The Girl Philippa. Chambers Robert William
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I hear."
Warner looked across the room at her again when he and Halkett were seated. She had considerable paint on her cheeks, and her lips seemed too red to be natural. Otherwise she was tragically young, thin, excepting her throat and cheeks – a grey-eyed, listless young thing with a mass of chestnut hair crowning her delicately shaped head.
She made change languidly for waiter and guest; acknowledged the salutes of those entering and leaving without more than a politely detached interest; smiled at the jests of facetious customers with mechanical civility when importuned; and, when momentarily idle, swung her long, slim foot in time to the music and rested her painted cheek on one hand.
Her indifferent grey eyes, sweeping the hall, presently rested on Warner; and remained on him with a sort of idle insolence until his own shifted.
Halkett was saying:
"You know that girl – the cashier, I mean – is extraordinarily pretty. Have you noticed her, Warner?"
Warner turned again:
"I've been looking at her. She's rather thickly tinted, isn't she?"
"Yes. But in spite of the paint. She has a charmingly shaped head. Some day she'll have a figure."
"Oh, yes; figures and maturity come late to that type… If you'll notice, Halkett, those hands of hers are really exquisite. So are her features – the nose is delicate, the eyes beautifully drawn – she's all in good drawing – even her mouth, which is a little too full. As an amateur, don't you agree with me?"
"Very much so. She's a distinct type."
"Yes – there's a certain appeal about her… It's odd, isn't it – the inexplicable something about some women that attracts. It doesn't depend on beauty at all."
Halkett sipped his Moselle wine.
"No, it doesn't depend on beauty, on intelligence, on character, or on morals. It's in spite of them – in defiance, sometimes. Now, take that thin girl over there; her lips and cheeks are painted; she has the indifferent, disenchanted, detached glance of the too early wise. The chances are that she isn't respectable. And in spite of all that, Warner – well – look at her."
"I see. A man could paint a troubling portrait of her – a sermon on canvas."
"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