.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 52404
   :PG.Title: The Girl Philippa
   :PG.Released: 2016-06-24
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Robert \W. Chambers
   :MARCREL.ill: Frank Craig
   :DC.Title: The Girl Philippa
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1916
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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THE GIRL PHILIPPA
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   .. _`"'Anywhere alone with you in the world would be a sufficient purpose in life for me'"`:

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      :alt: "'Anywhere alone with you in the world would be a sufficient purpose in life for me'"

      "'Anywhere alone with you in the world would be a sufficient purpose in life for me'"

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      *The*
      GIRL PHILIPPA

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      BY

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      ROBERT \W. CHAMBERS

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      ILLUSTRATED BY
      FRANK CRAIG

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      \D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
      NEW YORK LONDON
      1919

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      COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY
      ROBERT \W. CHAMBERS

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      1915, 1916, BY THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE COMPANY

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      Printed in the United States of America

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      TO MY SON
      BOBBY

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   BOB AT SIXTEEN

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..

   |    You can tell a better tale than I;
   |  Trap and wing you shoot a better score;
   |    You can cast a surer, lighter fly,
   |  Catch as can, you'd put me on the floor;
   |    Should I hoist a sail beneath the sky
   |  Yours the race, away and back to shore.

   |    You have mastered all my woodland lore,
   |  In the saddle you can give me spades;
   |    You have slain your first and mighty boar
   |  In the classic Croyden Forest shades;
   |    You have heard the Northern rivers roar,
   |  You have seen the Southern Everglades.

   |    You have creeled your Highland yellow trout
   |  Where the Scottish moorlands call us back;
   |    You have left me puzzled and in doubt
   |  Over tropic specimens I lack—
   |    Sphinxes that I know not, huge and stout;
   |  Butterflies, un-named, in blue and black.

   |    Well, we've had a jolly run, my son,
   |  Through a sunny world has lain our trail
   |    Trodden side by side with rod and gun
   |  Under azure skies where white clouds sail;
   |    —Send our journey is not nearly done!
   |  Send the light has not begun to fail.

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   *Envoi*

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..

   |    Yet, that day you tread the trail alone,
   |  With no slower comrade to escort
   |    On the path of spring with blossoms sown,
   |  You may deem me not so bad a sort,
   |    Smile and think, as one who would condone,
   |  "He was sure a perfectly good sport."

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   \R. \W. \C.
   Broadalbin; 1916.

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   DOG-DAYS (1914)

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..

   |    The mad dog of Europe
   |  Yelped in the dog-days' heat;
   |    To his sick legs he staggered up
   |  Swaying on twitching feet;
   |    Snarled when he saw the offered cup,
   |  And started down the street.

   |    All hell has set his brain aflame;
   |  All Europe shrieks with dread;
   |    All mothers call on Mary's name,
   |  Praying by shrine and bed,
   |    "For Jesus' sake!"—Yet all the same
   |  Each sees her son lie dead.

   |    "On Guard!" the Western bugles blow;
   |  "Boom!" from the Western main;
   |    The Brabant flail has struck its blow;
   |  The mad dog howls with pain
   |    But lurches on, uncertain, slow,
   |  Growling amid his slain.

   |    They beat and kick his dusty hide,
   |  He bleeds from every vein;
   |    On his red trail the Cossacks ride
   |  Across the reeking plain
   |    While gun-shots rip his bloody sides
   |  From Courland to Champagne.

   |    Under the weary moons and suns
   |  With phantom eyes aglow,
   |    Dog-trotting still the spectre runs
   |  Yelping at every blow
   |    'Til through its ribs the flashing guns
   |  And stars begin to show.

   |    The moon shines through its riven wrack;
   |  On the bleached skull the suns
   |    Have baked the crusted blood all black,
   |  But still the spectre runs,
   |    Jogging along its hell-ward track
   |  Lined with the tombs of Huns.

   |    Back to the grave from whence it came
   |  To foul the world with red;
   |    Back to its bed of ancient shame
   |  In the Hunnish tomb it fled
   |    Where God's own name is but a name
   |  And souls that lived lie dead.

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   THE GIRL PHILIPPA

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   FOREWORD

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On the twenty-eighth of June, 1914, the Archduke
Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne,
was murdered by a Serb in Serajevo, the capital
of Bosnia.  The murder was the most momentous crime
ever committed in the world, for it altered the
geography and the political and social history of that
planet, and changed the entire face of the civilized and
uncivilized globe.  Generations unborn were to feel the
consequences of that murder.

Incidentally, it vitally affected the life and career of
the girl Philippa.

Before the press of the United States received the
news, Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, the British Ambassador,
had been notified of the tragedy, and a few minutes
later he was in secret conference with the President.

The British Ambassador knew what he wanted, which
was more than the administration knew, and at this
hasty and secret conference he bluntly informed the
President that, in his opinion, war before midsummer
had now become inevitable; that there was every
probability of England being drawn into a world-wide
conflict; and that, therefore, an immediate decision
was necessary concerning certain pending negotiations.

The truth of this became apparent to the President.
The State Department's ominous information
concerning a certain Asiatic Empire, the amazing knowledge
in regard to the secret military and political activities
of Germany in the United States, the crass stupidity
of a Congress which was no better than an uneducated
nation deserved, the intellectual tatterdemalions in
whose care certain vitally important departments had
been confided—a momentary vision of what all this
might signify flickered fitfully in the presidential brain.

And, before Sir Cecil left, it was understood that
certain secret negotiations should be immediately
resumed and concluded as soon as possible—among other
matters the question of the Harkness shell.

About the middle of July the two governments had
arrived at an understanding concerning the Harkness
shell.  The basis of this transaction involved the
following principles, proposed and mutually accepted:

1st.  The Government of the United States agreed
to disclose to the British Government, and to no other
government, the secret of the Harkness shell, known to
ordnance experts as "the candle shell."

2nd.  The British Government agreed to disclose to
the United States Government, and to no other government,
the secrets of its new submarine seaplane, known
as "the flying fish," the inventor of which was one
Pillsbury, a Yankee, who had offered it in vain to his
own country before selling it to England.

3rd.  Both Governments solemnly engaged not to
employ either of these devices against each other in the
event of war.

4th.  The British Government further pledged itself
to restrain from violence a certain warlike and Asiatic
nation until the Government of the United States could
discover some method of placating that nation.

But other and even more important negotiations,
based upon the principle that the United States should
insure its people and its wealth by maintaining an army
and a navy commensurate with its population, its
importance, and its international obligations, fell
through owing to presidential indifference, congressional
ignorance, the historic imbecility of a political
party, and the smug vanity of a vast and half-educated
nation, among whose employees were numbered several
of the most perfect demagogues that the purlieus of
politics had ever germinated.

This, then, was the condition of affairs in the United
States when, on the nineteenth of July, the British
Ambassador was informed that through the treachery
of certain employees the plans and formula for the
Harkness shell had been abstracted.

But the British Embassy had learned of this catastrophe
through certain occult channels even before it
was reported to the United States Government; and
five hours after the information had reached Sir Cecil
Spring-Rice, two young men stepped aboard the Antwerp
liner *Zeeduyne* a few seconds before the gangway
was pulled up.

With the first turn of the steamer's screws the wheel
of fate also began to revolve, spinning out the web
of destiny so swiftly that already its meshes had fallen
over an obscure little town thousands of miles distant,
and its net already held a victim so obscure that few
except the French Government had ever heard of the
girl Philippa.

The two young men who had come aboard at the
last moment were nice-looking young men.  They
carried tennis bats, among other frivolous hand luggage,
and it was rumored very quickly on board that they
were two celebrated New Zealand tennis champions on
their way to the international tournament at Ostend.

It was the Captain who first seemed interested in
the rumor and who appeared to know all about the
famous New Zealand players, Halkett and Gray.

And this was odd, because when Halkett and Gray
came aboard their names did not figure on the
passenger list, no stateroom had been engaged for them,
and the Captain of the *Zeeduyne* had never before laid
eyes on either of them.

But he may have heard of them, for that morning
the British Embassy had called him on the telephone,
had talked for twenty minutes to him, and had arranged
for him to hold his steamer if necessary.  But it had
been necessary for the Captain to hold the *Zeeduyne*
for ten minutes only.

The voyage of the *Zeeduyne* was calm, agreeable,
and superficially uneventful.  There was much dancing
aboard.  Halkett and Gray danced well.  They had
come aboard knowing nobody; in a day or two they
seemed to have met everybody.  Which urbanity is not
at all characteristic of Englishmen.  New Zealanders,
it seemed, were quite different.

The ocean being on its best behavior nearly
everybody appeared triumphantly on deck.  There were,
however, several passengers who maintained exclusiveness
in their staterooms; and among these were two
German gentlemen who preferred the stateroom they
shared in common.  However, they took the air
sometimes, and always rather late at night.

Evidently they were commercial gentlemen, for they
sent several wireless messages to Cologne during the
voyage, using a code of their own which seemed to
concern perfumes and cosmetics and, in particular, a
toilet soap known as Calypso soap.

In return they received several wireless messages,
also apparently in some commercial code, and all
mentioning perfumes and Calypso soap.

And a copy of every code message which they
dispatched or received was sent to the Captain of the
*Zeeduyne*, and that affable and weather-reddened
Belgian always handed these copies to the tennis champions
of New Zealand, who spent considerable time poring
over them in the only spot on the steamer which was
absolutely safe from intrusion—the Captain's private
quarters.

Then, in their turn, as the steamer drew nearer to
the Belgian coast, they sent a number of wireless
messages in private code.  Some of these messages were
directed to the British Consul at Maastricht, some to
the British Ambassador at Brussels, some to private
individuals in Antwerp.

But these details did not interfere with the young
men's social activities on board, or with their
popularity.  Wherever Halkett and Gray walked, they
walked surrounded by maidens and pursued by
approving glances of relatives and parents.

But the two German gentlemen who kept their cabin
by day and prowled sometimes by night were like
Mr. Kipling's cat; when they walked they walked by their
wild lone.  Only the chaste moon was supposed to
notice them.  But always either Halkett or Gray
was watching them, sometimes dressed in the jaunty
uniform of a deck steward, or in the clothing of a
common sailor, or in the gorgeous raiment of a ship's
officer.  The two Germans never noticed them as they
walked in the dark by their wild lone.

And always while one of the young men watched
on deck, the other ransacked the stateroom and luggage
of the gentlemen from Germany—but ransacked in vain.

As the *Zeeduyne* steamed into the Scheldt, several
thousand miles away, in the city of Washington, the
French Ambassador telegraphed in cipher to his
Government that the secret plans and formula for the
Harkness shell, which had been acquired by England
from the United States Government, had been stolen
on the eve of delivery to the British Ambassador; that
French secret agents were to inspect the arrival of all
Dutch, Belgian, and German steamers; that all agents
in the French service resident or stationed near the
north or northeastern frontier of France were to
watch the arrival of all strangers from Holland or
Belgium, and, if possible, follow and observe any
individual who might be likely to have been involved in
such a robbery.

Immediately, from the Military Intelligence Department
in Paris orders were telegraphed and letters sent
to thousands of individuals of every description and
station in life, to be on the alert.

Among others who received such letters was a
denationalized individual named Wildresse, who kept a
cabaret in the little town of Ausone.

The cabaret was called the Café de Biribi.  Wildresse
insisted that the name had been his own choice.  But
it was at the request of the Government that his cabaret
bore the ominous title as an ever-present reminder to
Wildresse that his personal liberty and the liberty of
his worthless son and heir depended on his good
behavior and his alacrity in furnishing the French
Government with whatever information it demanded.

The letter sent to Monsieur Wildresse read as
follows:


MONSIEUR:

Undescribed individuals carrying important document
stolen from the United States Government may appear in
your vicinity.

Observe diligently, but with discretion, the arrival of
any strangers at your café.  If suspicions warrant, lay a
complaint before local police authorities.  Use every
caution.  The fugitives probably are German, but may be
American.  Inform the girl Philippa of what is required.
And remember that Biribi is preferable to Noumea.


When Wildresse received this letter he went into the
bedroom of the girl Philippa, who was standing before
her looking glass busily rouging her cheeks and painting
her lips.  She wore no corset, her immature figure
requiring none.

"If they come our way, Philippa," growled Wildresse,
"play the baby—do you hear?  Eyes wide and artless,
virginal candor alternating with indifference.  In other
words, be yourself."

"That is not difficult," said the girl Philippa,
powdering her nose.  "When I lose my innocence then it
will mean real acting."

Wildresse glared at her out of his little black eyes.

"*When* you lose it, eh?" he repeated.  "Well, when
you do, I'll break your neck.  Do you understand
that?"

The girl continued to powder her nose.

"Who would marry me?" she remarked indifferently.
"Also, now it is too late for me to become a religieuse
like—"

"You'll carry on the business!" he growled.
"That's what you'll do—with Jacques, when the Sbirs
de Biribi let him loose.  As for marrying, you can
think it over when you are thirty.  You'll have a dot
by that time, if the damned Government lets me alone.
And a woman with a dot need not worry about
marriage."

The girl was now busy with her beautiful chestnut
hair; Wildresse's pock-marked features softened.

"*Allons*," he said in his harsh voice, "lilies grow
prettiest on dunghills.  Also, you are like me—serious,
not silly.  I have no fears.  Besides, you are where I
have my eye on you."

"If I am what I am it is because I prefer it, not
on account of your eye," she said listlessly.

"Is that so!" he roared.  "All the same, continue to
prefer virtue and good conduct, and I'll continue to
use my two eyes, nom de Dieu!  And if any strangers
who look like Germans come into the café—any
strangers at all, no matter what they look like—keep
your eyes on them, do you hear?"

"I hear," said the girl Philippa.

The web of fate had settled over her at last.

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About that time the steamer *Zeeduyne* was docking
at Antwerp.

Two hours later two German gentlemen in a hurry
registered at the Hôtel St. Antoine in the Place Verte,
and were informed that they were expected immediately
in room 23.

A page conducted them to the corridor and indicated
the room; they thanked him and sent him back for
their luggage which he had, it seemed, neglected to
bring from the lobby.

Then both German gentlemen went to the door of
room 23, knocked, and were admitted; and the door
was rather violently closed and locked.

The next instant there came a crash, a heavy fall,
dull sounds of feet scuffling behind the locked door, a
series of jarring, creaking noises, then silence.

A chambermaid came into the corridor to listen, but
the silence was profound, and presently she went away.

When the boy came back with the hand luggage
and knocked at 23, Halkett opened the door a little
way and, tipping the lad with a five-franc piece, bade
him leave the luggage outside the door for the present.

Later, Gray cautiously opened the door and drew
in the luggage.

Ten minutes later both young men came leisurely
out of the room, locking the door on the outside.  They
each carried hand luggage.  Halkett lighted a
cigarette.

At the desk Gray requested that the gentlemen in
No. 23 should not be disturbed that night, as they were
lying down and in need of repose.  Which was true.

Then both young men departed in a cab.  At the
railroad station, however, an unusually generous
stranger offered Gray a motor cycle for nothing.  So
he strapped his bag to it, nodded a smiling adieu to
Halkett, and departed.

Halkett bought a ticket to Maastricht, Holland,
which he had no idea of using, and presently came out
of the station and walked eastward rather rapidly.  A
man who also had bought a ticket for Maastricht rose
from his seat in the waiting room and walked stealthily
after him, making a signal to another man.

This second man immediately stepped into a station
telephone booth and called up room 23 at the Hôtel
St. Antoine, where two German gentlemen, badly
battered, were now conferring with a third German
gentleman who had paid no attention to instructions
from the hotel office but had gone to room 23, knocked
until out of patience, and had then summoned the
*maître d'hôtel*, who unlocked the door with a master-key.

Which operation revealed two Teutons flat on their
backs, very carefully tied up with rope and artistically
gagged.

This unbattered gentleman now conversed over the
telephone with the man at the railroad station.

A few moments later he and the two battered ones
left the hotel hastily in a taxicab, joined the man at
the railroad station, and drove rapidly eastward.

.. vspace:: 2

And before forty-eight hours had elapsed, each one
of these four men operating in pairs, had attempted
to kill the young man named Halkett.  Twice he got
away.  The third time two of them succeeded in locating
him in the little town of Diekirch, a town which
Halkett was becoming more and more anxious to leave,
as he finally began to realize what a hornet's nest he
and his friend Gray had succeeded in stirring up.

And all the while the invisible net of destiny in which
he now found himself entangled was every minute
enmeshing in its widening spread new people whose fate
was to be linked with his, and who had never even heard
of him.  Among them was the girl Philippa.





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   PROLOGUE

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A narrow-gauge railroad track runs through
the woods from Diekirch, connecting the two
main lines; and on the deserted wooden platform
beside this track stood Halkett, his suitcase in
one hand, the other hand in his side pocket, awaiting
the shuttle train with an impatience born of deepest
anxiety.

The young man's anxiety was presently justified, for,
as he sauntered to and fro, uneasily scanning the track
and the unbroken woods around him, always keeping
his right hand in his coat pocket, two men crept out
from behind separate trees in the forest directly behind
the platform, and he turned around only in time to
obtain a foreshortened and disquieting view of the
muzzle of a revolver.

"Hands up—" began the man behind the weapon;
but as he was in the very act of saying it, a jet of
ammonia entered his mouth through the second button
of Halkett's waistcoat, and he reeled backward off the
platform, his revolver exploding toward the sky, and
fell into the grass, jerking and kicking about like an
unhealthy cat in a spasm.

Already Halkett and the other man had clinched;
the former raining blows on the latter's Teutonic
countenance, which proceeding so dazed, diverted, and
bewildered him that he could not seem to find the
revolver bulging in his side pocket.

It was an automatic, and Halkett finally got hold of
it and hurled it into the woods.

Then he continued the terrible beating which he
was administering.

"Get out!" he said in German to the battered man,
still battering him.  "Get out, or I'll kill you!"

He hit him another cracking blow, turned and wrested
the other pistol from the writhing man on the grass,
whirled around, and went at the battered one again.

"I've had enough of this!" he breathed, heavily.  "I
tell you I'll kill you if you bother me again!  I could
do it now—but it's too much like murder if you're not
in uniform!"

The man on the grass had managed to evade suffocation;
he got up now and staggered off toward the
woods, and Halkett drove his companion after him
at the point of his own revolver.

"Keep clear of me!" he said.  "If you do any more
telephoning or telegraphing it will end in murder.  I've
had just about enough, and if any more of your friends
continue to push this matter after I enter France, just
as surely as I warn you now, I'll defend my own life
by taking theirs.  You can telephone that to them if
you want to!"

As he stood on the edge of the wooden platform,
revolver lifted, facing the woods where his two assailants
had already disappeared, the toy-like whistle of
an approaching train broke the hot, July stillness.

Before it stopped, he hurled the remaining revolver
into the woods across the track, then, as the train drew
up and a guard descended to open a compartment door
for him, he cast a last keen glance at the forest behind
him.

Nothing stirred there, not even a leaf.

But before the train had been under way five minutes
a bullet shattered the glass of the window beside which
he had been seated; and he spent the remainder of
the journey flat on his back smoking cigarettes and
wondering whether he was going to win through to the
French frontier, to Paris, to Calais, to London, or
whether they'd get him at last and, what was of infinitely
greater importance, a long, thin envelope which
he carried stitched inside his undershirt.

That was really what mattered, not what might
become of a stray Englishman.  He knew it; he realized
it without any illusion whatever.  It was the contents
of this envelope that mattered, not his life.

Yet, so far, he had managed to avoid taking life in
defense of his envelope.  In fact, he traveled unarmed.
Now, if matters continued during his journey through
France as they had begun and continued while he was
crossing Holland and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg,
he would be obliged to take life or lose his own.

And yet, if he did kill somebody, that meant arrest
and investigation by the police of France.  And such
an investigation might be fatal to the success of his
undertaking—quite as fatal, in fact, as though he
himself were killed.

The main thing was to get that envelope and its
contents to London.

His instructions were not to mail it, but to take it
in person, or to send it, if necessary, by another
messenger through other channels.

One thing became more and more evident to him; the
time had now arrived when certain people unknown to
him by sight had decided to kill him as the only way out
of the affair.

Would they actually go so far as to kill him in
France, with the chance of the French police seizing
that envelope before they could seize it and clear out
with it to Berlin?  Would they hazard the risk of
France obtaining cognizance of a matter which so
vitally concerned Germany, rather than permit that
information to reach England?

Halkett lay on his back and smoked and did not know.

But he was slowly coming to the conclusion that
one thing was now imperative: the envelope must not
be found upon his person if he were killed.

But what on earth to do with it until it could be
safely transferred to the proper person he had not
the slightest idea.


That evening, as he changed trains at the frontier,
in the lamp-lit dimness of the station platform he was
fired at twice, and not hit.

A loud outcry naturally ensued; a stampede of
passengers who tried to escape, a rush of others who
desired to see what had happened—much hubbub and
confusion, much shouting in several languages.

But nobody could be found who had fired two shots
from a revolver, and nobody admitted that they had
been shot at.

And so, as nobody had been hit, the gendarmes,
guards, and railway officials were in a quandary.

And the train rolled out of the station with Halkett
aboard, a prey to deepest anxiety concerning his long
thin envelope.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER I`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER I

.. vspace:: 2

Somebody at Warner's elbow spoke to him in
French.  He turned his head leisurely: a
well-dressed young fellow, evidently an Englishman,
was striving to maintain a place beside him in the
noisy, market day crowd.

"Pardon, Monsieur, are you English?"

"American," replied Warner briefly, and without
enthusiasm.

"My name is Halkett," said the other, with a quick
smile.  "I'm English, and I'm in trouble.  Could you
spare me a moment?"

To Warner the man did not look the typical British
dead-beat, nor had he any of the earmarks and
mannerisms of the Continental beach-comber.  Yet he was,
probably, some species or other of that wearisome and
itinerant genus.

"I'm listening," said the young American resignedly.
"Continue your story."

"There's such a row going on here—couldn't we
find a quieter place?"

"I can hear you perfectly well, I tell you!"

Halkett said:

"If I try to talk to you here I'll be overheard,
and that won't do.  I'm very sorry to inconvenience
you, but really I'm in a fix.  What a noise these
people are making!  Do you mind coming somewhere else?"

"Say what you desire to say here," returned Warner
bluntly.  "And perhaps it might save time if you begin
with the last chapter; I think I can guess the rest of
the story."

The features of the American expressed boredom to
the point of unfriendly indifference.  The Englishman
looked at him, perplexed for a moment, then his
sun-bronzed face lighted up with another quick smile.

"You're quite mistaken," he said.  "I don't expect
the classic remittance from England, and I don't require
the celebrated twenty-franc loan until it arrives.  You
take me for that sort, I see, but I'm not.  I don't need
money.  May I tell you what I do need—rather
desperately?"

"Yes, if you choose."

"I need a friend."

"Money is easier to pick up," remarked Warner drily.

"I know that.  May I ask my favor of you all the same?"

"Go ahead."

"Thanks, I will.  But can't we get out of this crowd?
What is going on in this town anyway?"

"Market day.  It's like this once a month in Ausone.
Otherwise the town is as dead as any other French
provincial town."

Shoulder to shoulder they threaded their way
through the crowded market square, amid the clatter
of sabots, the lowing of cattle, the incessant bleating
of sheep.  Ducks quacked from crates in wagons, geese
craned white necks and hissed above the heads of the
moving throngs; hogs squealed and grunted; fowls
hanging by their legs from the red fists of sturdy
peasant women squawked and flapped.

Cheap-Jack shows of all sorts encumbered the square
and adjacent streets and alleys—gingerbread booths,
shooting ranges, photograph galleries, moving-picture
shows, theaters for ten sous.  Through the lowing,
bleating, and cockcrowing, the drumming and squeaking
of Punch and Judy, and the brassy dissonance of
half a dozen bands, mournful and incessant strains
from several merry-go-rounds continued audible.

But the steady clatter of sabots on stony pavements,
and the ceaseless undertone of voices, swelling,
subsiding, dominated the uproar, softening the
complaint of kine and feathered fowl to a softly
cheerful harmony suggestive of summer breezes and green
fields.

On the dusty Boulevard d'Athos—the typical solitary
promenade of such provincial towns—there were,
as usual, very few people—the inevitable nurses here
and there, wheeling prams; a discouraged, red-trousered
and sou-less soldier or two sprawling on benches under
the chestnut trees; rarely a passing pedestrian, more
often a prowling dog.

At the head of the Boulevard d'Athos, where the
rue d'Auros crosses, Warner halted under the shade
of the chestnuts, for the July sun was very hot.  His
unconvinced grey eyes now rested inquiringly on the
young Englishman who had called himself Halkett.  He
said:

"What species of trouble are you in?"

Halkett shook his head.

"I can't tell you what the trouble is; I may only
ask you to help me a bit—"  The quick smile
characteristic of him glimmered in his eyes again—a
winning smile, hinting of latent recklessness.  "I have my
nerve with me, you see—as you Americans have it," he
added.  "You're thinking something of that sort, I
fancy."

Warner smiled too, rather faintly, but remained
silent.

"This is what I want you to do," continued Halkett.
"I've a long thin envelope in my pocket.  I'd like to
have you take it from me and slip it into your breast
pocket and then button your coat.  Is that too much
to ask?"

"*What!*"

"That's all I want you to do.  Then if you wouldn't
mind giving me your name and address?  And that is
really all I ask."

Said the American, amused and surprised:

"That airy request of yours requires a trifle more
explanation than you seem inclined to offer."

"I know it does.  I can't offer it.  Only—you won't
get into trouble if you keep that envelope buttoned
tightly under your coat until I come for it again."

"But I'm not going to do that!"

"Why?"

"Why the devil should I?  I don't propose to wander
about France carrying papers concerning which I know
nothing—to oblige a young man about whom I know
even less."

"I quite see that," admitted Halkett seriously.  "I
shouldn't feel inclined to do such a thing either."

"Can't you tell me what is the nature of these
papers?—Or something—some explanation——"

"I'm sorry."

"And why do you propose to trust me with them?"
continued Warner, curiously.  "How do you know I am
honest?  How do you know I won't examine your packet
as soon as you clear out?"

Halkett looked up with his quick and winning smile:

"I'll take that risk."

"Why?  You don't know me."

"I had a good look at you in the market square
before I spoke to you."

"Oh.  You think you are a psychologist?"

"Of sorts.  It's a part of my business in life."

"Suppose," said Warner, smiling, "you explain a
little more clearly to me exactly what is your actual
business in life."

"Very glad to.  I write."

"Books?"

"No; just—stories."

"Fiction?"

"As one might say, facts rather than fiction."

"You are a realist?" suggested Warner with slight
irony.

"I try to be.  But do you know, there is more
romance in realism than in fairy tales?"

Warner, considerably diverted, nodded:

"I know.  You belong to the modern school, I take it."

"Very modern.  So modern, in fact, that my work
concerns tomorrow rather than today."

Warner nodded again:

"I see.  You are a futurist—opportunist.  There
are a lot of clever men working on those lines in
England....  Still—" he glanced amusedly at Halkett
"—that scarcely explains your rather unusual request.
Why should I take charge of an envelope for *you*?"

"My dear fellow, I can't answer that....  Still—I
may say this much; I'm hard put to it—rather
bewildered—had a rotten time of it in the Grand Duchy
and in Belgium—so to speak—"

"What do you mean by a rotten time?"

"Rows."

"I don't understand.  You'll have to be more
explicit."

"Well—it had to do with this envelope I carry.
Some chaps of sorts wanted to get it away from me.
Do you see? ... I had a lively time, and I rather
expect to have another before I get home—if I ever
get there."

Warner looked at him out of clear, sophisticated eyes:

"See here, my ingenuous British friend," he said,
"play square with me, if you play at all."

"I shan't play otherwise."

"Very well, then; why are you afraid to carry that
envelope?"

"Because," said Halkett, coolly, "if I'm knocked on
the head and that envelope is found in my clothing and
is stolen, the loss of my life would be the lesser loss to
my friends."

"Is anybody trying to *kill* you?"

Halkett shrugged his shoulders; but there seemed
to be neither swagger nor bravado in his careless
gesture of assent.  He said:

"Listen; here's my case in brief.  I saw you in the
crowd yonder, and I made up my mind concerning you.
I have to think quickly sometimes; I took a good look
at you and—"  He waved one hand.  "You look like a
soldier.  I don't know whether you are or not.  But I
am ready to trust you.  That's all."

"Do you mean to say that you are in any real
personal danger?"

"Yes.  But that doesn't count.  I can look out for
myself.  What worries me is this envelope.  Couldn't
you take charge of it?  I'd be very grateful."

"How long do you expect me to carry it about?"

"I don't know.  I don't know whether anything is
likely to happen to me today in this town—or tomorrow
on the train—or in Paris—I have no means of
knowing.  I merely want to get to Paris, if I can, and
send a friend back here for that envelope."

"I thought you were to return for it yourself."

"Maybe.  Maybe I'll send you a letter by a friend—just
a line for him to give you, saying it's all right."

"Mr. Halkett, you have rather a disconcerting way
of expressing unlimited confidence in me—"

"Yes, I trust you."

"But *why*?"

"You look right."

"That's no reason!"

"My dear chap, I'm in a corner, and instinct rules,
not reason!  You see, I—I'm rather afraid they may
get me before I can clear out."

"*Who'll* get you?" demanded Warner impatiently.

"That's the worst of it; I don't know these fellows
by sight.  The same chaps never try it on twice."

Warner said quietly:

"What is this very dramatic mess you're in?  Can't
you give me a hint?"

"I'm sorry."

"Shall I give *you* a hint?"

"If you like."

"Are the *police* after you?"

"No."

"You're sure of that?"

"Quite sure.  I don't blame you for asking.  It looks
that way.  But it isn't."

"But you are being followed across Europe by people
who want this envelope of yours?"

"Oh, yes."

"You expect personal violence from them?"

Halkett nodded and gazed absently down the almost
deserted boulevard.

"Then why don't you appeal to the police—if your
conscience is clear?" demanded Warner bluntly.

Halkett's quick smile broke out.

"My dear chap," he said, "I'd do so if I were in
England.  I can't, as matters stand.  The French
police are no use to me."

"Why don't you go to your consulate?"

"I did.  The Consul is away on his vacation.  And
I didn't like the looks of the vice-consul."

"What?"

"No.  I didn't like his name, either."

"What do you mean?"

"His name is Schmidt.  I—didn't care for it."

Warner laughed, and Halkett looked up quickly,
smiling.

"I'm queer.  I admit it.  But you ought to have come
to some conclusion concerning me by this time.  Do you
think me a rotter, or a criminal, or a lunatic, or a
fugitive from justice?  Or will you chance it that I'm
all right, and will you stand by me?"

Warner laughed again:

"I'll take a chance on you," he said.  "Give me your
envelope, you amazing Britisher!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER II`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER II

.. vspace:: 2

Halkett cast a rapid glance around him;
apparently he saw nothing to disturb him.
Then he whipped out from his pocket a long,
very thin envelope and passed it to Warner, who
immediately slipped it into the breast pocket of his
coat.

"That's very decent of you," said Halkett in a low
voice.  His attractive face had grown serious and a
trifle pale.  "I shan't forget this," he said.

Warner laughed.

"You're a very convincing Englishman," he said.
"I can't believe you're not all right."

"I'm right enough.  But you are *all* white.  What is
your name?"

"I had better write it out for you."

"No.  If things go wrong with me, I don't want your
name and address discovered in my pockets.  Tell it
to me; I'll remember."

Warner looked at him rather gravely for a moment,
then:

"James Warner is my name.  I'm a painter.  My
present address is La Pêche d'Or at Saïs."

"By any chance," asked Halkett, "are you the military
painter, James Warner, whose pictures we know
very well in England?"

"I don't know how well my pictures are known in
England.  I usually paint military subjects."

"I *knew* you were right!" exclaimed Halkett.  "Any
man who paints the way you paint *must* be right!
Fancy my actually knowing the man who did 'Lights
Out' and 'The Last Salute'!"

Warner laughed, coloring a little.

"Did you really like those pictures?"

"Everybody liked them.  I fancy every officer in
our army owns a colored print of one or more of
your pictures.  And to think I should run across you
in this God-forsaken French town!  And to think it
should be *you* who is willing to stand by me at this
pinch!  Well—I judged you rightly, you see."

Warner smiled, then his features altered.

"Listen, Halkett," he said, dropping instinctively the
last trace of formality with a man who, honest or
otherwise, was plainly of his own caste.  "I have tried to
size you up and I can't.  You say you are a writer,
but you look to me more like a soldier.  Anyway, I've
concluded that you're straight.  And, that being my
conviction, can't I do more for you than carry an
envelope about for you?"

"That's very decent of you, Warner.  No, thanks,
there is nothing else you could do."

"I thought you said you are likely to get into a row?"

"I am.  But I don't know when or where.  Besides,
I wouldn't drag you into anything like that."

"Where are you stopping in Ausone?"

"At the Boule d'Argent.  I got in only an hour
before I met you."

"Do you still believe you are being followed?"

"I have been followed so far.  Maybe I've lost them.
I hope so."

Warner said:

"I came into town to buy canvases and colors.
That's how I happen to be in Ausone.  It's only an
hour's drive to Saïs.  Why don't you come back with
me?  Saïs is a pretty hamlet.  Few people have ever
heard of it.  The Golden Peach is an excellent inn.
Why don't you run down and lie snug for a while?  It's
the last place on earth anybody would think of looking
for a man who's done—what I suppose *you've* done."

Halkett, who had been listening with a detached
smile, jerked his head around and looked at Warner.

"What do you suppose I've done?" he asked coolly.

"I think you're a British officer who has been abroad
after military information—and that you've got it—in
this envelope."

Halkett's expressionless face and fixed eyes did not
alter.  But he said quietly:

"You are about the only American in France who
might have been likely to think that.  Isn't it the
devil's own luck that I should pick *you* for my friend
in need?"

Warner shrugged:

"You need not answer that implied question of mine,
Halkett.  My theory concerning you suits me.  Anyway,
I believe you *are* in trouble.  And I think you'd
better come back to Saïs with me."

"Thinking what you think, do you still mean to
stand by me?"

"Certainly.  I don't *know* what's in your damned
envelope, do I?  Very well; I don't wish to know.  Shall
we stroll back to the Boule d'Argent?"

"Right-o!  What a devilish decent chap you are,
Warner!"

"Oh, no; I'm a gambler by disposition.  This business
amuses me!"

"Are you stopping at the Boule d'Argent, too?"
asked Halkett after a moment.

"I lunched there and left my stack of *toiles* and my
sack of colors there.  Also, I have a dogcart and a
horse in the stables."

They turned away together, side by side, crossed
the boulevard, traversed the deserted square in front
of the beautiful old church of Sainte Cassilda, and
entered the stony rue d'Auros, which led directly into
the market square.

The ancient town of Ausone certainly seemed to be
very much *en fête*, and the rue d'Auros—the main
business thoroughfare—was crowded with townspeople,
country folk, and soldiers on leave, clustering not only
all over the sidewalks, but in the middle of the streets
and squares, filling the terraces of the cafés and the
courts of the two hotels, the Boule d'Argent and the
Hôtel des Voyageurs.

Sunlight filtered through the double rank of chestnut
trees in full leaf; the shade was even denser and cooler
by the stone bridge where, between stone walls, the
little stony river flowed, crystal clear.  Here women
and young girls, in holiday attire, sat on the benches,
knitting or chatting with their friends; children played
along the stone embankment, where beds of brilliant
flowers bloomed; the red trousers of soldiers and the
glittering brass helmets of firemen added a gayety to
the color and movement.

"They're a jolly people, these French," remarked
Halkett.

"They're very agreeable to live among."

"You've lived in France for some time?"

"Yes," said Warner.  "My headquarters are in
Paris, but every summer I take a class of American
art students—girls—to Saïs for outdoor instruction.
I've half a dozen there now, plugging away at *Plein Air*."

"Do you like to teach?"

"Well, not particularly.  It interferes with my own
work.  But I have to do it.  Painting pictures doesn't
keep the kettle boiling."

"I see."

"I don't really mind it.  Saïs is a charming place;
I've known it for years.  Besides, a friend of mine lives
there—an American woman, Madame de Moidrey.  Her
sister, Miss Brooks, is one of the young girls in my
class.  So it makes it agreeable; and Madame de
Moidrey is very hospitable."

Halkett smiled.

"Painters," he said, "have, proverbially, a pretty
good time in life."

"Soldiers do, too; don't they?"

Halkett's smile became fixed.

"I've heard so.  The main thing about a profession
is to choose one which will take you out of doors."

"Yours does.  You can sit under a tree and write
your stories, can't you?"

The Englishman laughed:

"Of course I can.  That's the beauty of realism; all
you have to do is to walk about outdoors and jot down
a faithful description of everything you see."

They had reached the little stone *quai* under the
chestnut and lime trees; the cool ripple of the river
mingled with the laughter of young girls and the gay
voices of children at play made a fresh and cheerful
sound in the July sunshine.

They leaned against the mossy river wall and looked
out under the trees across the square which surged
with people.  Flags fluttered from booths and white
tents; the blare of bands, the tumult of wooden shoes,
the noises of domestic creatures, and human voices all
mingled with the unceasing music from the merry-go-rounds.

Across the esplanade there was a crowd around the
Café de Biribi—people constantly passing to and
fro—and strains of lively music leaked out from within.

After a moment Warner suggested that they go
over and have something light and cool to drink.

"I've never been in there," he remarked, as they
started, "but I've always intended to go.  It's kept by
a rascal named Wildresse—a sporting man, fight
promoter, and an ex-gambler.  You've heard of the
Cabaret Wildresse in Paris, haven't you?"

"I think I have," replied Halkett.  "It was an all
night place on the Grand Boulevard, wasn't it?"

"Yes; opposite the Grand Hôtel.  This is the same
proprietor.  He's an American—a shady sort of
sport—and he certainly must have been a pretty bad lot,
because the police made him leave Paris six years
ago—what for, I don't know—but they fired him out, and
he started his cabaret business here in Ausone.  You
hear of it everywhere.  People come even from Nancy
and Liége and Louvain to dance, and dine here—certain
sorts of people, I mean.  The cuisine is celebrated.
There are cockfights and other illegal attractions."

The Cabaret Biribi formed the corner of the square.
It was a detached stucco structure surrounded by green
trees and pretty shrubbery; and in the rear the grounds
ran down to the river, where a dozen rowboats were
moored along that still, glassy reach of water which
extends for several miles south of Ausone between
meadows and pleasantly wooded banks.

They found the Cabaret Biribi crowded when they
went in; a lively young person was capering on the
little stage at the end of the dancing floor, and singing
while capering; soldiers and civilians, with their own
or other people's sweethearts, sat at the zinc tables,
consuming light beer and wine and syrups; a rather
agreeable stringed orchestra played intermittently.

Waiters scurried about with miraculously balanced
trays on high; old man Wildresse roamed furtively in
the background, his gorilla arms behind his back, his
blunt fingers interlocked, keeping a sly and ratty eye
on waiters and guests, and sometimes on the young
woman cashier who lounged listlessly upon her high
chair behind the wire cage, one rather lank leg crossed
over the other, and her foot swinging in idle time to
the music.

The moment that Warner and Halkett appeared in the
doorway, looking about them to find a table, Wildresse
crossed the floor and said to his cashier in a whisper:

"It's one of those men.  Schmidt's description might
fit either.  If they don't make eyes at you and ask you
to dance and drink with them, come over and join
them anyway.  And I want you to pump them dry.  Do
you hear?"

"Yes, I hear."

Warner looked across the room at her again when
he and Halkett were seated.  She had considerable
paint on her cheeks, and her lips seemed too red to
be natural.  Otherwise she was tragically young, thin,
excepting her throat and cheeks—a grey-eyed, listless
young thing with a mass of chestnut hair crowning
her delicately shaped head.

She made change languidly for waiter and guest;
acknowledged the salutes of those entering and leaving
without more than a politely detached interest; smiled
at the jests of facetious customers with mechanical
civility when importuned; and, when momentarily idle,
swung her long, slim foot in time to the music and rested
her painted cheek on one hand.

Her indifferent grey eyes, sweeping the hall, presently
rested on Warner; and remained on him with a
sort of idle insolence until his own shifted.

Halkett was saying:

"You know that girl—the cashier, I mean—is
extraordinarily pretty.  Have you noticed her, Warner?"

Warner turned again:

"I've been looking at her.  She's rather thickly
tinted, isn't she?"

"Yes.  But in spite of the paint.  She has a charmingly
shaped head.  Some day she'll have a figure."

"Oh, yes; figures and maturity come late to that
type....  If you'll notice, Halkett, those hands of
hers are really exquisite.  So are her features—the
nose is delicate, the eyes beautifully drawn—she's all
in good drawing—even her mouth, which is a little too
full.  As an amateur, don't you agree with me?"

"Very much so.  She's a distinct type."

"Yes—there's a certain appeal about her....  It's
odd, isn't it—the inexplicable something about some
women that attracts.  It doesn't depend on beauty at all."

Halkett sipped his Moselle wine.

"No, it doesn't depend on beauty, on intelligence, on
character, or on morals.  It's in spite of them—in
defiance, sometimes.  Now, take that thin girl over
there; her lips and cheeks are painted; she has the
indifferent, disenchanted, detached glance of the too
early wise.  The chances are that she isn't respectable.
And in spite of all that, Warner—well—look at her."

"I see.  A man could paint a troubling portrait of
her—a sermon on canvas."

"Just as she sits there," nodded Halkett.

"Just as she sits there, chin on palm, one lank leg
crossed over the other, and her slim foot dangling....
And the average painter would make her seem
all wrong, Halkett; and I might, too, except for those
clear grey eyes and their childish indifference to the
devil's world outside their ken."  He inspected her for
a moment more, then: "Yes, in spite of rouge and
other obvious elementals, I should paint her as she
really is, Halkett; and no man in his heart would dare
doubt her after I'd finished."

"That's not realism," remarked Halkett, laughing.

"It's the vital essence of it.  You know I'm something
of a gambler.  Well, if I painted that girl as she
sits there now, in this noisy, messy, crowded cabaret,
with the artificial tint on lip and cheek—if I painted
her just as she appears to us, and in all the insolently
youthful relaxation of her attitude—I'd be gambling
all the while with myself that the soul inside her is as
clean as a flame; and I'd paint that conviction into her
portrait with every brush stroke!  What do you think
of that view of her?"

"As you Americans say, you're some poet," observed
Halkett, laughingly.

"A poet is an advanced psychologist.  He begins
where scientific deduction ends."

"That's what makes your military pictures so convincing,"
said Halkett, with his quick smile.  "It's not
only the correctness of details and the spirited drawing
and color, but you *do* see into the very souls of the
men you paint, and their innermost characters are
there, revealed in the supreme crisis of the moment."  He
smiled quietly.  "I'll believe it if *you* say that
young girl over there is quite all right."

"I'd paint her that way, anyhow."

The singing on the stage had ceased from troubling,
and the stringed orchestra was playing one of the
latest and most inane of dance steps.  A clumsy
*piou-piou* got up with his fresh-cheeked partner; other
couples rose from the sloppy tables, and in
another moment the dancing floor was uncomfortably
crowded.

It was a noisy place; a group of summer touring
students from Louvain, across the border, were singing
"La Brabançonne"—a very patriotic and commendable
attempt, but it scarcely harmonized with the dance
music.  Perspiring waiters rushed hither and thither,
their trays piled high; the dancers trotted and spun
around and galloped about over the waxed floor; the
young girl behind her wire wicket swung her narrow
foot to and fro and gazed imperturbably out across
the tumult.

"Philippa!" cried one of the Louvain students,
hammering on the table with his beer glass.  "Come out
from behind your *guichet* and dance with me!"

The girl's grey eyes turned superciliously toward
the speaker, but she neither answered nor moved her
head.

The young man blew a kiss toward her and attempted
to climb upon the zinc table, but old man Wildresse,
who was prowling near, tapped him on the shoulder.

"Pas de bêtise!" he growled.  "Soyez sage!  Restez
tranquille, nom de Dieu!"

"I merely desired the honor of dancing with your
charming cashier—"

"Allons!  Assez!  It's sufficient to ask her, isn't it?
A woman dances with whom she chooses."

And, grumbling, he walked on with his heavy sidling
step, hands clasped behind him, his big, hard, smoothly
shaven face lowered and partly turned, as though eternally
listening for somebody just at his heels.  Always
sidling nearer to the table where Warner and Halkett
were seated, he paused, presently, and looked down
at them, shot a glance across at the girl, Philippa,
caught her eye, nodded significantly.  Then, addressing
Warner and his new friend:

"Well, gentlemen," he said in English, "are you
amusing yourselves in the Café Biribi?"

"Sufficiently," nodded Warner.

Wildresse peeped stealthily over his shoulder, as
though expecting to surprise a listener.  Then his very
small black eyes stole toward Halkett, and he furtively
examined him.

"*Jour de fête*," he remarked in his harshly resonant
voice.  "Grand doings in town tonight.  Do you
gentlemen dine here this evening?"

"I think not," said Warner.

"I am sorry.  It will be gay.  There are dance
partners to be had for a polite bow.  You should see my
little *caissière* yonder!"  He made a grunting sound
and kissed his blunt fingers to the ceiling.  "M-m-m!"
he growled.  "*She* can dance!  But I don't permit her
to dance very often.  Only a special client now and
then——"

"May we consider ourselves special clients?" inquired
Warner, amused.

"Oh, I don't say yes and I don't say no."  He jerked
his round, shaven head.  "It all depends on *her*.  She
dances with whom she pleases.  And if the Emperor
of China asked her, nevertheless she should be free to
please herself."

"She's very pretty," said Halkett.

"Others have said so before you in the Cabaret de
Biribi."

"Why do you call your cabaret the Café Biribi?"
asked Warner.

"Eh?  By God, I call it Biribi because I'm not
ashamed of the name."

Halkett looked up into his wicked black eyes, and
Wildresse wagged his finger at him.

"Supposition," he said, "that your son is a good boy—a
little lively, but a good boy—and he comes of age
and he goes with his class for two years—three years
now, and to hell with it!

"Bon!  Supposition, also, that his sergeant is a
tyrant, his captain an ass, his colonel an imbecile!
Bon!  Given a little natural ardor—a trifle of animal
spirits, and the lad is up before the council—bang!—and
he gets his in the battalions of Biribi!"

His voice had become a sort of ominous growl.

"As for me," he said heavily, "I mock at their
council and their blockhead colonel!  I accept their
challenge; I do not conceal that my son is serving in a
disciplinary battalion; I salute all the battalions of
Biribi—where there are better men in the ranks than
there are in many a regiment of the line, by God!  And
I honor those battalions by naming my cabaret
'Biribi.'  The Government gets no change out of me!"

The man asserted too much, swaggered too obviously;
and Halkett, not suspicious but always cautious,
kept his inquiring eyes fixed on him.

Warner said with a smile:

"You have the courage of your convictions, Monsieur
Wildresse."

"As for that," growled Wildresse, casting another
stealthy glance behind him, "I've got courage.
Courage?  Who hasn't?  Everybody's got courage.  It's
brains the world lacks.  Excuse me, gentlemen—affairs
of business—and if you want to dance with my little
cashier, there is no harm in asking her."  And he
shuffled away, his heavy head bent sideways, his hands
tightly clasped behind him.

"There's an evil type," remarked Halkett.  "What
a brute it is!"

Warner said:

"With his cropped head and his smooth, pasty face,
and those unpleasant black eyes of his, he looks like an
ex-convict.  It doesn't astonish me that he has a son
serving in the disciplinary battalions of Africa."

"Does it astonish you that he is the employer of
that girl behind the counter?" asked Halkett.

Warner turned to look at her again:

"It's interesting, isn't it?  She seems to be another
breed."

"Yes.  Now, what do you make of her?"

Warner hesitated, then looked up with a laugh.

"Halkett," he said, "I'm going over to ask her to
dance."

"All right; I'll hold the table," said the Englishman,
amused.  And Warner rose, skirted the dancers,
and walked around to the cashier's desk, aware all
the while that the girl's indifferent grey eyes were
following his movements.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER III`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III

.. vspace:: 2

Warner tucked his walking stick and straw
hat under one arm and, sauntering over to
the cashier's desk, made a very nice and
thoroughly Continental bow to the girl behind it.

Her impartial and uninterested gaze rested on him;
after a moment she inclined her head, leisurely and in
silence.

He said in French:

"Would Mademoiselle do me the honor of dancing
this dance with me?"

She replied in a sweet but indifferent voice:

"Monsieur is too amiable.  But he sees that I am
*caissière* of the establishment."

"Yet even the fixed stars of heaven dance sometimes
to the music of the spheres."

She smiled slightly:

"When one is merely a fixture *de cabaret*, one dances
only to the music of the *Sbires*!  You must ask
Monsieur Wildresse if I may dance with you."

"He suggested that I ask you."

"Very well, if it's a matter of business——"

Warner laughed.

"Don't you ever dance for pleasure?" he asked in
English.

She replied in English:

"Is it your theory that it would give me pleasure to
dance with you?"

"It is," he said, still laughing.  "But by demonstration
alone are theories proven."

The girl hesitated, her grey eyes resting on him.
Then she turned her head, drew a pencil from her chestnut
hair, rapped with it on the counter.  A head waiter
came speeding to her.

"Aristide, I'm going to dance," she said in the same
sweetly indifferent voice.  "Have the goodness to sit in
my chair until I return or Mélanie arrives."

She slid to the floor from her high seat, came out,
through the wire gate, and began to unpin her cambric
apron.

The closer view revealed to him her thinness in her
black gown.  She was not so tall as he had thought
her, and she was younger; but he had been right about
her cheeks and lips.  Both were outrageously painted.

She handed her daintily embroidered apron to the
waiter, laid one hand lightly on Warner's arm; he led
her to the edge of the dancing floor, clasped her waist
and swung her with him out into the noisy whirl
beyond.

Thin, almost immature in her angular slenderness, the
girl in motion became enchantingly graceful.  Supple
as a sapling in the summer wind, her hand rested
feather-light in his; her long, narrow feet seemed like
shadows close above the floor, never touching it.

The orchestra ceased playing after a few minutes,
but old man Wildresse, who had been watching them,
growled, "Go on!" and the music recommenced amid
plaudits and shouts of general approval.

Once, as they passed the students' table, Warner
heard the voice of old Wildresse in menacing dispute
with the student who had first shouted out an invitation
to Philippa.

"She dances with whom she chooses!" roared Wildresse.
"Do you understand, Monsieur?  By God, if
the Grand Turk himself asked her she should not dance
with him unless she wished to!"

Warner said to her jestingly:

"Did the Grand Turk ever ask you, Philippa?"

The girl did not smile.

"Perhaps I am dancing with him now.  One never
knows—in a cabaret."

When the music ceased she was breathing only a
trifle faster, and her cheeks under the paint glowed
softly pink.

"Could you join us?" he asked.  "Is it permitted?"

"I'd like to....  Yes."

So he took her back to the table, where Halkett
rose and paid his respects gracefully; and they seated
themselves and ordered a grenadine for her.

Old Wildresse, sidling by, paused with a non-committal
grunt:

"Eh bien?  On s'amuse?  Dis, petit galopin!"

"I'm thirsty," said the girl Philippa.

"And your *caisse*?"

"Tell them to find Mélanie," she retorted indifferently.

"Bon!  A *jour de fête*, too!  How long are you going
to be?"  But as she glanced up he winked at her.

She shrugged her shoulders, leaned forward, chose
a straw, and plunged it into the crimson depths of her
iced grenadine.

Old Wildresse looked at her a moment, then he also
shrugged his shoulders and went shuffling away, always
apparently distrustful of that invisible something just
behind his back.

Halkett said:

"Mr. Warner and I have been discussing an imaginary
portrait of you."

"What?"  The clear, grey eyes turned questioningly
to him, to Warner.

The latter nodded:

"I happen to be a painter.  Mr. Halkett and I have
agreed that it would be an interesting experiment to
paint your portrait—*as you really are*."

The girl seemed slightly puzzled.

"As I really am?" she repeated.  "But, Messieurs,
am I not what you see before you?"

The music began again; the Louvain student, a little
tipsy but very decorous, arose, bowed to the girl
Philippa, bowed to Halkett and to Warner, and asked
for the honor of a dance with her.

"Merci, Monsieur—another time, perhaps," she
replied indifferently.

The boy seemed disposed to linger, but he was not
quarrelsome, and finally Halkett got up and led him
away.

From moment to moment Warner, glancing across
during his tête-à-tête with the girl Philippa, could see
the Louvain student continually shaking hands with
Halkett who seemed horribly bored.

A little later still the entire Louvain delegation
insisted on entertaining Halkett with beer and song; and
the resigned but polite Englishman, now seated at their
table, was being taught to sing "La Brabançonne,"
between draughts of Belgian beer.

The girl Philippa played with the stem of her glass
and stirred the ice in it with her broken wheat straw.
The healthy color in her face had now faded to an
indoor pallor again under the rouge.

"So you are a painter," she said, her grey eyes fixed
absently on her glass.  "Are you a distinguished
painter, Monsieur?"

He laughed:

"You'll have to ask others that question, Philippa."

"Why?  Don't you know whether you are distinguished?"

"I've had some success," he admitted, amused.

She thought a moment, then leaned forward toward
the Louvain table.

"Mr. Halkett," she called in English.  "Is Mr. Warner
a distinguished American painter?"

Halkett laughed.

"One of the most celebrated American painters of the
day!"

The Louvain students, understanding, rose as a man,
waved their glasses, and cheered for Warner, the
"*grand peintre Américain*."  Which embarrassed and
annoyed him so that his face grew brighter than the
paint on Philippa's lips.

"I'm sorry," she said, noticing his annoyance.  "I
did not mean to make you conspicuous."

Everybody in the café was now looking at him; on
every side he gazed into amused and smiling faces, saw
glasses lifted, heard the cries of easily aroused Gallic
enthusiasm.

"Vive le grand peintre Américain!  Vive l'Amérique
du Nord!"

"This is tiresome!" exclaimed Philippa.  "Let us
walk down to the river and sit in one of our boats.  I
should really like to talk to you sensibly—unless you
are too much annoyed with me."

She beckoned a waiter to bring her apron; and she
put it on.

"When you are ready, Monsieur," she said serenely.

So they rose; Warner paid the bill, and, with a
whimsical smile at Halkett, walked out beside Philippa
through one of the rear doors, and immediately found
himself in brightest sunshine, amid green trees and
flower beds.

Here, under the pitiless sky, the girl's face became
ghastly under its rouged mask—the more shocking,
perhaps, because her natural skin, if pale, appeared to be
smooth and clear; and the tragic youth of her seemed
to appeal to all out of doors from the senseless abuse
it was enduring.

To see her there in the freshness of the open breeze,
sunshine and shadow dappling the green under foot,
the blue overhead untroubled by a cloud, gave Warner
a slightly sick sensation.

"The air is pleasant," she remarked, unconscious of
the effect she had on him.

He nodded.  They walked down the grassy slope to
the river bank, where rows of boats lay moored.  A few
were already in use out on the calm stream; young men
in their shirt sleeves splashed valiantly at the oars;
young women looked on under sunshades of flamboyant
tints.

There was a white punt there called the *Lys*.
Philippa stepped into it, drew a key from her apron
pocket, unlocked the padlock.  Then, lifting the pole
from the grass, she turned and invited Warner with a
gesture.

He had not bargained for this; but he tossed the
chain aboard, stepped in, and offered to take the pole.

But Philippa evidently desired to do the punting
herself; so he sat back, watching her sometimes and
sometimes looking at the foliage, where they glided
swiftly along under overhanging branches and through
still, glimmering reaches of green water, set with
scented rushes where dragon flies glittered and midges
danced in clouds, and the slim green frogs floated like
water sprites, partly submerged, looking at them out
of golden goblin eyes that never blinked.

"The town is *en fête*," remarked Philippa presently.
"Why should I not be too?"

Warner laughed:

"Do you call this a *fête*?"

"For me, yes." ... After a moment, turning from
her pole: "Do you not find it agreeable?"

"Certainly.  What little river is this?"

"The Récollette."

"It flows by Saïs, too.  I did not recognize it for the
same.  The Récollette is swifter and shallower below
Saïs."

"You know Saïs, then?"

"I live there in summer."

"Oh.  And in winter?"

"Paris."

An unconscious sigh of relief escaped her, that it
was not necessary to play the spy with this man.  It
was the other man who interested Wildresse.

The girl poled on in silence for a while, then deftly
guided the *Lys* into the cool green shadow of a huge
oak which overhung the water, the lower branches
touching it.

"The sun is warm," she observed, driving in the pole
and tying the white punt so that it could swing with
the current.

She came and seated herself by Warner, smiled
frankly.

"Do you know," she said, "I've never before done this
for pleasure."

"What haven't you done for pleasure?" he inquired,
perplexed.

"This—what I am doing."

"You mean you never before went out punting with
a customer?"

"Not for the pleasure of it—only for business
reasons."

He hesitated to understand, refused to, because, for
all her careless freedom and her paint, he could not
believe her to be merely a *fille de cabaret*.

"Business reasons," he repeated.  "What is your
business?"

"Cashier, of course."

"Well, does your business ever take you boating
with customers?  Is it part of your business to dance
with a customer and drink grenadine with him?"

"Yes, but you wouldn't understand——"  And suddenly
she comprehended his misunderstanding of her
and blushed deeply.

"I am not a *cocotte*.  Did you think I meant that?"

"I know you are not.  I didn't know what you meant."

There was a silence; the color in her cheeks cooled
under the rouge.

"It happened this way," she said quietly.  "I didn't
want to make it a matter of business with you.  Even
in the beginning I didn't....  You please me....
After all, the town is *en fête*....  After all, a girl has
a right to please herself once in her life....  And
business is a very lonely thing for the young....
Why shouldn't I amuse myself for an hour with a client
who pleases me?"

"Are you doing it?"

"Yes.  I never before knew a distinguished painter—only
noisy boys from the schools, whose hair is uncut,
whose conversation is *blague*, and whose trousers are
too baggy to suit me.  They smoke soldier's tobacco,
and their subjects of discussion are not always
*convenable*."

He said, curiously:

"As for that, you must hear much that is not
*convenable* in the cabaret."

"Oh, yes.  I don't notice it when it is not addressed
to me....  Please tell me what you paint—if I am
permitted to ask."

"Soldiers."

"Only soldiers?"

"Portraits, sometimes, and landscapes out of
doors—anything that appeals to me.  Do pictures interest
you?"

"I used to go to the Louvre and the Luxembourg
when I was a child.  It was interesting.  Did you say
that you would like to make a portrait of me?"

"I said that if I ever did make a portrait of you I'd
paint you *as you really are*."

Her perplexed gaze had the disconcerting directness
of a child's.

"I don't understand," she said.

"Shall I explain?"

"If you would be so kind."

"You won't be offended?"

She regarded him silently; her brows became slightly
contracted.

"Such a man as you would not willingly offend, I
think."

"No, of course not.  I didn't mean that sort of thing.
But you might not like what I have to say."

"If I merit what you say about me, it doesn't matter
whether I like it or not, does it?  Tell me."

He laughed:

"Well, then, if I were going to paint you, I'd first
ask you to wash your cheeks."

She sat silent, humiliated, the painful color deepening
and waning under the rouge.

"And," he continued pleasantly, "after your face
had been well scrubbed, I'd paint you in your black
gown, cuffs and apron of a *caissière*, just as I first saw
you there behind the desk, one foot swinging, and your
cheek resting on your hand.

"But behind your eyes, which looked out so tranquilly
across the tumult of the cabaret, I'd paint a
soul as clean as a flame....  I'm wondering whether
I'd make any mistake in painting you that way,
Philippa?"

The girl Philippa had fixed her grey eyes on him
with fascinated but troubled intensity.  They remained
so for a while after he had finished speaking.

Presently, and partly to herself, she said:

"*Pour ça*—no.  So far.  But it has never before
occurred to me that I look like a *cocotte*."

She turned, and, resting one arm on the gunwale,
gazed down into the limpid green water.

"Have you a fresh handkerchief?" she asked, not
turning toward him.

"Yes—but——"

"Please!  I must wash my face."

She bent swiftly, dipped both hands into the water,
and scrubbed her lips and cheeks.  Then, extending her
arm behind her for the handkerchief, she dried her skin,
sat up again, and faced him with childish resignation.
A few freckles had become visible; her lips were no
longer vivid, and there now remained only the faintest
tint of color under her clear, cool skin.

"You see," she said, "I'm not attractive unless I
help nature.  One naturally desires to be thought
attractive."

"On the contrary, you are exceedingly attractive!"

"Are you sincere?"

"Perfectly."

"But I have several freckles near my nose.  And I
am pale."

"You are entirely attractive," he repeated, laughing.

"With my freckles!  You are joking.  Also, I have
no pink in my cheeks now."  She shrugged.  "However—if
you like me this way——"  She shrugged again,
as though that settled everything.

Another punt passed them; she looked after it
absently.  Presently she said, still watching the receding
boat:

"Do you think you'll ever come again to the Café
Biribi?"

"I'll come expressly to see you, Philippa," he
replied.

To his surprise the girl blushed vividly and looked
away from him; and he hastily took a different tone,
somewhat astonished that such a girl should not have
learned long ago how to take the irresponsible badinage
of men.  Certainly she must have had plenty of
opportunity for such schooling.

"When I'm in Ausone again," he said seriously, "I'll
bring with me a canvas and brushes.  And if Monsieur
Wildresse doesn't mind I'll make a little study of you.
Shall I, Philippa?"

"Would you care to?"

"Very much.  Do you think Monsieur Wildresse
would permit it?"

"I do what I choose."

"Oh!"

She misunderstood his amused exclamation, and she
flushed up.

"My conduct has been good—so far," she explained.
"Everybody knows it.  The *prix de la rosière* is not yet
beyond me.  If a girl determines to behave otherwise,
who can stop her, and what?  Not her parents—if she
has any; not bolts and keys.  No; it is understood
between Monsieur Wildresse and me that I do what I
choose.  And, Monsieur, so far I have not
chosen—indiscreetly——"  She looked up calmly.  "——In
spite of my painted cheeks which annoyed you——"

"I didn't mean——"

"I understand.  You think that it is more *comme il
faut* to exhibit one's freckles to the world than to paint
them out."

"It's a thousand times better!  If you only knew
how pretty you are—just as you are now—with your
soft, girlish skin and your chestnut hair and your
enchanting grey eyes——"

"Monsieur——"

The girl's rising color and her low-voiced
exclamation warned him again that detached and quite
impersonal praises from him were not understood.

"Philippa," he explained with bored but smiling
reassurance, "I'm merely telling you what a really pretty
girl you are; I'm not paying court to you.  Didn't you
understand?"

The grey eyes were lifted frankly to his; questioned
him in silence.

"In America a man may say as much to a girl and
mean nothing more—important," he explained.  "I'm
not trying to make love to you, Philippa.  Were you
afraid I was?"

She said slowly:

"I was not exactly—*afraid*."

"I don't do that sort of thing," he continued
pleasantly.  "I don't make love to anybody.  I'm too busy
a man.  Also, I would not offend you by talking to you
about love."

She looked down at her folded hands.  Since she had
been with him nothing had seemed very real to her,
nothing very clear, except that for the first time in her
brief life she was interested in a man on whom she
was supposed to be spying.

The Gallic and partly morbid traditions she had
picked up in such a girlhood as had been hers were
now making for her an important personal episode out
of their encounter, and were lending a fictitious and
perhaps a touching value to every word he uttered.

But more important and most significant of anything
to her was her own natural inclination for him.  For
her he already possessed immortal distinction; he was
her first man.

She was remembering that she had gone to him after
exchanging a glance with Wildresse, when he had first
asked her to dance.  But she had needed no further
persuasion to sit with him at his table; she had even
forgotten her miserable rôle when she asked him to go
out to the river with her.  The significance of all this,
according to her Gallic tradition, was now confronting
her, emphasizing the fact that she was still with him.

As she sat there, her hands clasped in her lap, the
sunlit reality of it all seemed brightly confused as in
a dream—a vivid dream which casts a deeper enchantment
over slumber, holding the sleeper fascinated under
the tense concentration of the happy spell.
Subconsciously she seemed to be aware that, according to
tradition, this conduct of hers must be merely preliminary
to something further; that, in sequence, other
episodes were preparing—were becoming inevitable.
And she thought of what he had said about making love.

Folding and unfolding her hands, and looking down
at them rather fixedly, she said:

"Apropos of love—I have never been angry because
men told me they were in love with me....  Men love;
it is natural; they cannot help it.  So, if you had said
so, I should not have been angry.  No, not at all,
Monsieur."

"Philippa," he said smilingly, "when a girl and a
man happen to be alone together, love isn't the only
entertaining subject for conversation, is it?"

"It's the subject I've always had to listen to from
men.  Perhaps that is why I thought—when you spoke
so amiably of my—my——"

"Beauty," added Warner frankly, "—because it
*is* beauty, Philippa.  But I meant only to express the
pleasure that it gave to a painter—yes, and to a man
who can admire without offense, and say so quite as
honestly."

The girl slowly raised her eyes.

"You speak very pleasantly to me," she said.  "Are
other American men like you?"

"You ought to know.  Aren't you American?"

"I don't know what I am."

"Why, I thought—your name was Philippa Wildresse."

"I am called that."

"Then Monsieur Wildresse isn't a relation?"

"No.  I wear his name for lack of any other....
He found me somewhere, he says....  In Paris, I
believe....  That is all he will tell me."

"Evidently," said Warner in his pleasant, sympathetic
voice, "you have had an education somewhere."

"He sent me to school in England until I was sixteen....
After that I became cashier for him."

"He gave you his name, and he supports you....
Is he kind to you?"

"He has never struck me."

"Does he protect you?"

"He uses me in business....  I am too valuable to
misuse."

The girl looked down at her folded hands.  And even
Warner divined what ultimate chances she stood in the
Cabaret de Biribi.

"When I'm in Ausone again, I'll come to see you,"
he said pleasantly.  "—Not to make love to you,
Philippa," he added with a smile, "but just because
we have become such good friends out here in the *Lys*."

"Yes," she said, "friends.  I shall be glad to see you.
I shall always try to understand you—whatever you
say to me."

"That's as it should be!" he exclaimed heartily.
"Give me your hand on it, Philippa."

She laid her hand in his gravely.  They exchanged
a slight pressure.  Then he glanced at his watch, rose,
and picked up the pole.

"I've got to drive to Saïs in time for dinner," he
remarked.  "I'm sorry, because I'd like to stay out here
with you."

"I'm sorry, too," she said.

The next moment the punt shot out into the sunny
stream.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER IV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV

.. vspace:: 2

Warner and the girl Philippa reëntered
the Cabaret de Biribi together the uproar
had become almost deafening.  Confetti was
thrown at them immediately, and they advanced all
a-flutter with brilliant tatters.

The orchestra was playing, almost everybody was
dancing, groups at tables along the edge of the floor
sang, clinked glasses, and threw confetti without
discrimination.  The whole place—tables, floor,
chandeliers, and people—streamed with multi-colored paper
ribbons.  Waiters swept it in heaps from the dancing
floor.

Philippa entered the cashier's enclosure and dismissed
the woman in charge.  Seated once more on her high
chair she opened her reticule and produced a small
mirror.  Then she leaned far over her counter toward
Warner.

"Is it permitted me to powder my nose?" she whispered
with childlike seriousness; but she laughed when
he did, and, still laughing, made him a gay little gesture
of adieu with her powder puff.

He stood looking at her for a moment, where she
sat on her high chair behind the cage, intently occupied
with her mirror, oblivious to the tumult around her.
Then, the smile still lingering on his features, he turned
to look for his new acquaintance, Halkett.

.. vspace:: 2

Old man Wildresse sidled up to the cashier's desk,
opened the wicket, and went inside.  Philippa, still
using her tiny mirror, was examining a freckle very
seriously.

"Eh, bien?" he growled.  "Rien?"

"Nothing!"

"Drop that glass and talk!" he said harshly.

She turned and looked at him.

"I tell you it was silly to suspect such a man!" she
said impatiently.  "In my heart I feel humiliated that
you should have set me to spy on him——"

"What's that!"

"No, I've had enough!  I don't like the rôle; I never
liked it!  Are there no police in France——"

"Little idiot!" he said.  "Will you hold your tongue?"

"It is a disgusting *métier*——"

"Damnation!  Hold your tongue!" he repeated.
"We've got to do what the Government tells us to do,
haven't we?"

"Not I!  Never again——"

"Yes, you will!  Do you hear?  Yes, you will, or I'll
twist your neck!  Now, I'm going to keep my eye on
that other gentleman.  Granted that the man you
pumped is all right, I'm not so sure about the other,
who seems to be an Englishman.  I'm going over to
stand near him.  By and by I'll address him.  And if
I wink at you, leave your *caisse* with Mélanie, come
over, and sit at their table again——"

"No!"

"Yes, you will!"

"No!"

"Yes, you will.  And you'll also contrive it so the
Englishman asks you to dance.  Do you hear what I
say?  And you'll find out where he comes from, and
when he arrived in Ausone, and where he is going, and
whatever else you can worm out of him!"  He glared
at her.  "Disobey if you dare," he added.

She was silent.

After a moment he continued in a softer voice:

"Do you want to see me in prison and my son in
New Caledonia?  Very well, then; do what the
Government tells you to do."

"I—I've done enough—filthy work——" she
stammered.  "Why must I?  I have never done anything
wrong——"

"Did you hear what I said?  Do you want to see
Jacques in Noumea?"

"No," she said sullenly.

"Then do what I tell you, or, by God, they'll ship
him there and me too!"

And he clasped his hands behind his back, peered
sideways at her, shrugged, and went shuffling out of
the enclosure.

Groups at various tables were singing and shouting;
the floor seethed with sweating dancers.  On the
edge of this vortex the girl Philippa, from her high
chair, looked darkly across the tumult toward the
table where Halkett sat.

Something seemed to be happening there; she could
see Wildresse gesticulating vigorously; she saw Warner
making his way toward his friend, who was seated
alone at a table, a lighted cigarette balanced between
his fingers and one arm thrown carelessly around the
back of the chair on which he sat.

He was looking coolly but steadily at three men who
occupied the table next to him; Wildresse now stood
between the two tables, and his emphatic gesticulations
were apparently directed toward these three men;
but in the uproar, and although he also appeared to
be shouting, what he was saying remained inaudible.

Warner went over and seated himself beside Halkett;
and now he could distinguish the harsh voice of the
Patron raised in irritation:

"No politics!  I'll not suffer political disputes in my
cabaret!" he bawled.  "Quarrels arise from such
controversies.  I'll have no quarrels in my place.  Now,
Messieurs, *un peu de complaisance*!"

One of the men he was exhorting leaned wide in his
seat and looked insolently across at Halkett.

"It was the Englishman's fault," he retorted
threateningly.  "I and my friends here had been speaking
of the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand
in Serajevo.  We were conversing peaceably and
privately among ourselves, when that Englishman laughed
at us——"

"You are mistaken," said Halkett quietly.

"Did you not laugh?" cried the second of the men at
the next table.

"Yes, but not at what you were saying.  I'm sorry
if you thought so——"

The man half rose in his chair, exclaiming:

"Why shouldn't I think it natural for an Englishman
to laugh at the murder of an Austrian arch-duke——"

"Stop that discussion!" cried Wildresse, angrily
jerking his heavy head from Halkett to the three men
at the other table.  "Let it rest where it is, I tell you!
The English gentleman says he did not laugh at what
you were saying.  Nom de Dieu!  Nobody well brought
up laughs at murder!"  And to Halkett and Warner:
"Be amiable enough, gentlemen, to carry this misunderstanding
no further.  I've had sufficient trouble with
the police in my time."

Warner laid one hand lightly on Halkett's arm.

"All right," he said to Wildresse; "no trouble shall
originate with us."  And, to Halkett, in a lowered
voice: "Have you an idea that those men over there
are trying to force a quarrel?"

"Of course."

"Have you ever seen them before?"

"Not one of them."

Warner's lips scarcely moved as he said:

"Is it the matter of the envelope?"

"I think so.  And, Warner, I don't intend to drag
you into any——"

"Wait.  Are you armed?"

Halkett shook his head.

"That's no good," he said.  "I can't afford to do
anything conspicuous.  If I'm involved with the authorities
I'm done for, and I might just as well be knocked
on the head."  After a moment he added: "I think
perhaps you'd better say good-by to me now,
Warner——"

"Why?"

"Because, if they manage to force a quarrel, I don't
mean to have you involved——"

"Do you really expect me to run away?" asked Warner,
laughing.

Halkett looked up at him with a faint smile:

"I'm under very heavy obligations to you already——"

"You are coming to Saïs with me."

"Thanks so much, but——"

"Come on, Halkett.  I'm not going to leave you here."

"My dear chap, I'll wriggle out somehow.  I've done
it before.  After all, they may not mean mischief."

Warner turned and looked across at the three men.
Two were whispering together; the third, arms folded,
was staring truculently at Halkett out of his light blue
eyes.

Warner turned his head and said quietly to Halkett:

"I take two of them to be South Germans or Austrians.
The other might be Alsatian.  Do any of these
possible nationalities worry you?"

"Exactly," said Halkett coolly.

"In other words, any trouble you may expect is
likely to come from Germans?"

"That's about it."

Warner lighted a cigarette.

"Shall we try a quiet getaway?" he asked.

"No; I'll look out for myself.  Clear out, Warner,
there's a good fellow——"

"Don't ask me to do a thing that you wouldn't do,"
retorted Warner sharply.  "Come on; I'm going to
drive you to Saïs."

Halkett flushed.

"I shan't forget how decent you've been," he said.
They summoned the waiter, paid the reckoning, rose,
and walked leisurely toward the door.

At the *caissière's* desk they turned aside to say
good-night to Philippa.

The girl looked up from her accounts, pencil poised,
gazing at Warner.

"*Au revoir*, Philippa," he said, smilingly.

The girl's serious features relaxed; she nodded to
him gayly, turned, still smiling, to include Halkett.
And instantly a swift change altered her face; she half
rose from her chair, arm outstretched.

"What is that man doing behind you!" she cried
out—too late to avert what she saw coming.  For the
man close behind Halkett had dexterously passed a silk
handkerchief across his throat from behind and had
jerked him backward; and, like lightning, two other
men appeared on either side of him, tore his coat wide,
and thrust their hands into his breast pockets.

Warner pivoted on his heel and swung hard on the
man with the silk handkerchief, driving him head-on
into the table behind, which fell with a crash of
glassware.  Halkett, off his balance, fell on top of the
table, dragging with him one of the men whose hand
had become entangled in his breast pocket.

The people who had been seated at the table were
hurled right and left among the neighboring tables; a
howl of anger and protest burst from the crowd; there
came a shout of "*Cochon*!"—a rush to see what had
happened; people mounted on chairs, waiters arrived,
running.  Out of the mêlée Halkett wriggled and rose,
coughing, his features still crimson from partial
strangulation.  Warner caught his arm in a grip of iron and
whisked him out of the door.  The next instant they
were engulfed in the crowds thronging the market
square.

Warner, thoroughly aroused and excited, still maintained
his grip on Halkett's arm.

"Did you ever see anything like it?" he said in a
low voice.  "It came like a bolt from the sky.  That
was the *Coup du Père François*.  Did they get
anything from you?"

Halkett spoke with difficulty, pressing his throat with
his fingers and trying to smile.

"What they got," he said, "was meant for them to
get—time-tables and a ticket to Paris.  I don't intend
to travel that way——"  A fit of coughing shook him.
"——For a moment I thought they'd actually broken
my neck.  What did you do to that fellow with his
noose?"

"He fell on the table behind you.  Everybody was
piled up with the crockery.  You wriggled out like a
lizard."  He turned cautiously and looked back over his
shoulder.  "Do you think we have been followed?"

"I can't see that we are."

They entered the rue d'Auros and turned into the
Hôtel Boule d'Argent.  Warner sent a chasseur to
the stables for his horse and dogcart; Halkett hastened
to collect his luggage.

In a few minutes the horse and cart came rattling out
of the mews; luggage, canvases, and the sack of colors
were placed in the boot; Warner mounted, taking reins
and whip; Halkett sprang up beside him, and the groom
freed the horse's head.

Into the almost deserted Boulevard d'Athos they
went at a lively clip, circled the lovely church of Sainte
Cassilda at the head of it, and trotted out into the
broad highroad which swings cast to the river Récollette,
and follows that pretty little stream almost due
south to the hills and cliffs and woods and meadows
of Saïs.

The sun hung low above the fields, reddening the
roadside bushes and painting the tall ranks of poplars
with vivid streaks of gold and rose.

Just outside the remains of the old town wall they
passed through a suburban hamlet.  That, except for
a farm or two more, included the last houses this side
of Saïs.

For a little while neither of the young men spoke;
Halkett's cough had ceased, but now and then he
fidgeted with his collar as though to ease it from the
bruised throat.  Warner drove, looking straight
between his horse's ears, as though intently
preoccupied with his navigation.

After a while Halkett said:

"The envelope is safe, I take it:"

"Oh, yes.  They never noticed me until I hit one of
them."

"I'm so grateful," said Halkett, "that it's quite
useless for me to try to say so——"

"Listen!  I'm enjoying it.  I'm grateful to *you*,
Halkett, for giving me the opportunity.  I needed touching
up."  He laughed in sheer exhilaration.  "We stodgy
professional people ought to be stirred out of our ruts,
A little mix-up like that with a prospect of others is
exactly what I needed."

Halkett smiled rather dryly.

"Oh," he said.  "If it strikes you that way, I shall
feel much relieved."

"Relieve yourself of all embarrassment," returned
Warner gayly.  "If our acquaintance entails further
scraps with those gentlemen, I shall be merely the more
grateful to you."

They both laughed; Warner swung his long whip
like a fly rod and caught the loop cleverly on his
whip-stock.

Halkett, still laughing, said:

"You don't look as though you enjoyed a cabaret
fight.  You look far too respectable."

"Oh, I am respectable, I suppose.  But I'm not
very aged yet, and my student days are still rather
near."

The road curved out now along the Récollette where
it still flowed a placid stream between green meadows
and through charming bits of woodland.  In the glass
of the flood the sunset sky was mirrored; swallows cut
the still, golden surface; slowly spreading circles of
rising fish starred it at intervals.

"So you don't go armed?" remarked Warner thoughtfully.

"No."

The American pointed with the butt of his whip to
the dashboard where the blue-black butts of two
automatics appeared from slung holsters.

"Why the artillery?" inquired Halkett.

"I drive my neighbor, Madame de Moidrey, sometimes;
and in summer it is often dark before we return.
It's a lovely country; also, the quarrymen at the cement
works are a rough lot.  So I let my pretty neighbor
take no chances with me."

"Quite right," nodded Halkett.  "When quarrymen
get drunk it's no joke.  What quarry is it?"

"The Esser Company.  It's a German cement
concern, I believe."

"German?"

"I believe so."

"Where is this quarry?"

"In the hills back of the Récollette.  They run barges
to Ausone.  Just below their canal the Récollette
becomes unnavigable, and the shallows and rapids continue
for several miles below Saïs.  That is the reason,
I suppose, that the country around Saïs remains
primitive and undeveloped, lacking as it does railroad and
water transportation."

"I wonder," said Halkett thoughtfully, "whether I
might see the quarry and cement works.  It must be
interesting."

Warner shrugged:

"If that sort of thing interests you, I'll take you
over.  It's a messy place full of stone crushers and
derricks and broken rock and pits full of green water.
Still, if you want to see it——"

"Thanks, I should like to."

Warner glanced at him; a slight grin touched his
lips.

"You seem to be interested in a great many kinds of
business," he said, "—literature, military science,
cement works, cabaret life——"

Halkett laughed outright; but the next moment he
turned like a flash in his seat, and Warner also cast
a quick glance behind him.

"A car coming!" he said, driving to the right.
"What's the matter, Halkett?  You don't think it's
after us?"

"I think it is."

"What?"

"I know damned well it is!" said Halkett between
his teeth.  "Shall I jump and swim for it?  Pull in a
moment, Warner——"

"Wait!  Do you see that gate in the hedge?  Get
out and open it.  Quick, Halkett!  I know what to
do——"

Halkett leaped, dragged open the gate; Warner
swung his horse and drove through and out into a
swampy meadow set with wild flowers and bushes and
slender saplings.

The wheels of the cart cut through the spongy sod
and sank almost to the hubs, but Warner used his
whip and Halkett, taking the horse by the head, ran
forward beside the swaying cart.  Right across their
path flowed a deep, narrow stream, partly invisible
between reeds and tufts of swamp weed; Warner turned
the vehicle with difficulty, urged his nervous horse across
a cattle bridge which had been fashioned out of a few
loose planks, and drove up on firmer ground among
tall ferns and willow bushes.

"Pull up those planks!" he shouted back to Halkett,
guiding his horse with difficulty; and Halkett ran back,
lifted the mossy, half rotted planks, and threw them
up among the bushes.

A grey touring car which had halted on the
highway outside the hedge had now turned after them
through the gate; and already the driver was having
a bad time of it in the swampy meadow.

As Halkett lifted the last plank that spanned the
brook, one of three men in the tonneau of the car stood
up and fired a revolver at him; and another of the men,
seated beside him, also fired deliberately, resting his
elbow on the side of the stalled car to steady his aim,
and supporting the revolver with his left hand under
the barrel.

Halkett ran back to where the cart stood, partly
concealed among the ferns and bushes; Warner, holding
whip and reins in one hand, passed him an automatic
revolver and drew out the other weapon for his own
use.

"This is rottenly ungrateful of me," said the
Englishman.  "I've certainly involved you now!"

"It's all right; I'm enjoying it!  Now, Halkett, their
car is badly mired.  There is another gate to that hedge
a few hundred yards below.  If you'll just lay those
planks in the cart, we'll drive along the hard ground
here and make another bridge below."

Halkett picked up the wet and muddy planks, one
by one, and placed them crossways in the cart.  Then,
at a nod from Warner, he climbed up and the cart
started slowly south, winding cautiously in and out
among the bushes.

When they had driven a little distance, the men in
the car across the brook caught sight of them; the
driver left his wheel and sprang out; and from either
door of the tonneau the three other men followed,
revolvers lifted.  There was no shouting; not a word
spoken; not a sound except the hard, dry crack of the
pistols.

"I don't know," said Warner coolly, "whether this
horse will stand our fire, but if they cross the stream
we'll have to begin shooting....  We'd better begin
now anyway, I think."  He drew rein, turned in his
seat, and fired two shots in quick succession.  The
horse started, and, instantly checked, stood trembling
but behaving well enough.

Another shot from Halkett brought the running men
to a halt.  Warner drove on immediately; three of
the men started to follow on a run, but half a dozen
rapid shots brought them to a dead stop again.  And
again the dogcart jolted slowly forward.

One of the men made a furious gesture, turned, and
ran back to the mud-stalled car; two of the others
followed to aid him to extricate the machine; the fourth
man, skulking along the stream, continued to advance
as the dogcart drove on.

Warner, driving carefully, shoved with his foot a
box of clips toward the dashboard; Halkett reloaded
both automatics.  Presently the cart turned east,
descending the hard slope toward the stream again; and
the man who had followed them along the swampy
brook immediately opened fire.

Halkett and Warner sprang out; the former shouldered
the planks and ran forward; the latter, holding
his nervous horse by the head, fired at the man among
the reeds as he advanced toward the stream.

It seemed odd that so many bullets could fly and hit
nothing; Halkett heard them whining over his head; the
horse heard them too and threatened to become
unmanageable.  Far up the stream the three other men were
laboring frantically to disengage the grey automobile;
the man across the creek, routed out of the reeds by
the stream of bullets directed at him, was running now
to get out of range.  Evidently his automatic was
empty, for it merely swung in his hand as he ran.

But what occupied Warner was the course the man
was taking, straight for the lower gate in the hedge.

"Jump in!" he called to Halkett.  "We can't wait
for the other planks!"  The Englishman swung up
beside him; the whip whistled and the horse, now
thoroughly frightened, bounded forward down the
slope and took the improvised bridge at a single leap.
For one moment it looked like a general smash, but
the cart stood it, and, after a perilous second, righted
itself.

Straight at the closed gate drove Warner, whipping
his horse into a dead run; crashed through the flimsy
pickets, slashed mercilessly with his whip at the man
who pluckily stripped off his coat and strove to make
the horse swerve into the hedge, as a toreador waves
his cloak at a charging bull.

Halkett could have shot the man; but he merely
turned his weapon on him as they dashed out into the
highroad once more, and tore away due south through
the rose and golden glory of the sunset.

The horse ran a flat mile before Warner chose to
ease him down; the summer wind whistled in their ears;
the last glow faded from the purpling zenith; the crimson
streak on the river surface, which had run parallel
on their left like level and jagged lightning, glimmered
to a pallid ochre tint; and the flying mist of trees and
bushes which had fled past like an endless rush of
phantoms now took shape and substance once more
above the rising veil of river mist.

Warner's tense features were flushed with excitement.
As he gradually eased in his horse he was smiling.

"Well, what do you know about this performance
of ours, Halkett?" he inquired rather breathlessly.
"Can you beat it in the movies?"

"I'm wondering what I've let you in for," said the
Englishman very seriously.

"I'll tell you," laughed Warner; "you've let me in
for a last glimpse of my youth—the days when everything
went and every chance for mischief was gratefully
seized—the days when I was a subject of the only real
democracy on earth—the Latin Quarter—the days that
dawn no more, Halkett.  This is the last gleam from
their afterglow.  *Nosce tempus*!  But the sun has set
at last, Halkett, and the last haymaker is going home."

"It would not have been very amusing if one of
those bullets had knocked you off your seat," remarked
Halkett.

"But they didn't, old chap!" returned Warner
heartily.  "It was a good mix-up—exciting, harmless,
and beneficial.  I feel years younger.  Respectability
is a good, warm coat for the winter of life; but one
feels its weight in Indian summer."

Halkett smiled but shook his head:

"No good hunting trouble.  You've only to turn
around any time to find it sniffing in your tracks."

"You don't understand.  For years I've worked very
steadily, very seriously.  I've painted, studied, read;
I've made a living by selling some pictures, by royalties
on the reproduction of pictures, by teaching a summer
class of girls.  After a while, you know, one goes stale
with respectability.  I went out to the East and saw
the Balkan fighting.  It helped some.  I made some
sketches last year in Mexico.  That helped.

"But there's an exhilaration about lawbreaking—or
in aiding and abetting a lawbreaker—that has the rest
beaten to a batter.  Today's misdeeds mean a new
lease of life to me, Halkett."

The Englishman laughed.  He was still cradling the
two automatics on his knees; now, with a careless glance
behind him, he leaned forward and replaced them in
their respective holsters.

"For a rather celebrated and weighty member of the
social structure," he remarked, "there is a good deal
of the boy left in you."

"When that dies in a man," returned Warner lightly,
"creative and constructive work end.  The child who
built with blocks, the youth who built airier castles, is
truly dead.  And so is the man he has become."

"Do you think so?"

"I know it.  The same intellectual and physical
restlessness drives one to create and construct, which, as a
boy, drove one into active and constructive mischief.
When the day dawns wherein creating no longer appeals
to me, then I am old indeed, Halkett, and the overcoat
of respectability will suit me the year round....  I'm
very glad that I have found it oppressive this July
day.  By the way, what day does it happen to be?"

Halkett said:

"It happens to be the last day of July.  I have an
idea that several billion other people are destined to
remember these last few days of July, 1914, as long as
they live."

"Why?" inquired the American curiously.

"Because, within these last few days, Austria has
declared war on Servia, Russia has already ordered
partial mobilization, Germany has sent her an ultimatum,
and will back it up tomorrow."

"What!  How do you know?"

"You don't mean to ask me that, do you?" said
Halkett pleasantly.

"No, of course not——"  Warner gazed straight
ahead of him as he drove; his altered features had
become gravely expressionless.  After a moment he
said:

"I can't comprehend it.  Servia had agreed to everything
demanded—except that one item which she offered
to arbitrate.  I can't understand it."

Halkett said calmly:

"It is not difficult to understand.  A telegram has
been suppressed—the only telegram which could now
prevent war."  He removed his straw hat, took from
the lining a strip of semi-transparent paper, and read
aloud the minute handwriting:

.. vspace:: 2

"The German government has published several
telegrams which the Emperor of Russia exchanged with
Emperor William.  Among these telegrams, nevertheless, is
one which was not published—a dispatch from His Russian
Majesty, dated July 29, 1914, containing a proposition to
submit the Austro-Servian conflict to The Hague Tribunal.

"This has an appearance of a desire in Germany to pass
over in silence the attempt to prevent the approaching
collision.  In view of this, the Minister of Foreign Affairs is
authorized to publish the telegram mentioned, of which this
is the text:

"'Thanks for your conciliatory and friendly telegram.
Inasmuch as the official message presented today by your
ambassador to my minister was conveyed in a very different
tone, I beg you to explain this divergency.  It would
be right to give over the Austro-Servian problem to The
Hague Conference.  I trust in your wisdom and friendship.'"

.. vspace:: 2

"Where did you get that?" asked Warner bluntly.

"This morning at the Boule d'Argent.  A friend
was kind enough to leave it for me in a note," he added
blandly.

"Do you believe it to be authentic?"

"Unfortunately, I can not question its truth."

"You think that the German government——"

"Without any doubt at all, Warner.  For her The
Day is about to dawn at last.  Her Joshua has halted
the course of the sun long enough to suit himself.  It
is scheduled to rise tomorrow."

"Do you mean war?"

"I do."

"Where?"

"Well, here, in France—to mention one place."

"In *France*!"

"Surely, *surely*!"

"Invasion?"

"Exactly."

"From which way?"

Halkett shrugged:

"Does anybody now believe it will come by way of
the Barrier Forts?  The human race never has been
partial to cross-country traveling; only ants prefer it."

"You think it will come by the flank—through Belgium?"

"Ask yourself, Warner.  Is there an easier way for
it to come?"

"But the treaties?"

"*Nulla salus bello; necessitas no habet legem.*"

"Nothing dishonorable is ever necessary."

"Ah!  If nations could only agree upon the definition
of that word 'honor'!  There'd be fewer wars, my
friend."

"You think, if France follows Russia's example
and mobilizes, that Germany will strike through Belgium?"

"I'm sure of it."

"What about England, then?" asked Warner bluntly.

But Halkett remained silent; and he did not repeat
the question.

"After all," he said, presently, "this entire business
is incredible.  Diplomacy will find a way out of it."  And,
after a moment's silence: "You don't think so?"

"No."

Presently Halkett turned and looked back through
the gathering dusk.

"I wonder," he said, "whether they'll get their car
out tonight?"

"They'll have to go back to Ausone for aid," said
Warner.

"Do you still mean to put me up at Saïs?"

"Certainly.  You don't expect your friends back
there to assault the inn, do you?"

"No," said Halkett, laughing.  "They don't do
things that way just yet."

Warner snapped his whip, caught the curling lash,
let it free, twirled it, and, snapped it again, whistling
cheerfully a gay air from his student days—a tune
he had not thought of before in years.

"I believe," he said, frankly hopeful, "that you and
I are going to have another little party with those
fellows before this matter is ended."

"I'm sure of it," said Halkett quietly.

A few moments later Warner, still whistling his
joyous air, pointed toward a cluster of tiny lights far
ahead in the dark valley.

"Saïs," he said; and resumed his song blithely:

   |  "Gai, gai, mariez-vous!
   |      C'est un usage
   |      Fort sage.
   |  Gai, gai, mariez-vous,
   |  Le mariage est si doux!—"
   |

"Like a bird it is!" he added ironically.

"By the way, you're *not* married, are you?" inquired
Halkett uneasily.

"Oh, Lord!  No!  Why the unmerited suspicion?"

"Nothing much.  I just thought that after getting
you into this scrape I shouldn't dare face your
wife."

Then they both laughed heartily.  They were already
on excellent terms.  Already acquaintance was becoming
an unembarrassed friendship.

Warner flourished his whip and continued to laugh:

"I have no serious use for women.  To me the normal
and healthy woman is as naïve as the domestic and
blameless cat, whose first ambition is for a mate, whose
second is to be permanently and agreeably protected,
and whose ultimate aim is to acquire a warm basket by
the fireside and fill it full of kittens! ... No; I'm not
married.  Don't worry, Halkett."

He whistled another bar of his lively song:

"Women?  Ha!  By the way, I've a bunch of them
here in Saïs, all painting away like the devil and all,
no doubt laying plans for that fireside basket.  It's the
only thing a woman ever really thinks about, no matter
what else she pretends to be busy with.  I suppose it's
natural; also, it's natural for some men to shy wide
of such things.  I'm one of those men.  So, Halkett,
as long as you live, you need never be afraid of offending
any wife of mine!"

"Your sentiments," said Halkett, mockingly serious,
"merely reveal another bond between us.  I thank God
frequently that I am a bachelor."

"Good," said Warner with emphasis.  And he
chanted gayly, as he drove, "Gai, gai, marions-nous—"
in a very agreeable baritone voice, while the
lights of Saïs grew nearer and brighter among the trees
below.

"I never saw a girl worth the loss of my liberty," he
remarked.  "Did you, Halkett?  And," he continued,
"to be tied up to a mentally deficient appendage with
only inferior intellectual resources, and no business or
professional occupation—to be tied fast to something
that sits about to be entertained, and that does nothing
except nourish itself and clothe itself, and have
babies!—It's unthinkable, isn't it?"

"It's pretty awful....  Of course if a woman came
along who combined looks and intellect and professional
self-sufficiency——"

"You don't find them combined.  Take a slant at my
class.  That's the only sort who even pretend to
anything except vacuous idleness.  There are no Portias,
Halkett.  There never were.  If there were, I'd take
a chance myself, I think.  But a man who marries the
young girl of today has on his hands an utterly useless
incubus.  No wonder he sometimes makes experiments
elsewhere.  No wonder he becomes a rainbow chaser.
But he's like a caged squirrel in a wheel; the more he
runs around looking for consolation the less progress
he makes.

"No, Halkett, this whole marriage business is a
pitiable fizzle.  Until both parties to a marriage
contract are financially independent, intellectually
self-sufficient, and properly equipped to earn their own
livings by a business or a trade or a profession—and
until, if a mistake has been made, escape from an
ignoble partnership is made legally easy—marriage will
remain the sickly, sentimental, pious fraud which a
combination of ignorance, superstition, custom, and
orthodoxy have made it.

"I'm rather eloquent on marriage, don't you think so?"

"Superbly!" said Halkett, laughing.  "But, do you
know, Warner, your very eloquence betrays the fact
that you have thought as much about it as the
unfortunate sex you have so eloquently indicted."

"What's that?" demanded Warner wrathfully.

"I'm sorry to say it, but you are exactly the sort
of man to fall with a tremendous flop."

"If ever I fall——"

"You fell temporarily this afternoon."

"With that painted, grey-eyed——"

"Certainly, with the girl Philippa.  Come, old chap,
you were out with her a long while!  What did you two
talk about?  Love?"

"No, you idiot——"

"You didn't even mention the word 'love'?  Be honest,
old chap!"

Warner began to speak, checked himself.

"Didn't you or she even mention the subject?"
persisted Halkett with malicious delight.

But Warner was too angry to speak, and the
Englishman's laughter rang out boyishly under the stars.
To look at them one would scarcely believe they had
been a target for bullets within the hour.

"You don't suppose," began Warner, "that——"

"No, no!" cried Halkett.  "—Not with that girl.
I'm merely proving my point.  You're too eloquent
concerning women not to have spent a good deal of time
in speculating about them.  You even speculated
concerning Philippa.  The man who mourns the scarcity
of Portias wouldn't be likely to care for one if he met
her.  You're just the man to fall in love with
everything you denounce in a girl.  And I have no doubt I
shall live to witness that sorrowful spectacle."

Warner had to laugh.

"You are rather a terrifying psychologist," he said.
"You almost make me believe I have a streak of romance
in me."

"Oh, we all have that, Warner.  We call it by other
names—cleverness, logic, astuteness, intelligence—but
we all have it in us, and it is revealed in every man who
marries a woman for love....  Believe me, no normal
man ever lived who was not, at some brief moment in
his life, in love with some woman.  Maybe he ignored
it and it never came again; maybe he strangled it and
went on about more serious business; maybe it died a
natural but early death.  But once, before he died, he
must have had a faint, brief glimpse of it.  And that
was the naissance of the latent germ of romance in
him—ephemeral, perhaps, but inevitably to be born
before it died."

Warner waved his whip and snapped it maliciously:

"So you have been in love, have you?"

"Why?  Because I, also, am suspiciously eloquent?"

"That's the reason—according to you."

Halkett smiled slightly.

"Perhaps I have been," he said....  "Hello!  Is this
your inn?" as they drew up before the lighted windows
of a two-story building standing close to the left-hand
edge of the highway, under the stars.

"Here we are at the Golden Peach," nodded Warner,
as the door opened and a smiling peasant lad came out
with a: "Bon soir, Monsieur Warner!  Bon soir,
messieurs!"  And he took the horse's head while they
descended.

.. vspace:: 2

That night, lying awake on his bed in the Inn of
the Golden Peach, Halkett heard the heavy rush of a
southbound automobile passing under his window with
the speed of an express train.

And he wondered whether the spongy morass by the
little brook still held the long, grey touring car
imprisoned.

He got up, went to his window and leaned out.  Far
away down the road the tail lamps of the machine
twinkled, dwindled to sparks, and were engulfed in the
invisible.

"More trouble south of me," he thought.  But he
returned to his bed and lay there, tranquil in the
knowledge that when he started south alone on the morrow
the envelope would not be on his person.

After a while he rose again, walked to the door
connecting his room with Warner's, and opened it
cautiously.

"I'm awake," said Warner in a low voice.

"Did you hear that car?"

"Yes.  Was it the one that chased us?"

"I only guess so.  Listen, Warner!  When I go
south tomorrow, what are you going to do with that
envelope until I send a man back for it?"

"I've thought it all out, old chap.  I shall take one
of my new canvases, lay the envelope on it, cover
envelope and canvas with a quarter of an inch of
Chinese White, and when the enamel is dry I shall paint
on it.  By the way, did you do your telephoning to
your satisfaction?"

"Entirely, thank you."

"You got your man?"

"I did," said Halkett.  "He's on his way here now.
Good night.  I'll sleep like a fox, old chap!"

"Good night," said Warner cheerily, enamored with
his invention for the safety of the envelope, as well as
with the entire adventure.

That night, while they both slept, far away southward,
on a lonely road in the Vosges, the car which
had rushed by under their windows was now drawn up
on the edge of the road.

Four men sat in it, waiting.

Just as dawn broke, what they awaited came up out
of the south—a far, faint rattle announced it, growing
rapidly louder; and a motor cyclist, riding without
lights, shot out of the grey obscurity, trailing a comet's
tail of dust.

Head-on he came, like a streak, caught sight
suddenly of the motionless car and of four men standing
up in it, ducked and flattened out over his handlebars
as four revolvers poured forth streams of fire.

Motor cycle and rider swerved into the ditch with
a crash; the latter, swaying wide in his saddle, was
hurled a hundred feet further through the air, landing
among the wild flowers on the bank above.

He was the man to whom Halkett had telephoned.

He seemed to be very young—an Englishman—with
blood on his fair hair, and his blue eyes partly open.

They searched him thoroughly; and when they could
find nothing more they lifted him between two of them;
two others carried the wrecked motor cycle out across
the fields toward the slope of a wooded mountain.

After ten minutes or so, two of the men returned to
the car, drew a couple of short, intrenching spades
from the tool box, and went away again across the fields
toward the misty woods.

A throstle in a thorn bush had been singing all the
while.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER V`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V

.. vspace:: 2

Halkett had not slept well; all night long in
the garden under his window the nightingales
had been very noisy.  When he slept, sinister
dreams had assailed him; cocks crowed at sunrise,
cowbells tinkled, outside his drawn blinds a refreshed and
garrulous world was awakening; and the happy tumult
awoke him, too.

He was bathed, shaved, and dressed, and downstairs
before Warner awoke at all; and he began to rove about
the place which, by daylight, did not look at all like
what he had imagined it to be the night before.

The Inn of the Golden Peach was one of those cream-tinted
stucco houses built into and around a series of
haphazard garden walls which inclosed flower and
fruit gardens, cow-barns and stables.  Its roof and
wall copings were covered with red tiles, weather-faded
to a salmon tint; two incredible climbing rosebushes
nearly covered the front with delicate, salmon-pink
blossoms, and, in the rear, flowers bloomed along
stone-edged borders—masses of white clove pinks,
rockets, poppies, heliotrope, reseda, portulaca, and
pansies—a careless riot of color, apparently, yet set
with that instinctive good taste which seldom fails in
France and is common alike to aristocrat and peasant.

Beyond the strawberry beds were fruit trees, peach,
cherry, plum, and apricot—the cherries hanging ripe
and deeply crimson among dark green leaves, the
apricots already golden, peaches and plums delicately
painted with a bloom which promised approaching
maturity.

Everywhere the grass grew thick and intensely green,
though it was not very neatly kept; water ran out of a
stone trough and made a dancing little rivulet over a
bed of artificially set stones among which grew ferns.
Beyond stood a trellised summerhouse, with iron tables
and chairs painted green.

On the edge of the watering trough, Halkett seated
himself in the sun.  An immaculate tiger cat sat on
the garden walk a few paces away, polishing her
countenance with the velvet side of one forepaw, and
occasionally polishing the paw with a delicate pink tongue.

Once or twice she looked at Halkett without any
apparent interest; now and then she glanced up with
more interest at the side of the house where, under
the kitchen door, in a big basket-cage, a jay hopped
about, making a scuffling noise among his cracked maize
and rye straw.

However, the cat proved entirely susceptible to
flattery, responded graciously to polite advances, and
presently relapsed into a purring doze on his knee.

It was very still in the garden, too early even for
butterflies to be abroad.  The kitchen door remained
closed; smoke had just begun to rise from one chimney.

In the peaceful silence nothing stirred; there was no
breeze, no sound save the trickle of water among fern
fronds.

Then, from nowhere apparently, into this golden
tranquillity came a nun—no, not a nun, but one of
those Grey Daughters of St. Vincent de Paul, who
have "for their monastery the houses of the sick, for
a cell a hired room, for a cloister the city streets, for a
veil modesty."

In her white *cornette*, or pointed coiffe, with its
starched wings, her snowy collarette, wide sleeves, grey
apron, and grey-blue habit, she became instantly the
medieval incarnation which vitalized the old garden and
the ancient wall, so that the centuries they had
witnessed were born again there where their spirit had
returned, clothed in the costume which they had known
so well.

The *soeur de charité* had not seen Halkett; she passed
lightly, swiftly, along the flowering borders with
scissors and ozier basket, bending here to gather the
white clove pinks, kneeling there to snip off pansies.

And it was only when the grey cat leaped from Halkett's
knees and advanced toward the Sister of Charity
with a little mew of recognition that she turned, still
kneeling, caught sight of Halkett, and remained looking
at him, one delicate white hand resting on the
purring cat.

Halkett was on his feet, his hat under his arm, now,
and he bade her good-morning with that pleasant deference
which marks such men immediately for what they are.

She smiled faintly from the transparent shadow of
her white *cornette*.

"Flowers are all so lovely," she said, "it is never easy
for me to choose.  They are for my school, you know?"—with
a slight rising inflection.  But evidently this
young man did not know, so she added, "I am Sister
Eila," and smiled again, when it was apparent that he
had never heard of Sister Eila.

"I am English," he said, "—traveling through
France on business.  I arrived last night to visit my
friend, Mr. Warner.  My name is Halkett."

She nodded and snipped a few more pansies.

"May I help you, Sister?  If you don't mind telling
me what flowers you desire——"

"Merci, Monsieur.  Pansies, if you please.  The children
see odd little faces in their petals, and it amuses
them."

Down on his knees beside the border, the grey cat
seated between them, Halkett picked pansies and laid
them in rows in her ozier basket.

"Of course," he said, "your school is a charity
school."

"For the poor, of course.  My children are those
of the quarrymen."

"You do not teach them alone?"

"Oh, no.  Sister Félicité teaches with me.  And then,
of course, we are together when, during the vacation,
hospital service is required of us."

"Is there a quarry hospital?"

"Yes, Monsieur.  It is more like an ambulance where
first aid is given.  The hospital at Ausone takes our
sick."  Still kneeling, she looked up at the slender fruit
trees beyond, and the sunlight fell full on the most
exquisite young face that Halkett had ever seen.
Whether it was her unexpected beauty that gave him
a little shock, or the sudden idea that in her features
there was a haunting resemblance to somebody he had
seen, perhaps met, he did not know.

Sometimes in the first glimpse of a face we recognize
the living substance of her to whom we have aspired, and
of whom we have dreamed.  But she has never existed
except in the heart which created her until we
unconsciously endow another with all we dreamed she was.

He went on gathering flowers to fill her basket.

"I wonder," she said musingly, "whether any of
those apricots are ripe.  One of my children is
convalescent, and she really needs a little fresh fruit."

So Halkett rose, threaded his way through the
flowers, and looked carefully among the branches for
a ripe apricot.  He found two, and Sister Eila laid
them together in the corner of her basket, which was
now full.

He walked with her to the garden door, which was
set solidly under an arch in the wall.  There she looked
up, smiling, as she said in English:

"Is not our country of Saïs very lovely, Mr. Halkett?"

"Yes, indeed, it is," he replied, also smiling in his
surprise.  "But, Sister Eila, you are English, are you
not?"

"Irish—but brought up in France." ... Her face
grew graver; she said very quietly: "Is it true there
is any danger of war?  The children are talking; it
is evident that the quarrymen must be discussing
such things among themselves.  I thought I'd ask
you——"

"I'm afraid," he said, "that there is some slight
chance of war, Sister."

"Here in France?"

"Yes—here."

"It is Germany, of course?"

"Yes, the menace comes from—" he cast a quick
glance toward the east, "—from over there....
Perhaps diplomacy may regulate the affair.  It is
always best to hope."

"Yes, it is best always—to hope," she said serenely....
"Thank you, Mr. Halkett.  Mr. Warner is a
friend of mine.  Perhaps you may have time to visit
our school with him."

"I'll come," said Halkett.

She smiled and nodded; he opened the heavy green
door for her, and Sister Eila went out of the golden
world of legend, leaving the flowers and young trees
very still behind her.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER VI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VI

.. vspace:: 2

Warner discovered him there in the garden,
seated once more on the stone trough, the
grey cat dozing on his knees.

"Hello, old chap!" he said cheerfully.  "Did you
sleep?"

Halkett gave him a pleasant, absent-minded glance:

"Not very well, thanks."

"Nor I.  Those damn nightingales kept me awake.
Has your man arrived?"

"Not yet.  I don't quite understand why."

Warner sauntered up and caressed the cat.

"Well, Ariadne, how goes it with you?" he inquired,
gently rubbing her dainty ears, an attention enthusiastically
appreciated, judging by the increased purring.

"Ariadne, eh?" inquired Halkett.

"Yes—her lover forsook her—although she doesn't
seem to mind as much as the original lady did.  No
doubt she knows there's a Bacchus somewhere on his
way to console her."

The other nodded in his pleasant, absent-minded
fashion.  After a moment he said:

"I've been talking to a Sister of Charity here in the
garden."

"Sister Félicité?"

"No; Sister Eila."

"Isn't she the prettiest thing!" exclaimed Warner.
"And she's as good as she is beautiful.  We're excellent
friends, Sister Eila and I.  I'll take you over to
her school after breakfast."

"It's the Grey Sisterhood, isn't it?"

"St. Vincent de Paul's Filles de la Charité; not the
Grey Nuns, you know."

"I supposed not.  Of course these nuns are not
cloistered."

"They are not even nuns.  They don't take perpetual vows."

Halkett looked up quickly.

"What!" he demanded.

"No.  The vows of these Sisters of Charity are
simple vows.  They renew them annually.  Still, it is a
strict order.  Their novitiate is five years' probation."

"Oh!  I supposed——"  He remained silent, his
thoughtful gaze fixed on space.

"Yes, our brave gentle Sisters of Charity remain
probationers for five years, and then every year they
renew their vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience.
The annual vows are taken some time in March, I
believe.  They have no cloister, you know, other than
a room in some poor street near the school or hospital
where they work.  Did you ever hear the wonderful
story of their Order?"

"No."

So Warner sketched for him the stainless history of
a true saint, and of the Filles de St. Vincent de Paul
through the centuries of their existence; and Halkett
listened unstirring, his handsome head bent, his hand
resting motionless on Ariadne's head.

A few minutes later a fresh-faced peasant girl, in
scarlet bodice and velvet-slashed black skirts, came
out into the garden bearing a tray with newly baked
rolls, new butter, and café-au-lait for two.  She placed
it on the iron table in the little summerhouse, curtseyed
to the two young men, exchanged a gay greeting with
Warner, and trotted off again in her *chaussons*—the
feminine, wholesome, and admirable symbol of all that
is fascinating in the daughters of France.

Halkett placed Ariadne on the grass, rose, and
followed Warner to the arbor; Ariadne tagged after
them, making gentle but pleased remarks.  There was
an extra saucer, which Warner filled with milk and set
before the cat.

"You know," he said to Halkett, "I like to eat by
myself—or with some man.  So I have my meals served
out here, or in the tap room when it rains.  The Harem
feeds itself in the dining-room——"

"The *what*?"

"My class, I mean.  An irreverent friend of mine in
Paris dubbed it 'the Harem,' and the title stuck—partly,
I suppose, because of its outrageous absurdity,
partly because it's a terse and convenient title."

"*They* don't call it that, do they?"

"I should say not!  And I hope they don't know
that others do.  Anyway, the Harem dawdles over its
meals and talks art talk at the long table where
Madame Arlon—the Patronne—presides.  You'll have
to meet them."

"Do you criticise your—Harem—this morning?"
inquired Halkett, laughing.

"Yes; I give them their daily pabulum.  Do you
want to come about with me and see how it's done?
After the distribution of pap I usually pitch my own
umbrella somewhere away from their vicinity and make
an hour's sketch.  After that I paint seriously for
the remainder of the day.  But I'll take you over to
Sister Eila's school this morning if you like."  He
fished out a black caporal cigarette and scratched a
match.

Halkett, his cigarette already lighted, lounged
sideways on the green iron chair, his preoccupied gaze
fixed on Ariadne.

"Annual vows," he said, "mean, of course, that a
Sister renews such vows voluntarily every year; does
it not, Warner?"

"Yes."

"They usually do renew their vows, I suppose."

"Almost always, I believe."

"But—a Sister of Charity *could* return to the—the
world, if she so desired?"

"It could be done, but it seldom is, I understand.
The order is an admirable one; a very wonderful
order, Halkett.  They are careful about admitting their
novices, but what they regard as qualifications might
not be so considered in a cloistered order like the
Ursalines.  The novitiate is five years, I believe; except
for the head of the order in Paris, no grades and no
ranks exist; all Sisters are alike and on the same
level."  He smiled.  "If anything could ever convert
me to Catholicism, I think it might be this order and
the man who founded it, Saint Vincent de Paul,
wisest and best of all who have ever tried to follow
Christ."

.. vspace:: 2

Ariadne had evidently centered her gentle affections
upon the new Englishman; she trotted at his heels
as he sauntered about in the garden; she showed off
for his benefit, playfully patting a grasshopper into
flight, frisking up trees only to cling for a moment,
ears flattened, and slide back to earth again;
leaping high after lazy white butterflies which hovered
over the heliotrope, but always returning to tag after
Halkett where he roamed about, a burnt-out cigarette
between his fingers, his eyes dreaming, lost in
speculations beyond the ken of any cat.

The Harem came trooping into the garden, presently,
shepherded by Warner.  They all carried full
field kit—folding easels, stools, and umbrellas slung
upon their several and feminine backs; a pair of
clamped canvases in one hand, color-box in the
other.

Halkett was presented to them all.  There was Miss
Alameda Golden, from California, large, brightly
colored, and breezy; there was Miss Mary Davis,
mouse-tinted, low-voiced, who originated in Brooklyn; there
was Miss Jane Post, of Chicago, restlessly intense and
intellectually curious concerning all mundane phenomena,
from the origin of café-au-lait to the origin of
species; and there was Miss Nancy Lane, of New York,
a dark-eyed opportunist and an observer of man—sometimes
individually, always collectively.  And there
was Miss Peggy Brooks, cosmopolitan, sister of
Madame de Moidrey who lived in a big house among the
hills across the meadows—the Château des Oiseaux,
prettily named because the protection and encouragement
of little birds had been the immemorial custom
of its lordly proprietors.

And so the Harem, fully equipped to wrestle with
the giant, Art, filed out of the quiet garden and across
the meadows by the little river Récollette, where were
haystacks, freshly erected and fragrant, which very
unusual subject they had unanimously chosen for their
morning's crime.

To perpetrate it upon canvas they pitched their
white umbrellas, tripod easels, and sketching stools;
then each maiden, taking a determined grip upon her
charcoal, squinted, so to speak, in chorus at the
hapless haystacks.  And the giant, Art, trembled in the
seclusion of the *ewigkeit*.

Warner regarded them gloomily; Halkett, who had
disinterred a pipe from his pockets, stood silently
beside him, loading it.

"They'll paint this morning, and after luncheon,"
said Warner.  "After dinner they all get into an
omnibus and drive to Ausone to remain overnight, and
spend tomorrow in street sketching.  I insist on their
doing this once every month.  When they return with
their sketches, I give them a general criticism."

"Will these young ladies ever really amount to
anything?" inquired Halkett.

"Probably never.  Europe, the British Isles, and the
United States are dotted all over with similar and
feminine groups attempting haystacks.  The sum-total
of physical energy thus expended must be
enormous—like the horsepower represented by Niagara.
But it creates no ripple upon the intellectual serenity
of the thinking world.  God alone knows why women
paint haystacks.  I do my best to switch them toward
other phenomena."

The rural postman on his bicycle, wearing *képi* and
blue blouse, came pedaling along the highway.  When he
saw Warner he saluted and got off his wheel.

"Letters, Grandin?"

"Two, Monsieur Warner."

Warner took them.

"Eh, bien?" he inquired, lowering his voice; "et la
guerre?"

"Monsieur Warner, the affair is becoming very
serious."

"What is the talk in Ausone?"

"People are calm—too calm.  A little noise, now, a
little gesticulation, and the affair would seem less
ominous to me—like the Algeciras matter and the
Schnaeble incident before that—Monsieur may remember?"

"I know.  It is like the hush before a tempest.  The
world is too still, the sunlight too perfect."

"There seems to me," said the little postman, "a
curious unreality about yesterday and today—something
in the cloudless peace overhead that troubles men."

Being no more and no less poet than are all French
peasants, this analysis sufficed him.  He touched his
képi; the young men lifted their hats, and the postman
pedaled away down the spotless military road.

Warner glanced at the envelope in his hand; Halkett
looked at it, too.  It was addressed in red ink.

"It's for me, old chap," said the Englishman.

The other glanced up, surprised.

"Are you sure?"

"Quite—if you don't mind trusting me."

Warner laughed and handed him the letter.

"It's addressed very plainly to me," he said.
"You've got your nerve with you, Halkett."

"I have to keep it about me, old chap."

"No doubt.  And still I don't see——"

"It's very simple.  I sent two telephone messages
last night.  One letter should have arrived.  It has
not!  The man who wrote this letter must have gone
miles last night on a motor cycle to mail it so that your
little postman should hand it to me this morning——"

"Intriguer!" interrupted Warner, still laughing.
"He handed it to *me*!  I see you're going to get me in
Dutch before I'm rid of you."

"I don't comprehend your Yankee slang," retorted
Halkett with a slight grin, "so if you don't mind I'll
sit here on the grass and read my letter.  Go on and
criticize your Harem.  But before you go, lend me
a pencil.  They stole even my pencil in the Cabaret de
Biribi."

Warner, amused, handed him a pencil and a pad, and
strolled away toward the industrious Harem to see
what they might be perpetrating.

Halkett seated himself on the grass where, if he
chose to glance up, he had a clear view all about him.
Then he opened his letter.

It was rather an odd sort of letter.  It began:

.. vspace:: 2

DEAR GREEN:

.. vspace:: 1

A red wagon, red seat, orange rumble, red mudguards,
blue steering-wheel, red bumpers, blue wheels, red engines,
red varnish, red open body, red machinery, red all over, in
fact, except where it isn't—is for sale.

.. vspace:: 2

So much of this somewhat extraordinary letter
Halkett very carefully and slowly perused; then, still
studying this first paragraph intently, he wrote down
on his pad the following letters in the following
sequence, numbering each letter underneath:

.. vspace:: 1

::

   R O Y G B I V S W A
   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0

.. vspace:: 2

The letters represented, up to and including the
letter V, the colors of the solar spectrum in their proper
sequence: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and
violet.  The letter S, which followed the letter V, stood
for *schwarz*, which in German means black.  The
letter W stood for weiss, white; the letter A for *argent*.
Every letter, therefore, represented some color or
metallic luster; and these, in turn, represented numbers.

And now Halkett took the opening salutation in
the first paragraph of his letter—"Dear Green."  The
color green being numbered 4, he found that the fourth
letter in the word "dear" was the letter R.  This he
wrote down on his pad.

Then he took the next few words: "A red wagon,
red seat, orange rumble, red——" etc.

The first and only letter in the word "A" he wrote
down.  The next word after "wagon" was "red."  The
color red indicated the figure 1.  So he next wrote down
the first letter of the word "wagon," which is W.

Then came the word "seat."  The word "orange"
followed it.  The color orange indicated number 2
in the spectrum sequence.  So he found that in the
word "seat" the letter E was the second letter.  This
he wrote.

Very carefully and methodically he proceeded in this
manner with the first paragraph of the letter, as far
as the words "all over," but not including them or any
of the words in the first paragraph which followed
them.

He had, therefore, for his first paragraph, this
sequence of letters:

RAWERUSEWEVOM.

Beginning with the last letter, M, he wrote the
letters again, reversing their sequence; and he had:

MOVEWESUREWAR.

These, with commas, he easily separated into four
words: "Move," "we," "sure," and "war."  Then, again
reversing the sequence of the words, he had two
distinct sentences of two words each before him:

WAR SURE!  WE MOVE!

Always working with the numbered color key before
him, taking his letter paragraph by paragraph, he
had as a final remainder the following series of letters:

EDIHUOYERADELIARTTIAWDROWOTDEECORPSIALAC.

Reversing these, checking off the separate words, and
then reversing the entire sequence of words, he had as
the complete translation of his letter, including the
first paragraph, the following information and
admonition:

"War sure.  We move.  Hide.  You are trailed.
Wait word to proceed Calais."

"War sure!"  That was easily understood.  "We
move."  That meant England was already mobilizing
on land and sea.  And the remainder became plain
enough; he must stay very quietly where he was until
further instructions arrived.

He read through his notes and his letter once more,
then twisted letter, envelope, and penciled memoranda
into a paper spiral, set fire to it with a match, and
leisurely lighted his pipe with it.

When the flame of the burning paper scorched his
fingers, he laid it carefully on the grass, where it was
presently consumed.  The charred remnants he ground
to dust under his heel as he got up and brushed a
spear or two of hay from his clothing.

Then he looked at the Harem, all busily committing
felony with brush and colors; and, as he gazed
upon them, he politely stifled a yawn.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER VII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VII

.. vspace:: 2

Warner, conscientious but not hopeful,
circulated among the easels of the Harem.
Halkett strolled at his heels.

Stopping in front of Alameda Golden's large canvas,
which was all splashed with primary and aggressive
colors, he gazed, uncomforted, upon what she had
wrought there.  After a few moments he said very
patiently:

"You should not use a larger canvas than I have
recommended to the class.  Mere size is not necessarily
a synonym for distinction, nor does artistic strength
depend upon the muscular application of crude paint.
A considerable majority of our countrymen comprehend
only what is large, gaudy, and garrulous.  Bulk
and noise only can command their attention.  On the
other hand, only what is weak, vague, and incoherent
appeals to the precious—the incapables and eccentrics
among us.  But there is a sane and healthy majority:
enroll yourself there, Miss Golden!

"Be honest, reticent, and modest.  If you have anything
to say in paint, say it without self-consciousness,
frankly, but not aggressively.  Behave on canvas as
you would bear yourself in the world at large, with
freedom but with dignity, with sincerity governed by
that intelligent consideration for truth which permits
realism and idealism, both of which are founded upon
fact."

Miss Golden pouted:

"But I *see* haystacks this way!" she insisted.  "I see
them in large and brilliant impressions.  To me nothing
looks like what it is.  Haystacks appear this way
to my eyes!"

"My dear child, then paint them that way.  But the
popular impression will persist that you have painted
the battle of Trafalgar."

Miss Golden wriggled on her camp chair.

"Everything," she explained, "is one monstrous,
gaudy, and brutal impression to me.  I see a million
colors in everything and very little shape to anything.
I see only cosmic vigor; and I paint it with a punch.
Can't you see all those colors in those haystacks?  To
me they resemble gigantic explosions of glorious color.
And really, Mr. Warner, if I am to be true to myself,
I must paint them as I see them."

Warner, horribly discouraged, talked sanely to
her for a while, then with a pleasant nod he passed
to the next easel, remarking to Halkett under his
breath:

"It's a case for a pathologist, not for a painter."

And so for an hour he prowled about among the
Harem, ministering to neurotics, inspiring the
sluggish, calming despair, gently discouraging
self-complacency.

"Always," he said, "we must remain students,
because there is no such thing as mastery in any art.
If ever we believe we have attained mastery, then our
progress ceases; and we do not even remain where
we are; we retrograde—and swiftly, too.

"The life work of the so-called 'master' is passed
only in solving newer problems.  There is no end to
the problems, there is an end only to our lives.

"Look at the matter in that way, not as a race
toward an attainable goal, nor as an eternally hopeless
effort in a treadmill; but as a sane and sure and
intelligent progress from one wonder-chamber to a
chamber still more wonderful—locked rooms which
contain miracles, and which open only when we find the
various keys which fit their locks....

"That is all for this morning, young ladies."

He lifted his hat, turned, and strolled away across
the meadow, Halkett at his side.

"Some lecture!" he commented with a faint grin.

"It's sound," said Halkett.

"I do the best I can with them.  One might suppose
I know how to paint, by the way I pitch into those
poor girls.  Yet, I myself never pick up a brush
and face my canvas but terror seizes me, and my own
ignorance of all I ought to know scares me almost
to death.  It's not modesty; I can paint as well as
many, better than many.  But, oh, the long, long way
there is to travel!  The stars are very far away,
Halkett."

He pitched his easel, secured a canvas, took a
freshly-set palette and brushes from his color-box, and,
still standing, went rapidly about his business, which
was to sketch in an impression of what lay before him.

Halkett, watching him over his shoulder, saw the
little river begin to glimmer on the canvas, saw a
tender golden light grow and spread, bathing distant
hills; saw the pale azure of an arching sky faintly
tinting with reflections the delicate green of herbage
still powdered with the morning dew.

"This is merely a note," remarked Warner, painting
away leisurely but steadily.  "Some day I may pose
my models somewhere outdoors under similar weather
conditions; and you may see dragoons in their saddles,
carbines poised, the sunlight enveloping horses and
men—or perhaps a line of infantry advancing in open
order with shrapnel exploding in their faces....
Death in the summer sunshine is the most terrifying of
tragedies....  I remember once after Lule Burgas——  Never
mind, I shan't spoil the peaceful beauty of such
a morning.

"War?  War *here*!—In this still meadow, bathed in
the heavenly fragrance of midsummer! ... Well,
Halkett, the government of any nation which *attacks*
another nation is criminal, and all the arguments of
church and state and diplomacy cannot change that
hellish fact.

"There is only one right in any combat, only one
side in any war.  And no reasoning under the sun can
invest an aggressor with that right.

"He who first draws and strikes forestalls God's
verdict."

Halkett said:

"How about your own wars?"

"Halkett, the United States is the only nation which
ever entered a war from purely sentimental reasons.
It was so in the Revolution; it was so in 1812, in the
War of Secession, in Mexico, in the Cuban War.

"All our wars have been undertaken in response to
armed aggression; all were begun and carried on in
defense of purely sentimental principles.  I do not say
it because I am a Yankee, but our record is pretty
clean, so far, in a world which, since our birth, has
accused us of ruthless materialism."

He continued to paint for a while in silence; and
when his color notes were sufficiently complete for his
purpose, and when the Harem had filed before the
canvas and had adoringly inspected it, Warner packed
up his kit, and, taking the wet canvas, walked with
Halkett back to the Golden Peach.

There Halkett was made acquainted with Madame
Arlon, the stout, smiling proprietress of the inn, who
sturdily refused to believe that war was possible, and
who explained why to Halkett with animation while
Warner went indoors to deposit his sketches in his
studio.

He returned presently, saying that he would take
Halkett to Sister Eila's school across the fields; so
the two young men lighted their pipes and strolled
away together through the sunshine.

Eastward, far afield, the gay aprons and sunbonnets
of the Harem still dotted the distance with flecks of
color; beyond, the Récollette glimmered, and beyond
that hazy hills rolled away southward toward the
Vosges country.

Halkett looked soberly into the misty east.

"It won't come from that direction," he said, half
to himself.

Warner glanced up, understood, and sauntered on
in silence.

"By the way," remarked the Englishman, "I shall
stay here tonight."

"I'm very glad," returned Warner cordially.

"So am I, Warner.  Ours is an agreeable—acquaintance."

"It amounts to a little more than that, doesn't it?"

"Yes.  It's a friendship, I hope."

"I hope so."

After a moment he added laughingly:

"I've fixed up your bally envelope for you."

"How?"

"Covered it with a thick, glossy layer of Chinese
white.  I put in a dryer.  In a day or two I shall make
a pretty little picture on it.  And nobody on earth
could suspect that embedded under the paint and
varnish of my canvas your celebrated document reposes."

They took a highway to the left, narrow and tree-shaded.

"When do you get the newspapers here?" inquired
Halkett.

"After lunch, usually.  The *Petit Journal d'Ausone*
arrives then.  Nobody bothers with any Paris papers.
But I think I shall subscribe, now....  There's the
school, just ahead."

It was a modern and very plain two-storied building
of stone and white stucco, covered with new red
tiles.  A few youthful vines were beginning to climb
gratefully toward the lower window sills; young linden
trees shaded it.  A hum, like the low, incessant
murmur of a hive, warned them as they approached that
the children were reciting in unison; and they halted
at the open door.

Inside the big, clean room, the furniture of which
was a stove and a score or more of desks, two dozen
little girls, neatly but very poorly dressed, stood
beside their desks reciting.  On a larger desk stood a
glass full of flowers which Halkett recognized; and
beside this desk, slenderly erect, he saw Sister Eila,
facing the children, her white hands linked behind her
back.

Seated behind the same desk was another Sister—a
buxom one with the bright, clear coloring of a healthy
peasant—more brilliant, even, for the white wimple,
collarette, and wide-winged headdress which seemed
to accent the almost riotous tint of physical health.

The childish singsong presently ceased; Sister Eila
turned pensively, took a step or two, lifted her eyes,
and beheld Halkett and Warner at the doorway.

"Oh!" she exclaimed.  "Please come in, Messieurs.
I have been wondering whether Mr. Warner would bring
you before luncheon....  Sister Félicité, this is
Monsieur Halkett, who so amiably aided me to gather my
bouquet this morning."

Sister Félicité became all animation and vigor; she
was cordial to Halkett, greeted Warner with the
smiling confidence of long acquaintance.

It lacked only a few minutes to noon, and so lessons
were suspended, and the children put through one or
two drills for Halkett's benefit.

Out in the kitchen a good, nourishing broth was
simmering for them, and Sister Eila slipped away during
the brief exhibition to prepare twenty-four bowls and
spoons and tartines for these ever-hungry little
children of the poor, orphaned for the most part, or
deserted, or having parents too poor to feed them.

At noon Sister Félicité dismissed the school; and the
little girls formed in line very demurely and filed off
to the kitchen.

"What a delicious odor!" exclaimed Halkett, nose in
the air.

Sister Félicité sniffed the soup.

"We do our best," she said.  "The poor little things
fatten here, God be praised."  And, to Warner, in her
vigorous, alert manner: "What is all this talk concerning
war?  The children prattle about it.  They must
have heard such gossip among the quarry people."

Warner said:

"It begins to look rather serious, Sister."

"Is it Germany again?"

"I fear so."

Sister Félicité's pink cheeks flushed:

"Is it the noisy boaster who rules those Germans
who would bring the sword upon us again?  Is there
not enough of barbaric glory in his Empire for him
and his that he should invade the civilized world to
seek for more?  It is a vile thing for any man, be he
ruler or subject, to add one featherweight to the
crushing burden of the world's misery!"

"To declare war is the heaviest of all responsibilities,"
admitted Warner.

"Is it already declared?"

"No.  That is to say, Austria has declared war
against Servia, Russia is mobilizing, and Germany has
warned her."

"Is that an excuse for anybody to attack France?"

"Russia is mobilizing, Sister," he repeated meaningly.

"What then?"

"France must follow."

"And then?"

Warner shrugged his shoulders.

Sister Eila came out, nodding to Sister Félicité, who
usually presided at the lunch hour: and the latter went
away with Warner toward the kitchen, still plying the
American with questions.  Sister Eila bent her head,
inhaled the perfume of the flowers on her desk, and
then looked up at Halkett.

"Don't you ever lunch?" he asked.

"Yes; I tasted the soup.  You lunch at one at the inn."

"I suppose so.  What a charming country this is—this
little hamlet of Saïs!  Such exquisite peace and
stillness I have seldom known."

Sister Eila's eyes grew vague; she looked out through
the sunny doorway across the fields towards a range
of low hills.  The quarries were there.

"It is a tranquil country," she said pensively, "but
there is misery, too.  Life in the quarries is hard, and
wages are not high."

"Mr. Warner tells me they are a hard lot, these
quarrymen."

"There is intemperance among the quarrymen, and
among the cement workers, too: and there is roughness
and violence—and crime, sometimes.  But it is
a very hard *métier*, Mr. Halkett, and the lime dust
blinds and sears and incites a raging thirst.  God
knows there is some excuse for the drunkenness there.
We who are untempted must remain gentle in our judgments."

"I could not imagine Sister Eila judging anybody
harshly."

Sister Eila looked up and laughed:

"Oh, Mr. Halkett, I have confessed to impatience
too many times to believe that I could ever acquire
patience.  Only today I scolded our children because
they tore down a poster which had been pasted on the
public wall at the crossroad.  I said to them very
severely, 'It is a sin to destroy what others have
paid for to advertise their merchandise.'"

"That was a terrible scolding," admitted Halkett,
laughing.

"I'll show you the poster," volunteered Sister Eila,
going over to her desk.  Raising the lid, she picked
up and displayed an advertisement.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER VIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII

.. vspace:: 2

Halkett looked curiously at this specimen of
a poster which was already very familiar to
him.  The dead walls of northern and eastern
France and Belgium had been plastered with such
advertisements for the last year or two, extolling the Savon
de Calypso.  But what had recently interested Halkett
in these soap advertisements was that posters, apparently
exactly similar, appeared to differ considerably
in detail when examined minutely.

The picture in this advertisement represented, as
always, the nymph, Calypso, seated upon the grass,
looking out over the sea where the sun shone in a
cloudless sky upon a fleet of Grecian ships which were
sailing away across the blue waves of the Ægean.

Where details varied was in the number of ships in
the fleet, the number and grouping of sails, sea birds
flying, of waves, and of clouds—when there were any
of the latter—the number of little white or blue or pink
blossoms in the grass, the height of the sun above the
horizon line and the number and size of its rays.

There was always at least one ship—never more than
a dozen; he had counted twenty white blossoms on some
posters; varying numbers on others, of white, of blue,
or of pink, but never less than three of any one color.
Sometimes there were no sea birds.

As for the sun, sometimes it hung well above the
ocean, often its yellow circle dipped into it, and then
again only the rays spread fanlike above the horizon
line.

.. _`Savon de Calypso poster`:

.. figure:: images/img-103.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Savon de Calypso poster

   Savon de Calypso poster

And concerning the nymph, her pose and costume
did not seem to vary at all in the various poster
specimens which he had seen; the wind was always blowing
her red hair and white, transparent scarf; she always
sat gazing laughingly seaward, one hand resting on
the grass, the other clutching a cake of soap to her
bosom.

Still examining the sheet of paper, he counted the
white flowers scattered over the grass around the seated
nymph.  There were *ten* of them.

"Sister Eila," he said carelessly, "how many kilometers
is it to the next town south of us?  I mean by
the military road."

"To Rosières-sous-Bois?"

"Yes."

"About ten kilometers by the military road."

He nodded and counted the ships.  There were three.

"Is there more than one road which runs to
Rosières-sous-Bois?" he asked.

"Yes.  One may go by this road, or cross the bridge
by the quarries and go by the river road, or there is
still a better and shorter highway which runs west of
Saïs."

"Then there are *three* main roads to Rosières-sous-Bois?"

"Yes.  The road to the west is shorter.  It is not
more than seven miles that way."

Halkett casually counted the sea gulls.  Seven gulls
were flying around one of the ships; thirteen around
another.

"And the river road, Sister?" he inquired.

"By the quarry bridge?  Oh, that is longer—perhaps
twelve or thirteen kilometers."

"I see....  Rosières-sous-Bois is not a garrison town?"

"No.  There are only a few gendarmes there."

Halkett examined the picture attentively.  The sun
appeared to be about three hours high above the
horizon.

"The nearest military post must be about three
hours' journey from here," he ventured.

Sister Eila thought a moment, then nodded:

"Yes, about three hours.  You mean the fort above
the Pass of the Falcons?  That is the nearest."

He counted the rays of the sun.  There were three
long ones and two short ones.

"I suppose there are three or four battalions garrisoned
there," he remarked.

"Three, I think.  And a company of engineers and
one company of Alpine chasseurs."

All the time, with a detached air, the young Englishman
was examining the colored poster, searching it minutely
for variations from other posters of the same
sort which he had recently investigated.

There remained in his mind little or no doubt that
the number and position of the groups of pointed
wavelets signified something important; that the
number of sails set on the ships, which varied in every
poster, contained further information; that the sky,
cloudless in some posters, dotted with clouds in others,
was destined to convey topographical particulars to
somebody.

These colored advertisements of a soap made in
Cologne by Bauermann and Company, and plastered
over the landscape of Northern and Eastern Belgium
and France, concealed a wealth of secret information
for anybody who possessed the key to the messages
so clearly and craftily expressed in pictograph and
cipher code.

The sinister significance of the sheet in his hand
was becoming more apparent every minute.  He had
made a study of these posters—was just beginning
to find them interesting, when he had been ordered
to America.  Now, all his interest in them returned.

Sister Eila had seated herself at her desk, and, while
he was still examining the poster, she continued serenely
to correct the pile of inky copybooks.

He watched her for a while, where she bent above
the scrawled pages, her pen poised, her lovely face
framed in the snowy wimple under the pale shadow
of her wide-winged coiffe.

"Sister Eila?"

She turned her head tranquilly.

"You are English, you tell me?"

"Irish."  She smiled.

"It's the same.  Tell me, have you had enough
experience in your world of duty and of unhappiness
to know an honest man when you encounter him?"

Sister Eila laid aside her pen and turned toward him.

"I don't think I understand," she said.

"I mean, could you make up your mind about—well—about
such a man as I am—merely by inspecting
me and hearing me speak?"

Sister Eila laughed:

"I think I could very easily."

"Have you already done so?"

"Why, yes, I suppose so."

"Do you think I am honest enough to be trusted?"

Sister Eila laughed again, deliciously.

"Yes, I think so," she said.

He remained silent and his face, already grave, grew
more serious.  Sister Eila's smile faded as she watched
him.  It was becoming very plain to her that here
was a man in trouble.

Silent there together in the cool stillness of the
schoolroom, they heard the distant clatter of little
feet, the vigorous voice of command from Sister
Félicité; and a moment later a double file of chattering
children passed in the sunshine outside the window, led
toward their noonday playground by Sister Félicité
accompanied by Warner.

"What is on your mind, Mr. Halkett?" asked Sister
Eila, still watching him.

"If I tell you," he said, "will you ask me no more
than I offer to tell you?"

She flushed:

"Naturally, Monsieur——"

"You don't quite understand, Sister.  What I have
to say I wish you to write down for me in the form
of a letter of information to the French Government."

"You wish *me* to write it?"

"Please.  And that is what I mean.  Naturally, you
might ask me why I do not write it myself....  Don't
ask me, Sister....  If you really do trust me."

He turned, met her gaze, saw two clear, sweet eyes
unspoiled and unsaddened by the wisdom she had
learned in dark and wretched places; saw in them
only a little wonder, a faintly questioning surprise.

"What is your answer, Sister?" he asked.

"My answer is—I—I *do* trust you....  What am
I to write?"

She took a few loose leaves of paper from the desk,
and sat looking at him, pen lifted.

He said:

"Write to the chief of the general staff at the
Ministry of War in Paris."

And when she had properly addressed the personage
in question, he dictated his letter very slowly in
English; and Sister Eila, her expressionless young face
bent above the letter paper, translated into French as
he dictated, and wrote down the exact meaning of
every word he uttered:

.. vspace:: 2

"Information has come to me that the advertisements
of Bauermann and Company, of Cologne, Prussia, which
are posted everywhere throughout Belgium and Northern
and Eastern France, conceal military and topographical
details concerning the vicinity where these advertisements
are displayed.

"Such information could be of use only to a prowling
spy or an invading enemy.

"Therefore, acting upon the incomplete information
offered me, I deem it my duty to bring this matter to the
notice of the Government.

"It would appear that:

"1st.  Secret information is contained in the details of
the picture which embellishes this advertisement, a sample
of which I inclose herewith.

"2nd.  These details vary in every poster.  Presumably
their number, color, groupings, and general distribution
constitute a secret code which is calculated to convey
information to the enemies of France.

"3rd.  In the sample which is inclosed with this letter,
the number of ships probably represents the number of
highways leading from Saïs to Rosières-sous-Bois; the sea
gulls flying above two of the ships give the distance in
kilometers; the ten white flowers give the distance by the
military road.

"The sun, in the picture, appears to be about three hours
high above the horizon; and it is *three hours'* journey from
here to the nearest French fortified post, the Pass of the
Falcons in the Vosges.

"The rays of the sun are five in number, three long ones
and two short ones; and there are *three battalions* of the
line guarding the fort at the pass, and *two companies*, one
of engineers, one of Alpine infantry.

"My informant, who desires to remain anonymous, further
declares it to be his belief that an exhaustive study of
this and similar posters would reveal perfectly clear
messages in every detail of color, drawing, and letter-press;
and that it is his firm conviction that these posters,
representing a German firm which manufactures soap, have
been placed throughout Belgium and France for the
convenience of an invading army.

"Immediate removal of these advertisements seems
advisable in the opinion of my informant.

.. vspace:: 1

"(Signed), SISTER EILA,

.. vspace:: 1

"Of the Daughters of St. Vincent de Paul at Saïs."

.. vspace:: 2

When she had finished the letter and had unhesitatingly
signed it, she lifted her clear eyes to him in
silence.  Her breath came a trifle unevenly; the tint
of excitement grew and waned in her cheeks.

"At least," he said, "you will understand that I am
a friend to France."

"Yes, that is evident."

"Will you direct and seal the packet and give it
to the postman?"

"Yes."

"And, Sister Eila, if they send gendarmes or other
officials to question you?"

She looked straight into his eyes, deeply, so that
her gaze seemed to plunge into the depths of his very
soul.

Then, lifting the cross from the rosary at her girdle,
she slipped out of her chair and knelt down beside
her desk, her young head bent low over the crucifix
which she held between the palms of her joined hands.

Halkett, head also lowered, stood motionless.

After a few moments she rose lightly from her knees.

"It is a vow, now," she said.  "I have bound myself
to silence concerning the source of my information—"
her untroubled eyes rested again on his—"because
I believe in you, Monsieur."

He started to speak, but seemed to find no word
to utter.  A bright color mounted to his brow; he
turned abruptly from the desk and stepped toward
the open door.

And the instant he appeared there, framed by the
doorway, a shot rang out, knocking a cloud of stucco
and plaster from the wall beside him.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER IX`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX

.. vspace:: 2

He shrank back flat against the wall, edged
along it, and slipped swiftly inside the house.
A thick veil of lime dust hung across the open
doorway, gilded by the sunlight.  Crumbs of plaster
and mortar still fell to the schoolroom floor.

Through the heated silence of early afternoon he
could hear the distant cries of the children from their
playground; there was no other sound; nothing stirred;
nobody came.

If Warner had noticed the shot at all, no doubt he
supposed it to be the premature report of some piece.
To the gaunt, furtive Vosges poacher no close season
exists.  If it did exist, he would cease to.

Halkett slowly turned his head and saw Sister Eila
behind him.  She had risen from her chair at the desk;
now she came slowly forward, her deep, grey eyes fixed
on him.  But before she could take another step he
laid his hand firmly on her wide, blue sleeve and forced
her back into the room.

"Keep away from that door," he said quietly.

"Did somebody try to kill you?" she asked.  Her
voice was curious, but perfectly calm.

"I think so....  Don't show yourself near that
door.  They might not be able to distinguish their
target at such a range."

"They?  Who are 'they'?"

"Whoever fired....  I must ask you again to please
keep out of range of that doorway——"

"The shot came from the river willows across the
fields, did it not?" she interrupted.

"I'm very sure of it.  You need not feel any anxiety
for the children, Sister; I am going.  There'll be no
more shots."

"There is a door at the back by the kitchen yard,
Mr. Halkett.  They will not see you if you leave that
way."

He stood thinking for a while; then:

"On your account, and on the children's, I'll have
to show myself again when I leave the house, so that
there'll be no mistake about my identity.  Don't move
until after I have gone some distance along the road.
And please say to Mr. Warner that I've returned
to the inn for luncheon——"

"There is a door in the rear!  You must not show
yourself——"

"Indeed, I must.  Otherwise, they might mistake you
or Sister Félicité or one of the children for me——"

"Mr. Halkett!"  He had already started.

"Yes?" he replied, halting and glancing back; and
found her already at his elbow.

"Why were you shot at?" she asked.  "I desire to
know."

He looked her straight in the eyes:

"I can't tell you why, Sister."

"You say you are English, and that you are a friend
to France.  If that is true, then tell me who shot at
you!  Do you know?"

"In a general way, I suppose I do know."

"Do you not trust a French Sister of Charity
sufficiently to tell her?"

"What man would not trust a daughter of St. Vincent
de Paul?" he said pleasantly.

"Then tell me.  Perhaps I already guess.  Has it
to do with your knowledge of German advertisements?"

He was silent.

"You are evidently a British agent."  Her deep,
grey eyes grew more earnest.  "You are *more*!" she
said, clasping her hands with sudden conviction.  "I
suspected it the first time I saw you——"

"Please do not say to anybody what it is that you
suspect——"

"You are a British officer!" she exclaimed.

"Sister Eila; you could do me much harm by mentioning
to others this belief of yours, or anything
concerning this affair.  And—do you remember that you
once said you trusted me?"

"I said it—yes."

"Do you still have confidence in me?"

Their eyes met steadily.

"Yes," she said.  "I believe you to be a friend to
France, and to me."  A slight flush edged the snowy
wimple which framed the lovely oval of her face.

"I *am* your friend; and I am a friend to France—I
say as much as that to you.  I say it because of what
you are, and because—you are *you*.  But ask me no
more, Sister.  For men of my profession there are
confessionals as secret and as absolute in authority as
those which shrive the soul."

He hesitated, his eyes shifted from her to the fresh
flowers on the desk, which they had both gathered; he
reached over and drew a white blossom from the glass.

"May I take it with me?"

She bent her head in silence.

Then he turned to go through the deadly doorway,
carrying his flower in his hand; but, as he walked out
into the sunshine, Sister Eila stepped swiftly in front
of him, turned on the doorstep, screening him with
extended arms.

"This is the best way," she said.  "They ought to see
quite clearly that I am a Sister of Charity, and they
won't fire at me——"

But he tried to push her aside and spring past her:

"Stand clear of me, for God's sake!" he said.

"Wait——"

"Sister!  Are you insane?"

"*You* must be, Mr. Halkett——"

"Keep away, I tell you——"

"Please don't be rough with me——"

He tried to avoid her, but her strong, young hands
had caught both his wrists.

"They won't shoot at a Sister of Charity!" she
repeated.  "—And I shall not permit them to murder
you!  Be reasonable!  I am not afraid."

She held on to his wrists, keeping always between
him and the distant glimmer of the river:

"I shall walk to the road with you this way; don't
try to shake me off; I am strong, I warn you!"  She
was even laughing now.  "Please do not wriggle!  Only
schoolboys wriggle.  Do you suppose I am *afraid*?
Since when, Monsieur, have Sisters of Charity taken
cover from the enemies of France?"

"This is shameful for me——"

"You behave, as I have said, like a very bad
schoolboy, Mr. Halkett——"

He tried vainly to place himself between her and
the river, but could not disengage her grasp
without hurting her.  Then, over his shoulder, he saw
three men come out of the river willows.

"You shall not take this risk——" he insisted.

"Please listen——"

"I take no risk worth mentioning.  It was you who
would have walked out to face their fire—with that
smile on your lips and a flower in your hand!  Did
you think that a Grey Sister would permit that?
Soyez convenable, Monsieur.  They will not fire while
I am walking beside you."  She looked over her shoulder.
One of the men by the willows was raising a rifle.

They reached the highway at the same moment, and
the roadside bank sheltered them.  Here she released
his arm.

"I beg you to be a little reasonable," she said.
"You must leave Saïs at once.  Promise me,
Mr. Halkett——"

"I cannot."

"Why?"

"Sister, if I am really a soldier, as you suppose
me to be, perhaps I have—*orders*—to remain at
Saïs."

"Have you?" she asked frankly.

He turned and looked at her:

"Yes, little comrade."

"That is really serious."

"It must not cause you any anxiety.  I shall 'wriggle'—as
you say—out of this mess when the time comes.
I may start tonight."

"For London?  Do you wriggle as far as that?"

He said gravely:

"You know more about me now from my own lips
than I would admit, even prompted by a firing squad.
I trusted you even before you faced death for me on
that doorstep a moment ago.  *Did you see that man
come out of the willows and level his rifle at us?*"

She said tranquilly:

"We daughters of St. Vincent de Paul never heed
such things."

"I know you don't; I know what are your traditions.
Many a Sister of your Order has fallen under rifle
and shell fire on the battlefields of the world; many
have died of the pest in hospitals; many have
succumbed to exposure.  The history of modern war is
the history of the Grey Sisters.  What you have just
done, as a matter of course, is already part of that
history.  And so—" he looked down at her crucifix and
rosary—"and so, Sister, and comrade, I shall tell you
what it would not be possible for me to admit to any
other living soul in France.  Yes; I *am* a British officer
on special and secret duty.  I left the United States
two weeks ago.  Trouble began in Holland.  I am now
on my way to London.  Orders came today halting me
at Saïs.  Enemies of France are annoying me—people
who are becoming more desperate and more determined
as the hours pass and the moment approaches swiftly
when they can no longer hope to interfere with me.
That moment will come when war is declared.  It will
be declared.  I shall be very glad to arrive in
England.  Now I have told you almost everything, Sister
Eila.  My honor is in your keeping; my devotion is
for my own country, for France—and for you."

"I have made one vow of silence," she said simply.
"I shall make another—never to breathe one word of
this."

"You need not.  Just say to me that you will not
speak."

Her lovely face became as solemn as a child's:

"I shall not speak, Mr. Halkett."

"That settles it," he said.  "If it lay with me, I'd
trust you with every secret in our War Office!"  He
checked himself, hesitated, then: "Sister Eila, if
anything happens to me, go to Mr. Warner and ask him
for *that envelope*.  There are sure to be British soldiers
in France before very long.  Give that envelope to some
British officer."

After a moment she laughed:

"Englishmen are odd—odd!  They are just boys.
They are delightful.  I shall do what you ask....
And there is your inn....  Am I tired?  *I*?  Vous
plaisantez, Monsieur!  But, Mr. Halkett, what would
be the object in your walking back with me?  I should
only have to walk back here again with you!  It would
continue *ad infinitum*."

They both laughed.

"When trouble finally comes, and if I am hit, I pray
I may lie in your ward," he said gayly.

Her smile faded:

"I shall pray so, too," she said.

"I'd feel like a little boy safe in his own nursery,"
he added, still smiling.

"I am—happy—to have you think of me in that
way."  Her smile glimmered anew in her eyes.  "I
should be a devoted nurse."  She made him a friendly
little signal of adieu and turned away.

Hat in hand, he stood looking after the grey-blue
figure under the snowy headdress.

At the turn of the road she looked back, saw him,
still standing there; and again, from the distance, she
made him a pretty gesture of caution and of farewell.
Then the grassy bank hid her from view.

.. vspace:: 2

At the Inn of the Golden Peach, Warner's Harem
was already lunching.  Through the open windows of
the dining-room came a discreet clatter of tableware
and crockery, and a breezy, cheery tumult like the
chatter in an aviary.

Halkett, not fancying it, went around the house to
the quiet garden.  Here he wandered to and fro among
the trees or stood about aimlessly, looking down at
the flower beds where, kneeling beside Sister Eila, he
had aided her to fill her ozier basket.

Later Warner found him seated under the arbor
with Ariadne on his knee; and a few moments
afterward the maid, Linette, served their luncheon.

Neither of the young men was very communicative,
but after the dishes and cloth had been removed, and
when Halkett, musing over his cigarette and coffee,
still exhibited no initiative toward conversation,
Warner broke the silence:

"What about that shot?" he asked bluntly.

"What shot?"

"Don't you want to talk about it?"

Halkett glanced up, amused:

"Well, I suppose there was no hiding that bullet hole
and the plaster dust from Sister Félicité."

"Of course not.  The bullet ripped out the lathing.
Who was it fired at the school?  Or was it at you they
let go?"

"Didn't you ask Sister Eila?"

"I did.  She absolutely refused to discuss it, and
referred us both to you.  It was no accident, was it?"

"No."

"Somebody tried to get *you*?"

"It rather looked that way."

"Our friends in the grey car, of course!" concluded
Warner.

"Not necessarily.  *They* have other friends who might
be equally attentive to me.  I don't know who shot at
me.  There were three of them over by the river."

"Well, Halkett, don't you think you had better
remain indoors for a while?"

"I'd better, I suppose."  He laughed.  "Honestly,
I'm sick of being shot at.  One of these days they'll
hit me, if they're not very careful."

But Warner did not smile.

"Do you promise to stay indoors?" he insisted.

"I'll see.  Perhaps."

"Don't you think it advisable for you to carry some
sort of a firearm—one of my automatics, for example?"

"Thanks, old fellow.  I think I'll do that, if you can
spare a section of your artillery for a day or two."

Warner promptly fished an automatic out of his hip
pocket, and Halkett took it and examined it.

"So I'm to do the Wild West business after all,"
he said gayly.  "Right you are, old chap.  I know how
it's done; I've read about it in your novels.  You wait
till your enemy takes a drop, then you get the drop!"  He
laughed at his British joke.  And, having no hip
pocket, he stowed away the lumpy bluish weapon in
a side pocket of his coat.

"Now, don't let me interfere with your daily
routine," he continued.  "I shall do very well here in
the arbor while you lead your Harem toward the
Olympian heights."

"Sometimes I feel like pushing 'em off those cliffs,"
muttered Warner.  "All right; I fancy you'll be snug
enough in the garden, here with Ariadne, till I return.
We shall have the whole house to ourselves after
dinner.  The Harem migrates to Ausone for overnight
to do street sketches tomorrow, and returns the next
morning for a general criticism.  So if you'll amuse
yourself——"

"I shall be quite comfortable, thanks.  If anybody
climbs the wall to pot me, we'll turn loose on 'em,
this time—won't we, old girl?"—caressing Ariadne,
who had returned to his knee.

Half an hour afterward Warner went away in the
wake of the Harem; and at the end of the second hour
he gave them a final criticism before they started for
Ausone.

Much good it did them; but they adored it; they even
adored his sarcasms.  For the Harem truly worshiped
this young man—a fact of which he remained
uncomfortably conscious, timidly aware that warier men
than he had been landed by maidens less adept than
they.

So it was with his usual sense of deep relief that
he saluted the Harem, picked up his own kit and
canvases, and wandered at hazard through a little poplar
grove and out of it on the other edge.

A wild meadow, deep with tasseled grasses and field
flowers, stretched away before him, where swallows
sailed and soared and skimmed—where blue lupin,
*bouton d'or*, meadowsweet, and slender, silvery stems
crowned with queen's lace grew tall, and the heliotrope
perfume of hidden hawkweed scented every fitful little
wind.

But what immediately fixed his attention was a
distant figure wading waist-deep amid the grasses—a
slim, brilliant shape, which became oddly familiar as
it drew nearer, moving forward with light and boyish
grace, stirring within him vaguely agreeable recollections.

Then, in spite of her peasant's dress, he recognized
her; and he walked swiftly forward to meet her.  The
figure out there in the sunshine saw him coming and
lifted one arm in distant recognition and salute.

They met in mid-meadow, Warner and the girl Philippa.

Her short skirt and low peasant bodice had faded
to a rose-geranium tint; her white chemisette, laced
with black, was open wide below the throat.  Black
velvet straps crossed it on the shoulders and
around the cuffs.  Her hair was tied with a big black
silk bow.

"How in the world did you come to be here?" he
asked, not yet releasing the eager, warm little hands
so frankly clasped between both of his.

Philippa laughed with sheerest happiness:

"Figurez-vous, Monsieur.  I have been punting since
early morning; and when I found myself so near to
Saïs I was ready to drop with heat and fatigue: 'Mais,
n'importe!  Allons!' I said to myself.  'Courage, little
one!  Very soon you shall see Mr. Warner painting a
noble picture by the river!'  Et puis——"  She
tightened her clasp on his hands with an adorable laugh,
"Nous voici enfin ensemble—tous les deux—vous et
moi!  Et je suis bien content et bien fatiguée."

"But, Philippa—how in the world do you propose
to get back to Ausone tonight?"

She shrugged, looked up as though protesting to
the very skies:

"I have this instant arrived, and his first inquiry
is concerning my departure!  That is not a very
friendly welcome."

"Philippa, I *am* glad to see you——"

"It is time you said so——"

"I thought you understood——"

The girl laughed:

"I understand how glad I am to see *you*!"  She
looked about her in the sunshine, and touched a tall
blossom of queen's lace with outstretched fingers.

"How heavenly beautiful is this world of God!" she
said with that charming lack of self-consciousness
which the skies of France seem to germinate even in
aliens.  "I am very glad to see you," she repeated
abruptly, "and I am awaiting the expression of your
sentiments."

"Of course I am glad to see you, Philippa——"

"That makes me quite happy."  She smiled on him
and then looked curiously at his painting kit.  "If you
will choose your picture," she added, "I shall sit
beside you and watch you at your painting.  It will be
agreeable.  We can converse."

So he chose a ferny spot at the wood's edge, pitched
his field easel and camp stool, and opened his color
box; and Philippa seated herself cross-legged on the
short grass beside him, gathering both slim ankles into
her hands.

While he was fussing with his canvas, she sang to
herself blithely, radiantly contented, rocking herself
to and fro to the rhythm of her song:

   |  "'Hussar en vedette,
   |  What do you see?
   |    The sun has set
   |  And a voice is calling me
   |  Across the Récollette,
   |  Where the scented rushes fret
   |  In the May wind's breath—
   |    Et garde à vous, Hussar!
   |  'Tis the voice of Death!

   |    'Hussar en vedette,
   |  What do you see?
   |    The moon has set
   |  And a white shape beckons me
   |  Across the Récollette,
   |  Where the scented rushes fret
   |  In the night wind's breath—
   |    Et garde à vous, Hussar!
   |  'Tis the shape of Death!'"
   |

Singing away with the serene unconsciousness of a
bird, rocking her lithe young body, and watching his
every movement out of wide grey eyes, Philippa assisted
at the artistic preparations with great content, missing
nothing.

"To squeeze color from tubes must be amusing," she
remarked.  "I like to squeeze out tooth paste."

"I am very sure," said Warner, "that you accomplish
more charming results with your tooth paste than
I do with my colors."

The girl laughed, showing her snowy teeth:

"Do you find them pretty, Monsieur?"

"Quite perfect, and therefore in keeping with the
remainder of you, Philippa."

"He really seems to mean it," she said, addressing
a grasshopper which had alighted on her knee.  And
to Warner: "Is my face sufficiently scrubbed to suit
you?"

He glanced down at her:

"You have kept your word, haven't you?"

"Ma foi!  My word is my word....  Listen; I came
to Saïs to see you; and partly because I have something
to show you.  It concerns your friend, I think."

"Mr. Halkett?"

"Yes.  After the fight in our cabaret there was much
excitement, but when you had disappeared, and before
the agents de police and the gendarmes arrived, I found
on the floor under the overturned table a portfolio.
In that portfolio was part of an unfinished letter.  It
is written in German.  I could not read it; but, studying
it, I recognized Mr. Halkett's name written several
times.  So I said nothing to anybody, but I have
brought it.  Here it is."

She drew from her bosom a small leather pocketbook.

"Before you examine it," she continued, "I ought to
tell you what really happened at the cabaret.  Those
men who attacked Mr. Halkett were in the employment
of Monsieur Wildresse."

"What!" exclaimed Warner.

"It is true.  I was furious when I noticed them
creeping up behind him.  I realized instantly what they
meant to do, and I cried out—too late.  You ought to
be told about this.  Therefore, I came here to tell
you.

"And I desire to tell you more.  The three men who
were seated across the hall, and who attempted to pick
a quarrel with Mr. Halkett, were 'provocative
agents'—Germans.

"The *patron* knew them and interfered.  Besides, he
had his own ideas and his own ends to serve just then.

"But I saw those three German agents whisper to a
fourth—a stranger.  And that man came and seated
himself with three other men directly behind
Mr. Halkett, where he stood while you were talking to
me——"

"Philippa," he interrupted with blunt impatience,
"I don't understand all this that you are saying to me.
Give me that letter if it concerns Mr. Halkett."

The girl colored painfully.

"Please don't speak rudely to me," she said.  "I am
trying to behave honestly——"

"I'm sorry.  I didn't mean to speak roughly.  Please
continue."

"Yes; it is better you should know what happened
before you read this letter.  Well, then, the men who
attacked Mr. Halkett naturally got away; the patron
attended to that.  Naturally, also, he desired to have
people believe that the German agents were responsible
for the fight, and they were, therefore, detained by
Monsieur Wildresse and were asked for an explanation.
Then they declared that Mr. Halkett was a British
spy, and that they were Belgian police agents with full
authority to arrest him in France.  Which was a lie,
of course, but it served its purpose by increasing the
tumult."

"Did they say that they were Belgians?"

"Yes.  I heard them.  They lied.  There was much
confusion and shouting—everybody crowding around
and disputing.  The three Germans pushed their way
toward the door; nobody knew whether or not to stop
them."  She shrugged.  "They were gone before people
could make up their minds.  And, as usual, the police
came in too late.  Now you know all there is to tell
about what happened after you left the cabaret."

Warner laid aside his brushes, looked curiously at the
portfolio which she held out to him, hesitated, then
opened it and drew out three pages of a letter in
German, but written in English script.  Evidently it was
an unfinished fragment of a letter.  He translated it
rather freely and without any great difficulty:

.. vspace:: 2

—were followed from New York by this man, Halkett,
and a companion of his named Gray.  Disembarking at
Antwerp and going immediately to room No. 23 in the
Hôtel St. Antoine, according to instructions, we walked
directly into a trap, prepared for us, no doubt, by a
wireless message sent from the steamer by the individual,
Halkett.  Schmidt was knocked flat on his back and lay
unconscious; me they hurled violently on the bed; my face was
covered with a pillow, my legs and arms held as in a vise,
while they ripped my clothing from me and then literally
tore it to shreds in their search for the papers I carried.

In the lining of my vest they found the information and
drawings which we had been at such pains and danger to
secure from the Yankee War Department.  And now the
Yankee Government will find out who has been robbing it.

Unless we can overtake these individuals, Halkett and
Gray, the loss to us must be irreparable, as we dared not
study the plans and formula on board ship, nor even venture
to trust in the security of our stateroom, believing that
British agents might be on board and watching.  God knows
they were.

I regret deeply that we did not suspect Halkett and Gray.

Also, the ship's officers, crew, stewards, wireless
operator—all evidently were our enemies and in willing collusion
with these two Englishmen.

Gray, on his motor cycle, left Antwerp for Brussels.
We shall watch him and prevent his meeting Halkett in
France.  We fear they have divided the papers between them.

Our orders are to use our own discretion.  Therefore, I
repeat that Gray shall not live to meet Halkett.

As for Halkett, he undoubtedly has some of the papers
on his person.  We missed him in Holland by accident; we
unfortunately failed in the city of Luxembourg, because
he was too crafty to cross the viaduct, but slept that night
in a water mill under the walls in the lower city.

We traced him to Diekirch, but missed him again, twice,
although Schmidt, who was posted further along on the
narrow-gauge line, fired at him as a last resort.  For, as
you point out, it is better that France should come into
possession of the Harkness shell than that the British
Admiralty should control it.  The very existence of our
fleet is now at stake.  France is slow to accept foreign
inventions; but England is quick as lightning.

So, if necessary, we shall take extreme measures in
regard to Halkett and Gray, and stand the chances that we
may secure their papers and get back to Berlin before the
French police interfere.

And if we fail to get away, well, at least England shall
not profit by the Harkness shell.

Meier and Hoffman are following Gray; we are now
leaving for Ausone, and hope to find Halkett somewhere in
that vicinity.

I am writing this with difficulty, as the road is not what
it ought to be, and the wind is disconcerting.  Esser is
acting as chauffeur——

.. vspace:: 2

And there the letter ended.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER X`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER X

.. vspace:: 2

Philippa was plaiting grass stems when he
finished his examination of the letter.  And while
she deftly braided *boutons d'or* among the green
blades, she continued under her breath the song of the
Vidette, casting an occasional side glance upward at
him, where he sat on his camp stool studying the written
fragments.

At length, seeing that he had finished, she tossed
aside the flowering rope of grass, set her elbows on her
knees, her rounded chin on her hands, and regarded him
inquiringly, as though, for the moment, she had done
with childish things.

"It is a letter which urgently concerns Mr. Halkett,"
he nodded coolly.  "Shall I give it to him?"

"Please."

He pocketed the portfolio, hesitated, glanced at his
watch, then, with an absent-minded air, began to pack
up his painting kit.  As he unhooked his *toile* he looked
around at her.

"Philippa," he said, "if you are going to punt back
to Ausone, isn't it nearly time you started?"

"Aren't you going to paint any more?" she asked,
smiling.

"No.  I think I had better find Mr. Halkett and show
him this letter."

"But—I have come all the way from Ausone to pay
you a visit!" explained the girl in hurt surprise.
"Didn't you want to see me?"

"Certainly I want to see you," he replied smilingly.
"But to punt up stream to Ausone this afternoon is
going to take you quite a long while——"

"As for that," she remarked, "it need not concern us.
I am not going back to Ausone."

"Not going back!"

"Listen, please.  Monsieur Wildresse and I have
had a disagreement——"

"Nonsense!"

"No, a serious disagreement.  I am not going back
to Ausone.  Shall I tell you all about it?"

"Yes, but listen to me, Philippa.  You can't run away
from your home merely because you have had a
disagreement with your Patron and guardian."

"Shall I tell you why we disagreed?"

"If you choose.  But that doesn't justify you in
running away from your home."

The girl shook her head:

"You don't yet understand.  In our café the French
Government compels us to spy on certain strangers and
to report whatever we can discover.  Always it
disgusted me to do such a thing.  Now I shall not be
obliged to do it any more, because I am never going
back to the Cabaret de Biribi."

"Do you mean to say that you and Monsieur Wildresse
are in the secret service of your Government?"
he asked, astonished.

"That is too dignified an explanation.  I have been
an informer since I was seventeen."

"A—a *paid* informer?"

"I don't know whether the Government pays Monsieur Wildresse."

"But he doesn't do such things for the pleasure of
doing them."

"Pleasure?  It is an abominable profession!  It is
unclean."

"Then why do you do it?" he demanded, amazed.

"I am not perfectly sure why.  I know that the
Patron is afraid of the Government.  That, I suppose,
is why we have been obliged to take orders from them."

"Afraid?  Why?"

"It's partly on Jacques' account—his son's.  If we
do what they ask of us they say that they won't send
him to New Caledonia.  But I believe it is all *blague*."  She
looked up at Warner out of her troubled grey eyes.
"Espionage—that has been my *metier* since I was taken
out of school—to listen in the cabaret, to learn to keep
my eyes open, to relate to the Patron whatever I saw
or heard concerning any client the Government desired
him to watch....  Do you think that is a very pleasant
life for a young girl?"

His face became expressionless.

"Not very," he said.  "Go on."

She said thoughtfully:

"It is a horrible profession, Mr. Warner.  Why
should I continue it?  Are there no police?  Why
should I, Philippa Wildresse, do their dirty work?
Can you explain?  *Alors*, I have asked myself that
many, many times.  Today, at last, I have answered
my own question: I shall never again play the spy for
anybody!  C'est fini!  Voilà!"

Warner remained silent.

"Why, it is revolting!" she exclaimed.  "Figurez-vous,
Monsieur!  I was even signaled to spy upon *you*!
Can you conceive such a thing?"

"On *me*?" he repeated, bewildered and angry.

"Certainly.  That is why I danced with you.  I am
permitted to dance only with clients under observation."

Her unflattering candor sent a flush to his face.  His
latent vanity had been rather rudely surprised.

"Afterward," she continued, "I knew you could not
be the man they wanted——"

"What man did they want?"

"Somebody who had stolen documents in America, I
believe.  But I was sure that you were honest."

"Why?"

Philippa lifted her grey eyes:

"Because you were honest with *me*."

"How, honest?"

"You did not make love to me.  Dishonest men always
regard women as a pastime.  To make advances is
the first thing I expect from them.  I am never
disappointed.  All men are more or less dishonest—excepting
you."

"This is a sorry school you have been brought up
in," he said grimly.

"Do you mean that I have had my schooling by
observing life?"

"Yes—a life in a cabaret full of *rastaoqueres* and
*cocottes*—a rather limited and sordid outlook,
Philippa.  The world lies outside."

"Still—it is life.  Even a *cocotte* is part of life."

"So is disease.  But it isn't *all* there is in life."

"Nor is life in a cabaret all corruption.  A cabaret
is merely the world in miniature; all types pass in and
out; they come and go as souls are born and go: the
door opens and closes; one sees a new face, one loses
it.  It is much like birth and death."

She made an unconsciously graceful gesture toward
the white clouds overhead.

"A cabaret," she went on seriously, "is a republic
governed by the patron, audited by the *caissière*,
policed by waiters.  Everybody goes there—even you,
Monsieur.  All languages are spoken there, all questions
discussed, all theories aired, all passions ventilated.
Every trait of human nature is to be observed there;
the germ of every comedy; the motive of every tragedy....
Yet, as you say, it is a saddening school....
Wisdom is too early acquired there.  One learns too
quickly and too completely in such a school.  Such
an education means precocity.  It foreshadows the
early death of youth, Monsieur....  If I remain
there, all that is still young in me will die, now, very
quickly."

"You poor child!"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Therefore," she said, "I am leaving.  Now do you
understand?"

He sat looking at her, wondering uneasily at her
intelligence and her ability to express herself.  Here
was a maturity of mind unexpected in this girl.  So far
it had not visibly altered the youth of her, nor impaired
her sweetness and honesty.

In spite of the appalling surroundings amid which
she had matured, her mind and heart still remained
young.

Biting a tasselled grass stem reflectively, she sat
thinking for a few moments, then she reverted to the
subject of Wildresse and his son.

"I am convinced that it is all *blague*," she repeated,
"—this threat of Noumea.  Unless Jacques misbehaves
very seriously in Biribi, nobody can send him to
La Nouvelle.  Besides, if his father chooses to oblige
the Government, what does it matter about me?  No;
I have had enough of degradation.  An hour on the
river with you was enough to settle it."

"But what do you intend to do, Philippa?" he inquired.

She looked up at him with her winning smile:

"I came to ask *you* that.  Please tell me what I am
to do."

"You must not ask *me*——"

"Of course.  You are the first man who ever pleased
me.  You please me more and more.  Why should I
not come to you in my perplexity and say, 'What am
I to do, my friend?'"

He reddened at that; found nothing to answer.  The
sudden and grotesque responsibility which this young
girl was so lightly placing upon his shoulders might
have amused if it had not disconcerted him.  But it
did not disconcert her.

"What am I to do, Mr. Warner?" she repeated with
a smile of perfect confidence.

"Why, *I* don't know, Philippa.  What *can* you do
down here at Saïs?"

"Tell *me*!" she insisted with undisturbed serenity.

"You couldn't very well remain here.  You will have
to go back to Ausone and consider this matter more
seriously——"

"Ah, ça—non!  I shall *not* go back!"

"What do you propose to *do*?"

She bit her grass stem:

"I don't know.  I have my trunk in the punt——"

"What!"

"Certainly, I brought my effects!  I have some
money—not very much.  I shall go to the inn and
remain there until you have decided what it is best for
me to do."

The situation began to strike him as sufficiently
ludicrous—the tragic mask is always on the verge of a
grin—but he did not feel like smiling.

For a few minutes he occupied himself with collecting,
strapping, and slinging his kit; and when he was
ready to go, he looked down at the girl Philippa, where
she was seated watching him out of her trustful grey
eyes.

"I can employ you as a model," he said, "until
Monsieur Wildresse sends for you.  What do you think of
the idea?"

.. _`"'I can employ you as a model,' he said"`:

.. figure:: images/img-132.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: "'I can employ you as a model,' he said"

   "'I can employ you as a model,' he said"

"As a—a *model*, Monsieur?" she stammered.

"Yes.  You could pose for me, if you like."

A delicate scarlet flush slowly mounted to her hair.

Perplexed, he watched her.

"Don't you like the idea?"  And suddenly he divined
what was troubling her.  "Not that sort of model," he
said, amused.  "You shall wear your clothes, Philippa."

"Oh....  Yes, I should like it, I think."

"It's about the only excuse which would enable you
to remain at the inn until you have come to some
conclusion regarding your future," he explained.

"A painter may always have his models?  It is
expected, is it not?"

"Oh, yes, *that* is always understood.  But nobody
would understand your coming to live at the Golden
Peach merely because you and I happened to be good
friends," he added laughingly.

"I understand," she said in a grave voice.  "I am
to be your model, not your friend."

He nodded carelessly, looking away from her.  After
a moment, he lighted a cigarette.  It relieved him
considerably to recollect that the Harem had gone to
Ausone.

"Now," he said, "if you are ready to walk back to
the inn with me, I'll explain you to Madame Arlon, the
*patronne*."

"And my punt?" she inquired, rising from the grass.

"Oh, Lord!  I forgot."

"My trunk is in it."

"Where is your punt?"

She pointed across the meadow to where the river
sparkled:

"It is my own punt; the *Lys*.  I took nothing from
Monsieur Wildresse that did not belong to me.  It will
be agreeable for us to have a punt here, will it not?"

"Very," he said uneasily.

They turned eastward across the blossoming meadow,
over which already the swallows were soaring in their
late afternoon flight.  A *vanneau* or two rose from
moist spots, protesting, and flapping away on
greenish-bronze wings; a *bécassine* went off like a
badly-balanced arrow, and his flat, raucous, "squack! squack!"
rang through the sunny silence.  Higher, higher his
twisting flight carried him toward the sky, where he
dwindled to a speck and vanished; but out of the
intense blue zenith his distant cry still rang long
after he had disappeared from the range of human
vision.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI

.. vspace:: 2

When Warner and the girl Philippa arrived
at the Golden Peach, they found that
Madame Arlon, profiting by the prospective
temporary absence of the Harem, had gone to visit
relatives near Nancy for a day or two.  But Linette
smilingly took charge of Philippa and her luggage.

Warner, entering the southern end of the walled
garden, discovered Halkett at the other extremity, still
seated under the latticed arbor.  A letter lay spread
upon the table beside his elbow.  Over this letter, with
pencil and paper, he pored as though he were working
out a problem in hieroglyphics.

But when Warner appeared, the Englishman leisurely
folded and pocketed the papers on which he had been
working, nodded pleasantly, and handed to Warner a
copy of the *Petit Journal d'Ausone*.

"It came after you left," he said.  "There's nothing
really new in it—Germany's ultimatum to Russia,
that's about all....  I am feeling rather anxious
about a friend of mine, Reginald Gray.  He was to
have arrived here last night or early this morning on
his motor cycle.  No word has come from him
*personally*, and it is now nearly night again."

Warner seated himself, glanced over the inky little
provincial newspaper, then laid it aside.  There was
in its columns nothing definite concerning the
threatened rupture of the peace of Europe.

"Halkett," he said almost solemnly, "this crime with
which they say our civilization is menaced can never be
consummated.  There will be no World War, because
the world dares not acquiesce in such an outrage.  The
eleventh hour has struck, I know; but salvation exists
only because there is a twelfth hour on the dial;
otherwise the preordained end of everything would be hell."

Halkett smiled slightly.

"I've just had another letter," he said.  "I'm likely
to remain here for a few days more....  Which
means only one thing."

"What does it mean?"

"War."

Warner smiled incredulously.

"Anyway, there will be one compensation for the
general smash if you remain here," he said gayly.

"You're very good to take it that way....  You
and I—and to hell with the Deluge!"  But his face
sobered while the jest was spoken; he leaned rather
wearily on the iron table and rested his forehead in one
hand.  "I wish I knew what has happened to Reginald
Gray," he repeated.

"What is it that worries you about your friend Gray?"

"His cap was picked up on the highway five miles
southeast of Saïs."

"How could you know that?"

"I have just learned it by telephone, through a
certain source of information."

"Did you learn anything more?"

"*There was a little blood on the road.*"

Warner remained silent.

"Also," continued Halkett thoughtfully, "a motor
cycle had skidded up the bank.... But no signs of
a serious accident could be discovered—merely the
ragged swathe cut through soft earth and rank
vegetation....  If Gray met with an accident, he must have
mended his machine, remounted, and continued his
course—wherever he was going—unless somebody
picked up him and his wheel and took them away....
I can't understand this affair.  It bothers me."

"The chances are that your friend Gray had a rather
bad spill," suggested Warner, "and no doubt you'll
hear from him, or about him, before morning."

"I ought to, certainly."  He filled and lighted his
pipe; Warner rose and began to pace the garden path
rather nervously.  Presently he came back to where
the Englishman sat brooding over his pipe and nursing
Ariadne.

"Halkett," he said abruptly, "you remember that
girl Philippa in the Café Biribi?"

The Englishman looked up inquiringly.

"Well, she is here."

"At the inn?"

"Yes.  I met her down in the big river meadow this
afternoon, and she calmly informed me that she had
left home for good."

"Run away?"

"Run away.  Taken the key of the fields.  Beat it
for keeps.  How does that strike you?"

"Any particular reason?" inquired Halkett indifferently.

"Why, yes.  The child has been used by the secret
police to spy on people in the Café Biribi."

Halkett's eyes opened at that.

Warner went on:

"That old rascal, Wildresse, it seems, is nothing but
a paid informer.  He forced this girl Philippa to
engage in the same filthy business.  She even admitted
that old Wildresse had set her on *me*!  No doubt he
had decided to watch you himself.  And do you know
what I think?"

Halkett was very wide-awake now.  He said:

"I believe I do know what you are thinking.  And I
believe you are pretty nearly right."

"That the assault on you was merely a local matter
instigated by Wildresse?"

"It wouldn't surprise me."

"I think it was, too.  Some of his thugs did it.  He
had made up his mind about you.  But somebody must
have tipped him off to watch you."

"Probably."

"I am sure of it.  The three German-appearing men
who tried to pick a quarrel with you over the
Archduke's murder were not the men who tried to frisk you
for your papers.  They were 'provocative agents' in
the pay of a foreign government—hired opportunists
who were expected to pick something of value out of
any confusion attending a general row fomented by
themselves."

"Who told you that?"

"Philippa."

Halkett, now thoroughly interested, looked keenly
at Warner through the thin haze of his pipe.

"These three agents," continued Warner, "were
certainly in close communication with the men who have
been following you.  And at least one of those men
was seated at the table directly behind you when
Wildresse's thugs tried to frisk you for documents.  So
you see that Wildresse, prodded by the French secret
police, and these provocative agents, prodded by the
people who are following you, who, in turn, are spurred
by the German Government, were all playing at cross
purposes, but with you as a common objective.  A
fine nest of intrigue I led you into when I took you to
the Cabaret de Biribi!  I'm terribly sorry, Halkett.
But I believe that some good has come out of that
mess—a fragment of a letter, written in German, which
Philippa gave me in the meadow this afternoon.

"She found it under the wrecked table behind you.
Nobody has seen it except myself and Philippa; and
the child cannot read much German.  But, studying
it and seeing your name in the letter, she was clever
enough to bring it to me.  Here it is."  He laid it
on the table under the Englishman's eyes.

While Halkett remained absorbed in his translation,
Warner paced the garden, deeply occupied with his
own uneasy cogitations.  After a little while Halkett
spoke to him in an altered voice, and he turned and
came swiftly back to the arbor.

The Englishman, looking up, said gravely:

"Concerning myself, there seems to remain now
nothing worth concealing from you....  Perhaps you had
better know the truth.  I happen to be an officer
temporarily serving with the Intelligence Department; I
had just been assigned to duty in New York when the
Harkness shell was stolen.  The general alarm went
out.  Gray, a brother officer, and I chanced to stumble
on evidence which sent us aboard an Antwerp steamer.
Our birds were aboard.  We pulled every string available,
and, passing over the details of the affair, he and
I managed to recover the drawings, specifications, and
formula which had been stolen.  Some of these papers
are in that envelope.

"Every German agent in Europe knows we have
them.  My Government, for some reason or other,
instructs me to remain here for the present.  As Gray
and I are known, doubtless somebody will appear and
take the drawings out of our hands, because the
chances are that I'd be murdered before I reached
Calais.  That is the situation, Warner."

"Has Gray any of the drawings?"

"He has."

"I understand."

"And that is why I am worrying about Gray.  They'd
not hesitate to kill him if they thought there was a
chance that he had any of the papers."

Warner said:

"They couldn't have killed him.  A crime on the
public highway cannot remain undiscovered very long."

Halkett sat thoughtfully stroking Ariadne.  Presently
he looked up with a slight smile.

"Well, what are you going to do with the girl
Philippa?" he inquired.

"Now, what do you think of a situation like this?"
demanded Warner, half laughing, half vexed.  "I told
her to go home.  She positively refuses.  You can't
blame the child.  The dirty business there has
disgusted her.  This seems to be a final revolt.
But—what would *you* do if a young girl wished herself on
*you*?"

"I haven't the faintest idea," said Halkett, intensely
amused.

Warner reddened.

"I haven't either," he said.  "All I can think of is
to use her as a model—give her a small salary until
she finds something to do."

"Are you going to use her for a model?"

"I suppose so, until somebody comes after her to
take her back."

"Suppose nobody comes?" suggested Halkett mischievously.

"Well, I'm not going to adopt her, that's certain,"
insisted the other.  "Poor little thing!" he added.
"—Her instincts seem to be decent.  Who could
blame a young girl for sickening of such a life and
cutting away on her own hook?  That's a rotten joint,
that Cabaret de Biribi.  And as for that old villain,
Wildresse, it wouldn't surprise me at all if he were
playing the dirty game from both ends—German and
French.  Informers are often traitors."

"Very frequently."

"Spies also have that reputation, I believe—except
in romantic fiction," said Warner.

"They usually deserve it," returned Halkett.  "Generally
speaking, they are a scum recruited from low
pubs and brothels.  Rarely does any reputable person
enter that profession except in line of military duty
or in time of war.

"Servants, waiters, chauffeurs, those are the most
respectable classes of secret agents.  But the
demi-monde and their hangers-on furnish the majority of
those popularly supposed to represent people of
position who play the rôle of international spy.  They are
a rummy lot, Warner.

"It is very, very seldom in Occidental drawing-rooms
that such practices prevail.  A woman of position very
rarely becomes a paid agent of that sort.  Diplomats
and attachés who are pumped and victimized are
usually the dupes of socially disreputable people.
Society in England and in Western Europe rarely
entertains such a favorite of fiction as a paid
Government spy; nor are such people very often
recruited from its ranks.  East of the Danube it is
different."

They sat for a while smoking, Halkett lavishing
endearments upon Ariadne who never failed to respond,
Warner musing on what Halkett had said and wondering
exactly what duties the Military Intelligence
Department of any Government might include.

No doubt, like the Government, it employs spies,
and, like the Government, never admits the fact.

For among all outcasts so vitally necessary to
autocracy and militarism, the spy is the most pitiable:
in time of peace no authority admits employing him;
in time of war, his fate, if taken, is as certain as that
his own Government will disown him.  Eternally
repudiated, whether of respectable or disreputable
antecedents, honest or otherwise, patriotic or mercenary,
the world has only one opinion to express concerning
spies, although it often cackles over their adventures
and snivels over their fate.

Perhaps Halkett was musing on these things, for
presently he took his pipe from his mouth and said:

"To my knowledge, we British never employ spies in
America.  Your Government, I know, never employs
them anywhere in time of peace.  All other
Governments do.  Europe swarms with them.  If I were in
Germany today, I'd be considered a spy.  They'd
follow me about and lock me up on the first excuse—or
without any excuse at all.  And if we chanced to be
at war with Germany, and I were caught, they'd
certainly shoot me because I have recovered stolen
property."

"They'd execute you because you are not in uniform?"

"Certainly.  I'd not stand a ghost of a chance.  So
I shall be rather glad that I'm in France when war
comes."

"You are so certain it is coming?"

"Absolutely, my dear fellow.  Probably it will be
declared tomorrow."

"I cannot believe it, Halkett."

"I can scarcely believe it myself.  But—I know it
is coming.  And it is coming from the north."

"Through *Belgium*?"

"Exactly."

"And the treaty?"

"I have already told you how Germany regards such
agreements.  She'll kill that treaty with just as much
emotion as she'd experience in assassinating a fly.  It's
a rotten outlook, Warner.  The eleventh hour has
passed."

They smoked for a while in silence, then:

"Where is your little protégée?" asked Halkett,
making an effort to shake off his depression.

"Linette is making her comfortable.  When Madame
Arlon returns from Nancy I shall tell her to look
out for the child.  She's in her room, unpacking, I
suppose."

"Did she even bring her boxes?" asked the Englishman,
greatly amused.

"Yes, she did.  And I don't know what on earth she
intends to do for a living when I go back to Paris.
I'm sorry for her, but she can't expect me to travel
about France with her——"

He checked himself abruptly; Halkett also looked up.

The girl Philippa had entered the further end of
the garden.

She came slowly forward through the rosy evening
light, straight and slim in her girlish gown of white,
unrelieved except by a touch or two of black, and by
the coppery splendor of her hair.

She halted in the path a little way from the arbor,
evidently aware that somebody was within.

"Are you there, Monsieur Warner?" she asked in
her sweet, childish voice.

He got up with a glance of resignation at Halkett,
and went to meet her.  Halkett, from the arbor, noticed
the expression of her face when Warner appeared, and
he continued to observe the girl with curious attention.

She had instinctively laid her hands in Warner's,
detaining him naïvely, and looking up into his face with
an honesty too transparent to mistake.

"I miss you very much," she said, "even for a few
minutes.  I hastened my toilet to rejoin you."

"That is very sweet of you, Philippa——"  He didn't
know what else to say; felt the embarrassment warm
on his face—chagrin, shyness, something of both,
perhaps—and a rather helpless feeling that he was
acquiescing in an understanding which already was
making him very uneasy.

"Come in to the arbor," he said.  "Mr. Halkett is
there."

She slipped her arm through his.  Halkett saw both
their faces as they approached, and, watching Warner
for a moment, he felt inclined to laugh.  But in this
young girl's eyes there was something that checked
his amusement.  A man does not laugh at the happy
and serious eyes of childhood.

So he rose and paid his respects to Philippa with
pleasant formality; she seated herself between the
two men.

The last pink rays of the sun fell across the little
iron table, flooding the garden with an enchanted light:
already the evening perfume of clove pinks had become
exquisitely apparent; a belated bumblebee blundered
out of the reseda and, rising high in the calm air,
steered his bullet flight into the west.  Ariadne, on
the table, stretched herself, yawned, and looked about
her, now thoroughly awake for the rest of the night.

"*Minette!*" murmured Philippa, caressing her and
laying her cheek against the soft fur.

"You are sunburned," remarked Halkett.

"And badly freckled, Monsieur——"  She looked
mischievously at Warner, laughed at their secret
agreement concerning cosmetics, then turned again to
Halkett:

"You have heard, I suppose, of the happy understanding
between Mr. Warner and me?"

"I think so," said Halkett, subduing an inclination
to laugh.

"The future, for me, is entirely secure," continued
Philippa happily.  "I am permitted to assist Mr. Warner
in his art.  It is a very wonderful future, Mr. Halkett,
destined for me without doubt by God."  She
added, half to herself: "And a lifetime on my knees
would be too short a time to thank Him in."

Both men became silent and constrained, Warner
feeling more helpless than ever in the face of such
tranquil confidence; Halkett remembering what Warner had
once said about the soul of Philippa—but still pleasantly
and gently inclined to skepticism concerning this
*fille de cabaret*.

Philippa, leaning forward on the table between them,
joined her slender hands and looked at Warner.

"It is pleasant to be accepted as a friend by such
men as you are," she said thoughtfully....  "I have
met other gentlemen of your station in life, now and
then.  But their attitude toward me has been different
from yours....  I once supposed that, in a cabaret,
all men resembled each other where women were
concerned.  I have been very happily mistaken."

Warner said:

"A man scarcely expects to see more than one sort
of woman in a cabaret."

"Yet, you were not astonished to see me, were you?"

"Yes," he said, "I was astonished."

"You did not seem to be."

Warner glanced at Halkett:

"Do you remember what I once said about Philippa's
soul?"

The Englishman smiled at Philippa:

"As soon as Mr. Warner saw you he said to me that
your soul was as clean as a flame....  I was slower
to understand you."

The girl turned swiftly to Warner:

"What a heavenly thing for a man to say about a
woman!  And my lips painted scarlet—and I a *caissière
de cabaret*——"  Her voice broke childishly; she
sprang to her feet and stood looking through the
starting tears at the last level rays of the sun.

Standing so, unstirring till the tears dried, she
presently turned and resumed her chair; and, after a few
moments' silence, she dropped her elbows on the table
again and clasped her hands under her chin.

She said, not looking at either of the men:

"I have thought of becoming a nun.  But it is too
late.  Cloisters make awkward inquiries and search
records; no Sisterhood of any order I ever heard of
would admit to a novitiate any girl who has served five
years where I have served....  And so—until I saw
you—I did not know what was to become of me——"

She lifted her grey eyes to Warner.  They
were starry with recent tears.  Her chin rested
on her clasped hands, her enchanted gaze on him.

Halkett was first to move and make an effort:

"Yes, it was perhaps time to cut away," he muttered.
"Anything we can do—very glad, I'm sure."

"Certainly," said Warner.  "There are a lot of agreeable
young women in my class who will be interested to
know you when they return from Ausone day after
tomorrow——"

Philippa turned swiftly toward him:

"I do not wish any woman to know what I have
been!  You wouldn't *tell* them, would you?"

"No, of course not—if you feel that way," he said.
"Only I—it occurred to me—some protection—some
countenance—understanding—from other women——"

"I desire none.  I want only your friendship."

"But how am I going to explain you——"

"You are a painter.  I am your model.  Is not that
sufficient explanation?"

"Yes—if you desire to be so regarded—permanently——"

"I do.  My privacy will then remain my own.  I
permit nobody to invade it—excepting you."

"Very well, if you feel that way....  Only, you
are—attractive, Philippa—and I am rather afraid you
might not be understood——"

She shrugged her shoulders:

"For five years I have not been understood.  Do you
know that men have even thrown dice for me, so
certain were they that they understood me?  I am
accustomed to it.  But I am not accustomed to women—I
mean to your kind.  I distrust them; possibly I am
afraid of them.  Anyway, their interest in me would
be unwelcome.  It is your friendship I want.  Nothing
else matters."

"You are wrong, Philippa.  Other things do matter.
No woman can go it alone, disdainful of other women's
opinions."

"I have always been alone."

Warner said patiently:

"I should not do anything without first consulting
you."

"I feel very sure that you would not."  She smiled
at him trustfully, her cheek on her linked fingers; then
her gaze grew absent.  The last sun ray lingered on
her hair, turning it to fiery bronze.  Under it her grey
eyes gazed absently into the future, filled now, for her,
with iridescent castles and peopled with vaguely splendid
images—magic scenes that young and lonely hearts
evoke out of the very emptiness of their isolation.

And in the center of the phantom pageant always
appeared Warner, her friend, endowed with all the
mystery and omniscience with which a young girl's
heart invests the man who first awakens it to
irregularity—who first interferes with the long monotony of
its virgin rhythm.

Halkett, a little keener of the two—a little more
sensitive, if more reticent—said pleasantly:

"Perhaps you might prefer to dine out here with us,
Philippa.  The Ha—the class, I mean—banquets and
carouses in the dining-room, when it is here."

"Of course I wish to dine with you!  I said so to
Linette before I came out here.  It is all arranged."

Halkett laughed.  At the same moment, Linette came
out with the tray.

.. vspace:: 2

A bright afterglow still lingered in the zenith when
their leisurely dinner had ended; and in the garden the
mellow light was beginning to make objects exquisitely
indistinct.

Halkett, smoking in silence, was evidently thinking
about his friend Gray, for, when Linette came to remove
the cloth and coffee cups, and to say that some gentlemen
on motor cycles were at the garden gate inquiring
for Mr. Halkett, the young Englishman rose with a
quick sigh of relief and walked swiftly to the heavy,
green door under the arch in the garden wall.

As he laid his hand on the latch, he turned toward
Warner:

"I'll bring Gray in directly," he called back; and
opened the door and stepped out into the dusk.

At the same instant Warner rose to his feet, listening;
then he ran for the green door.  As he reached
it, the heavy little door burst open; Halkett sprang
inside, slid the big iron bolt into place, turned and
warned the American aside with upflung hand.

"Keep Philippa out of range of the door!" he called
across the garden, drawing his automatic at the same
time and springing backward.  "Don't stand in a line
with that green door——"

A volley of pistol shots cut him short.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XII

.. vspace:: 2

The green door in the garden wall had been
perforated by a dozen bullets from outside before
the first heavy crash came, almost shaking it
from its hinges.

Warner had already whipped out his own automatic;
Halkett pushed him aside across a flower bed.

"Keep out of this!" he said.  "It's my affair——"

"I'm damned if it is!" retorted Warner.  "I'll settle
that question once for all!"  And he leveled his
automatic and sent a stream of lead through the green
door in the wall.

No more blows fell on it, but all over it, from top
to bottom, white splinters flew while bullets poured
through it from outside.

"You are wrong to involve yourself," insisted Halkett,
raising his voice to dominate the racket of the
automatics.  "They want only me."

"So do I, Halkett.  And I've got you and mean to
keep you.  Blood is the thicker, you know."

Philippa came from the arbor, carrying the badly
frightened cat with difficulty.

"Is it really war?" she asked calmly, while Ariadne
alternately cowered and struggled.

"Just a little private war," said Halkett.  "And you
had better go into the house at once——"

"You and I should go, also," added Warner, "if there
are more than two men out there."

"I saw at least half a dozen beyond the wall.  You
are quite right, Warner; we couldn't hope to hold this
garden.  But I dislike to go into a strange house and
invite assault on other people's property—just to
save my own hide——"

"Keep out of range!" interrupted Warner sharply,
taking him by the arm and following Philippa around
the garden toward the rear of the house.

The back door was iron, armed with thick steel bolts;
the neighborhood of the quarry rendering such defenses
advisable.  Warner shot all three bolts, then passed
rapidly through the kitchen to the front door and
secured it, while Halkett went to the telephone.  The
nearest gendarmes were at Ausone.

Linette, the chambermaid and waitress, and Magda,
the cook, had followed Halkett and Philippa from the
pantry through the kitchen to the front hallway.  They
had heard the noisy fusillade in the garden.  Curiosity
seemed to be their ruling emotion, but even that was
under control.

"Is it the Prussians, Messieurs?" asked Linette
calmly.  "Has the war really begun?"  Her face, and
Magda's too, seemed a trifle colorless in the failing
evening light, but her voice was steady.

"Magda," said Warner, "the men outside our garden
who fired at Mr. Halkett are certainly Germans.  He
and I mean to keep them out of this house if they
attempt to enter it.  So you and Linette had better
go very quietly to the cellar and remain there, because
there may be some more firing——"

"I?  The cellar!  When Prussians are outside!"
exclaimed Magda.  "Ma foi!  I think Linette and I
can be of better use than hiding in the cellar.  Linette!
Set water to boil in both kettles!  I have my dishes to
wash.  The Prussians had better not interfere with
me when I have dishes to wash!"

"Keep away from the windows," added Warner to
Linette.  "There are iron bars on all the lower windows,
aren't there?"

"Yes, Monsieur Warner.  If the front door holds,
they cannot get in."

Halkett, at the telephone, called back through the
dim hallway to Warner:

"Somebody has cut the telephone wire.  I can't do
anything with the instrument!"

Philippa, still clasping Ariadne, had betrayed no
sign of fear or excitement.

"If somebody would tell me what to do," she began—but
Warner quickly drew her into the office of the inn,
which was really the inner café and bar.

"Stay here," he said.  "Those men outside might
open fire on us at any moment.  Don't go near a
window.  Do you promise?"

The girl seated herself obediently and began to
stroke the cat, her eyes serenely fixed on Warner.

Halkett had gone to the floor above to lurk by one
of the windows giving on the garden.  When Warner
came up with a box of cartridge clips, the Englishman,
filling his pockets, remarked quietly:

"They're over the wall already, and dodging about
among the fruit trees—four of them.  There were two
others.  Perhaps you had better keep an eye on the
front door, if you really insist on being mixed up
with this mess I'm in."

"Do you suppose those fellows will be silly enough
to attack the house?" asked the American incredulously.

Halkett nodded:

"They are desperate, you see.  I can understand
why.  They know that war is likely to be declared
within the next few hours.  If they don't get me now
they won't stand much chance later.  That's why I'm
prepared for anything on their part."

Warner walked swiftly back toward the front, cutting
the cords of the latticed window blinds in every
room, so that they fell full length.

"No lights in the house!" he called down over the
banisters; "and keep away from the windows,
everybody!  Philippa, do you hear me?"

"I understand; I shall tell them to light no candles,"
came the untroubled voice of Philippa.

"Are *you* all right down there?"

"Yes, *I* am.  But the cat is still quite frightened,
poor darling."

In spite of his anxiety, Warner laughed as he reloaded.

Outdoors there still remained sufficient light to see
by.  Flat against the wall, pistol in hand, he cautiously
reconnoitered the dusky roadway in front of the
house, then, leaning further out, he ventured to look
down between lattice and sill at the doorstep
below.  A mound of dry hay had been piled against the
door.

"Get out of there!" he shouted, catching a glimpse
of two shadowy figures skulking toward the doorway arch.

His reply was a red flash which split the dusk,
another, and another; the window glass above him
flew into splinters under the shower of bullets; the
persiennes jerked and danced.

But the men who stood pouring bullets in his direction
had been obliged to drop double armfuls of faggots.
One of these men, still firing as he ran, took cover
behind a poplar tree across the road; the other man
flattened himself against the wall of the house, so far
under the door arch that no shot could reach him from
an upper window unless the marksman exposed himself.

Standing so, he lighted a chemical match and tossed
it, flaring, on the heap of hay piled high against the
door; and almost at the same instant a boilerful of
hot water splashed through the bars of the lower
window beside him, scalding and soaking him; and he
bounded out into the road with a yell of astonishment
and pain.

The hay, instantly on fire, sent a cloud of white
thick smoke billowing along the façade of the house,
then burst into flame; but Linette and Magda dashed
water on it from the lower windows, and the red blaze
leaped and died.

Then, from the rear of the house, the dry rattle
of Halkett's automatic broke out, and the pattering
racket of pistol shots redoubled when other automatics
crackled from the garden.  Thick as hailstones
pelting a tin roof the bullets clanged on the iron rear
door, filling the house with deafening dissonance.

Halkett, peering out through his lattice into the
dusk, ceased firing.  A few moments longer the door
reëchoed the bullets' impact; then all sound ceased, the
silence still vibrating metallic undertones.

Prowling from window to window, Warner, pistol
lifted, peered warily from the shelter of the lowered
lattice blinds.

One man still crouched behind the poplar tree; the
other, he thought, was lying in the long grass of the
roadside ditch.

"Are you all right, Halkett?" he called back through
the stinging fumes of the smokeless powder which filled
the hallway.

"Quite fit, thanks.  How is it with you?"

"Still gayly on the job.  I didn't hit anybody.  I
didn't try to."

"Nor I.  Did you ever see such obstinacy and
determination?  Very German, isn't it?"

"Perfectly....  They're keeping rather too quiet
to suit me.  What do you suppose they're up to?"

But neither he nor the Englishman could discover
any movement or hear any sound around the house.
And it had now become too dark to see anything very
clearly.

Philippa appeared mounting the stairs, looking for
Ariadne who had scrambled out of her arms during
the fusillade.

Warner nodded to her from where he was standing
guard.  She came up quietly behind him, stood for a
moment with both hands around his left arm—a silent
figure in the dusk, friendly as a well-bred dog, and as
winningly unconscious of self.  Her cheek, resting
lightly against her hands, where they clasped his arm,
pressed a trifle closer before she went away.

And while he stood there, perplexedly conscious of
this youthful affection, and listening to every slightest
sound, suddenly he heard her voice, startled, calling
out to him from a bedroom on the east side of the
house.

As he entered the room, running, a man outside
on a garden ladder kicked in the window panes, drew
back his heavy foot, sent it crashing again through
the wooden frame, and lurched forward across the sill,
only to be held there, fighting, in the grasp of Philippa.

Behind them another man on the ladder was already
struggling to fling his leg over the sill; the head and
shoulders of a third appeared just behind him,
menacing with uplifted pistol any interference.

Already Philippa had been dragged headlong half-way
through the shattered window, and the man whom
she had seized was endeavoring to fling her down in the
flower bed below, when Warner, leaping forward, hit
him heavily in the face and caught the girl's shoulders,
jerking her back into the room as her assailant's grasp
on her waist relaxed.

The man with the pistol had not been able to use it;
he staggered, his weapon fell, and he clung with both
hands to the rungs as Philippa's assaulter went
tumbling down the ladder, carrying with him the man
directly behind him.  And the next moment Warner had
upset the ladder, sprung back, and pulled Philippa with
him down on the floor.

A hurricane of bullets swept through the shattered
window above them; Halkett, from his latticed vantage,
was firing, too.

The girl lay panting beside him, silent, her head
across his arm.

"Are you hurt?" he whispered.

"Are *you*?"

"No; answer me!" he repeated impatiently.

"He was—very rough.  I don't think I am hurt,"
she breathed.

"You plucky little thing!"

She pressed her cheek against his arm.

"Are you contented with me?" she whispered.

The shots had ceased.  After a long interval of quiet,
Warner ventured to creep to the window and look
through a corner of the ragged lattice blind.  Little by
little he raised himself to his knees, peered out and
finally over.

The ladder lay there just below in the garden path;
the men were gone.  And, even as he looked, the
staccato noise of departing motor cycles broke out like a
startling volley of rifle fire in the night.

For an hour he stood on guard there, with the girl
Philippa crouching beside him on the floor.  From time
to time he called cautiously:

"All well here!"

And the Englishman from the front windows always
answered:

"All well here!"

Finally:

"Halkett!" he called.  "I believe they've cut away
for good!"

Halkett presently appeared in the hallway, coming
from the front of the house, as Philippa rose to her
knees and stood up, a trifle dazed.

"Warner," he whispered, "a dozen horsemen have
just ridden up in front of our house.  They look like
French gendarmes to me, but it's so dark outside that
I am not quite certain.  Will you take a look at them?"

Warner ran to the front and gazed out.  The road
below was filled with mounted gendarmes, their white
aiguillettes plainly visible in the dark.

Two had already descended from their horses, and
while one held an electric torch the other was busily
nailing a big placard to the front door of the inn.  His
hammer strokes rang out sharply in the darkness.

It took only a moment for him to complete his business;
the electric torch shifted, flashed upward, was
extinguished.

"Mount!" came the quick order from the shadowy
peloton of horsemen; up on their high saddles popped
the two troopers; there came a trample of hoofs, the
dull clank of sabres, and away they galloped into the
darkness.

Warner turned slowly, looked hard at Halkett, who
merely nodded in reply to the silent question.

Philippa slipped downstairs in front of them and
began to unlatch the door, as Linette and Magda
appeared from the kitchen carrying lighted candles.

Then, when the front door had swung open, the little
group gathered in front of it and read on the placard,
by flickering candlelight, the decree of the Government
of Republican France.

It was the order for general mobilization.

The nation was already at war.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIII

.. vspace:: 2

A pale streak of daybreak along the eastern
hills, a blackbird piping, then that intense
stillness which heralds the sun.

In mid-heaven the last star-drops melted, washed
out in the grey silver of the sky; a light breeze sighed
through the trees, and, sighing, died.

Then, above earth, a sudden misty glory of gold and
rose; and through it, as through a veil, the sword-edge
of the celestial scimitar curved up, glittering.

Thus dawned the year of war on Saïs.

But the awakening world of summer did not seem
to comprehend; the yellow-haired lad who drove his
cows to pasture halted to read the placard on the door
of the inn, then, whistling his dog to heel, ran forward
after his slowly moving herd.

The miller of Saïs drove by on his way to the mill,
drew rein to read the placard, looked up at the
bullet-shattered window above, then jogged on, his furrowed
features unaltered, his aged eyes fixed on his horse's
ears.

One or two washerwomen on the way to the meadow
pool stood gracefully regarding the poster, flat baskets
of clothes balanced on their heads; then moved on
through the golden sunrise, still graceful, unhurried,
exchanging leisurely comments on life and death as
they walked.

In the kitchen of the Golden Peach, Magda was astir,
and presently Linette appeared, very sleepy.  As they
went about the routine business to which they had been
bred, they too exchanged tranquil views concerning
emperors and kings and the mortality of all flesh.  Also
they took counsel together regarding the return of
Madame Arlon, the ultimate necessity of summoning a
glazier from Ausone, the damage done in the garden
by the ladder.

The door of Philippa's bedroom remained closed;
Warner's door also.  But Halkett, his hands in his
pockets, was out at sunrise, pacing the road in front
of the inn, sometimes looking up at the shot-riddled
windows, or at the placard on the front door, or along
the road at the telephone wires which appeared to be
intact as far as he could see.

But somewhere they had been cut, and communication
still remained interrupted.

Deeply worried over the non-appearance of Gray, the
cutting of the telephone wires now became a matter of
serious concern to him.  He scarcely knew how to act
in his sudden isolation, and, though his instructions
held him at Saïs until further orders, the decree for
general mobilization would have started him off for
Paris except for one thing.  That was the continued
absence of Gray and the possibility that something
alarming had happened to him.

He could not take his envelope and start for England
until he had met Gray or some authorized messenger
from Gray.  He had not explained this to Warner.

But the truth was that what plans he carried were
useless without the interlocking plans carried by Gray.
All the eggs had not been trusted to a single basket.
And, vice versa, the information carried by Gray was of
no practical account until supplemented by the contents
of the long, thin envelope.

Gray's papers and his, taken together, were of vital
importance to England or to any enemy of England;
separate they could be of no use to anybody, enemy or
ally.

The determined attack on him the night before
proved that others besides himself understood this.
And it also made him realize the more clearly that since
he had parted from Gray in Antwerp, the latter had
been as open to such attacks as had he.  The question
now was: had they caught Gray?  If so, it must have
occurred within the last thirty-six hours, because he
had talked over the telephone to Gray the evening of
his own arrival at Saïs.

But since that conversation, which ended with the
understanding that Gray should set out on his motor
cycle for Saïs, not a word had he heard concerning
his colleague, except that his cap had been found on
the road south of Saïs, and that the condition of the
roadside bank, and a few drops of blood, gave evidence
of an accident—if, indeed, it had been an accident.

Nor had Halkett any idea who it was that had called
him up on the telephone to tell him this.

As he stood there, looking down the road, terribly
perplexed and filled with keenest apprehensions
concerning his colleague, far away through the vista of
poplars and telephone poles something white glimmered
in the sunlit road.

It was the white cornette of a Sister of Charity;
after a few minutes Halkett recognized the advancing
figure and walked forward to meet her.

The color of early morning freshened her youthful
cheeks, framed by the snowy wimple.  She extended a
friendly hand to him in salutation, as he came up and
uncovered.

"At such an hour, Monsieur, only birds and Sisters
of Charity are supposed to be on the wing.  Is it
curiosity that has awakened you to see how the sun
really looks when it rises?"

But as she spoke she detected the deep anxiety which
his smile masked, and her own face became responsively
serious.

"Have you had bad news?" she asked gently.

"Worse—I have had no news at all.  Are you going
to the inn?"

"Yes."

"May I help you gather your flowers?" he asked.

"Thank you—if you care to."

They walked on in silence, skirted the garden wall
westward, then north to the bullet-splintered green
door.

Immediately she noticed the scars of the fusillade,
gazed at them curiously for a moment, then laid a
questioning forefinger across a bullet hole.

And while she stood so, he told her in a few words
what had occurred the night before—told her everything,
including the posting of the notice ordering a
general mobilization.

She listened, her finger still resting over the shot
hole, her calm face raised to his.  And, when he ended:

"Then it is war already," she said quietly.

"War has not been declared....  Yes, it is virtually
war.  Why not say so?"

She nodded; he pushed open the heavy little door,
and Sister Eila bent her white-coiffed head and stepped
lightly into the garden.

For a while she moved slowly along the flower-bordered
paths, as though uncertain what to choose from
among the perfumed thickets, then, setting her ozier
basket on the edge of the walk, she knelt down before
the white clove pinks; and Halkett dropped on his
knees beside her.

They worked there together, exchanging scarcely a
word, slowly filling the basket which lay between them.

Ariadne came up with a cheery mew of greeting, and
after marching around and rubbing herself against
Halkett, mounted to his shoulders and settled down,
purring like a teakettle beside his ear.

When the basket was filled, Sister Eila stood up and
straightened her shoulders, and Halkett rose too, the
cat still perched on his shoulder.

He lifted the flower-heaped basket and set it in the
shade of the arbor; Sister Eila seated herself and
Halkett sat down on the stone steps at her feet.

After a silence, made resonant with Ariadne's loudly
cadenced purring, Sister Eila clasped her hands in her
lap and looked steadily down at the heap of flowers
in the green ozier basket.

"What is going to happen?" she asked in a low
voice.  "If there is to be a war, it will come here, I
suppose."

"I am afraid so."

"Yes; Saïs cannot escape."

"The Vosges are too near," he nodded.  "So is
Ausone.  So is the Rhine, for that matter."  He glanced
up at her from where he sat caressing Ariadne.  "Belgium
also is too near, Sister Eila."

"You believe *they* will arrive that way?"

"I feel very certain of it.  And this means that
England moves."

"Where?"

"To the firing line."

"With France?"

"Yes, Sister."

She said quietly:

"That is as it should be, Mr. Halkett.  The two
great wardens of European liberty should stand
together in its defense."

"They've got to stand for *each other*," he said,
"—whatever else they stand for."

"Alsace—Lorraine—I think this is to be a very holy
war—for France," she murmured to herself.

He said nothing.  He was not very clear concerning
the exact amount of holiness involved, but he knew that
war had now become a necessity to England, if she
meant to retain the autocracy of the seas.

"We're bound to go in," he remarked, stroking
Ariadne; "there's nothing else left for us to do.  And
if they don't give us an excuse by invading Belgium,
we'll go in anyway.  That's the meaning of all this!
It has only one real meaning.  The 'Day' they've been
drinking to so long is—Today!  This entire matter
has got to be settled once and for all.  And that's the
truth, Sister Eila."

He sat for a while silent, gazing out across the quiet
garden.  Then, again:

"As for Saïs, if there is an invasion of France, it
must pass this way: if the Vosges are to be defended,
Saïs will see war."

"That will be very sad for us," she said.  "It seems
as though there were already enough violence and
misery in the quarries—enough of wretchedness and
poverty.  If the quarrymen are called to the colors
with their classes, and if the quarries and cement
works close, I don't know what is to become of our
school."

"You said that it is a free school."

"Yes, but the children live elsewhere, and are clothed
and fed elsewhere.  Except at noontime, we do not
feed them.  If we had money to provide beds and food,
the school is large enough to shelter the children.
However, I suppose we shall hear from the rue de
Bac—the mother house, you know?"

She rose, picked up her basket of flowers, and
Halkett also stood up.

"Good-by," she said.  "Thank you for helping....
I—I suppose you do not remain very long in Saïs?"

"I don't know how long."

She inclined her young head gravely.

They walked together to the green door in the wall,
and again her eyes became riveted on the bullet marks.

"Perhaps," she said, "you will have time to—to
come to the school again before you leave Saïs? ...
Unless you think it dangerous——"

He looked up, then away from her.

"I'll come—to the school."

"Then—it is au revoir, I hope."

He stood uncovered, holding open the door, and, as
she passed in front of him, he took from her basket a
white clove pink.  She saw what he did, and halted
instinctively to give him his choice.  Suddenly, without
any reason, her cheeks flushed brightly; she bent her
head and stepped quickly through the archway, leaving
him standing there with the dull color deepening in his
sun-tanned face.

Warner discovered him still standing where she had
left him, the white blossom hanging from his clenched
fist.

"Well," he said, "how did you sleep after that
villainous business of last night?"

"Thanks, I slept," replied Halkett, rousing himself.

They went into the arbor together, and presently
Linette came out of the house carrying their coffee.

"Where is your little friend Philippa?" inquired the
Englishman with an effort.

"In bed, I fancy.  Linette has just taken up her
café-au-lait.  I think the child is feeling the reaction."

"No wonder.  Plucky little thing!"

"Yes.  But what on earth am I going to do with
her, Halkett?  Ought I to wait until that old scoundrel
Wildresse comes here or telephones?  Ought I to try to
persuade her to go back to that cabaret?  Ought I to
telephone that she is safe here?"

"The wires are cut."

"I know.  Somebody will fix them, though.  Do you
think I'd better try to persuade Philippa to let me
drive her over to Ausone in the trap?  If I'm to keep
her, I ought to have an interview with Wildresse, or
she and I will get into trouble."

"Oh, Lord!" said Halkett.  "That's your affair.
Listen, Warner, I'm so worried about Gray I can't
think of anything else.  Something serious certainly
has happened to him.  And until those wires are
repaired, I shan't know what to do.  Is there any other
way we can communicate with Ausone?"

"None that I know of, unless somebody goes over to
Ausone.  I can do that if you like.  I can drive over
in the trap.  Of course the telephone people already
know that there's a break on the line, and no doubt
they're out now looking for it.  We'll be in
communication with Ausone by noon, I expect."

For a little while they exchanged views concerning
the attack of the previous night, and Halkett was of the
opinion that the order for mobilization would now
restrain any further violence on the part of those who
had been following him, if, indeed, it did not entirely
clear them out of France.  And he expressed a desire
for the envelope.

So Warner went into the house, lifted the partly
hardened skin of white lead from the canvas, disinterred
the envelope, wiped it clean, and brought it out to
Halkett.  The Englishman put it into his breast pocket.

"It was perfectly safe where it was," remarked the
other.  "It's an invitation to murder where it is now."

"Yes, but it's no good to anybody unless Gray turns
up.  I wish I knew what had become of that man.  I
think I'll try the telephone again——"

He rose and walked swiftly toward the house,
Ariadne trotting at his heels.  Even as he approached,
he heard the telephone bell ringing, and hastened his
steps toward the house.

But as he entered, the girl Philippa stepped into the
hallway, and he caught a glimpse of a slim, barefooted
figure, holding with one hand the folds of a shabby
chamber robe around her, and with the other the
receiver.

"What?" she cried in answer to a question.  "Yes,
I am Philippa....  Oh!  It's *you*.  I thought so....
What do you desire of me?"

What Wildresse desired of the girl Philippa
intimately concerned Halkett.  He coolly remained to
listen.

"No!" she said in her clear, emotionless voice.  "I
shall not come back! ... Very well; if the Government
agents want me, they can find me here....  You may
threaten me with arrest by the Government if you
choose, but I know that you are more afraid of the
Government than I am....  *Why* shouldn't I say it!
Yes, I know quite well that we are going to have war....
You say that the Germans are already across the
Duchy?  Skirmishing before Longwy?  Very well; why
don't you inform *one* of your Governments? ... No,
I won't keep quiet!  No, no, *no*! ... What you say
does not frighten me....  I refuse to return! ...
Because I am now in an honest business for myself....
Yes, it is an honest business.  I am permitted to
pose for an artist of great distinction....  What you
*say* does not frighten me; but what you *are* does cause
me some apprehension.  And knowing as much as I do
know about you, I seriously advise you to leave France....
No, I haven't said such a thing to anybody else,
but I am likely to, so you had better hasten to leave
for America.  Yes, I will tell you why, if you wish.
It is because there are always two millstones when
anything is to be crushed.  War is now beginning to bring
those two stones together.  The mill wheel already is
turning!  When the two millstones meet, the little meal
worm that has remained between them so long in safety
is going to be crushed....  Oh, yes, you *do* know what
I mean!  You also know whom I mean.  Very well,
then, if you don't I'll tell you this much: *double wages*
never are paid by a *single* master.  I learned that
yesterday when you gave me the *wrong* paper to forward
to Paris with the others.  Fortunately for you, I read
it.  I then burnt it to ashes and took my clothes and
my punt and my departure!  I might have continued
to endure what you had accustomed me to.  But *two*
masters!  Faugh!  The horror of it! ... Fear?  If
you really think *that* of me, then you have never really
known me.  It was disgust and shame that drove me
toward liberty....  Yes, this that I say is final....
You *dare* not interfere! ... Then I'll say this: if you
do not leave France now, *at once*, in this moment of her
peril, I *will* tell what I know to the first soldier of
France who crosses my path! ... I am not afraid of
you, I tell you....  Believe me, you are well rid of
me....  I warn you, in God's name, to let me alone!"

She hung up the receiver, turned, and mounted the
stairs with flying feet, but at the top landing Halkett's
quiet voice halted her.

"I was listening, Philippa.  What that man says or
does may cost me dear.  What did he want of you?"

"Mr. Halkett," leaning swiftly toward him over the
handrail above—"he is the most ignoble of creatures!
And after five years I learned only yesterday that he
sells his filthy secrets in *two* markets!—Three, perhaps;
*I* don't know how many!  And I no longer care!  It
ceases to interest *me*!"

"Wait!  It interests *me*!"

"But I can't say any more to you than I have——"

"Why not?"

"I don't know.  *Can* I?  You know better than I.
But I don't wish to betray anybody, even such a man
as—as——"

"Wildresse?"

"Yes."

"Is he also betraying France?"

"I—I don't know.  I suppose it is that.  I haven't
yet tried to comprehend it——"

"What was the paper you started to forward, then
read, and finally burned?"

"It was a letter directed to a Mr. Esser.  He is a
German."

"The head of the Esser Cement Works?"

"Yes."

"What was in the letter?"

"A list of the guns in the Ausone Fort and a plan
of the emplacements on tissue paper....  Perhaps I
am stupid, but I could guess what a German wanted
with a plan of a French fort!  It was enough for me!
I took my punt and my effects and I departed!"

"You burnt the letter?"

"In my candle.  Also, I wrote on a piece of paper,
'You damned traitor!' and I pinned it on his door.
Then I went out by the garden door with my leather
trunk on my head!"

"Come down when you are dressed," said Halkett,
and walked back through the hallway to the garden.

"Warner," he said, "this old spider, Wildresse, is
certainly a bad lot.  I'd have him arrested by French
gendarmes if I were certain that England is going in.
But I dare not chance it until I'm sure.  Perhaps I
dare not chance it at all, because if he has had
anything to do with Gray's disappearance, as I am
beginning to suspect, it would not do to have the French
authorities examine my papers."

"Why?"

"Because—if they have already seized Gray's papers,
they will secure military information which perhaps my
Government might not care to have even an ally possess.
I don't know whether Gray is living or dead; I don't
know who has Gray's papers at this instant.  That's
the trouble.  And I'm hanged if I know what to do!
I'm stumped, and that's the devilish truth!"

He took a few quick, uncertain steps along the flower
beds, turned, came back to the arbor where Warner
was seated:

"It's a mess!" he said.  "Even if agents employed
by Wildresse have robbed Gray—murdered him,
perhaps, to do it—I don't know what Wildresse means
to do with Gray's papers."

"What!"

Halkett nodded:

"Yes, he's *that* kind!  Pleasant, isn't it?  If he has
Gray's papers, it may be France that will pay him for
them; it may be that Germany has already bought and
paid for them.  In either case, carrying the papers I
carry, I hesitate to ask for his arrest.  Do you understand?"

"Very clearly.  If there is any way you can think
of to get hold of this scoundrel, I'll be glad to help.
Shall we drive over to Ausone and try?"

"You're very kind, Warner.  I don't know; I want
to think it over——"  He turned and walked back to
the house, entered the hallway, unhooked the telephone,
and finally was given a connection—not the one he
had asked for.

A voice said curtly:

"During mobilization no private messages are
transmitted."  Click!  And the connection was severed.
Again and again he made the attempt; no further
attention was paid to his ringing.  Finally he hung up
the receiver and started to go out through the front
doorway.

As he crossed the threshold, a young man in tweeds
rode up on a bicycle, stepped off, and, lifting his cap
to Halkett, said politely:

"Monsieur Halkett, if you please?  Is he still
residing here at the Golden Peach?"

Halkett's right hand dropped carelessly into the
side pocket of his coat.  When he had cocked his
automatic, he said pleasantly:

"I am Mr. Halkett."

The young man said smilingly, in perfect English:

"Do you expect a friend, Mr. Halkett?"

"Perhaps."

"Possibly you expect a Mr. Reginald Gray?"

"Possibly."

"He has been injured."

"Really?"

"Yes, rather seriously.  He lost control of his
motor cycle two nights ago.  He was on his way to join
you here."

"Indeed?"

"So he told me before he became unconscious."

"Is he still unconscious?"

"No, but he is too weak to move."

"Where is he?"

"At my house, in Bois d'Avril.  I was motoring that
evening, and I found him in the road, insensible.  So I
lifted him into my car, slung his motor cycle on behind,
and went top speed for home.  He's in my own house
in Bois d'Avril.  The physician thinks he will recover."

"What is your telephone number?" asked Halkett
bluntly.

The young man gave it, adding that the transmission
of private messages had, unfortunately, been
suspended during mobilization.  Which Halkett knew to
be true.

"Very well," he said, "I shall go to Bois d'Avril at
once——"

"It is not necessary; I have a message for you, and
some papers from Mr. Gray."

"Really?"

The young man smiled, drew from his inner pocket
a long, thin envelope, and handed it to Halkett.  The
latter held it in his hand, looking steadily into the
stranger's pleasant face for a full minute, then he
coolly opened the envelope.

Inside were the missing papers concerning the
Harkness shell, complete.

There could be no doubt concerning their identity;
he recognized them at a glance.  A deep sigh of
relief escaped him.

He said:

"There's no use trying to thank you——"

"It's quite all right," interrupted the young man
smilingly.  "If you don't mind offering me a
drink—the road over was rather dusty——"

"Leave your wheel there and come in!" exclaimed
Halkett cordially, stepping aside in the doorway.

The young man laid his bicycle against the steps,
turned with a smile, and entered the doorway.

As he passed, he turned like lightning and struck
Halkett full between the eyes with his clenched fist.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XIV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIV

.. vspace:: 2

The terrific impact of the blow sent Halkett
reeling across the threshold.  Partly stunned, he
caught at the banisters, groping instinctively for
the pistol.  And already he had contrived to drag it
clear of his side pocket when another blow sent him
staggering back against the stair rail; the pistol flew
out of his hand and went spinning down the hallway
over the polished floor.

As Halkett crashed into the banisters and fell full
length, Philippa, in her red skirt and bodice, appeared
on the stairs above.

The young man, who had dropped on his knees beside
Halkett, and who had already torn open his coat,
caught sight of the girl as she flew past him down the
stairs; and he leaped to his feet to intercept her.

On the newel-post stood a tall, wrought-iron lamp.
As he blocked her way she hesitated an instant, then
threw all her weight against the heavy metal standard,
pushing with both hands; and the iron lamp swayed
forward and fell.

As the young man leaped clear of the falling fixture,
Philippa vaulted the stair rail into the hallway
below.  He saw instantly what she was after; both
sprang forward to snatch the pistol.

As she stooped for it and seized it, he caught her
arm; and she twisted around on him, beating his head
and breast with her free hand while he strove
desperately to master the outstretched arm which still
clutched Halkett's pistol.

To and fro they swayed over the slippery floor of
the hallway, until he forced back her arm to the
breaking point.  Then the pistol clattered to the floor.

Instantly she kicked it under a tall secretary, where
the register was kept.  Holding her at arm's length
with one hand, he managed to drag the heavy piece
of furniture on its casters away from the wall far
enough to uncover the pistol.

As he stooped for the weapon, she tore herself free,
kicked it away from beneath his fingers, which
already touched it, and, wrenching a framed engraving
from the wall behind her, hurled it at him with both
hands.

He leaped nimbly aside to avoid it, but another
picture followed, and then a mantel clock and two vases
went smashing against the secretary behind which he
had taken shelter.  And suddenly she seized the
secretary itself, and with one supreme effort tipped it over
toward him, driving him again from cover and from
the vicinity of the weapon they both were fighting to
secure.

As the big oak secretary fell, and the glass doors
crashed into splinters, she stooped, snatched Halkett's
pistol from the floor, and crept forward along the
base of the staircase.  But the young man had whipped
out a revolver of his own, and was now standing astride
of Halkett's body, panting, speechless, but menacing
her with gesture and weapon.

She shrank aside and crouched low under the staircase,
resting there, disheveled, bleeding, half naked,
struggling for breath, but watching his every
movement out of brilliant, implacable eyes.

Every time he ventured to bend down over Halkett,
or make the slightest motion toward the fallen man's
breast pockets, Philippa stopped his operations with
leveled pistol, forcing him to spring to his feet again.

Suddenly, behind him in the doorway, appeared
Magda and Linette, coming from the meadow across
the road, carrying between them a basket of freshly
washed linen.  Like a flash he turned on them and
drove them back and out of doors at the point of his
weapon, then whirled about, aimed full at Philippa,
slammed and bolted the front door behind him, and,
covering her with his revolver, ran forward to the foot
of the stairs, where his victim still lay unconscious.
Catching the senseless man by the sleeve, he strove
desperately to rip the coat from the inert body, while
keeping his revolver pointed at Philippa's hiding place
under the stairs.

As he stood there, tugging furiously at the fallen
man's coat, into the rear of the hallway ran Warner,
his automatic lifted.  Both men fired at the same
instant, and the intruder dropped Halkett's arm.  Then
he ran for the stairway.  Up the stairs he leaped,
shooting back at Warner as he mounted to the landing
above; and the American sped after him, followed
by Philippa, as far as the foot of the stairway.

Here Warner hesitated for a few moments, then he
began cautiously to negotiate the stairway, creeping
step by step with infinite precaution.

When at last he had disappeared on the landing
above, Philippa, listening breathlessly below, heard
Halkett stir and then groan.

As she turned, the Englishman lifted himself on one
elbow, fumbled instinctively in his breast pockets, and
drew out two envelopes.

"Take them to Sister Eila!—Hurry, Philippa——"  He
passed a shaking hand across his eyes, swayed to
a sitting posture, caught at the stair rail, and dragged
himself to his feet.

"Give me that pistol," he muttered.  She handed
it to him; he groped in his pockets for a few moments,
found a clip, reloaded, and, reeling slightly,
walked with her aid as far as the front door.  Philippa
opened it for him.

"Where is this man?" he asked vaguely.

"Mr. Warner followed him upstairs."

He pressed his hand over his battered head, nodded,
extended the two envelopes to her.

"Sister Eila," he repeated.

Philippa took the papers; he straightened his shoulders
with a visible effort; then, steadying himself by
the handrail, he started to ascend the stairs.

The girl watched him mount slowly to the landing
above, saw him disappear, stood listening a moment
longer.

Magda and Linette came stealing into the hallway;
Philippa pointed to the telephone.

"Call the gendarmes at Ausone!" she whispered.  "I
must go to——"

A shot from above cut her short.  All three women
stood gazing up at the landing in startled silence.

"Quick—the telephone!  The gendarmerie!" cried
Philippa.

Magda ran to the box; and at the same instant a
man climbed over the stair well, dropped to the hallway
below, swung around on Magda, pushed her violently
from the telephone, and, seizing the receiver, ripped it
out by the roots.

Philippa had already turned and slipped through
the doorway, both envelopes tightly clutched in her
hand.  Directly in her path stood the intruder's
bicycle; and she seized the handles, righted it, and leaped
into the saddle before he could reach the front door.

He ran up the road behind her for a little distance,
but she had already found her balance and was
increasing her speed over the smooth, white highway.
Then the young man halted, carefully leveled his revolver,
steadied his aim with his left elbow, and, standing
in mid-road, he deliberately directed a stream of
lead after the crouching fugitive.

The last bullet from his magazine sent her veering
widely from her path; the machine sheered in a half-circle,
staggered, slid down into the grassy ditch, flinging
the girl off sideways among the weeds.

Philippa got up slowly, as though dazed or hurt.
The young man hurried forward, reloading his weapon
as he ran, but a shot from behind warned him away
from the trail of the limping girl, who was now trying
to escape on foot.

Whirling in his tracks, he stood for a second glaring
at Halkett and Warner, who were advancing, shooting
as they came on; then, with a savage glance at
Philippa, he fired at her once more, turned, mounted
the roadside bank in a single leap, and ran swiftly
along the hedge, evidently looking for an opening into
the field beyond.

When he found one, he wriggled through and was
off like a hare, across the fields and headed for the
river, before Halkett and Warner could discover his
avenue of escape.  Checked for a few moments, they
ranged the thorny hedge up and down, like baffled
beagles.  They had overrun the trail.

Warner was already within speaking distance of
Philippa when the girl hailed him.

"Are you hurt?" he called across to her, where
she stood knee-deep among the roadside weeds, trying
to draw together the points of her torn bodice, to
cover her throat and shoulders.

"The tire burst.  I have a few scratches!"

"Did he get the papers?" shouted Halkett.

She drew both envelopes from her bosom, and shook
them high with a gesture of defiance.  Then, replacing
them, she made a funnel of her hands and called
out to them:

"He crawled under the hedge by that third telephone
pole behind you!  You have come too far this
way!  No—the *other* pole!  Wait a moment, Mr. Warner——"

Still calling out her directions in her clear, calm
voice, she started to limp down the road toward them;
and Warner glanced back at her for a moment; then
he suddenly flung up his arm and shouted:

"Philippa!  Look out for that car behind you!"

The girl turned, saw the automobile coming, stepped
aside into the ditch as a cloud of white dust obscured
her.

Before she realized that the car had stopped, three
men had jumped out into the ditch and caught hold
of her.

Warner heard her cry out; started to run toward
her; saw her flung struggling into the car; saw
Wildresse rise and strike her with his great fist and
knock her headlong across the back seat, where she
lay, her disheveled head hanging down over the rear
of the tonneau.  Then the car started.  As she hung
there, blood dripping from her mouth, she reached
blindly toward her breast, drew out the envelopes, and
dropped them in the wake of the moving car.

They fluttered along behind it for a moment, drawn
into the dusty suction, then they were whirled away
right and left into the roadside ditches.

Evidently nobody in the car except Philippa knew
what she had done, for the car, at top speed, dashed
on toward the north.

Halkett ran up and found Warner gazing vacantly
after the receding machine, pistol leveled, but not
daring to shoot.  Then they both saw Wildresse jerk
the half senseless girl upright, saw him strike her again
with the flat of his huge hand so heavily that she
crumpled and dropped back into the corner of the seat.

"God!" whispered Halkett at Warner's elbow.  "Did
you see that?"

Warner, as white as death, made no reply.  The
ear had vanished, but he still stood there staring at the
distant cloud of dust settling slowly in the highway.
Presently Halkett walked forward, picked up the two
envelopes, pocketed them, and returned swiftly to
where the American still stood, his grim features set,
the red stain from his bitten lip streaking his chin.

"Warner?"

"Yes?" he answered steadily.

"We'd better start after that man at once."

"Certainly."

Halkett said:

"Have your horse hooked up as soon as you can....
I think——"  His voice trembled, but he controlled
it.  "I am horribly afraid for that child....
He would cut her throat if he dared."

Warner turned a ghastly visage to his companion:

"Why do you say that?"

"Because she knows enough about him to send him
before a firing squad," said Halkett.  "That's the
trouble, Warner."

They turned and walked rapidly toward the inn.

Warner spoke presently in an altered voice, but
with the mechanical precision of a man afraid of
emotion and any wavering of self-control.

"I'm going to Ausone at once to find her....
Wherever I find her I shall take her....  It makes no
difference to me who objects.  She is going to have her
chance in life....  I shall see to that."

Halkett drew a deep breath:

"Did you ever hear of such a plucky battle as she
gave that rascal after he got me?  I never shall forget
what she has done."

They entered the front door of the inn, almost
running; Warner continued on toward the garden and
the stable beyond; Halkett halted at the telephone,
gazed grimly at the ruined instrument, realized that
he was again isolated, and called impatiently to Linette
who, with Magda, was gathering up and sweeping aside
the debris of the wrecked furniture.

"Linette," he said, "would you do something to help me?"

"Willingly, Monsieur."

"Go to the school; say to Sister Eila that I am in
real need of her.  Ask her if she could come here at
once, because I cannot go to her."

The girl nodded, turned, and went out rapidly by
the front way.  Halkett hastened upstairs to his room.

When again he returned, the dogcart had just driven
up, and Warner sat waiting in silence, reins and whip
in hand.

But Halkett had a letter to write before he could
start; and it was slow work, because the letter must
be written in a cipher, the key to which was the solar
spectrum and the three metallic symbols.

He had scarcely completed his letter when Sister
Eila and Linette entered the hallway together.

The Sister of Charity caught sight of him through
the doorway as he rose from his seat in the empty
dining-room; and she instantly went to him.

He thanked Linette, closed the door, and turned
to Sister Eila.

"There's nobody else I can trust," he said.  "Will
you help me?"

"You know I will."

He drew the two envelopes from his breast pocket
and handed them to her in silence.  Then he laid on
the table the letter which he had just, written.

"I am obliged to go to Ausone," he said.  "It will
take me several hours, I suppose, to go, attend to my
business, and return.  Could you remain here at the
inn until I can get back?"

"Yes.  Sister Félicité is with the children."

"Then this is what you must know and prepare for.
If, while I am away, a man should come here and ask
for me, you will show him this letter lying on the table,
and you will say to him that I left it here for a man
whom I have been expecting.  You will stand here and
watch him while he is reading this letter.  If he really
*can* read it, then he will ask for pen and ink, and he
will *change the punctuation* of what I have written on
the envelope: '*Ibis, redibis non, morieris in bello.*'  As
I have punctuated it, it means: 'Thou shalt go, thou
shalt not return, thou shalt die in battle.'

"So if he *can* read what is *inside* the envelope, he
will erase the comma after the word *non*, and insert a
comma after the word *redibis*.  And the translation will
then read: 'Thou shalt go, thou shalt return, thou shalt
*not* die in battle.'  Is all this quite clear to you, Sister?"

"Perfectly."

"Then, if a man comes here and asks for me, and
if you see that he really has understood the letter
which is written in cipher, then, after he has
repunctuated what I have written, give him the other two
envelopes which I have entrusted to you.

"Will you do this for—France, Sister Eila?"

"Yes"—she lifted her grave young eyes—"for France."


Through the open dining-room window Sister Eila
watched his departure, smiling her adieux as the two
men turned toward her and uncovered.

Then she seated herself by the window sill and rested
her cheek on her palm, gazing out at the blue sky
with vague, enraptured eyes that saw a vision of
beatitude perhaps, perhaps the glimmering aura of an
earthly martyrdom, in the summer sunshine.

And possibly a vision less holy invaded her tranquil
trance, for she suddenly straightened her young shoulders,
picked up the crucifix at her girdle, and gazed
upon it rather fixedly.

The color slowly cooled in her cheeks till they were
as white as the spotless wimple that framed them in
its snowy oval.

After a while rosary and crucifix fell between her
relaxing hands, and she looked up at the blue
foothills of the Vosges with bluer eyes.

The next moment she sprang to her feet, startled.
Over the sparkling hills came sailing through the
summer sky a gigantic bird—the most enormous winged
creature she had ever beheld.  A moment later the
high clatter of the aëroplane became audible.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XV

.. vspace:: 2

Wheeling in spirals now above the river
meadow, the great, man-made bird of prey
turned and turned, hanging aloft in the sky
like a giant hawk, sweeping in vast circles through the
blinding blue, as though searching every clump and
tussock in the fields below for some hidden enemy
or victim.

Louder and louder came the rattling clatter from
the sky, nearer swooped the great plane on wide-stretched
wings, until, close to the earth, it seemed
to sheer the very grass blades in the meadow, and the
deafening racket of its engines echoed and reëchoed,
filling the world with outrageous and earsplitting
noise.

Sister Eila had gone to the front door; Magda and
Linette stood behind her.  And they saw the aëroplane
alight in the meadow and a hooded figure, masked in
glass and leather, step out, turn its goblin head
toward the inn, then start rapidly toward them across
the fields.

He was a tall thin man, and as he crossed the
highroad and came toward them, he lifted the glass and
leather mask and drew it back above his closely-fitting
hood.

When he saluted Sister Eila's habit, he came to a
full halt and his heels clicked together.  Then he spoke
in French, pleasantly, perfectly:

"Mr. Halkett, if you please, Sister.  Is he still
residing here?"

"Monsieur Halkett has left."

"Oh, I am sorry.  Was not Monsieur Halkett
expecting a messenger?"

"Have you a message for Monsieur Halkett?"

The airman twisted his pointed, blond mustache:

"I expected that Monsieur Halkett would have a
packet for me.  Did he leave none?"

"He left a letter," said Sister Eila.

He bowed ceremoniously:

"Would you be kind enough?"

"Will you not enter?"

"I thank you.  If I may be permitted to remain
here——"  He had kept continually glancing up and
down the road while speaking; and it was evident that
he preferred to remain where he could watch the
highway both ways.

So Sister Eila brought the letter to him, and he
bowed again with tight-waisted ceremony, pocketed it,
and asked again for the packet.

"Wait, if you please," she said.  "The letter was
to be read in my presence."

"A thousand pardons!  I had not understood——"

He drew the sheets of paper from the unsealed
envelope, glanced sharply up and down the highroad,
then unfolded the letter.

Sister Eila's eyes were fixed on his face, but his
features exhibited no emotion whatever.

Every few moments he looked up and down the road,
then bent his pleasantly expressionless face again over
the sheets in his gloved hands.

Presently he looked up with a smile:

"I have read it and I understand it.  Would you be
kind enough to give me the packet which Monsieur
Halkett writes that he has left for me?"

"Please read first what is written on the envelope of
this letter," said Sister Eila very calmly.

He turned over the envelope, read the inscription in
Latin, smiled as he read it.

"Rather an ominous message, is it not, Sister?"

"Do you think so?"

He glanced sharply to right and left, then, still
smiling, he read aloud:

"Thou shalt go, thou shalt *not* return, thou shalt die
in battle——"

He turned his head with a jerk and gazed down
the road as though suddenly startled; at the same
instant Sister Eila snatched the letter from his fingers,
sprang inside the house, and slammed the door.

As she bolted it, he threw his weight against it
for a moment, then turned and ran for the meadow
where the aëroplane stood.

From a window Sister Eila saw him climb aboard;
saw the machine move, run over the ground like a great
beetle, and rise from the grass, pointing upward and
eastward as it took wing and soared low over the
river.

And down the highway, pell-mell, galloped a dozen
gendarmes in a storm of dust and flying pebbles,
wheeled in front of the inn, put their superb horses
to the ditch and the cattle gate beyond, and, clearing
both, went tearing away across the fields after the
rising aëroplane.

Over the river bank they galloped, straight into the
water, their big, powerful horses wading, thrashing,
swimming across; then they were up the opposite bank
and over and away, racing after the ascending aëroplane.

From it was coming a redoubled rattle now; machine
and machine gun were both spitting fiercely as the
winged thing fought upward toward the blue zone of
safety.

The gendarmes drew bridle now and began to shoot
upward from their saddles, then spurred on across
the fields, taking ditches and hedges as they came, until
the strange chase was hidden by a distant rise of
ground and the quarry alone remained visible, high
winging, still rising, still pointed eastward toward the
Rhine.

Then, far away across the hills, a heavier shot set
the August air vibrating—another, another, others
following.

Faster and faster cracked the high-angle guns on
the Barrier Forts, strewing the sky with shrapnel; the
aëroplane soared and soared, leaving behind it a wake
dotted with clots of fleece which hung for a while quite
motionless against the intense blue, then slowly
dissolved and vanished in mid-air.

.. vspace:: 2

From the Ausone Fort the gunners could hear, far
to the southeast, the sky-cannon banging away on the
Barrier Forts; and the telescopes on their signal towers
swung toward the sky line above the foothills of the
Vosges.

But in the town below the fortressed hill no echo
of the cannonade penetrated.  Ausone, except in the
neighborhood of the railroad and the office of the *Petit
Journal d'Ausone*, lay still and almost deserted in the
August sunshine: a few children played under the trees
by the bridge; a few women sat knitting along the river
quay; one or two old men nodded, half asleep, fishing
the deeper pools below the bridge; the market
square remained empty except for a stray dog, tongue
lolling, padding stolidly up the street about his
business.

But before the office of the *Petit Journal d'Ausone* a
crowd stood, covering the sidewalks and overflowing
beyond the middle of the street.  Young men and old,
women and young girls, were clustered there quietly
watching the bulletin boards.

There was no excitement apparent, no loud talking,
no gesticulation: voices were calm, tones were low;
there was almost no movement in the crowd except when
people joined the throng or silently departed.

On one of these bulletin boards was nailed the order
for general mobilization; on the other a terse
paragraph announced that on Sunday, August 2, German
soldiers had entered the city of Luxembourg, crossed
the Grand Duchy, and were already skirmishing with
Belgian cavalry around Liége and with French troops
before Longwy.  In other terms, the Teutonic invasion
had begun; German troops were already on French
soil; for Longwy is the most northern of the
Republic's fortifications.

Another paragraph reported that King Albert of
Belgium had appealed to England, and that Sir Edward
Grey, in the House of Commons, had prepared his
country for an immediate ultimatum to Germany.

Still a third paragraph informed the populace of
Ausone that the British battle fleet had mobilized and
sailed, and that the Empire's land forces were already
preparing to cross the Channel.

And Germany had not yet declared war on either
France or Belgium, nor had England declared war on
Germany, nor had Austria, as yet, formally declared
war on Russia, although Germany had.

But there seemed to be no doubt, no confusion in
the minds of the inhabitants of Ausone, concerning
what was happening, what had already happened, and
what Fate still concealed behind a veil already growing
transparent enough to see through—already lighted
by the infernal flashes of German rifle fire before
Longwy.

Everybody in Ausone knew; everybody in France
understood.  A great stillness settled over the
Republic, as though the entire land had paused to kneel
a moment before the long day of work began.

There was no effervescence, no voice raised, no raucous
shout from boulevard orators of the psychological
moment, no attitudes, no complaints.

Only, amid the vast silence, as the nation rose
serenely from its knees, millions of flashing eyes were
turned toward Alsace and Lorraine—eyes dimmed for
an instant, then instantly clear again—clear and steady
as the sound and logical minds controlling them.

There was no *sonnerie* from the portcullis, no salvo
from parapet or bastion, no fanfare blared at midday
in square or stony street.  No bands of *voyous* went
yelling through boulevards, no seething crowds choked
the cafés or formed a sinister maelstrom around
embassies or government offices.

Down at the Gare de Chalons another crowd had
gathered to watch the young men of Ausone depart.
They came alone, or two by two, or in groups—sticks,
bundles, suitcases, valises swinging—with serious,
unruffled features intent upon the business of the long,
long business day that was beginning for them at last.

Some were accompanied by parents, some by wives
and children, some by sweethearts: many had said
good-by at home and were walking to the station with
brother or friend, saluting acquaintances en route.

But the mobilizing youths were undemonstrative,
chary of gesture—shy, serious young fellows
preoccupied with the business on hand, conscious that their
term of service had equipped them for it—and in their
bearing was that modesty and self-respect which
discounts self-consciousness and self-assertion.

For there was no longer any excuse for France to
be either noisy or dramatic when she went about her
business—no reason for posturing, for epigrams, for
attitudes, or for the loud laugh and the louder boast
to bolster faith with mutual and riotous reassurance
in the face of an unknown business venture concerning
the conduct of which the entire nation was excited,
ignorant, and unprepared.

The Republic had been both instructed and prepared
for the matter of the business on hand.  And was
going quietly about it.

In Ausone itself there were few signs of war visible;
the exodus of the young men, the crowd before the
bulletins, and the throng at the station, and perhaps
more mounted officers and gendarmes than usual riding
faster than is customary in the peaceful streets of a
provincial town.

But on the roads around the fortified hill dominating
the rolling green landscape in the heart of which
Ausone nestled, cavalry patrols were riding, infantry
details tramped through the white dust, military wagons
and motor vans passed under dragoon escort; bridges
over the Récollette were guarded by line soldiers and
gendarmes, while sappers and miners and engineers were
busy at every bridge, culvert, and railway cut.

Above the fort slim tentacles of wireless apparatus
spread a tracery against the sky, and a signal tower
swam high against the blue.  From it sparkled blinding
flashes in code.  Officers up there were talking
business to the Barrier Forts, and the heliographs
along the Vosges brilliantly discussed the new business
deal with other forts far to the south and east,
relaying reports, rumors, and quotations as far as Paris,
where the directors' meeting was being held; and even
as far as London, where stockholders and directors were
gathered to add up profit and loss, and balance policy
against ethics, and reconcile both with necessity.

In London a King, a Prime Minister, and a First
Lord of the Admiralty were listening to a Sirdar who
was laying down the law by wireless to a President
and his Premier.

In St. Petersburg an Emperor was whispering to a
priest while the priest consulted the stars.  Signs
being favorable, they changed the city's name to
Petrograd, which imperial inspiration dealt a violent slap
on the Kaiser's wrist.

Led westward by a Grand Duke, marching Russia
bent several million reverent heads, awed by this stroke
of autocratic genius, and somebody named a brand
of caviar after the Czar of all the Russias.  Which
holy tribute, however, built no strategic railroads in
the West.

Meanwhile, the spinning world swung on around its
orbit; tides rose and ebbed; the twin sentinels of the
skies relieved each other as usual, and a few billion
stars waited patiently for eternity.

.. vspace:: 2

Ausone, lying in the sun, was waiting, too, amid its
still trees and ripening fields.

In the summer world around, no hint of impending
change disturbed the calm serenity of that August
afternoon—no sense of waiting, no prophecy of
gathering storms.  But in men's hearts reigned the
breathless stillness which heralds tempests.

Silently as a kestrel's shadow gliding over the grass,
an ominous shade sped over sunny France, darkening
the light in millions of smiling eyes, subduing
speech, stilling all pulses, cautioning a nation's
ardent heart and conjuring its ears to listen and its lips
to silence.

And, as France sat silent, listening, hand lightly
resting on her hilt, came the far cry from beyond the
Vosges—the voices of her lost children.

Now she had risen to her feet, loosening the blade
in its scabbard.  But she had not yet drawn it; she
still stood listening to the distant shots from Longwy
in the north, to the noise of the western winds blowing
across the channel; and always she heard, from
the east, the lost voices of her best beloved, calling,
calling her from beyond the Vosges.

.. vspace:: 2

As they approached Ausone, driving full speed,
Warner and Halkett encountered the Saïs omnibus
returning, and drew rein.

In it was the Harem, much annoyed because not
permitted to sketch in the Ausone streets.

They had seen nothing of any touring car containing
several men and a young girl.  That did not interest
them.  What preoccupied their minds was that they
had been sketching in the streets of Ausone, and had
been politely requested to desist by several
unappreciative policemen.  So they had collectively shaken
the dust of Ausone from their several and indignant
feet, and were now en route to Saïs to paint hay
stacks.

Requesting to know whether they might still be
permitted to paint haystacks at Saïs, Warner offered them
no encouragement, pointing out that Saïs was in the
zone of future military operations.

In the face of such an outrageous condition of
affairs, there is no doubt that Art shrieked as loudly as
did Freedom when her popular hero fell.  Anyway, her
devotees now protested in chorus; but Warner advised
them to pack their trunks and go to Paris while the
going was good; and the Saïs omnibus rolled away
with the Harem still volubly denouncing a government
which dared to interfere with Haystack Art on any
pretext whatever.

As Warner drove forward Halkett said:

"The chances are that the military will requisition
that omnibus before evening.  It wouldn't surprise me
if they stopped us at the entrance to Ausone and took
your horse and cart."

And it happened as he had feared; red-legged
soldiers halted them at the town entrance; a polite but
resolute young officer refused to argue the matter, but
insisted that they descend, accept an official voucher
for the temporary loan of their horse and cart, and
continue their journey on foot.

As yet, however, punts, rowboats, and skiffs were
not subject to requisition by the authorities.  Halkett
noticed a skiff tied to the shore near a small house
on the river bank; so they climbed a stile, crossed the
newly mown hayfield, and found an old man fishing
from his doorstep in the rear of the house.

For thirty francs they bought the boat outright;
the old man shuffled into the house and returned with
the home-made oars; Warner took them; Halkett
pushed off and sprang in; and they pulled away up
the river, breasting a glassy current over which
swallows darted and played and dipped, starring the calm
surface with a hundred spreading circles.

Rushes swayed inshore where meadows bordered the
Récollette, and dragon flies with turquoise bodies sailed
glittering into the breeze.  Trees swept the surface of
the water with tender leaves still untarnished by the
ripening world of waning summer; and in shady coves
the cattle stood to their knees in the crystal flood,
staring with moony eyes at the passing skiff.

Presently Warner sent the skiff inshore, and when
it lay floating in the shadow of the trees under the
right bank of the stream, he rested on his oars.

"The café garden is just ahead, around that next
turn," he said.  "If you'll take the oars, I'll get out on
the bank and look over the situation."

"Don't you want me?"

"I don't know; I'll see what things look like first.
Do you mind?"

"I'll wait if you say so.  But there's a rough crowd
hanging about that café, as you know."

"I know it," said Warner grimly.

"Are you armed?"

"I certainly am, Halkett.  But I don't count on any
trouble, because Wildresse can't afford to make any.
If there's a row in that cabaret at such a time as this,
the police will make short work of it.  I think I'll have
no difficulty in finding my little friend Philippa and
in taking her out of that miserable place."

Halkett said:

"Don't forget yourself and beat up Wildresse for
what we saw him do to Philippa.  You can attend to
that later: the idea now is to take the child back to
Saïs."

"I'll try to remember," said Warner with a somber
glance at his friend.  Then he handed him the oars
and, making his way to the stern, leaped lightly to
the grassy bank.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XVI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVI

.. vspace:: 2

Warner entered a paved lane leading up the
slope, between two high, stucco walls.  It
bore the name, "Impasse d'Alcyon," painted
under the rusty bracket of a gas lamp projecting from
the wall.  A few chickens and a pig moved aside to
let him pass.

The Impasse d'Alcyon emerged upon the market
square of Ausone to the left of the Cabaret de Biribi;
and, as Warner came out into the sunny, deserted
square, the first thing he caught sight of was a
written notice nailed up over the doorway of the Cabaret
de Biribi:

.. class:: center

   AVIS IMPORTANT

.. vspace:: 1

The town of Ausone is proclaimed to be in a state of
siege.  Place and town will remain under government of
the military authorities, aided by the municipality.  Both
are within jurisdiction of military headquarters in charge
of the secteur which includes place, town, and environs of
Ausone.

.. vspace:: 1

BY ORDER OF THE MAYOR.

.. vspace:: 1

The Cabaret de Biribi will remain closed until further
notice.  For the convenience of the public, the Café Biribi,
adjoining, will remain open between the hours of seven
A.M. and nine P.M. until further notice.

.. vspace:: 2

The café, separated from the cabaret by a clipped
privet hedge, formed the southeastern angle of the
square.

Under its orange and white awning the tables on the
terrace were crowded with people lingering over
after-luncheon coffee and cognac—quiet, serious, solid
citizens, accustomed to their déjeuner at that time and
place, whose habits of long standing had not so far
been altered in the sudden and general upheaval in the
accustomed order of things.

Waiters came and went as usual; men consulted the
files of provincial and Paris papers; one or two were
playing dominoes inside the café.

Warner, pausing at the entrance to the terrace,
summoned a waiter.

"The cabaret is closed, then?" he asked.

"Since last night, Monsieur."

"By the police?"

"Yes, Monsieur."

"Why?"

The waiter said respectfully:

"It is usual in time of war to close places of amusement.
Besides, music and dancing are in questionable
taste at such a time as this."

"Certainly.  Where is Monsieur Wildresse?"

"The Patron is absent."

"Where can I find him?"

The waiter shrugged:

"The Patron went away this morning.  I do not
know where.  He has not yet returned."

"Are you quite certain?"

"Perhaps Monsieur had better ask the *caissière*.
Maybe the Patron has returned."

So Warner entered the café.  In the cool, subdued
light of the interior, he saw the cashier behind her
counter—a fresh-faced, plump, dark-eyed country girl,
who returned his salute with a smile that showed her
white teeth.

"Monsieur Wildresse?" he inquired.  "May I see
him for a moment?"

"The Patron is absent, Monsieur."

"When do you expect him to return?"

"We do not know.  Sometimes he goes to Paris and
remains a week or two."

"Do you suppose he has gone to Paris?"

"We do not know.  He never tells us where he is going."

Warner thought hard for a moment, then:

"It seems that the cabaret is closed," he said.

"Locked up, Monsieur."

"I wonder if you could tell me where I might
find the *caissière* of the cabaret—Mademoiselle
Philippa?"

The girl shook her head:

"I think she went to Paris."

"When?"

"The other day.  We understood that she had gone
to Paris."

"No," said Warner, "she did not go to Paris.  Has
she not returned to Ausone?"

The *caissière* rapped with her pencil and a waiter
hastened to the desk.

"Pierre, didn't you say something about
Mademoiselle Philippa this morning?"

"I said that I thought I saw her.  It was somebody
who resembled her, no doubt."

Warner wheeled around:

"When?"

"It was before noon, some time——"

"Where?"

"Monsieur, they were putting up and locking the
shutters of the cabaret, and on the top floor somebody
inside was lowering the lateen shades and drawing the
blue curtains.

"I thought I saw Mademoiselle Philippa—I thought
I saw her face for a moment behind one of the windows
in the Patron's apartment."

"And what do you think about it now?"

"*Ma foi*, Monsieur, if Mademoiselle Philippa has
gone to Paris, I could not have seen her at the window."

"But you saw somebody there?"

"I thought I did."

"Could we go to the cabaret and inquire?"

"It is locked up.  There is nobody now within."

"How do you know?"

"They locked and padlocked it from the outside.
They even removed the geraniums and the three cats.
The place is empty, Monsieur.  I know, because I
helped remove the cats and the potted plants.  Everybody
and everything was transferred last night to the
café.  And at noon today the police put seals on the
doors."

Warner forced a smile:

"That, of course, settles it.  I'm sorry.  I wanted
to see the Patron and Mademoiselle Philippa.
Another time will do."

He thanked the waiter, lifted his hat to the *caissière*,
turned, and walked over to a table by the opposite
wall, where he ordered coffee and cognac and a
newspaper, as though he had just lunched.

When his coffee was brought, he opened the paper
and leaned back against the padded leather seat,
pretending to read, but studying the room and everybody
in it.

It was a café typical of almost any half dead
provincial town in France—large, rather dimly lighted,
shabbily furnished with marble-topped tables ranged
around the walls and two ancient billiard tables
occupying the center of the room.

In the corner near the door was the cashier's cage
and desk; on the same side of the room, in the further
corner, a swinging leather door, much battered, gave
exit and entrance to the waiters as they went to or
arrived from kitchen and cellar.

And one thing occurred to him immediately: the
same kitchen, and perhaps the same cellar, had
supplied both cabaret and café.  Therefore, there must
still be some passage of communication between the
cabaret—which had been locked and sealed by the
authorities—and the café which the police had
decreed must remain open for the convenience of the
public.

Deeply perturbed by what the waiter had said
concerning the glimpse he had caught of somebody
resembling Philippa, and made doubly anxious by Halkett's
sinister remark in regard to the girl's knowledge of
secrets which might send Wildresse before a platoon
of execution, he studied the gloomy room from behind
his newspaper, trying to come to some conclusion.

He did not believe that Wildresse and his companions
had dared drive into Ausone by daylight with
Philippa in the tonneau, either unconscious or
resisting them.

If they had brought her to Ausone at all, they must
have carried her by boat, landed at the foot of the
cabaret garden, and smuggled the child into the house
through the rear door giving on the river garden.

If they had brought her to Ausone at all, then, she
must be at that moment somewhere within the walls
of the double building forming the Café and Cabaret de
Biribi.  Otherwise, the grey touring car had never
entered Ausone.

To make certain on that point he presently paid
his reckoning, bowed to the cashier, and went leisurely
out into the deserted square.

First of all he sauntered back to the town entrance,
where the red-legged soldiers had taken over his cart
and horse.  Having been obliged to give particulars
concerning himself, the soldiers were perfectly friendly.
Inquiry they readily answered; such a touring car as
he described had been halted and requisitioned by the
guard about two hours before his own horse was
stopped and appropriated.  There were only two
people in the car, both men.

"Friends of yours, Monsieur?" inquired the polite
lieutenant in charge.

"Business acquaintances——"

Warner hesitated, then asked for the names of the
two men and their addresses.  The officer on duty very
obligingly looked up the information in his
leather-covered book.  It appeared that the men were Adolf
Meier and Josef Hoffman, *commis voyageurs*, of
Paris, and that they had gone for lodging to the Boule
d'Argent in Ausone.

Warner thanked the boyish officer; the officer was
happy to have been of service to an American and
an artist.

But when Warner turned back into the town, he
went directly to the railroad station instead of to the
hotel.  There he presently discovered and consulted
the *chef de gare* and the ticket agent; and he learned
definitely that Monsieur Wildresse, who was perfectly
well known to both of them by sight, had not taken
any train there.

Travelers who board trains at provincial railway
stations cannot escape official observation.  Therefore,
what the station master and ticket agent told him was
sufficient for him.

He went slowly back along the river quay, crossed
diagonally in front of the deserted cabaret, entered the
Impasse d'Alcyon, and traversed it to the river bank,
where Halkett sat under the big willow tree, smoking
his pipe and letting the rowboat float by the chain
which he held in his hands.

"Halkett," he said, "they're in Ausone or near it.
I'm convinced of that.  Their car came in with only
two men in it.  The military confiscated it.  The men's
names are Adolf Meier and Josef Hoffman, and they
inscribed themselves as commercial travelers from Paris.
Do you happen to know them?"

"Perfectly."

"What are they; spies?"

"They are—clumsy ones."

"By any chance are they any of the gentlemen who
have been following you?"

"Exactly.  Both have had several shots at me."

"That is interesting.  The address they left with
the military authorities is the Boule d'Argent.

"What I have found out is this: the Cabaret de Biribi
has been closed and sealed up by the police; the café
remains open.  A waiter in the café thought he saw
Philippa at the window of her apartment over the
cabaret just before noon today.

"But Wildresse, they all say, went away this morning
and has not returned.  And they have no idea
when to expect him.

"Now, my theory is this: Wildresse and his ruffians,
realizing that their own necks are in danger, went to
Saïs to see Philippa, either to bully her into silence
or persuade her to return to duty.  When they saw
her by the roadside they changed their plans and took
a chance.  I don't believe they saw us.  We were on
our knees in the grass under the shadow of the hedge.
After they caught her they never looked around.  I
don't believe any of them noticed us at all.  Before the
car reached Ausone they must have stopped in some
deserted place, found a boat somewhere, sent the car
on ahead to Ausone with only two men in it, and then
Wildresse and the other two men must have dragged
or carried Philippa across the fields to the river and
forced her into the boat.  That was the only way they
could have ventured to enter Ausone.  They must have
gone by boat to the garden behind the cabaret, where
nobody could see what was going on, and there they
probably let themselves into the house by the rear entrance.

"That's my theory, Halkett.  I believe Philippa is
there.  I believe Wildresse is there.  And I feel very
sure that those two choice scoundrels of his at the
Boule d'Argent will join him wherever he is.  So I
think we had better tie up our boat and go to the
Boule d'Argent and find these fellows, Meier and
Hoffman, and never let them out of our sight."

"I think so, too," said Halkett quietly.

He knelt down on the grass, passed the boat chain
around the base of the willow tree, linked and padlocked
it, sprang to his feet, and walked quickly after
Warner, who had already started to enter the Impasse
d'Alcyon.

"You're a little flustered, old chap," he said, as he
rejoined Warner in the narrow alley.  "Don't walk
so fast; we ought not to attract attention."

"I'm horribly nervous," admitted the other, slackening
his pace.

"We'll have to keep pretty cool about this affair.  It
won't do to scare those scoundrels."

"Why?"

"Because if they really have her locked up in that
cabaret.  I'm afraid to guess what they might do to her
if they thought their own skins were in danger."

"I know it," said Warner hoarsely.  "I'm worried
sick, I tell you!  Wildresse has the worst face I ever
looked at.  There is only one word to characterize that
countenance of his—bestial!"

"He's a bad lot and he looks it.  The military
authorities would make short work of him if Philippa
should ever hint at what she has found out about his
rather complicated business affairs.  That's what I am
afraid of—that he may take some terrible precaution
in order to anticipate any danger from her——"

"What?"

"He is capable of doing anything to prevent her
from speaking.  Keeping her locked up is the precaution
that I dread least.  What I'm afraid of is that
he may kill her."

Warner turned a bloodless visage to his comrade:

"That's what I'm afraid of, too," he said steadily
enough.  "I think we had better notify the police at
once——"

"It won't do, old chap!"

"Why?  On your account?"

"No, no!  My papers are safe enough now.  But I
tell you, Warner, French temper is on a hair trigger,
in spite of all this gravity and silence.  The very word
'spy' would be the match to the magazine."

"But what of it?"

"Suppose Wildresse denies his treachery and makes
a counter-accusation against Philippa?"

"What?  How can he?"

"Suppose he declares that she betrayed him?  Suppose
already he has arranged documents to prove it?
Suppose he had long ago taken such a precaution
against any chance of her denouncing him?  He is an
old rat, grown grey in the business.  He must have
been perfectly aware that Philippa is honest—that it
even went against her to do the dirty work that her
own Government required of her.  He must have known
that if she ever discovered his double treachery, she
would at least desert him, perhaps denounce him.  No,
no, Warner; that crafty old sewer rat left nothing to
chance.

"If that girl now has an opportunity and the desire
to denounce him, you can be absolutely certain that
long ago he has foreseen and prepared himself for just
such an event!"

"Do you believe that?"

Halkett smiled:

"I am certain of it."

"Why?"

"What does a young girl know about treachery?
How many papers has Philippa ignorantly and
innocently signed which might exculpate Wildresse and
send *her* before a peloton of execution in the first
*caserne* available?  *That's* the way such rats as he
protect themselves!

"No, Warner.  It's a filthy business at best, and
I admit, sadly enough, that I know more about it than
you ever could know.

"Listen, old chap!  It's no good stirring up the police
until Philippa is outside French territory.  Then,
and then only, may we dare to let loose the police on
this nest of rats in Ausone!"

"Very well," said Warner quietly.  "I'll act as you
think best, only I'll——"  He stopped to regain
control of himself.  And when he had himself in hand
again: "Only—it will be a—a bad mistake if
Wildresse—if—if any harm comes to that child."

"Oh, in that event," said Halkett quietly, "we need
not scruple to kill him where we find him."

Warner said unsteadily:

"I shall not hesitate a second——"  But Halkett
suddenly checked him with a touch on his elbow, and
drew him back behind the wall of the Impasse d'Alcyon,
from which alley they were on the point of emerging
into the town.

Two men were crossing the almost empty market
square toward the Café Biribi, moving without haste
over the sunny pavement.

"Hoffman and Meier," whispered Halkett.  "There
go our promising young rodents straight toward the
old rat's nest!  It won't do for them to catch sight
of me....  Wait a moment!  There they go—into the
Café Biribi!  Follow them—they don't know you.
Keep your eye on them.

"I'll stroll over to the quay and dangle my legs on
the river wall.  If you need me, come out on the café
terrace and beckon."

"Would it do to hand over that pair to the police?
They are German spies, are they not?"

"They are.  But at present they are likely to be
useful.  If Wildresse is in the café or the cabaret, they
are sure to reveal the fact to us.  Better go in and
keep your eye on them.  If you want me, I shall be
smoking my pipe on the river wall across the street."

He nodded and strolled over toward the little
tree-shaded quay, filling his pipe as he sauntered along.
Warner continued on to the café, entered, seated
himself against the shabby wall, picked up an illustrated
journal, ordered bitters, and composed himself to enjoy
the preprandial hour sacred to all Frenchmen.

Without looking he was aware that the two men,
Meier and Hoffman, seated at a table near the cashier's
desk, had noted his arrival and were steadily
inspecting him.

But he did not look in their direction; he turned
the pages of the illustrated paper, leisurely, until the
waiter brought his Amer Picon and a chilled carafe.
Then he measured out his water with the unstudied
deliberation of an habitué, stirred the brown liquid, sipped
it, and, turning to another page of his paper, let his
eyes rest absently on the two men opposite.

By that time neither of them was even looking at
him.  They were drinking beer; their heads were close
together and they had turned so that they were facing
each other on the padded leather wall settee.

It was impossible to hear what they were saying;
they spoke rapidly and in tones so low that only the
vibration of their voices was audible in the still room.

Guarded but vigorous gesticulations marked the
progress of their conference; now and then both
became mute while the waiter replenished their glasses
with beer and added another little saucer to the
growing pile on the marble table.

For an hour Warner dawdled over the café papers
and his glass of bitters.  The men opposite still faced
each other on the leather settee, still conversed with
repressed animation, still guzzled beer.  Once or twice
they had looked up and across the room at him and
had taken a swift, comprehensive survey of the few
other people in the café, but the movement had been
wholly instinctive and mechanical.  Evidently they felt
entirely secure.

The plump, dark-eyed *caissière* had caught Warner's
eye once or twice.  Evidently she remembered him, and
her quick smile became almost an invitation to
conversation.

It was what he wanted and he hesitated only because
he was not sure how the men opposite might regard
his approach toward their vicinity.

But he did it very well; and both men, looking up
sharply, seemed presently to realize that it was merely
a flirtation, and that the young man lounging before
the cashier's counter, smiling, and being smiled upon,
could safely be ignored.

"To be the prettiest girl in Ausone," Warner was
saying, "must be a very great comfort to that girl.
Don't you think so, Mademoiselle?"

"To be the most virtuous, Monsieur, would be far
more comforting."

"Have you then *both* prizes, Mademoiselle?  I was
sure of it!"

"Prizes, Monsieur?"

"The golden apple and the *prix de la sagesse*?"

She laughed and blushed, detaching from her corsage
a rosebud.

"Accept, Monsieur, the prize for eloquence and for
impudence!"  And she extended the rosebud to Warner.

He took it, lifted it to his lips, looking smilingly at
her, and listening with all the concentration he could
summon to the murmuring conversation at the
neighboring table.

Only a word or two he could catch—perhaps merely
a guess at—"Patron," and "nine o'clock," and
"cellar"—at least he imagined he could distinguish these
words.  And all the time he was up to his ears in a
breezy flirtation with a girl very willing, very adept,
and perfectly capable of appreciating her own desirability
as well as the good points of any casual suitor
whom Heaven might strand upon her little, isolated
island for an hour or two.

Being French, she was clever and amusing and sufficiently
grateful to the gods for this bit of masculine
flotsam which had drifted her way.

"There are boats," she said, "and the evening will
be beautiful."  Having made this clear to him, she
smiled and let matters shape their course.

"What pleasure is a boat and a beautiful night
to me," he said, "if nobody shares both with me?"

"Alas, Monsieur, have you no pretty little friend
who could explain to you the planets on a summer
night?"

"Alas, Mademoiselle!"

"What a pity....  Because I have studied astronomy
a little.  And I recommend it to you as a
diversion.  They are so high, so unattainable, the stars!
It is well for a young man to learn what is attainable,
and then to address himself to its pursuit.  What do
you think, Monsieur?"

"That I should very much like to study astronomy
if in all the world there could be discovered anybody
amiable enough to teach me."

"How pathetic!  If I only had time——"

"Have you no time at all?"

"It wouldn't do, *mon ami*."

"Why?"

"Because I should be seen going to a rendezvous with you."

"Isn't there any way into the cabaret garden except
through the cabaret?" he asked.

She shook her head, laughing at him out of her
brown eyes.

He waited a moment to control his voice, but there
was a tremor in it when he said:

"Is there no way through the cellar?"

She noticed the tremor and liked it.  In the lightest
and airiest of flirtations the ardent and unsteady
note in a man's voice appeals to any woman to
continue and finish his subjugation.

"As for the cellar," she said, "it is true that one
can get into the cabaret garden that way.  But,
Monsieur, do you imagine that a dark, damp, ghostly and
pitch-black cellar appeals to any woman?"

"Is the cellar so frightful a place, Mademoiselle?"

"Figure it to yourself!—Some twenty stone steps
from the pantry yonder"—She nodded her head toward
the battered swinging door of leather.—"And then
more steps, down, down, down!—Into darkness and
dampness where there are only wine casks and kegs
and bottles and mushrooms and rats and ghosts——"

"What of it—if, as you say, the stars are shining
on the river——"

"Merci!  A girl must certainly be in love to
venture through that cellar!  And a man, too!"

"Try me.  I'll go!"

The girl laughed:

"You!  Are you, then, in love already?"

"I should like to prove it.  Where is that terrible
cellar?"

"Behind the door, there."  She waved her hand
airily.  "Try it.  Show me how much you are in love!
Perhaps then I'll believe you."

"Will the waiters interfere if I go into the cellar?"

"See how you try to avoid the test!"

"Try me!"

"Very well.  The washroom is there.  If you choose
to wash your hands, you are at liberty to do so.  And
then if you can't slip down into the cellar while the
waiters are looking the other way, all I can say is
that you are not in love!"

He looked at her smilingly, scarcely trusting himself
to speak for a moment, for the face of Philippa
rose unbidden before his eyes and a shaft of fear
pierced him.

"You are wrong," he said steadily enough.  "I am
in love....  Very honestly, very innocently....  It
just occurred to me.  I didn't know how deeply I felt....
I really am in love—as one loves what is fearless,
faithful, and devoted."

"A dog is all that, Monsieur."

"Occasionally a human being is, also.  Sometimes
even a woman."

Her smile became a little troubled.

"Monsieur, are you, then, in love with some woman
who possesses these commendable virtues?"

"No.  I am in love with her virtues, Mademoiselle."

"Oh!  Then she might even be your sister!"

"Exactly.  That is the quality of my affection for
her."

The pretty *caissière* laughed:

"You were beginning to make me sad," she said.
"I—I am really willing to teach you astronomy, if you
truly desire a knowledge of the stars."

"I do, ardently."

"But I am sincerely afraid of the cellar," she
murmured.  "It is ten o'clock before I am released from
duty, and the knowledge that it is ten o'clock at night
makes that cellar doubly dark and terrible.  I—I don't
want to give you a rendezvous down there; and I
certainly don't propose to traverse the cellar alone.
Monsieur, what on earth am I to do?"

"To study the stars on the river, and to reach a
rendezvous without being noticed, makes it necessary
for you to slip out through the cellar, does it not?"

"Alas!"

"Haven't you the courage?"

"I don't—know."

"Yes, you have."

"Have I?"  She laughed.

"Certainly.  I'll go to the washroom now, and
get into the cellar somehow, and make myself
acquainted with it....  I suppose I ought to have a
candle——"

She said:

"When I walk home alone at night I have a little
electric torch with me.  Shall I lend it to you?"

She opened the desk drawer, drew it out concealed
under her handkerchief, and he managed to transfer
it to his pocket.  It clinked against the loaded
automatic pistol; nobody noticed the sound.

But for a moment he thought the two men, Meier
and Hoffman, had noticed it, because they both got up
and came over directly toward him.

However, they merely wished to pay their reckoning
with a hundred-franc note, and Warner moved aside
while they crowded before the pretty cashier's desk,
offering hasty pleasantries and ponderous gallantries,
while she dimpled at them and made change.

Then, after tipping the waiter, they went out into
the late afternoon sunshine.

Warner, looking after them, could see that they
were crossing the square toward the Boule d'Argent;
and he knew that Halkett must have seen them and
that he would manage to keep them in view.

Now was his time to investigate the cellar, and he
said so to the brown-eyed girl behind the cage, who
had been inspecting him rather pensively.

"I ought not to do this," said the pretty *caissière*.

"Of course not.  Otherwise we should not find each
other agreeable."

She smiled, looking at him a little more seriously
and more attentively.

"It is odd, is it not," she said under her breath,
"how two people from the opposite ends of the earth
chance to meet and—and find each other—agreeable?"

"It is delightful," he admitted smilingly.

"I don't even know your name," she remarked, playing
with her pencil.

"James."

"Tchames?"—with a pretty attempt to imitate his
English.

"Jim is easier."

"Djeem?"

"Perfect!"

"Djeem," she repeated, looking musingly at the tall,
well-built American.  "C'est drôle, ce nom là!  Djeem?
It is pleasant, too....  My name is Jeanne."  She
shrugged her youthful shoulders.  "Nothing extraordinary,
you see....  Still, I shall try to please you,
Monsieur Djeem."

"I dare not hope to please you——"

She laughed:

"You *do* please me.  Do you suppose, otherwise, I
should dare enter that frightful cellar?"

Under cover of her desk, she deftly detached a key
from the bunch at her belt, covered it with her hand,
palm down, and let it rest on the counter before him.

"Do you promise to keep away from the wine bins?"
she asked lightly.

"I promise solemnly," he said, and took the key.

"Very well.  Then you may go and look at this
dreadful cellar at once.  And when you behold it,
ask yourself how great a goose a girl must be who
ventures into it at ten o'clock at night merely
because a young man desires to take a lesson in
astronomy on the river Récollette."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XVII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVII

.. vspace:: 2

He had little difficulty in gaining the cellar from
the washroom.  Both doors opened out of the
pantry passage; he had only to watch the
moving figures silhouetted through the pantry
doorway, and when they were out of sight for the moment,
he stepped out, unlocked the cellar door, closed it
gently behind him, flashed his electric torch, and started
down the broad stone steps.

It was one of the big, old-time cellars not unusual
in provincial towns, but built, probably, a century
before the café and cabaret had been erected on its solid
stone foundations.

Two rows of squatty stone pillars supported the low
arches of the roof; casks, kegs, bins, empty bottles,
broken bottles, and row after row of unsealed wine
bottles lined the alleyways leading in every direction
through the darkness.

On either side of the main central corridor stood
wine casks of every shape and size, some very ancient,
to judge from the carving and quality of the wood,
some more or less modern, some of today.  Almost
all were hoisted on skids with bung and bung starter
in place and old-time jugs and measures of pewter
or glass at hand; a few lay empty amid the cellar
debris, where the salts born of darkness and dampness
dimly glimmered on wall and pavement, and a rustling
in unseen straw betrayed the lurking place of rats.

Warner, playing his flashlight, walked swiftly
forward, traversing the three principal alleys in
succession.  The third round included the little dark
runways twisting in and out among the bins, turning
sudden angles into obscurity, or curving back in a
blind circle to the point of entrance.

And as he stood resting for a moment, trying to get
his bearings and shifting his electric torch over the
labyrinth within which he had become involved, a
slight but distinct sound broke the silence around him.

It came from the cellar steps: somebody had opened
the door above.

Instantly he extinguished his torch; the blackness
walled him in, closing on him so swiftly that he seemed
to feel a palpable pressure upon his body.

Listening, every nerve on edge, he heard footsteps
falling cautiously upon the stone stairway; a white
radiance spread and grew brighter at the far end of the
vaulted place; and in a moment more the blinding star
of an electric torch dazzled his eyes, where he stood
looking out between the cracks of the piled-up boxes
which made of the alley in which he had halted a
rampart and an impasse.

Two men were advancing, shining the way before
them, turning their heads from side to side with
curiosity, but without apparently any suspicion.

They seemed to know the place and to be entirely
familiar with every alley, for, just before they passed
the runway where he crouched behind the boxes, they
turned aside, played their light over the dusty banks
of bottles, chose one, coolly knocked off its neck, and
leisurely drained it between them.

Then, exchanging a few comments in voices too low
to be understood, they resumed their course, passed
the entrance to the alley where Warner lay hidden,
and continued on a few paces.

He could see them as black shapes against the flare
of light; saw them halt a few paces from where he
stood, saw them reach up and take hold of a huge tun
which blocked their progress.

Their torch was shining full upon it; he could
follow minutely everything they were doing.

One of the men stretched his arms out horizontally
and grasped the edges of the immense cask.  Then he
threw his full weight to the right; the cask swung
easily outward, leaving a passageway wide enough for
a man.  And there, full in the blaze of brilliant light,
was a door, scarcely ten feet away from where he was
standing.

The man who had turned the cask went to the door,
slid aside a panel, reached in and unbolted it, and had
already opened the door when a big bulk loomed up
in front of him; a gross, vibrant voice set the hollow
echoes growling under the arches of stone and mortar;
Wildresse barred their way.

He stood there, the torchlight falling full on his
round, partly bald and smoothly shaven head; his
wicked little ratty eyes were two points of black, his
wicked mouth was twisted with profanity.

"Sacré tas de bougres!" he roared.  "I told you to
come at nine o'clock, didn't I?  What are you doing
here, then?  You, Asticot, you are supposed to have
more sense than Squelette, there!  Why do you
interrupt me before the hour I set?"

The man addressed as Asticot—a heavy, bench-legged
young man with two *favoris* pasted over his
large wide ears—shuffled his shoes most uncomfortably.

Squelette, tall, frightfully thin, with his long,
furrowed neck of an unclean bird swathed in a red
handkerchief, stood sullen and motionless while the glare
of his torch streamed over Wildresse.

"Nom de Dieu!" shouted the latter.  "Aim at my
belly and keep that light out of my face, you stupid
ass!"

Squelette sulkily shifted his torch; Asticot said in
the nasal, whining voice of the outer boulevards:

"*Voyons, mon vieux*, you have been at it for six
hours, and the Skeleton here and I thought you might
require our services——"

"Is that so!" snarled Wildresse.  "Also, they may
require your services in La Roquette!"

"They do," remarked Squelette naïvely.

"You don't have to tell me that!" retorted Wildresse.
"You'll sneeze for them, too, some day!"  He turned
savagely on Asticot: "I *don't* want you now!  I'm busy!
Do you understand?"

"I understand," replied the Maggot.  "All the same,
if I may be so bold—what's the use of chattering if
there's a job to finish?  If there's work to do, do it,
and talk afterward.  That's my idea."

Wildresse glared at him:

"Really!  Very commendable.  Such notions of industry
ought to be encouraged in the young.  But the
trouble with you, Asticot, is that you haven't
anything inside that sucked-out orange you think is a
head.

"Whatever mental work is to be done, I shall do.
Do you comprehend me, imbecile?  And I don't trouble
to consult your convenience, either.  Is that clear?
Now, take your friend, the Skeleton, and take your
torch and yourself out of this cellar.  Get out, or I'll
bash your face in!—You dirty little bandy-legged,
blood-lapping cockroach——"

His big, pock-pitted, hairless face became frightful
in its concentrated ferocity; both men made simultaneous
and involuntary movements to the rear.

"You'll come at nine o'clock, do you hear!" he roared.
"And you'll bring a sack with you and enough weight
to keep it sunk!  You, Maggot; you, Skeleton, do you
understand?  Very well, clear out!"

The young ruffians made no response; Asticot turned
and made his way through the narrow passage; the
Skeleton shuffled on his heels, shining his torch ahead.

Halfway down the central corridor they helped themselves
to two more bottles of Bordeaux, pocketing them
in silence, and continued on their course.

Listening, Warner could hear them ascending the
stone stairs, could hear the door click above as they
left the cellar.  But his eyes remained fixed on
Wildresse, who still stood in the door, darkly outlined
against the dull gaslight burning somewhere in the
room behind him.

Once or twice he looked at the great cask which the
two *voyous* had not troubled to close into its place
behind them.  And Wildresse did not bother to go out
and swing the cask back into place, but, as soon as
he caught the sound of the closing cellar door, stepped
back and shut his own door.

He must either have forgotten, or carelessly neglected,
to close the open panel in it, for the lighted
square remained visible, illuminating the narrow
passage after Warner heard him bolt the door on the
inside.

His retreating footsteps, also, were audible for some
distance before the sound of them died away; and
Warner knew then that the door belonged to the cabaret,
and that behind its bolted shutters and its police seals
Wildresse had been lurking since his return from Saïs.

There was no need to use his torch as he crept out
of his ambush and entered the narrow lane behind the
big cask.

With infinite precautions, he thrust his arm through
the open panel, felt around until he found the two
bolts, slid them noiselessly back.

The door swung open, inward.  He went in softly.

The place appeared to be a lumber room littered
with odds and ends.  Beyond was a passage in which
a gas jet burned; at the end of it a stairway leading up.

The floor creaked in spite of him, but the stairs were
carpeted.  They led up to a large butler's pantry; and,
through the sliding door, he peered out into the dim
interior of the empty cabaret.

Through cracks in the closed shutters rays from
the setting sun pierced the gloom, making objects
vaguely distinct—tables and chairs piled one upon the
other around the dancing floor, the gaudy decorations
pendent from the ceiling, the shrouded music stands,
the cashier's desk where he had first set eyes on the
girl Philippa——

With the memory his heart almost ceased, then
leaped with the resurgence of his fear for her; he looked
around him until he discovered a leather swinging door,
and when he opened it a wide hallway lay before him
and a stairway rose beyond.

Over the thick carpet he hastened, then up the stairs,
cautiously, listening at every step.

Somewhere above, coming apparently from behind
a closed door, he heard the heavy vibration of a voice,
and knew whose it was.

Guided by it along the upper passageway, he passed
the open doors of several bedrooms, card rooms, private
dining-rooms, all empty and the furniture covered
with sheets, until he came to a closed door.

Behind it, the heavy voice of Wildresse sounded
menacingly; he waited until it rose to a roar, then
tried the door under cover of the noise within.  It was
locked, and he stood close to it, listening, striving
to think out the best way.

Behind the locked door Wildresse was shouting now,
and Warner heard every word:

"By God!" he roared in English.  "You had better
not try to lie to me!  Do you want your neck twisted?"

There was no reply.

"I ask you again, what did you do with that paper
I gave you by mistake?" he repeated.

Suddenly Warner's heart stood still, as Philippa's
voice came to him, low but distinct:

"I burned it!"

"You burned it?  You lie!"

"I never lie," came the subdued voice.  "I burned it."

"You slut!  How dared you touch it at all?"

"You handed it to me," she said wearily.

"And you knew it was a mistake, you treacherous
cat!  My God!  Have I nourished you for this, you
little snake, that you turn your poisonous teeth on
me?"

"Perhaps....  But not on my country."

"Your country!  You miserable foundling, did you
suppose yourself French?"

"France is the only country I have known.  I
refuse to betray her."

"France!" he shouted.  "France!  A hell of a country
to snivel about!  You can't tell me anything about
France—the dirty kennel full of mongrels that it is!
France?  To hell with France!

"What has she done for me?  What has she done
to me?  Chased me out of Paris; forced my only son
into her filthy army; hunted us both without
mercy—finally hunted my son into the Battalions of
Biribi—me into this damned pigpen of Ausone!  That's what
France has done to me and mine!—Blackmailed me into
playing the *mouchard* for her—forcing me to play spy
for her by threatening to hunt me into La Nouvelle!

"By God!  I break even, though!  I sell her every
chance I get; and what I sell to her she has to pay for,
too—believe me, she pays for it a hundred times over!"

There came a silence, then Wildresse's voice again,
rumbling, threatening:

"Who was that *type* you went to visit in Saïs at the
Golden Peach?"

No answer.

"Do you hear, you little fool?"

"I hear you," she said in a tired voice.

"You won't tell?"

"No."

"Why?  Is he your lover?"

"No."

"Oh, you merely got your wages, eh?"

No answer.

"In other words, you're launched, eh?  You aspire
to turn *cocotte*, eh?"

"I am employed by him quite honestly——"

"Very touching.  Such a nice young man, isn't he?
And how much did you tell him about me, eh?"

No reply.

"Did you inform him that I was a very bad character?"
he sneered.  "Did you tell him what a hard
time you had?  Did you explain to him that a pious
Christian really could not live any longer with such
a man as I am?  *Did* you?  And that is the way you
feel, isn't it?—That you are too good for the business
in which I have taken the trouble to educate you?"

"To be compelled to seek information for my
Government has made me very unhappy," she said.  "But
to betray that Government—that is not in me to do.
I had rather die....  I think, anyway, that I had
rather not—live—any longer."

"Is that so?  Is that all the spirit you have?  What
are you, anyway—a worm?  Have you no anger in
you against the country which has kicked you and me
out of Paris into this filthy kennel called Ausone?
Have you no resentment toward the Government that
has attempted to beggar us both—the Government
which bullies us, threatens us, blackmails us, forbids
us entry into the capital, keeps us tied up here like
dogs to watch and bark at strangers and whine away
our lives on starvation wages, when we could make
our fortunes in Paris?"

"I don't know what you did."

"What of it?  Suppose I broke a few of their
damned laws!  Is that a reason to kick me from place
to place and finally tie me up here?"

"I—don't know."

"Oh, 'don't know'!" he mimicked her.  "You ungrateful
slut, if you had any gratitude in your treacherous
little body, you'd stick to me now!  You'd rejoice at
my vengeance!  You'd laugh to know that I am paying
back in her own coin the country which insulted me!
That's what you'd do, instead of sniveling around about
'treachery' and 'betraying France.'

"And, by God!—now that war has come, you'll see
your beloved France torn into pieces by the Bosches!
That's what you'll see—France ripped into tatters!

"Yes, and that sight will repay me for all that has
been done to me—that revenge I shall have—soon!—just
as soon as they sweep up that stable litter of
Belgians over there!

"*Then* we'll see!  Then perhaps I'll get my recognition
from the Bosches!

"What do I care for France or for them, either?  I'm
of no nation; I'm nothing; I'm for *myself*!  The
Bosches were the kinder to me, and they get what
I don't need, *voilà tout*!"

There came a long pause, and then Wildresse's heavy
tones once more:

"I'll give you your chance.  Yes, in spite of your
treachery and your ingratitude, I'll give you your
chance!

"You have a brain—such as it is.  It's a woman's
brain, of course, but it can figure out on which side
the bread is buttered.

"Listen: I ought to twist your neck.  You've tried to
put mine into the *lunette*.  You could have sent me up
against a dead wall if you had given that paper you
burned to the *flics*.  No, you didn't.  You enjoyed a
crisis of nerves and you burned it.  I *know* you burned
it, because I admit that you tell the truth.

"Bon!  Now, therefore, I do not instantly twist your
neck.  No!  On the contrary, I reason with you.  I
do not turn you over to the *sergots*.  I *could*!  Why?
Voyons, let us be reasonable!  I was not hatched
yesterday.  No!  Do you suppose I have trusted you all
these years without having taken any little precautions?
*Tiens*, you are beginning to look at me, eh?

"Well, then, listen: if in future you have any
curiosity concerning *lunettes* and dead walls, let me inform
you that you are qualified to embellish either.

"*Tiens*!  You seem startled.  It never occurred to
you to ask why I have had certain papers written
out by you, or why I have had you affix your pretty
signature to so many little documents which you could
not read because the ink was invisible.

"No.  You have never thought about such matters,
have you?  But, all the same, I have all I require to
make you sneeze into the basket, or to play blindman's
buff between a dead wall and a squad of execution.

"And *now*!—Now that you know enough to hold your
tongue, will you hold it in future and be honest and
loyal to the hand that picked you out of the gutter
and that has fed you ever since?"

There was a silence.

"*Will* you?" he repeated.

"*No!*"

A bull-like roar burst from Wildresse:

"I'll twist your neck for you, and I'll do it now!"
he bellowed.  "I'll snap that white neck of yours——"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XVIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVIII

.. vspace:: 2

The next instant Warner struck the door such
a blow with his doubled fist that the jarring
sound silenced the roar of rage that had burst
from Wildresse at Philippa's answer, and checked the
heavy scuffle of his great feet, too.

Already Warner had drawn back, pistol lifted, gathered
together to throw his full weight against the door
and hold it the moment it was opened from inside.

The sudden stillness which followed his blow lasted
but a few seconds; heavy steps approached the door,
halted; approached irresolutely, stopped short.  Then
ensued another period of quiet; and Warner, listening,
could hear the breathing of Wildresse on the other
side of the door.

Minute after minute passed; Wildresse, still as a
tiger, never stirred, and even his suppressed breathing
became inaudible after a while.

Warner, pistol in hand, ready to throw himself
against the door the instant it moved on the crack,
bent over and placed his ear close against the paneling.
After a while he detected the sound of footsteps
cautiously retreating, and realized that Wildresse did not
intend to open the door.

He knocked again loudly: the steps continued to
recede; somewhere another door was unbolted and
opened; and the stealthy, retreating footsteps continued
on beyond earshot.

Again he knocked heavily with the butt of his pistol;
waited, listened, then drew back and fairly hurled
himself against the door.  It scarcely even creaked; he
might as well have attempted to push over the
retaining wall of the corridor itself.

"Philippa!" he called.  "Philippa!"

A low cry answered him; he heard her stir suddenly.

But as he grasped the door knob and shook it in his
excitement and impatience, over his shoulder he caught
a glimpse of a gross, hairless face slyly peering around
the further corner of the corridor.  It disappeared
immediately.

"Open the door, Philippa!" he cried.  "Open quick!"

"Warner, *mon ami*, I can't!  He took the key——"
she called through to him.  "Oh, Warner!  What am
I to do?"

"All right!  Wait there!"  He turned and ran for
the further end of the corridor, sprang around the
corner without hesitating, sped forward, now fiercely
intent on the destruction of Wildresse.  But the Patron
had fled.  He ran forward, turned another corner in
the dim light of locked shutters, but found no trace
of the bulky quarry he hunted, heard nothing, halted,
breathing fast and hard, trying to establish his
bearings.

A stair well plunged downward into shadowy depths
just ahead; he stole forward and looked over; carpeted
steps vanished into the darkness below.

Doors, all locked, faced him everywhere; he ran
along them, trying each as he passed; came to an
angle of solid wall, stepped around it, pistol extended;
and it was a miracle he was not startled into pulling
trigger when a door was torn open in his very face,
and a figure, dark against the fiery sunset framed by
a window, sprang forward.

"Warner, *mon ami*!  *Me voici*!" she cried joyously,
flinging both arms around his neck; but he stood white
and trembling with the nearness of her destruction
at his hands, holding the shaking pistol wide from her
body and unable to utter a word.

And as he stood there, one arm around her thin body,
somewhere below and behind him a door burst open and
there came a muffled rush of feet up the stairway from
the darkness below.

He pushed her violently away from him, but before
he could turn and spring to the stairhead, three men
leaped into the passage, their weapons spitting red
flashes through the dusky corridor; and he jumped
backward dragging Philippa with him into the room
behind them, slammed the door, and bolted, chained,
and locked it.

Outside, Asticot, Squelette, and Hoffman stood close
to the door and poured bullets through it at close range.
The stream of lead tore the papered plaster wall,
opposite to tatters; but the door was as massive as
the one he had tried to force with his shoulder; two
great bars of metal bolted it, a heavy chain further
secured it, and the key remained in the lock.

But steel-jacketed bullets still pierced the wood,
stripping splinters from the inside and mangling the
opposite wall until the gay wall paper hung in strips,
and the whole room swam in a haze of drifting white
dust.

Edging along, his body flattened against the north
wall of the empty room, and drawing Philippa after
him, he cautiously approached the door which he had
tried to force; and heard Wildresse whispering to
somebody outside.  No wonder he had not been able to force
it; the bolts and chains that held it were exactly like
those which secured the other door.

He placed his lips close to Philippa's ear:

"Where are we?" he breathed; and bent his head to
the child's bruised mouth, which was still swollen and
cut from the blow dealt her by Wildresse that
morning in the car.

"We are in the Patron's private office, where he used
to lock himself in," she whispered.  "They've taken out
the desk and chairs.  His bedroom is next; mine is
the next beyond that."

He looked anxiously toward the window and saw
tree tops and glimpses of rolling country sparkling in
the lilac-tinted haze of approaching twilight.

"Where does that window face?" he whispered, softly.

"On the garden and river."

"How far a drop is it?"

"Too far, *mon ami*.  The stone terrace is below."

"Is it thirty feet?"

"I don't know.  The roof and chimneys are above
us.  We are in the top story of the house."

"There are only two stories above the cellar, as I
remember."

"Two, yes."

Still holding himself and her flat against the wall,
he turned his head cautiously from side to side,
searching the empty room.  There was absolutely nothing
there except bare floor and walls, and, in the fireplace,
a huge iron grate weighted with cannel coal.

Outside, from the two corridors the firing had ceased;
but he could distinguish the low vibration of heavy
voices, carefully subdued, catch the sound of stealthy
movements on the carpeted floor close to both doors.
Lifting his pistol he fired through one door, wheeled,
and fired through the other.  When the deafening
racket in the room had ceased, he bent toward her
and whispered:

"Philippa, will you obey me?"

"Yes, mon ami."

"Flatten yourself closer against the wall and don't
stir."

The girl spread out both arms, palms against the
wall, and shrank closer against it with her slim body.

Warner dropped cautiously to the floor, crept across
it, dragging himself by his hands, grasped the sill of
the window, drew his head up with infinite precaution,
and looked out and finally down.

Below lay the flagstones and potted flowers of the
garden terrace, not more than twenty-five feet, he
thought.  Beyond these, the grass sloped down to the
Récollette, where rowboats still floated under the trees.

Reconnoitering, he could not discover a soul in sight,
and, satisfied, he crept back to where Philippa stood.

As he looked up at her, a faint smile touched the
girl's bruised lips, and her steady grey eyes seemed to
say: "*Me voici, mon ami, toujours à vos ordres!*"

"We must try to leave by the window," he whispered.
"Both doors are guarded.  And this man means
murder—for you, anyway——"

"Yes....  It does not matter much now....
Since I have seen you again."

"You dear child—you dear, brave little thing!"

"Oh, *mon ami*—if you truly are content with me——"

"Little comrade, you have been very wonderful and
very true!  Halkett has recovered his papers....
Can you imagine how I felt when that murderous brute
struck you!"

"It was nothing—I don't care, now——"  She looked
at his face, extended one finger along the wall, and
touched his arm, trying to smile with her disfigured
lips.

He looked at her very intently for a moment,
unsmiling.  Then:

"Little comrade!  Listen attentively."

"Yes, Warner."

"It's too far for us to drop.  It is twenty feet,
anyway, and probably more.  You would break your legs
on the stones....  How many of your clothes can you
spare to make a rope?"

"My—*clothing*?"

"Yes.  You see there is not a thing in this room, not
even a shred of carpet.  I can spare my coat, waistcoat,
shirt, tie, two handkerchiefs, collar, belt—and
both shoe laces.  I have a heavy, sharp pocketknife
with a four-inch blade, which will cut cloth into strips.
Help me all you can, Philippa.  We shall need every
inch of cloth and linen we can spare....  And I think
we had better hurry about it, because I don't
know what they are planning to do outside those two
doors."

She hesitated an instant, then:

"If you wish it....  Will you please turn your head?"

"Of course, you dear child!  What can you spare?"

"I can spare my chemisette and underskirt and
petticoat, and my velvet hairband and my shoe laces....
And a handkerchief and my stockings....  It leaves
me my red velvet bodice, which I can lace tightly, my
red velvet skirt, and my shoes....  Will it be enough
to give you?"

"I hope so; we must try."  He turned, stripped to
his undershirt and trousers, opened the long-bladed
knife, and began to cut out strips from the materials.

Presently she was ready to contribute to the projected
rope, and together they ventured to seat themselves
noiselessly at the base of the wall and begin
serious work on the business before them.

The sound of linen or of cotton being ripped would
certainly have set on the alert the men outside and
directed a murderously inclined gentleman or two to
the garden.

So they parted the stuffs with every precaution to
avoid any noise, using the knife constantly, and easing
the various fabrics apart little by little.

Warner was confident that Wildresse, knowing the
utter nakedness of the room in which they were locked,
and knowing that death or broken bones must result
from a drop into the terrace flowerpots, was not
concerning himself to guard that quarter.  Working
steadily, easing, parting, picking out or cutting threads,
ripping and tearing with greatest caution, the growing
dusk in the room began to impede their operations.
But he dared not use his electric torch, lest they be
seen from outside.

Already the girl's slender fingers were flying as she
picked up strip after strip of fabric and twisted them
into the quadruple braid, bending closer over her task
as the light became dimmer and dimmer.

Her bare feet in her laceless shoes were extended and
crossed in front of her; the slender neck and shoulders
and arms were exquisite in the delicate loveliness of
immaturity; she worked swiftly, intensely absorbed,
unconscious, unembarrassed in her preoccupation.

Now and then she lifted the braided cord and,
stretching it, tested it with all her youthful strength.
Once she handed it to him and he threw his full strength
into the test, nodded, passed it back to her, and went
on with his cutting and ripping.

Before the cord was finished, a tremendous crash
shook the door on the left; and Warner, seated flat on
the floor, fired two shots through the panels.

Then they both went on with their cutting, ripping,
knotting, and braiding.  The fumes from the cartridges
set them coughing, but the smoke filtered out of
the open window very soon.

It was dark when the cord was ready—some eighteen
feet of it, as far as Warner could judge by measuring
it across his outstretched arms.

Everything was in it except his leather belt, and this
he buckled around Philippa's body.

There seemed to be no way he could test the cord
except, inch by inch, using main strength; and, looking
at the slender girl beside him, he concluded that it was
going to hold her anyway.

The only light left in the room came from the stars;
by this he crept across to the fireplace, lifted the heavy,
iron grate with difficulty, set it at the foot of the
window, fastened one end of the cord to it, turned and
beckoned to Philippa.

She came creeping through the dusk on hands and
knees; he pushed the pistol into one hip pocket, the
electric torch into the other, fastened the rope to his
leather belt which she wore, motioned her to mount the
sill.

"But—*you*?" she whispered.

"Listen!  I shall follow.  If *I* fall, try to find Halkett
in the square and tell him."

"Warner—I am afraid!"

"I won't let you fall——"

"For *you*, I mean!"

"Don't be afraid.  I could almost drop it without any
cord to help me.  Now!  Are you ready?"

"If you wish it."

"Then sit this way—there!  Now, turn and take hold
of the sill with both hands—*that* way! ... Now, you
may let go——"

Her full weight on the cord frightened him; he braced
his knees and paid out the rope which crushed and
threatened to cut his hands in two.

Down, down into the dusk below he lowered her; his
arms and back and ribs seemed turned to steel, so
terrible was the fear that he might let her drop.

There remained yet a coil or two of rope when the
cord in his staggering hands suddenly slackened.  A
shaft of fright pierced him; he bent shakily over the
sill and looked down.  She had not fallen; she stood
on the terrace, unknotting the rope from her leather
belt.

A moment later he drew it up, the belt dangling at
the end.  With trembling and benumbed hands he tested
the knot tied to the grate; then, twisting the cord
around both hands, he let himself over the sill, clung
there, and lowered the window, hesitated, let his full
weight hang, heard the iron grate drag and catch, then,
blindly, twisting the cord around his left leg, he let
himself down foot by foot, believing every moment that
the cord would part or that the iron grate would be
dragged up and over the sill, carry away the sash,
and crush him.

And the next instant his feet touched the stone
flagging and he turned to find Philippa at his side.

"Be silent," she breathed close to his ear.  "A boat
has just landed."

"Where?"

"At the foot of the garden.  Two men are getting out!"

He knew that the rope would be discovered; he seized
it and tried to break it loose.  It held as though it had
been woven of wire.

"There is a way into the cellar," whispered Philippa.
"Can you lift this grating?  It is only a drop of a foot
or two!"

He bent down beside her in the shadows, felt the bars
of the narrow grating overgrown with herbage, pulled
upward and lifted it easily from its grassy bed.
Philippa placed her hand flat on the dewy turf, and
vaulted down into darkness.  He balanced himself on
the edge of the hole, turned and pulled the grating
toward him, and dropped.  The grating fell with a
soft thud on the damp and grassy rim of the manhole.
Philippa caught his hand.

"I know my way!  Come!" she breathed, and he
followed into the pitchy darkness.

How far they had progressed he had no idea, when
she halted and drew him close to her.

"I've lost my way; I thought I could find the main
corridor.  Have you a match?"

"I have a flashlight."

He pulled it from his pocket and drew his pistol
also.  Then he snapped on the light.

For a moment the girl stood dazzled and perplexed,
evidently unfamiliar with what she was gazing at,
bewildered.

But Warner knew.  There, in front of him, stood
the great tun, swung open like a gate, and between it
and the next cask ran the secret alley blocked by the
door from which Wildresse had driven Asticot and
Squelette.

"I know the way now!" he said.  "But we'll have
to pass through the café——"

He sprang back with the words on his lips as the
door opened violently and Wildresse lurched out,
followed by Asticot and another man.

But the glare of the torch in their eyes checked them
and they recoiled, stumbling over each other in the
narrow doorway.

Step by step Warner backed away, keeping Philippa
behind him and focussing the blinding light on the
men huddled in the doorway.

"Who are you?" demanded Wildresse hoarsely.
"What are you doing in my cellar?"

He made a motion toward his breast pocket; Asticot
was quicker, and he fired full at the flashlight which
Warner was holding wide of himself and Philippa.

The bullet struck the light; startling darkness
buried them, instantly all a-flicker again with pistol
flashes.

"The grating again!  Can you find it, Philippa?"
he whispered.

She turned her head as she retreated, caught a
glimpse of the faint spot of starlight behind, took his
hand and drew him around.

Evidently Wildresse dared not use any light; his
friends were shooting wildly and at hazard for general
results; the racket in the vaulted place was deafening;
but the flashes from their own pistols must have
obscured their vision, for if they could have
distinguished the far, pale spot of light under the manhole,
they evidently did not see the dim figures crouching
there.

Warner reached up, grasped the iron bars, lifted
them, swung them open.  Then he dragged himself up
and over, and, flat on the grass, held down his arms
for Philippa.

Beside him, panting on the grass, she lay flat under
the dim luster of the stars, while they searched the
dusk for any sign of the two men who had landed from
the rowboat.

And all at once the girl's eyes fell upon a ladder
leaning against the house, and she silently touched
Warner on the arm.

It became plain enough now; the rope was gone;
the men had mounted to the room, found it empty,
had unbolted both doors, and started Wildresse and
his crew toward the cellar—the only egress to the
street—where lay their only chance of successful
pursuit.

Bending low above the grass, gliding close to the
shrubs and bushes, Warner, with Philippa's hand
clasped in his, stole down the slope and into the shadow
of the shoreward trees.

A boat, with both oars in it, lay there, pulled up into
the sedge; the girl stepped in; Warner pushed off and
followed her, shipped the oars, swung the boat, and
bent to his work.

"You are taking the wrong way!" whispered Philippa.

"Halkett is waiting on the quay."

Already they had rounded the bank in sight of the
ancient arch of the bridge; the quay wall rose above
them in the starlight.  At the foot of the narrow flight
of steps he checked the boat; Philippa took the oars,
and he sprang out and ran up the stone incline.

"Halkett!" he called sharply.

A figure seated on the wall turned its head, jumped
to the pavement, and came striding swiftly.

"Have you discovered her whereabouts?  Good
heavens!  Where are your clothes, Warner?"

"I've found Philippa.  She's waiting below in a
boat——"

They ran down the steps while they were speaking,
and Philippa cried:

"Is it you, Halkett?  I am happy again!"  And
stretched out her slender bare arm to him, excited,
trembling a little from the nervous reaction which now
suddenly filled her eyes and set her disfigured mouth
quivering.

"Awf'lly glad," said Halkett heartily, clasping her
offered hand in his firm cool grip; and if he was astonished
at her negligee he did not betray it, but took the
oars with decision and sent the boat shooting out into
mid-current.

"Philippa," he said, pulling downstream with powerful
strokes through the darkness, "I don't know what
has happened; Warner got you out of the mess, whatever
it was; but what I do know is that you behaved
like a brick and I shall never forget it!  A soldier's
thanks, little comrade, for what you did!"

"I—I am—happy——" she faltered; and her voice
failed her.  She slid from the stern down against Warner's
knees, and buried her face in her bare arms against
them.

"Do you think you could spare her your coat, old
fellow?" asked Warner in a low voice.

"Of course!"  Halkett stripped off his coat and
passed it over; then he gave his waistcoat to Warner.

"Lucky it's a warm night," he said cheerfully, while
Warner spread the coat over Philippa, where she lay
exhausted, tremulous, and close to tears.  The girl who
had never whimpered when fear, timidity, and
indecision meant instant disaster, now lay huddled against
his knees, shaking in every limb, crushing back the tears
that burned her eyes and her throat, striving to master
the nerves that clamored for relief.

Warner bent over her, close, touching her disheveled hair:

"It's all right now," he whispered.  "I shall not let
you go again until you want to....  It's all right now,
Philippa.  I'll stand your friend always—as long as
you need me—as long as you—want me....  Don't
worry about a home; I'll see to it.  You are going to
have your chance."

One of her crossed hands groped blindly for his,
closed over it convulsively, and her breath grew hot
with tears.

"It's a long way to Tipperary," remarked Halkett
cheerily.  "Tell me about it when you're ready, old
chap."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XIX`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIX

.. vspace:: 2

About seven o'clock the next morning Halkett
knocked at Warner's door, awakening him.

"The cavalry are passing, if you'd care to see
them," he said.

Warner got out of bed, found his slippers and a
bathrobe, and opened the door.  Halkett, fully dressed
in the field uniform of a British officer, came in.

"Hello!" exclaimed the American in surprise.  "What
does this mean?"

"It means that we've gone in, old chap."

"England!"

"Yes, we're in it!  And I'm off."  He made a gesture
for silence.  "Hark!  Do you hear that?"

Warner listened: from the distance came a confused,
metallic sound, growing more and more distinct, filling
the room with a faint ringing, jarring harmony.

"Come to the window; it's worth seeing," said Halkett.

It was worth seeing.  Through the still morning
sunshine, from the southward came an immense sound
wave; the rustle and clash of steel, the clink-clank of
iron-shod hoofs.

Leaning from the window, Warner looked down the
road.  A high column of white dust stretched away into
perspective as far as he could see.  Under it, emerging
from it, rode the French heavy cavalry, the morning
sun a blinding sheet of fire on their armor.

On they came at a leisurely walk, helmets and
breastplates blazing silvery fire under a perpendicular forest
of lances canopied by the white dust.

They were terribly conspicuous; a cloudless sky
exposed every detail of their uniforms—the gold
epaulets of their officers, the crimson epaulets and
breeches of the troopers, the orange-red whalebone
plumes that flew like the manes of horses from the
trumpeters' helmets.

On they came, riding at ease, accompanied by dust
and by a vast and confused volume of assorted noises—the
tintinnabulation of their armor, the subdued clash
of sabers, the rattle and clash of equipments, the
solidly melodious trample of thousands of horses.

But Warner looked down at them with anxious eyes
and lips compressed.

"Good God!" he said under his breath to Halkett.
"Are they going into battle dressed that way?  I
thought they had learned something since 1870!"

"War has caught France unprepared in that
particular matter," said Halkett gravely.

"I didn't know it.  I understood that Detaille had
designed their campaign dress.  It's a dreadful thing,
Halkett, to send men into fire dressed in that way!"

"It is.  But look, Warner.  Is there anything more
magnificent when in mass formation than a brigade
of French cuirassiers?"

As they rode clanging under the windows of the inn,
officers and troopers looked up curiously at the man
in his bathrobe, in friendly surprise at the young man
in the British field uniform; but when the upturned,
sunburned faces caught sight of the next window
beyond, a quick, gay smile flashed out, and dark blue
sleeves shot up in laughing greeting and salute.

"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.

He was no longer merely amused; he stood listening
in silence to her happy, disjointed phrases, evoked by
flashes of memory equally disconnected.

The happiness connected with her girlish souvenirs
faded, however, when they represented the period
following her removal from school.

And yet, for all the loneliness and unhappiness—for
all the instinctive mental revolt, all the perplexity
and impatience of these latter years—their souvenirs
she handled tenderly, describing each with that
gentleness and consideration born of intimate personal
association.

And at last she discovered her account book,
strapped with rubber bands, and she rose from the
floor, drew the only chair up for Warner, and seated
herself on her bed, laying the book open across his
knees.

Here, under his eyes, columns of accurately kept
figures told the story.  Here everything had been
minutely set down—her meager salary, her few
expenses, her rigid economies, her savings during the
years of her employment by Wildresse—a record of
self-denial, of rigid honesty, of childlike perseverance.

As he slowly turned the clearly written pages on his
knees, Philippa, leaning against his shoulder, her fresh
young face close to his, pointed out and explained with
her forefinger tracing the written figures.

After he had examined her accounts, she unstrapped
her thin little pass book for him.  It was in order and
balanced to the end of July.

He closed the books, rested his clasped hands on
them, and sat thinking.  His preoccupied expression
left her silent, too—or perhaps it was the slight
reaction from her joyous indulgence in loquacity.
Reticence always follows—and always this aftermath of
silence is tinged with sadness.

He was thinking, almost in consternation, how
lightly he had assumed responsibility for a young soul
in the making.  All of her was still in the making; the
girl was merely beginning to develop in mind and spirit;
and in body her development had not ended.

Her circumstances aside—whatever her origin,
whatever her class or position might have been—he
suddenly realized that for him the responsibility was too
great.

Whatever her origin, in her were the elements and
instincts of all things upright.  Whatever her place
in the social scale, her intelligence could not be
questioned.  And, if her recent years had been passed amid
sordid and impossible surroundings and influences,
these had not corrupted her.  In her there was no hint
of depravity, nothing unwholesome, nothing spoiled.

Life and endeavor and the right to hope still lay
before her; a theoretical future opened uncontaminated;
opportunity alone was her problem; and his.  And he
realized his responsibility and was perplexed and
troubled.

"Philippa," he said, looking up at her where she sat
on the iron bed, her cheek resting on her clasped hands,
"I am not very aged yet.  Do you realize that?"

"Aged?" she repeated, puzzled.

He laughed and so did she.

"I mean," he said, "that if you and I go about
together in this rather suspicious world, nobody is
likely to understand how very harmless and delightful
our friendship is."

She nodded.

"Not that I care," he said, "except on your account.
A girl has only one real asset, as assets and liabilities
are now figured out by what we call civilization.  It
won't do to have any suspicion attach to this solitary
asset of yours.  There must never be any question of
your moral solvency through your friendship for me
or mine for you.  Do you follow me?"

"Yes."

"Very well.  It remains for us to find out how to
remain friends without hurting you and your prospects
in a world, which, as I have explained, is first of all an
incredulous world, and after that the most pitiless of
planets.  Do you still follow what I say?"

"Yes."

"Then have you any suggestions?"

"No, Warner."

"What would you prefer to do to support yourself?"

"Anything that permitted me to remain near you."

"I know, Philippa; but I mean, leaving me out of
consideration, what do you prefer to do?"

"I like everything—respectable."

"But what in particular?"

"I don't know; I like to keep accounts; I like to
oversee and manage a household....  I conducted all
the departments of the Café and Cabaret de Biribi—I
was manager, housekeeper, general director; I hired
and discharged servants, looked after all marketing,
all the linen and tableware, kept all accounts and paid
all wages.

"I know how to do such things and I like to do
them.  It was only the other—the secret service—which
sickened me.  Of course it would have been a
great happiness to me if I had been employed in quiet,
respectable, and cultivated surroundings, and not in
a public place where anybody may enter and misbehave."

"I understand," he said thoughtfully.  "If it is
necessary, then, you are competent to do your duty as
housekeeper in a private house."

"I don't know; I should think so."

"And there is nothing else you prefer?"

Philippa shook her head.  Then she picked up her
knitting again, settling herself on the edge of the bed,
feet crossed, fingers flying, delicate face bent gravely
over her work.  And all at once it seemed to Warner
that her peasant dress was not convincing; that this
gay costume of her province which she wore was only
a charming masquerade—the pretty caprice of a young
girl born to finer linen and a purple more costly—the
ephemeral and wayward whim which once had been
responsible for the Little Trianon, and irresponsible
to everything else except the traditions of a caste.

"*Who* are you, Philippa?" he asked curiously.

"I?"  Her lifted eyes were level with his, very
sweet and clear, and the bright needles ceased clicking.

"Don't you know who you are?" he repeated, watching her.

"A foundling....  I told you once."

"Is that all you know?"

"Yes."

"Does *he* know more than that?"

"He says he does not."

"You have no clew to your parentage?"

"None."

Her gaze became preoccupied, wandered from his,
grew vaguely wistful.

"Out of the gutter," she said, without any bitterness
in her emotionless voice.  "—Of which circumstance
he has frequently reminded me."  With an
unconscious movement she extended one exquisitely
fashioned hand and gazed at it absently; looked down
at the slim foot, where on the delicately arched instep
a peasant's silver buckle glimmered.

Then, resting her grey eyes on him:

"If it really was the gutter, it is odd," she said, half
to herself, "because always that second self which lives
within me goes freshly bathed and clean and clothed
in silk."

"Your second self?"

"My *real* self—my only comrade.  You know, don't
you?  When one grows up alone there grows up with
one an inner comrade—the truer self....  Otherwise
the solitude of life must become intolerable."

"Yes, I understand."

"All lonely children have such a comrade, I suppose.
Absolute self-isolation seems unendurable—actually
impossible for a human being."

She resumed her knitting, meditatively, as a youthful
princess might pick up her embroidery.

"As for the gutter," she said, "—out of the common
earth we came, and we return to it....  Christ wandered,
too, in very humble places."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XX`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XX

.. vspace:: 2

About noon a British soldier in uniform and
mounted on a motor cycle came whizzing up to
the Golden Peach.

Warner was in his room writing to his bankers in
Paris; Philippa, in her room, was mending underwear;
Halkett, who had walked to the school only to learn
that Sister Eila had gone to the quarries, came out of
the garden, where he had been sitting in silence with
Ariadne.

The cyclist, a fresh-faced young fellow, saluted his
uniform; Halkett took the dispatches, read them,
turned on his heel and went upstairs to make his adieux.
First he knocked on Philippa's door, and when the girl
appeared he took his leave of her with a new and oddly
stiff deference which seemed akin to shyness.

"I am so sorry you are going," she said.

"Thanks, so much.  I shan't ever forget my debt to
you.  I hope you'll be all right now."

"I shall be all right with Mr. Warner, always.  I do
hope we shall see you again."

"If I come out of this——" He checked himself,
embarrassed, then he added hurriedly: "I'll look you
up, if I may.  I shan't forget you."

His vigorous handclasp almost wrung a cry from
her, but she managed to smile, and he went on down
the corridor and knocked at Warner's door.

"Well, old chap, good-by and good luck!"

"What!  Have your orders arrived?" exclaimed
Warner.

"Just now.  I've a motor cyclist below.  He takes
me behind him to Ausone.  From there I go by rail."

"I'm glad for your sake, Halkett; I'm sorry for my
own.  It's been a jolly friendship."

"Yes, considering all the trouble I've put you to——"

"I tell you I liked it!  Didn't I make that plain?  I
was in a rut; I was turning into an old fluff before you
came cannoning into me, bringing a lively breeze with
you.  I've never enjoyed anything half as much!"

"It's kind of you to take it so.  You've been very
good to me, Warner.  I shan't forget you—or the little
lady yonder.  I'm sure this doesn't mean the end of
our friendship."

"Not if it lies with us, Halkett.  I hope you'll come
through.  Good luck, old fellow."

"Thanks!  Good luck and good-by."

Their gripped hands parted; Halkett turned, walked
toward the stairs, halted:

"I'll send for my luggage," he said.

"I'll look out for it."

"Thanks.  And be civil to Ariadne.  She's a friendly
old thing!"

"I'll cherish her," said Warner, smiling.

So they parted.  He took leave of Madame Arlon
and reckoned with her in British gold; Magda and
Linette were made happy with his generosity.

Out on the roadside they saw him swing up behind
the soldier cyclist.  A moment later there was only a
trail of dust hanging along an empty road.

But Halkett had not yet done with Saïs.  At the
school he dismounted and ascended the steps.

The schoolroom was empty, the place very still.
From a distance came the voices of children.  It was
the hour of their noonday recreation.

He entered the quiet schoolroom.  On the desk stood
a vase of white clove pinks.  He took one, inhaled its
fragrance, touched it to his lips, turned to the door,
and suddenly flushed to the roots of his hair.

Sister Eila, on the doorstep, turned her head and
looked steadily at the soldier cyclist for a moment.
But a moment was enough.

Yet, still looking away from Halkett, she said in her
serene young voice:

"Your uniform tells me your errand, Monsieur Halkett.
You have come for your papers."

"If I may trouble you——" His voice and manner
were stiff and constrained.

She let her eyes rest on him for a moment:

"A British uniform is pleasant to see in France,"
she said.  "One moment——"  She stepped past him
and entered the schoolroom.  "I shall bring you your
papers."

He walked slowly out to the road, holding in his
hands, which were clasped behind him, the clove pink.
Standing so, he looked across the fields to the river
willows, from whence the shot had come.  Slowly, clear-cut
and in full sunshine, the scenes of that day passed
through his mind.  And after they had passed he
turned and walked back to the schoolroom.

Sister Eila was seated at her desk, the papers lying
before her.

He took them, buttoned them inside his tunic.  She
sat looking across the dim room, her elbow on the desk,
her chin resting on her palm.

"There is no use trying to thank you," he said with
an effort—and stopped.

After a silence:

"You are going into battle," she said.

"I hope so."

"Yes—I hope so....  God protect you, Mr. Halkett."

He could not seem to find his voice.

Perhaps the silence became unendurable to her; she
fumbled for her rosary, lifted it, and took the metal
crucifix between both hands.

"Good-by," he said.

"Good-by."  Her eyes did not leave the crucifix.

He stood motionless, crushing his forage cap in his
hands.  The white flower broke from its stem and fell
to the floor.  He bent and picked it up, looked at it,
looked at her, turned and went his way.

The crucifix in her tightening hand grew indistinct,
blurring under her steady gaze.  In her ears still
sounded the retreating racket of the motor cycle; the
echoes lingered, grew fainter, died out in the golden
gloom of the room.

Sister Eila extended her arms in front of her and
laid her colorless face between them.  The room grew
very still.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXI

.. vspace:: 2

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.

.. vspace:: 2

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."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXII

.. vspace:: 2

Madame de Moidrey, strolling with Warner
on the south terrace of the Château des
Oiseaux, glanced sideways at intervals
through the open French windows, where, at the piano
inside, Philippa sat playing, and singing in a subdued
voice ancient folk songs of the lost provinces.

Peggy Brooks, enchanted, urged her to more active
research through the neglected files of a memory still
vivid; Philippa's voice was uncultivated, unplaced, but
as fresh and carelessly sweet as a blackbird's in May.
Some of these old ballads she had picked up from
schoolmates, many from the Cabaret de Biribi, where
clients were provincial and usually sentimental, and
where some of the ancient songs were sung almost
every day.

Madame de Moidrey had not immediately referred to
Philippa when, with Warner, she had strolled out to
the terrace, leaving the two younger girls together at
the piano.

They had spoken of the sudden and unexpected
menace of war, of the initial movements of troops along
the Saïs Valley that morning; the serious chances of
a German invasion, the practical certainty that in any
event military operations were destined to embrace the
country around them.  Warner seemed very confident
concerning the Barrier Forts, but he spoke of Montmedy
and of Mézières with more reserve, and of Ausone
not at all.

They promenaded for a few minutes longer in silence,
each preoccupied with anxious speculations regarding
a future which began already to loom heavy as a
thundercloud charged with unloosed lightnings.

From moment to moment the handsome woman
beside him glanced through the open windows of the
music room, where her younger sister and the girl
Philippa were still busily interested in working out
accompaniments to the old-time songs.

Philippa sang "J'ai perdu ma beauté":

   |  "I have lost my beauty—
   |  Fate has bereft me,
   |  Fortune has left me,
   |  None owes me duty.

   |  I have lost my lover;
   |  I shall not recover.
   |  Our Lady of Lorraine,
   |  Pity my pain!"
   |

They paused to listen to this naïve melody of other
days, then strolled on.

Madame de Moidrey said:

"She is very interesting, your little friend from
Ausone."

"I am glad you think so."

"Oh, yes, there is no doubt about her being clever
and intelligent....  I wonder where she acquired her
aplomb."

"Would you call it that?"

Madame de Moidrey smiled:

"No, it is a gentler quality—not devoid of sweetness.
I think we may label it a becoming self-possession....
Anyway, it is a quality and not a trait—if that
pleases you."

"She has quality."

"She has a candor which is almost disturbingly
transparent.  When I was a girl I saw Gilbert's comedy,
'The Palace of Truth.'  And actually, I believe that
your little friend, Philippa, could have entered that
terrible house of unconscious self-revelation without
any need of worrying."

"You couldn't praise her more sincerely if you think
that," he said.  "She offers virgin soil for anybody
who will take any trouble with her."

"Oh," said Madame de Moidrey, laughing, "I thought
I was to engage her to aid me and amuse *me*; but it
seems that *I* have been engaged to educate her in the
subtler refinements of civilized existence!"

"Don't you want to?" asked Warner, bluntly.

"Dear friend of many more years than I choose to
own to, have I not enough to occupy me without
adopting a wandering *caissière de cabaret*?"

"Is that the way you feel?" he said, reddening.

"Don't be cross!  No; it isn't the way I feel.  I do
need a companion.  Perhaps your friend Philippa is
not exactly the companion I might have dreamed about
or aspired to——"

"If you look at it in that way——"

"Jim!  Don't be rude, either!  I desire two things;
I want a companion and I wish to oblige you.  You
know perfectly well I do....  Besides, the girl is
interesting.  You didn't expect me to sentimentalize
over her, did you?  You may do that if you like.  As
for me, I shall consider engaging her if she cares to
come to me."

"She will be very glad to," he said, coolly.

Madame de Moidrey cast a swift side glance at him,
full of curiosity and repressed amusement.

"Men," she said, "are the real sentimentalists in this
matter-of-fact world, not women.  Merely show a man
a pretty specimen of the opposite sex in the conventional
attitude of distress, and it unbalances his intellect
immediately."

"Do you imagine that my youthful friend Philippa
has unbalanced my intellect?" he asked impatiently.

"Not entirely.  Not completely——"

"Nonsense!"

"What a bad-mannered creature you are, Jim!  But
fortunately you're something else, too.  For example,
you have been nice about this very unusual and
somewhat perilously attractive young girl.  Few men
would have been so.  Don't argue!  I have known a
few men in my time.  And I pay you a compliment."

She stopped and leaned back against a weatherworn
vase of stone which crowned the terrace parapet.

"Listen, Jim; for a woman to take into her house
a young girl with this girl's unknown antecedents and
perfectly well-known past performances ought not to
be a matter of romantic impulse, or of sympathy alone.
What you tell me about her, what I myself have already
seen of her, are sufficient to inspire the interest which
all romance arouses, and the sympathy which all lonely
youth inspires.  But these are not enough.

"Choice of companionship is a matter for serious
consideration.  You can't make a companion of the
intellectually inferior, of one who possesses merely the
lesser instincts, of any lesser nature, whether
cultivated to its full extent or otherwise.  You know that.
We shun what is not congenial."

He looked at her very intently, the dull red still
flushing his face; and she surveyed him critically,
amiably, amused at his attitude, which was the epitome
of everything masculine.

"What are you going to do about her?" he inquired
at last.

"Offer to engage her."

"As what?"

"A companion."

"Oh.  Then you *do* appreciate her?"

Madame de Moidrey threw back her pretty head and
laughed with delicious abandon.

"Perhaps I don't appreciate her as deeply as you
do, Jim, but I shall humbly endeavor to do so.  Now,
suppose, when you go back to the Golden Peach, you
send Philippa's effects up here, and in the meanwhile
I'll begin my duty of finishing Philippa's education—for
which duty, I understand, I'm engaged by you——"

"Ethra, you are a trump!  And I don't really mind
your guying me——"

"Indeed, I'm not guying you, dear friend!  I'm
revealing to you the actual inwardness of this entire
and remarkable performance of yours.  And if you
don't know that you are engaging me to finish this
young girl's education while you're making up your
mind about your sentiments concerning her, then it's
time you did."

"That is utterly——"

"Please!  And it's all the truer because you don't
believe it! ... Jim, the girl really *is* a pathetic
figure—simple, sweet, intelligent, and touchingly honest....
And I'll say another thing....  God knows what
mother bore her, what parents are responsible for
this young thing—with her delicate features and
slender body.  But it was not from a pair of unhappy
nobodies she inherited her mind, which seems to seek
instinctively what is fine and right amid the sordid
complexities of the only world she has ever known.

"As for her heart, Jim, it is the heart of a child—with
one heavenly and exaggerated idol completely filling
it.  *You!* ... And I tell you very plainly that,
if I were a man, the knowledge of this would frighten
me a little, and make me rather more serious than
many men are inclined to be."

He bit his lip and looked out across the southern
valley, where already the August haze was growing
bluer, blurring the low-hanging sun.

She laid a friendly, intimate, half humorous hand
on his arm:

"In all right-thinking men the boy can never die.
No experience born of pain, no cynicism, no incredulity
acquired through disappointment, can kill the boy
in any man until it has first slain his soul.  Otherwise,
chivalry in the world had long since become extinct.

"You have done what you could do for Philippa.
I am really glad to help you, Jim.  But from now on,
be very careful and very sure of yourself.  Because now
your real responsibility begins."

He had not thought of it in that way.  And now
he did not care to.

To sympathize, to protect, to admire—these were
born of impulse and reason, which, in turn, had their
origin in unconscious condescension.

To applaud the admirable, to express a warm concern
for virtue in difficulties, meant merely sincere
recognition, not the intimacy of that equality of mind
and circumstance which existed per se between himself
and such a woman as Madame de Moidrey.

The very word "protection" implies condescension,
conscious or unconscious.  We may love what we
protect; we never, honestly, place it on a pedestal, or
even on a mathematical level with ourselves.  It can't
be done.

And so, in a vague sort of way, Warner remained
incredulous of the impossible with which Madame de
Moidrey had smilingly menaced him.

Only, of course, she was quite right; he must not
thoughtlessly arouse the woman in the girl Philippa.

But there is nothing in the world that ought more
thoroughly to arouse the best qualities of manhood
in a man than the innocent adoration of a young
girl.  For if he could really believe himself to be
even a shadow of what she believes he is, the world
might really become the most agreeable of residential
planets.

As Warner and Madame de Moidrey entered the
music room through the open French windows, Philippa
turned from the piano and her soft voice died out in
the quaint refrain she had been accompanying.

She rose instinctively, which was more than Peggy
did, having no reverence for age in her own sister—and
Madame de Moidrey came forward and took the
girl's slender hands in hers.

"Have you concluded to remain with me?" she asked,
smilingly.

"I did not understand that you had asked me," said
the girl gravely.

"I do ask you."

Philippa looked at Warner, then lifted her grey eyes
to the elder woman.

"You are very kind, Madame.  I—it will be a great
happiness to me if you accept my services."

The Countess de Moidrey regarded her, still retaining
her hands, still smiling.

"You have a very sweet way of making the acceptance
mine and not yours," she said.  "Let us accept
each other, Philippa.  Will you?"

"You are most kind, Madame——"

"Can kindness win you?"

"Madame, it has already."

The American widow of the recent Count de Moidrey
felt a curious sensation of uncertainty in the quiet
self-possession of this young girl—in her serenity, in
her modulated voice and undisturbed manner.

An odd idea persisted that the graciousness was not
entirely on her own part; that there was something
even more subtle than graciousness on the part of this
girl, whose delicate hands lay, cool and smooth, within
her own.

It was not manner, for there was none on Philippa's
part; not reticence, for that argues a conscious effort
or a still more conscious lack of effort.  Perhaps,
through the transparent simplicity of the girl, the
older woman's intuition caught a glimpse of finer
traditions than she herself had been born to—sensed the
far, faint ring of finer and more ancient metal.

And after a moment she felt that courtesy, deference,
and propinquity alone held Philippa's grave grey eyes;
that the soul which looked fearlessly and calmly out
of them at her could not be lightly flattered or lightly
won; and that, released from their conventional duty,
those clear eyes of grey would seek their earthly
idol as logically as the magnetic needle swings to its
magnet.

Very subtly, as she stood there, the sympathy of
the older woman widened to include respect.  And,
unconsciously, she turned and looked at Warner with
the amused and slightly malicious smile of a woman
who detects in a man the characteristic obtuseness
from which her own and feminine instinct has rescued
her just in time to prevent mistakes.

Then, turning to Philippa, she said:

"Our family of *three* is a very small one, dear, but
I think it is going to be a happy one....  What was
that song that you and Peggy were trying when we
came in?"

"It is called 'Noblesse Oblige,' Madame.  It is a
very ancient song."

"It is as old as the world," said the Countess.
"Peggy, will you try the accompaniment?  And will
you sing it, Philippa?"

"If you wish it, Madame."

The Countess de Moidrey stepped aside and seated
herself; the grey eyes left her to seek and find their
magnet; and, having found it, smiled.

As for the magnet himself, he stood there deep in
perplexity and trouble, beginning slowly to realize
how profoundly his mind and affections had already
become involved in the fate of a very young girl, and
in the problems of life which must now begin to threaten
and confront her.

   |  "Namur, Liége—
   |  Le dur siége
   |  Noblesse oblige

.. vspace:: 1

sang Philippa—

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  "Namurois, Liégeois,
   |  La lois des Bois
   |    Exige
   |  Noblesse—noblesse oblige—"'
   |

The Countess de Moidrey rested her face on her
hand, looking curiously at the young girl from whose
lips the old phrase fell so naturally, so confidently, with
such effortless and inborn understanding—*noblesse—noblesse
oblige*.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIII

.. vspace:: 2

Philippa's trunk had gone to the Château des
Oiseaux, and the Inn of the Golden Peach knew
her no longer.

Warner, who usually adored the prospect of a month
all alone after his class had left for the season, found
to his surprise that he was experiencing a slight sense
of loneliness.

The inn, the garden, seemed to him uncommonly still;
and at first he thought he missed the gallinaceous
chatter of the Harem, then he was very sure that he
regretted Halkett acutely.

Ariadne, sitting in the sun by the deserted summer-house
in the garden, always greeted him with a plaintive
little mew which, somehow or other, sounded to him
pointedly reproachful.

The cat evidently missed Halkett, perhaps Philippa.
Warner remembered that he had been requested to be
polite and agreeable to Ariadne, and, whenever he
recollected these obligations, he dutifully hoisted the
animal to his shoulder and promenaded her.  For which,
no doubt, the cat was grateful, but as she was also
beginning to shed her coat in preparation for a
brand-new set of winter furs, Warner found the intimacy
with Ariadne slightly trying.

There were no other guests at the inn.  Now and
then during the next three or four days officers stopped
their automobiles for a few moments' refreshment, or
to replenish their gasoline tanks.  But early one
morning a big motor truck, driven by a little, red-legged,
boyish *pioupiou*, and guarded by three others,
equally youthful, took away the entire supply of
gasoline and ordered Madame Arlon to remove the sign
advertising it.

They drove away through the early autumn sunshine,
singing the "Adoro," not the one best known, but that
version attributed to the Scottish Queen, and they
looked and sang like three little choir boys masquerading
in the uniforms of their fathers.

Warner had been sketching in the meadow across
the road that day, feeling restless and unaccountably
depressed.  It was one of those still, hazy mornings in
early August, when the world seems too quiet and
the sky too perfect for inaction or repose.

He had pitched his easel near the river, perhaps
because it remained busy; and where, if any troops or
military trains passed along the quarry road, he could
see them.  Also, from there he could look down over
the road hedge and see the motor cycles whiz by and
military automobiles with a streak of crimson,
turquoise and silver uniforms in the tonneau.

But none came.  Two or three gendarmes, with white
and yellow trappings, passed toward Ausone at a
gallop while he sat there, but across the river nothing
stirred save a kestrel soaring.

According to the *Petit Journal d'Ausone* of the day
before, war had already burst over eastern Belgium
full blast and the famous forts so long celebrated as
impregnable were beginning to crumble away under an
avalanche of gigantic shells.

As he sat there under the calm sky, painting leisurely,
relighting his pipe at intervals, he tried to
realize that such things as bombardments and sieges
and battles were going on to the north of where he
was—not so very far north, either.  But he could not
seem to grasp it as an actual fact.  For the monstrous
and imbecile actuality of such a war seemed still to
remain outside his comprehension; his intelligence had
not yet accepted it—not encompassed and digested
the fact—and he could not get rid of the hopefully
haunting feeling that presently somebody or something
somewhere or other would stop all this amazing
insanity, and that the diplomats would begin again
where they had left off only a few days ago.

It was the illimitable proportions of the calamity—the
magnitude of the catastrophe—the cataclysmic
menace of it that still left his mind slightly stunned,
as it had paralyzed the minds of every civilized human
being, and suspended for a space the power of thought
in the world.

As yet, all these enormous, impossible threats of
governments and emperors seemed to be some gigantic,
fantastic, and grotesque hoax which the sovereigns
and chancelleries of Europe were playing in concert
to frighten a humdrum world out of its five dull
wits.

And yet, under the incredulity, and the mental
obscurity and inertia, deep within the dazed hearts of
men a measured and terrible pulse had already begun to
throb steadily, with an unchanging and dreadful
rhythm.  It was the clairvoyant prophecy of the
world's subconscious self stirring, thrilling to that red
future already breaking, and warning all mankind that
the day of wrath had dawned at last.

But to Warner the most unreal part of it all was
not the dusty *fantassins* in column, slouching forward
toward the north—not the clinking, jingling cuirassiers
on their big battle horses, not the dragoons riding
with rapt, exalted faces under forests of tall lances,
not the clanking artillery, the heavy military wagons
and motor trucks, nor the galloping gendarmes which
passed the inn every hour or two.

What had become suddenly unreal to him was the
green and sunlit serenity of the world itself—the breeze
ruffling the clover, poppies glowing deep in fields of
golden wheat and barley, the melody of the flowing
river, the quiet blue overhead, the tenderness of leaf
and blossom, and the blessed stillness of the world.

Relighting his pipe, he looked at the swallows
soaring and sailing high above the Récollette; noticed
butterflies hovering and flitting everywhere; heard the
golden splashing of the river, the sigh of leaves and
rushes.  The word "war" still remained a word to him,
but in the sunshine and the silence he began to divine
the immobility of menace—something unseen and evil
which was quietly waiting.

.. vspace:: 2

Ariadne had come across from the garden, ostensibly
to hunt meadow mice, really for company.

Sniffing and snooping around his color box, she got
one dainty whisker in the ultramarine, and had enough
of art.  So she went off, much annoyed, to sit by
herself in the grass and do some scrubbing.  After a
while the fixed persistency with which she stared across
the meadow attracted his attention and he, also, turned
and looked that way.

As he saw nothing in particular to stare at, he
presently resumed his sketching and his troubled thoughts.
The latter concerned the girl Philippa.  Not since he
had taken her to the Château had he seen her.  And
that was four days ago.

He didn't know exactly why he had not strolled over.
Possibly a vague idea that he had better not interfere
to distract the girl's attention from her first lessons
in the refinements of existence had kept him away from
her vicinity.

He didn't even know that he had missed her; he knew
only that for some occult reason or other he had felt
rather lonely lately.

He painted away steadily, pausing to relight his
pipe now and then, and all the while Ariadne, never
stirring, stared persistently across the landscape,
neglecting her uncleansed whisker.

Suddenly, with a little mew of recognition and
greeting, she trotted forward through the grass; and the
next moment two soft hands fell lightly upon Warner's
shoulders from behind.

"Philippa!" he exclaimed, enchanted.

"Oh, Jim!" she cried joyously, abandoning both
hands to him as he sprang to his feet and faced her.

She was so eager, so pretty in her unfeigned delight,
as though it had been four years instead of four days
since they had seen each other; and he seemed to feel
something of this, also, for he held her hands closely
and laughed without any apparent reason for mirth—unless
the sheer contentment of contact and possession
be a reason.

"Are you well and happy, Philippa?"

"Yes, I am happy enough up there.  But, oh, how
dreadfully I have missed you, Jim—may I call you
Jim?—I do to myself——"

"Of course!"

"I *think* of you that way—so it came very naturally
to my lips—if you really don't mind?  And besides,
I am so happy to be with you....  Peggy Brooks
and I were looking over maps in the library—you know,
the *Petit Journal* says that the Prussians are firing
enormous shells into Liége—and so Peggy and I were
down on our knees over the maps of Belgium.
Oh, dear!  You know, it isn't so very far from us here
if you take a ruler and measure by scale....  And it
seemed to sober us both—we had been laughing, I
don't remember exactly what about—but studying the
map made us both serious, and Peggy went upstairs
to talk it over with the Countess, and I felt that I
couldn't stand being away from you for a single
minute longer!"

"You dear child!"

"So I asked Peggy to ask Madame de Moidrey if
I might pay you a little visit, and she said, 'Of
course.'  So I came as fast as I could——"  She laughed and
made a sweeping gesture with both arms outflung:
"And here I am!  Are you contented?"

She stooped and stroked Ariadne, looking up to
smile at him.

"Careful of her whisker; there is blue paint on it,"
he warned Philippa; but the girl wiped off the
ultramarine with a green leaf and took the cat to her heart,
covering her with caresses and murmuring endearments.

"Jim, dear, what do *you* think?" she asked presently.

"About what?"

"About the war?"

He said gravely:

"I don't quite understand how those magnificent
Belgian forts are being knocked to pieces—if what the
paper says is true.  I supposed them to be among the
strongest fortifications in the world."

"Madame de Moidrey says they are.  Her husband,
the late Count Victor, was an artillery officer.  And
she told Peggy and me that the Count de Moidrey had
always said they were the very strongest forts in the
world."

"*Something's* gone wrong; that is evident," said
Warner.  "But not with *you*, Philippa," he added,
smiling at her.  "I never saw you looking as well;
and that's a tremendously fetching frock you're
wearing."

It was a white outing gown of serge, and the girl
wore white stockings and tennis shoes, and a soft white
hat—a boyish headgear which became her enchantingly.

"Peggy gave it to me," she said.  "It is very American,
isn't it?"

"It's adorable on *you*.  Do you like Peggy Brooks?"

"Yes."

"And Madame de Moidrey?"

"Yes, I do—rather."

"Not entirely?"

"Jim——"

"What?"

"Yes, I—yes, I do like her....  But I don't do
much to earn my wages.  And that troubles me."

"Your salary?"

Philippa laughed:

"Wages, salary—what does it matter what you call
them, when both merely mean pay for work performed....
I should like to do something for Madame de
Moidrey in return.  But she has many servants and
a maid and a housekeeper.  I thought I was to read
to her, write letters for her, amuse her.  But she
sometimes reads to me and she and Peggy are teaching me
to play tennis——"  Philippa held out one narrow
foot for his inspection.  "And yesterday she ordered
a horse for me, as well as for herself and her sister, and
I wore one of Peggy's riding habits—knee breeches and
boots, Jim; and they set me on a horse!  *That* is the
way I am earning my wages at the Château des
Oiseaux!"

"Why complain?" he asked, much amused.

"Because I am unable to return such favors——"

"Don't worry; whatever they do for you brings its
own recompense."

"How?"

"Has it never occurred to you that your society is
agreeable, interesting, amusing, and desirable?"

"No," she said, honestly surprised.

"Well, it is!  People like you.  You yourself amply
recompense anybody for anything done for you, by
accepting the attentions offered."

"Do *you* think of me in that way?"

He hadn't quite understood until then that he did
feel that way about her, but he felt it now so strongly
that it seemed as though he had always been of that
mind.

"I've always thought so," he said.  "There is never
a dull moment with you, Philippa.  No wonder people
seek you and like you and pet you!"

Philippa blushed and tried to smile, then for a
moment she buried her flushed face in Ariadne's fluffy
fur until her cheeks cooled.

"If," she said, "I had a home and an income, however
tiny, I should not feel at all embarrassed by courtesies
from others, because I should, in my turn, offer
the best I possessed.  But, Jim—a homeless girl—with
all that I have been—endured!—I don't know—but
I should feel more comfortable if I could be of
some service in return for all that these very kind
Americans offer me."

She placed Ariadne on the grass, turned and looked
down at the river.

"There is my punt," she said.  "Isn't it curious to
remember that you and I first became friends in that
boat?  It seems to have happened very long ago, when
I was a child....  You made me wash my face; do
you remember?"

"I do," he replied gayly.  "You looked like a schoolgirl
made up for the part of Jezebel."

She blushed and hung her head.  Presently her lowered
eyes were raised to him in a distressed, questioning
way, and he came over to her and put his hands
on her shoulders.

"I never thought ill of you, Philippa—never doubted
you were anything except what you really are."

She looked up into his eyes:

"I don't know what I really am.  But I am beginning
to understand that I can be whatever you desire.
Also, I am beginning to understand how generous you
have been to me in your thoughts.  Both you and
Mr. Halkett had every reason to think lightly of the
*caissière* of the Cabaret de Biribi, with her painted lips
and cheeks and her easy manners——"  She shrugged.
"And perhaps, but for the grace of God and you, I
should have become what I appeared to be....  Let
us sit in the punt.  Shall we?"

They went down to the river together, Ariadne
marching at their heels with tail erect, and the girl
stepped aboard and seated herself in the stern which,
afloat, swung in the limpid eddy among the tall, green
rushes.

When Warner also was seated, at her feet, she drew
from the pocket of her white serge jacket a letter,
and, leaning over him, opened and displayed it.

The letter was written in French on common writing
paper, in a perfectly legible but uneducated hand.

.. vspace:: 2

MADEMOISELLE [it began],

.. vspace:: 1

You are watched and your present whereabouts is known.
You are warned to keep your mouth shut.  Any treachery,
even any slight indiscretion on your part, will be fully
revenged by those you betray.

The wages of a traitor are death.  Be advised in time.
Return to your duty while there is yet time and your
present ingratitude will be forgiven.

Make up your mind at once.  There is no time to waste.
*What is to happen shall happen!  It is coming very fast.
It is almost upon us*.

The safety which you suppose that the present condition
of affairs guarantees you is but momentary.  Peril
threatens you; certain punishment awaits you.  Documents in
possession of those whom you threaten to betray are
sufficient to condemn you now.

And more than that: we hold over you the power of life
and death; and shall hold it, *no matter what happens in
Ausone*!

Either way we can destroy you.

Return to us, therefore; accept forgiveness while there
is yet time.  You know who has caused this to be written.
Therefore, enough!

Return and find security; remain to betray us and you
shall be shot!

.. vspace:: 2

When Warner finished reading this outrageous missive,
he looked up into Philippa's undisturbed face, and
she smiled.

"When did you receive this?" he demanded.

"It came in the noon mail yesterday."

"Of course it's from Wildresse."

"Of course," she said simply.  "What do you think
of it?"

"I think very little of it," he replied.  "Threatened
people are good insurance risks.  If he could have
harmed you, he'd not have troubled to write you about
his amiable designs on you....  It's a pity—a great
pity, Philippa—that we dare not call in the police."

"If I have written, innocently, the things he says
I have written and signed, it might go hard with me
if he were arrested," she said.

"I know it.  It can't be done—at any rate, it can't
be done yet.  If there were anywhere you could go—any
frontier that might be a barrier of safety for you!
But all Europe seems to be involved—all neutral
frontiers violated—even the Grand Duchy has become a
German thoroughfare....  Let me think it over,
Philippa.  I don't know how dangerous to you that
miserable rascal can become....  But Halkett was
right: as long as you are in France, it won't do to
denounce Wildresse."

"You understand, Jim, that I am not alarmed," she
said gently, watching his anxious and clouded features.
"I know that.  I think I have reason to bear testimony
concerning your courage——"

"I did not mean it in that way——"

"I understand, dear.  Those who amount to anything
never have to say so.  I know you are not afraid....
Shall I keep that letter for you?"

She handed it to him.  He pocketed it and sat for
a while in silence, his brooding eyes on the blue
distance.

Finally, with an effort, his face cleared, and he said
cheerfully:

"It is the strangeness and unreality of these last few
days which depresses everybody.  As a matter of fact,
the war has lent a certain almost dignified terror to
the attitude and the petty operations of a very vile
and squalid band of malefactors in a small, provincial
town.

"These fellows are nothing but cheap dealers in
blackmail; and the last thing they'd do would be to
invoke the law, of which they stand in logical and
perpetual fear.

"No, no!  All this hint of political and military
vengeance—all this innuendo concerning a squad of
execution, is utter rot.

"If they've dabbled in the bartering of military
information, they'll keep clear of anything resembling
military authority.  No; I'm not worried on that point....
But I think, if Madame de Moidrey cares to ask
me, that I should like to be a guest at the Château des
Oiseaux for the next few days."

"Jim!" she exclaimed, radiant.

"Do you want me?" he asked, pretending astonishment.

.. vspace:: 2

And so it happened that after luncheon Warner
locked up his room and studio in the pretty hostelry
of the Golden Peach, gave orders for his trunk to be
sent to the Château, and started across the fields
toward the wooded heights, from whence had come over
the telephone an amused voice inviting him to be the
guest of the Countess de Moidrey.

When he arrived, Madame de Moidrey was sewing
alone on the southern terrace, and she looked up
laughingly and extended her hand.

"So you're in the web at last," she said.  "I
predicted it, didn't I?"

"Nonsense, Ethra.  I came because Philippa has
received a threatening letter from that scoundrel,
Wildresse."

"I know.  The child has told me.  Is it worth
worrying over?"

"Not at all," said Warmer contemptuously.  "That
sort of thing is the last resort of a badly frightened
coward.  Only I thought, considering the general
uncertainty, that perhaps you and Peggy might not be
displeased to have a rather muscular man in the
house."

"As a matter of fact, Jim, I had thought of asking
you.  Really, I had.  Only—" she laughed—"I was
afraid you might think I was encouraging you in
something else——"

"See here, Ethra!  You don't honestly suppose that
there is anything sentimental in my relations with
Philippa, do you?"

"Isn't there?"

"No," he said impatiently.

Madame de Moidrey resumed her sewing, the smile
still edging her pleasant lips:

"She *is* very young yet, in many things; all the
enchanting candor and sweetness of a child are hers still,
together with a poise and quiet dignity almost
bewildering at moments....  Jim, your little, nameless
protégée is simply fascinating!"

He spoke quietly:

"I'm only too thankful you find her so."

"I do.  Philippa is adorable.  And nobody can make
me believe that there is not good blood there.  Why,
speaking merely of externals, every feature, every
contour, every delicate line of her body is labeled
'race.'  There is never any accident in such a result of
breeding.  In mind and body the child has bred true to
her race and stock—that is absurdly plain and
perfectly evident to anybody who looks at her, sees her
move, hears her voice, and follows the natural workings
of her mind."

"Yes," said Warner, "Halkett and I decided that she
had been born to fine linen and fine thoughts.
Who in the world can the child be, Ethra?"

Madame de Moidrey shook her head over her sewing:

"I've found myself wondering again and again what
the tragedy could have been.  The man, Wildresse,
may have lied to her.  If some day he could be forced
to tell what he knows——"

"I have thought of that....  I don't know, Ethra....
Sometimes it is better to leave a child in untroubled
ignorance.  What do you think?"

"Perhaps....  But, Jim, there is no peasant ancestry
in that child, I am sure, whatever else there may be."

"Just rascally aristocracy?"

The Countess de Moidrey laughed.  She had married
for love; she could afford to.

"I am Yankee enough," she said, "to be sensitive
to that subtle and indescribable something which
always characterizes the old French aristocracy.  One
is always aware of it; it is never absent; it clings
always as the perfume clings to an ancient cabinet
of sandalwood and ivory.

"And, Jim, it seems to me that it clings, faintly, to
the child Philippa....  It's an odd thing to say.
Perhaps if I had been born to the title, I might not have
detected it.  What is familiar from birth is rarely
noticed.  But my unspoiled, nervous, and Yankee nose
seems to detect it in this young girl....  And my
Yankee nose, being born republican, is a very, very
keen one, and makes exceedingly few mistakes."

"You intend, then, to keep her as a companion for
the present?"

"If she will stay.  I don't quite know whether she
wants to.  I don't entirely understand her.  She does
not seem unhappy; she is sweet, considerate, agreeable,
and perfectly willing to do anything asked of
her.  She is never exacting; she asks nothing even of
the servants.  It's her attitude toward them which
shows her quality.  They feel it—they all are aware
of it.  My maid adores her and is forever hanging
around to aid her in a hundred little offices, which
Philippa accepts because it gives pleasure to my maid,
and for that reason alone.

"I tell you, Jim, if anybody thinks Philippa complex,
it is a mistake.  Her heart and mind are virginal,
whatever her experience may have been; she is as
simple and unspoiled as the children of that tall young
King yonder, Albert of Belgium—God bless him!  And
that is the truth concerning Philippa—upon whom a
suspicious world is going to place no value whatever
because no rivets, ecclesiastical or legal, have
irrevocably fastened to her the name she bears in ignorance
of her own."

Peggy Brooks, a dark-haired, fresh-faced girl, came
out on the terrace, nodded a familiar greeting to
Warner, and looked around in search of Philippa.

Her sister said in a low voice:

"Peggy is quite mad about her.  They get along
wonderfully.  I wonder where the child is?  She
expected you."

"Ethra," said Peggy, "I've given her one of my new
afternoon gowns.  I *made* her take it, on a promise to
let her pay me out of her salary.  Mathilde is fussing
over her still, I suppose."  And to Warner: "I'm painting
a head of her.  She sits as still as a statue, but
it's hopeless, Jim; the girl's too exquisite to paint——"

"I mean to try it some day," said Warner.  "The
way to paint her, Peggy, is to try to treat her as the
great English masters of portraiture treated their
grand ladies—-with that thoroughbred loveliness and
grace—just a dash of enchanting blue sky behind her,
and the sun-gilded foliage of stately trees against it,
and her scarf blowing free——"  He laughed.  "Oh,
I know how it *ought* to be done.  We shall see what
we shall see, some day——"

He ceased and turned his head.  Philippa stepped
out upon the terrace—the living incarnation of his
own description.

Even Peggy caught her breath as the girl came
forward.

"You beautiful thing!" she exclaimed.  "You do
belong in a golden frame in some great English
castle!"

Philippa, perplexed but smiling, acknowledged
Madame de Moidrey's presence and Peggy's, then turned
to Warner with hand extended, as though she had
not taken a similar leave of him an hour or two
before.

"Everybody is so generous!  Do you admire my
new gown?  Peggy gave it to me.  Never have I
possessed such a ravishing gown.  That is why I am late;
I stood at my mirror and looked and looked——"

She turned swiftly to Peggy: "Dear, I am too happy
to know how to say so!  And if Madame de Moidrey
is contented with me——"

"You are too lovely for words, Philippa," said the
Countess.  "If Mr. Warner paints you that way, I
shall wish to have the picture for myself."

"Aha!" exclaimed Warner.  "A commission!"

"Certainly," said the Countess.  "You may begin
as soon as Philippa is ready."

"Very well," said he.  "If I paint the picture, you
promise to hang it in the Château as a memento of
Philippa, do you?"

"I do."

"Then there'll be no charge for this important major
operation.  Philippa, will you take ether tomorrow
morning?"

The girl laughed and nodded, looking up at him
from where she was seated beside the Countess,
examining the sewing.

"Could I not do this for you, Madame?" she said.

"But I like to sew, Philippa."

The girl smiled, then a slight sigh escaped her.  The
Countess looked up at her, and Philippa smiled again,
saying:

"There seems to be nothing within my power to do
for you, Madame."

"There *is* something," said Madame de Moidrey
under her breath.

"What, if you please?"

"I want you to like me, Philippa....  And if some
day you could learn to love me, that would be the rarest
gift that could be offered me."

The girl's grey eyes widened in utter surprise;
suddenly they sparkled with tears, and she bent her head
swiftly and touched the elder woman's hands with her own.

"Madame," she whispered, "you overwhelm me with
your kindness....  If only I could express my
gratitude——"

She checked herself as Maurice, the head gardener,
appeared, hat in hand, deep anxiety stamped on his
seamed and sunburnt features.

"Pardon, Madame la Comtesse—there is a great fire
somewhere in the north.  I thought Madame should be
told——"

"A fire?  What is it?  The forest, Maurice?"

"Oh, it is very far away, Madame.  Perhaps it is a
forest on fire....  But there is a sound, too.  One
may see and hear from the northern terrace when the
wind sets in."

"Is it as far away as Ausone?"

"Farther, Madame."

The Countess glanced at Warner, rose, retaining
Philippa's hand.

"Thank you, Maurice," she said over her shoulder,
and, passing her arm through Philippa's, she entered
the house, followed by Warner and Peggy.

"What do you suppose alarms old Maurice?" whispered
Peggy.

But Warner, vastly troubled, made no answer.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXIV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIV

.. vspace:: 2

Below the carved stone balustrade of the north
terrace acres and acres of tree tops—oak,
beech, birch, and fir—spread away on every side.
This was the Forêt des Oiseaux.

Beyond the dense green surface of the tree tops,
which was so compact that it resembled a wide
and gently rolling plateau, the country stretched away
toward Ausone.  Here and there some distant farmhouse
window sparkled in the sun; set amid banks of
velvet green the Récollette glittered like severed
fragments of a silver thread.

Bathed in a mauve haze the Ausone Fort stood out
on its conical, tree-clad hill; beyond it other hillocks
rose, lilac-tinted silhouettes against the horizon.

Turquoise, palest violet, tender green and gold, the
country lay revealed under the August sky, peaceful,
glimmering, silent.

And across this dainty harmony of color was smeared
a somber, discordant smudge, staining the delicate haze
of amethyst, defiling the pure sky—a wide, high area of
dirty smoke, leaning from the perpendicular toward
the east, spilling its dun-colored vapor downward over
the pale aquarelle of hill and river and valley.

"The Alcyon Forest is afire!" exclaimed the Countess
in a low voice.

"It is much farther away," said Warner.

A sudden breeze sprang up, blowing in their faces
over the swaying tree tops.

"Listen!" said Philippa, touching her lips with one
finger.

From an infinite distance the wind carried with it a
deadened thumping sound, now regular as the dulled
rolling of drums, now softly irregular, with intervals
of stillness, then again spasmodic, muffled, almost
inaudible.

"Are they threshing anywhere near us?" asked the
Countess of her sister.  "What is that pumping
sound?" She turned to Warner, who made no reply.

"Do you know what it is, Jim?" demanded Peggy
Brooks uneasily.

"I'm not absolutely sure....  I'll be back in a
moment——"  He turned and went swiftly into the
house.

Philippa, leaning on the balustrade beside the
Countess, said very quietly:

"I know what that sound is.  I have heard it
before from the outer boulevard in Ausone, when the
grand maneuvers were going on."

The Countess said:

"I was afraid it was that."

"Drums?" asked Peggy Brooks.

"Cannon," said Philippa.

Warner came back with his field glasses.

Studying the horizon, he spoke at intervals in his
pleasant, undisturbed voice:

"They have cleared the Ausone Fort; the flag, the
semaphore, the signal tower—all are gone; there is
nothing to be seen there except trees....  It looks
like any hill now; nothing is stirring on it....  This
glass brings the smoke much nearer, but it is impossible
to guess what is on fire....  I don't think it's
a forest....  I'm afraid it is a village."

He offered the glass to the others; each took a turn
and made out nothing new until Philippa, gazing above
the discoloring stain of smoke, spoke to Warner in a
low voice and handed him the glasses.

For a few moments he stood rigid, his field glasses
poised at an angle; then, still watching at the same
angle, he said:

"You are perfectly right, Philippa; two aëroplanes
are soaring between the smoke and the Ausone Fort."

One by one the others searched for the distant sky
craft and discovered them.

They were still at it when tea was served, and, by
that time, the deadened drumming sound had become
unmistakable, increasing in volume with every lightest
puff of wind, and, when the breeze died out, still
filling the ears with its steady thudding.

Also, the dirty smoke-smear had spread, polluting
the tender northern sky, and new centers of infection
had appeared here and there amid the green landscape—dark
spots of smoke which, at first, appeared insignificant
and motionless, which were bigger in ten
minutes, which in half an hour had become volumes.
Yet their actual growing process was not perceptible,
so gradually the looming spots assumed the threatening
proportions of gloom.

Warner, his teacup on his knees, bracketed the field
glasses on the aëroplanes once more, and was startled
at their nearness.

Almost at the same instant a dry crack, like the
breaking of a stick, sounded, coming from the direction
of the distant fort—another, another, others following
in quicker succession.  And, watching, he saw
below the aëroplanes a dotted line of tiny white spots,
growing in length for a while, then maintaining its
length as the rearward dots vanished and new dots of
cottony white were added to the other end.

Higher and higher rose the aëroplanes above the
white wake of exploding shells, bearing eastward now,
sheering widely, as a pair of soaring hawks sweep
swiftly into vaster circles as they mount into the
dazzling blue.

"The fort is using its sky-guns," remarked Warner.

They all took turns watching the fleecy clots of smoke
appear, linger, dissolve in mid-air.  Long after the
aëroplanes had disappeared in the sky, the high-angle
guns continued their distant, rattling fusillade.

"What do you think is happening out there?" asked
the Countess.  "You have seen war, Jim.  Have you
an idea what the smoke and cannonade mean?  Is a
German army coming?"

Warner said:

"They are shelling villages to the north of us—perhaps
trenches, too.  I don't know what troops we have
there.

"Probably their cavalry screen has come into contact
with ours, and I should say that we are retiring.
But you can't tell yet."

"It's the *invasion*, then," said the Countess calmly.

"It's a raid, anyway."

"A raid on Ausone?"

"Probably.  The railroad there is always important—much
more so than the Ausone Fort.  I'm afraid
that fort doesn't amount to very much as fortifications
are classed now."

The spectacle from the north terrace had become
very disquieting.  All the horizon was now obscured
by smoke, and its dirty shadow dulled the distance
and invaded the middle distance, hanging from west
to east like a sooty veil suspended across land and
sky.  There was, however, nothing else to see, not
a glimmer of flame, nothing stirring on the hill where,
unseen, the Ausone Fort crouched above the green
valley of the Récollette.  But the deadened mutter of the
cannonade continued unbroken along the horizon, never
ceasing now, not even when the light wind changed.

Peggy's curiosity was satisfied; she had taken jealous
possession of Philippa, with a side glance at Warner
out of brown eyes not entirely devoid of malice, and
the two were in the billiard room, which opened from
the northern terrace, for the purpose of Philippa's
education in the game of French billiards.

The Countess set her teacup aside and picked up
her sewing.

"I don't intend to be driven out of my home," she
remarked.

He lighted a cigarette and looked curiously into the
north.

"Whether it's to be the wretched story of 1870 again
or not," she went on, "I shall not be frightened away
from this house.

"This is my home.  I came here a bride; my dear
husband died under this roof; all I care for in the
world, all I hold most dear, most intimate, is here,
Jim.  I shall not go."

He said gravely:

"I hope the necessity may never arise, Ethra."

"It will not.  Are the Germans really barbarians?
What object could they have in injuring this old
house?  What good would it do them or their country
to disturb us here?  If they come, we can't defend
ourselves.  What is there for us to do except to submit?
But I shall not go away and leave this place to the
mercies of their filthy soldiery."

Warner said nothing.  There were many contingencies
overlooked by this determined lady—circumstances
which might mean ruin to the house—if, for instance,
a retreating army chose to defend the Château.  But
he remained silent, not caring to trouble her with the
possibilities of eventualities.

"I had rather you stayed, if you don't mind, Jim,"
she said, sewing away serenely.

"Certainly."

The steady thud of the cannonade had now assumed
a more substantial rumbling sound.

Now and then separate shocks were audible, as
though great pieces, occasionally, were discharged
singly, dominating the duller monotone of lesser
caliber.

He kept his eyes pretty constantly on the horizon
line of smoke, evidently expectant of some new
development, now and then fancying that it had become
visible, as the calm sky became suffused with the
delicate pastel hues of early evening, and the first bat
zigzagged among the potted orange trees on the terrace.

And presently, in the early dusk, it became visible—first
merely as a dull tint reddening the distant
smoke, then as a faint, ruddy line of light, shifting,
twinkling, sinking, flaring palely, then more redly as
the summer dusk deepened and possessed the silent
world around them.

From northwest to southeast ran the flicker of the
guns, with now and then a wider flare and a deeper
accent dominating the measured monotone.

Five fires were burning, also: two from hamlets or
nearer groups of buildings belonging to some big farm;
the other three conflagrations were farther distant,
and much greater, as though three considerable
villages and their environs were in flames.

Philippa and Peggy came to the long, open windows
from moment to moment, standing there, cue in hand,
to look out at the reddening sky.

It was still not too dusky to see fairly well, and
the lamps had not yet been lighted in the house,
excepting the luster over the billiard table, when a
footman appeared on the terrace, dignified, correct,
unruffled:

"The driveway and circle, Madame la Comtesse, are
full of cavalry.  Their officers are dismounting; the
troopers have gone into our stables and garage."

The Countess rose quietly, and Warner stood up
in silence.

"What cavalry is it?"

"Ours, Madame.  They have taken out the three
automobiles and all the horses."

"Thank you."  And, to Warner: "Would you mind
coming with me, Jim?"

They entered the billiard room and traversed the
house to the southern terrace.

Drive and circle were swarming with the pale blue
dolmans of hussars moving in and out of the fan-shaped
glare of electric torches, some mounted, their lances
held perpendicularly in the stirrup boots, others afoot,
leading up horses from the Château stables, pushing
the three automobiles along the garage drive, dragging
vehicles of every description by hand—hay wagons, farm
wagons, long unused and old-fashioned family carriages
with the De Moidrey crest on their panels.

Several officers in turquoise and silver, standing on
the terrace, surveyed the proceedings below, one of
them turning the brilliant light of his breast torch
upon one spot after another and scarcely raising his
voice as he directed operations.

There was very little noise, no confusion; everybody
seemed to know what was to be done.

As the Countess de Moidrey and Warner came out
upon the terrace, the officers heard them, turned,
saluted, and one of them, a slim, handsome youth most
beautifully molded into his uniform, came forward,
crimson cap in hand, bowing with a grace
indescribable.

"Madame de Moidrey," he said, "we very deeply
regret the military necessity which temporarily
deprives you of your cars and horses, but the Government
requires us to ask them of you and to offer you
a receipt——"

"The Government is welcome, Monsieur," she said
earnestly.  "If the Government will accept what I have
to offer as a gift, it will honor me sufficiently without
offering any receipt or promise of indemnification."

"Countess," said the youthful soldier, bowing, "it
is the answer any soldier of France might expect from
one who bears the name of De Moidrey.  Nevertheless,
Madame, I am required to leave in your possession a
receipt for what you so graciously permit me to
requisition....  Permit me, Madame——"  He drew from
his dispatch pouch the papers, already filled in, signed
and stamped, and presented them with a bow.

And, smilingly, Madame de Moidrey tore them
across, again and again, and dropped the fragments
upon the terrace.

"Monsieur," she said, "may I not offer you the
hospitality of the house—some little refreshment for you
and for your men?"

"Madame, we are overwhelmed, but our orders permit
us no time."

Warner said quietly:

"If you could spare a moment, Captain, there is
something I should like you to see from the north
terrace."  And to the Countess: "May I take him?  I
think he ought to see what we have seen."

Madame de Moidrey said:

"By all means, Jim."

And the two young men went swiftly through the
house and out on the north terrace.

"Ha!" exclaimed the officer, as the rumble of the
cannonade struck his ears, and he looked out on the dark
circle of the horizon, all sparkling and lighted up with
the ruddy flicker and flare of the guns.

"A raid?" asked Warner quietly.

"I don't know.  Villages are afire yonder.  Have
you seen anything that might be of importance to us,
Monsieur?"

"Two aëroplanes.  The Ausone fort fired at them
with sky-guns.  They went east."

"Biplanes?"

"Monoplanes, I think.  I am not sure."

"Square-tipped ailerons?  Could you see?"

"They were shaped exactly like kestrels."

"Ah!  Taubes!  Many thanks, Monsieur."  He
stared out across the darkness.  "Yes, it's warming up
out there.  Well, sir, I must go.  And thank you again
for your kindness——"  He fumbled in his dolman,
produced his cardcase.  "May I be permitted to
present my cards to Madame de Moidrey?  Thank
you—if you would be so amiable——"

They retraced their steps through the house,
encountering Peggy Brooks in the hallway, who received
a most ceremonious bow from the youthful hussar, and
who acknowledged it with an enchanting inclination
of her pretty head.

Within a few feet of the front terrace, the young
officer suddenly halted.

"Monsieur," he said, very red, "it would seem,
perhaps, more courteous for me to leave my cards for
all the ladies of the household.  Would it not—under
such unusual and unfortunate circumstances as those of
this evening?"

Warner looked at him gravely; he was very young,
very ceremonious, very much flushed.  Was it
possible that Peggy Brooks had bowled over this young
gentleman with her first smile?

"I think," said Warner, very seriously, "that it
might be considered obligatory for an officer who takes
away all the horses and motor cars to leave his card
for every lady in the family.  There are," he added,
"three."

.. vspace:: 2

Afterward, when the officer had taken his leave, and
his escort of hussars had trotted away with the horses,
wagons, and automobiles, Warner, much amused,
related to the Countess the incident of the cards; and
he distributed them at dinner, reading the name
engraved on his own with some curiosity.

"Well, Peggy," he said, "you did murderous work
with your smile this evening."

She answered calmly:

"I hope so.  He was exceedingly nice looking."

"Le Vicomte d'Aurès," nodded Warner, "Captain of
Cavalry!  Very polite, that youngster; very prolific
of visiting cards.  You should have seen him blush,
Peggy."

"I did.  I repeat that he is a nice boy, and I hope
he comes back and steals something else."

Philippa laughed; the Countess smiled indulgently
upon her younger sister, and gave the signal to rise.

"The family comes from the West, I think," she
remarked to Warner, as she took his arm.  "Goodness,
Jim, what a nuisance!—Not a horse in the stable, not
a car to move about in.  It looks to me as though we
were marooned here....  But I am very happy to
think that I could do even a little for our Government.
I wish I could do more."

"You may have plenty of chances, Ethra," he said.

They walked through to the north terrace and stood
for a while watching the conflagrations on the horizon.

The vast, slightly curved line of flickering points of
fire no longer twinkled and played through the
darkness, and the muttering of the cannonade had ceased.
Only the three incendiary foci reddened the sky, their
illuminated vapors billowing up and spreading away
for leagues to the eastward.

There was a mist this night, delicately veiling the
tops of the forest trees, and the perfume of lilies from
the gardens saturated the night air.

Usually, when foggy conditions prevailed over the
valley of the Récollette, the lights of Ausone were
visible as a pinkish tinge in the sky.  But this night
no such tint was apparent; no signal lamps sparkled
from the fort, not a light glimmered in the vast black
void beyond, where miles and miles of darkness
stretched away unlighted even by the wastes of
star-set firmament above.

Ethra de Moidrey shrugged her pretty shoulders and
turned back toward the billiard room, whither Peggy
Brooks had already repaired for practice.

Philippa, remaining beside Warner, stood watching
them through the lighted windows.

She was wearing her first evening gown—one of
Peggy's gifts—a dainty affair of palest blue; and
her full, smooth cheeks and throat accented the slim
immaturity of her arms and shoulders.

She looked up, smiled faintly, and moved nearer with
that unconscious instinct of youth for seeking
contact where confidence and trust is placed.  Her
slim fingers, touching his, nestled into his hand with
an eloquence unmistakable of innocent possession
satisfied.

"You *are* only a very little girl yet, aren't you,
Philippa?" he said, smiling, but touched by the youth
of her and her frail shoulder resting lightly against
his own.

"I know I am, Jim.  I seem to be growing younger
under the warm shelter of your kindness—under the
security of this roof and the quiet sense of protection
everywhere.

"It is as though I had been arrested in development
since I left school—as though youth and growth had
stopped and only my mind had continued growing
older and older and more tired during these last six
years—dull, bewildering, ignoble years—lonely,
endless years that dragged their days after them like a
chain, heavier, heavier——"

She pressed a little closer to his shoulder:

"I had *nobody*.  Do you understand?  I seem to
know right from wrong, but I don't know how I know
it.  Yet, I am old in some things—old and wearied
with a knowledge which still, however, remains personally
incomprehensible to me.  It's just a vast accumulation
of unhappy facts concerning life as it is lived
by many....  I always knew there were such people
as you—as these dear and gentle friends of yours; I
never saw them—never saw even any young girls after
I left school—only the women, young and old, who
came to the cabaret, or who came and went through
the Ausone streets, or who sat knitting and gossiping
under the trees on the quay."

She laid her cheek against his shoulder with a little
sigh.

"You are very wonderful to me," she murmured,
partly to herself.

The night air had become a little fresher: he thought
that she should have some sort of wrap, so they
entered the billiard room together, where Peggy,
awaiting her shot, slipped one arm around Philippa's waist,
detaining her to caress her and whisper nonsense.

"You beautiful child, I want you to stay with me
and not go star-gazing with that large and sunburnt
man.  You'll stay, won't you, darling?  And we'll go
to the library presently and find a pretty red and
gold book full of armorial designs and snobbish
information; and we'll search very patiently through
those expensively illuminated pages until we find a
worthy family called D'Aurès——"

"Oh, Peggy!" said Philippa.  "Would you really
take so much trouble?"

"Rather!" said Peggy coolly.  "I mean to write him
some day and find out how he is treating my pet
Minerva runabout which he had the audacity to
appropriate without thanking me."

Philippa laughed rather shyly, not entirely comprehending
the balance between badinage and sincerity in
Peggy's threat, but realizing that any freedom she
permitted herself was her prerogative.

Warner, lingering at the other door, caught Peggy's eye.

"You can't have her, Jim!" she said with emphasis,
and drew her closer.

So Warner went on to find a wrap for her, and
entered the music room.

The next moment he halted, rigid, astounded.

Peering through the windows into the room were
the dirty countenances of Asticot and Squelette, their
battered noses flattened white on the glass, their ratty
eyes fixed on him.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXV

.. vspace:: 2

That the precious pair believed Warner to be
paralyzed with terror was evident.

As long as he remained motionless they glared
at him, their faces and spread fingers flattened against
the windowpane.  Then, the next instant, he was after
them at one bound, jerking open the glass door, out
across the terrace where the two young ruffians,
evidently surprised and confused by his headlong behavior,
parted company, Squelette digging up gravel in his
headlong flight down the drive, Asticot darting across
the lawn where, beyond the stables, a hospitable tangle
of shrubbery seemed to promise easy escape.

But Asticot was awfully wrong; in the darkness he
rushed full speed into an elastic barrier of mesh wire
which supported the hedge of sweet peas separating
garage and stables; and as he rebounded, Warner
caught him and coolly began to beat him up.

The beating was deliberate, methodical, and
merciless; the blows fell with smart cracks upon the
features of Asticot, right, left, sometimes hoisting him
off his large, flat feet, sometimes driving him dizzily
earthward; but another blow and a savage jerk always
brought him up to be swung on again, battered,
knocked flying, and finally smashed into merciful
insensibility.

Asticot was in a dreadful mess as he lay there on
the grass.  Vignier, the chauffeur, and a stable lad,
Henri, had appeared with a lantern at the *débâcle* of
Monsieur Asticot.

Warner, breathing rapidly, waited a few moments
to recover his breath.

"Take him into the harness room and lay him on
a blanket," he managed to say.  "Keep your eyes on
him, Vignier, until I return.  There's another of them,
but I'm afraid he's cleared out."

As a matter of fact, Squelette had cleared out.  He
must have scaled the wall somewhere, for the gates
were locked, and the old lodge keeper was evidently
asleep.

The lad, Henri, came up, armed with a stable fork,
and followed by the head gardener, Maurice, shouldering
a fowling piece and marshaling in his wake half
a dozen others—grooms, under-gardeners, and a lad or
two employed about the place.

They beat the shrubbery for an hour; then Warner
left them to explore the wooded strip along the base of
the wall with their flashlights and lanterns, and went
back to the stable where lay Asticot, badly in need
of bandages and protracted repose.

Vignier met Warner at the stable door.

"Has he come to?" inquired the latter, who had
begun to feel a little worried.

"Monsieur Warner, that *voyou* is a most frightful
wreck.  Out of neither eye is he able to perceive me;
what he wears upon his shoulders does not, to me,
resemble a head at all."

"He *is* conscious, then?"

"Entirely.  He lies upon his blanket and inquires
for you at intervals."

"What?"

"It is true.  'Oh, my mother!' he whimpers.  'What
a horrible beating I have had from that American!
Oh, my sister, I am battered into a *boudin*!  Ou est-il,
donc, ce Monsieur sans remords?  I have need of
conversing with him.  I wish to behold him who has
brought me to this pitiable ditch of misery!  I do
not desire another beating!  It is I, Asticot, who
informs you!'  And that, Monsieur Warner, is what this
*voyou affreux* continues to repeat in the harness room
where I have locked him in.  Would Monsieur care to
inspect the swine?"

Warner nodded and entered the stable; Vignier
fitted a key to the harness room and opened the door.

A lantern burned there brightly.  Under it squatted
Asticot on his blanket.  Neither eye was entirely
closed, for there was a ratty glitter under the puffed
lids, and he lost no time in whining out that he did
not desire to be beaten any more by "that gentleman
there"—pointing a shaking finger straight at
Warner.

"Vignier," said Warner, "bring me a chair, close
the door, and then go and find something to bandage
this rascal.  Bring a tub and hot water, also!"

And when the chair was fetched and the door closed,
Warner seated himself and surveyed the battered
ruffian with grim satisfaction.

"You murderous young sewer rat," he said calmly,
"out with the whole business, now!  Do you hear?
I meant to catch one of you and find out for myself
what you're up to.  Now, tell me, and tell me quick,
and don't lie, or I'll start in on you again——"

He half rose from his chair, and Asticot shrieked.

"What were you doing here?" snapped out Warner.

"M-m'sieu'—it was but a peaceful reconnoissance
in search of—of information——" stuttered Asticot in
terror.

"What information?—You rat!"

"M-m-m'sieu'—I swear to you on the cross of my
mother——"

"Stop that!  Go on!  Go on faster!  What information?"

"T-t-to f-find out if *l-la fille*, Philippa, had taken
refuge with M-madame la Comtesse——"

"Who wants that information?"

"I s-swear to you——"

"Quick!  *Who* wants it!"

"Monsieur Wildresse——"

"Why?"

"*Je n'en sais rien*——"

"You lying Apache!  *Why*?"

"M'sieu', he pays us, the Squelette and me, to do
his jobs for him, but he has never made confidants of
us.  I swear it.  I don't know why he desires to seize
the girl, Philippa!"

"He *does* mean to seize her, then?"

"Alas——"

"*Does* he?"

Asticot's entire body jerked from sheer fright.

"Yes—yes, he does!  God knows it is not in me
to lie to M'sieu'.  God knows I do not ever desire
another beating such as M'sieu' has been pleased
to bestow upon me.  I affirm it—I, Asticot—that I
am the devoted servant of M'sieu' and will most
thankfully betray anybody to him——"

"Be quiet!"

"M'sieu' does not believe me!  Yet, I speak only
truth.  I will diligently serve M'sieu' if he
permits——"

"Serve *me*?  Why?"

"Mon Dieu, M'sieu', have I not been most horribly
beaten by M'sieu'?  I, Asticot, who am not
unacquainted with the *Boxe* and the *Savate*—I have been
rendered insensible!  With weapons?  No!  *Without*
weapons!  Yes, with the empty hands of M'sieu'.  Why
should I not admire?  Why should I not experience
gratitude that I am alive?  Am I an imbecile to court
further destruction?  *Non, alors*; I am not crazy.
God forbid I should ever again experience the hand
of M'sieu' upon my coat collar!  And if——"

"You listen to *me*!" interrupted Warner.  "Vermin
of your sort that Wildresse hires for a few francs stand
no chance when military law is proclaimed.  Either side
would push you against a wall on sight.  Do you
understand?"

"Mon Dieu, M'sieu'——"

"There are just two safe places for you: Biribi or
prison.  Which do you prefer?"

"I?  Oh, my God!  I have served in the Battalion de
Biribi!  Not *that*, M'sieu'——"

"All right; La Nouvelle——"

Asticot emitted a muffled shriek, huddled his ragged
knees within his arms, and sat rocking and whimpering
and blubbering with fright under the lantern
until an impatient gesture from Warner startled him
dumb.

"Like all your kind, you don't like to be hurt, do
you?" inquired Warner, disgusted.  "Yet, for twenty
francs—for ten—yes, for *five*—you could be hired to
do murder; couldn't you?"

"I—I would b-be happy to do it for nothing to oblige
M'sieu'——"

"I haven't a doubt of it.  The only thing you
understand is fear....  Where is Wildresse?"

"M'sieu' doubtless knows."

"Never mind what I know.  Answer!"

"Le vieux——"

"*Who?*"

"Le Père Wildresse—he has taken to the woods——"

"Where?"

"Le forêt d'Ausone."

"Why?"

"It is because of the girl Philippa.  It is evident to
Squelette and to me that he fears her.  Why?  I tell
you frankly I do not know.  If I knew——"

"Go on!"

Asticot turned his battered visage toward Warner.
A leer stretched his swollen mouth.

"If we knew what he is afraid of, Squelette and I,
we would make him sing!" he said coolly.

"Blackmail him?"

"Naturally."

"I understand.  And if you ever had a chance to
get behind my back with a thoroughly trustworthy
knife—eh, Asticot?"

"No," said the ruffian naïvely, "I should be afraid
to do that."  He squinted silently at Warner out of
his puffy eyes for a few moments, then, shaking his
head: "No," he repeated; "never again.  I should
make of the job only a bungle; I should be too
horribly afraid."

Warner got up from his chair.

"Tomorrow," he said, "I shall go with you to the
Forest of Ausone and you shall find the Père Wildresse
for me and I shall have a little chat with him."

"Do you mean to slay him, M'sieu'?  It would be
safer, I think.  I could do it for you, if you wish, when
his back is turned.  When one is annoyed by anybody,
it saves much trouble to knock him on the head at once.
If I could once get him down," he added cheerfully,
"I would take him by both ears and beat his head on
the ground until his coco cracked."

"Really?"

"Certainly.  Supposition that an individual bores
M'sieu'.  What to do?  M'sieu' reflects; M'sieu' rubs
his head in perplexity—crac!  There is his devoted
friend, Asticot!  Why had you not before thought of
your humble friend and grateful?  Asticot!  To be
sure!  A word to him and the job is done, discreetly,
without any *tapage*.  And M'sieu', contented, I trust,
with his honest and devoted Asticot, may remember
in his bounty that times are hard and that one
must eat and drink—yes, even poor Asticot among the
rest."

"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 coördinated, 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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXVI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVI

.. vspace:: 2

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 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.

"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 Saïs 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."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXVII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVII

.. vspace:: 2

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 *maréchal 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, képis 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 Château
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 Saïs.

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 Père Wildresse," replied Asticot,
naïvely.

"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 Saïs and the valley of the
Récollette.

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 Récollette 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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXVIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVIII

.. vspace:: 2

Philippa, curled up in the punt, had fashioned
for herself a chaplet of river lilies.  The white
blossoms wreathing the black velvet *bonnet à
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 Récollette, 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 Saïs that morning had not
come from the scattered hamlets and cottages along
the Récollette.  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
Café 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 là!  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 fête
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 Café 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 à 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 Saïs 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 Château at Saïs," 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 Saïs."

"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 *gérant*, 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, François.  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.  Liége, 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, François?"

"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 *gérant* bowed himself
out and sent a porter to the lumber room to collect
and cord up Warner's canvases.

While Philippa poured their tea, the cups began to
rattle in the saucers, and the windows shivered and
trembled in the increasing thunder.  Twice his cup
slopped over; and he was just lifting it to his lips
when suddenly the very floor seemed to jump under
them and a tremendous shock rocked the room.

"A big gun in the fort," said Warner, coolly forcing
a smile.  "I think, Philippa, as soon as you have
finished——"

A terrific salvo cut him short.  Somewhere he could
hear a crashing avalanche of broken glass, prolonged
into a tinkling cascade; then came a second's silence,
then another splitting roar from the end of the street.

The waiter came in hurriedly, very pale.

"An aëroplane, Monsieur!  They are firing at it
from the boulevard——"

His words were obliterated in the rush and clatter
of horses outside.

Dragoons were galloping up the stony rue d'Auros,
squadron on squadron, and behind them rattled three
high-angle guns harnessed to teams driven by dragoons.

"Attention there!" shouted an officer, reining in and
halting a peloton of horsemen.  "Fire at will from your
saddles!"

Warner sprang to the window; the street and the
market square was full of halted cavalry firing skyward.
They had several high-angle guns there too; the
ear-splitting detonations became continuous; and all
the time the solid earth was shaking under terrible
detonations from the fort's cupolas, where the big
cannon were concealed.

From everywhere came the treble clink and tinkle
of broken glass; people in the hotel were running to the
windows and running away from them; the building
itself seemed to sway slightly; dust hung in the air,
greying everything.

Warner drew Philippa to him and said calmly, but
close to her ear:

"The thing to do is to get out of this at the first
opportunity.  I had no idea that anything would
happen as near——"

His voice was blotted out in a loud report, shouts,
a woman screaming, the rumble and tumbling roar of
bricks.  Another shattering report almost deafened
him; the air was filled with whizzing, whining noises;
the entire front of a shop diagonally across the street
caved in with a crystalline crash of glass, and the
cornice above it lurched outward, swayed, crumpled,
and descended in a pouring avalanche of bricks and
mortar.

Somebody in the hotel lobby shouted:

"An aëroplane is directly over us.  They are dropping
bombs!"

"Go to the cellar!" cried another.

An officer of gendarmerie came in, followed by a
trooper.

"Stay where you are!" he said.  "It's safer."

Another explosion sounded, but farther away this
time.

"Their Taube is steering toward the fort," continued
the same quiet-voiced officer who had spoken.
"Don't go out into the streets!"

The uproar in the square had become terrific;
high-angle guns poured streams of fire into the sky;
dragoons sitting their restless horses fired upward from
their saddles; an engine escorted by brass-helmeted
pompiers arrived and a stream of water was turned
on the debris of the shop across the street, where
already pale flames flickered and played over the dusty
ruins.

"Somebody has been killed," whispered Philippa in
Warner's ear.

He nodded, watching the Red Cross bearers as they
hastened up with their stretchers, where the firemen
were uncovering something from beneath the heap of
smoking debris.

A staff officer, attended by a hussar lancer, and
followed by two mounted gendarmes, rode into the street
just as the dragoons, forming to whistle signal in
column of fours, rode out of the street at a gallop.

There came another clatter of hoofs; an open carriage
escorted by six *gendarmes-à-cheval* rolled through
the rue d'Auros.  In it was a white-haired gentleman
wearing a top hat and a tri-colored sash.

"The mayor," nodded Warner, as carriage and
escort passed rapidly in the direction of the Hôtel de
Ville.

The sky-guns had ceased firing, now; three of them
were limbered up and dragged away toward the
Boulevard d'Athos by dragoons.  More Red Cross brassards
appeared in the street, more stretchers.  Two
double-decked motor ambulances drew up; others, following,
continued on toward the Place and the railroad station.
Then three grey military automobiles full of officers
came whizzing through the rue d'Auros with terrific
blasts of warning; and sped on, succeeded by others
filled with infantry soldiers, until a steady stream of
motor cars of every description was rushing past the
windows, omnibus motors, trucks, hotel busses,
furniture vans, private cars, of every make and varying
capacities, all loaded with red-capped *fantassins* and
bristling with rifles.

Warner opened the window and leaned far out, one
arm around Philippa.

Eastward, on the Plaza Sainte Cassilda, masses of
lancer cavalry were defiling at a trot, dragoons,
hussars, and *chasseurs-à-cheval*, and the rue d'Auros was
filled with onrushing motor cars as far as he could see.
Westward, parallel with the stream of automobiles,
field artillery was crossing the Place d'Ausone, battery
after battery, the drivers whipping and spurring in
their saddles, the horses breaking from trot to gallop.

"Something unexpectedly serious is happening,"
said Warner, trying to make his voice audible in the
din from the fort.  "Look into those alleys and lanes
and cross streets!  Do you see the people hurrying
out of their houses?  I must have been crazy to bring
you here!"

"I can't hear you, Jim——"  Her lips formed the
words; he pointed across the street into the alleyways
and mews; she nodded comprehension.

"Until these automobiles pass we can't cross—can't
get across!"  He found himself almost shouting; and
he emphasized his meaning with pantomime and
gesticulation.

She nodded, undisturbed.  Now and then, when
soldiers in automobiles looked up at them, she tossed
white flowers from her bouquet into the tonneau and
nodded a gay response to the quick salutes.  One lily
remained; she drew it through the laces that held her
scarlet and black bodice, then, resting her hand on
Warner's shoulder, looked gravely down at the
rushing column underneath.

The tremendous concussions from the fort had
loosened plaster and broken window glass everywhere
in the hotel; a smarting mist drifted through the open
window; the room behind them was obscured as by a
fog, and every shock from the guns added to the
thickening dust veil.

The *gérant*, François, ghastly pale but polite, came
presently to inform Warner by signs that a chimney
had fallen in on the lumber room and that at present
it was not possible for the porter to enter and find
the canvases stored there.

Warner understood, catching a word or two here and
there, and shrugged his indifference to what might
become of his sketches.

"All I want," he shouted into the *gérant's* ear, "is to
get this young lady out of Ausone!"

François nodded, pointed toward the cross streets
which were now swarming with people preparing for
flight.  There came a sudden lull in the cannonade,
and almost at the same time the last motor filled with
soldiers sped through the street below.

Instantly the street, now occupied only by firemen
and Red Cross soldiers, was filled with citizens.  Groups
formed, surged hither and thither, mingled with other
groups and became a swaying crowd.  Already
hand-carts and wheelbarrows appeared, piled with bedding
and household furniture; the open carriage of the
mayor repassed, was halted, and the aged magistrate
stood up and addressed the people; but Warner could
not make out what he was saying, and in a moment or
two the carriage continued toward the Boulevard
d'Athos, escorted by gendarmes.

"It's plain enough that the Germans are pretty
close," said Warner carelessly.  "If you're ready,
Philippa, I think we'd better get back to Saïs."

"And your beautiful pictures!  Oh, Jim, I can't
bear to have them left here——"

"Which do you imagine I consider the more valuable,
Philippa, you or those daubs of mine?  Come, dear;
let's clear out if we can before that fort begins to
converse again with Germans."

He paid his reckoning at the desk, where *patron*,
*gerant*, *caissière*, and staff had gathered in calm
consultation concerning eventualities.  Nobody seemed
excited; everybody was polite, even smiling; servants
were already busy with dusters, brooms, and pans; the
porter carried down luggage for departing guests.

"Monsieur Warner, are you leaving us?" inquired
François smilingly.  "Perhaps it is better; they say
that the Germans are now in range of the fort.  Saïs
is likely to be more peaceful than Ausone tonight.  If
the Bosches don't bombard us, I think your pictures
will be quite safe with us."

He bowed them to the door; Philippa, clinging to
Warner's arm, went out into the stony street, which
was now crowded with hurrying people, all preparing
for flight.

As they set foot on the pavement, a frightful
detonation shook the town, another, another; and on the
heels of the thunderous shock the first German shell
fell in Ausone, plunged through the roof and exploded
in the transept of the Church of Sainte Cassilda,
blowing the altar and choir stalls to dust and splinters.

Before Philippa and Warner could make their way
to the river, three more shells came plunging into the
town, one exploding with a deafening din in the empty
market, another stripping a shop open from roof to
basement and literally disemboweling it, and a third
blowing up the eastern end of the rue d'Auros, where
its whistling fragments tore right and left through
a huddled group of women and children.

Then, as they ran toward the quay, the soldiers on
guard there came hastening toward them, warning them
back.  For a few moments the Place d'Ausone streamed
with terrified people in confused and purposeless flight,
forced back from the river by line soldiers who kept
shouting something which Warner could not understand.

But in another moment he understood, for the old
stone bridge across the Récollette split in two, vomiting
great masses of stone into the air, and the earth rocked
with the roar of dynamite.

Half stunned, balked, hesitating, Warner stood in
the market place with his arm around Philippa, looking
about him for a chance; while shell after shell fell
into the town, and the racket of their detonations
resounded from the railroad station to the boulevard.

"The river," he said; "it's the best way out of this,
I think!"

She nodded, clasped his arm, and they started once
more toward the quay.

Below the parapet their punt, still tied fast, lay
tossing and rocking on the agitated river.  Down the
stone stairs they ran; Philippa sprang on board, and
the next moment Warner cast off and drove the punt
swiftly out into the current of midstream.

Then, directly ahead of them, parallel to the Impasse
d'Alcyon, a shell fell with the whistling screech
of a steamer's siren; there came a deadened roar; a
geyser of water and gravel rose in mid-river, hurling
rocks, planks from the landing, and splintered
rowboats in every direction.

Great limbs from the willow trees hurtled earthward,
a muddy maelstrom of foam whirled their punt, caught
it on a comb of seething water, flung it from wave to
wave.

Warner, beaten from his balance, had fallen to his
knees.  As the plunging punt swept downstream, he
continued to use his pole mechanically.  Around them
debris still rained into the discolored river, branches,
fragments of sod; the surface of the water was covered
with floating boards, sticks, green leaves, uprooted
reeds and rushes; a mangled and bloody swan floated
near, its snowy neck and head under water.

Philippa crouched on the bottom of the punt, deadly
pale, her hands over her ears, her grey eyes riveted on
Warner.

When his voice was under control, he said:

"Are you all right, dear?"

She read his lips, nodded, tried to smile, fell to
trembling with both hands still convulsively crushed
over her ears.

Current and pole had already swept the punt out
past the *banlieu*, past the suburban cottages, past the
farms and the cattle and the clotheslines where the
wash hung drying.

Behind them lay the town, amid a hell of exploding
shells; the hills and woods reëchoed the infernal crash;
and, high overhead, above the dreadful diapason of
the guns, rose the crazy treble hooting of incoming
projectiles, dominating the awful roar on earth with a
yelling bedlam in the sky.

Again and again he looked aloft, fearfully attempting
to trace and trail and forestall some whistling
screech growing louder and louder and nearer and
nearer, until the shattering crash of the explosion in
the town behind them relaxed the nerve-breaking
tension.

Farther out in the green countryside he no longer
looked up and back.  Philippa still lay huddled at his
feet, looking up out of grey eyes that quivered and
winced sometimes, but always opened again, steady and
clear with faith.

On the Ausone road fugitives from every farm and
hamlet were afoot again, but he could not see them very
distinctly through the dust that hung there.  Also
clouds now obscured the declining sun; the world had
turned grey around them; and the Récollette flowed
away ahead with scarcely a glimmer on its tarnished
flood, save where a dull and leaden sparkle came and
went along the water weeds inshore.

It was as though the subtle poison of war itself had
polluted material things, killing out brightness and
health and life, staining sky and water and earth with
its hell-distilled essence.

Then a more concretely sinister omen took shape,
floating under the trees in a deep, still cove—a
dead cavalry horse, saddled and bridled, stranded
there, barely awash; and a hooded crow already
walking busily about over the level gravel of the
shoal.

As they neared Saïs, the quarry road across the river
became visible.  Dust eddied and drifted there, and he
could distinguish the slanted lances of cavalry in rapid
motion and catch the muffled roar of hoofs.

They were galloping north, a dusty, interminable
column enveloped in an endless grey cloud of their own
making in the thickening evening mist already hanging
palely over land and water.

There was scarcely a tint of color left in the east,
and that vague hue died out under clotted clouds as
he looked.

And after a while he was aware of a vague rumor
in the air, which seemed to come from the east—a vibration,
low, indefinite, almost inaudible, yet always there
to challenge his attention.

The Vosges lay beyond; and the Barrier Forts.

Duller and duller grew the twilight.  He drove the
punt forward into dusky reaches shrouded in mist,
where not a ripple glimmered, and the trees and river
reeds stood motionless in the fog.

There were no stars, no lights ashore.  On his left
he could hear the unbroken trample of cavalry riding
north; far beyond, the air was heavily unsteady with
the dull rumor beyond the hills; behind him the shriller
tumult had died away and the deadened booming of
the guns sounded like the heavy thunder of surf on sand.

Philippa had risen to a sitting position, and now
she was lying back comfortably extended among the
cushions.

They exchanged a few words; her voice was calm,
cheerful, untroubled.  She offered to take the punt
pole; said that at first she had felt more bewildered
and dazed than frightened; explained that real fear
had first possessed her when the dead and bloody swan
floated past, and that then she had been horribly afraid
of the sky noises—the shrieking, hooting, whistling
approach of the unseen.

He had been under fire in the Balkans; Lule Bourgas
had blunted for him the keener edge of terror.  And
now, still thoroughly stirred, only the excitement of
the past hour remained and stimulated him.

"It's war all around us now," he said, driving his
punting pole steadily and straining his keen eyes into
the shadows beyond.  "There are stirring days ahead
for France in this region, I fear; the Barrier Forts
are far away and there is nothing in the north to
hold the deluge breaking over Luxembourg into Belgium.

"A great war is beginning, Philippa; the greatest
that the earth has ever faced....  I never supposed
that I should live to see such a war—the greatest of
all wars—the last *great* war, I think.

"If I were anything except a useless painter, I'd go
into it....  I don't know what good I'd be to
anybody.  But if anybody wants me——"

"We both can offer ourselves," said Philippa.

"Dear child!  I'd like to catch *you* wandering into
this sort of——"

"I shall volunteer if you do!"

"You shall *not*!  You'll go to Paris with Madame
de Moidrey—that's what you'll do!"

"Jim, that is absurd.  If I'm wanted I shall volunteer
for hospital service, anyway.  And if you offer
yourself I shall wait until I find out where you are to be
sent, and then I shall beg them to take me at the
nearest field ambulance."

"No good, Philippa.  They do that sort of thing in
romances, but in real life a course of hospital training
is required of volunteers."

"I can scrub floors and sew and cook," she said
serenely.  "Do they not need such people?"

"There's no use discussing it," he said.  "Only
trained women will be wanted—tolerated; and I suppose
only trained men.  The amateur nurse and warrior
were utterly and definitely discredited in South Africa.
There'll be no more of that.  There's no room for us,
Philippa; the firing line would reject me with derision,
and the base hospital would politely bow you out."  He
laughed rather mirthlessly.  "There remains for us,"
he said, "the admirable, but somewhat monotonous
thinking-rôles of respectable citizens—items in the
world-wide chorus which marches harmlessly hither and
thither during the impending drama, and forms
pleasing backgrounds for the principals when they take
their curtain calls."

She felt the undertone of slight bitterness in his
voice; understood it, perhaps, for, when the punt was
turned and driven gently ashore among the foggy
rushes, she retained the supporting arm he offered,
clung to it almost caressingly.

"I know you," she murmured, as they mounted
the grassy bank together; "you have no need to
tell me what you are—dearest, noblest, best among
men."

He answered almost impatiently:

"I don't want you to think that of me!  You must
not believe it, Philippa.  Keep your head clear, and
your judgment independent of that warm, sweet heart
of yours.  I'm a most ordinary sort of man, little
distinguished, not in any way remarkable——"

"Don't!" she said.  "You only hurt me, not yourself.
Of what use is it saying such things to a girl
when the whole world would be a solitary place if you
were not in it—if your living mind did not make the
earth a real and living place to me!

"I tell you that, to me, life itself—the reality of
the living world—depends on you.  If you die, all dies.
Without you there is nothing—absolutely nothing!—Not
even myself!"

Calm, passionless, clear, her voice serenely
pronounced and emphasized her childish creed.  And,
impatient, restless, disturbed at first, yet in this young
girl's exaggerated and obstinate devotion he found
no reason for mirth, no occasion for the suppressed
amusement of experience.

He said:

"I can try to be what you think me, Philippa.
Yours is a very tender heart, and noble.  Perhaps your
heart may gradually lend me a little of its own quality,
so that the glamour with which you invest me shall
not be all unreal."

There was a short silence, then Philippa laughed.
It was a sweet, happy, confused little laugh.  She
made an effort to explain it.

"The greatest thing in the world," she said—"the
*only* thing!"

"What, Philippa?"

"Our friendship."

It was still early evening as they entered the house
together and traversed the hall to the north terrace.

The Countess de Moidrey, a book on her lap, was
seated by a lighted lamp in the billiard room, gazing
out of the open windows, through which the thunder
of the cannonade, wave after wave, came rolling in
from the north.

"Madame—" began the girl timidly.

"Philippa!" she exclaimed, rising.

The girl came forward shyly, the unuttered words
of explanation still parting her lips; and the Countess
de Moidrey drew her into her arms.

"My darling," she whispered unsteadily, "my darling
child!"

Suddenly Philippa's eyes filled and her lips quivered;
she turned her face away, stood silent for a moment,
then slowly she laid her cheek on the elder woman's
breast, and a faint sigh escaped her.

Madame de Moidrey looked at Warner over the
chestnut head in its velvet bonnet, which lay close and
warm against her breast.

"Jim," she said, "they told me where you had taken
this child.  Can you imagine what my state of mind
has been since that horrible uproar began over there
in Ausone?"

"I must have been a lunatic to take her," he admitted;
but Philippa's protesting voice interrupted,
unruffled, childishly sweet.

"The fault was mine, Madame.  I was very willful; I
made him take me.  I'll try not to be willful any
more——"

"Darling!  He ought to have known better.  Do you
understand how far you have crept into all our hearts?
It was as though a child of my own were out there
among the cannon——"  She bent and kissed the girl's
flushed cheek.  "I'm not inclined to forgive Mr. Warner,
but I shall if you want me to.  Now, run up stairs,
darling, and speak to Peggy.  She's still sitting at her
bedroom window, I fancy, watching those dreadful
flashes out there, and perfectly miserable over
you——"

"Oh!" cried Philippa, lifting her head.  "You all
are so sweet to me—so dear!  I shall hasten
immediately——"  She stooped swiftly and touched her
lips to the hands that held and caressed her, then
turned and mounted the stairs with flying feet.

Warner gazed rather blankly at Madame de Moidrey.

"I must have been crazy to risk taking her.  But,
Ethra, I hadn't any reason to suppose there was any
danger."

"Were you in Ausone when the fort began firing?
Didn't you know enough to come home?"

"Yes; I didn't realize it was the Fort d'Ausone.  We
were at tea in the Boule d'Argent when the Taube
appeared.  Then everything was in a mess, Ethra.  I
know a number of people have been killed.  We saw a
shop blown up across the street.  After that the
cupola guns on the fort opened and the town shook;
and before we could cross the rue d'Auros to find our
punt, where we had left it tied under the river wall,
the big German shells began to fall all over the town.
It was certainly a rotten deal——"

"Jim, I am furious at you for taking that child into
such a place.  I wish you to understand now, from
this moment, that I love her dearly.  She is adorable;
and she's mine.  You can't take her about with you
without ceremony, anywhere and everywhere.  Anyway,
it's sheer madness to go roaming around the
country in such times as these.  Hereafter, you will
please ask my permission and obtain my sanction when
you are contemplating any further harebrained
performances."

Warner took his rebuke very humbly, kissed the
pretty hand that, figuratively, had chastised him, and
went away to dress, considerably subdued.

"By the way," he asked, when halfway up the stairs,
"how is that man, Reginald Gray?"

"I think he is better, Jim.  Sister Eila is with him.
Poor child, she has been superintending the placing
of the cot beds which have arrived, and she is really
very tired.  If you are going to stop in and speak to
Mr. Gray, please say to Sister Eila that I shall relieve
her in a few moments."

He met Peggy with Philippa in the upper hall.

"You brute!" remarked Peggy, turning up her nose;
and Philippa laughed and closed the girl's lips with
her soft hand.

"You may chase me about and kick me, too," said
Warner, contritely.  "Anyway, I'm not to go anywhere
with Philippa any more, it seems——"

"What!" exclaimed Philippa, then smiled and flushed
as Peggy said scornfully:

"You couldn't keep away from her if you tried.  But
hereafter you'll include me on your charming excursions
in quest of annihilation!"  And she tightened her
arm around Philippa's waist and swung her with her
toward the further end of the hall.

Very conscious of his temporary unpopularity, he
went in to see how Gray was feeling, and found him
sitting up in bed and Sister Eila preparing his dose
for him.

So Warner gave the Sister of Charity the message
from Madame de Moidrey, and offered to sit beside
Gray until the Countess arrived.

When Sister Eila had retired, Gray said, rather
wistfully:

"I shan't know how to thank these people for taking
me in.  It's really a beastly imposition——"

"Nonsense, my dear fellow.  They like it.  All women
adore a hero.  How do you feel, anyway?"

"Much fitter, thanks.  I don't know what medicine
they're giving me, but it is evidently what I needed....
And do you know that the Countess de Moidrey
has been kind enough to visit me and read to me,
and even write a letter to Halkett for me?  I sent it
to London.  They'll get into touch with him there."  His
sunken eyes rested on the window through which,
far away over Ausone Fort, the flicker and flare of
the guns lighted up the misty darkness, throwing a
wavering red glare over the clouds.

Boom—boom—rumble—rumble—boom! came the
dull thundering out of the north.  Every window was
shaking and humming.

"A devil of a row," remarked Gray, restlessly.

"You've heard that the German shells are already
falling on Ausone, haven't you?"

"No.  Are they?"

Warner drew a brief picture of what he had seen
that afternoon in Ausone, and the Englishman
listened, intensely interested.

"And I don't know," he ended, "what is to prevent
the Germans from battering the Ausone Fort to pieces
if they have silenced those big Belgian fortresses around
Namur.  In that case, we'll have their charming Uhlans
here in another forty-eight hours——"

He checked himself as Madame de Moidrey knocked
and entered, followed by a maid with Gray's dinner on
a tray.

"Thank you, Jim; you may go and dress now.  Mr. Gray,
you are to dine a little earlier, if you don't
mind—Suzanne, place the tray on this tabouret.  Now, shall
I help you, Mr. Gray?"

"Thanks, so much; but I am detaining you from dinner——"

"No, indeed.  Let me help you a little——" arranging
a napkin for him and uncovering his cup of
fragrant broth.

Warner and the maid, Suzanne, lingered, looking on,
thinking they might be needed.

But realizing presently that neither the Countess
nor her patient was paying the slightest attention
to them, they looked at each other very gravely and
quietly walked out.

.. vspace:: 2

That night at dinner Sister Eila was absent.

Certain prescribed devotions made Sister Eila's
attendance at any meal an uncertainty.  The private
chapel in the east wing had now become a retreat for
her at intervals during the day; the kitchen knew her
when Gray's broth was to be prepared; she gently
directed the servants who had been setting up the
hospital cots in the east wing, and she showed them how
to equip the beds, how to place the tables, how to
garnish the basins of running water with necessaries,
where to pile towels, where to assemble the hospital
stores which had arrived with the cots in cases and kegs
and boxes.

Besides this she had not forgotten to give Gray his
medicine and to change his bandages.

It had been a busy day for Sister Eila.

And now, in the little chapel whither she had crept on
tired feet to her devotions, she had fallen asleep on her
knees, the rosary still clinging to her fingers, her
white-bonneted head resting against the pillar beside which
she had knelt.

Warner, wandering at hazard after dinner, discovered
her there and thought it best to awaken her.

As he touched her sleeve, she murmured drowsily:

"I have need of prayer, Mr. Halkett....  Let me
pray—for us—both——"

For a long while Warner stood motionless, not
daring to stir.  Then, moving cautiously, he left her
there asleep on her knees, her white cheek against the
pillar, the wooden prayer beads hanging from her
half-closed hand.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXIX`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIX

.. vspace:: 2

The first streak of tarnished silver in the east
aroused the sleeping batteries beyond Ausone.
Warner, already dressed and out of doors,
felt the dim world around him begin to shake again,
as one by one the distant guns awoke and spoke to
the ruined fort of doom.  There was not a soul astir in
the Château or about the grounds.  Over shrubbery
and woods thin films of night mist drooped, sagging like
dew-laden spiders' webs; in the demi-light the great
house loomed spectral and huge amid its phantom trees,
and the wet lawns spread away and vanished under
the pallid pall that bathed them.

Warner had slept badly.  What might be transpiring
in the north had haunted his troubled slumber, had
broken it continually, and finally had driven him from
his hot and tumbled pillows to dress and go out into
the dark obscurity.

To see for himself, to try to form some conclusion
concerning the approaching situation of the people in
the Château des Oiseaux, was his object.

The first grey tint in the east woke up the guns;
from the northern terrace he could see the fog all rosy
over Ausone; pale flashes leaped and sparkled far
beyond as the deep waves of sound came rolling and
tumbling toward him, breaking in thunderous waves
across the misty darkness.

Now and then a heavier concussion set the ground
shaking, and a redder glare lighted the north and
played shakily over the clouds.  Ausone was still replying.

On the other side of the Récollette there was a hill
terraced to the summit with vineyards.  From its
western slope he knew that part of Ausone town was
visible, and from there he believed that with his field
glasses he could see for himself how much of the town
was really on fire; how near to it and to the fort were
those paler flashes reflected on the clouds which ringed
the northern sky.

Nobody was astir in the house as he left it; nobody in
the roadway.

At the lodge he rapped on the dark window until the
old man peered out at him through the diamond panes,
yawning and blinking under his Yvetot nightcap, a
candle trembling in his hand.

Outside the wall he crossed the road, climbed the
hedge stile and struck across a field of stubble.

Over the darker eastern hills a wet sky lowered; the
Récollette ran black under its ghostly cerements of
vapor; lapwings were calling somewhere from the foggy
sky, and their mournful and faint complaint seemed
to harmonize sadly with the vague grey world around him.

A trodden path twisted through the grass down to
the reedy shore where the punt lay.  Peering about
for it, his foot struck the pole, where it lay partly
buried in the weeds; he picked it up and went down
among the rushes.  But until he laid his hand on the
boat he did not notice the man asleep there.  And not
until the man sat up with a frightful yawn, rubbing
his sleep-swollen lids, did he recognize Asticot.

"What the devil——" he began, but Asticot
stumbled to his large, flat feet with a suppressed yelp
of apprehension, as Warner's dreaded grasp fell on
his collar.

"*Mon Dieu*," moaned the young ruffian, "may I not
even sleep without offending M'sieu'——"

Warner shook him, not roughly.

"Now answer me once and for all!  *Why* are you
hanging around Saïs?"

The tiny, mousy eyes of Asticot became fixed; a
grin of terror stiffened the pasty features.

"Why do I still find you in Saïs?" repeated Warner.
"Tell me the truth!"

"I—I am too f-frightened to tell you——"

"Get over your fright.  Listen, Asticot, I'm not
going to hurt you.  But you've got to answer me.
Come, compose yourself——"  He relaxed his grasp
on the coat collar and stepped aside.  "Come, Asticot;
tell me why I find you here in Saïs?"

"M'sieu'——"

"Yes, go on.  Just tell me the truth.  I'm not going
to beat you."

"M'sieu' will not believe me—God knows I do not
know how to explain it to myself—but since that
frightful beating bestowed upon me I do not
know how to get along without the protection of
M'sieu'——"

"What do you mean?"

"I am *afraid*!  I do not know why.  I desire to be
taken under the patronage of him I fear.  C'est plus
fort que moi.  *Tenez*, M'sieu', like a dog owned by
nobody I once ran about at random, and not afraid, until
caught and nearly killed by M'sieu'.  And now I desire
to be his.  It is natural for me to follow him—even
though I remain afraid of him, even risking his anger
and another beating——"

"Asticot!"

"M'sieu'?"

"Do you nourish any agreeable dreams that you
may one day live to insert your knife in my back?"

The sheer astonishment in the young ruffian's visage
was sufficient answer for Warner.  He realized then
that this yellow mongrel would never again try to
bite—that he might collapse and succumb under violence,
but never again would he twist and try to mangle the
hand of punishment which once had broken him so
mercilessly.

"Get into the punt, anyway," said Warner, much
perplexed.

Asticot turned and crept into the stern.

"Sit down!"

The young man squatted obediently.  Warner shoved
off, sprang aboard, and sent the punt shooting out
across the misty water.

"So you don't want to murder me any more?" he
asked humorously.

"No," said Asticot, with sullen but profound
conviction.

"What's become of your delightful friend,
Squelette?"

Asticot looked up, bared every tooth.

"*Figurez-vous*, M'sieu', a dragoon patrol caught him
yesterday stealing a goose from a farm.  Me, I hid in
a willow tree.  It's the Battalion of Biribi for
Squelette—his class having been called a year ago—and he over
the Belgian line with his fingers to his nose!  Hé—hé!"
laughed Asticot, writhing in the enjoyment of the prospect
before his recent comrade.  "Me, I have done my
time in Biribi!—And the scars of it—God!—hot irons
on the brain!—And the heart a cinder!  Biribi!  Is
there a priest's hell like it?"  He spat fiercely into
the river.

"And Squelette, who always mocked me for the time
I did in Biribi!  *Tenez*, M'sieu', now they've caught
him and he'll do a tour for himself in that dear Biribi!
Hè—hè!  C'est bien fait!  Chacun à son tour!  As for
me——"  His voice suddenly relapsed into a whine.  "I
shall now be well protected by M'sieu' and I shall be
diligent and grateful in his service, ready always with
brush and black soap or with knife and noose——"

"Thanks," said Warner dryly.  "You may stick to
the bowl of black soap until your class is summoned."

Asticot looked at him earnestly.

"If I have to go with my class, will M'sieu' speak a
word for me that it shall be the line and not Biribi
again?"

"Yes, if you behave yourself."

"A—a certificate of honest employment?—A few
kind words that I have diligently labored in the service
of M'sieu'?"

"Yes, I'll do that."

Asticot squirmed with delight.  And Warner, poling
steadily up stream, saw him making his toilet in the
grey light, dipping his fists into the water, scrubbing
his battered features, carefully combing out *favoris* and
*rouflaquette* and greasing both from the contents of
a knotted bandana handkerchief which he drew from
the capacious pocket of the coat which the charity
of Warner had bestowed upon him.

He was as merry as a washer-raccoon over his ablutions;
all care for the future had fled, and an animal-like
confidence in this terrible young patron of his
reigned undisturbed in the primitive brain of Asticot.

There was now only one impelling force in life for
him—the instinctive necessity of running rather close
to Warner's heels, wherever that might lead him.
Anxiety for personal comfort and well-being he
dismissed; he would eat when his master thought best; he
would find shelter and warmth and clothing when and
where it pleased the man after whom he tagged.  He
was safe, he was comfortable.  That dominating
physical strength which had nearly destroyed him,
coupled with that awesome intellectual power which now
held him in dumb subjection, would in future look out
for him and his needs.  Tant mieux!  Let his master do
the worrying.

Carefully combing out his *favoris* with a broken comb
and greasing them with perfumed pomade flat over
his sunken cheekbones, he fairly wriggled with his new
sense of security and bodily comfort.

Now and then he scratched his large, outstanding
ears, trying to realize his good fortune; now and then,
combing his *rouflaquette* with tenderness and pride, he
lifted his mean, nasal voice in song:

   |  "Depuis que j'suis dans c'tte p—n d'Afrique
   |  A faire l'chameau avec une bosse su' l'dos,
   |  Mon vieux frangin, j'suis sec comme un coup d'trique,
   |  J'ai b'entôt p'us que d'la peau su'les os!
   |      Et v'là l'Bat. d'Af. qui passe,
   |      Ohé! ceux d'la classe!—"
   |

Combing away and plastering his lovelocks by the
help of a fragment of mirror, Asticot whined out his
dreadful ballads of Africa, throwing all the soul he
possessed into the tragic recital and sniffling
sentimentally through his nose:

   |  A Biribi c'est là qu'on marche,
   |      Faut pas flancher;
   |  Quand l'chaouch crie: 'En avant!  Marche!'
   |      I'faut marcher,
   |  Et quand on veut fair' des épates,
   |      C'est peau d'zébi:
   |  On vous fiche les fers au quat' pattes
   |      A Biribi!

   |  A Biribi c'est là qu'on crève
   |      De soif et d' faim,
   |  C'est là qu'i' faut marner sans trêve
   |      Jusqu' à la fin! ...
   |  Le soir on pense à la famille
   |      Sous le gourbi....
   |  On pleure encor' quand on roupille
   |      A Biribi!"
   |

He was still chanting when the punt glided in among
the rushes of the eastern bank.  He followed Warner
to the land, aided him to beach the punt, then trotted
docilely at heel as the American struck out across the
quarry road and mounted the retaining wall of the
vineyard-clad hill.

Up they climbed among the vines; and Asticot with
a leer, but keeping his mousy eyes on Warner,
ventured to detach a ripe bunch here and there and
breakfast as he trotted along.

The thunder of the cannon had become very distinct;
daylight came slowly under the heavy blanket of grey
clouds; the foggy sky was still stained with rose over
Ausone; red flashes leaped from the fort; the paler
glare of the German guns played constantly across the
north.

And now, coming out on the hill's crest among the
vines, Warner caught sight of Ausone town far below,
beyond the Château forest.  Here and there houses
kindled red as coals in a grate; the sluice and wheel of
a mill by the Récollette seemed to be on fire; beyond
it haystacks were burning and smothering all the east
in smoke.

"*Mazette*," remarked Asticot, with his mouth full of
stolen grapes.  "It appears to Bibi that their church
of Sainte Cassilda is frying the stone saints inside!"

And then, adjusting his field glasses, Warner
discovered what the mouse-eyes of Asticot had detected:
Sainte Cassilda the beautiful was merely a hollow shell
within which raged a sea of fire crimsoning the gaping
doors and windows, glowing scarlet through cracks
and fissures in the exquisitely carved façade, mounting
through the ruined roof in a whirl of rosy vapors that
curled and twisted and glittered with swarming golden
sparks.

Another fire burned in the ruins of what had been
the Chalons railway station; the Café and Cabaret de
Biribi were level wastes of stones and steaming bricks,
over which fire played and smoke whirled upward; the
market was a long heap of live coals; even trees were
afire by the river, and Warner could see flames here
and there among the bushes and whole thickets
burning fiercely along the river and beyond, where the
Bois d'Ausone touches it with a fringe of splendid oaks.

As day broke, a watery light illuminated the still
landscape.  Smoke hung heavy over Ausone Fort; the
great cupola guns flashed redly through it; a wide,
high bank of vapor towered above Ausone, stretching
away to the west and north.  Whole rows of burning
houses in Ausone glowed and glimmered, marking the
courses of streets; the Hôtel de Ville seemed to be
intact, but the Boulevard d'Athos was plainly on fire;
and, over the rue d'Auros, an infernal light flickered
as flame and smoke alternately lighted the street or
blotted it from view.

"The town is done for," said Warner calmly.  "The
fort is still replying, but very slowly.  It looks rather
bad to me.  It looks like the end."

Asticot scratched one large ear and furtively helped
himself to another bunch of grapes.  Warner seated
himself on the ground and raised his field glasses.  Asticot
squatted on his haunches, his little, mousy eyes fixed
wistfully on the burning town.  Looting ought to be
good in Ausone—dangerous, of course, but profitable.
A heaven-sent opportunity for honest pillage was
passing.  Asticot sighed and licked his lips.

After a while, and imbued now with the impudent
confidence of a tolerated mongrel, he ventured to rise
and nose around a bit, keeping, however, his new master
carefully in sight.

The sour little wine grapes had allayed his thirst
and hunger; he prowled at random around the summit
of the hill, surveying the river valley and the hills
beyond.  By chance he presently kicked up a big hare,
which cleared out at full speed, doubling and twisting
before the shower of stones hurled after it by Asticot.
He ran after it a little way among the vines, hoping
that a chance missile might have bowled over the
toothsome game.  Craning his neck, he peeped discreetly
down the hillside, reconnoitering; then suddenly
ducked; squatted for a moment as though frozen to
a statue, and, dropping on his belly, he crawled back
to Warner, who still sat there with his field glasses
bracketed on Ausone.

"M'sieu'!"

Warner turned at the weird whisper, lowering his glasses.

"Las Bosches!" whispered Asticot.

"Where?" demanded Warner incredulously.

"Riding up this very hill where we are sitting!  I
saw them—six of them on their horses!"

"They must be French!"

"No, Bosches!  Uhlans!"

"Did they see you?"

"No."

Along the upper retaining wall of the vineyard a
line of low bushes grew in patches, left there, no doubt,
so that the roots might make firmer the steep bank
of earth and dry-laid stone.

Warner rose, and, stooping low, ran toward this
thatch of cover, followed by Asticot.

Under the bushes they crept, stretched themselves
flat, and lay listening.

They had not long to wait; straight through the
rows of vines toward the crest of the hill rode an
Uhlan, walking his big, hard-breathing horse to the
very verge of the northern slope.

His lance, with pennon furled, slanted low from
the arm loop; he sat his high saddle like a statue, and
looked out across the valley toward the burning town
beyond.

He was so near that Warner could see the grey
uniform in detail—the ulanka piped with dark crimson,
shoulder straps bearing the number 2, collar with the
eagle-button insignia of the Guard.  A grey helmet-slip
covered the mortar board and leather body of the
schapska; boots and belt were of russet leather.

Another Uhlan rode up, showing the star of an
oberleutnant on the *pattes-d'épaules*.

Four others followed, picking their way among the
vines, cautiously yet leisurely.  At the stirrups of
the oberleutnant strode a man on foot—a big,
shambling, bald-headed man wearing a smock and
carrying a felt hat in his huge hand.  And when he turned
to wipe his hairless face on his sleeve, Asticot clutched
Warner's arm convulsively.

The man was Wildresse.

The officer of Uhlans sat very straight in his saddle,
his field glasses sometimes focussed on the burning
town, sometimes sweeping the landscape to the north
and west, sometimes deliberately studying the valley
below.

Presently he lowered his glasses and turned partly
around to look down at Wildresse, who was standing
among the vines by his stirrup.

"Wohin führt diese Weg?" he demanded with a nod
toward the quarry road below.

"Nach Drieux, Excellenz!"

"Zeigen Sie mir die Richtung nach Dreslin mit der Hand!"

Wildresse raised his arm and pointed, tracing the
quarry road north and west.

"Also!  Wie tief ist dieser Fluss?  Ist eine Brücke?"

The harsh, deep rumble of Wildresse's voice, the
mincing, nasal tones of the Prussian, the snort of
horses receded as the Uhlans rode slowly over toward
the right—evidently a precaution to escape observation
from the valley below.

For a while they sat their big horses there, looking
out over the valley; then, at a signal from the ober-leutnant,
they turned their mounts and rode slowly off
down the eastern slope of the vineyard, taking with
them the double traitor, Wildresse.

Asticot's eyes were like two minute black sparks; he
was shivering now from head to foot as he lay there; and
it became very evident to Warner that this young
ruffian had had no knowledge of that sort of villainy
on the part of Wildresse.

"Ah, le cochon!" hissed Asticot, grasping two fistfuls
of earth in his astonishment and fury.  "Is he selling
France then to the Bosches?"

"Didn't you know it?" inquired Warner coldly.

"I?  Nom de Dieu!  For what do you take me then?
Whatever I am, I am not *that*!  Ah, le sale bougre de
Wildresse!  Ah!  Les salauds de saligauds de Bosches!
Ah, Wildresse!—Fumier, viande à corbeau, caserne à
puces, gadou', morceau d'chausett's russes—que j'te
dis que j't'engeule et que j't'abomine, vermine malade,
canard boiteux——"

Ashy white, his mouth twisted with rage, Asticot
lay shivering and cursing the treachery of his late
employer, Wildresse.  And Warner understood that,
low as this creature was, ignorant, treacherous, fierce,
ruthless, and cowardly, the treason of Wildresse had
amazed and horrified and enraged him.

"It's the last depths of filth," stammered Asticot.
"Ah, non, nom de Dieu!  One does not do *that*!—Whatever
else one does!  I'll have his skin for this.  It
becomes necessary to me that I have his skin!  Minc'
de Marseillaise!  Viv' la république!  En avant
l'armée!  Gare au coup d'scion, eh, vache d'apache!
Les coutcaur sont faits pour les chiens, mince de
purée!  C'est vrai qu' Squelette c'est un copain à
moi—but if he is in this—he and the père Wildresse, et
bon!—Faut leur-z-y casser la geule——"

"That's enough!" interrupted Warner, who for a
moment had been struck dumb by the frightful fluency
of an invective he never dreamed existed, even in the
awful argot of *voyous* like Asticot.

He rose.  Pale and still trembling, Asticot stumbled
to his feet, his pasty face twisted with unuttered
maledictions.

Moving cautiously to the eastern edge of the vineyard,
they saw, far below them, six Uhlans riding
slowly eastward toward the Bois de Saïs, and a gross
figure on foot shuffling ahead and evidently acting as
pilot toward the wilder uplands of the rolling country
beyond.

Warner watched them through his glasses until they
disappeared in the woods, then he turned, looked at
the burning town in the north for a few moments,
closed his field glasses and slung them, and, nodding
to Asticot, descended the western slope toward the river.

There were no people visible anywhere, either on
the quarry road or across the river.  The fugitives
from Ausone must have gone west toward Dreslin.

Asticot crawled into the punt; Warner shoved off
and poled for midstream, where he let the current
carry him down toward Saïs.

"Asticot?"

"M'sieu'?"

"That was only one small scouting party of Uhlans.
Perhaps there are more of them along the river."

Asticot began to curse again, but Warner stopped him.

"Curb that charmingly fluent flow of classic
eloquence," he said.  "It may sound well on the outer
boulevards, but I don't care for it."

The *voyou* gulped, swallowed a weird oath, and
shivered.

"Asticot, that man Wildresse ought to be apprehended
and shot.  Have you any idea where his hiding
place is?"

"In the Bois d'Ausone.  It *was* there.  Animals
travel."

"Could you find the place?"

Asticot shrugged and rubbed his pock-marked nose.
The forest of Ausone was too near the cannon to suit
him, and he said so without hesitation.

"Very well," said Warner.  "When we meet any
of our soldiers or gendarmes you can explain where
Wildresse has been hiding.  He won't come out, I
suppose, until the occupation of Ausone by the
Germans reassures him.  He ought to be caught and
executed."

"If the cannon would only stop their ugly noises
I'd go myself," muttered Asticot.  "*Tenez, M'sieu'*, it
would be a pleasure for me to bleed that treacherous
hog——"

"I don't doubt it," said Warner pleasantly, "but,
odd as it may appear to you, Asticot, I have a personal
prejudice against murder.  It's weak-minded of me, I
know.  But if you have no objection, we'll let military
law catch Wildresse and deal with him if it can."

Asticot looked at him curiously:

"Is it then distasteful to M'sieu' that I bleed this
*espèce de* pig for him?"

"I'm afraid it is."

"You do not desire me to settle the business of this
*limace*?"

"No."

"For what purpose is an enemy?" inquired the
*voyou*.  "For revenge.  And of what use is revenge if
you do not use it on your enemy?"

"You can't understand me, can you, Asticot?"

"No," said Asticot naïvely, "I can't."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXX`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXX

.. vspace:: 2

It was still very early as Warner walked up to the
Golden Peach, but Magda and Linette were astir
and a delicious aroma of coffee floated through
the hallway.

Warner surveyed his most recent acquisition with a
humorous and slightly disgusted air.  As it appeared
impossible to get rid of Asticot, there seemed nothing
to do but to feed him.

So he called out Linette and asked her to give some
breakfast to the young *voyou*; and Linette showed
Asticot into the bar and served breakfast with a scorn
and aloofness which fascinated Asticot and also awed him.

None of the leering impudence, none of the easy
effrontery of the outer boulevards, aided Asticot to
assert himself or helped him toward any attempt at
playfulness toward this wholesome, capable,
business-like young woman.

She served him with a detached and supercilious air,
placed cover and food with all the nonchalance of
serving a house cat with its morning milk.  And Asticot
dared not even look at her until her back was turned;
then only did he venture to lift his mousy eyes to study
the contemptuous girl who had provided him with
what he spoke of as the "*quoi d'boulotter*."

As for Warner, he had sauntered into the kitchen,
where Madame Arlon greeted him heartily, and was
prettily confused and flattered when he seated himself
and insisted on having breakfast with her.

Over their café-au-lait they discussed the menace of
invasion very quietly, and the stout, cheery landlady
told him that she had concluded to keep the inn open
in any event.

"What else is there for me to do?" she asked.  "To
leave my house is to invite robbery; perhaps even
destruction, if the Prussians arrive.  I had rather
remain and protect my property if I can.  At any
rate, it will not be for long, God willing!"

"I do not believe it will last very long, this headlong
rush of the Germans into France," he said thoughtfully.
"It seems to me as though they had the start
of us, but nothing more serious.  I'm very much
afraid we are going to see them here in the Récollette
Valley before they are driven back across the frontier."

Linette's cheeks grew very red.

"I had even rather serve that frightful *voyou* in there
than be forced to set food before a Prussian," she said
in a low voice.

"Wait a bit longer," said Warner.  "—A little
patience, perhaps a little more humiliation, but, sooner
or later, surely, surely the liberation of the Vosges—the
return of her lost children to France, the driving
out of German oppression, arrogance, and half-cooked
civilization forever....  It's worth waiting for, worth
endurance and patience and sacrifice."

"It is worth dying for," said Magda simply.

"If," added Linette, "one only knew how best to
serve France by offering one's life."

"It is best to live if that can be accomplished
honorably," said Madame Arlon.  "France is in great need
of all her children."

The three women spoke thoughtfully, naturally, with
no idea of heroics, expressing themselves without any
self-consciousness whatever.

After a silence Warner said to Linette with a smile:

"So you don't admire my new assistant, Monsieur
Asticot?"

"Monsieur Warner!  That dreadful *voyou* in *your*
service!"

Warner laughed:

"It seems so.  I didn't invite him.  But I can't get
rid of him.  He sticks like a lost dog."

"Send him about his business—which doubtless is
to pick pockets!" cried Linette.  "Monsieur has
merely to whisper 'Gendarmes!' to him, and he does
not stop running until he sights the Eiffel Tower!"

Madame Arlon smiled:

"He really is a dreadful *type*," she said.  "The
perfume of Paris gutters clings to him.  Monsieur
Warner had better get rid of him before articles begin to
be missed."

"Oh, well," remarked Warner, "he'll probably
scuttle away like a scared rabbit when the Germans
come through Saïs.  I'm not worrying.  Meanwhile, he
carries my field kit and washes brushes—if I ever
can make up my mind to begin painting again....
That heavy, steady thunder from the north seems to
take all ambition out of me."

"It affects me like real thunder," nodded Madame
Arlon.  "The air is lifeless and dead; one's feet drag
and one's head grows heavy.  It is like the languor
which comes over one before a storm.

"Do the guns seem any louder to you since last night?"

"I was wondering....  Well, God's will be done....
But I do not believe it is in His heart to turn
the glory of His face from France....  Magda, if
we are to make the preserves today, it will be necessary
for you to gather plums this morning.  Linette, is that
type still eating?"

"He stuffs himself without pause," replied the girl
scornfully.  "Only a guinea pig can eat like that!"

She went into the bar café and bent a pair of pretty
but hostile eyes upon Asticot, who stared at her with
his mouth full, then, still staring, buttered another
slice of bread.

"Voyons," she said impatiently, "do you imagine
yourself to be at dinner, young man?  Permit me to
remind you that this is breakfast—café-au-lait—not a
banquet at the Hôtel de Ville!"

"I am hungry," said Asticot simply.

"Really?" she retorted, exasperated.  "One might
almost guess as much, what with the *tartines* and
*tranches* you swallow as though you had nothing else
to do.  Come, stand up on what I suppose you call
your feet.  Your master is out in the road already, and
I don't suppose that even you have the effrontery to
keep him waiting."

Asticot arose; a gorged sigh escaped him.  He
stretched himself with the satisfaction of repletion,
shuffled his feet, peeped cunningly and sideways out of
his mousy eyes at Linette.

"*Allons*," she said coldly, "it's paid for.  Fichez-moi
le camp!"

There was a vase of flowers on the bar.  Asticot
shuffled over, sniffed at them, extracted the largest and
gaudiest blossom—a yellow dahlia—and, with a half
bold, half scared smirk, laid it on the table as an
offering to Linette.

The girl was too much astonished and incensed to
utter a word, and Asticot left so hurriedly that when
she had recovered her power of speech he was already
slouching along down the road a few paces behind
Warner.

The latter had hastened his steps because ahead of
him walked Sister Eila; and he meant to overtake and
escort her as far as the school, and then back to the
Château, if she were returning.

As he joined her and they exchanged grave but
friendly greetings, he suddenly remembered her as he
had last seen her, kneeling asleep by the chapel
pillar.

And then he recollected what she had murmured, still
drowsy with dreams; and the memory of it perplexed
him and left his face flushed and troubled.

"How is your patient, Sister?" he inquired, dropping
into step beside her.

"Much better, Mr. Warner.  A little care is all he
needs.  But I wish his mind were at rest."  She glanced
behind her at Asticot, plainly wondering who he might be.

"What worries Gray?" inquired Warner.

"The prospect of being taken prisoner, I suppose."

"Of course.  If the Germans break through from
the north they'll take him along.  That would be pretty
hard luck, wouldn't it?—To be taken before one has
even a taste of battle!"

Sister Eila nodded:

"He says nothing, but I know that is what troubles
him.  When I came in this morning, I found him up
and trying to walk.  I sent him back to bed.  But
he tells me he does not need to use his legs in his
branch of the British service, and that if he could
only get to Chalons he would be fit for duty.  I think,
from things he has said, that both he and Mr. Halkett
belong to the Flying Corps."

Warner was immensely interested.  Sister Eila told
him briefly why she suspected this to be true, then,
casting another perplexed glance behind her, she asked
in a low voice who might be the extremely unprepossessing
individual shuffling along the road behind them.
And Warner told her, humorously; but she did not smile.

Watching her downcast eyes and grave lips in the
transparent shadow of her white coiffe, he thought he
had never seen a human face so pure, so tender—with
such infinite capacity for charity.

She said very gently:

"My duties have led me more than once into the
Faubourgs.  There is nothing sadder to me than Paris....
Always I have believed that sin and degradation
among the poor should be treated as diseases of the
mind....  Poor things—they have no doctor, no
medicines, no hospital to aid them in their illness—the
most terrible illness in the world, which they inherit
at birth—poverty!  Poverty sickens the body, and at
last the mind; and from a diseased mind all evil in
the world is born....  They are not to blame who
daily crucify Christ; for they know not what they do."

He walked silently beside her.  She spoke again of
crippled minds, and of the responsibility of civilization,
then looked up at his gloomy visage with a faint smile,
excusing herself for any lack of cheerfulness and
courage.

"Indeed," she said almost gayly, "God is best served
with a light heart, I think.  There is no palladin like
good humor to subdue terror and slay despair; no ally
of Christ so powerful as he who laughs when evil
threatens.  Sin is most easily slain with a smile, I
think; its germs die under it as bacilli die in the
sunlight.  *Tenez*, Monsieur Warner, what do you think
of my theories of medicine, moral, spiritual, and
mundane?  Is it likely that the Academy will award me
palms?"

He laughed and assured her that her views were sound
in theory and in practice.  A moment later they came
in sight of the school.

"It is necessary that I make some little arrangements
with Sister Félicité for my absence," she explained.
"I scarcely know what she is going to do all
alone here, if the children are to remain."

They went into the schoolroom, where exercises had
already begun, and the droning, minor singsong of
children filled the heavy air.

Sister Félicité greeted Warner, then, dismissing the
children to their desks, withdrew to a corner of the
schoolroom with Sister Eila.

Their low-voiced consultation lasted for a few
minutes only; the little girls, hands solemnly folded,
watched out of wide, serious eyes.

On the doorstep outside, Asticot sat and occasionally
scratched his large ears with a sort of bored
embarrassment.

Warner went out to the doorstep presently and
looked up at the sky, which threatened rain.  As he
stood there, silent, preoccupied, Sister Eila came out
with Sister Félicité, nodding to Warner that she was
ready to leave.  And, at the same instant, two
horsemen in grey uniforms rode around the corner of the
school, pistols lifted, lances without pennons slanting
backward from their armslings.

Asticot, paralyzed, gaped at them; Warner, as
shocked as he, stood motionless as four more Uhlans
came trotting up and coolly drew bridle before the
school.

Already three of the Uhlans had dismounted, stacked
lances, abandoning their bridles to the three who
remained on their horses.

As they came striding across the road toward the
school, spurs and carbines clinking and rattling, a
child in the schoolroom caught sight of them and
screamed.

Instantly the room was filled with the terrified cries
of little girls: Sister Eila and Sister Félicité, pale but
calm, backed slowly away before the advancing Uhlans,
their arms outstretched in protection in front of the
shrieking, huddling herd of children.  Behind them the
terrified little girls crouched under desks, hid behind
the stove, or knelt clinging hysterically to the
grey-blue habits of the Sisters, who continued to interpose
themselves between the Uhlans and their panic-stricken
pupils.

The Uhlans glanced contemptuously at Asticot as
they mounted the door steps, looked more closely at
Warner; then one of them walked, clanking, into the
schoolroom, lifting his gloved hand to his helmet in
salute.

Sister Félicité tried vainly to quiet the screaming
children; Sister Eila, her head high, confronted the
Uhlans, both arms extended.

"Stop where you are!" she said coolly.  "What do
you wish, gentlemen?  Don't you see that you are
frightening our children?  If you desire to speak to
us we will go outside."

An Uhlan clumsily tried to reassure and make
friends with a little girl who had hidden herself behind
the stove.  She fled from him, sobbing, and threw
herself on her knees behind Sister Eila, hanging to her
skirts.

"Pas méchant," repeated the big cavalryman, with
a good-natured grin; "moi, père de famille!  Beaucoup
enfants à moi.  Pas peur de moi.  Vous est bon
Français."

Another Uhlan pointed inquiringly at Warner, who
had placed himself beside Sister Félicité.

"*Anglais?*" he demanded.

"American," said Sister Eila calmly.

"Oh," he exclaimed with a wry grin.  "Americans are
our friends.  Frenchmen have our respect.  We salute
them as brave enemies.  But not the English!
Therefore, do not be afraid.  We Germans mean no harm
to peaceful people.  You shall see; we are not
barbarians!  Tell your children we are not ogres."

He stood tall and erect in his grey, close-fitting
uniform, looking curiously about him.  The plastron of
the tunic, or *ulanka*, was piped with yellow, and bore
the *galons* and the heraldic buttons of a *Feldwebel*.
The shoulder strap bore the number 3; the boots and
belt were of tan-colored leather; all metal work was
mat-silver; spurs, saber, were oxidized; and the oddly
shaped helmet, surmounted by the mortar board, was
covered with a brown holland slip bearing the
regimental number.

The children had become deathly silent, staring
with wide and frightened eyes upon these tall intruders;
the Sisters of Charity stood motionless, calm,
level-eyed; Warner, wondering why the Uhlans had entered
the school, had drawn Sister Eila's arm through his,
and remained beside her watching the Germans with
undisturbed curiosity and professional interest.  Afterward
his well-known picture of the incident was bought
by the French Government.

The *Wachtmeister* in charge of the peloton turned
to him with a sort of insolent civility.

"Wie viel Kilometer ist es bis Ausone?" he inquired.

Warner made no reply.

"Wie heisst dieser Ort?"  The Wachtmeister had
raised his voice insolently.

"Saïs," replied Warner carelessly.

"Sind hier deutsche Truppen durchmarschiert?"

Warner remained silent.

"Sind deutsche Truppen im Walde?"

"There is no use asking an American for information,"
said Warner bluntly.  "You'll get none from me."

Instantly the man's face changed.

"So!  Eh, bien!  Qui cherche à s'esquiver sera
fusillé!" he said in excellent French.  "Unlock every
door in the house.  If there are any dogs tie them
up.  If they bark, you will be held responsible.  Don't
move!  Keep those children where they are until we
have finished!"

He nodded to a trooper behind him.  The Uhlan
instantly drew a short hammer and a cold chisel from
his pouch, knelt down, and with incredible rapidity
ripped up a plank from the hardwood floor, laying bare
to view the solid concrete underneath.

"Sound it!"

The trooper sounded the concrete with the heavy
butt of his chisel.

"All right!"  The non-com touched his schapska
in salute to the Sisters of Charity.  "Take your
children away before noon.  We need this place.  German
troops will occupy it in half an hour."  Then he
swung around and shot an ugly glance at Warner.

"If you are as neutral as you pretend to be, see
that you are equally reticent toward the French when
we let you go....  You may be American, but you
behave like an Englishman.  You annoy me; do you
understand?"

Warner shrugged his shoulders.

"What do you mean by that gesture of disrespect?"
demanded the Uhlan sharply.

"I mean that you ask improper questions and you
know it!"

"I ask what I choose to ask!" he said angrily.  "I
think I shall take you with us, anyway, and not leave
you here!"

"You'll only get into trouble with my Government
and your own——"

"Take that man!" shouted the Uhlan in a passion.
"I'll find out what he is——"

A shot rang loudly from the road outside; the
Uhlans turned in astonishment, then ran for the door
where their comrades flung them their bridles.  They
seized their lances and scrambled into their saddles,
still disconcerted and apparently incredulous of any
serious danger to themselves.  Then another Uhlan
who had cantered off down the road suddenly fired
from his saddle; the others, bending forward, scanned
the road intently for a moment; then the whole peloton
swung their horses, spurred over the ditch and up the
grassy bank, trotted in single file through the hedge
gate, and, putting their horses to a gallop, headed
straight across the meadow toward the river and the
quarry bridge beyond.

They had reached the river willows and were already
galloping through them when, far away toward the
south end of the meadow, a horseman trotted into view,
drew bridle, fired at the Uhlans, then launched his
horse into a dead run toward them, disengaging his
lance from which a pennon flew gayly.

After him, bending forward in their saddles, came
two score riders in pale blue jackets, lances advanced,
urging their wiry horses, spurring hard to intercept
the Uhlans.

But the Germans, who had gained the bridge, were
now galloping over it, and they disappeared amid a
distant racket of shots.

To the spectators at the school door, it all looked
like a pretty, harmless, unreal scene artistically
composed and arranged for moving-picture purposes; the
wide, flat green meadow was now swarming with the
pale blue and white laced dolmans of French hussar
lancers.  Everywhere they were galloping, trotting,
maneuvering; a section of a light battery appeared,
drew rapidly nearer, went plunging across the meadow
hub-deep in wild flowers, swung the guns and dropped
them at the bridge, making the demi-tour at a gallop.

Back came the caissons, still at a gallop; the dark,
distant figures of the cannoniers moved rapidly for a
moment around each gun; a tiny figure held up one
arm, dropped it; crack! echoed the report of the
field-piece; up went the arm, down it jerked; crack! went
the other.

From a front room overhead Warner and Sister Eila
were leaning out and watching the lively spectacle along
the river.

"It looks to me," he said, "as though the Germans
were in the cement works....  By George!  They
are!  The yards and quarries are alive with their
cavalry!  Look!  Did you see that shell hit the stone
crusher?  There goes another.  The big chimney on
the Esser Works is falling—look!—down it comes!
Our gunners have knocked it into dust!"

Another section of artillery came plunging into
view across the meadows, the drivers spurring and
lashing, the powerful horses bounding forward, and the
guns jumping and bouncing over the uneven ground.

It was like a picture book—exactly what the layman
expects of a battle—a wide, unobstructed view over a
flat green meadow, artillery at a gallop with officers
spurring ahead; brilliantly uniformed cavalry arriving
in ever-increasing squadrons, some dismounting and
deploying, others drawn up here and there under
serried thickets of lances.  But there was no smoke,
only a dusky, translucent haze clinging for a moment
to the gun muzzles; no enemy in sight save for a
scrambling dot here and there among the quarry hills
where, from the cement works, a cloud of dust rose
and widened, veiling the trees and hillsides.

For a while the lively rattle of the fusillade
continued, but in a few minutes a six-gun battery arrived
and went into ear-splitting action, almost instantly
extinguishing the German fire from the quarry.  A few
more ragged volleys came, then only dropping shots
from their carbines as the hussars rode forward and
broke into a gallop across the quarry bridge.

More cavalry was arriving all the while, dragoons
and *chasseurs-à-cheval*, all riding leisurely toward the
quarry.  More artillery was coming, too, clanking and
bumping up the road, a great jolting column of field
batteries, not in a hurry, paying little attention to
the lively proceedings across the river, where the
German cavalry was retreating over the rolling country
toward the eastern hills and the blue hussars were
riding after them.

The artillery passed the school and continued on
toward Ausone.  Behind them came infantry with
their swinging, slouchy stride, route step, mildly
interested in the doings of the cavalry in the meadow, more
interested in the Sisters of Charity leaning from the
schoolhouse windows and the excited children crowding
at the open door.

Not very far beyond the school a regiment turned
out into a stubble field and stacked arms.  Other
regiments swung out east and west along the Route de
Saïs, stacked arms, let go sacks, and went to work
with picks and spades.

More artillery rumbled by; then came some engineers
and a pontoon train which turned out toward the
river opposite the school after the engineers had opened
a way through the hedge stile.

Sister Eila and Warner had returned from the
upper story to stand on the doorstep among the
children.

"One thing is certain," he said in her ear; "Sister
Félicité will have to take the children away tonight.
The infantry yonder are intrenching, and all these
wagons and material that are passing mean that the
valley is to be defended."

The young Sister nodded and whispered to Sister
Félicité, who looked very grave.

Some odd-looking, long, flat motor trucks were
lumbering by; the freight which they carried was
carefully covered with brown canvas.  Other trucks were
piled high with sections of corrugated iron, hollow
steel tubes, and bundles of matched boards and
planking.

For these vehicles there was a dragoon escort.

"Aeroplanes and material for portable sheds," said
Warner.  "They intend to erect hangars.  There is
going to be trouble in the valley of the Récollette."

He turned and looked out and around him, and saw
the valley already alive with soldiers.  Across the river
on the quarry road they were also moving now, cavalry
and artillery; and, as far as he could follow eastward
with his eye, red-legged soldiers were continuing the
lines of trenches already begun on this side of the river.

An officer of hussars rode up, saluted the Sisters and
Warner, glanced sharply at Asticot, who had flattened
himself against the vines on the schoolhouse wall, and,
leaning forward from his saddle, asked if the German
cavalry had been there that morning.

"Six Uhlans, *mon capitaine*," said Warner.  "They
ripped up a plank from the floor; I can't imagine why.
You can see it through the door from where you sit
your saddle."

The officer rode up close to the steps and looked
into the schoolroom.

"Thank you, Monsieur.  You see what they've done,
I suppose?"

"No, I didn't understand."

"It is simple.  The Esser cement works across the
river built this school two years ago.  It's a German
concern.  While they were about it they laid down a
few cement gun platforms—with an eye to this very
moment which confronts us now."

He shrugged his shoulders:

"The Esser cement works over there are full of gun
emplacements in cement, masquerading as pits, retaining
walls, foundations, and other peaceful necessities.
A British officer discovered all this only a few days
ago——"

"Captain Halkett!" exclaimed Warner, inspired.

The Hussar glanced at him, surprised and smiling.

"Yes, Monsieur.  Are you acquainted with Captain
Halkett?"

"Indeed, I am!  And," he turned to the Sisters of
Charity, "he is a good friend of all of us."

"He is my friend, also," said the Hussar warmly.
"He has told me about Saïs and how, masquerading as
a quarry workman one evening, he discovered gun
platforms along the Récollette and among the quarries.
You understand they were very cunning, those
Germans, and the cement works and quarries of Herr
Heinrich von Esser are all ready to turn those hills
yonder into a fortress.  Which," he added, laughing,
"we may find very convenient."

Sister Eila, standing beside the horse's head, stroked
it, looking up at the officer out of grave eyes.

"Is Captain Halkett well?" she asked calmly.

"I think so, Sister.  I saw him yesterday."

"If you see him again, would you say to him that
Captain Gray is at the Château des Oiseaux recovering
from an accident?"

"Yes, I will tell him, Sister; but he must be around
here somewhere——"

"Here!" exclaimed Warner.

"Why, yes.  Our aëroplanes have just passed
through.  A British Bristol biplane is among them in
charge of a flight-lieutenant—Ferris, I think his name
is.  Captain Halkett ought to be somewhere about.
Possibly he may be superintending the disembarkment
and the erection of the sheds."

He pointed northwest, adding that he understood
the sheds were to be erected on the level stretch of
fields beyond the school.

"However, I shall give him your message, Sister, if
I meet him," he said, saluted them ceremoniously in
turn, cast another puzzled and slightly suspicious
glance at Asticot, and rode away.

"I should like to find Halkett," said Warner.  "I
certainly should like to see him again.  We had become
friends, you see.  Shall we walk back that way across
the fields, Sister Eila?"

Sister Eila turned to Sister Félicité.  Her color was
high, but she spoke very calmly:

"Had I not better remain with you and help you
close the school?"

Sister Félicité shook her head vigorously:

"I can attend to that if it becomes necessary.  I
shall not budge unless I am called to field duty."

"But the children?  Had I not better take some of
them home?"

"There's time enough.  If there is going to be any
danger to them, I can arrange all that."

Sister Eila hesitated, her lovely head lowered.

"If we could find Halkett on our way back," said
Warner, "I think he would be very glad to hear from
us that Gray is alive."

Sister Eila nodded in silence; Warner made his
adieux; the Sisters of Charity consulted together a
moment, then the American and Sister Eila went out
through the rear door and through the little garden.
And at their heels shuffled Asticot, furtively chewing a
purloined apple.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXI

.. vspace:: 2

As they reached the plateau above the school
and halted for a few moments to look back
across the valley of the Récollette, Warner
began to understand.

The cannonading in the north had ceased.  On
every road, in whichever direction he looked, troops,
artillery, and wagons were moving eastward.  This was
no mere cavalry reconnoissance; it was a serious
offensive movement in force toward the east.  Eastward
and south lay the Vosges; beyond, the lost provinces
stretched away in green valleys toward the Rhine.

There lay the objective of this movement which
was based on the great Barrier Forts from Verdun
to Toul, from Toul to Nancy and Luneville, southward
to Epinal, to the great, grim citadel of Belfort.

This was no raid, no feint, no diversion made by a
flying corps along the frontier.  A great screen of
cavalry was brushing back every hostile scout toward
the mountains; the contact at the cement works was
a mere detail.  Nor was this movement directed toward
the north, where the Grand Duchy was crawling alive
with Prussians already battering at the "Iron Gate
of France."

No, the guns of Longwy were not calling these
French horsemen north, whatever was happening at
Verdun or along the Moselle.  Their helmets were
moving toward the east, toward the passes of the Vosges
where Alsace lay, and Lorraine.  Metz, Strassburg,
Colmar, Mülhausen, beckoned from every tall tower,
every gable, every spire.  It was invasion!  Armed
France was riding toward the rising sun.

Sister Eila's pale, intelligent face was lifted to the
distant horizon; her clear, exalted gaze made it plain
to him that she, also, had begun to understand.

As for Asticot, he was finishing the core of his
apple and watching details in the vast panorama out
of his tiny mouse-eyes; and whether he understood or
cared to understand no man might say.  For the
minds of little animals must remain inscrutable.

Near them, on the grassy plateau, soldiers were
unloading portable sheds in sections and erecting them;
others were leveling hedges, felling small, isolated trees,
uprooting bushes, and clearing away a line of wire
pasture fencing.

Evidently this plateau was to be a base for some
of the airmen operating along the Vosges or possibly,
also, north and east from Verdun.

As they moved forward he looked about for a British
uniform, but saw none.  A soldier informed them that
there were no British troops attached to the army of
General Pau as far as he knew; two or three cavalry
officers politely confirmed the statement, taking
Warner to be an Englishman.

It was not until, following the deeply trodden sheep-walk,
they passed the silver birch woods that they had
any news of Halkett.

A squadron of hussars was already bivouacked
there; their wagons were coming across the fields from
the Dreslin road; officers, men, and horses had taken
advantage of the woods to escape observation from
air-scouts; and three batteries of artillery were parked
in the Forêt de Saïs, where the cannoniers had already
begun to cover everything with green branches.

As they passed through the Forêt de Saïs, out of
which a shepherd with his shaggy dogs was driving his
flock, they overtook an officer of hussars on foot,
sauntering along the same path, a lighted cigarette between
his white-gloved fingers.

He stepped aside into the bracken, courteously, in
deference to Sister Eila, and lifted his hand to his
shako in salute.  But when he caught sight of Warner
he stepped forward with a quick, boyish smile and held
out his hand.

"Do you remember me?—D'Aurès?  This is Monsieur
Warner, is it not?"

They exchanged a handclasp; Warner presented him
to Sister Eila.

"This is exceedingly nice," said the American
cordially.  "We—Sister Eila and I—are returning to the
Château.  I hope you will come with us."

"If I may venture to pay my respects——"

"You will be welcome, I know."  He added, laughing:
"Also, the ladies will be most interested in the fate of
their horses and their automobiles."

The Vicomte d'Aurès reddened, but laughed:

"The Countess was most gracious, most patriotic,"
he said.  "But one could expect nothing less from a
De Moidrey.  Nevertheless, I felt like a bandit that
evening.  I left them only a basket wagon and a
donkey."

"Which have been greatly appreciated, Monsieur,"
said Sister Eila, smiling.  And she told him about the
removal of Captain Gray from the school to the Château.

"Oh, by the way," exclaimed D'Aurès, "we have a
British aviator with us—a friend of yours, Sister Eila,
and of Mr. Warner."

"Halkett!"

"Yes, indeed.  It appears that Captain Halkett has
specialized in this region, so he has been assigned to
us.  I have the honor of a personal acquaintance with him."

"Where is he?" asked Warner.

"He is near here somewhere.  His machine, a Bristol,
is to be parked with ours on the plateau yonder.  I
think they are erecting the hangars now."

They entered the wicket of the lodge gate and
advanced along the drive toward the house.

Warner said:

"All this movement means the invasion of
Alsace-Lorraine, I take it."

D'Aurès nodded.

"Could you give me an idea of the situation as it
stands, Captain?"

"I can only guess.  Briefly, we are moving on Strassburg
from the Donon peaks to Château-Salins.  As I
understand it, our armies now stretch from the Sambre
to the Seine, from the Meuse to the Oise.

"I can tell you only what is gossiped about among
cavalry officers.  We believe that we are leading a great
counter-offensive movement; that it is our General
Joffre's strategy to drive the Germans out of upper
Alsace, block Metz and Strassburg, and, holding them
there in our steel pincers, let loose our army on their
flank and rear."

"And Longwy?  And this drive just north of us at
Ausone?"

D'Aurès smiled.

"Can you still hear the cannonade?"

They halted to listen; there was no longer that
deadly rumor from the north.

"Verdun and Toul are taking care of that raid, I
think," said D'Aurès pleasantly.  "It comes from Metz,
of course.  Verdun must look out for the country
between it and Longwy, too.  That is not *our* route.
Ours lies by Nancy toward Vic and Moyenvic, and
through Altkirch to Mülhausen, and *then*—" he
laughed—"it does not become a Frenchman to
prophesy or boast.  There were too many dreamers in
1870.

"I am telling merely the gossip of our camps.  It is
human to gossip when the day's work is over.  But for
the rest—route step and plod ahead!—That is what
counts, not bragging or splendid dreams."

When they reached the terrace Warner fell back
to speak to Asticot.

"I've arranged for you at the Golden Peach.  Madame
Arlon knows."  He handed Asticot a key.  "There's
plenty to do in my studio down there.  Get some wood
and make cases for my canvases.  Cover the *chassis*
with *toile* and prime them with white lead.  Use an
ivory palette knife and let them have the sun when
there is any and when there is no wind and dust.  That
will keep you busy until I send for you.  Do you
comprehend?"

"Yes, M'sieu'....  May I not walk behind M'sieu'
when he takes the air?"

Warner scowled at him, but he looked so exactly
like a shiftless, disreputable and mongrel dog who
timidly desires to linger, yet is fearful of a kick, that
the American laughed.

"A fine bargain I have in you!" he said.  "You prefer
rambling to work, it appears!"

"I prefer the vicinity of M'sieu'," said Asticot
naïvely.

"Go back to the inn and see if you can do an honest
hour's work!" retorted Warner; and he turned and
rejoined Sister Eila, who had taken D'Aurès up the
steps of the terrace.

It appeared that the ladies were on the north terrace.
On the way through the hall, Sister Eila excused
herself and mounted the stairs for a look-in on Gray.
At the same moment, Peggy Brooks came out of the
billiard room, saw D'Aurès, recognized him.

"Oh," she said, extending her hand, "I am so glad
you have come back!  How is my Minerva runabout?"

"I'm sorry I don't know," he replied, blushing; "I
didn't steal it for myself, you see."

"You *didn't* steal it!  It's a gift.  It's mine to give.
I give it to *you*!  My sister took all the credit of giving
away the horses and cars.  But I insist on your having
my Minerva runabout.  It's a charming car.  You'll
fall in love with it if they let you drive it.  Come out
to the terrace and speak to my sister and to my dearest
friend, Philippa Wildresse."

Warner, much amused to observe the capture of this
young man, followed them out to the south terrace.

He certainly was an ornamental young man of
enchanting manners, and his popularity was immediate.

To Warner Philippa came presently:

"Where have you been?" she asked.  "And couldn't
you have taken me?"

"Dear child, I was out before sunrise prowling about
the hills with that vagabond at my heels—Asticot."

"What did you see?"

"Uhlans on Vineyard Hill, across the Récollette.
Wildresse was with them."

"He!"

"Yes, the miserable spy!  If he's not gone clear away
some of D'Aurès' men had better try to round him up
and get rid of him....  After that, Sister Eila and
I went to the school.  More Uhlans came sniffing
around, but they cleared out in a hurry when our
cavalry appeared.  Our artillery shelled the Germans
out of the Esser quarries—you must have heard the
firing?"

"Yes.  We all thought that the Germans had
arrived.  Poor Mr. Gray looked so disgusted!"

"Philippa, Halkett is here somewhere."

"Oh!" she exclaimed happily.

"He's here with his machine—an aëroplane of
sorts—Bristol, I believe.  No doubt he'll come up to the
house when he has a chance.  I suppose Sister Eila
has gone up to tell Gray."

They had strolled around to the eastern parapet and
now stood looking out over the tree tops.

"What has happened at Ausone?" she asked.  "The
cannon have stopped firing."

"I saw Ausone burning from Vineyard Hill.  It's
all knocked to pieces, Philippa.  What I think has
happened is this: troops from Verdun and Toul—perhaps
from Chalons—have entered Ausone in time to
save the fort.  I suppose our infantry are intrenched
along the Récollette and that there is going to be
more fighting in Ausone Forest, which must be full of
Germans."

"You don't think they'll come here?"

"I don't know.  The army which you see below us
everywhere in the valley is probably on its way to
invade Alsace.  D'Aurès thinks so.  I suppose this line
will be defended.  We shall hear more cannonading, I
fancy.  Anyway, they are digging trenches to fall
back on."

"Where?"

"Along the Récollette."

From where they were leaning on the stone balustrade,
they could see pontoons spanning the river.
Across them troops and wagons were passing; through
every ford cavalry were splashing; the quarry bridge
and road were packed with motor trucks escorted by
cavalry; and on the Saïs highway artillery was still
passing toward Ausone.

Her cheeks framed by her hands, elbows on the
parapet, Philippa gazed at the moving host below.  She
wore a thin white gown; a scarf fell from her shoulders;
her thick, beautiful hair was full of ruddy gleams,
accenting the snowy neck and throat.

"If I set up my easel will you let me have a try at
you?" he asked.

"Yes, but you've had no luncheon.  I'll bring you
something, and you can arrange your canvas while I'm
gone."

But they found Sister Eila had arranged for him to
lunch with Gray, so he sat with that battered and
patient Englishman, chatting, watching the troops in
the valley from the open window, and lunching
comfortably.

Sister Eila glanced in, smiled, then went lightly away
toward the eastern wing of the house, where fresh
consignments of bandages were to be sterilized and stored
in Red Cross boxes—gauze rolls, plugs for bullet
wounds, body bandages, fracture bandages, arm slings,
rolls of unbleached muslin, of cotton, of gauze.

As she passed the open door of the chapel, she
halted, faced the altar and made her reverence.  Then,
crossing herself, she rose erect, turned to continue
her way, and encountered Halkett face to face.

A bright flush leaped to her cheeks; his own face
reddened to his hair under the bronze coat of tan.

"I am so glad to see you," she said steadily, offering
her hand.  "We heard you were in Saïs with your
aëroplane.  How did you happen to come into the
east wing?  It must have been closed when you were
here before?"

"I have never before been in this house.  I saw you
cross the court as I mounted the terrace steps."  He
tried to ease the constraint in his voice.  "I wanted to
speak to you—first of anybody—in Saïs....  Are
you well?"

"Perfectly.  And you, Captain Halkett?"

"You seem thinner.  You do not spare yourself."

"We scarcely have time to think of ourselves," she
said, smiling.  "I am trying to fit up a little hospital
here; Madame de Moidrey offers the house."

"I understand that my friend, Captain Gray, is here?"

"Poor boy!  I must not detain you any longer.
You will desire to pay your respects to Madame de
Moidrey and her sister and to the beautiful Miss
Wildresse——"

"Philippa!  Here?"

"You know her?  Is she not lovely?  I find her
charming.  And—so should all young men," she added
with a little laugh.  "Therefore—I shall no longer
detain you, Captain Halkett——"

"May I—hope to see you again?"

"I hope so, indeed," she replied cheerfully.  "Do
you remain for a while in Saïs?"

"For a while, I think."

There fell a silence, which became a little strained.
Sister Eila looked up at him from lowered eyes; then
her face went white and she laid her hand flat against
the chapel wall beside her, as though for support.

"Then—if I may hope to see you again—inspect
your hospital, perhaps——"

She nodded, still leaning on the chapel wall.

So he went away swiftly, very straight in his field
uniform, and she saw him cross the court, head erect,
looking directly before him as though he saw nothing.

An immense fatigue seemed to weight her; still
supporting herself against the wall, she turned and looked
at the chapel door.  Even on that grey day the light
within was golden from the old glass.

Into that mellow stillness crept Sister Eila, her
young head drooping, the metal crucifix swinging at
her girdle from its rosary of wooden beads.

The painted saints stared at her; the painted angels
all stood watching her; the Mother of God looked out
from the manger, brooding, preoccupied, wonder-eyed;
but the Child at her breast was smiling.

Then down on her knees fell Sister Eila; her slim
hands clasped, clung, tightened, parted, and covered
her face convulsively.

Very far away in the valley a trumpet spoke.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXII

.. vspace:: 2

Warner began the full-length portrait—which
has now become famous under the
title "Philippa Passes"—in the main hall of
the Château.

A clear light fell through the northern and eastern
windows; from the golden gloom above generations of
De Moidreys looked down upon the fair girl who stood
in their great hall as tranquil and unconscious as
though born within the carved gray walls which they
had built or added to in years long dead.

He had chosen for the pose a moment when, as she
was in the act of passing in front of him, a word from
him had checked her and caused her to turn her head.

There he held her as she had paused, poised on the
very edge of motion, her enchanting head turned and
the grey eyes meeting his.

Already on his canvas he had caught her; an odd
sensation of cold, clear-minded exaltation seemed to
possess him as he worked—a calm, strange certainty
of himself and of the work in hand.

There was no hesitation, no doubt within him, only
a sustained excitement under unerring control.  He
knew what he wanted; he knew that he was doing
methodically what he wanted to do with every
unhurried brush stroke.

There was no halting, no searching, no checks; his
mind had never been so absolutely in control of his
hand; his hand never so automatically obedient, his
intelligence never before so clear, so logical, so steady
under the incessant lightning of inspiration.

Conscious of the tremendous tension, he knew he
was equal to it—knew that no weakness of impulse or
of sentiment could swerve him, unsteady him, meddle
with his brain or his nerves or his hand.

Nothing could stop him from doing what he had to
do, nothing could tamper with this newborn confidence
which had suddenly possessed him with its unlooked for
magic.

He was painting Philippa as he had known her from
the beginning; as he had prophesied; as she had been
revealed—a young girl with grey eyes and chestnut
hair, fine of limb, with the shadow of a smile on her
wistful lips, and "her soul as clean as a flame."

So certain was he of what he was about that to
Philippa he seemed to work very leisurely, wiping brush
after brush with unhurried deliberation, laying on
stroke after stroke with that quiet decision which
accumulates and coördinates component parts into a
result so swiftly that an ensemble is born as though by
magic.

A few great pictures are painted that way; myriads
of bad ones.  If he thought of this it did not trouble
him.  Already, on his canvas, the soul of a young girl
was looking at him through those grey eyes; on the
fresh lips, scarce parted, hovered the shadow of a
smile, virginal and vague.

He felt the splendid tension; experienced the
consciousness of achievement, steeled every nerve, wiped
his brushes with deliberation, drew them across the
edges of the colors needed, scarcely glancing at his
palette, laid on the brush stroke with the precision
of finality.

From where he had slung his tall canvas between two
ancient, high-backed chairs as an improvised easel, he
could see the northern terrace and the people gathered
there—Madame de Moidrey in animated conversation
with Halkett; Peggy knitting fitfully and looking over
her clicking needles at the youthful Vicomte d'Aurès,
who had pushed aside the tea table in order to obtain
an unobstructed view of this American girl who was
making his boyish head spin.

Beyond them, on a steamer chair, lay Gray.  Sister
Eila sat beside him sewing.  There was conversation
between them and Madame de Moidrey and Halkett—across
and across, cat-cradle fashion—but it passed
through Peggy and D'Aurès unheeded, as wireless in
the upper air currents; and the Countess glanced
occasionally at her sister or let her eyes rest on D'Aurès
now and then with a pleasant, preoccupied air, as
though considering other things than those which were
passing under her pretty nose.

From time to time Philippa came around to where
Warner stood before his canvas, and remained beside
him in silence while he studied what he had done.

Once he looked up questioningly; the girl took
possession of his right arm with both of hers and rested
her cheek lightly against his shoulder.  No words could
have praised or reassured him as eloquently.  And he
understood that what he had done was, to her, worthy
of all she believed him to be—matchless, wonderful, and
hers.

The light had failed a little in the early August sky,
but the clouds had cleared and the sun glittered in
the west.  There was light to work by, yet.

He clothed his canvas in a mystery of cobweb
shadow: behind her there was a dull gleam of duller
tapestry; delicate half-lights made the picture vague,
so that the "clean flame" of her seemed the source of
all light, its origin, making exquisite the clear, young
eyes.

He knew that what he had painted was already a fit
companion to be placed among the matchless company
looking down on them from the walls through a delicate
bloom of dust.

What he had done belonged here, as she herself belonged
here between these old-time walls and the ancient
roof above.  And every corridor, every room, every
terrace, would be the sweeter, the fresher, for her
lingering before she passed on her life's journey through
an old and worn-out world.

"Philippa passes," he said, thinking aloud.

She looked up, smiled.

"Only where you lead her, shall Philippa pass," she
murmured.

"It is to be the title of your portrait....  Would
you care to look at it now?  There is not so much
more to do to it, I think...."

She came around and stood silently beside him.

"Is it you?" he asked.

"My other self....  I had not supposed you knew
her—so deeply—so intimately—more intimately than
I myself seem to know her."

He laughed gently.

"Heart of a child," he said, half to himself.

"Heart of a man," she answered.  "What have I
done to deserve you?  How can you be so patient with
me? ... You, a man already grown, distinguished,
ripe with wisdom....  I don't know why you should
annoy yourself with me....  It is too wonderful—why
you should be my friend—my friend——"

"There is something far more wonderful, Philippa—that
you should be my friend.  Didn't you know it?"

She laughed.

"I wonder if you know what I would do for you?
There is nothing you could ask of me that I would
not do——"

She ceased, her voice threatening unsteadiness, but
her eyes were clear and she was smiling.

"Words are idle things," she added calmly, "and
not necessary, I think, between you and me....  Only,
sometimes I feel—a need of telling you—of my
devotion....  There have been lonely years—friendless—and
a heart sickens under eternal silence—needing an
opportunity for self-expression——"

"I know, dear."

"I know you do....  You are very kind to me."

"Philippa, I care more for you than I do for any
living person!"

The lovely surprise in her face flushed her to her
hair.  She looked at him out of confused, incredulous
eyes, strove to smile, caught her trembling lip between
her teeth.

"Didn't you know it?" he said in a low voice.

She tried to answer, turned sharply and faced the
windows with blurred eyes that saw only a glimmering
sheet of light there.

He stood motionless, looking at her, intent upon
the sudden confusion in his own brain, realizing it,
trying to explain it, analyze it coolly, calmly account
for it.

If it were any emotion resembling love which was
so utterly possessing him, he chose to know it, to
inform himself as to the real significance of this loss
of logical equilibrium, this mental inadequacy which
began to resemble a sort of chaos.

Was he in love with this girl?  Was it love?  Was
this what it all had meant—all, from the very
beginning, through all its coincidences, accidents,
successive steps and stages?

And suddenly a terrible timidity seized him.
Suppose she knew what he was thinking about!  What
would she think?  What would she do?  Where would
her confidence go?  What would become of her trust
in him?  What would happen to her implicit faith in him?

Of one thing he was suddenly and absolutely certain;
love had never entered her mind, never lodged
in her heart, never troubled that candid gaze, never
altered her fearless smile.  With all her devotion to
him, all her passionate attachment of a child, never
had anything as deep—never had any emotion as
profound as love disturbed the mystery of depths where
dwelt in virginal immaturity the soul of her, "clean
as a flame—"

As for himself—where he now stood—whither he was
being led by something which was not reason, not
intention, he did not seem able to understand.

The light in the room had become too uncertain
to paint by; he released his canvas and carried it
away behind a tapestry, setting it slanting, face to
the stone wall.

The brushes, mediums, palette, he left on the palette
table and pushed it into a corner behind a sofa, where
nobody was likely to fall over it before he gave brushes
and palette to Asticot to clean.

All the while Philippa stood looking out of the
window over the tree tops, her young heart and brain
on fire with happiness and throbbing with the wonder
of her first innocent passion.

With it, for the first time, had come something she
never before had known with Warner—something
indefinite, new, inexplicable—a vague sense of shyness
almost painful at instants—a consciousness of herself
that she had never known—a subtle, instinctive realization
of her own maturity which left a faintly delicious
sensation in her breast.

Now, for the first time since she had known him, her
instinct was not to go to him, not to face him.  She
did not understand why—did not question herself.
From the window she looked out over the forest; she
heard him moving quietly about behind her; listened
with an odd content in his proximity, but with no
desire to turn and join him—no wish to move or stir
from the spell which held her there in the enchanted
silence of a happiness so wonderful that sky and earth
seemed to understand and share it with her.

"Philippa?"

She turned slowly as in a dream.

It was perhaps as well that he had a record on canvas
of what she had been—of the young girl he had been
painting in all her lovely immaturity.  Perhaps the
girl who faced him now from the window was even lovelier,
but she was not the Philippa of "Philippa Passes."

Truly that Philippa had passed, vanished silently
even as she had stood there with her eyes on the
window; faded, dissolved into thin shadow, leaving, where
she had stood, this slender, silent, deep-eyed girl
looking at him out of the new and subtle mystery which
enveloped her.

He thought that it was he himself who saw her
differently and with new eyes; but she herself had
changed.  And, for the first time, as they passed slowly
toward the terrace together, he was conscious of a
freshness that seemed to cling to her like a fragrance—and
of the beauty of her as she moved beside him,
not touching him, keeping clear of contact, her head
a trifle bent.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXIII

.. vspace:: 2

Warner, dressing for dinner, stood looking
down from his window at the Saïs road.  Halkett,
in his smart but sober field uniform, sat
sideways on the window sill, chatting with his friend and
surveying the lively panorama below, where, through the
fading light, endless columns of motor lorries rolled
ponderously eastward.

In every direction bicycle and motor cycle messengers
were speeding, north and south on the Saïs road,
west toward Dreslin by the mill, eastward over
cow-paths and sheepwalks, and across the pontoons, or by
the school highway and quarry bridge, southeast
toward a road crowded with motor lorries, and through
that gap in the foothills which narrows into the Pass
of the Falcons.

Warner, leisurely buttoning his waistcoat, stood
looking out of the window at the scenes passing under the
plateau, and listening with the greatest interest to
Halkett's comments on these preliminaries for a
campaign about to open.

"Then, in your opinion, it is invasion?" he said.

Halkett nodded:

"I can make nothing else of this movement, Warner.
Our General, Pau, is at Nancy.  What you see down
there is part of a perfectly complete and coherent
army, and it is certainly moving on the Vosges passes.

"Metz, Strassburg, Colmar, lie beyond; our alpinists
are swarming around the Donon.  Under it lie the
lowlands of Alsace and Lorraine.

"Already we have seized the pass of Saales; Thann
and Danemarie are menaced; the valley of the Bruche
lies before us, Saarburg and the railroad to Metz
invite us.

"Does it not all seem very logical, Warner?"

"It sounds so."

"It is good strategy.  The logic is sound logic.  If
we carry it through, it will be applauded as brilliant
strategy.

"The Germans want a decisive battle on French soil
in the vicinity of Rheims.  If they beat us there, they
pivot on Verdun, half-circle on the Oise, and Paris lies
before them.  They have today a million men within
striking distance of the French frontier."

"Are we fully mobilized?"

"Our concentration is slower; we are massing
between Bar-le-Duc and Epinal.  We have, so far, only
seven *corps d'armée* concentrated, and twenty-one more
on the march.  But do you know what we have done
already?

"Listen; this isn't generally known yet, but we have
taken the passes of Bonhomme and Sainte Marie; *we
have taken Mülhausen*——"

"*What!*"

"Yes, it's ours.  More than that, we have entered
Dinant.  At Mangiennes, Moncel, Lagarde, we drove
the Germans.  Our line of battle stretches two hundred
miles from a point opposite Tongres to Nancy.  We
smashed the Germans at Altkirch and left them minus
thirty thousand men!

"And this great counter-offensive which our General
is planning is already exercising such a pressure on
their advance toward Brussels that they have begun
to detach entire army corps and send them post haste
into Alsace.  What do you think of that, Warner?"

"Fine!" exclaimed the American.  "It's simply splendid,
Halkett.  You see, we here in the valley couldn't
know anything about it.  All we had to go by was
that the German guns were booming nearer and nearer,
that Ausone is in ruins, that Uhlans were riding the
country as impudently as though they were patrolling
their own fatherland.  I tell you, old chap, it's a
wonderful relief to me to hear from you what is really
going on."

He turned to his mirror, lighted a cigarette, and
began to fuss with his tie.

Halkett said, grimly amused:

"Oh, yes, we all ought to feel immensely relieved
by capturing a mountain and a couple of unfortified
German towns, even if there are today in Europe seventeen
million men under arms and seventeen million more
in reserve, all preparing to blow each other's heads off."

Warner came back slowly to the windows:

"It *is* a ghastly situation, Halkett.  The magnitude
of the cataclysm means nothing to us, so far.  Nobody
yet has comprehended it.  I don't think anybody
ever really can—even when it's over and the whole
continent is underplowcd and fertilized with dead men
from the Channel to the Carpathians—no single mind
of the twentieth century is ever going to be able to
grasp this universal horror in all its details.  In a
hundred years, perhaps——"  He shrugged, threw
away his cigarette, and picked up his evening coat
to inspect it before decorating his person with it.

Halkett said:

The scale of the whole business is paralyzing.
Here's a single detail, for example: Germany is in
process of launching six huge armies into France.  The
Crown Prince, the Grand Duke of Württemberg,
Generals von Kluck, von Bülow, von Hausen, and von
Heeringen command them.

"Three of them have not yet moved; three are on
their juggernaut way already—the Army of the Meuse,
based at Cologne, is marching through Belgium on a
front thirty miles wide, its right flank brushing the
Dutch border at Visé, its left on Stavelot, its center
enveloping the Liége railroad.

"The Moselle army, based on Coblenz, has made a
highway of the Grand Duchy and is in Belgium.  The
Rhine army has its bases at Strassburg and Mayence,
and started very gayly to raise the devil on its own
account, but we've stung it in the flank already and
it's squirming in uncertainty.

"And that is the situation so far, old chap, as well
as I can understand it.  And I understand it fairly
well because of my position with this French army.
You don't quite understand how I happen to be here
and what I am doing, do you?"

"Not exactly.  I know you have a Bristol aëroplane
here and that you are attached to the British Flying
Corps."

"Oh, yes.  In our service I am squadron commander,
and Gray is wing commander.  But I have a
flight-lieutenant yonder at the sheds and a mechanic.

"As a matter of fact, Warner, I am the British
Official Observer with General Pau's army, and Gray,
when he can get about, is to act with me.  That is
what I am doing."

"You make no flights?"

"Oh, yes, we shall fly, Gray and I—not doing any
range finding for the artillery and not making ordinary
raids with bombs.  Observation is to be our rôle.  It's
interesting, isn't it?"

"It's fascinating," said Warner, linking his arm in
Halkett's as they left the room.

"As a matter of fact," he added, "in spite of the
horrors in Belgium, the slaughter there and in Alsace,
this war has not really begun."

Halkett turned a drawn and very grave face to him:

"Warner," he said, "this war will not really begin
until next spring.  And there will be a million dead
men under ground by that time."


Dinner that evening at the Château des Oiseaux was
a most cheerful function.  The passing of an army for
miles and miles through the country around them was
a relief and a reassurance which brought with it a
reaction of gayety slightly feverish at moments.

The Countess de Moidrey gave her arm to Gray, tall,
slim, yellow-haired, and most romantically pale:
Captain the Vicomte d'Aurès took out Peggy Brooks—they
turned to each other with the same impulse, as
naturally as two children coming together—and the
words designating them to other partners remained
unspoken on Ethra's lips.

Philippa, in an enchanting gown of turquoise, looked
up at the Countess, flushed and expectant, but the
elder woman, much amused, designated Halkett, and
the girl took the arm he offered with a faint smile
at Warner, as though to reassure him concerning
matters temporarily beyond her own control.

The Countess saw it, stood watching Warner, who
had drawn Sister Eila's arm through his own, and
was taking her out—saw Halkett and Philippa halt
and draw aside to let them pass; saw the expression
in Sister Eila's face as her glance met Halkett's,
wavered, and passed elsewhere.

Before she and Gray had moved to close the double
file, the Curé of Dreslin was unexpectedly announced,
and she turned to receive him, asking him to support
Gray on the other side.  Always Father Chalus was
a welcome guest at the Château; every house, humble
or great, from Dreslin to Saïs, was honored when this
dim-eyed old priest set foot across the threshold.

The dinner was lively, gay at times, and always
cheerful with the excitement lent by the arrival of
the army—an arrival verging closely on the dramatic,
with the echoes of the cannonade still heavy among
the northern forests, the evening sky still ruddy above
Ausone, and the August air tainted with the odor of
burning.

Through the soft candlelight servants moved
silently; the Countess, with the old Curé on her right,
devoted herself to him and to Gray.

As though utterly alone in the center of some vast
solitude peopled only by themselves, young D'Aurès
and Peggy Brooks remained conspicuously absorbed in
each other and equally oblivious to everything and
everybody else on earth.

"How is Ariadne?" inquired Halkett of Philippa,

"Poor dear!  I have not seen her since she soiled a
whisker in Jim's ultramarine!"

Sister Eila's lowered eyes were lifted; she tried to
smile at Halkett.

"I saw Ariadne the other day," she said.  "The cat
is quite comfortable in the garden of the Golden
Peach."

Halkett said lightly:

"Ariadne introduced me to Sister Eila.  Do you
remember, Sister?"

But Sister Eila had already turned to Warner, and
perhaps she did not hear.

Later Warner bent toward Philippa:

"You are enchanting in that filmy turquoise blue
affair."

"Isn't it a darling?  Peggy *would* make me wear
it.  It's hers, of course....  Do I please you?"

"Did you ever do anything else, Philippa?"

She colored, looked up at him confused, and
laughed:

"Oh, yes," she said, "I have annoyed you too,
sometimes.  Do you remember when I ran away from Ausone
and told you about it in the meadow by the river?
Oh, you were very much annoyed!  You need not deny
it.  I realize now how much annoyed you must have
been——"

"Thank God you did what you did," he said under
his breath.

"What else could I do?"

"Nothing....  I must have been blind, there in
Ausone, not to understand you from the first moment.
And I must have been crazy to have gone away and
left you there....  When I think of it, it makes
me actually ill——"

"Jim!  You didn't know."

"I should have known.  Any blockhead ought to have
understood.  That was the time I should have heard
the knocking of opportunity!  I was deaf.  That
was the time I should have caught a glimpse of that
clean flame burning.  I seemed to know it was
there—words are cheap!—but my eyes were too dull to
perceive a glimmer from it!"

"Jim!  You saw a girl with painted lips and cheeks
insulting the sunlight.  How could you divine——"

"I couldn't; I didn't.  I was not keen enough, not
fine enough.  Yet, that was the opportunity.  That
was the moment when I should have comprehended
you—when I should have stood by you—taken you,
held you against everybody, everything——  Good
God!  I went away, smug as any Pharisee, and with
a self-satisfied smile left you on the edge of
hell—smiling back at me out of those grey, undaunted
eyes——"

"Please!  You were wonderful every minute from
the beginning—every minute—all through it, Jim——"

"*You* were!  I know what I was.  Halkett knows,
too.  I was not up to the opportunity; I did not
measure up to the chance that was offered me; I was not
broad enough, fine enough——"

"What are you saying!—When you know how I
feel—how I regard you——"

"How can you regard me the way you say you do?"

"How can I help it?"  She looked down at her glass,
touched the slender stem absently.

"Out of all the world," she said under her breath,
"you alone held out a comrade's hand.  Does anything
else matter? ... Think!  You are forgetting.
Remember!  Picture me where I was—as I was—only
yesterday!  Look at me now—here, beside you.—here
under this roof, among these people—and the taste
of their salt still keen in my mouth!  Now, do you
understand what you have done for me—you alone?
Now, do you understand what I—feel—for you?—For
you who mean not only life to me, but who have made
possible for me that life which follows death?"

Her cheeks flushed; she turned breathlessly toward him.

"I tell you," she whispered, "you have offered me
Christ, as surely as He has ever been offered at any
communion since the Last Supper! ... *That* is what
you have done for me!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXIV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXIV

.. vspace:: 2

Dinner was ended.

Gray had retired to his room, persuaded
by Madame de Moidrey, who bribed him by
promising to read to him when he was tired of
talking shop to Captain Halkett.

Sister Eila had returned to the east wing, which
was convenient to her business as well as to her
devotions.

Also, she had need of Father Chalus, who had come
all the way from Dreslin on foot.  For it was included
in the duty of the parish priest to confess both Sister
Eila and Sister Félicité; only the sudden perils and
exigencies of home duties in Dreslin had detained him
since the war broke out.

He was old, lean, deeply worn in the service of the
poor—a white-haired man who looked out on the world
through kindly blue eyes dimmed by threescore years
of smoky candlelight and the fine print of breviaries—a
priest devotedly loved in Dreslin, and by the household
of the Château, and by every inhabitant of the
scattered farms composing the little hamlet called Saïs.

It appeared that Sister Eila had great need of
Father Chalus, for they had gone away together, into
the eastern wing of the house.  And the Countess,
noticing their departure, smiled to herself; for, like
everybody else, she was skeptical regarding the reality
of any sins that Sister Eila might have to confess.

The young Vicomte d'Aurès had taken his leave with
all the unspoiled, unembarrassed, and boyish cordiality
characteristic of his race; also he departed in a state of
mind so perfectly transparent to anybody who cared
to notice it that Madame de Moidrey retired to the
billiard room after his departure, looking very
serious.  She became more serious still when Peggy did
not appear from the southern terrace, whither she had
returned to mention something to Monsieur D'Aurès
which she had apparently forgotten to say to him in
the prolonged ceremony of leavetaking.

When fifteen minutes elapsed and no Peggy appeared,
Madame de Moidrey rose from her chair, flushed and
unsmiling.  But before she had taken a dozen steps
toward the southern terrace her younger sister
reappeared, walking rapidly.  When she caught sight of
the Countess advancing, she halted and gazed at her
sister rather blankly.

"Well, Peggy?"

"Well?"

"I am not criticising you or that boy, but perhaps
a little more reticence—repose of manner—reserve——"

"Ethra," she said in an awed voice, "I am in love
with D'Aurès."

"*What!*"

"I am.  It came."

"Good heavens, Peggy——"

"I know!  I said 'good heavens,' too—I mean I
thought it.  I don't know what I've been saying this
evening——"

"When?  Where?"

"Everywhere.  Just now, on the terrace——"

"Peggy!"

"What?"

"You didn't say anything that could be——"

"Yes, I did.  I think he knows I'm in love with him.
I meant him to know!"

"Peggy!"

"Oh, Ethra, I don't remember what I said....
And I think he cares for me—I think we're in love
with each other——"

The girl dropped into a chair and stared at her
sister.

"I'm bewitched, I think.  Ever since I saw him that
first time it's been so.  I've thought of him all the
time....  He says that it was so with him, also——"'

"Oh, heavens, Peggy!  Are you mad?  Is he?
You're acting like a pair of crazy children——"

"We *are* children.  He's only a boy.  But I know
he's growing into the only man who could ever mean
anything to me....  He's writing to his father now.
I expect his father will write to you.  Isn't it
wonderful!"

Ethra de Moidrey gazed at her sister dizzily.  The
girl sat with her face between her hands looking
steadily at the carpet.  After a moment she glanced up.

"It's the way *you* fell in love," she said under her
breath.

Madame de Moidrey rose abruptly, as though a sudden
shaft of pain had pierced her.  Then, walking over
to her sister, she dropped one hand on her dark head;
stroked the thick, lustrous hair gently, absently; stood
very silent, gazing into space.

When Peggy stood up the Countess encircled her
waist with one arm.  They walked together slowly
toward the southern terrace.

A million stars had come out in the sky; there was
a scent of lilies lingering above the gardens.  Sounds
from distant bivouacs came to their ears; no camp
fires were visible, but the Récollette glittered like snow
in the white glare of searchlights.

"That boy," said Peggy, "—wherever he is riding
out there in the night—out there under the
stars—that boy carries my heart with him....  I always
thought that if it ever came it would come like this....
I thought it would never come....  But it has."

Halkett, returning from a conference with Warner
and Gray, came out on the terrace to take his leave.
They asked him to return when he could; promised
to visit the sheds and see the Bristol biplane.

Part way down the steps he turned and came back,
asked permission to leave his adieux with them for
Sister Eila from whom he had not had an opportunity
to take his leave, turned again and went away into
the night, using his flashlight along the unfamiliar
drive.

Ethra de Moidrey went into the house to keep her
promise to Gray, and found him tired but none the
worse for his participation at dinner.

Philippa and Warner had come in to visit him; the
Countess found the book from which she had been
reading to him since his arrival.  He turned on his
pillow and looked at her, and she seated herself
beside the bed and opened the book on her knees.

"Do you remember where we left off?" she asked,
smiling.

"I think it was where he was beginning to fall in
love with her."

The Countess de Moidrey bent over the book.
There was a slight color in her cheeks.

"I had not noticed that he was falling in love," she
observed, turning the pages to find her place.

Philippa said to Warner:

"Could we walk down and see the searchlights?
They are so wonderful on the water."

"Probably the sentinels won't permit us outside our
own gates," he replied.  "I know one thing; if you
and I were not considered as part of the family of
the Château, the military police would make us clear
out.  It's lucky I left the inn to come up here."

The Countess had begun reading in a low, soft voice,
bending over her book beside the little lamp at the
bedside, where Gray lay watching her under a hand
that shaded his pallid face.

Something in her attitude and his, perhaps—or in
her quiet voice—seemed subtly, to Philippa, to
exclude her and the man with her from a silent entente
too delicate, perhaps, to term an intimacy.

She touched Warner's arm, warily, not taking it
into her possession as had been her unembarrassed
custom only yesterday—even that very day.

Together they went out into the corridor, down the
stairway, and presently discovered Peggy on the
southern terrace gazing very earnestly at the stars.

That the young girl was wrapped, enmeshed, in the
magic of the great web which Fate has been spinning
since time began, they did not know.

Still stargazing, they left her and walked down the
dark drive to the lodge where, through the iron grille,
they saw hussars *en vedette* sitting their horses in the
uncertain luster of the planets.

Overhead the dark foliage had begun to stir and
sigh in the night breeze; now and again a yellowing leaf
fell, rustling slightly; and they thought they could
hear the Récollette among its rushes—the faintest
murmur—but were not sure.

He remembered her song, there in the river meadow:

   |  Hussar en vedette
   |  What do you see?—
   |

And thought of the white shape on the bank—a true
folk song, unfinished in its eerie suggestion which the
imagination of the listeners must always finish.

Yet he said:

"*Was* he killed—that *vedette* on the Récollette,
Philippa?"

She knew what he meant, smiled faintly:

"Does anybody see Death and live to say so?"

"Of course I knew," he said.

They turned back, walking slowly.  He had drawn
her arm through his, but it rested there very lightly,
scarcely in contact at all.

"What a fine fellow Halkett is!" he said.

"Your friends should be fine, Jim.  Our friends
ought to reflect our own qualities and mirror our
aspirations....  That was written in one of my
school-books," she added with that delicate honesty which
characterized her.

"You reflect my aspirations," he said, unsmiling.

"Oh, Jim!  I?  Do you imagine I believe that?"

"You might as well.  It's true enough.  You have
just mirrored for me my hopeless aspiration toward
that perfect and transparent honesty which I haven't
attained, but which seems always to have been a part
of you."

Sister Eila passed them in the starlight, her young
head bent over the rosary in her hands, moving slowly
across the lawn.

Their passing on the drive did not seem to arouse
her from her meditation; she seated herself on a stone
bench under a clump of yews; and they moved on in
silence.

As they reached the terrace a shot sounded down by
the river; another echoed it; the rattle of rifle fire ran
along the valley from, north to south; a rocket rose,
flooding the hill beyond the quarry road with a ghastly
light.

Peggy Brooks, white as death, came over to Philippa
and took her hands into both of hers.

She had begun to learn what love meant, with the
first blind shot in the dark, and all the passion and
fear within her was concentrated in wondering where
those leaden messengers of death had found their
billets.

She said in a ghost of a voice:

"Is there going to be a battle here?"

"Not now," replied Warner.  "Probably it's nothing
at all—some nervous sentry waking up his equally
nervous comrades....  What a horrible light that
rocket shed!"

The shots had died away; there was no more firing.

Vignier had come around; he was an old soldier,
and Warner spoke to him.

"Perhaps a cow," he said with a shrug, "—the wind
in the bushes—a hedgehog rustling.  Young soldiers
are like that in the beginning.  And still, perhaps they
have caught a prowler out there—an Uhlan, maybe,
or a spy.  One never knows what to expect at night."

"Do you think that our valley will see any fighting,
Vignier?"

"Does that not depend, Monsieur, on what is to
happen beyond the Vosges?  They have dug line after
line of trenches across the valley and the plateau as
far as Dreslin.  Those are positions being prepared
in advance, to fall back upon in case of disaster in
the east."

"I thought that was what this trench digging meant."

"That is what it means, Monsieur Warner.  They
tell me that our soldiers are going to operate the
cement works day and night to turn out material for
platforms and emplacements.  I know that they have
gone into our western woods with loads of cement and
crushed stone.  The forest is full of *fantassins* and
*chasseurs-à-pied*.  It is certain that some general will
make our Château his headquarters *en passant*."

He had scarcely spoken when, far away in the
darkness, a noise arose.  It came from the direction
of the lodge gate, grew nearer, approaching by the
drive.

The Countess, reading to Gray, heard it, laid down
her book to listen.  Gray listened too, raising himself
on his pillows.

"Cavalry have entered the grounds," he said quietly.

"I shall have to go down," she said.  At the door
she paused: "Will you remember where we left off,
Captain Gray?"

"I shall remember.  It is where he has completely
fallen in love with her."

The Countess de Moidrey met his calm gaze,
sustained it for a moment, then with a smile and a nod
of adieu she turned and went out into the corridor.
As she descended the stairs she placed both hands
against her cheeks, which burned slightly.

The hall below was already crowded with officers of
somebody's staff; the pale blue tunics of chasseurs and
hussars were conspicuous against the darker dress of
dragoons.  The silver corselet of a colonel of cuirassiers
glittered in the lamplight; twisted gold arabesques
glimmered on crimson caps and sleeves; the ring of
spur and hilt and the clash of accouterments filled the
house.

As the Countess set foot in the hall, a general officer
wearing the cross of the Legion came forward, his red
cap, heavy with gold, in his gloved hand.

"Countess," he said, bending over the hand which
she smilingly extended, "a thousand excuses could not
begin to make amends for our intrusion——"

"General, you honor my roof.  Surely you must
understand the happiness that I experience in reminding
you that the house of De Moidrey belongs to France
and to the humblest and highest of her defenders."

The General, whose clipped mustache and imperial
were snow-white, and whose firm, bronzed features
denied his years, bent again over the pretty hand that
rested on his own.

Then, asking permission to name himself, in turn
he presented the members of his military family.

Included was a thin blond man of middle height, with
a golden mustache twisted up, cinder-blond hair, and
conspicuous ears.  He wore a monocle, and was clothed
in a green uniform.  General of Division Delisle
presented him as Major-General Count Cassilis, the
Russian Military Observer attached to division
headquarters.

For a few moments there was much bending of
tight-waisted tunics in the yellow lamplight, much jingling
of spurs and sabers, compliments spoken and implied
with a gay smile and bow—all the graceful, easy
formality to be expected in such an extemporized
gathering.

Peggy and Philippa appeared, followed by Warner;
presentations were effected; servants arranged chairs
and brought trays set with bottles of light wine and
biscuits, preliminary to an improvised supper which
was now being prepared in the kitchen.

General Raoul Delisle had known Colonel de Moidrey;
he and the Countess formed the center of the
brilliant little assembly where half a dozen officers
surrounded Peggy and Warner.

But the effect of Philippa on the Russian Military
Observer, General Count Cassilis, was curious to
watch.

From the instant he laid eyes on her, he had
continued to look at her; and his inspection would have
had all the insolence of a stare had he not always
averted his gaze when hers moved in his direction.

When he had been named to her, he had bowed
suavely, and with characteristic Russian ceremony and
empressement; but the instant her name was pronounced
the Russian Observer had straightened himself
like a steel rod released from a hidden spring, and
his fishy blue eyes widened so that his monocle had
fallen from its place to swing dangling across the
jeweled decorations on his breast.

And now he had managed to approach Philippa and
slightly separate her from the company, detaining her
in conversation, more suave, more amiably correct than
ever.

Already in her inexperience with a world where such
men are to be expected, the girl found herself vaguely
embarrassed, subtly on the defensive—a defensive
against something occult which somehow or other
seemed to menace her privacy and seemed to be meddling
with the natural reticence with which, instinctively,
she protected herself from any explanation of
her past life.

Not that Count Cassilis had presumed to ask any
direct question; she was not even aware of any hint
or innuendo; yet she was constantly finding herself
confronted with a slight difficulty in responding to his
gay, polite, and apparently impersonal remarks.
Somehow, everything he said seemed to involve some
reference on her part to a past which now concerned
nobody excepting herself and the loyal friends who
comprehended it.

And, from the beginning, from the first moment
when this man was presented to her, and she had looked
up with a smile to acknowledge the introduction, she
experienced an indefinite sensation of meeting
somebody whom she had seen somewhere years
before—years and years ago.

As he conversed with her, standing there by the
table with the lighted lamp partly concealed by his
gold-slashed shoulder, the vague impression of something
familiar but long forgotten came at moments, faded,
returned, only to disappear again.

And once, a far, pale flicker of memory played an
odd trick on her, for suddenly she seemed to remember
a pair of thin, conspicuous ears like his, and
lamplight—or perhaps sunlight—shining behind them and
turning them a translucent red.  It came and vanished
like the faint memory of a dream dreamed years and
years ago.  As she looked at Count Cassilis, the smile
died out in her eyes and on her lips, and the slightest
feeling of discomfort invaded her.

Toasts were offered, acknowledged, compliments said,
glasses emptied.

The General of Division Delisle spoke diffidently of
quarters for himself and his military family, and was
cordially reassured by the Countess.

There was plenty of room for all.  It was evident,
too, that they had ridden far and must be hungry.
Servants were summoned, rooms in the east wing
thrown open to the air; the kitchen stirred up to
increased activity for the emergency; the officers piloted
to the rooms assigned them.

Down on the drive a shadowy escort of hussars
waited until an orderly appeared, shining, with his
breast torch, the path to the stables.

Then three sky-guns jolted up out of the darkness
and halted; a company of infantry tramped by toward
the garage; the horses of the staff were led away
by mounted gendarmes; and three big military touring
cars, their hoods and glass windows grey with dust,
began to purr and pant and crawl slowly after the
infantry.

Everywhere sentries were being set, taking post on
every terrace, every path and road, and before the
doorways of the great house.

A single candle burned in the chapel.  Beside it sat
Sister Eila, intent on her breviary, her lips moving
silently as she bent above it.

The fifth part of the breviary, Matins, Lauds,
and the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin, absorbed
her.

The whole of the breviary services, the duty of
publicly joining or of privately reading aloud so as to
utter with the lips every word, is generally
incumbent upon all members of religious orders.

But Sisters of Charity, forming as they do an *active*
religious order, are excepted.

Nevertheless, they are always bound to some shorter
substitute, such as the Little Office, or to some similar
office.  And though the hours for devotion are
prescribed, the duties of mercy sometimes interrupt the
schedule which must then be carried out as circumstances
of necessity permit.

Philippa, entering the chapel, caught sight of Sister
Eila, and knelt without disturbing her.

The girl had experienced an odd, unaccustomed, and
suddenly imperative desire for the stillness of an altar,
for its shelter; for that silent security that reigns
beneath the crucifix and invites the meditation of the pure
in heart.

How long she had been seated there in the shadows
she did not know, but presently she became aware of
Sister Eila beside her, resting against her as though
fatigued.

The girl put her arm around Sister Eila's neck
instinctively, and drew the drooping head against her
shoulder.

They had not known each other well.

That was the beginning.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXV

.. vspace:: 2

The growling and muttering of German guns in
the north and northeast awoke Warner in his bed.

Sunrise plated his walls and ceiling with gold; the
morning air hummed with indefinite sounds and
rumors, the confusion and movement of many people
stirring.

He stood for a moment by his window looking down
over the plateau and across the valley of the
Récollette.

Everywhere cavalry, infantry, artillery, baggage
trains, automobiles, bicycles, motor cycles were moving
slowly eastward into the blazing eye of the rising
sun and vanishing within its blinding glory.

Two French aëroplanes had taken the air.  They
came soaring over the valley from the plateau, filling
the air with the high clatter of their machinery; pale
green ribbons of smoke fell from them, uncoiling like
thin strips of silk against the sky; flag signals were
being exchanged between officers gathered on the
terrace below and a group of soldiers at the head of the
nearest pontoon across the river.

Poles supporting field telephone and telegraph wires
stretched across the lawn, running south toward the
lodge gate.  Another line ran east, another west.

Parked on the lawn were a dozen big automobiles, the
chauffeurs at the wheels, the engines running.  Behind
these, soldier cyclists and motor cyclists sat
cross-legged by their machines, exchanging gossip with a
squadron of hussars drawn up on the other side of
the drive.

There were no tents visible anywhere, but everywhere
in the open soldiers were erecting odd-looking
skeleton shelters and covering them with freshly cut
green boughs from the woods.  Under one of these
an automobile was already standing, and under others
hussars stood to horse.

Across the rolling country, stretching over valley
and plateau, the face of the green and golden earth
was striped, as though some giant plow had turned
furrows at random here and there, some widely separated
from the rest, others parallel and within a few
yards of one another.  A few dark figures appeared
along these furrows of raw earth, moved about,
disappeared.  It was evident that the trenches of these
prepared positions were still in process of construction,
for carts were being driven to and from them
and men were visible working near some of them.

Warner had completed his toilet when a maid
brought café-au-lait.  He ate, listening to the grumble
of the northern cannonade and watching the movement
of the columns along dry roads, where unbroken walls
of dust marked every route, seen or unseen, across the
vast green panorama.

He had finished breakfast and was lighting a cigarette
in preparation for descending to the terrace, when
the noise of an altercation arose directly under his
window; and, looking out, he beheld Asticot in
dispute with the sentry stationed there, loudly
insisting that he was a servant of the establishment, and
demanding free entry with every symptom of virtuous
indignation.

He was a sight; his face and hands were smeared
with black—charcoal, it looked like—his clothes were
muddy and full of briers, his beloved lovelocks, no
longer plastered in demicurls over each cheekbone,
dangled dankly beside his large, wide ears.

Over his shoulder he carried a sack, and to this he
clung while he flourished his free hand in voluble and
impassioned argument.

Warner spoke sharply from the window above:

"Asticot!"

The disheveled one looked up with a joyous exclamation
of recognition; the sentry also looked up.

"He's my servant," said Warner quietly.  "Asticot!
What do you want?"

"M'sieu' Warner, I have something for you and for
Mademoiselle Philippa——"

"Very well.  Go to the harness room; make something
approaching a toilet, put on the clean suit I
gave you, and report to me."

"'Fait, M'sieu'!"

The sentry scowled after him as he departed, and
Asticot pulled a hideous face at him and thrust his
tongue into his cheek in derision.

Warner, immensely amused, reassured the soldier on
guard, folded his arms and leaned on the sill to watch
the interminable columns of motor lorries moving
through the valley.

The scenes everywhere were so intensely interesting
that he had not had enough of them when Asticot
reappeared, cleansed, reclothed, his hair sleekly
plastered, still lugging his sack and looking at the
sentinel with the sad air of outraged innocence bestowing
forgiveness.

"Let him pass, please," said Warner from the window.
After a few moments a disgusted maid knocked,
requesting enlightenment concerning "an individual
pretending to be a servant of Monsieur Warner."

"It's true, Babette," he said, laughing.  "Show him
up, if you please."

Asticot entered, cap in hand, bowed, scraped the
carpet with a propitiating and crablike shuffle of his
right foot, and set the sack upon the floor.

There always had been something about the young
ruffian which inclined Warner to mirth.  He waited a
moment to control the amusement which twitched at
his lips, then:

"Well, Asticot, where have you been and what is
in this bundle?"

"M'sieu'—may I close the door?  I thank M'sieu'....
One cannot be too careful about being overheard
in these miserable days of martial law."

"What?  Have you been doing something you are
ashamed of?"

"No; nothing that I am ashamed of," replied Asticot
naïvely.  "I have been to Ausone."

"To Ausone!"

"M'sieu', figurez-vous!—It occurred to me last
evening—*tiens!* there ought to be a few odds and ends to
pick up in Ausone—a few miserable *chiffons* which
nobody wants—little fragments of no value, you
understand—what with the bombardment and all those ruined
houses——"

"You went *looting*!"

"M'sieu'!" he said in pained surprise.  "It was
nothing like *that*!  No!  I said to myself, '*Tenez, mon
vieux*, to rake over a pile of rubbish is no crime in
Paris.  On peut ramasser des bouts d'cigares comme
ça.  Eh, bien, quoi?'  I said to myself, 'Asticot, en
route!'

"So I borrowed a boat——"

"Borrowed?  From whom?"

"I could not find any owner, M'sieu'.  So, as I
say, I offered myself a boat, and I took the fishing
pole which was in it, and I rowed boldly up the river.

"I suppose, seeing the fishing pole, nobody stopped
me.  Besides, there were a few freshly caught fish in
the boat.  These I held up, offering to sell to the
soldiers I saw—a precaution, M'sieu', which rendered my
voyage very easy."

"It's a wonder you did not get yourself shot!"

"It was dark enough after a while.  And there are
no troops beyond the second mill; and no vedettes
disturbed me.

"At the Impasse d'Alcyon I tied my boat.  The alley
and the square were full of the poor people of Ausone,
returning to look among the ruins for what had been
their homes.  Me, I said I was looking for mine,
also——"

Warner said:

"That is villainous, Asticot; do you know it?"

"M'sieu'!  I journeyed there only for what was
rightfully mine!"

"Yours!  What do you mean?"

"*Tenez*, M'sieu'; that wicked traitor, Wildresse,
employed me, did he not?  Bon!  Would you believe
it—never yet has he paid me what he owes me!  M'sieu',
such trickery, such ingratitude is nauseating!  Besides,
now that I know he has sold France, I would not
touch his filthy money.  No!"

He scowled thoughtfully at space, shrugged, continued:

"The question nevertheless remained: *how* was I to
reimburse myself?  Tiens!  An idea!  I remembered
that in the cellar of that cabaret my friend, Squelette,
and I had discovered a safe.

"That very night, after M'sieu' had escaped us,
taking with him M'amzelle Philippa, Squelette and I we
drilled into that safe——"

"What!"

Asticot shrugged:

"Que voulez-vous!  C'est la vie!  Also, M'sieu' should
trouble himself to recollect that I had not become
honest and God-fearing under the merciless blows of
M'sieu'.  I was still full of evil in those days,
alas! not yet sufficiently remote——"

"Go on," said Warner, controlling his laughter.

"M'sieu', we got the safe door open, Squelette and I,
but found no opportunity to rummage.  Then we were
sent here, M'sieu' knows the rest—the bombardment
and all....  So last night I went back to the
cabaret—or what remains of it—four walls and a heap of
brick.  The fire was out.  The cabaret was ruined,
but the café had not been destroyed.

"And now, M'sieu', comes a real vein of luck.  And
what do you suppose!  Face to face in the dark I came
upon a pioupiou on guard as I crawl through the café
door.

"And I thought his bayonet was in my bowels,
M'sieu', when he turned his breast torch on me.  One
makes short work of looters—not that I can rightly
be called that.  No!  But still I thought: 'Dieu!  Je
claque!  C'est fini!'  When, 'Tiens!' exclaims my
soldier.  'C'est mon vieux co'pain!  What dost thou do
here, Asticot, smelling around these ruins?'

"M'sieu', I look, I expel a cry of joy, I embrace a
friend!  It is One Eye—my comrade in the Battalion of
Biribi!  I am within the lines of a Battalion of Africa!"

He licked his lips furtively, and leered at Warner.

"*Voyez-vous*, M'sieu', when old friends meet an
affair is quickly arranged.  I file away at full speed;
I gain the cellar, I flash the safe, I pull some old sacks
under me and sit down at my leisure.  It was most
comfortable.

"Can M'sieu' see the tableau?  Me, Asticot, seated
before the open safe of Wildresse, who has wronged
me and my country, leisurely revenging myself by
knocking off the necks of his wine bottles and
refreshing myself while I examine the contents of the
traitor's safe!"

He smirked, doubtless picturing to himself his recent
exploit, with himself, Asticot, as the heroic center of
a deed which evidently gave him exquisite satisfaction.

He reached for the sack on the floor, squatted down
on the rug in front of Warner's chair, untied the sack,
and drew from it bundle after bundle of papers.

"His!" he remarked.  "All private.  I think, M'sieu',
that a few of these will do away with any necessity for
ceremony when we catch Wildresse."

He passed the packages of papers to Warner, who
laid them on the table, looking very serious.

What Asticot did not extract from the sack he had
already removed and hidden in the straw under his
blanket in the harness room—a bag of Russian gold
coins and a bag of French silver money.

Now, however, he produced a pillowcase.  There
were old, rusty stains on it, and in the corner of it
a heraldic device embroidered.

Asticot deftly untied it and dumped out of it upon
the floor a strange assortment of things—toys, and
picture books in French, articles of clothing, ribbons,
tiny slippers, the crumpled frocks and stockings of
a little girl, and fragments of a little cloak of blue silk
edged with swansdown, and a little hat to match.

"What in the world——" began Warner, when
Asticot opened one of the picture books and silently
displayed the name written there—"Philippa."

"M'sieu', because you are fond of M'amzelle, when
I discovered her name in these books I brought everything
as I found it—tied up in this pillowcase—toys,
clothing, all, just as I discovered it in the safe—thinking
perhaps to please M'sieu', who is so kind to me——"

"You did right!  What are those things—photographs?
Give them to me——"

"M'sieu', they are the pictures of a little child.  To
me they resemble M'amzelle Philippa."

Warner examined the half-dozen photographs in
amazement.  They were more or less faded, not
sufficiently to prevent his recognizing in them the child
that Philippa had once been.  He was absolutely
certain that these photographs represented Philippa
somewhere between the ages of five and seven.

One by one he studied them, then turned them over.
On every one was written "Philippa," and the age,
"four," "five," "six," on the several pictures.  All were
written in the same flowing feminine handwriting.  The
name of the photographer was the same on every
picture, except on that one where the age "six" was
written.  That photograph had been taken in the city of
Sofia in Bulgaria.  The others bore the name of a
photographer in the French city of Tours.

Asticot, squatting on the floor cross-legged, watched
him in silence.

Finally Warner said:

"Thank you, Asticot.  You have behaved with
intelligence.  I double your wages."

"M'sieu' is contented with his Asticot, grateful and
devoted?"

"Indeed, I am!"

"Will M'sieu' permit me to go now?"

"Certainly.  Do they feed and lodge you properly at
the inn?"

Asticot murmured that it was heavenly, and hastily
took his departure, burning with anxiety concerning
the safety of the treasure he had concealed under the
straw and blanket in the harness room.

As for Warner, he was intensely interested, excited,
and perplexed.  Here, apparently, in this old, stained
pillowcase which Asticot had found in the private
safe of Wildresse, were the first clews to Philippa's
identity that anybody, excepting Wildresse, had ever
heard of.

These photographs were without doubt photographs
of Philippa as a child, two taken in Tours, one in
Sofia.

And the girl's name was Philippa, too——

Suddenly it occurred to him that, according to
Wildresse, Philippa had been left at his door as a Paris
foundling—as an infant only a few weeks old.  So
Wildresse himself might have named her.  Perhaps his
wife had written Philippa's name on these pictures.
And yet—how had Philippa come to be in the Bulgarian
city of Sofia?  Was it possible that Wildresse
could ever have taken the child there?

He looked down at the toys, at the clothing.  Had
they belonged to Philippa as a child?

Between his room and Gray's there was a pretty
sitting room.  He put everything back into the pillowcase,
went out into the corridor, found the sitting room
door open and the room full of sunlight.

A maid, who sat sewing in the corridor, went to
Philippa's room with a request from Warner that she
dress and come to the sitting room.

Warner emptied the pillowcase on the center table,
then, folding it, gave it to the maid, who returned
to say that Philippa was dressed and would come
immediately.

"Take this pillowcase to Madame la Comtesse," he
explained.  "Say to Madame that there is a device
embroidered on the case, and that I should be
infinitely obliged if Madame la Comtesse would be kind
enough to search for a similar device among such
volumes on the subject as she possesses."

The maid went away with the pillowcase, and a moment
later Philippa appeared, fresh, dainty, smiling,
an enchanting incarnation of youth and loveliness in
her thin, white morning frock.

She offered her hand and withdrew it immediately,
as though this slight, new shyness of hers in his
presence forbade that contact with him which, before that
day when he painted her, had never seemed to embarrass her.

He ushered her silently into the little sitting room;
she went forward and stopped by the center table,
looking down curiously at the motley heap of toys
and clothing which covered it.

He watched her intently as she turned over one
object after another.  Presently she glanced around at
him interrogatively.

"Examine them," he said.

"What are they?"

"You see—a child's toys and clothing.  Pick up that
broken doll and look it over carefully."

She lifted the battered French doll, examined it as
though perplexed, laid it aside, picked up a Polichinelle,
laid that aside, looked at a woolly dog, a cloth cat, a
wooden soldier in French uniform with scarlet cap
askew and one arm missing.

"Well?" he asked.

"I don't understand, Jim."

"I know.  Is there among these things any object
which seems at all familiar to you?"

"No."

"Nothing that seems to stir in you any memory?"

She shook her head smilingly, turned over the heap
of garments, shifting them to one side or the other,
caught a glimpse of the little cloak of pale blue silk and
swansdown, lifted it curiously.

"How odd," she said; "I have——"  She hesitated,
looked intently at the faded silk, passed one slim hand
over the swansdown, stood with brows bent slightly
inward as though searching in her mind, deeply, for
something which eluded her.

Warner did not speak or stir; presently she turned
toward him, perplexed, still searching in her memory.

"It's odd," she said, "that I seem to remember a
cloak like this....  Or perhaps as a very little child
I dreamed about such a pretty cloak....  It was long
ago....  Where did you get it, Jim?"

"Do you seem to remember it?"

"Somehow, I seem to."

"Is there anything else there which appears at all
familiar to you?"

She sorted over the toys and garments, shook her
head, picked up a picture book and stood idly
turning the pages——

And suddenly uttered a little cry.

Instantly he was beside her; the page lay open at a
golden scene where the Sleeping Beauty had just awakened,
and the glittering Prince had fallen on one knee
beside her couch.

"Jim!  I—I remember that!  It was all gold—all—all
golden—everything—her hair and his—and the
couch and her gown and his clothes—all gold,
everything golden!

"I *know* that picture.  Where in the world did you
find it?  I was a child—they showed it to me; I
always asked for it——"  She looked up at him, bewildered.

"Turn the pages!" he said.

She turned; another soft little cry escaped her; she
recognized the picture, and the next one also, and the
next, and every succeeding one, excitedly calling his
attention to details which had impressed her as a child.

Of the other books she seemed to retain no recollection;
remembered none of the toys, nothing of the clothing
except the faded silken cloak with its border of
swansdown.  But this book she remembered vividly; and
when he showed her her name written in it she grew a
little pale with surprise and excitement.

Then, seated there on the table's edge beside her,
he told her what Asticot had told him and showed
her the photographs.

She seemed a little dazed at first, but, as he
continued, the color returned to her cheeks and the
excitement died out in her grey eyes.

"I cannot remember these events," she said very
quietly.

"Is it possible he could have taken you to Bulgaria
without your recollecting anything about it?"

"I must have been very, very young."  She sat on
the table's edge, staring at the sunny window for a
while in silence, then, still gazing into space:

"Jim....  I have sometimes imagined that I could
remember something—that I am conscious of having
been somewhere else before my first recollections of
Wildresse begin.  Of course, that is not possible, if
he found me, a baby, at his door——"

"He may have lied."

She turned slowly toward him:

"I wonder."

"I wonder, too."

After a silence she said, speaking with a
deliberation almost colorless:

"Whether they were dreams, I am not quite certain,
now.  Always I have supposed them to have been
dreams—dreamed long ago....  When I was very,
very little....  About a lady with red hair—near
me when I was sleepy....  Also there comes a voice
as though somebody were singing something about
me—my name—Philippa."

"Is that all?"

"I think so....  She had red hair, and her cheeks
were warm and soft....  I was sleepy.  I think she
sang to me....  Something about 'Philippa,' and
'dreamland.' ... The golden picture in that book
makes me think of her voice.  The cloak with the
swans-down reminds me....  Do you think it could have
been a dream?"

"God knows," he muttered, staring at the floor.

After a while he rose, drew a chair to the table,
and Philippa seated herself.  Leaning there on one
elbow, her cheek on her palm, she opened the book
she had remembered and gazed at the golden picture.

Warner watched her for a while, then went quietly
out and along the corridor to the hall that crossed
it.  Madame de Moidrey's maid announced him.

"May I come in a moment, Ethra?"

"Certainly, Jim.  It's all right; I'm in negligée."  And
as he entered: "Where in the world did you find
that soiled old pillowcase?"

"Did you discover the device embroidered on it?"

She pointed to a volume lying on her dressing table:

"Yes.  The arms of Châtillon-Montréal are embroidered
on it.  It's rather a strange thing, too, because
the family is extinct."

"What?"

"Certainly.  As soon as I found out what the device
was, I remembered all about the family.  Sit down
there, if you want to know.  You don't mind Rose
doing my hair?"

"You're as pretty as a picture, Ethra, and you are
perfectly aware of it.  Go on and tell me, please."

"It's a well-known family, Jim—or was.  The early
ones were Crusaders and Templars, I believe.  Their
history ever since has been mixed up with affairs
oriental.

"There was a De Châtillon who had a row with
Saladin, and I think was slain by that redoubtable
Moslem.  The daughter of that De Châtillon married a
paladin of some sort who took her name and her
father's quarterings and added a blue fanion and a
human head to them; also three yaks' tails on a spear
support the arms.  Why, I don't remember.  It's in
that book over there, I suppose.

"Anyway, it seems that some king or other—Saint
Louis, I believe—created the first son of this paladin
and of the daughter of De Châtillon a Prince of
Marmora with the Island of Tenedos as his domain.

"Of course one of the Sultans drove them out.  Fifty
years ago the family was living in Tours, poor as mice,
proud as Lucifer of their Principality of Marmora and
Tenedos—realms which no Châtillon, of course, had
ever been permitted to occupy since the Crusades.

"The family is extinct—some tragedy, I believe,
finished the last of the Châtillons.  I don't remember
when, but it probably is all recorded in that book over
there."

"May I borrow it?"

"Certainly.  But where in the world did that
exceedingly soiled pillowcase come from?"

"Don't have it washed just yet, Ethra.  A man
discovered it in a safe which was the private property
of that scoundrel, Constantine Wildresse.

"When your hair is done, will you please go into
the sitting room on my corridor?  Philippa has
something to show you."

The Countess looked at him curiously as he took his
leave.

"Please hurry with my hair," she said to her maid.





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.. _`CHAPTER XXXVI`:

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   CHAPTER XXXVI

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As Warner returned to his own room, two thoughts
persisted and dominated all others: Philippa's
parents were known to Wildresse; Wildresse
must be found.

Somehow or other he had already taken it for
granted that Philippa's father or mother, or perhaps
both parents, had been engaged in some capacity in
the service of this family called De Châtillon.  There
was no particular reason for him to believe this; her
parents might have been the friends of these people.
But the idea of some business association between the
two families seemed to obsess him—he could not
explain why—and with this idea filling his mind he
entered his room, seated himself by the open window, and
picked up the packages of personal papers belonging
to Wildresse and taken from his safe by Asticot.

There were three packets of documents, each packet
tied separately with pink tape and sealed twice.

Running over the first packet like a pack of cards,
he found that every paper had been endorsed on the
outside and dated, although the dates were not
arranged in proper sequence.

On the first document which he read without
unsealing the packet was written, "Affaire Schnaeble,
1887."  On the next he read, when he parted the
papers, "Affaire de Clermont-Ferrand, 1888."  The next,
however, bore the inscription, "Affaire Panitza" and
bore an earlier date.  Beneath this caption was
written: "Prince Ferdinand and the Oberanovitch Dynasty.
Dossier of Draga.  The Jockey Club and King Milan.
Queen Natalie and her dossier.  The Grand Duke Cyril."

He turned over document after document, all bearing
endorsements, but the majority of the captions
meant nothing to him, such as "Abdul Hamid and
Marmora," "The Greco-Italian Proposition for an
International Gendarmerie," "Ali Pasha, Saïd Pasha, and
the Archives of Tenedos," "The Hohenzollern-Benedetti
Affair."

There seemed to be nothing in this packet to justify
his breaking the seals before he turned over the
documents to the military authorities.

Nor, in the next packet, could he discover anything
among the motley assortment of endorsements which
seemed to justify his forestalling the French
authorities in their examination.

But in the third packet he found that, no matter
what the endorsement might be, under each caption was
written, "The De Châtillon Affair."

This packet he locked in his desk until he should
return; he gathered up the other two, took his cap,
buttoned and belted his Norfolk, and went downstairs.

The man he sought had not yet left the Château;
General Delisle was seated at a table in the music
room looking at a series of big linen maps which had
been hung up on the opposite wall.

A dozen officers were seated in a semicircle around
him; an officer with a pointer stood by the maps as
demonstrator, another sat at a table near by, under
a portable switchboard.  In the little room adjoining
was seated a military telegraph operator.

Through the open French windows cyclist messengers
were constantly mounting and descending the terrace
steps; every few moments motor cycles arrived
and departed; now and then a cavalryman galloped
up in an old-style storm of dust, or a trooper vaulted
into his saddle and departed *ventre à terre*.  The
growling of the cannonade was perfectly audible in the
room.

At first General Delisle did not see Warner, but the
Russian Military Observer did, and he rose and came
quietly over to shake hands and inquire concerning
the health of the ladies.

Several times his big, fish-blue eyes wandered
curiously all over Warner's face and figure, as though
insolently appraising the American and trying to come
to some conclusion concerning the nature of the man
and of the packet of papers which he had stuffed into
the pocket of his Norfolk jacket.

A moment later Delisle caught sight of him, rose
with pleasant courtesy, and extended his hand, asking
after the health of the ladies, and making a similar
inquiry concerning himself.

"General, could I see you for one moment alone?"
said Warner.

The General moved out from the seated circle of
officers, joined Warner, and moved with unhurried step
beside him through the house toward the billiard room.

When they had reached the billiard room, Warner
had told him all he knew concerning Wildresse,
concluding with the appearance of the man escorted by
Uhlans on Vineyard Hill.

Then he drew the papers from his pocket and gave
them to the silent officer, who stood quite motionless,
looking him through and through.

It was evident that General Delisle had no hesitation
about breaking the big, sprawling seals of grey wax;
he ripped both packets open so that the documents fell
all over the scarf covering the billiard table; then,
rapidly, he picked up, opened, scanned, and cast aside
paper after paper.

There was not the slightest change in the expression
of his face when he came to the "Schnaeble-Incident";
he scanned it, laid it aside, and said quietly as he picked
up the next paper:

"That document is sufficient to settle the affair of
this man Wildresse.  If we catch him, ceremony will be
superfluous....  The nearest wall or tree, you
understand—unless he cares to make a statement first....
I always have time to listen to statements.  Only one
out of a hundred proves to be of any value at all,
Mr. Warner, but that one is worth all the time I waste on
the others——"

And all the while he was opening, scanning, and
casting aside document after document.

"Oh, almost any one of these is enough," remarked
the General.  "Here's a villainous center of
ramifications, leading God knows where——"

He checked himself abruptly; a dull color mounted
to his bronzed cheekbones.  Warner glanced at the
caption of the document.  It read: "Dossier of Count
Cassilis and the Battenberg Affair."

The General read it, very slowly, for a few minutes.
He could not have gone much further than the first
paragraph when he folded the paper abruptly, shot
a lightning glance at Warner that dazzled him like
a saber flash; and suddenly smiled.

"This seems to indicate a rather bad business,
Mr. Warner," he said pleasantly.  "I count on your
discretion, of course."

"You may, General."

"I mean even among my entourage.  *Do you understand*?"

"Perfectly."

"Who has any knowledge of these papers excepting
yourself and myself?"

"Nobody but Wildresse, as far as I know."

The General motioned to the sentry who stood guard
by the three sky-guns on the north terrace:

"Colonel Gerould; say to him I am waiting!"

A few moments later the big Colonel of Cuirassiers
came clanking into the billiard room.  General Delisle
handed him the papers, said a few words in a low voice.
As he spoke there was something quietly terrible in
the stare he turned on Colonel Gerould; and the latter
turned visibly white and glared blankly into space as
the General laid his hand on his arm and spoke low
and rapidly into his ear.

The next moment the Cuirassier was gone and General
Delisle had taken Warner's arm with a quiet smile
and was leisurely sauntering back toward the music
room.

"It was very friendly of you, Mr. Warner—may I
add, very sagacious?  But that is like an American.
We French feel very keenly the subtle sympathy of—"
he laughed—"neutral America."

"Are these papers of real importance, General?—Is
it proper of me to ask you such a question?"

"They are of—overwhelmingly vital importance, Mr. Warner."

"What!"

The General halted, looked him pleasantly in the eyes:

"The most vitally important information that I have
ever received during my entire military career," he
said quietly.  "Judge, then, of my gratitude to you.
I cannot express it.  I can only offer you my
hand—with a heart—very full."

They exchanged a firm clasp.  As they went into
the music room, Count Cassilis, who had seated
himself at the piano, and who was running over a few
minor scales, turned and looked at them, rising slowly
to his feet with the other officers when the General
entered.  He had his monocle screwed into his right eye.

The cannonade had now become noisy and jarring
enough to interrupt conversation, and it was plain
to Warner that French batteries somewhere along the
Récollette had opened.

Out on the terrace he could see aëroplanes in the
northeastern sky, no doubt trying to find the range
for the French batteries.  They were very high, and
the clots of white appeared and dissolved far below
them.

But now the steady tattoo of machine guns had
become audible in the direction of the Ausone Forest,
and the racket swelled swiftly into a roar of rifle fire
and artillery—so rapidly, indeed, that every head in
the vicinity was turned to listen—hussars, cyclists,
infantry, the cannoniers lying beside their sky-guns,
the military chauffeurs, the sentries, all looked toward
the northeast.

Two more French aëroplanes took the air over the
plateau, rose rapidly, and headed toward the Ausone
Forest.

Down on the Saïs highway the slowly moving file of
motor lorries drew out to the right-hand edge of the
road, and past them galloped battery after battery,
through a whirling curtain of dust—guns, caissons,
mounted officers, flashing past in an interminable stream,
burying the baggage vans out of sight under the
billowing clouds.  Columns of cavalry, also, appeared
in the river meadows on both banks, trotting out across
the stubble and splashing through the reeds, all
moving toward the northeast.

The quarry road, too, was black with moving
infantry; another column tramped across the uplands
beyond; horsemen were riding over Vineyard Hill,
horsemen crossed the Récollette by every ford, every
pontoon—everywhere the French riders were to be seen
swarming over the landscape, appearing, disappearing,
in view again increased in numbers, until there seemed
to be no end to their coming.

The uproar of the fusillade grew deafening; the
sharper crack of the fieldpieces became dulled in the
solid shocks from heavier calibers.

General Delisle came out on the terrace and stood
looking across the valley just as the British biplane
soared up over the trees—the Bristol machine, pointed
high, racing toward the northeast.

Warner, looking up, realized that Halkett was up
there.  The roaring racket of the aëroplane swept the
echoes along forest and hillside; higher, higher it
pointed; smoke signals began to drop from it and
unroll against the sky.

Looking upward, Warner felt a light touch on his
elbow; Sister Eila had slipped her arm through his.

Gazing into the sky under her white coiffe, the
Sister of Charity stood silent, intent, her gaze
concentrated on the receding aëroplane.

When the first snowy puff ball appeared below it,
her arm closed convulsively on Warner's, and remained
so, rigid, while ball after ball of fleece spotted the sky,
spread a little, hung, and slowly dissolved against
the blue.

Down on the Saïs road four Red Cross motor ambulances
were speeding in the wake of the artillery.  A
fifth ambulance came up the drive.  Sister Félicité,
seated beside the chauffeur, signaled to Sister Eila.

Warner said:

"Are you called for field duty?"

"On the telephone a few minutes ago.  They need us
this side of Ausone."

He went with her to the ambulance and she swung
on board.  As the chauffeur started to back and make
a demi-tour, Warner jumped on the vehicle and shook
hands with Dr. Senlis.

"Do you want a bearer?" he asked.

"Yes, if you don't mind."

Sister Eila picked up a brassard bearing the conventional
emblem, and tied it around his left arm above
the elbow.

He had not yet noticed the other figure in the
ambulance; now he looked around, stared, and suddenly
a violent desire to laugh seized him.

"Asticot!" he exclaimed.

"Oui, c'est moi, M'sieu'," replied that smirking
gentleman, with a demureness that struck Warner as
horrible.

"But *why*?" he asked, in frank amazement.

"Ah," rejoined Asticot complacently, "that is the
question, M'sieu'.  I myself do not know exactly why
I am here."

But he knew well enough.  First of all, he had gotten
all over any terror of bullets in Africa.  Five years
and fifty skirmishes had blunted that sort of fear in
him.

What he wanted to do was to see what was going
on.  More than that, the encounter with One Eye in
Ausone had strangely moved this rat of the Faubourgs.
He desired to find that Disciplinary Battalion
again—the Battalion which had been for him a hell on
earth—but he wanted to look at it, pushed by a morbid
curiosity.  If One Eye were there, perhaps other
old friends might still decorate those fierce and sullen
ranks.

There was a certain lieutenant, too—gladly he would
shoot him in the back if opportunity offered.  He had
dreamed for months of doing this.

But there was still another reason that incited
Asticot to offer his services to Sister Félicité as a
bearer.  The ambulance had been called to the Ausone
Forest.  Somewhere within those leafy shades lurked
Wildresse.

Never before had such a hatred blazed in the crippled
intellect of Asticot as the red rage that flared
within him when he learned that he had been employed
by a spy who had sold out France.

Anything else he could have understood, any other
crime.  He was not squeamish; nothing appalled him
in the category of villainy except only this one thing.
Scoundrel as he was, he could not have found it in his
heart to sell his country.  And to remember that he
had been employed by a man who *did* sell France
aroused within him a passion for revenge so fierce that
only a grip on the throat of Wildresse could ever
satisfy the craving that made his vision red as blood.

He wore a brassard, this *voyou* of the Paris gutters,
set with the Geneva cross.  And in his pocket was an
automatic pistol.

From the rear seat Sister Eila could still see the
Bristol biplane in the sky, circling now high over
Ausone Forest and the cultivated hills beyond.  She
never removed her eyes from it as the ambulance rolled
on through the dust beside the slower moving line of
lorries.

Later the motor lorries turned east; a column of
infantry replaced them, trudging silently along in the
sun, their rifles shouldered.  Then they passed a
battalion of *chasseurs-à-pied* in green and blue, swinging
along at a cheerful, lively pace toward the crash of
rifles and machine guns.

Across the river they saw the first German shells
explode in the fields, and dark columns of smoke rise
and spread out over the bushes and standing grain.

For some time, now, Warner had recognized the
high whimper of bullets, but he said nothing until
Sister Eila mentioned the noises, guessing correctly
what were the causes.

Asticot shrugged and cuddled a cigarette which
Warner had given him, enjoying it with leering
deliberation.

He was inclined to become loquacious, too, whenever
a shell exploded across the river.

"Baoum—baoum!" he sneered.  "Tiens!  Another
overripe egg!  The Bosches will starve themselves with
their generosity!  Pan!  Pouf!  V'lan!  Zoum—zo——um!
That is shrapnel, M'sieu', as you know.  As for
me, I do not care for it.  Anything else on the *carte
du jour*, but not shrapnel for Bibi!  No!  For the big
shells, yes; for the machine guns, yes; for the
Démoiselles Lebel, all right!  But no shrapnel, *if* you
please——"

Sister Eila looked at him in smiling surprise.

"You would do well in the wards, with your cheerfulness,"
she said.  "I always was certain that I should
find in you some quality to admire."

Asticot looked at her, mouth open, as though
thunderstruck.  Then, to Sister Eila's amazement, a blush
turned his expressive features scarlet.

To be spoken to like that by a *Sainte* of Saint
Vincent de Paul!  To be admired by a Sister of Charity!
He, Asticot, was commended, approved of, encouraged!

It was too much for Asticot.  He turned redder
and redder; he started to relieve his terrible
embarrassment by cursing, caught himself in time, choked,
passed his red bandanna over his battered visage, tried
to whistle, failed, and turned his ratty and distressed
eyes upon Warner for relief.

"Cheerfulness *is* a virtue," said Warner gravely.
"You seem to possess others, also; you have physical
courage, you have exhibited gratitude toward me which
I scarcely expected.  It is a wonderful thing for a
man, Asticot, to be commended at all by Sister Eila."

Sister Eila smiled and flushed; then her face became
serious and she leaned forward and looked up at the
Bristol biplane.  Under it the white fleece of the
shrapnel was still floating.

The ambulance stopped; hussars came riding on
either side of it; an officer gave an order to the driver,
who turned out among some trees.

The road ahead was crowded with infantry deploying
at a double—a strange, gaunt, haggard regiment,
white with dust, swinging out to whistle signal into
the patches of woodland and across the willow-set
meadows to the right.

Sullen sweating faces looked up everywhere among
the bayonets; hard eyes, thin lips, bullet heads,
appeared through the drifting dust.

Here and there an officer spoke, and there seemed
to be a ringing undertone of iron in the blunt commands.

They came running in out of the stifling cloud of
dust like a herd of sulky vicious bulls goaded right
and left by the penetrating whistle calls and the
menacing orders of their officers.

"One Eye!" yelled Asticot, waving his cap vigorously.
"He!  Mon vieux!  How are you, old camp kettle?"

A soldier looked up with a frightful leer, waved his
arm, and ran forward.

"C'est un vieux copain à moi!" remarked Asticot
proudly.  "M'sieu', voilà le Battalion d'Afrique!  Voilà
Biribi qui passe!  Tonnerre de Dieu!  There is Jacques!
Hé!  Look yonder, M'sieu'!  That young one with the
head of a Lyceum lad!  Over there!  That is the *gosse*
of Wildresse!"

"*What!*"

"Certainly!  That is Jacques Wildresse of Biribi!
Hé!  If he knew!  Eh?  Poor devil!  If he knew what
we know!  And his scoundrel of a father out there now
in those woods!  C'est épatant!  Quoi!  *B'en*, such
things are true, it seems!  And when he looses his rifle,
that lad, what if the lead finds a billet in his own flesh
and blood!  Eh?  Are such things done by God in these
days?"

An officer rode up and said to the chauffeur:

"Pull out of there.  Back out to the road!"

But, once on the road again, they were ordered into
a pasture, then ordered forward again and told to take
station under a high bank crowned with bushes.

No shells came over, but bullets did in whining
streams.  The air overhead was full of them, and the
earth kept sliding from the bank where the lead hit
it with a slapping and sometimes a snapping sound,
like the incessant crack of a coach whip.

Firing had already begun in the woods whither the
Battalion of Africa had hurried with their flapping
equipments and baggy uniforms white with dust.  In
the increasing roar of rifle fire the monotonous
woodpecker tapping of the machine guns was perfectly
recognizable.

Branches, twigs, bits of bark, green leaves, came
winnowing earthward in a continual shower.  There was
nothing to be seen anywhere except a few mounted
hussars walking their horses up and down the road,
and the motor cyclists who passed like skimming comets
toward Ausone.

Sister Eila and Sister Félicité had descended to the
road and seated themselves on the grassy bank, where
they conversed in low tones and looked calmly into the
woods.

Asticot, possessed of a whole pack of cigarettes,
promenaded his good fortune and swaggered up and
down the road, ostentatiously coming to salute when
an automobile full of officers came screaming by.

The military chauffeur dozed over his steering wheel.
Two white butterflies fluttered persistently around his
head, alighting sometimes on the sleeves of his jacket,
only to flit away again and continue their whirling
aerial dance around him.

For an hour the roar of the fusillade continued, not
steadily, but redoubling in intensity at times, then
slackening again, but continuing always.

Hussars came riding out from among the trees.  One
of them said to Warner that the ambulances across the
Récollette were very busy.

Another, an officer, remarked that the Forest was
swarming with Uhlans who were fighting on foot.
Asked by Asticot whether the Battalion d'Afrique had
gone in, the officer answered rather coolly that it was
going in then with the bayonet, and that the world
would lose nothing if it were annihilated.

After he had ridden on up the road, Asticot spat
elaborately, and employed the word "coquin"—a mild
explosion in deference to Sister Eila.

More cavalry emerged from the woods, coming out
in increasing numbers, and all taking the direction of
Ausone.

An officer halted and called out to Sister Eila.

"It goes very well for us.  The Bat. d'Af. got into
them across the river!  The Uhlans are running their
horses!—Everywhere they're swarming out of the
woods like driven hares!  We turn them by Ausone!
A bientôt!  God bless the Grey Sisters!"

Everywhere cavalry came trampling and crowding
out of the woods and cantering away toward the north,
hussars mostly, at first, then *chasseurs-à-cheval*, an
entire brigade of these splendid lancers, pouring out
into the road and taking the Ausone route at a
gallop.

More motor cycles flashed past; then half a dozen
automobiles, in which officers were seated examining
maps; then up the road galloped dragoon lancers,
wearing grey helmet slips and escorting three light field
guns, the drivers of which were also dragoons—a sight
Warner had never before seen.

An officer, wearing a plum-colored band of velvet
around his red cap, and escorted by a lancer, came from
the direction of Ausone, leaned from his saddle, and
shook the ambulance chauffeur awake.

"Drive back toward Saïs," he said.  "They are
taking care of our people across the river, and you may
be needed below!"  He saluted the Sisters of Charity:
"A biplane has fallen by the third pontoon.  You may
be needed there," he explained.

Sister Eila rose; her face was ashen.

"What biplane, Major?" she asked unsteadily.

"I don't know.  British, I think.  It came down
under their shrapnel like a bird with a broken wing."

He rode on.  Warner aided the Sisters of Charity
to their seats.  Then he and Asticot jumped aboard.

As they turned slowly, two wheels describing a circle
through the dusty grass of the ditch, half a dozen
mounted gendarmes trotted out of the woods with sabers
drawn.

Behind them came four mounted hussars.  A man
walked in the midst of them.  There was a rope around
his neck, the end of which was attached to the saddle
of one of the troopers.

At the same moment a sort of howl came from Asticot;
he half rose, his fingers curling up like claws;
his expression had become diabolical.  Then he sank
back on his seat.

The ambulance rolled forward faster, faster toward
Saïs, where a biplane had come down into the river.

But Asticot had forgotten; and ever his blazing eyes
were turned backward where, among four troopers,
Wildresse walked with a rope around his neck and his
clenched fists tied behind him.





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.. _`CHAPTER XXXVII`:

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   CHAPTER XXXVII

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The hussars conducted him toward headquarters.
His huge hands were tied behind him; there was
a rope around his neck, the other end of which
was fastened to a hussar's saddlebow.

The troopers rode slowly, carbines poised forward
with butt on thigh.

*Fantassins* along the road looked on, somber-eyed;
the murmured word "spy" passed from lip to lip; the
wounded turned their big, hollow eyes on him; drivers,
cyclists, cannoniers, looked upon him; but nobody
reviled him.  Their silence was more terrible.

He spoke only once, looking up at the horseman
beside him, his deep, harsh voice breaking the rigid
silence:

"Hé!  Vous là-haut!  Supposition that I confess?
... That I make a statement involving others....
That Cossack there at headquarters!  Do I benefit?"

The cavalryman did not even glance at him.

"Tas de casse-geules!" rumbled Wildresse, and spat
into the dust.

They crossed the pontoon, the troopers dismounting
and leading their horses, then into the saddle again,
across the river meadows, and so around to the lodge
gates.

Across the road they were opening trenches for dead
horses, and on the plateau hundreds of soldiers' graves
were being dug.

Wildresse glanced at them askance, and his bull neck
roughened with shivers as he thought of the quick-lime.

It was then that the first convulsive twitch jerked
his face and left the right eye turned slightly outward
in a sort of cast.  After that something seemed to
loosen in his cheek, and his jaw was inclined to sag
unless controlled with conscious effort.

*Fantassins* on guard passed forward prisoner and
escort with monotonous formulae; the sentry on the
terrace summoned assistance; a staff officer came; two
line soldiers arrived later, halted, fixed bayonets, and
loaded their pieces.

Half a dozen staff officers in the music room rose
and stepped aside, opening a lane to the table where
General of Division Raoul Delisle sat at the telephone.
A cool-eyed major of dragoons relieved him of the
apparatus; the General turned and looked up at
Wildresse.

"You are Constantine Wildresse?"

"Yes, General."

"Otherwise Constantine Volmark?"

"Well—yes!  My name is Volmark."

"Which name do you claim?" asked Delisle dryly.

"Volmark.  It is useless to deny it—no good to
deceive anybody."

"You are Austrian?"

"And Greek, on my mother's side."

"Greek?"

"That is—she was Eurasian."

"From—Tenedos?"

But Wildresse had suddenly caught sight of Count
Cassilis.

"You!" he cried.  "Now, then, will you do anything
for me?"

Cassilis stared.

"*Will* you?" demanded Wildresse loudly.

Cassilis glanced at Delisle and tapped his forehead
with a bored air.

"Oh!" shouted Wildresse.  "So that's it, eh?  I am
crazy, am I?"

He passed a thick, dry tongue over his lips, made
an effort; looked hard at Delisle:

"Yes, *mon Général*; I am Constantine Volmark, born
in Tenedos.  What then, if you please?"

"You are known.  No court is necessary.  You will
be shot immediately."

"Circumstances—in extenuation——"

"None!"

"And if I confess——"

"It is useless."

"A statement involving others, unsuspected——"

"What?"

"It is important.  Nations are involved," muttered
Wildresse.  "An officer in your entourage—eh?  Is
there any immunity in such things, General?"

"No."

"No—immunity?"

"No."

"I am not permitted to make a statement?"

"I am here to listen.  I always have time to listen."

"Then I may speak freely?"

"Yes, you may make a statement if you choose."

"Accusations?"

"If you choose."

"It will not help my case if I prove to you of what
filth chancelleries are made?  If I expose to you what
the faith of governments amounts to?—If I show you
a man who has betrayed everybody since his boyhood—an
officer here—your comrade and friend?  All this
will not help my case?"

"No."

"And yet I may make my statement if I choose?  Is
that the situation, General?"

"Yes."

"And I may denounce whom I please?  I am free to
accuse, am I?  Free to confess and involve others?"

"Yes."

"Hé!  Nom d'un nom!  Comme vous est un bon
bougre!!" broke out Wildresse in his harsh and
dreadful voice.  "I am to die, am I?  So that's it, is it?
Then I'll pull down everybody and everything I can
while I have the chance.  Men?  Does it matter so much
about a man or two if one can set the treacherous
nations flying at one another's throats?  There's a real
revenge!  I'll poison the belief in nations in you
all!—You with your alliances and leagues and
ententes!—That's where you'll not forget me!  That's where your
half crazy Kings and diseased Emperors will turn
cross-eyed with suspicion!  That's where there'll be
a ratty scuttling to cover in your dirty chancelleries!
I'll strip the orders and epaulettes off one or two idols
before I finish.  And I want witnesses!  I demand
witnesses to confront me——"

"Be quiet, Wildresse.  Whom do you desire to confront?"

"You—for one!  Then, the educated Kurd, yonder!
That Cossack there—that man over there in a green
uniform, who pretends to be a Christian!—That
bashi-bazouk of Abdul—Major-General Count Cassilis,
Russian Military Observer at division headquarters!"

"Very well."

"And I demand to be confronted with others, too.
That Yankee painter, Warner.  Let him carry the
poison I spill back among his own people.  They won't
forget.  And I want the British officer here,
Captain Gray!  Let him report to his Government
what I say, and see if it can swallow it! ... That's
a sufficiency of men....  And for my supplement
I want the Countess de Moidrey—so that the
noble faubourg shall feel the poison in its veins....
And, as proof documentary of the statement I shall
make, I demand to be confronted with the girl
Philippa!"

"Is that all?"

"No....  The mercy, the extenuation denied me
by the military autocracy of France, I shall seek from
another.  I require two things only before I die:
understanding and absolution from—my son."

"Who?"

"My only son, Jacques Wildresse, 6th Company,
Battalion of Africa!—Jacques—of Biribi!  That's all
I want—so that he understands and pardons.  As for
you others—*je m'en*——"

The staff officer at the telephone suddenly bent over
and whispered to the General.  He listened, nodded,
looked calmly at Wildresse.

"The soldier Wildresse, 6th Company, Battalion
d'Afrique, was unable to bear your disgrace.  He is
this moment reported dead by his own hand."

A terrible spasm shot like lightning across the
prisoner's visage, drawing his whole face to one side.
Slowly the flaccid muscles resumed their natural places;
the screwed up features loosened.

"That's a lie," mumbled Wildresse; and his big,
hairless head doddered for a moment.

At a nod from Delisle a soldier picked up the wrist
rope, coiled it, and gave it a slight pull.

"March!" he said briefly to his prisoner.

Count Cassilis came over, faintly amused at the
scene, to judge by his expression.

"There's a good place under the north terrace,"
he said languidly.  "You don't intend to listen, I
fancy, to this statement he wants to make....  Do you?"

"Oh, yes," said the General.  "It's my business to
listen always."

He sent an aid to find Warner and Gray, and to
beg the honor of Madame de Moidrey's presence and
of Philippa's.  Then he smiled pleasantly at Count
Cassilis.

"Yes," he said, "statements always should be listened
to.  It's the man who doesn't care to hear who
makes the most terrible mistakes in life.  I can't afford
to make mistakes.  I'd rather risk being bored.  So,
if you don't mind, my dear General——"

"Not in the least," said General Count Cassilis
languidly.

They had conducted Wildresse into the small,
semi-circular library in the northeast tower, the entrance
to which gave on the terrace and billiard room.

Gray and Warner appeared presently with the
Countess and Philippa; General Delisle went to them
immediately, and remained in close consultation with
them.

"It may prove of some military importance to us;
it may prove of no value whatever—this statement
he desires to make," concluded the General.  "Of
course it is not possible for me to guess....
And yet, Madame, if there is a chance that the
statement might be of value, may I not venture to hope
that you and Mademoiselle are willing to submit to
this disagreeable proceeding in the interests of
France?"

"Certainly," said the Countess, and linked her arm
in Philippa's.

The girl was a little pale, a trifle nervous, too.  She
glanced at Warner, tried to smile, then stood with lips
slightly compressed and head high, looking steadily
at the soldier who stood before the closed door of the
little library.

"If you are ready," said the General quietly.

So they went in, one by one, very noiselessly, as
though somebody had just died in there.  But their
entrance did not arouse Wildresse from his abstraction.

Two red-legged *fantassins*, with fixed bayonets and
loaded rifles, stood behind him.

The man himself sat huddled on a chair in a corner,
his great, blunt, murderous-looking hands hanging
crossed between his knees, his big, hairless head of a
butcher wagging slightly as though palsied.

There was not an atom of color left in his face,
except for the pockmarks which were picked out in
sickly greenish grey all over his flabby features.

He did not look up when they entered, his little,
wicked black eyes, which had become dull and covered
with a bluish glaze, remained fixed as though he were
listening, and his heavy lower lip sagged.

"Wildresse," said General Delisle.

There was no response; a soldier stirred the prisoner
to attention with the butt of his piece.

"Stand up," he said.

Wildresse, aroused, got to his great feet stupidly,
looked around, caught sight of Philippa, and silently
snarled—merely opened his mouth a little way till his
upper lip curled back, emitting no sound whatever—then
he caught sight of the green uniform of General
Count Cassilis, and instantly the old glare blazed up
in his eyes.

"By God, the Cossack!" he growled; and the heavy
voice vibrated ominously through the room.

Warner led Philippa to a chair as General Delisle
seated the Countess.  Wildresse, his heavy arms hanging
inert, stood looking from one man to another, as
they found scats in turn, on sofas or on
chairs—Delisle, Warner, Cassilis, Gray.

"Make your statement," said General Delisle dryly.
And he added: "If it is a long one, you may seat
yourself."

Wildresse shot a terrible look at the Russian
Military Observer.

"For the last time," he said hoarsely, "will you do
something for me? ... For the last time?"

Cassilis lifted his expressive eyebrows and glanced
rather wearily at Delisle.

"You know!" bellowed Wildresse in a sudden fury.
"You know what I can say!  If I say it, Russia and
her allies will have an enemy instead of another ally!
If I speak, your country will earn the contempt of
France and of England too; and their implacable
enmity after this war is ended.  If I speak!  Will you
do something for me?"

Cassilis, polishing his monocle with a heavily scented
handkerchief, shrugged.

"Very well!" roared Wildresse.  "It is death, then,
is it?  You filthy, treacherous Cossack, I'll do what I
can to ruin you and your lying Government before I
pass out!—You Moslem at heart—you bashi-bazouk——"

"Moderate your voice and your manner!" said General
Delisle very quietly.

Wildresse turned his great, hairless head; his face
had become suddenly chalky again; he seated himself
heavily; his big hands, doubled into fists, fell on either
knee.

For a moment the slight, palsy-like movement of the
head began again, the black eyes lost their luster, the
heavy lip became pendulous.  But he made an effort,
and a change came over him; the muscles tightened
visibly; he lifted the bulk of his great shoulders and
sat erect, looking questioningly from one to another.

Then he began to speak without preamble, reciting
his statement in an accentless, pedantic way which
seemed to lend to what he said a somber sort of truth—the
corroborative accuracy of unimaginative stupidity,
which carries with it conviction to the minds of
listeners.

He said:

"Count Cassilis knows.  Like every Cossack he is
at heart a Mussulman and a bashi-bazouk.  Ask Enver
Bey.  He knows more than any white man, this
Cassilis.  He knows who sent the bashi-bazouks into the
province of Philippopolis in '76, where half a hundred
villages were burnt and twelve thousand Bulgarian
men, women, and children were murdered.  It was this
man's father who did that!"

"A lie," remarked Cassilis, politely concealing a
yawn.  "General, if this rambling statement interests
you——"

"Pardon, Count——" interposed Delisle, with cool
courtesy.  And to Wildresse: "Go on!"

Without even lifting his eyes, and as though he had
been unconscious of the interruption, Wildresse went
on reciting:

"It was the Sultan's business—that affair in
Bulgaria.  Your father played double traitor; the Sultan
never knew; the war provoked by Count Serge Cassilis
followed; Russia beat Turkey into the mud and slush.
Count Serge got double pay.  Your Czar wanted Bulgaria
to become a free state full of gratitude to Russia;
and he tried to carry things with a high hand at San
Stefano.  You were not there!  It was Count Serge.
Where I first laid eyes on you, and you on me, was at
Slivnitza.  And after that I did your dirty jobs for
you.....  Very well; it warms up; Bulgaria becomes
free—except she must tip her hat to the Sultan.  Eh!
You Russians didn't like that!  All the same, Bulgaria
becomes free to choose and elect her own Prince.
Only—she doesn't want the Russian candidate—*you*!

"Alexander of Battenberg—Cousin of the Hesse
Grand Duke—he was the first.  Your Czar didn't like
him, eh?  They made a god of him, didn't they, in
Sofia?  And you Russians began to hate him.  So did
that rickety old gambler of Servia, King Milan.  Who
started that Servian fool after Alexander of Battenberg?
And what did he get for his foolery?  He got
his empty head broken at Slivnitza—he and his
swineherd army—kicked headlong through the Dragoman
Pass!  And that settled the Roumanian question.  Eh?
Swine and swineherd kicked into the lap of Holy
Russia....  And yours was double pay!

"Then *you* came sneaking back into the scene, Count
Cassilis.  I did your filthy work for you.  You taught
me how double pay is earned!

"Prince Alexander of Battenberg was the idol of
Bulgaria.  I don't know who gave you your orders,
but I got mine from you!  Was it Abdul Hamid—Abdul
the Damned—who gave you your orders?

"Russian roubles paid *me* and the men I used.
Maybe the Bank of Constantinople paid you....  And
so we broke into his palace—the young prince
Alexander's—and carried him across the frontier.  You sat
on your big horse among your Cossacks and saw us
bring the Prince of Bulgaria into Russia.  And your
pockets full of Turkish sweetmeats!—Like a prostitute!

"That time you meant murder; but others were
afraid.  Alexander of Battenberg was allowed to
abdicate.

"Then, for the world, history went on to the summer
of '87, when that Saxe-Coburg Prince was elected—Ferdinand,
who now talks to himself for want of an
audience, and who calls himself the Czar of all the
Bulgars—he of the long nose and beard, and the eye
of a wild pig.

"Russia pretended to hate him.  Does she?  *You*
know!

"But history gives us only two Bulgarian princes
from 1879 to 1915.  How is that, Count Cassilis?
Were there *only two?*—Alexander of Battenberg, whom
you were afraid to murder, and this fat-jowled
Ferdinand of today——"

"The man is crazy, I think," remarked Count
Cassilis to the Countess.

Wildresse merely gazed at him out of lackluster
eyes, and went on speaking with monotonous and
terrible simplicity:

"History has lied to the world.  There was another
prince after Alexander.  Every chancellery in Europe
knows it, but never mentions it.  A few others outside
know it; you among others....  And I.

"England and France found him.  The Templars
of Tenedos were not all dead.  The race of the
hereditary Prince of Marmora was not extinct—the race of
that man whose head Saladin cut off with his own
hand—the race of Djani the Paladin, and of Raymond
de Châtillon—the Princess of Marmora!  England
found him—Philip de Châtillon—and forced him on
Russia and Germany and Austria in secret conference.
The Porte promised assent; it *had* to.  Before he was
presented for election to the Bulgarian people—a
matter of routine merely—he was crowned and
consecrated, and you know it!  He was already as truly the
ruler of Bulgaria as your Czar is today of all the
Russias.  And you know that, too!  And *that* time,
whoever gave you your orders, and whatever they may
have been, *my* orders from you spelled murder!"

There was a moment's silence; Cassilis had turned
his sneering, pallid face on Wildresse as though held
by some subtle and horrible fascination, and he sat
so, screwing up his golden mustache, his fishy blue
eyes fixed, his lips as red as blood, and his wide, thin
ears standing out translucent against the lighted lamp
behind him.

Delisle, Warner, Gray, watched Wildresse with
breathless attention; the Countess de Moidrey sat with
Philippa's hand in hers, staring at this man who was
about to die, and who continued to talk.

Only Philippa's face remained outwardly tranquil,
yet she also was terribly intent upon what this man
was now saying.

But Wildresse's head began to wag again with the
palsy-like movement; he muttered, half to himself:

"That's how Philip de Châtillon died—Prince Philip
of Bulgaria—that's how he died—there in the palace
with his young wife—the way they did for Draga,
the Queen—and Milan's son—the Servian swine who
reigned before this old fighter, Peter!—*You* know,
Count Cassilis!  So do I—and Vasilief knew.  We both
knew because we did it for you—tore the bedclothes
off—God!  How that young man fought!  We stabbed
his red-haired wife first—but when we stretched that
powerful young neck of his, the blood spouted to the
ceiling——"

The Countess made a gesture as though she were
about to rise; Philippa's hand crushed hers, drew her
back.

"That's how they died—those two young things
in the bedroom of the Palace there....  I know what
my orders were....  There was a child—a little girl
six years old....  Vasilief went to the Ghetto and
cut the throat of a six-year-old....  That's what we
buried with Prince Philip of Bulgaria and his wife....
I took the little Princess out of her bed and kept
her for myself....  In case of trouble.  Also, I
thought she might mean money some day.  I waited
too long; it seems she was not worth killing—no use
for blackmail.  And the French Government wouldn't
listen, and the British were afraid to listen....
What's proclaimed dead remains dead to Governments,
even if they have to kill it again.

"That is my statement.  Vasilief and I killed Prince
Philip of Bulgaria, and his red-haired Princess, too....
In their bedroom at the Palace it was done....
But I took their little girl with me....  I had to
knife Vasilief to do it.  He wanted too much.  I
strangled him and turned my knife inside him—several
times.  And took the little girl away with me—the
little six-year-old Princess Philippa——"  He lifted
his heavy head and stared at Philippa: "*There she sits!*"

Philippa stood straight up, her grey eyes fixed on
Wildresse in terrible concentration.

He wagged his head monotonously; a tic kept
snatching at the upper lip, baring his yellow dog-teeth,
so that he seemed to be laughing.

"There's a bag full of the child's clothing—your
clothing—toys—photographs—God knows what.
There's a safe in the cellar of the Café Biribi.  The
fire won't harm it.  I kept the pieces of identification
there—against a time of need.  England wouldn't
listen and wouldn't pay anything.  France was afraid
for her alliance.  There was nothing in it for
Germany.  Russia shrugged and yawned—as *you* do,
Count Cassilis—and then tried to kill me.

"As for the long-nosed wild pig of Bulgaria—do you
think I had a chance with him?  Not with Ferdy.  Non
pas!  I couldn't reach the people.  That was the
trouble.  That is where I failed.  Who would believe
me without my pieces of identification?  And I was
afraid to take them into Sofia—afraid to cross the
frontier with them—dared not even let France know I
had them—or any other Power.  They'd have had my
throat cut for me inside of forty-eight hours!  Eh,
Cassilis?  You know how it is done....  And that's
all....  They've burned the Café Biribi.  But the
safe is in the cellar....  I've done what I could to
revenge myself on every side.  I've sold France, sold
Germany, sold Russia when I was able.  Tell them that
in Petrograd!  I had no chance to sell England....
At first I never meant to harm the girl Philippa....
Philippa de Châtillon!  Only when she turned on me,
then I meant to twist her neck....  I waited too long,
talked too much.  That man—the Yankee, yonder—saved
her neck for her——"

His head was wagging by jerks; the tic stretched
his loosened mouth, twitching it into awful and silent
laughter, and the *rictus mortis* distorted his sagging
features as the soldiers took him by both arms, shaking
him into comprehension.

He shambled to his feet, looking at everybody and
seeing nothing.

"Philippa de Châtillon, Princess of the Bulgars!"
he mumbled....  "The girl Philippa, gentlemen,
*caissière de cabaret*! ... Her father died by the Palace
window, and her mother on the black marble floor!—Very
young they were, gentlemen—very young....
And I think very much in love——"

They took him out, still mumbling, the spasm playing
and jerking at his sagging jaw.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXVIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXVIII

.. vspace:: 2

The sun was a crimson disk through the dust; a
haze possessed the world; forest and hill,
meadow and river, faded to phantoms in the
unreal light.

The Château des Oiseaux was very quiet.  General
and staff had departed; sentries, telegraphers, wires,
switchboard—the sky-guns on the northern terrace,
the great racing automobiles, cyclists, motor cyclists,
*fantassins*, cavalry—all were gone into the magic glory
of the east.

The park was empty and still; only traces remained
where green leaves curled up and grew brittle, and
drooping boughs withered on rustic scaffoldings;
where lawn and drive showed the fresh scars of
wheels and hoofs; and where trusses of hay and straw
and glistening heaps of spilled oats marked the
abandoned lines.

So far to the north and east had the sound of cannon
receded that only at intervals, when the wind was
right, was it distinguishable at all as a soft, almost
inaudible thudding along the horizon.

No gun shots troubled the August quiet; the shrill
chirring of insects from every stubble field accentuated it.

Very few soldiers were to be seen; *fantassins* mounted
guard by the pontoons; vedettes were visible along the
river meadows and on the low hills beyond the
Récollette.  Patrols rode slowly on the Saïs highway;
wagons still rolled eastward through the sunset light,
or went into park in sheltered places; few cyclists
went south, fewer still whizzed by into the north and
east.

Just at sunset a squadron of hussars passed the
lodge gate, walking their horses.  An officer turned his
mount, spurred through the open gate, and galloped
up the drive to the Château.

He dismounted at the foot of the terrace; his horse
stood, turning a beautiful, gentle head around toward
the distant gate where his comrades were slowly passing.

His rider, mounting the terrace steps two at a time,
encountered Madame de Moidrey and Warner, paid
his respects almost breathlessly, but with perfect
restraint of an impatience impossible to conceal.

"And Captain Halkett?" he inquired.  "I hear that
he was not injured when his biplane came down into
the river?"

"He was stunned, that's all," said Warner quietly.
"His mechanic was badly bruised, but not seriously.
The plane is a wreck."

The Vicomte d'Aurès stood a moment, twisting one
glove between his fingers, then, with winning dignity,
but turning very red, he said to the Countess:

"I have come also to make my adieux to—Peggy—if
I have your permission——"

The Countess nodded:

"She is in there....  You have my permission
... and approval."

He saluted her hand very simply, straightened up,
took faultless leave of Warner, turned, and entered
the house.  Peggy rose from the music stool and came
toward him in the dim rose light.  They met as
naturally and unconsciously as two children; he took both
her hands; she released them and drew them around
his neck and laid her face against his breast.

They had only a few moments.

Ethra de Moidrey and Warner saw his departure
from where they were strolling along the parapet of
the lily garden.  He left the park at a fast gallop,
never turning to look back.  Twilight swallowed the
gallant, gay young figure.  For a few moments the
double gallop of hoofs sounded through the evening
air, then died away.

The Countess, seated on the parapet, laid her hand
appealingly on Warner's sleeve:

"Jim, do you like him?"

"He's all right, Ethra.  If I had a younger brother
I should wish him to be like that boy."

"Yes....  He is nice....  He is going into battle....
That is hard....  Poor little Peggy.  Womanhood
comes swiftly when it comes, Jim.  The reagent
is sorrow.  We all pass that way, we women.  Sorrow
is the philosopher's stone....  Else we remain only
children until we die."

Warner gazed at the dusty glory still glowing above
the western hills:

"What a day it has been!" he murmured.

"God guide those men who are riding into the east,"
said she.  "What a strange day it has been, Jim!  Did
you understand that painful incident between General
Delisle and General Count Cassilis?"

"Perfectly.  The Russian Military Observer was
given his congé.  Did you not see what happened?  The
rattle of the volley that ended Wildresse meant also
the end of the world for Count Cassilis.

"I saw General Delisle walk across the terrace and
say something to Cassilis in a low voice.  I saw the
Russian's face.  It was like death.  The end was also
in sight for him.  He knew it.  He knew what his
dismissal from French division headquarters meant.  He
knew he must go home.  He knew that his arrest would
follow the instant he set foot across the frontier of
his own Empire.

"But his good manners did not desert him.  You saw
him take his leave, stiff, correct, calm as though the
ceremony meant nothing to him except familiar routine.

"There was no exchange of handclasps, nothing of
cordiality, merely the faultless observance of
convention.  Then he went away."

"He is a traitor?" she asked, in an awed voice.

"Undoubtedly.  Think what it has meant—think
what it would have meant to this army if his treachery
had not been discovered!—A spy at headquarters!
But his own Emperor will punish him.  As surely as
I stand here, Ethra, that man is doomed to die on the
scaffold.  He knows it....  Did you notice him light
a cigarette when he got into his limousine?  I could
not keep my eyes off him—that man already practically
dead—that traitor impassively saluting the hussars'
fanion as his automobile rolled by!  And even
while I looked at him I seemed to see him suspended
there in his shroud, a dead weight on the gibbet,
turning gently in the morning breeze—God!  The fellow
got on my nerves!—Knowing the guilt that lay black
within him—the murders in Sofia——"

"Horrible," said the Countess with a slight shiver.
"And the man, Wildresse—did it—with those dreadful
hands of his.  I thought I should faint when he was
telling of it—what he did in the bedroom—"

She shuddered, rose abruptly:

"Philippa is in her room, still poring over those
papers.  I can't bear to leave the child all alone, and
yet it seems like intrusion to disturb her.  Could you
take her for a little walk, Jim, before dinner?—Take
her out of her room—out of the house for a while?
I'm afraid she's remembering that murderer's confession.
She ought not to brood over such things."

"Yes, I'll try to take her mind off it.  Suppose I
walk down to the inn with her!  Halkett's there.  It
might divert her; she's fond of him."  He smiled
slightly.  "There's a cat there, too.  It will seem like
old times—she and Halkett and Ariadne and I together
at the Golden Peach.  I believe it will divert her."

"Why not remain and dine there with Mr. Halkett,
as you used to, in your somewhat unconventional way?"
suggested the Countess, smiling.  "I am very sure that
would appeal to Philippa."

"I'll ask her," nodded Warner.

They walked slowly into the house together.  Gray
lay in the corner of an upholstered lounge beside a
lighted lamp, a book open on his knees, his cheek
resting on his hand.

At the sound of their approach he looked up quickly,
and his face brightened.

"I thought I wouldn't read any further," he said
frankly.  "We have enjoyed so much reading it
together.  Do you mind going on with it to the end?"

The Countess laughed and a pretty color rose in
her cheeks.

"Do you think," she said, "that I expect to spend
the remainder of my days reading romances with you?"

And, as Warner turned and mounted the stairs:

"Besides," she added, "there is really nothing more
to read in that silly novel."

"Why not?" he inquired, his face expressing candid
disappointment.

"Because they have already fallen in love," she
explained carelessly.  "And the end of such a
proceeding is always obvious, Mr. Gray."

She glanced up at the stairs.  Warner had disappeared.

After a moment, casually unconscious, she seated
herself on the broad, upholstered end of the lounge,
looking down over his shoulder at the open book on his
knees.

"In fiction," she remarked, "there is only one end
to such situations....  But, if you like, I don't mind
beginning another book with you, Mr. Gray."

Her hand, which rested among the cushions,
supporting her, happened to come within the range of his
wandering vision.  He looked at it for a little while.
Presently he placed his own over it, very lightly.

Neither moved.  But it was a long time before he
ventured to turn his head and look up at the woman
with whom he had read through his first long love story.
She had read such stories before, understood something
of their tricks, their technique, their reality, and
their romance.  And had supposed there was nothing
further for her to learn about them and that her
interest in them was dead.

"If you don't mind," he said, "reading on with me,
for a while——"

"I might tire."

"Try not to."

Her flushed face became thoughtful.  Already the
prospect of reading another romance with him seemed
interesting.

Warner and Philippa, silently descending the stairs
together, glanced around at the two figures together
there under the lighted lamp.

The Countess was saying calmly:

"We might as well finish the love story we have
begun, if you really insist on following through to the
conventional end."

"Yes," he said.  "I do insist.  Let us follow through
together—to the end."

Philippa, slim and white, moved silently through the
house beside Warner, out across the terrace and down
to the drive.

The last hint of color had died out in the west.
Below, in the valley, no searchlights flooded the river;
only a moving lantern here and there glimmered through
the misty dusk.

"It will be jolly," he was saying, "for us to dine
again together before Halkett leaves.  Don't you think
so, Philippa?"

"Yes.  When is he going?"

"Tomorrow, I believe.  They are sending the
wrecked machine to Verdun by rail.  I suppose he'll
follow in the morning.  What a miracle that he was
not killed!  They say the big Bristol behaved exactly
like a wing-tipped grouse when the shrapnel hit
her—coming down beating and fluttering and fighting for
equilibrium to the end.  It was the skill of his pilot
that brought her safely wabbling and planing into the
river, where she waddled about like a scotched duck."

"Was the pilot badly hurt?"

"Not badly.  Sister Eila is looking after him.
They're going to bring him up to the Château hospital
in the morning.  He's at the inn now."

"Why didn't they bring any wounded to us, Jim?"

"The ambulances from Ausone and Dreslin took
them.  I believe we are to expect fifty wounded tomorrow.
Sister Félicité was notified after our ambulance
returned from the Bois d'Ausone."

Twice they were halted, and the permit from General
Delisle which Warner carried was minutely inspected by
flashlight.  Then they moved on slowly through the
fragrant night toward the unlighted windows of the
Golden Peach.

There, as in the Château, all lights were masked by
shutters and curtains, so that no night visitor soaring
high under the stars might sight anything at which
to loose the tiny red spark—that terrible, earth-shattering
harbinger of death and annihilation.

At the front door they knocked; Linette welcomed
them into a darkened hall, but as soon as the door was
closed again she brought out a lamp.

Madame Arlon followed, delighted that they were to
dine there with Halkett.

He was somewhere about the garden, she said, and
Sister Eila was upstairs with the wounded pilot.

Moving along the familiar path in the garden, they
presently discovered Halkett seated alone in the little
arbor, with Ariadne dozing on his lap.

"We've come to dine with you, old fellow!" said
Warner.  "—Philippa and you and I and Ariadne again.
Does the idea appeal to you?"

"Immensely!"  He had saluted Philippa's hand and
had offered her the cat, which she took to her breast,
burying her face in the soft fur.

"Darling," she murmured, "it is so nice to have you
again!  One needs all one's old friends in days like
these."

They returned to the house, Philippa walking between
the two men, caressing Ariadne, who acknowledged
the endearments with her usual enthusiasm.

Dinner was all ready for them in the little room by
the bar: a saucer was set beside Philippa's chair for
Ariadne; Linette went upstairs to summon Sister Eila,
and returned with word that she would be down after
a while, and that dinner was not to wait for her.

Warner said to Halkett:

"How did you feel when you were falling, old chap?"

"Not very comfortable," returned the other, smiling.

"You thought it was all up with you?"

"On the contrary, I realized it was all down."

Philippa smiled faintly.

"You didn't expect to come out alive?" inquired
Warner.

"I didn't think of that.  Bolton, my pilot, said:
'I'm trying to make the river, sir.'  I was attempting
to find out how badly we were damaged.  It seemed
an age; but we both were busy."

"You probably did some very serious thinking, too."

Halkett nodded.  He remembered that part vividly—the
thinking part.  He recollected perfectly where
his thoughts were concentrated as he came fluttering
down out of the sky.  But on whom they were centered
he never would tell as long as he lived.

Sister Eila came in.

Halkett placed her; she and Philippa exchanged
faint smiles; then the two men resumed their seats.

"Monsieur Bolton is now asleep," she said, speaking
to Halkett and looking at her plate.  "Tomorrow we
shall move him to the east wing of the Château.  We
shall have many wounded tomorrow, I believe."

"Yes.  Sister Félicité told me," said Warner.  He
looked at her for a moment.  "Are you well, Sister Eila?"

"Why, yes; I am perfectly well."

"You look very pale.  Do you ever find time to sleep?"

"Sufficiently, thank you," she replied, smiling.  "You
know we are very tough, we Sisters of Charity.  There
is a saying that nothing but death can kill a Grey
Sister."

Warner laughed, Halkett forced a smile.

"I think," added Sister Eila, "that British airmen
ought to be included in that proverb.  Don't you,
Mr. Halkett?"

"Nothing can kill me," he said.  "I'm even wondering
whether old man Death could do the job."

Philippa turned to Warner:

"Isn't the conversation becoming a trifle grim for
our reunion?"

They all smiled; Philippa fed tidbits to Ariadne, who
had forsaken a well-garnished platter on the floor to
sit up beside Philippa and pat her gown from time to
time with an appealing paw.

"That's very human," commented Warner.  "Ariadne
wants only what is not meant for her."

"I can understand her," said Halkett carelessly.
"May I smoke, Sister Eila?  Do you mind, Philippa?"  He
struck a match: "With your permission," he said,
and lighted his cigarette as Linette entered with
coffee.

"Yes," he said musingly, "it seems to be the game
in life—to desire what is not meant for one.  The worst
of it is that philosophy doesn't help one to understand
and become reconciled."

Sister Eila said, looking at her plate:

"Religion helps."

"Only a favored few, Sister."

"Yes, for everybody the refuge of faith is waiting."

"Belief may explain; but it can not reconcile,"
rejoined Halkett quietly.  "Except for the mystery of
God, there is no other mystery like man.  None has
yet explained him; not even himself.  If his riddle is
ever to be solved, I don't know when that will be, unless
it is to happen after death."

There was a silence.

Halkett spoke again:

"Unbidden love comes; it abides as long as it chooses—a
day, a lifetime—and after life, perhaps.  But if
it chooses to go, no one ever born can control its
departure....  This is one mystery of man—only one
among many....  I believe something of this sort
occurred to me while—" he laughed—"I was coming a
cropper in the sky this morning."

Sister Eila's eyes were fixed on space; Halkett laid
aside his cigarette and picked up Ariadne.

"Well, old lady," he said, "there is only one solution
to everything; go on with the business in hand and do
it as thoroughly as your intellect permits.  Your business,
I suppose, is to look ornamental, have kittens, and
catch mice.  *Bonne chance*, little lady!"

He set her on the table and she marched gingerly
among the coffee cups toward Philippa.

Sister Eila rose; all followed her example.

Halkett, looking around at them, said pleasantly:

"It was a happy thought—this reunion.  I had
meant to say good-by tonight at the Château——"

"Tonight!" exclaimed Warner.

"Yes.  Orders have come.  An automobile arrives
later, to take me to the railroad station at Dreslin.
My wrecked machine has gone——"  He looked smilingly
at Sister Eila: "What's left of me is to follow tonight,
it seems....  And so I shall go over to the Château,
now, I think, and make my very grateful adieux, and
have a last word with Gray.  Shall I say good-by to
you now?  Will you be here when I return in an hour?"

Philippa said in a low voice:

"We are going to walk in the garden.  Look for us
there."

He turned to Sister Eila.

"I shall be with my sick man," she said smilingly.
Her face was deadly white.

So Halkett took his cap and went away up the road
all alone, and Sister Eila mounted the stairs to inspect
her patient.

As Warner stood for a moment by the open door
looking after Halkett, a familiar voice came to his
ears—the voice of Asticot, bragging of his prowess and
cheerfully predicting even greater glory for himself.

"Nonsense!" came the voice of Linette, sharply.
"You had nothing more to do with the taking of that
spy than had Ariadne!"

"M'amzelle!  It was I who accomplished that!
Behold your Asticot, a hero, modest and humble——"

"Tiens!  You are not *my* Asticot!  Be kind enough
to remember that!"

"M'amzelle, you know me——"

"No, I don't!"

"But you are perfectly at liberty to become
acquainted with me——"

"I do not desire to!"

"My master, M'sieu' Warner, trusts and respects
me.  He is the most wonderful gentleman in the whole
world, M'sieu' Warner.  And he believes in me!"

"*I* don't!" retorted Linette.

Asticot heaved a terrific sigh:

"And I with thirty thousand francs which I have
labored to save—fruits of my toil—souvenirs of years
of self-denial——"

"What!  Thirty thousand francs!  Bah!  Thirty
thousand debts, you mean——"

"I mean nothing of the sort," said Asticot simply.
"If you doubt my word, I will show them to you some
day.  Linette, you know me——"

"I tell you I don't!"

Warner could hear Magda laughing, and Madame
Arlon making caustic comments concerning the financial
solvency of Asticot and the manner in which he
wore his hair.

"As for that," rejoined Asticot, "I can trim my
hair to please Linette——"

"That," exclaimed Linette, exasperated, "is impossible!
Only a machine that will trim your neck close
to your shoulders might interest me, Monsieur Asticot!"

"Woman!" said Asticot, unruffled.  "Tenez, M'amzelle!
*That* is what I think of woman—charming,
capricious, enchanting woman!  I salute your
incomparable sex!"  And Warner heard him kiss his own
palm with a vigorous smack.

"Imbecile!" cried Linette.  "Put on a uniform before
you have the impudence to make love to an honest girl!"

"I am going to," said Asticot triumphantly.

Warner closed the door, turned back into the hallway,
and entered the little dining room.  Philippa was
no longer there; so he went through the house into
the dark garden, where the air was sweet with the
perfume of clove pinks and lilies.

She was there, a pale shape in the darkness, moving
slowly among the flowers.  As he came up she lifted
her head and looked at him, her grey eyes still vague
with memories which the place evoked.

And, after a few moments' wandering along the
paths with him:

"Why are you so silent?" she asked.

"I thought perhaps I might disturb your thoughts,
Philippa."

"You are always part of my thoughts.  I have no
thought that I would not share with you....
But—you have never understood that."

"I understand you, Philippa."

"Do you?"

"Yes.  You are everything a woman should be; nothing
a woman should not be.  That is my understanding
of you."

She shook her head gently:

"That is an impossible woman.  You are kind to
me in your thoughts.  And—you have not understood
me after all."

"What have I not understood, Philippa?"

"My—my heart and mind."

"Both are wonderful, matchless——"

"You are wrong!  There is your mistake.  They are
not wonderful; and both may be matched by the hearts
and minds of any woman! ... Has it never occurred
to you that I am very human?"

He remained silent; they walked on for a while,
turned, and retraced their steps along the border of
clove pinks.

"Have you gone over all your papers?" he asked
in a hesitating voice.

"Yes."

"Is there anything I can do to help you—advise—aid——"

She turned almost impatiently:

"Always you are thinking of my well-being, my
worldly benefit.  It is for that you give me your
companionship, your protection.  I—I don't know—sometimes
I think I have never been—so—lonely——"

Her voice broke; she turned sharply from him and
stood with slender hands clenched in the starlight.

"Philippa?" he said gently, in his kindly, even voice.
And it seemed to break the barrier to her reserve.

"Oh!" she faltered.  "—It is something else a
woman—hopes for—something different—when her heart—is
empty——"

He dared not understand her, dared not touch her.
He heard himself saying: "There is nobody but you,
Philippa," and dared not speak—dared not say what
he should have said before either he or she had learned
who she really was.

Perhaps a faint idea of what held him to an aloofness,
a formality unaccustomed, occurred to her during
the strained silence.  Perhaps she divined, vaguely,
what might be in his mind.

After a while she turned, not looking at him, and
took his arm!  It was the first time she had done so
since that day when he painted her.

Even yet she could scarcely realize, scarcely
comprehend the great change which had come to her.  She
knew it was true; she understood that it must be the
truth—that she was no longer nameless—not the
foundling, not the lonely child of chance who had looked
out blankly over the world, without aim, without
interest, having nothing to expect, nothing to hope for
from a world which had not even bestowed upon her
a name.

And now—now, suddenly hazard had snatched aside
that impenetrable curtain which, as long as she could
remember, had hung between her and all that she
desired most passionately to know.

From the loose, half palsied lips of a murderer had
fallen the words she had never expected to hear.  He
had gone to his death, shambling, doddering, mumbling
to himself.  But the papers which had belonged to him
had confirmed every word he uttered.

She knew now who she was, Philippa de Châtillon.
She knew how her mother had died; and her father.

As yet, the wonderment of it all had not been too
deeply embittered by the tragedy.  It was still only
wonder, and a striving to realize—a dream, strange,
terrible, beautiful by turns; but still a dream to her.

Something far more real, more vivid, more vital,
possessed her.  She knew it; felt it always now.  The
consciousness of it shared with her the veiled emotions
which the solving of her life's mystery evoked.

As she stood there in the brilliant starlight, both
arms wound around one of his in the old, unconscious
way, Halkett came into the garden, walking swiftly:

"The car is here.  Don't come to the door.  I had
rather say good-by and God bless you here in this
garden—where I first knew you, Philippa—where you
and I became friends, Warner....  So—good-by.  If
I come out of it, I'll come to you—to both of you, I
hope."

"Yes," said Philippa calmly.

He took her hand, held it, looked at Warner, and
took the hand he offered.

"Good-by!"

"Good-by!"

He turned and walked swiftly into the house.  As
he passed the stairway, he saw Sister Eila standing
there as white as death.

They looked at each other in silence; she laid one
hand on the banisters as though to steady herself.  With
the other she held out to him a flower.

When he had gone with his flower, and when the whir
of his motor car had died away in that silent house, she
turned to ascend the stairs again, stumbled, dropped
by the rail, and lay there huddled in a heap, both
hands pressed desperately over her quivering face.

Then in the room above, the sick man groaned; and
she straightened up and rose as though a trumpet had
sounded.  And slowly, steadily, she mounted her
Calvary, drying her eyes naïvely and like a little girl who
has been hurt and whose grief seems hopeless,
inconsolable, and never ending.


Slowly, side by side, his arm once more in her
possession, Warner and Philippa returned to the Château.

When they reached the terrace, the stars overhead
had become magnificent; millions and millions of them
sparkled up there, arching the dark earth with
necklaces of light.

He turned and gazed out over the panorama of the
night.  Far in the east the silver pencil of a
searchlight swept the heavens.

Into the mysterious east he stared in silence, thinking
of Wildresse.

The Orient had hatched out Wildresse; Biribi had
caught him; Biribi had utterly extinguished his race
at last.

The mysterious irony of it—the death of this man's
only son—the fate that had delivered the father into
the crime-blotched hands of that terrible
battalion—the hazard of Asticot's discovery in the safe—the
sudden, dramatic unmasking of Cassilis—could these
things be happening in this year of 1914?

Stranger things than these were happening, and he
knew it.

Westward the spray of a grey sea dripped from
the muzzles of a thousand guns.

Eastward the coldly logical strategy of a great
commander was developing, and the first fierce drive at
Alsace-Lorraine was being launched.

From farther eastward still the two allies, listening,
caught already the low growling of the Russian
bear.

Germany, poised high above the glare of battle,
waiting to snatch up, one by one, heroic and dying
nations to her bosom—Germany clutching the dripping
sword of conquest, heard also the rumbling of the
Asiatic monster behind the Caucasus.

She turned her armed head and stared over her
mailed shoulder toward the east, haughty, incredulous,
magnificently barbaric—the last of the Valkyries left
amid the dying gods of old, standing there alone,
glittering, motionless amid the hellish conflagration of
the Götterdämmerung.

Warner looked up at the stars.

The glimmering writing on Heaven's wall was plain
to read.

Plainer, it seemed, than his own heart, which had
grown heavy as he stood there beside the woman to
whom it was now too late to speak.

For he should have spoken before, long ago, almost
in the beginning.  Because he had always loved her.
He had known it for days, now; and yet with that blind
delay and distrust of self to which some men are fated,
he had waited too long to ask of her what his heart
had so long, so blindly desired.

Now it was too late: He should have spoken before.

He should have spoken when she was lonely, friendless,
nameless.

Now it was too late.

He turned toward the house, but she did not move,
they came face to face under the high stars.

"*Can't* you—love me?" she faltered.

"Philippa!——"

She flung both arms around his neck.

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