The Girl Philippa

"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.

CHAPTER XXVI

Warner awoke with a start; somebody was knocking on his door. As he sat up in bed, the solid thudding of the cannonade filled the room – still very far away, but deeper and with a heavier undertone which set the windows slightly vibrating.

The knocking on his door sounded again insistently.

"All right!" he called, throwing on a bathrobe and finding his slippers.

The rising sun had not yet freed itself from the mist that lay over hill and plain; wide, rosy beams spread to the zenith and a faint glow tinged the morning fog, but the foreground of woods and fields was still dusky and vague, and his room full of shadows.

He tied the belt of his robe and opened the door. In the semi-obscurity of the corridor stood Philippa, hair disordered, wrapped in her chamber robe.

"Jim," she said, "the telephone in the lower hall has been ringing like mad. It awoke me. I lay and listened to it, but nobody seemed to hear it, so I went down. It's a Sister of Charity – Sister Eila – who desires to speak to you."

"I'll go at once – thank you, Philippa – "

"And, Jim?" She was trotting along beside him in her bare feet and bedroom slippers as he started for the stairs. "When you have talked to her, I think you ought to see what is happening on the Ausone road."

"What is happening?" he demanded, descending the stairs.

She kept pace with him, one hand following the stair rail:

"There are so many people and carts and sheep and cattle, all going south. And just now two batteries of artillery went the other way toward Ausone. They were going at a very fast trot – with gendarmes galloping ahead to warn the people to make room – "

"When did you see this?"