Category: Historical Novels

The Girl Philippa

You can tell a better tale than I; Trap and wing you shoot a better score; You can cast a surer, lighter fly, Catch as can, you'd put me on the floor; Should I hoist a sail beneath the sky Yours the race, away and back to shore.

Chapters

11. Part 11

"That will be very sad for us," she said. "It seems as though there were already enough violence and misery in the quarries--enough of wretchedness and poverty. If the quarrymen...

14. Part 14

"Djeem," she repeated, looking musingly at the tall, well-built American. "C'est drole, ce nom la! Djeem? It is pleasant, too.... My name is Jeanne." She shrugged her youthful s...

15. Part 15

Below lay the flagstones and potted flowers of the garden terrace, not more than twenty-five feet, he thought. Beyond these, the grass sloped down to the Recollette, where rowbo...

10. Part 10

"For five years I have not been understood. Do you know that men have even thrown dice for me, so certain were they that they understood me? I am accustomed to it. But I am not...

17. Part 17

On the road across the Recollette, wagons, motor trucks, and field artillery had been passing for hours; the barrier of dust had grown much loftier, hanging suspended and unchan...

8. Part 8

"I know you don't; I know what are your traditions. Many a Sister of your Order has fallen under rifle and shell fire on the battlefields of the world; many have died of the pes...

27. Part 27

The brushes, mediums, palette, he left on the palette table and pushed it into a corner behind a sofa, where nobody was likely to fall over it before he gave brushes and palette...

21. Part 21

But the spectacle on the Ausone road below was ominous enough. The northern countryside was in flight; towns and villages were emptying themselves southward; and the exodus had...

26. Part 26

Sister Eila nodded in silence; Warner made his adieux; the Sisters of Charity consulted together a moment, then the American and Sister Eila went out through the rear door and t...

13. Part 13

So Warner entered the cafe. In the cool, subdued light of the interior, he saw the cashier behind her counter--a fresh-faced, plump, dark-eyed country girl, who returned his sal...

4. Part 4

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 w...

18. Part 18

The American widow of the recent Count de Moidrey felt a curious sensation of uncertainty in the quiet self-possession of this young girl--in her serenity, in her modulated voic...

2. Part 2

A loud outcry naturally ensued; a stampede of passengers who tried to escape, a rush of others who desired to see what had happened--much hubbub and confusion, much shouting in...

12. Part 12

"I'm going to Ausone at once to find her.... Wherever I find her I shall take her.... It makes no difference to me who objects. She is going to have her chance in life.... I sha...

20. Part 20

"I had _nobody_. Do you understand? I seem to know right from wrong, but I don't know how I know it. Yet, I am old in some things--old and wearied with a knowledge which still,...

22. Part 22

"M'sieu'! I ask as wages only a crust, a pallet of straw in some corner, and a few pennies which will enable me to 'fry a cigarette' when I am lonely----"

5. Part 5

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 strip...

16. Part 16

What Linette had reported was true: across the Recollette a wall of white dust ran north and south as far as they could see. Under it an undulating column tramped, glimmering, s...

24. Part 24

Certain prescribed devotions made Sister Eila's attendance at any meal an uncertainty. The private chapel in the east wing had now become a retreat for her at intervals during t...

31. Part 31

"That's how Philip de Chatillon died--Prince Philip of Bulgaria--that's how he died--there in the palace with his young wife--the way they did for Draga, the Queen--and Milan's...

29. Part 29

He ushered her silently into the little sitting room; she went forward and stopped by the center table, looking down curiously at the motley heap of toys and clothing which cove...

3. Part 3

"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 artificia...

9. Part 9

He sat looking at her, wondering uneasily at her intelligence and her ability to express herself. Here was a maturity of mind unexpected in this girl. So far it had not visibly...

23. Part 23

The uproar in the square had become terrific; high-angle guns poured streams of fire into the sky; dragoons sitting their restless horses fired upward from their saddles; an eng...

25. Part 25

Over their cafe-au-lait they discussed the menace of invasion very quietly, and the stout, cheery landlady told him that she had concluded to keep the inn open in any event.

6. Part 6

So Halkett rose, threaded his way through the flowers, and looked carefully among the branches for a ripe apricot. He found two, and Sister Eila laid them together in the corner...

7. Part 7

It was a modern and very plain two-storied building of stone and white stucco, covered with new red tiles. A few youthful vines were beginning to climb gratefully toward the low...

28. Part 28

"Perhaps a cow," he said with a shrug, "--the wind in the bushes--a hedgehog rustling. Young soldiers are like that in the beginning. And still, perhaps they have caught a prowl...

1. Part 1

You can tell a better tale than I; Trap and wing you shoot a better score; You can cast a surer, lighter fly, Catch as can, you'd put me on the floor; Should I hoist a sail bene...

30. Part 30

The road ahead was crowded with infantry deploying at a double--a strange, gaunt, haggard regiment, white with dust, swinging out to whistle signal into the patches of woodland...

19. Part 19

"And, Jim, it seems to me that it clings, faintly, to the child Philippa.... It's an odd thing to say. Perhaps if I had been born to the title, I might not have detected it. Wha...

32. Part 32

"You are wrong! There is your mistake. They are not wonderful; and both may be matched by the hearts and minds of any woman! ... Has it never occurred to you that I am very human?"