Old Wildresse looked at her a moment, then he also shrugged his shoulders and went shuffling away, always apparently distrustful of that invisible something just behind his back.
Halkett said:
"Mr. Warner and I have been discussing an imaginary portrait of you."
"What?" The clear, grey eyes turned questioningly to him, to Warner.
The latter nodded:
"I happen to be a painter. Mr. Halkett and I have agreed that it would be an interesting experiment to paint your portrait--as you really are."
The girl seemed slightly puzzled.
"As I really am?" she repeated. "But, Messieurs, am I not what you see before you?"
The music began again; the Louvain student, a little tipsy but very decorous, arose, bowed to the girl Philippa, bowed to Halkett and to Warner, and asked for the honor of a dance with her.
"Merci, Monsieur--another time, perhaps," she replied indifferently.
The boy seemed disposed to linger, but he was not quarrelsome, and finally Halkett got up and led him away.
From moment to moment Warner, glancing across during his tete-a-tete with the girl Philippa, could see the Louvain student continually shaking hands with Halkett who seemed horribly bored.
A little later still the entire Louvain delegation insisted on entertaining Halkett with beer and song; and the resigned but polite Englishman, now seated at their table, was being taught to sing "La Brabanconne," between draughts of Belgian beer.
The girl Philippa played with the stem of her glass and stirred the ice in it with her broken wheat straw. The healthy color in her face had now faded to an indoor pallor again under the rouge.
"So you are a painter," she said, her grey eyes fixed absently on her glass. "Are you a distinguished painter, Monsieur?"
He laughed:
"You'll have to ask others that question, Philippa."
"Why? Don't you know whether you are distinguished?"
"I've had some success," he admitted, amused.
She thought a moment, then leaned forward toward the Louvain table.
"Mr. Halkett," she called in English. "Is Mr. Warner a distinguished American painter?"
Halkett laughed.
"One of the most celebrated American painters of the day!"
The Louvain students, understanding, rose as a man, waved their glasses, and cheered for Warner, the "grand peintre Americain." Which embarrassed and annoyed him so that his face grew brighter than the paint on Philippa's lips.
"I'm sorry," she said, noticing his annoyance. "I did not mean to make you conspicuous."
Everybody in the cafe was now looking at him; on every side he gazed into amused and smiling faces, saw glasses lifted, heard the cries of easily aroused Gallic enthusiasm.
"Vive le grand peintre Americain! Vive l'Amerique du Nord!"
"This is tiresome!" exclaimed Philippa. "Let us walk down to the river and sit in one of our boats. I should really like to talk to you sensibly--unless you are too much annoyed with me."
She beckoned a waiter to bring her apron; and she put it on.
"When you are ready, Monsieur," she said serenely.
So they rose; Warner paid the bill, and, with a whimsical smile at Halkett, walked out beside Philippa through one of the rear doors, and immediately found himself in brightest sunshine, amid green trees and flower beds.
Here, under the pitiless sky, the girl's face became ghastly under its rouged mask--the more shocking, perhaps, because her natural skin, if pale, appeared to be smooth and clear; and the tragic youth of her seemed to appeal to all out of doors from the senseless abuse it was enduring.
To see her there in the freshness of the open breeze, sunshine and shadow dappling the green under foot, the blue overhead untroubled by a cloud, gave Warner a slightly sick sensation.
"The air is pleasant," she remarked, unconscious of the effect she had on him.
He nodded. They walked down the grassy slope to the river bank, where rows of boats lay moored. A few were already in use out on the calm stream; young men in their shirt sleeves splashed valiantly at the oars; young women looked on under sunshades of flamboyant tints.
There was a white punt there called the Lys. Philippa stepped into it, drew a key from her apron pocket, unlocked the padlock. Then, lifting the pole from the grass, she turned and invited Warner with a gesture.
He had not bargained for this; but he tossed the chain aboard, stepped in, and offered to take the pole.
But Philippa evidently desired to do the punting herself; so he sat back, watching her sometimes and sometimes looking at the foliage, where they glided swiftly along under overhanging branches and through still, glimmering reaches of green water, set with scented rushes where dragon flies glittered and midges danced in clouds, and the slim green frogs floated like water sprites, partly submerged, looking at them out of golden goblin eyes that never blinked.
"The town is en fete," remarked Philippa presently. "Why should I not be too?"
Warner laughed:
"Do you call this a fete?"
"For me, yes." ... After a moment, turning from her pole: "Do you not find it agreeable?"
"Certainly. What little river is this?"
"The Recollette."
"It flows by Sais, too. I did not recognize it for the same. The Recollette is swifter and shallower below Sais."
"You know Sais, then?"
"I live there in summer."
"Oh. And in winter?"
"Paris."
An unconscious sigh of relief escaped her, that it was not necessary to play the spy with this man. It was the other man who interested Wildresse.
The girl poled on in silence for a while, then deftly guided the Lys into the cool green shadow of a huge oak which overhung the water, the lower branches touching it.
"The sun is warm," she observed, driving in the pole and tying the white punt so that it could swing with the current.
She came and seated herself by Warner, smiled frankly.
"Do you know," she said, "I've never before done this for pleasure."
"What haven't you done for pleasure?" he inquired, perplexed.
"This--what I am doing."
"You mean you never before went out punting with a customer?"
"Not for the pleasure of it--only for business reasons."
He hesitated to understand, refused to, because, for all her careless freedom and her paint, he could not believe her to be merely a fille de cabaret.
"Business reasons," he repeated. "What is your business?"
"Cashier, of course."
"Well, does your business ever take you boating with customers? Is it part of your business to dance with a customer and drink grenadine with him?"
"Yes, but you wouldn't understand----" And suddenly she comprehended his misunderstanding of her and blushed deeply.
"I am not a cocotte. Did you think I meant that?"
"I know you are not. I didn't know what you meant."
There was a silence; the color in her cheeks cooled under the rouge.
"It happened this way," she said quietly. "I didn't want to make it a matter of business with you. Even in the beginning I didn't.... You please me.... After all, the town is en fete.... After all, a girl has a right to please herself once in her life.... And business is a very lonely thing for the young.... Why shouldn't I amuse myself for an hour with a client who pleases me?"
"Are you doing it?"
"Yes. I never before knew a distinguished painter--only noisy boys from the schools, whose hair is uncut, whose conversation is blague, and whose trousers are too baggy to suit me. They smoke soldier's tobacco, and their subjects of discussion are not always convenable."
He said, curiously:
"As for that, you must hear much that is not convenable in the cabaret."
"Oh, yes. I don't notice it when it is not addressed to me.... Please tell me what you paint--if I am permitted to ask."
"Soldiers."
"Only soldiers?"
"Portraits, sometimes, and landscapes out of doors--anything that appeals to me. Do pictures interest you?"
"I used to go to the Louvre and the Luxembourg when I was a child. It was interesting. Did you say that you would like to make a portrait of me?"
"I said that if I ever did make a portrait of you I'd paint you as you really are."
Her perplexed gaze had the disconcerting directness of a child's.
"I don't understand," she said.
"Shall I explain?"
"If you would be so kind."
"You won't be offended?"
She regarded him silently; her brows became slightly contracted.
"Such a man as you would not willingly offend, I think."
"No, of course not. I didn't mean that sort of thing. But you might not like what I have to say."
"If I merit what you say about me, it doesn't matter whether I like it or not, does it? Tell me."
He laughed:
"Well, then, if I were going to paint you, I'd first ask you to wash your cheeks."
She sat silent, humiliated, the painful color deepening and waning under the rouge.
"And," he continued pleasantly, "after your face had been well scrubbed, I'd paint you in your black gown, cuffs and apron of a caissiere, just as I first saw you there behind the desk, one foot swinging, and your cheek resting on your hand.
"But behind your eyes, which looked out so tranquilly across the tumult of the cabaret, I'd paint a soul as clean as a flame.... I'm wondering whether I'd make any mistake in painting you that way, Philippa?"
The girl Philippa had fixed her grey eyes on him with fascinated but troubled intensity. They remained so for a while after he had finished speaking.
Presently, and partly to herself, she said:
"Pour ca--no. So far. But it has never before occurred to me that I look like a cocotte."
She turned, and, resting one arm on the gunwale, gazed down into the limpid green water.
"Have you a fresh handkerchief?" she asked, not turning toward him.
"Yes--but----"
"Please! I must wash my face."
She bent swiftly, dipped both hands into the water, and scrubbed her lips and cheeks. Then, extending her arm behind her for the handkerchief, she dried her skin, sat up again, and faced him with childish resignation. A few freckles had become visible; her lips were no longer vivid, and there now remained only the faintest tint of color under her clear, cool skin.
"You see," she said, "I'm not attractive unless I help nature. One naturally desires to be thought attractive."
"On the contrary, you are exceedingly attractive!"
"Are you sincere?"
"Perfectly."
"But I have several freckles near my nose. And I am pale."
"You are entirely attractive," he repeated, laughing.
"With my freckles! You are joking. Also, I have no pink in my cheeks now." She shrugged. "However--if you like me this way----" She shrugged again, as though that settled everything.
Another punt passed them; she looked after it absently. Presently she said, still watching the receding boat:
"Do you think you'll ever come again to the Cafe Biribi?"
"I'll come expressly to see you, Philippa," he replied.
To his surprise the girl blushed vividly and looked away from him; and he hastily took a different tone, somewhat astonished that such a girl should not have learned long ago how to take the irresponsible badinage of men. Certainly she must have had plenty of opportunity for such schooling.
"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 rosiere 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 role 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 Sais 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.
*CHAPTER IV*
Warner and the girl Philippa reentered 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----"
"What's that!"
"No, I've had enough! I don't like the role; I never liked it! Are there no police in France----"
"Little idiot!" he said. "Will you hold your tongue?"
"It is a disgusting metier----"
"Damnation! Hold your tongue!" he repeated. "We've got to do what the Government tells us to do, haven't we?"
"Not I! Never again----"
"Yes, you will! Do you hear? Yes, you will, or I'll twist your neck! Now, I'm going to keep my eye on that other gentleman. Granted that the man you pumped is all right, I'm not so sure about the other, who seems to be an Englishman. I'm going over to stand near him. By and by I'll address him. And if I wink at you, leave your caisse with Melanie, come over, and sit at their table again----"
"No!"
"Yes, you will!"
"No!"
"Yes, you will. And you'll also contrive it so the Englishman asks you to dance. Do you hear what I say? And you'll find out where he comes from, and when he arrived in Ausone, and where he is going, and whatever else you can worm out of him!" He glared at her. "Disobey if you dare," he added.
She was silent.
After a moment he continued in a softer voice:
"Do you want to see me in prison and my son in New Caledonia? Very well, then; do what the Government tells you to do."
"I--I've done enough--filthy work----" she stammered. "Why must I? I have never done anything wrong----"
"Did you hear what I said? Do you want to see Jacques in Noumea?"
"No," she said sullenly.
"Then do what I tell you, or, by God, they'll ship him there and me too!"
And he clasped his hands behind his back, peered sideways at her, shrugged, and went shuffling out of the enclosure.
Groups at various tables were singing and shouting; the floor seethed with sweating dancers. On the edge of this vortex the girl Philippa, from her high chair, looked darkly across the tumult toward the table where Halkett sat.
Something seemed to be happening there; she could see Wildresse gesticulating vigorously; she saw Warner making his way toward his friend, who was seated alone at a table, a lighted cigarette balanced between his fingers and one arm thrown carelessly around the back of the chair on which he sat.
He was looking coolly but steadily at three men who occupied the table next to him; Wildresse now stood between the two tables, and his emphatic gesticulations were apparently directed toward these three men; but in the uproar, and although he also appeared to be shouting, what he was saying remained inaudible.
Warner went over and seated himself beside Halkett; and now he could distinguish the harsh voice of the Patron raised in irritation:
"No politics! I'll not suffer political disputes in my cabaret!" he bawled. "Quarrels arise from such controversies. I'll have no quarrels in my place. Now, Messieurs, un peu de complaisance!"
One of the men he was exhorting leaned wide in his seat and looked insolently across at Halkett.
"It was the Englishman's fault," he retorted threateningly. "I and my friends here had been speaking of the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Serajevo. We were conversing peaceably and privately among ourselves, when that Englishman laughed at us----"
"You are mistaken," said Halkett quietly.
"Did you not laugh?" cried the second of the men at the next table.
"Yes, but not at what you were saying. I'm sorry if you thought so----"
The man half rose in his chair, exclaiming:
"Why shouldn't I think it natural for an Englishman to laugh at the murder of an Austrian arch-duke----"
"Stop that discussion!" cried Wildresse, angrily jerking his heavy head from Halkett to the three men at the other table. "Let it rest where it is, I tell you! The English gentleman says he did not laugh at what you were saying. Nom de Dieu! Nobody well brought up laughs at murder!" And to Halkett and Warner: "Be amiable enough, gentlemen, to carry this misunderstanding no further. I've had sufficient trouble with the police in my time."
Warner laid one hand lightly on Halkett's arm.
"All right," he said to Wildresse; "no trouble shall originate with us." And, to Halkett, in a lowered voice: "Have you an idea that those men over there are trying to force a quarrel?"
"Of course."
"Have you ever seen them before?"
"Not one of them."
Warner's lips scarcely moved as he said:
"Is it the matter of the envelope?"
"I think so. And, Warner, I don't intend to drag you into any----"
"Wait. Are you armed?"
Halkett shook his head.
"That's no good," he said. "I can't afford to do anything conspicuous. If I'm involved with the authorities I'm done for, and I might just as well be knocked on the head." After a moment he added: "I think perhaps you'd better say good-by to me now, Warner----"
"Why?"
"Because, if they manage to force a quarrel, I don't mean to have you involved----"
"Do you really expect me to run away?" asked Warner, laughing.
Halkett looked up at him with a faint smile:
"I'm under very heavy obligations to you already----"
"You are coming to Sais with me."
"Thanks so much, but----"
"Come on, Halkett. I'm not going to leave you here."
"My dear chap, I'll wriggle out somehow. I've done it before. After all, they may not mean mischief."
Warner turned and looked across at the three men. Two were whispering together; the third, arms folded, was staring truculently at Halkett out of his light blue eyes.
Warner turned his head and said quietly to Halkett:
"I take two of them to be South Germans or Austrians. The other might be Alsatian. Do any of these possible nationalities worry you?"
"Exactly," said Halkett coolly.
"In other words, any trouble you may expect is likely to come from Germans?"
"That's about it."
Warner lighted a cigarette.
"Shall we try a quiet getaway?" he asked.
"No; I'll look out for myself. Clear out, Warner, there's a good fellow----"
"Don't ask me to do a thing that you wouldn't do," retorted Warner sharply. "Come on; I'm going to drive you to Sais."
Halkett flushed.
"I shan't forget how decent you've been," he said. They summoned the waiter, paid the reckoning, rose, and walked leisurely toward the door.
At the caissiere's desk they turned aside to say good-night to Philippa.
The girl looked up from her accounts, pencil poised, gazing at Warner.
"Au revoir, Philippa," he said, smilingly.
The girl's serious features relaxed; she nodded to him gayly, turned, still smiling, to include Halkett. And instantly a swift change altered her face; she half rose from her chair, arm outstretched.
"What is that man doing behind you!" she cried out--too late to avert what she saw coming. For the man close behind Halkett had dexterously passed a silk handkerchief across his throat from behind and had jerked him backward; and, like lightning, two other men appeared on either side of him, tore his coat wide, and thrust their hands into his breast pockets.
Warner pivoted on his heel and swung hard on the man with the silk handkerchief, driving him head-on into the table behind, which fell with a crash of glassware. Halkett, off his balance, fell on top of the table, dragging with him one of the men whose hand had become entangled in his breast pocket.
The people who had been seated at the table were hurled right and left among the neighboring tables; a howl of anger and protest burst from the crowd; there came a shout of "Cochon!"--a rush to see what had happened; people mounted on chairs, waiters arrived, running. Out of the melee Halkett wriggled and rose, coughing, his features still crimson from partial strangulation. Warner caught his arm in a grip of iron and whisked him out of the door. The next instant they were engulfed in the crowds thronging the market square.
Warner, thoroughly aroused and excited, still maintained his grip on Halkett's arm.
"Did you ever see anything like it?" he said in a low voice. "It came like a bolt from the sky. That was the Coup du Pere Francois. Did they get anything from you?"
Halkett spoke with difficulty, pressing his throat with his fingers and trying to smile.
"What they got," he said, "was meant for them to get--time-tables and a ticket to Paris. I don't intend to travel that way----" A fit of coughing shook him. "----For a moment I thought they'd actually broken my neck. What did you do to that fellow with his noose?"
"He fell on the table behind you. Everybody was piled up with the crockery. You wriggled out like a lizard." He turned cautiously and looked back over his shoulder. "Do you think we have been followed?"
"I can't see that we are."
They entered the rue d'Auros and turned into the Hotel Boule d'Argent. Warner sent a chasseur to the stables for his horse and dogcart; Halkett hastened to collect his luggage.
In a few minutes the horse and cart came rattling out of the mews; luggage, canvases, and the sack of colors were placed in the boot; Warner mounted, taking reins and whip; Halkett sprang up beside him, and the groom freed the horse's head.
Into the almost deserted Boulevard d'Athos they went at a lively clip, circled the lovely church of Sainte Cassilda at the head of it, and trotted out into the broad highroad which swings cast to the river Recollette, and follows that pretty little stream almost due south to the hills and cliffs and woods and meadows of Sais.
The sun hung low above the fields, reddening the roadside bushes and painting the tall ranks of poplars with vivid streaks of gold and rose.
Just outside the remains of the old town wall they passed through a suburban hamlet. That, except for a farm or two more, included the last houses this side of Sais.
For a little while neither of the young men spoke; Halkett's cough had ceased, but now and then he fidgeted with his collar as though to ease it from the bruised throat. Warner drove, looking straight between his horse's ears, as though intently preoccupied with his navigation.
After a while Halkett said:
"The envelope is safe, I take it:"
"Oh, yes. They never noticed me until I hit one of them."
"I'm so grateful," said Halkett, "that it's quite useless for me to try to say so----"
"Listen! I'm enjoying it. I'm grateful to you, Halkett, for giving me the opportunity. I needed touching up." He laughed in sheer exhilaration. "We stodgy professional people ought to be stirred out of our ruts, A little mix-up like that with a prospect of others is exactly what I needed."
Halkett smiled rather dryly.
"Oh," he said. "If it strikes you that way, I shall feel much relieved."
"Relieve yourself of all embarrassment," returned Warner gayly. "If our acquaintance entails further scraps with those gentlemen, I shall be merely the more grateful to you."
They both laughed; Warner swung his long whip like a fly rod and caught the loop cleverly on his whip-stock.
Halkett, still laughing, said:
"You don't look as though you enjoyed a cabaret fight. You look far too respectable."
"Oh, I am respectable, I suppose. But I'm not very aged yet, and my student days are still rather near."
The road curved out now along the Recollette where it still flowed a placid stream between green meadows and through charming bits of woodland. In the glass of the flood the sunset sky was mirrored; swallows cut the still, golden surface; slowly spreading circles of rising fish starred it at intervals.
"So you don't go armed?" remarked Warner thoughtfully.
"No."
The American pointed with the butt of his whip to the dashboard where the blue-black butts of two automatics appeared from slung holsters.
"Why the artillery?" inquired Halkett.
"I drive my neighbor, Madame de Moidrey, sometimes; and in summer it is often dark before we return. It's a lovely country; also, the quarrymen at the cement works are a rough lot. So I let my pretty neighbor take no chances with me."
"Quite right," nodded Halkett. "When quarrymen get drunk it's no joke. What quarry is it?"
"The Esser Company. It's a German cement concern, I believe."
"German?"
"I believe so."
"Where is this quarry?"
"In the hills back of the Recollette. They run barges to Ausone. Just below their canal the Recollette becomes unnavigable, and the shallows and rapids continue for several miles below Sais. That is the reason, I suppose, that the country around Sais remains primitive and undeveloped, lacking as it does railroad and water transportation."
"I wonder," said Halkett thoughtfully, "whether I might see the quarry and cement works. It must be interesting."
Warner shrugged:
"If that sort of thing interests you, I'll take you over. It's a messy place full of stone crushers and derricks and broken rock and pits full of green water. Still, if you want to see it----"
"Thanks, I should like to."
Warner glanced at him; a slight grin touched his lips.
"You seem to be interested in a great many kinds of business," he said, "--literature, military science, cement works, cabaret life----"
Halkett laughed outright; but the next moment he turned like a flash in his seat, and Warner also cast a quick glance behind him.
"A car coming!" he said, driving to the right. "What's the matter, Halkett? You don't think it's after us?"
"I think it is."
"What?"
"I know damned well it is!" said Halkett between his teeth. "Shall I jump and swim for it? Pull in a moment, Warner----"
"Wait! Do you see that gate in the hedge? Get out and open it. Quick, Halkett! I know what to do----"
Halkett leaped, dragged open the gate; Warner swung his horse and drove through and out into a swampy meadow set with wild flowers and bushes and slender saplings.
The wheels of the cart cut through the spongy sod and sank almost to the hubs, but Warner used his whip and Halkett, taking the horse by the head, ran forward beside the swaying cart. Right across their path flowed a deep, narrow stream, partly invisible between reeds and tufts of swamp weed; Warner turned the vehicle with difficulty, urged his nervous horse across a cattle bridge which had been fashioned out of a few loose planks, and drove up on firmer ground among tall ferns and willow bushes.
"Pull up those planks!" he shouted back to Halkett, guiding his horse with difficulty; and Halkett ran back, lifted the mossy, half rotted planks, and threw them up among the bushes.
A grey touring car which had halted on the highway outside the hedge had now turned after them through the gate; and already the driver was having a bad time of it in the swampy meadow.
As Halkett lifted the last plank that spanned the brook, one of three men in the tonneau of the car stood up and fired a revolver at him; and another of the men, seated beside him, also fired deliberately, resting his elbow on the side of the stalled car to steady his aim, and supporting the revolver with his left hand under the barrel.
Halkett ran back to where the cart stood, partly concealed among the ferns and bushes; Warner, holding whip and reins in one hand, passed him an automatic revolver and drew out the other weapon for his own use.
"This is rottenly ungrateful of me," said the Englishman. "I've certainly involved you now!"
"It's all right; I'm enjoying it! Now, Halkett, their car is badly mired. There is another gate to that hedge a few hundred yards below. If you'll just lay those planks in the cart, we'll drive along the hard ground here and make another bridge below."
Halkett picked up the wet and muddy planks, one by one, and placed them crossways in the cart. Then, at a nod from Warner, he climbed up and the cart started slowly south, winding cautiously in and out among the bushes.
When they had driven a little distance, the men in the car across the brook caught sight of them; the driver left his wheel and sprang out; and from either door of the tonneau the three other men followed, revolvers lifted. There was no shouting; not a word spoken; not a sound except the hard, dry crack of the pistols.
"I don't know," said Warner coolly, "whether this horse will stand our fire, but if they cross the stream we'll have to begin shooting.... We'd better begin now anyway, I think." He drew rein, turned in his seat, and fired two shots in quick succession. The horse started, and, instantly checked, stood trembling but behaving well enough.
Another shot from Halkett brought the running men to a halt. Warner drove on immediately; three of the men started to follow on a run, but half a dozen rapid shots brought them to a dead stop again. And again the dogcart jolted slowly forward.
One of the men made a furious gesture, turned, and ran back to the mud-stalled car; two of the others followed to aid him to extricate the machine; the fourth man, skulking along the stream, continued to advance as the dogcart drove on.
Warner, driving carefully, shoved with his foot a box of clips toward the dashboard; Halkett reloaded both automatics. Presently the cart turned east, descending the hard slope toward the stream again; and the man who had followed them along the swampy brook immediately opened fire.
Halkett and Warner sprang out; the former shouldered the planks and ran forward; the latter, holding his nervous horse by the head, fired at the man among the reeds as he advanced toward the stream.
It seemed odd that so many bullets could fly and hit nothing; Halkett heard them whining over his head; the horse heard them too and threatened to become unmanageable. Far up the stream the three other men were laboring frantically to disengage the grey automobile; the man across the creek, routed out of the reeds by the stream of bullets directed at him, was running now to get out of range. Evidently his automatic was empty, for it merely swung in his hand as he ran.
But what occupied Warner was the course the man was taking, straight for the lower gate in the hedge.
"Jump in!" he called to Halkett. "We can't wait for the other planks!" The Englishman swung up beside him; the whip whistled and the horse, now thoroughly frightened, bounded forward down the slope and took the improvised bridge at a single leap. For one moment it looked like a general smash, but the cart stood it, and, after a perilous second, righted itself.
Straight at the closed gate drove Warner, whipping his horse into a dead run; crashed through the flimsy pickets, slashed mercilessly with his whip at the man who pluckily stripped off his coat and strove to make the horse swerve into the hedge, as a toreador waves his cloak at a charging bull.
Halkett could have shot the man; but he merely turned his weapon on him as they dashed out into the highroad once more, and tore away due south through the rose and golden glory of the sunset.
The horse ran a flat mile before Warner chose to ease him down; the summer wind whistled in their ears; the last glow faded from the purpling zenith; the crimson streak on the river surface, which had run parallel on their left like level and jagged lightning, glimmered to a pallid ochre tint; and the flying mist of trees and bushes which had fled past like an endless rush of phantoms now took shape and substance once more above the rising veil of river mist.
Warner's tense features were flushed with excitement. As he gradually eased in his horse he was smiling.
"Well, what do you know about this performance of ours, Halkett?" he inquired rather breathlessly. "Can you beat it in the movies?"
"I'm wondering what I've let you in for," said the Englishman very seriously.
"I'll tell you," laughed Warner; "you've let me in for a last glimpse of my youth--the days when everything went and every chance for mischief was gratefully seized--the days when I was a subject of the only real democracy on earth--the Latin Quarter--the days that dawn no more, Halkett. This is the last gleam from their afterglow. Nosce tempus! But the sun has set at last, Halkett, and the last haymaker is going home."
"It would not have been very amusing if one of those bullets had knocked you off your seat," remarked Halkett.
"But they didn't, old chap!" returned Warner heartily. "It was a good mix-up--exciting, harmless, and beneficial. I feel years younger. Respectability is a good, warm coat for the winter of life; but one feels its weight in Indian summer."
Halkett smiled but shook his head:
"No good hunting trouble. You've only to turn around any time to find it sniffing in your tracks."
"You don't understand. For years I've worked very steadily, very seriously. I've painted, studied, read; I've made a living by selling some pictures, by royalties on the reproduction of pictures, by teaching a summer class of girls. After a while, you know, one goes stale with respectability. I went out to the East and saw the Balkan fighting. It helped some. I made some sketches last year in Mexico. That helped.
"But there's an exhilaration about lawbreaking--or in aiding and abetting a lawbreaker--that has the rest beaten to a batter. Today's misdeeds mean a new lease of life to me, Halkett."
The Englishman laughed. He was still cradling the two automatics on his knees; now, with a careless glance behind him, he leaned forward and replaced them in their respective holsters.
"For a rather celebrated and weighty member of the social structure," he remarked, "there is a good deal of the boy left in you."
"When that dies in a man," returned Warner lightly, "creative and constructive work end. The child who built with blocks, the youth who built airier castles, is truly dead. And so is the man he has become."
"Do you think so?"
"I know it. The same intellectual and physical restlessness drives one to create and construct, which, as a boy, drove one into active and constructive mischief. When the day dawns wherein creating no longer appeals to me, then I am old indeed, Halkett, and the overcoat of respectability will suit me the year round.... I'm very glad that I have found it oppressive this July day. By the way, what day does it happen to be?"
Halkett said:
"It happens to be the last day of July. I have an idea that several billion other people are destined to remember these last few days of July, 1914, as long as they live."
"Why?" inquired the American curiously.
"Because, within these last few days, Austria has declared war on Servia, Russia has already ordered partial mobilization, Germany has sent her an ultimatum, and will back it up tomorrow."
"What! How do you know?"
"You don't mean to ask me that, do you?" said Halkett pleasantly.
"No, of course not----" Warner gazed straight ahead of him as he drove; his altered features had become gravely expressionless. After a moment he said:
"I can't comprehend it. Servia had agreed to everything demanded--except that one item which she offered to arbitrate. I can't understand it."
Halkett said calmly:
"It is not difficult to understand. A telegram has been suppressed--the only telegram which could now prevent war." He removed his straw hat, took from the lining a strip of semi-transparent paper, and read aloud the minute handwriting:
"The German government has published several telegrams which the Emperor of Russia exchanged with Emperor William. Among these telegrams, nevertheless, is one which was not published--a dispatch from His Russian Majesty, dated July 29, 1914, containing a proposition to submit the Austro-Servian conflict to The Hague Tribunal.
"This has an appearance of a desire in Germany to pass over in silence the attempt to prevent the approaching collision. In view of this, the Minister of Foreign Affairs is authorized to publish the telegram mentioned, of which this is the text:
"'Thanks for your conciliatory and friendly telegram. Inasmuch as the official message presented today by your ambassador to my minister was conveyed in a very different tone, I beg you to explain this divergency. It would be right to give over the Austro-Servian problem to The Hague Conference. I trust in your wisdom and friendship.'"
"Where did you get that?" asked Warner bluntly.
"This morning at the Boule d'Argent. A friend was kind enough to leave it for me in a note," he added blandly.
"Do you believe it to be authentic?"
"Unfortunately, I can not question its truth."
"You think that the German government----"
"Without any doubt at all, Warner. For her The Day is about to dawn at last. Her Joshua has halted the course of the sun long enough to suit himself. It is scheduled to rise tomorrow."
"Do you mean war?"
"I do."
"Where?"
"Well, here, in France--to mention one place."
"In France!"
"Surely, surely!"
"Invasion?"
"Exactly."
"From which way?"
Halkett shrugged:
"Does anybody now believe it will come by way of the Barrier Forts? The human race never has been partial to cross-country traveling; only ants prefer it."
"You think it will come by the flank--through Belgium?"
"Ask yourself, Warner. Is there an easier way for it to come?"
"But the treaties?"
"Nulla salus bello; necessitas no habet legem."
"Nothing dishonorable is ever necessary."
"Ah! If nations could only agree upon the definition of that word 'honor'! There'd be fewer wars, my friend."
"You think, if France follows Russia's example and mobilizes, that Germany will strike through Belgium?"
"I'm sure of it."
"What about England, then?" asked Warner bluntly.
But Halkett remained silent; and he did not repeat the question.
"After all," he said, presently, "this entire business is incredible. Diplomacy will find a way out of it." And, after a moment's silence: "You don't think so?"
"No."
Presently Halkett turned and looked back through the gathering dusk.
"I wonder," he said, "whether they'll get their car out tonight?"
"They'll have to go back to Ausone for aid," said Warner.
"Do you still mean to put me up at Sais?"
"Certainly. You don't expect your friends back there to assault the inn, do you?"
"No," said Halkett, laughing. "They don't do things that way just yet."
Warner snapped his whip, caught the curling lash, let it free, twirled it, and, snapped it again, whistling cheerfully a gay air from his student days--a tune he had not thought of before in years.
"I believe," he said, frankly hopeful, "that you and I are going to have another little party with those fellows before this matter is ended."
"I'm sure of it," said Halkett quietly.
A few moments later Warner, still whistling his joyous air, pointed toward a cluster of tiny lights far ahead in the dark valley.
"Sais," he said; and resumed his song blithely:
"Gai, gai, mariez-vous!
C'est un usage
Fort sage.
Gai, gai, mariez-vous,
Le mariage est si doux!--"
"Like a bird it is!" he added ironically.
"By the way, you're not married, are you?" inquired Halkett uneasily.
"Oh, Lord! No! Why the unmerited suspicion?"
"Nothing much. I just thought that after getting you into this scrape I shouldn't dare face your wife."
Then they both laughed heartily. They were already on excellent terms. Already acquaintance was becoming an unembarrassed friendship.
Warner flourished his whip and continued to laugh:
"I have no serious use for women. To me the normal and healthy woman is as naive as the domestic and blameless cat, whose first ambition is for a mate, whose second is to be permanently and agreeably protected, and whose ultimate aim is to acquire a warm basket by the fireside and fill it full of kittens! ... No; I'm not married. Don't worry, Halkett."
He whistled another bar of his lively song:
"Women? Ha! By the way, I've a bunch of them here in Sais, all painting away like the devil and all, no doubt laying plans for that fireside basket. It's the only thing a woman ever really thinks about, no matter what else she pretends to be busy with. I suppose it's natural; also, it's natural for some men to shy wide of such things. I'm one of those men. So, Halkett, as long as you live, you need never be afraid of offending any wife of mine!"
"Your sentiments," said Halkett, mockingly serious, "merely reveal another bond between us. I thank God frequently that I am a bachelor."
"Good," said Warner with emphasis. And he chanted gayly, as he drove, "Gai, gai, marions-nous--" in a very agreeable baritone voice, while the lights of Sais grew nearer and brighter among the trees below.
"I never saw a girl worth the loss of my liberty," he remarked. "Did you, Halkett? And," he continued, "to be tied up to a mentally deficient appendage with only inferior intellectual resources, and no business or professional occupation--to be tied fast to something that sits about to be entertained, and that does nothing except nourish itself and clothe itself, and have babies!--It's unthinkable, isn't it?"
"It's pretty awful.... Of course if a woman came along who combined looks and intellect and professional self-sufficiency----"
"You don't find them combined. Take a slant at my class. That's the only sort who even pretend to anything except vacuous idleness. There are no Portias, Halkett. There never were. If there were, I'd take a chance myself, I think. But a man who marries the young girl of today has on his hands an utterly useless incubus. No wonder he sometimes makes experiments elsewhere. No wonder he becomes a rainbow chaser. But he's like a caged squirrel in a wheel; the more he runs around looking for consolation the less progress he makes.
"No, Halkett, this whole marriage business is a pitiable fizzle. Until both parties to a marriage contract are financially independent, intellectually self-sufficient, and properly equipped to earn their own livings by a business or a trade or a profession--and until, if a mistake has been made, escape from an ignoble partnership is made legally easy--marriage will remain the sickly, sentimental, pious fraud which a combination of ignorance, superstition, custom, and orthodoxy have made it.
"I'm rather eloquent on marriage, don't you think so?"
"Superbly!" said Halkett, laughing. "But, do you know, Warner, your very eloquence betrays the fact that you have thought as much about it as the unfortunate sex you have so eloquently indicted."
"What's that?" demanded Warner wrathfully.
"I'm sorry to say it, but you are exactly the sort of man to fall with a tremendous flop."
"If ever I fall----"
"You fell temporarily this afternoon."
"With that painted, grey-eyed----"
"Certainly, with the girl Philippa. Come, old chap, you were out with her a long while! What did you two talk about? Love?"
"No, you idiot----"
"You didn't even mention the word 'love'? Be honest, old chap!"
Warner began to speak, checked himself.
"Didn't you or she even mention the subject?" persisted Halkett with malicious delight.
But Warner was too angry to speak, and the Englishman's laughter rang out boyishly under the stars. To look at them one would scarcely believe they had been a target for bullets within the hour.
"You don't suppose," began Warner, "that----"
"No, no!" cried Halkett. "--Not with that girl. I'm merely proving my point. You're too eloquent concerning women not to have spent a good deal of time in speculating about them. You even speculated concerning Philippa. The man who mourns the scarcity of Portias wouldn't be likely to care for one if he met her. You're just the man to fall in love with everything you denounce in a girl. And I have no doubt I shall live to witness that sorrowful spectacle."
Warner had to laugh.
"You are rather a terrifying psychologist," he said. "You almost make me believe I have a streak of romance in me."
"Oh, we all have that, Warner. We call it by other names--cleverness, logic, astuteness, intelligence--but we all have it in us, and it is revealed in every man who marries a woman for love.... Believe me, no normal man ever lived who was not, at some brief moment in his life, in love with some woman. Maybe he ignored it and it never came again; maybe he strangled it and went on about more serious business; maybe it died a natural but early death. But once, before he died, he must have had a faint, brief glimpse of it. And that was the naissance of the latent germ of romance in him--ephemeral, perhaps, but inevitably to be born before it died."
Warner waved his whip and snapped it maliciously:
"So you have been in love, have you?"
"Why? Because I, also, am suspiciously eloquent?"
"That's the reason--according to you."
Halkett smiled slightly.
"Perhaps I have been," he said.... "Hello! Is this your inn?" as they drew up before the lighted windows of a two-story building standing close to the left-hand edge of the highway, under the stars.
"Here we are at the Golden Peach," nodded Warner, as the door opened and a smiling peasant lad came out with a: "Bon soir, Monsieur Warner! Bon soir, messieurs!" And he took the horse's head while they descended.
That night, lying awake on his bed in the Inn of the Golden Peach, Halkett heard the heavy rush of a southbound automobile passing under his window with the speed of an express train.
And he wondered whether the spongy morass by the little brook still held the long, grey touring car imprisoned.
He got up, went to his window and leaned out. Far away down the road the tail lamps of the machine twinkled, dwindled to sparks, and were engulfed in the invisible.
"More trouble south of me," he thought. But he returned to his bed and lay there, tranquil in the knowledge that when he started south alone on the morrow the envelope would not be on his person.
After a while he rose again, walked to the door connecting his room with Warner's, and opened it cautiously.
"I'm awake," said Warner in a low voice.
"Did you hear that car?"
"Yes. Was it the one that chased us?"
"I only guess so. Listen, Warner! When I go south tomorrow, what are you going to do with that envelope until I send a man back for it?"
"I've thought it all out, old chap. I shall take one of my new canvases, lay the envelope on it, cover envelope and canvas with a quarter of an inch of Chinese White, and when the enamel is dry I shall paint on it. By the way, did you do your telephoning to your satisfaction?"
"Entirely, thank you."
"You got your man?"
"I did," said Halkett. "He's on his way here now. Good night. I'll sleep like a fox, old chap!"
"Good night," said Warner cheerily, enamored with his invention for the safety of the envelope, as well as with the entire adventure.
That night, while they both slept, far away southward, on a lonely road in the Vosges, the car which had rushed by under their windows was now drawn up on the edge of the road.
Four men sat in it, waiting.
Just as dawn broke, what they awaited came up out of the south--a far, faint rattle announced it, growing rapidly louder; and a motor cyclist, riding without lights, shot out of the grey obscurity, trailing a comet's tail of dust.
Head-on he came, like a streak, caught sight suddenly of the motionless car and of four men standing up in it, ducked and flattened out over his handlebars as four revolvers poured forth streams of fire.
Motor cycle and rider swerved into the ditch with a crash; the latter, swaying wide in his saddle, was hurled a hundred feet further through the air, landing among the wild flowers on the bank above.
He was the man to whom Halkett had telephoned.
He seemed to be very young--an Englishman--with blood on his fair hair, and his blue eyes partly open.
They searched him thoroughly; and when they could find nothing more they lifted him between two of them; two others carried the wrecked motor cycle out across the fields toward the slope of a wooded mountain.
After ten minutes or so, two of the men returned to the car, drew a couple of short, intrenching spades from the tool box, and went away again across the fields toward the misty woods.
A throstle in a thorn bush had been singing all the while.
*CHAPTER V*
Halkett had not slept well; all night long in the garden under his window the nightingales had been very noisy. When he slept, sinister dreams had assailed him; cocks crowed at sunrise, cowbells tinkled, outside his drawn blinds a refreshed and garrulous world was awakening; and the happy tumult awoke him, too.
He was bathed, shaved, and dressed, and downstairs before Warner awoke at all; and he began to rove about the place which, by daylight, did not look at all like what he had imagined it to be the night before.
The Inn of the Golden Peach was one of those cream-tinted stucco houses built into and around a series of haphazard garden walls which inclosed flower and fruit gardens, cow-barns and stables. Its roof and wall copings were covered with red tiles, weather-faded to a salmon tint; two incredible climbing rosebushes nearly covered the front with delicate, salmon-pink blossoms, and, in the rear, flowers bloomed along stone-edged borders--masses of white clove pinks, rockets, poppies, heliotrope, reseda, portulaca, and pansies--a careless riot of color, apparently, yet set with that instinctive good taste which seldom fails in France and is common alike to aristocrat and peasant.
Beyond the strawberry beds were fruit trees, peach, cherry, plum, and apricot--the cherries hanging ripe and deeply crimson among dark green leaves, the apricots already golden, peaches and plums delicately painted with a bloom which promised approaching maturity.
Everywhere the grass grew thick and intensely green, though it was not very neatly kept; water ran out of a stone trough and made a dancing little rivulet over a bed of artificially set stones among which grew ferns. Beyond stood a trellised summerhouse, with iron tables and chairs painted green.
On the edge of the watering trough, Halkett seated himself in the sun. An immaculate tiger cat sat on the garden walk a few paces away, polishing her countenance with the velvet side of one forepaw, and occasionally polishing the paw with a delicate pink tongue.
Once or twice she looked at Halkett without any apparent interest; now and then she glanced up with more interest at the side of the house where, under the kitchen door, in a big basket-cage, a jay hopped about, making a scuffling noise among his cracked maize and rye straw.
However, the cat proved entirely susceptible to flattery, responded graciously to polite advances, and presently relapsed into a purring doze on his knee.
It was very still in the garden, too early even for butterflies to be abroad. The kitchen door remained closed; smoke had just begun to rise from one chimney.
In the peaceful silence nothing stirred; there was no breeze, no sound save the trickle of water among fern fronds.
Then, from nowhere apparently, into this golden tranquillity came a nun--no, not a nun, but one of those Grey Daughters of St. Vincent de Paul, who have "for their monastery the houses of the sick, for a cell a hired room, for a cloister the city streets, for a veil modesty."
In her white cornette, or pointed coiffe, with its starched wings, her snowy collarette, wide sleeves, grey apron, and grey-blue habit, she became instantly the medieval incarnation which vitalized the old garden and the ancient wall, so that the centuries they had witnessed were born again there where their spirit had returned, clothed in the costume which they had known so well.
