Читать книгу The Girl Philippa - Robert W. Chambers - Страница 5
ОглавлениеCHAPTER IV
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——"
"What's that!"
"No, I've had enough! I don't like the rôle; I never liked it! Are there no police in France——"
"Little idiot!" he said. "Will you hold your tongue?"
"It is a disgusting métier——"
"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 Mélanie, 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 Saïs 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 Saïs."
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 caissière'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 mêlée 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 Père François. 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 Hôtel 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 Récollette, and follows that pretty little stream almost due south to the hills and cliffs and woods and meadows of Saïs.
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 Saïs.
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 Récollette 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 Récollette. They run barges to Ausone. Just below their canal the Récollette becomes unnavigable, and the shallows and rapids continue for several miles below Saïs. That is the reason, I suppose, that the country around Saïs 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 Saïs?"
"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.
"Saïs," 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 naïve 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 Saïs, 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 Saïs 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.
