Complete weird tales of.., p.880
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 880
“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.
