"Yes, Asticot. But after you're dead such necessities won't trouble you."
"M-m'sieu'!"
"I've got my eye on you. Do you know what that means?"
Stammering and stuttering, the ruffian admitted that he did know.
"Very well. They'll bring you a tin tub full of hot water, some clothing which I bestow upon you, some salves and bandages. Afterward, they'll give you some straw to sleep on, and then they'll lock the door. What I'll do with you or to you I don't know yet. But I'll know by morning."
Vignier knocked at the door. Behind him came a stableboy with a tub.
"Take care of that rat," said Warner briefly; and went out into the night.
His hands were slightly discolored, and one had bled at the knuckles. He went directly to the room, changed his linen, made a careful toilet with a grimace of retrospective disgust, then adjusting and brushing out his crumpled attire, took a look at himself in the glass and discovered no incriminating evidence of his recent pugilistic activity.
But when he went downstairs he discovered that the family had retired; lights flickered low in the west drawing-room, a lamp remained burning in the staircase hall, but the remainder of the house was dark.
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 cooerdinated, 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 Recollette.... 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 Recollette, 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 a 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 cafe-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 a quartiers or bonnet de beguin--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 aubepine 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 Felicite?"
"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 Chateau."
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 Felicite 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 Sais 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 Sais 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 Felicite 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 aeroplane 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 Felicite 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 Felicite 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 Felicite 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 Chateau 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 Sais 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."
*CHAPTER XXVII*
The journey back along the Ausone road was a slow and stifling one. Warner, walking on the left, led the donkey by the head; Philippa moved beside the basket cart on the right. In the cart sat the wounded Englishman, his bandaged head lying on Sister Eila's shoulder.
Through the heavy, suffocating cloud of dust, group after group of fugitives loomed up ahead, coming toward them, parting right and left to let the basket cart and the little, plodding donkey pass through. Sheep were driven aside for them; cattle swung out into the roadside ditches on either hand, halting there with stupid heads turned toward them while the basket cart took right of way.
Once, from the toiling procession behind them, distant shouts arose, and the ground began to quiver and shake; and Warner called out a sharp warning to Philippa and drew the donkey cart out among the dusty weeds of the ditch, while everywhere ahead of them people, cattle, vehicles, were being hurriedly turned out and crowded aside along the grassy roadside gullies.
Louder grew the clamour behind; heavier the jarring of the ground; a mounted gendarme--a marechal de logis--appeared, alternately cantering and galloping his superb horse, and sweeping the crowds aside with vigorous gestures of his white-gloved hand.
Behind him trotted six more gendarmes, sabers sheathed, their single rank stretching the entire width of the road from ditch to ditch. And behind these, in a writhing storm of dust and flying gravel, came the field artillery on a swift, swinging trot, drivers erect in their saddles, kepis strapped tight, sun-scorched faces sweating under masks of dust.
Tan-colored limbers, guns, caissons drawn by powerful, dust-whitened teams, rushed past thudding and clanking, escorted by galloping pelotons of artillerymen armed with saber and carbine, flanked by smart officers flashing all over cherry red and gold.
Battery after battery, with forges and wagons, passed; a fanion with trumpeters sped by; a squadron of remount cavalry in clearer blue jackets followed, then came two squadrons of galloping dragoon lancers, their steel helmets covered with brown holland slips, and the pennons streaming wildly from their lance heads. A gendarme or two galloped in the rear, mere ghosts in the driving dust. And the flying column had passed.
Sister Eila, covering Gray's mouth and nose with her grey-blue sleeve, bowed her head and closed her eyes while the storm of dust and pebbles lasted; then Warner nodded to Philippa, and between them they led out the donkey cart once more and pushed slowly ahead into the oncoming torrent of vehicles--cattle, men, women, and children.
It was nearly noon when they arrived at the Chateau des Oiseaux. A footman aided him to carry Gray upstairs to the room prepared for him.
"Are you all right?" asked Warner doubtfully.
Gray opened his haggard eyes.
"All right, thanks.... May I have a little water, if it's not too much trouble----"
Sister Eila entered the room with a carafe and some lemons; and Warner withdrew.
In the hallway below he encountered Madame de Moidrey and Peggy Brooks in earnest consultation with the village physician--an old man crippled from 1870, and wearing the Legion and an empty sleeve.
Warner shook hands with Dr. Senlis and told him what he knew of Gray's condition. Sister Eila came down presently and everybody greeted her with a warmth which unmistakably revealed her status in Sais.
Presently she went upstairs again with Dr. Senlis. Later the Countess went up. Peggy and Philippa had gone out to the south terrace where the reverberation of the cannonade was now continually shaking the windows, and where, beyond, Ausone, a dark band of smoke stretched like a rampart across the northern sky.
As Warner stood thinking, listening to the dull shock of the concussions rolling in toward them on the wind from the north, the footman, Vilmar, approached him.
"Pardon, Monsieur Warner, but there is a frightful type hanging about whom it seems impossible to drive away----"
"What!" said Warner angrily.
"Monsieur, I have hustled him from the terrace several times; I have summoned aid from my fellow domestics; the chauffeur, Vignier, chases him with frequency into the shrubbery; Maurice and the lad, Henri, pursue him with horsewhips----"
"Is it that voyou who is all over bandages?" demanded Warner incredulously.
"It is, Monsieur----"
Out of sheer contempt for the creature and for all his species, Warner had ordered him to be fed and turned loose. And here he was, back again, hanging around!
"Where is he?"
"He dodged into the shrubbery across the lawn."
The effontery of Asticot amazed Warner. With an impatient gesture he turned on his heel to traverse the lawn. And at the same moment Asticot emerged from the bushes bordering it.
His bruised and ratty eyes blinked nervously; his battered casquette de marlou was in his hand; his knees, and his teeth also, seemed inclined to smite together. Plainly, he was terrified; and when Warner walked swiftly toward him across the lawn, the creature uttered a sort of stifled squeak.
"Asticot," said Warner, in pleasant, even tones, "I told the servants to feed you and turn you loose. Also, I left word that I'd kill you the next time I caught you hanging around here. Did they give you that message?"
"M-m'sieu'----"
"Did they?"
"Alas!"
"Then why are you still prowling in this vicinity? Do you want to be killed?"
A suppressed howl escaped the bandaged ruffian.
"I do not desire to go away from M'sieu'! No! I desire to remain under his powerful protection----"
"What!"
"I desire to serve M'sieu'--to dedicate my life to the service of M'sieu', my patron, powerful and terrible. I have need to render him homage--I, Asticot, grateful and affectionate----" He blubbered sentimentally, squirming like a kicked and abject dog.
Warner, astonished, stared at the writhing ruffian for a few moments, then he burst into a laugh.
"Why, you Parisian sewer rat," he said, "do you imagine that I could have any use for you?"
"M'sieu'! I ask as wages only a crust, a pallet of straw in some corner, and a few pennies which will enable me to 'fry a cigarette' when I am lonely----"
"I don't want you!" repeated Warner, disgusted, but much amused. "Why do you imagine that I have any employment to offer a cutthroat?"
"There is le Pere Wildresse," replied Asticot, naively.
"Do you imagine I expect to hire somebody to murder him?"
"M'sieu'--it is but natural."
Warner's laughter died out and his expression altered.
"Come, Asticot, cut away," he said quietly, "or I shall become angry!"
"M'sieu'! Don't drive me away!" he whined. "I know how to wash brushes in black soap----"
"What!"
"Also, I have learned how to stretch toiles and make chassis. I have served in Biribi. My lieutenant amused himself by painting pictures of camels and palms and the setting sun, very red and as full of rays as a porcupine----"
"I don't want you, Asticot! It is noon, now. I shall tell them at the stables to give you a crust and a bowl of soup. After you have sufficiently stuffed yourself, go quietly away wherever you belong, and don't come back----"
"M'sieu'! I entertain a deep affection for M'sieu'----"
"Go to the devil!" said Warner wearily, and walked back to the house. Here he gave the footman culinary instructions to transmit to the kitchen-maid, who, in turn, should see that something to eat was sent to the stables for Asticot.
Then he walked through the house to the northern terrace, where Philippa and Peggy sat sewing and looking out across the valley toward the smoky panorama in the north. His field glasses lay on the parapet, and he picked them up and adjusted them to his vision.
"Isly is burning, and Rosales, and the great farm of Le Pigeonnier," remarked Peggy.
"Who says so?"
"Mathilde. The postman told her. He heard it in Ausone from the soldiers. That is where the fighting is, at Isly. The trains leaving Ausone are loaded with soldiers going north. It appears that matters are progressing very well for us."
Warner said nothing. With two French towns burning on the horizon, the great farm of Le Pigeonnier on fire, and the cannonade steadily becoming more distinct, he was not at all certain that everything promised well for Ausone and Sais and the valley of the Recollette.
Through his glasses he could see the beautiful spire of Sainte Cassilda in Ausone. Beyond, where the wooded, conical hill rose from the rolling plain as though it were an enormous artificial mound, nothing of the fort was visible.
But farther away, beyond the river, he could see trains crawling across the landscape--see smoke trailing from locomotives; farther still only the green and gold of woods and grain fields stretched away, growing vaguer and dimmer until the wall of smoke obscured them and blotted the earth from view.
Madame de Moidrey appeared at the doorway behind them.
"They have just telephoned from Ausone to ask whether we can take in wounded, if necessary," she said calmly. "They are to send material for fifty beds this evening. Sister Eila and Dr. Senlis have offered to remain for the present. I think everybody will have to help."
Philippa, who had risen, came toward her.
"I don't mind where I sleep," she said, "if I can only be of any use----"
"You are not going to be disturbed, dear--not at present, anyway." And to Peggy: "I have told them to open the east wing and air the gallery and the rooms on both the upper floors. There is room for two hundred beds in the east wing. Vignier has gone to turn on the water, and I shall have the parquet and windows thoroughly cleaned and the stair carpets taken out of storage and laid down."
"Is there anything I can do?" asked Warner.
"Nothing for any of us to do so far. When the beds arrive, I shall have them set up and ready, that's all. Peggy, if the servants require any further instructions, tell them what to do. Sister Eila is inspecting the east wing and I must return to Mr. Gray."
"How is Gray?" asked Warner.
"Very much afraid that he is making us extra trouble. He is so patient, so considerate--really a most charming man.
"I have an idea that the cannonade is making him very restless. He tries not to show it. He lies there very quietly, asking for nothing, most grateful for the slightest attention. I have been giving him the medicine Dr. Senlis prescribed and reading the paper to him between doses."
"Couldn't I do that?" began Peggy, but Madame de Moidrey shook her pretty head hastily and went away to inspect her Englishman, for whom luncheon was being prepared on a tray.
Luncheon was served on the terrace for the others. It was a rather silent affair: they ate with the distant rumble of cannon in their ears and their eyes turning ever toward the north where that impenetrable wall of smoke masked the horizon from east to west.
"I think I shall go over to Ausone," remarked Warner.
Philippa looked up in silence.
"Why?" inquired Peggy.
"Because," he replied, "I have a couple of dozen pictures and sketches in storage at the Boule d'Argent, and I think I might as well get them and ship them to my Paris studio."
"Do you really suppose there is any danger that----"
"No," he interrupted, smilingly, "but you know how finicky and panicky a painter is. I think I'll take a stroll after luncheon and bring back my canvases--" he turned to Philippa--"if I may take your punt for the purpose?"
"Certainly. I'll pole you up to Ausone----"
"You will do nothing of the sort, thank you!" he retorted, laughing.
"Is there any danger?" asked Peggy.
"Not the slightest. But I had rather that Philippa remained here."
Peggy passed her arm around Philippa's shoulders.
"He doesn't want you, darling, but I do! Remain where you're appreciated and I'll take you up presently to see that exceedingly nice-looking Englishman."
Philippa's smile was a little forced; she looked up at Warner every now and then, curiously, questioningly, even reproachfully.
When he had pretended long enough not to be aware of it, he turned and looked at her and laughed. And after Peggy had risen and entered the house, he said:
"Philippa, I don't care to have you any nearer that wall of smoke out yonder than you are at present. That's the only reason I don't want you to go to Ausone in the punt with me."
"You know," she said, "that I might just as well be where you are all the time."
"Why?"
"Is it necessary for me to tell you that if anything happens to you it might as well happen to me at the same time?"
"Nonsense, Philippa----"
"You know it is so," she said quietly.
He looked at the smoke, glanced at her, rose and walked to the door, and, turning abruptly, came back to where she was seated.
"That won't do," he said bluntly. "Nobody should be as vital to you as that. Life and happiness are beginning for you. Both must be independent of circumstances and individuals. Everything already lies before you, Philippa--youth, attainment, the serenity and the happiness of opportunity heretofore denied you. Fulfillment does not depend on others; the interest in living and the reason for living depends on personal faith, resolution, and endeavor, not on what accidents affect other lives around you. Life should be lived thoroughly and completely to the end, industriously, vigorously, and with a courage for enjoyment never faltering. Your life is yours. Live it! Find in it the sheer happiness of living. No matter what befalls others, no matter who these others may be, it is your business in life to go on living, to go on discovering reasons for living, to go on desiring to live, and to find in living the highest happiness in the world--the satisfaction of a duty thoroughly accomplished!"
He was smiling and rather flushed when he ended his emphatic sermon. The girl beside him had listened with drooping head, but her grey eyes were raised to his from time to time.
And now that he had finished expounding his strenuous and masculine logic, she turned away and leaned on the parapet looking down at the tops of the forest trees below.
He came over and rested on the stone balustrade beside her.
"Am I not right?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Then you understand that, whatever may happen to anybody else, life always presents the same noble challenge to you?"
"Yes.... A bird, shot through the breast, must go on fighting for breath as long as its heart beats.... I should do the same--if anything happened to you."
The hot color suddenly burnt his face. He made no comment--found none to make. Her transparent candor had silenced him utterly; and he found himself troubled, mute, and profoundly moved by her innocent avowal of devotion.
She looked around at him after a while.
"That is what you meant, isn't it?"
He shook his head slightly. He could scarcely presume to criticize her or instruct her concerning the mysteries of her own heart. Those intimate, shadowy, and virginal depths were exempt from the rule of reason. Neither logic nor motive was in control there; instinct alone reigned.
No, he had nothing more to say to her; nothing definite to say to himself. A haunting and troubled perplexity possessed his mind; and a deeper, duller, and obscure wonder that the young heart in her, and the youthful faith that filled it, had been so quietly, so fearlessly surrendered to his keeping.
He had always supposed that his experience, his years, his clear thinking and humorously incredulous mind rendered him safe from any emotional sentiment not directly connected with his profession.
The fact that women were inclined to like him had made him unconsciously wary, even amiably skeptical. Outside of a few friendships he had never known more than a passing fancy for any woman--a sentiment always partly humorous, an emotion always more or less amused. His preferences were as light as the jests he made of them, his interest as ephemeral as it was superficial--aside from his several friendships with women, or where women were intimately concerned with his work.
The swiftness with which acquaintance had become friendship between Philippa and himself had disturbed and puzzled him. That, like a witch-flower, it had opened over night into full blossom, he seemed to realize, even admitted to himself. But already it seemed to have become as important, as established, as older friendships. And more than that, day by day its responsibilities seemed to multiply and grow heavier and more serious.
He thought of these things as he leaned on the stone balustrade there beside Philippa. What she might be thinking of remained to him a mystery impenetrable, for she had passed one arm through his and her cheek rested lightly against his shoulder, and her grey eyes, brooding, seemed lost in the depths of the distant smoke.
And all the while she was saying in her sweet, serene way:
"You will let me go with you, won't you? It would be very agreeable on the river this afternoon. Such a pleasure you could not sensibly deny me. Besides, the punt is mine, Jim. I don't let anybody charter it unless captain and crew are included. I am, naturally, the captain. Ariadne is the crew. If you desire to engage a passage to Ausone----"
"Philippa, you little tyrant, do you mean to refuse me the Lys?"
"Come down to the river and look her over," she said, drawing him away from the balustrade. "And on the way you may get the pole from the garage."
He was inclined to demur, but she had her way; and ten minutes later they were walking across the fields, he with the pole across his shoulder, she moving lightly and happily beside him, her hair in two braids and the velvet strings of the bonnet fluttering under her rounded chin.
The Ausone road lay white and deserted; the last fugitive from the north had passed. Nor were there any more skiffs or laden boats on the river, nor any signs of life on the quarry road. All was still and sunny and silent; the Recollette slipped along, clear and silvery, between green banks; to the east the calm blue hills stretched away vague with haze; swallows soared and dipped, starring the glass of the stream as though rising fish were breaking its serene surface. But the still air and cobalt sky were heavy with the cannonade, making the stillness of the sun-drenched world almost uncanny.
*CHAPTER XXVIII*
Philippa, curled up in the punt, had fashioned for herself a chaplet of river lilies. The white blossoms wreathing the black velvet bonnet a quartiers, and a huge bouquet of the lovely flowers which she carried in her hand gave a bridal aspect to the affair, heightened presently when she began to festoon the gunwales with lilies and scented rushes from the sedge, as they slipped along inshore to avoid the stronger current of midstream.
The air vibrated and hummed with the unbroken rolling of the bombardment; there was not a cloud in the calm sky; no birds sang and few, except the darting swallows of the Recollette, were on the wing at all; but everywhere dragon flies glittered, level-winged, poised in mid-air, or darted and hovered among the reeds with a faint, fairy-like clash of gauzy wings.
The sound of the cannonade grew so much more distinct as they drew near the environs of Ausone that, to Warner, the increase in volume and the jar of concussion seemed scarcely due alone to their approach. Rather it appeared as though the distant reverberations were very gradually rolling toward them; and before they had poled within sight of the outskirts of the town Warner said to Philippa:
"It sounds to me as though the whole business were miles nearer than the mere distance we have come. And that is not an encouraging suggestion, either."
"Could it be the wind which is carrying it toward us?"
"There is very little wind in those tree tops up there." He shrugged, poled ahead, not apprehensive, yet conscious that Philippa had no business in a town from the vicinity of which such ominous sounds could be heard so distinctly.
Few people were moving on the Ausone road, merely a belated group or two trudging southward. Except for a distant cavalry patrol riding slowly along the quarry road across the river, the country appeared to be empty of military movement. As they advanced upstream, one fact became apparent; the fugitives who had passed through Sais that morning had not come from the scattered hamlets and cottages along the Recollette. They could see women washing linen along the river banks and hanging out the wash on clotheslines. Old men and children fished tranquilly from the sterns of skiffs pulled up among the rushes; cattle stood knee-deep in the limpid stream under the fringe of trees; a farmer who had cut his wheat and barley had already begun threshing. It was evident that the exodus from the north was not, so far, affecting Ausone.
When their punt glided past the great willow tree where the Impasse d'Alcyon terminated at the river bank, Warner, swinging his pole level, pointed in silence and looked at Philippa. She smiled interrogatively in response.
"That's where Halkett and I landed when we came to find you," he said.
Then she comprehended and the smile faded from her lips.
Around the bend lay the tree-shaded lawn of the Cafe Biribi. They gazed at it fixedly and in silence, as they shot swiftly past. There was no sign of life there; the beds of cannas and geraniums lay all ablaze in the sun; the windows of the building were closed, the blinds lowered; every gayly-painted rowboat had been pulled up on the landing and turned keel upward. A solitary swan sailed along close inshore, probing the shallows with his brilliant scarlet beak.
Then, as they left the deserted scene of their first meeting, and as the pretty stone bridge of the Place d'Ausone came into sight beyond, spanning the river in a single, silver-grey arch, Warner looked up along the steep and mossy quay wall, and saw, above him, a line sentinel, fully equipped, lounging on the parapet, watching them. Two others paced the bridge.
"Halte la! Au large!" called out the sentinel. "The Pont d'Ausone is mined."
Leaning on his pole and holding the punt against the current, Warner called out:
"Is it permitted to land, soldier?"
"It is not forbidden," replied the soldier. "But you must not approach the bridge any nearer. There are wires under water."
"I have business in Ausone at the Boule d'Argent!" explained Warner. "Is it all right for us to go there?"
"If you remain there with Madame over night you must inscribe yourself with the police and stay indoors after nine without lights," replied the sentinel. It was evident that he took the chaplet of river lilies for a bridal wreath, and that the young bride's beauty dazzled him. He was very young, and he blushed when Philippa looked up laughingly and thanked him as she put off her white chaplet.
Warner tied the skiff to a rusty ring; Philippa sprang ashore; and they mounted the stone steps, arm in arm together. As they passed the sentinel she drew a lily from her bouquet.
"Bonne chance, soldier of France!" she murmured, dropping the white blossom into his sunburnt hand; and clasping Warner's arm she passed lightly on into the square, hugging her bouquet to her breast.
The aspect of the town, from the quay wall above, seemed to have changed very little. Except on fete days the Place d'Ausone, or market square, was never animated. A few people moved about it now, as usual; a few men sat sipping their bitters on the terrace of the Cafe Biribi; children played under the trees by the river wall; old women knitted; a few aged anglers, forbidden the bridge, dozed on the quay parapets, while their brilliant scarlet quills trailed in the pools below.
True, there were no idle soldiers to be seen strolling in couples or dawdling on benches. A patrol of chasseurs a cheval, in their pale blue jackets and black "tresses," walked their wiry horses across the square. Also, near the horse fountain, three anti-aircraft guns stood in the sunshine, their lean muzzles tilted high, the cannoniers lying on their blankets around them, and a single sentinel on guard, pacing the Place with his piece shouldered. At the further end of the rue d'Auros, where it enters the boulevard by the Church of Sainte Cassilda, cavalry were moving; and more sky artillery was visible in front of the church plaza. Otherwise the presence of troops was not noticeable in Ausone town.
Nor were Philippa and Warner particularly noticed or remarked, the girl's provincial costume being a familiar sight in the region from Sais to Dreslin. In fact, Warner's knickers and Norfolk excited the only attention, and every now and then some man passing, and taking him for English, lifted his hat in cordial salutation to a comrade of an allied nation.
But for all the absence of animation and excitement in the Ausone streets, the deepening thunder of the cannonade began to preoccupy Warner; and finally he inquired what it signified of a passing line soldier, who stopped courteously and saluted.
"C'est le fort d'Ausone qui donne, Monsieur," he explained, bowing slightly to Philippa as he spoke.
"What!" exclaimed Warner. "Is the Ausone fort firing?"
"Since two hours, Monsieur. It would appear that affairs are warming up out there."
"What does that mean?"
"Dame--they must see something to fire at," replied the soldier, laughing. "As for us here in the town, we know nothing. We others--we never know anything that happens until it is happening to us."
"From the Chateau at Sais," said Warner, "one can see three towns on fire in the north."
"It is more than we soldiers can see from here, Monsieur. Yet we know it must be so, because people from Isly, from Rosales, from Dreslin, have been passing through from the north. They must have passed through Sais."
"Thousands," nodded Warner.
The soldier saluted; Warner lifted his cap, and he and Philippa entered the Boule d'Argent, where, in a little, lace-curtained dining-room to the left, they seated themselves by the street window and ordered tea and sugar-buns.
The gerant, who knew Warner, came up and made a most serious and elaborate bow to Philippa and to the American.
"Ah, Monsieur Warner!" he said. "Voyez-vous the Bosches have begun at last! But, God willing, it shall not be 1870 again!"
"It won't be; don't worry, Francois. The Republic knows how to confront what is coming!"
"Yes. I hope we have learned something. All Frenchmen will do what is possible. As for me, I expect that my class will be called. I shall do my best, Monsieur Warner.... It is a great happiness to know that the English are with us. We must stand by those poor Belgians. Have you heard the news, Monsieur?"
"Nothing since noon."
"Ah! The Bosches are ruining everything with their artillery. Liege, Namur, are crumbling; Louvain has been swept by shells. The great cupola forts are in ruins; everything is on fire; they are shooting the people in their houses, in the streets--the dead lie everywhere--women, children, in the ditches, in the fields, on the highroads. Ah, Monsieur Warner, c'est triste, allez!"
"Where did you hear such things, Francois?"
"It is already common talk. The noon bulletins of the Petit Journal confirm it. They say that our fort is shelling the Uhlans of Guillaume now. They say that the forest of Ausone crawls with them."
A waiter brought their tea; the gerant bowed himself out and sent a porter to the lumber room to collect and cord up Warner's canvases.
