When you find two almonds in one shell, that’s a Philippine. So when Philippa Homes had twins she called them Laura Philippine and Philip Joseph. And she went on calling them Laura Philippine and Philip Joseph till it fixed, and they are it to this day, and Laura Philippine is twenty.
She is quite a lovely girl, tall and white-skinned, but except when she’s dancing, or driving a car, or riding a horse, she’s languid. Having had what is called a good education, she drawls in slang. She has rather wonderful blue eyes, asleep rather than sleepy, with the oddest red-gold lashes coming down over them; close, red-gold lashes. You notice the lashes because most of the daytime she doesn’t trouble to raise them.
At about half-past eleven in the morning you suddenly come across her reclining on a lounge in the drawing-room, smoking a cigarette, showing several yards of good leg and turning over a periodical without looking at it.
“Hello, Laura Philippine, just got up?”
“This minute.”
“How are you?”
“Same.”
And she’s nothing more to say. She turns over the periodical without looking at it, lights another cigarette, and time, since it can’t help it, passes. At half-past twelve you find her in the hall in an elegant wrap, and a nut of a little blue hat, looking as if she might possibly be drifting out of doors to commit suicide in some half-delicious fashion.
“Where are you going, Laura Philippine?”
“Out.”
“Where’s that?”
“Oh, meet some of the boys—”
“Well, lunch is half-past one—”
But she is gone, with a completeness that makes it seem impossible she will ever come back. Yet back she comes, about two, when we are peeling our apple. She is the image of freshness, in her bit of a putty-coloured frock, her reddish petals of hair clinging down over her ears, her cheeks pink by nature, till she almost powders them out of spite, her long white limbs almost too languid to move, and her queer fiery eyelashes down over her dark blue eyes.
“I told her not to serve me soup till I came.”
“And I told her to serve it when she served us. Lunch is half-past one.”
Laura Philippine sits down in front of her soup, which Philippa always has for lunch, out of spite. The parlourmaid comes in again.
“I won’t have soup,” says Laura Philippine. “What else is there?” And when she is told, she replies: “I won’t take that either. I’ll just take salad, and will you find me something to eat with it?”
The parlourmaid looks at Philippa, and Philippa says:
“I suppose you’d better bring the galantine.”
So Laura Philippine, with pure indifference, eats galantine and salad, and drinks burgundy, which almost shows ruddy as it goes down her white throat.
“Did you find the boys?” I ask.
“Oh, quite.”
“Did you drink cocktails?”
“Not before lunch. Gin and bitters.”
I got no more out of her. But we went out in the afternoon in the car. As we went through Windsor Park, I said:
“It is rather lovely, isn’t it?”
“Oh, quite!”
“But you don’t look at it.”
“What am I to look at it for?”
“Pleasure.”
“No pleasure to me.”
She looked at nothing — unless it might be at a well-dressed woman. She was interested in nothing: unless it were the boys, just at mealtimes.
So she came with Philippa to Rome.
“Doing the sights of Italy with your mother, are you?” said I. “Mother’ll have a swell time taking me to see sights.”
Mother did. Laura Philippine just smoked cigarettes and lowered her reddish-gold lashes over her dark blue eyes, and said languidly: Is that so? We drove down to Ostia over the Campagna. Oh, look, Laura Philippine, there are still a few buffaloes! Laura Philippine knocked cigarette ash over the other side of the car in order not to look, and said yes! Look at the old fortifications of Ostia, Laura Philippine! — Yes, I’ve seen ‘em! — We came to the sea, got out of the car and walked on to the shingle shore. Call that the sea? said Laura Philippine. I said I did: the Mediterranean, at least. Is it always that way? Why, it must have something the matter with it! — And Laura Philippine reclined on the shingle, lit another cigarette, and was gone into a special void of her own, leaving the sea to take care of itself. Where shall we have tea, Laura Philippine? — Oh, anywhere! — At the Castle of the Caesars? — Suit me all right! — If one had said in the cemetery, she would have answered the same.
She appeared at dinner looking very, very modern.
“Where are you going tonight, Laura Philippine?”
“There’s a dance at the Hotel de Russie.”
“But you’re not going alone.”
“Oh, I shan’t be alone. I know a whole crowd of ‘em.”
“But does your mother let you go off like that?”
“My mother! Imagine if she had to come along!” Laura Philippine was animated. Her red-gold lashes lifted, her dark blue eyes flashed.
“Do you Charleston?” she said. It was the day before yesterday, when people still said it. And she started wriggling in the middle of the drawing-room. She was flushed, animated, flashing, a weird sort of Bacchanal on the hills of Rome, wriggling there, and her white teeth showing in an odd little smile.
She was gone for good again. But next day about lunch-time, there she was, lying down, faintly haunted by the last vestiges of life, otherwise quite passed out. — Have a good time? — Yes! — What time did you get home? — About four. Dance all night? — Yes! Isn’t it too much for you? — Not a bit. If I could dance all day as well, I might keep going. It’s this leaving off that does me in. — And she lapsed out.
One day Philippa said to her: “Show him your poems. Yes, let him see them. He won’t think you a fool.”
They were really nice poems, like little sighs. They were poems to yellow leaves, then to a grey kitten, then to a certain boy. They were ghostly wisps of verse, somehow touching and wistful. You should care for somebody, Laura Philippine, said I. — Oh, come! Not that old bait! she replied. — But you’ve got to live, said I. — I know it! she said. Why mention it? — But you’re only twenty. Think of your future. The only single thing you care about is jazz. — Exactly. But what are boys for, ‘xcept to jazz with? — Quite! But what about when you’re thirty, and forty? — and fifty? — I suppose they’ll invent new dances all the time, she said mildly. I see old birds trotting like old foxes, so why shouldn’t I, if I’m ninety? — But you’ll wear out, said I. — Not if anybody’s a good dancer, and will wind me up, she said. — But are you happy? said I. — Mother’s always saying that. Why should anybody on earth want to be happy? I say to mother: Show me somebody happy, then! And she shows me some guy, or some bright young thing, and gets mad when I say: See the pretty monkey! I’m not happy, thank God, because I’m not anything. Why should I be?