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."
CHAPTER XIX
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.
