Part 31

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'Aures, 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'Aures unheeded, as wireless in the upper air currents; and the Countess glanced occasionally at her sister or let her eyes rest on D'Aures 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.

CHAPTER XXXIII

Warner, dressing for dinner, stood looking down from his window at the Sais 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 Sais 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'armee 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 Muelhausen—"

"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 Wuerttemberg, Generals von Kluck, von Buelow, 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 Vise, its left on Stavelot, its center enveloping the Liege 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 aeroplane 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 role. 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 Chateau 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'Aures 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 Cure 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 Chateau; every house, humble or great, from Dreslin to Sais, 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 Cure 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'Aures 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!"