmet, saw Alsace itself embodied in this slender girl who sat knitting and looking down upon France militant out of quiet, proud eyes.
There was no fanfare, no shouting, no boasting, nothing theatrical. The troopers looked up from their saddles and rode by, still looking; the girl knitted quietly, her steady eyes gazing gravely over the needles. And it was as though Alsace herself were speaking a silent language from those clear, grey eyes:
“I am waiting; I have been waiting for you more than forty years. Take what time you need, but come. You will always find me waiting.”
Every officer understood it; every giant rider comprehended, as the squadrons trampled past through a thickening veil of dust which grew denser, dulling the sparkle of metal and subduing the raw, fierce colors to pastel tints.
The brigade passed up the valley leisurely, without halting; dust hung along the road for many minutes after the last cuirassier had walked his big horse out of view.
Philippa, who had been seated on the window sill with her back toward Warner’s window, left her perch; and Warner turned back into his room to bathe and dress.
“How long have you been up?” he asked Halkett, who had dropped on a chair by the window.
“Since sunrise. Madame Arlon is back. She behaved very nicely about the damage. She doesn’t wish me to pay for it, but I shall. Did you know that your Harem left in a body for Paris yesterday afternoon?”
“Very sensible of ’em,” said Warner with a sigh of relief. “How about you, Halkett?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m expecting orders at any moment now.”
“How do you know that your country has gone into this war?”
“I learned it last night at the Boule d’Argent. The news had just come over the wire.
“That precious pair, Meier and Hoffman, whom I had followed to the Boule d’Argent, were seated there in the café reading the newspapers when the telegram was posted up.
“They got up from their chairs with the other guests who had clustered around the bulletin to read what had been posted up. I watched their faces from behind my newspaper, and you should have seen their expressions — utter and blank astonishment, Warner! Certainly Germany never believed until the last moment that we had any real intention of going in.”
“I didn’t, either, to tell the truth.”
Halkett smiled:
“It was inevitable from the very beginning. The hour that Austria flung her brutal ultimatum into the face of Servia, every British officer knew that we were going in. It took our politicians a little longer to realize it, that’s all.”
Warner finished dressing, and they went downstairs together and across the grass to the arbor in the garden, where Philippa sat knitting and talking under her breath to Ariadne, who gazed at her, brilliant-eyed, purring.
The girl had her back toward them and they made no sound as they advanced across the turf which bordered the flowers.
“She’s talking to the cat; listen!” murmured Halkett.
“ — And after many, many years,” they heard Philippa saying, “the sad and patient mother of the two lost children sent out for her five million servants. ‘Go,’ she said, ‘and search diligently for my little daughters who were stolen by the fierce old giant, Bosche. And when you come to where they are imprisoned, you shall know the place, because there is no place on earth so beautiful, no mountains so tender a blue, no fields so green and so full of flowers, no rivers so lovely and clear.
“‘Also, you shall recognize my little children when you discover them, because they dress as I am dressed today, in red and black and wearing the black butterfly. So when you see them behind the bars of their prison, you shall call to them by name — you shall call out, Alsace! Lorraine! Be of good courage! Your mother has sent us here to find you and deliver you from the prison of the Giant Bosche!
“‘Then you shall draw your broad, bright bayonets and fix them; and you who are mounted shall unsling your long, pointed lances; and you who feed the great steel monsters that roll along on wheels, shall make ready the monsters’ food; and others of you who put on wings and who mount clattering to the clouds, shall wing yourselves and mount; and you others who look out over oceans from the tops of tall, steel masts shall signal for all the anchors to be lifted.
“‘Thus you shall prepare to encounter the Giant Bosche, who will come thundering and trampling and flaming across the horizon, with his black banners like storm clouds, and advancing amid a roaring iron rain.
“‘Thus you shall meet him and hold him, and turn him, and drive him, drive him, drive him, back, back, back, into the fierce, dark, shaggy places from whence he crept out into the sun and stole away my little children.
“‘And when that is done, you shall bring me back my children who were lost, and you shall be their servants as well as mine, dwelling with us as one family forever, in happiness and honor, dedicating ourselves to generous and noble deeds as long as the world shall last!’ ...
“That, minette, is the fairy story which I promised you if you would be a good cat and wait patiently for breakfast. And you have done so, and now I have kept my promise — —”
She lifted her eyes from her knitting, turned her head over her shoulder, and saw Warner and Halkett gravely listening.
“Oh,” she said, blushing. “Did you hear the story I have been telling to Ariadne?” She held out her hand to Warner and then to Halkett, inspecting the latter critically, much interested in his uniform.
“You saw our cuirassiers?” she asked, as they seated themselves at the table. “So did I. Also, they saw me. I wished them to see me because I was dressed in this dress. We understood each other, the ‘grosse cavalerie’ and I.”
“We saw what was going on,” said Halkett. “I should say that about two thousand suitors have been added to your list this morning, Philippa.”
She turned shy and a little grave at that, but seeing Warner laughing, laughed too.
“If I were a great lady,” she said, “you might be right. Only from the saddle could any man dare hope for a smile from me now.”
Linette, with the bright color of excitement still brilliant in her cheeks, brought out the breakfast tray.
“On the quarry road, across the river,” she said, “our fantassins are marching north — thousands of them, messieurs! — and the dust is like a high white wall against the hills!”
So they hastened with their coffee and rolls; Warner fetched the garden ladder and set it against the east wall, and all three mounted and seated themselves on the coping.
What Linette had reported was true: across the Récollette a wall of white dust ran north and south as far as they could see. Under it an undulating column tramped, glimmering, sparkling, flowing northward — an endless streak of dusty crimson where the red trousers of the line were startlingly visible through the haze.
Watching the stirring spectacle from a seat on the wall beside Philippa, Warner turned to her presently:
“Do you feel all right this morning?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Your lip is still a trifle swollen.”
“I feel quite well.” She looked up at him out of her honest grey eyes. “It is the happiest morning of my life,” she said in a low voice.
“Why?”
“For two reasons: I am to remain with you, that is one reason; I have lived to see what I am looking at yonder, that is the other reason.”
“You have lived to help what is going on yonder,” remarked Halkett.
She turned, the question in her eyes; and he answered seriously:
“We British are your allies, now.”
“Since when, Monsieur?”
“Since yesterday. So what you did for me when you saved my papers, you did for a friend to France.”
Her sudden emotion left her silent; she bent her head and looked down at her knitting, and leisurely resumed it, sitting so, her legs hanging down from the wall, the sun striking her silver shoe buckles.
“Do you hear, Philippa?” asked Warner, smiling. “You have added reason to be proud of the wound on your lip.”
She flashed a look at him, laughed shyly, and became very busy with her knitting and with watching the passing column across the river.
Halkett had unslung his field glasses to inspect them at closer range. The dusty fantassins were swinging along at a smart route step, rifles slung, red képis askew, their bulky luggage piled on their backs and flopping on their thighs — the same careless, untidy, slipshod infantry with the same active, tireless, reckless, rakish allure.
Their smartly mounted officers, smartly booted or gaitered, wearing the smart tunics and gold-laced caps of their arm of the service, seemed merely to accent the gayly dowdy, ill-fitting uniforms of the little fantassins.
No British officer could, on his soul and conscience, subscribe to such flapping, misfitting, fag-ends of military accouterments; and as Halkett watched them a singularly wooden expression came over his pleasant, youthful features; and Warner, glancing sideways at him, knew why.
“They’re very picturesque if a painter handles them properly,” he remarked, amused. “You know what De Neuville did for them.”
Philippa, not comprehending, continued to knit and to gaze out of her lovely grey eyes upon her beloved fantassins.
Ariadne, seeing her three friends aloft, presently mounted to the top of the wall beside them, and sat gravely blinking into space through slitted eyes.
A glazier had come across the fields from some neighboring hamlet, bringing with him under his ragged arm some panes of glass and a bag of implements.
He was in a hurry, because he was expecting that his class would be called to the colors, but the spectacle of the passing infantry across the river so fascinated him that he made but a slow job of it.
Toward noon a mounted gendarme, who seemed to know him personally, shouted, as he rode by, that his class had been called. The little glazier nodded, smeared the last strip of putty under the last window pane to be replaced, climbed down from the sill, lifted his hat to the three people on the wall — possibly including Ariadne in his politeness — and trotted away across the fields to tie up a few possessions in a large red handkerchief, and then trot away toward Chalons, where France needed even the humblest and most obscure of the children she had nourished through many years for such an hour as was sounding now.
Philippa, looking after him, was unconsciously stirred to express her thoughts aloud:
“There must be something I can do,” she said.
“You have been among the very first to do something,” rejoined Warner.
“Oh, that? That was nothing.” She pursed up her lips and stared absently at the troops across the Récollette. “I can knit socks, of course.... I don’t know what else to do.... If anybody wants me I am here.”
“I want you, Philippa,” said Warner.
“Mon ami, Warner — —” She gave him a swift, adorable smile and laid her hand lightly on his arm for an instant.
Such candid gratitude for friendship he had never read in any eyes before; the quick response of this friendless girl touched him sharply.
“Of course I want you,” he repeated. “Never forget, Philippa, that where I am you are welcome — not tolerated — wanted!”
She continued to knit, looking down steadily. Halkett lowered his field glasses and glanced at her, then with an odd look at Warner leveled the glasses again and resumed his study of the distant column.
After a few minutes’ silence the girl raised her eyes, and Warner caught the glint of unshed tears in them.
“It is only happiness,” she said in a low voice. “I am not accustomed to it.”
He did not know what to say, for the grey eyes were stirring him very deeply, and her attitude and their new relationship touched him and confused him, too.
The responsibility which he had assumed so impulsively, so lightly yet warmly, began to wear a more serious aspect to him.
Every few moments some new vein of purest metal was unconsciously revealed in her by her own transparent honesty. He began to understand that she had not only right instincts, but that her mind was right, in spite of what she had been since released from school — that her intelligence was of a healthy order, that she thought right, and that, untaught or taught otherwise, her conclusions were as direct and sane as a child’s.
“I think, Philippa, we ought to have a business talk this morning,” he said pleasantly.
“To discuss our affairs,” she nodded contentedly. “I have my little account book in my trunk. Shall I get it for you?”
He smiled:
“I didn’t intend to examine your financial situation — —”
“Oh, but we had better be very clear about it! You see, I have just so much saved — I shall show you exactly! — and then we can compute exactly what economies it will be necessary for me to make in order to maintain myself until we can find employment for me — —”
“But, Philippa—” he tried to maintain his gravity— “you need not have any concern in that regard. First of all, you are on a salary as my model — —”
“Please! I did not wish to be paid for aiding you — —”
“But it is a matter of business!”
“I thought — I am happy in being permitted to return a little of your kindness to me — I do not want anything from you — —”
“Kindness!”
“You have let me find a refuge with you — —”
“Dear child, I offer you employment until something more suitable offers. Didn’t you understand?”
“Yes, but I did not expect or wish you to pay me — except with friendship. It is different between us and others, is it not? — I mean you are my friend.... I could not take money from you.... Let it be only friendship between us. Will you? I have enough to last until I can find employment. Only let me be with you. That is quite enough for me, Warner.”
Halkett, who had been gazing fixedly through his glasses, remarked that the column across the river had now passed.
It was true; the wall of dust still obscured the blue foothills of the Vosges, but the last fantassin had trotted beyond their view and the last military wagon had rolled out of sight.
Halkett descended from the ladder and went through the house and down the road in the direction of the schoolhouse, a smart, well-groomed, well-set-up figure in his light-colored service uniform and cap.
Philippa gathered her knitting into one hand, placed the other in Warner’s, and descended the ladder face foremost, with the lithe, sure-footed grace of Ariadne, who had preceded them.
“Come to my room,” she said, confidently taking possession of Warner’s arm; “I want to show you my account book.”
Madame Arlon, who was coming through the hallway, overheard her, gazed at her unsmilingly, glanced at Warner, whose arm the girl still retained.
Philippa looked up frankly, bidding the stout, florid landlady a smiling good morning, and Madame Arlon took the girl’s hands rather firmly into her own, considered her, looked up at Warner in silence.
Perhaps she arrived at some silent and sudden conclusion concerning them both, for her tightened lips relaxed and she smiled at them and patted Philippa’s hands and went about her affairs, still evidently amused over something or other. She remarked to Magda in the kitchen that all Americans were mad but harmless; which distinguished them from Europeans, who were merely mad.
Upstairs in her bedroom, Philippa was down on her knees rummaging in her little trunk and chattering away as gay as a linnet to Warner, who stood beside her looking on.
And at first the pathos of the affair did not strike him. The girl’s happy torrent of loquacity, almost childish in its eagerness and inconsequential repetition of details concerning the little souvenirs which she held up for his inspection, amused him, and he felt that she was very, very young.
All the flimsy odds and ends which girlhood cherishes — things utterly valueless except for the memories evoked by disinterring and handling them, these Philippa resurrected from the confused heap of clothing in her trunk — here a thin gold circlet set with a tiny, tarnished turquoise, pledge of some schoolmate’s deathless adoration — there an inky and battered schoolbook with girls’ names written inside in the immature chirography of extreme youth and sentiment. And there were bits of inexpensive lace and faded ribbons, and a blotting pad full of frail and faded flower-ghosts, and home-made sachets from which hue and odor had long since exhaled, and links from a silver chain and a few bright locks of hair in envelopes.
And every separate one of these Philippa, on her knees, held up for Warner to admire while she sketched for him the most minute details of the circumstances connected.
Never doubting his interest and sympathy, she freed her long-caged heart with all the involuntary ecstasy of an escaped bird pouring out to the clouds the suppressed confidences of many years.
Names, incidents, circumstances almost forgotten even in her brief solitary life, were now uttered almost unbidden from her ardent lips; the bright or faded bits of ribbon were held aloft, identified with a little laugh or sigh, tossed aside, and another relic uncovered and held out to him.
On her knees before these innocent records of the past, the girl was showing him everything she knew about herself — showing him herself, too, and her warm, eager heart of a child.
