Philippa

The sense of her last words did not reach her sister’s brain. She sat staring at Philippa with more and more widely opening eyes.

“Why are you dressed like that?” she exclaimed, gradually taking in the fact of her sister’s unusual get-up. “Is it some trick you are playing, Philippa – some silly, practical joke? I cannot understand you, just now, especially, when I wanted to be calm and as easy-minded as possible for this visit!”

The reproach in her tone roused Philippa’s indignation.

“Trick – practical joke!” she repeated. “How can you say such a thing? What do you take me for?” and her voice faltered. “You are very stupid, Evelyn,” she went on, more lightly. “You surely must understand what I mean to do. I am no longer Philippa Raynsworth, I am Mrs Headfort’s maid – a very good, trustworthy girl, though rather young and not very experienced. So I hope, ma’am, I have made things clear.”

Evelyn gasped.

“Phil!” was all she could find breath to say for a moment. “Yes, indeed,” she went on, “I have been fearfully dense and stupid. I might have suspected something from your manner the last day or two, and when you so suddenly gave in about my going alone. But, oh, Phil, you are perfectly mad; such a thing cannot possibly be allowed. Just think if it were found out! What would Duke say?”

“Duke shall never hear of it!” Philippa replied, composedly. “It is my secret, Evelyn; I throw myself upon your honour never to tell anybody– do you hear – anybody without my leave. You must promise.”

“But papa and mamma?” said Evelyn, bewilderedly. “Papa and mamma,” repeated Philippa again, forgetting good manners in her excitement. “They know, of course. I mean,” – catching the increasing amazement on her sister’s face – “I mean they will know by this time. I left a letter for Dorcas to give mamma as soon as it was quite too late to stop me. In her heart I do believe mamma will be thankful to know I am with you, to take care of you, my poor little sweet, with your troubled white face. Oh, darling, do cheer up and see the bright side of it. Its going to be– nothing would make me give it up – do understand that, and let yourself be comfortable. Think how beautifully I can do your hair, and dress you, and everything, and what nice talks we can have when you are tired and come up to your room for a little rest. I can be ever so much more use to you even for talking and consulting, than if I were going with you as your sister. And think, if you feel ill or very depressed, how glad you will be to know I am at hand. And how glad mamma will be – why, I can write to her every day and keep her mind at rest.”

Evelyn’s face relaxed a little.

“But, Phil,” she began, and by the tone of her voice, in spite of the remonstrating, “but,” Philippa knew the battle was won, “but, Phil, the life for you – among the servants– you, my sister! Oh, no, it – ”

“It will be such a chance for studying one part of the other side of things as falls to very few,” she interrupted. “Just what I shall enjoy. Why, if ever I come to write stories, as papa says I may do some day, think how valuable it will be to me to have actually made one at the ‘second table’ myself. It will be something like a night-in-a-casual-ward experience.”

Evelyn shuddered.

“Don’t say such things, Philippa, it makes it worse and worse. At least the servants will be clean.”

“It is to be hoped so,” said her sister, coolly.

“But the men-servants,” continued Mrs Headfort; “fancy you sitting down between the butler and the valet! Oh, Philippa, when papa hears of it I believe he will come off by the first train to fetch you himself.”

“He will do nothing of the kind,” returned Philippa. “He will shrug his shoulders and say it will be a good lesson for me, and in his heart he will enjoy the humour of it. You can certainly trust me to keep all the butlers and valets in the world in their place, even though I’m only a lady’s-maid,” and she drew up her head proudly. “But seriously, Evey,” she went on, “I’m sure there will be nothing of the kind required at Wyverston; you may be pretty certain the servants will be a most decorous, old-fashioned set. I shall not be expected to do more than ‘speak when I’m spoken to’ and ‘mend your clothes’ if you tear them.”

Philippa knew what she was about. She went on talking in the same strain till she succeeded in making Evelyn smile and even laugh, taking care to treat the whole affair as irrevocable – a fait accompli– knowing Mrs Headfort’s mind to be so constituted that taking her acceptance for granted was in nine cases out of ten to insure it.

An hour and more passed, Evelyn’s intended opposition to the extraordinary drama arranged by Philippa, growing, half unconsciously to herself, feebler and fainter. She was feeling very tired, too, as the result of the agitation she had gone through, and in such conditions it came naturally to her to cling with childlike appeal to those around her. And Philippa’s stronger personality made her a very rock of support to poor Evey.

Suddenly a thought struck her.

“Phil,” she said, “how is it you are travelling in here? Did you take a first-class ticket?”

Miss Raynsworth shook her head.

“Oh, no,” she replied; “I am going to get out at Crowminster. There is a second-class compartment next door. I don’t suppose there will be any difficulty about my having come this bit of the way with you, but if there should be, I can pay the difference. It is much better for me not to stay with you: we shall get into our rôle more quickly if we start at once. I will look in at every station to see if you want anything. We must be getting near Crowminster now.”

Evelyn did not speak for a moment or two.

“There is just one little thing to be settled,” Philippa went on, with a touch of hesitation. “What will you call me, Evey?”

Evey glanced at her.

“Oh, Phil,” she exclaimed, “it is altogether impossible. I shall never be able to keep it up.”

“Nonsense,” said her sister, with a touch of asperity. “You will have no keeping up, as you call it, to do, and as for my part of it, you can safely leave that to me.”

“I shall never be able to call you anything but Phil,” said Mrs Headfort, plaintively.

“I’ve thought of that,” replied the young girl. “We had better choose a name which would not clash – I mean, so that if you did call me ‘Phil’ by mistake, people would either not notice it or think you had interrupted yourself. What do you say to ‘Phillis’? It would do very well, I think?”

“I daresay it would,” said Mrs Headfort, with a curious kind of resignation in her voice.

“Of course it is a perfect name for a maid,” said Philippa, “if people didn’t always use surnames. But you can truthfully say, if any one remarks upon it, that you’ve known me all my life, though I’ve only lately entered your service.”

“I cannot go into any explanations of the kind, whatever people say, I warn you, Philippa. I haven’t the nerve for it. Even if my words were true, I should feel as if I were telling stories.”

“Oh, well, say nothing, then,” her sister replied, tranquilly. “On the whole it will be as well, or perhaps better. But now, Evey, we are getting near Crowminster, and I must go back to my own carriage. There’s only just one thing more I want to prepare you for. – Shut your eyes for a minute.”

Evey meekly obeyed; she was past the stage of any attempt at restiveness by this time.

“Now,” said Philippa, and Evelyn, looking up, gave a slight exclamation.

“Who would have thought it would change you so? Where in the world did you get them?”

The “it” and the “them” referred to a pair of bluish-tinted spectacles which Philippa had composedly donned.

“Aren’t they splendid?” she said. “Don’t you remember them? They’re a pair mamma had that summer ages ago, when she went to Switzerland with papa, to shade her eyes from the glare. Of course they’re only plain glass, and very dark blue ones wouldn’t have done; they look so like a disguise. At least, in all the sensational stories, they are always used for that. And real spectacles would have dazed me, for my sight’s as keen as – ”

“A hawk’s!” said Mrs Headfort, with a spark of reviving vivacity. “But, oh, Phil, the train is slackening. I wish you could have stayed with me.”

“It is much better not,” said Philippa, philosophically. “Very much better not. We should have gone on talking and forgetting the new state of things. My being in another compartment is the first act in the play – it will help us to realise it. And now, ma’am,” she continued, rising as she spoke, for by this time the train had stopped, “I had better leave you. I will come to see if you desire me for anything at the next station we stop at.”

Without the undue effort or constraint, which would have accompanied any complete change of tone for a prolonged period, she had managed slightly to modify her usual inflection of voice and manner of speaking. It was slower and more monotonous than its wont, with a slight suggestion of choosing her words, as might be done by an intelligent girl of a lower class with enough education to make her aspire to perfect correctness.

“All right, Phillis,” Mrs Headfort replied, with a somewhat pitiful and not very successful attempt at following her sister’s lead. “No,” she continued, with a sudden change of tone, “don’t speak to me. I can’t stand it! I will do my best to brace myself up to it, but it won’t be easy. Perhaps it is better for you to leave me alone.”

Philippa did not reply, except by a smile and a nod, feeling, to tell the truth, far less easy-minded than she looked. She was becoming conscious that till now she had not sufficiently taken into account Evelyn’s peculiar unfitness for acting a part of any kind; all she had directed her attention to having been the mere obtaining of her sister’s consent to her scheme.

“Yet, after all,” she thought to herself, as she stepped into the second-class compartment next door, “after all, all she will have to do will be very easy; there will be no acting involved. We shall hardly ever be seen together, and if her manner is constrained and peculiar, it will only be thought to be her way with servants. It isn’t as if we were going among people who had ever seen her before.”

With these reflections she did her best to quell her misgivings, and feeling that it would be better not to let her mind dwell too long on her own concerns, she looked about her for a little diversion.

There were two or three other occupants of the compartment, and her glance fell almost immediately on one of them who at once riveted her attention. This was a long-nosed, melancholy-eyed dachshund, whom Philippa’s judgment, experienced in matters pertaining to his family, straightway mentally labelled as a “perfect beauty.” In other words, as consistently and entirely ugly as the strictest connoisseur could demand.

Philippa loved dogs, and in general her amiable feelings towards them were reciprocated. She had a very tender association with dachshunds, the tragic death of one such pet having been literally the sorest grief of her childhood, and as she gazed on her four-footed fellow-traveller, whose soft eyes gazed back at her in return from the seat exactly opposite hers, where he was comfortably established in a corner, it was perhaps well for her that the blue-tinted spectacles hid the tears which involuntarily dimmed their surface.

Never since that terrible day – now, what the young girl would have called “so many, many years ago,” when the broken-hearted child had sobbed itself to sleep for the loss of her darling – never had she seen another dog so exactly like “Valentine.”

“Oh, you dear, dear dog,” she said, under her breath, “I feel as if you must know me.”

The words were quite inaudible, but some doggie instinct must have carried their meaning to the brain of poor Valentine’s double, for with something between a smile and a sigh – literally speaking, a yawn of regret at the interruption of his comfortable repose – the dachshund, at the cost of considerable self-denial, slowly lifted himself, and with something between a spring and a stretch, landed his lengthy person on Philippa’s knee. Thence he lifted his reddy-brown eyes, gleaming with mingled pathos and humour, to her face for approval.