The Girl Philippa

"Just as she sits there," nodded Halkett.

"Just as she sits there, chin on palm, one lank leg crossed over the other, and her slim foot dangling… And the average painter would make her seem all wrong, Halkett; and I might, too, except for those clear grey eyes and their childish indifference to the devil's world outside their ken." He inspected her for a moment more, then: "Yes, in spite of rouge and other obvious elementals, I should paint her as she really is, Halkett; and no man in his heart would dare doubt her after I'd finished."

"That's not realism," remarked Halkett, laughing.

"It's the vital essence of it. You know I'm something of a gambler. Well, if I painted that girl as she sits there now, in this noisy, messy, crowded cabaret, with the artificial tint on lip and cheek – if I painted her just as she appears to us, and in all the insolently youthful relaxation of her attitude – I'd be gambling all the while with myself that the soul inside her is as clean as a flame; and I'd paint that conviction into her portrait with every brush stroke! What do you think of that view of her?"

"As you Americans say, you're some poet," observed Halkett, laughingly.

"A poet is an advanced psychologist. He begins where scientific deduction ends."

"That's what makes your military pictures so convincing," said Halkett, with his quick smile. "It's not only the correctness of details and the spirited drawing and color, but you do see into the very souls of the men you paint, and their innermost characters are there, revealed in the supreme crisis of the moment." He smiled quietly. "I'll believe it if you say that young girl over there is quite all right."

"I'd paint her that way, anyhow."

The singing on the stage had ceased from troubling, and the stringed orchestra was playing one of the latest and most inane of dance steps. A clumsy piou-piou got up with his fresh-cheeked partner; other couples rose from the sloppy tables, and in another moment the dancing floor was uncomfortably crowded.

It was a noisy place; a group of summer touring students from Louvain, across the border, were singing "La Brabançonne" – a very patriotic and commendable attempt, but it scarcely harmonized with the dance music. Perspiring waiters rushed hither and thither, their trays piled high; the dancers trotted and spun around and galloped about over the waxed floor; the young girl behind her wire wicket swung her narrow foot to and fro and gazed imperturbably out across the tumult.

"Philippa!" cried one of the Louvain students, hammering on the table with his beer glass. "Come out from behind your guichet and dance with me!"

The girl's grey eyes turned superciliously toward the speaker, but she neither answered nor moved her head.

The young man blew a kiss toward her and attempted to climb upon the zinc table, but old man Wildresse, who was prowling near, tapped him on the shoulder.

"Pas de bêtise!" he growled. "Soyez sage! Restez tranquille, nom de Dieu!"

"I merely desired the honor of dancing with your charming cashier – "

"Allons! Assez! It's sufficient to ask her, isn't it? A woman dances with whom she chooses."

And, grumbling, he walked on with his heavy sidling step, hands clasped behind him, his big, hard, smoothly shaven face lowered and partly turned, as though eternally listening for somebody just at his heels. Always sidling nearer to the table where Warner and Halkett were seated, he paused, presently, and looked down at them, shot a glance across at the girl, Philippa, caught her eye, nodded significantly. Then, addressing Warner and his new friend:

"Well, gentlemen," he said in English, "are you amusing yourselves in the Café Biribi?"

"Sufficiently," nodded Warner.

Wildresse peeped stealthily over his shoulder, as though expecting to surprise a listener. Then his very small black eyes stole toward Halkett, and he furtively examined him.

"Jour de fête," he remarked in his harshly resonant voice. "Grand doings in town tonight. Do you gentlemen dine here this evening?"

"I think not," said Warner.

"I am sorry. It will be gay. There are dance partners to be had for a polite bow. You should see my little caissière yonder!" He made a grunting sound and kissed his blunt fingers to the ceiling. "M-m-m!" he growled. "She can dance! But I don't permit her to dance very often. Only a special client now and then – "

"May we consider ourselves special clients?" inquired Warner, amused.

"Oh, I don't say yes and I don't say no." He jerked his round, shaven head. "It all depends on her. She dances with whom she pleases. And if the Emperor of China asked her, nevertheless she should be free to please herself."

"She's very pretty," said Halkett.

"Others have said so before you in the Cabaret de Biribi."

"Why do you call your cabaret the Café Biribi?" asked Warner.

"Eh? By God, I call it Biribi because I'm not ashamed of the name."

Halkett looked up into his wicked black eyes, and Wildresse wagged his finger at him.

"Supposition," he said, "that your son is a good boy – a little lively, but a good boy – and he comes of age and he goes with his class for two years – three years now, and to hell with it!

"Bon! Supposition, also, that his sergeant is a tyrant, his captain an ass, his colonel an imbecile! Bon! Given a little natural ardor – a trifle of animal spirits, and the lad is up before the council – bang! – and he gets his in the battalions of Biribi!"

His voice had become a sort of ominous growl.

"As for me," he said heavily, "I mock at their council and their blockhead colonel! I accept their challenge; I do not conceal that my son is serving in a disciplinary battalion; I salute all the battalions of Biribi – where there are better men in the ranks than there are in many a regiment of the line, by God! And I honor those battalions by naming my cabaret 'Biribi.' The Government gets no change out of me!"

The man asserted too much, swaggered too obviously; and Halkett, not suspicious but always cautious, kept his inquiring eyes fixed on him.

Warner said with a smile:

"You have the courage of your convictions, Monsieur Wildresse."

"As for that," growled Wildresse, casting another stealthy glance behind him, "I've got courage. Courage? Who hasn't? Everybody's got courage. It's brains the world lacks. Excuse me, gentlemen – affairs of business – and if you want to dance with my little cashier, there is no harm in asking her." And he shuffled away, his heavy head bent sideways, his hands tightly clasped behind him.

"There's an evil type," remarked Halkett. "What a brute it is!"

Warner said:

"With his cropped head and his smooth, pasty face, and those unpleasant black eyes of his, he looks like an ex-convict. It doesn't astonish me that he has a son serving in the disciplinary battalions of Africa."

"Does it astonish you that he is the employer of that girl behind the counter?" asked Halkett.

Warner turned to look at her again:

"It's interesting, isn't it? She seems to be another breed."

"Yes. Now, what do you make of her?"

Warner hesitated, then looked up with a laugh.

"Halkett," he said, "I'm going over to ask her to dance."

"All right; I'll hold the table," said the Englishman, amused. And Warner rose, skirted the dancers, and walked around to the cashier's desk, aware all the while that the girl's indifferent grey eyes were following his movements.

CHAPTER III

Warner tucked his walking stick and straw hat under one arm and, sauntering over to the cashier's desk, made a very nice and thoroughly Continental bow to the girl behind it.