The Girl Philippa

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 Saïs 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 Saïs 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'armée 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 Mülhausen– "

"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 Württemberg, Generals von Kluck, von Bülow, 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 Visé, its left on Stavelot, its center enveloping the Liége 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 aëroplane 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 rôle. 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: