The Girl Philippa

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."