Robert Chambers - The Girl Philippa

"When I'm in Ausone again," he said seriously, "I'll bring with me a canvas and brushes. And if Monsieur Wildresse doesn't mind I'll make a little study of you. Shall I, Philippa?"

"Would you care to?"

"Very much. Do you think Monsieur Wildresse would permit it?"

"I do what I choose."

"Oh!"

She misunderstood his amused exclamation, and she flushed up.

"My conduct has been good – so far," she explained. "Everybody knows it. The prix de la rosière is not yet beyond me. If a girl determines to behave otherwise, who can stop her, and what? Not her parents – if she has any; not bolts and keys. No; it is understood between Monsieur Wildresse and me that I do what I choose. And, Monsieur, so far I have not chosen – indiscreetly – " She looked up calmly. " – In spite of my painted cheeks which annoyed you – "

"I didn't mean – "

"I understand. You think that it is more comme il faut to exhibit one's freckles to the world than to paint them out."

"It's a thousand times better! If you only knew how pretty you are – just as you are now – with your soft, girlish skin and your chestnut hair and your enchanting grey eyes – "

"Monsieur – "

The girl's rising color and her low-voiced exclamation warned him again that detached and quite impersonal praises from him were not understood.

"Philippa," he explained with bored but smiling reassurance, "I'm merely telling you what a really pretty girl you are; I'm not paying court to you. Didn't you understand?"

The grey eyes were lifted frankly to his; questioned him in silence.

"In America a man may say as much to a girl and mean nothing more – important," he explained. "I'm not trying to make love to you, Philippa. Were you afraid I was?"

She said slowly:

"I was not exactly — afraid ."

"I don't do that sort of thing," he continued pleasantly. "I don't make love to anybody. I'm too busy a man. Also, I would not offend you by talking to you about love."

She looked down at her folded hands. Since she had been with him nothing had seemed very real to her, nothing very clear, except that for the first time in her brief life she was interested in a man on whom she was supposed to be spying.

The Gallic and partly morbid traditions she had picked up in such a girlhood as had been hers were now making for her an important personal episode out of their encounter, and were lending a fictitious and perhaps a touching value to every word he uttered.

But more important and most significant of anything to her was her own natural inclination for him. For her he already possessed immortal distinction; he was her first man.

She was remembering that she had gone to him after exchanging a glance with Wildresse, when he had first asked her to dance. But she had needed no further persuasion to sit with him at his table; she had even forgotten her miserable rôle when she asked him to go out to the river with her. The significance of all this, according to her Gallic tradition, was now confronting her, emphasizing the fact that she was still with him.

As she sat there, her hands clasped in her lap, the sunlit reality of it all seemed brightly confused as in a dream – a vivid dream which casts a deeper enchantment over slumber, holding the sleeper fascinated under the tense concentration of the happy spell. Subconsciously she seemed to be aware that, according to tradition, this conduct of hers must be merely preliminary to something further; that, in sequence, other episodes were preparing – were becoming inevitable. And she thought of what he had said about making love.

Folding and unfolding her hands, and looking down at them rather fixedly, she said:

"Apropos of love – I have never been angry because men told me they were in love with me… Men love; it is natural; they cannot help it. So, if you had said so, I should not have been angry. No, not at all, Monsieur."

"Philippa," he said smilingly, "when a girl and a man happen to be alone together, love isn't the only entertaining subject for conversation, is it?"

"It's the subject I've always had to listen to from men. Perhaps that is why I thought – when you spoke so amiably of my – my – "

"Beauty," added Warner frankly, " – because it is beauty, Philippa. But I meant only to express the pleasure that it gave to a painter – yes, and to a man who can admire without offense, and say so quite as honestly."

The girl slowly raised her eyes.

"You speak very pleasantly to me," she said. "Are other American men like you?"

"You ought to know. Aren't you American?"

"I don't know what I am."

"Why, I thought – your name was Philippa Wildresse."

"I am called that."

"Then Monsieur Wildresse isn't a relation?"

"No. I wear his name for lack of any other… He found me somewhere, he says… In Paris, I believe… That is all he will tell me."

"Evidently," said Warner in his pleasant, sympathetic voice, "you have had an education somewhere."

"He sent me to school in England until I was sixteen… After that I became cashier for him."

"He gave you his name, and he supports you… Is he kind to you?"

"He has never struck me."

"Does he protect you?"

"He uses me in business… I am too valuable to misuse."

The girl looked down at her folded hands. And even Warner divined what ultimate chances she stood in the Cabaret de Biribi.

"When I'm in Ausone again, I'll come to see you," he said pleasantly. " – Not to make love to you, Philippa," he added with a smile, "but just because we have become such good friends out here in the Lys ."

"Yes," she said, "friends. I shall be glad to see you. I shall always try to understand you – whatever you say to me."

"That's as it should be!" he exclaimed heartily. "Give me your hand on it, Philippa."

She laid her hand in his gravely. They exchanged a slight pressure. Then he glanced at his watch, rose, and picked up the pole.

"I've got to drive to Saïs in time for dinner," he remarked. "I'm sorry, because I'd like to stay out here with you."

"I'm sorry, too," she said.

The next moment the punt shot out into the sunny stream.

Warner and the girl Philippa reëntered the Cabaret de Biribi together the uproar had become almost deafening. Confetti was thrown at them immediately, and they advanced all a-flutter with brilliant tatters.

The orchestra was playing, almost everybody was dancing, groups at tables along the edge of the floor sang, clinked glasses, and threw confetti without discrimination. The whole place – tables, floor, chandeliers, and people – streamed with multi-colored paper ribbons. Waiters swept it in heaps from the dancing floor.

Philippa entered the cashier's enclosure and dismissed the woman in charge. Seated once more on her high chair she opened her reticule and produced a small mirror. Then she leaned far over her counter toward Warner.

"Is it permitted me to powder my nose?" she whispered with childlike seriousness; but she laughed when he did, and, still laughing, made him a gay little gesture of adieu with her powder puff.

He stood looking at her for a moment, where she sat on her high chair behind the cage, intently occupied with her mirror, oblivious to the tumult around her. Then, the smile still lingering on his features, he turned to look for his new acquaintance, Halkett.

Old man Wildresse sidled up to the cashier's desk, opened the wicket, and went inside. Philippa, still using her tiny mirror, was examining a freckle very seriously.

"Eh, bien?" he growled. "Rien?"

"Nothing!"

"Drop that glass and talk!" he said harshly.

She turned and looked at him.

"I tell you it was silly to suspect such a man!" she said impatiently. "In my heart I feel humiliated that you should have set me to spy on him – "