The Girl Philippa. Chambers Robert William
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 caissière, 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 ça– 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 Café 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 rosière is not yet beyond me. If a girl determines to behave otherwise, who can stop her, and what? Not her parents – if she has any; not bolts and keys. No; it is understood between Monsieur Wildresse and me that I do what I choose. And, Monsieur, so far I have not chosen – indiscreetly – " She looked up calmly. " – In spite of my painted cheeks which annoyed you – "
"I didn't mean – "
"I understand. You think that it is more comme il faut to exhibit one's freckles to the world than to paint them out."
"It's a thousand times better! If you only knew how pretty you are – just as you are now – with your soft, girlish skin and your chestnut hair and your enchanting grey eyes – "
"Monsieur – "
The girl's rising color and her low-voiced exclamation warned him again that detached and quite impersonal praises from him were not understood.
"Philippa," he explained with bored but smiling reassurance, "I'm merely telling you what a really pretty girl you are; I'm not paying court to you. Didn't you understand?"
The grey eyes were lifted frankly to his; questioned him in silence.
"In America a man may say as much to a girl and mean nothing more – important," he explained. "I'm not trying to make love to you, Philippa. Were you afraid I was?"
She said slowly:
"I was not exactly —afraid."
"I don't do that sort of thing," he continued pleasantly. "I don't make love to anybody. I'm too busy a man. Also, I would not offend you by talking to you about love."
She looked down at her folded hands. Since she had been with him nothing had seemed very real to her, nothing very clear, except that for the first time in her brief life she was interested in a man on whom she was supposed to be spying.
The Gallic and partly morbid traditions she had picked up in such a girlhood as had been hers were now making for her an important personal episode out of their encounter, and were lending a fictitious and perhaps a touching value to every word he uttered.
But more important and most significant of anything to her was her own natural inclination for him. For her he already possessed immortal distinction; he was her first man.
She was remembering that she had gone to him after exchanging a glance with Wildresse, when he had first asked her to dance. But she had needed no further persuasion to sit with him at his table; she had even forgotten her miserable rôle when she asked him to go out to the river with her. The significance of all this, according to her Gallic tradition, was now confronting her, emphasizing the fact that she was still with him.
As she sat there, her hands clasped in her lap, the sunlit reality of it all seemed brightly confused as in a dream – a vivid dream which casts a deeper enchantment over slumber, holding the sleeper fascinated under the tense concentration of the happy spell. Subconsciously she seemed to be aware that, according to tradition, this conduct of hers must be merely preliminary to something further; that, in sequence, other episodes were preparing – were becoming inevitable. And she thought of what he had said about making love.
Folding and unfolding her hands, and looking down at them rather fixedly, she said:
"Apropos of love – I have never been angry because men told me they were in love with me… Men love; it is natural; they cannot help it. So, if you had said so, I should not have been angry. No, not at all, Monsieur."
"Philippa," he said smilingly, "when a girl and a man happen to be alone together, love isn't the only entertaining subject for conversation, is it?"
"It's the subject I've always had to listen to from men. Perhaps that is why I thought – when you spoke so amiably of my – my – "
"Beauty," added Warner frankly, " – because it is beauty, Philippa. But I meant only to express the pleasure that it gave to a painter – yes, and to a man who can admire without offense, and say so quite as honestly."
The girl slowly raised her eyes.
"You speak very pleasantly to me," she said. "Are other American men like you?"
"You ought to know. Aren't you American?"
"I don't know what I am."
"Why, I thought – your name was Philippa Wildresse."
"I am called that."
"Then Monsieur Wildresse isn't a relation?"
"No.