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.”