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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c744f0a --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #65386 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/65386) diff --git a/old/65386-0.txt b/old/65386-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 3c689c1..0000000 --- a/old/65386-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,13803 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Little French Girl, by Anne Douglas -Sedgwick - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: The Little French Girl - -Author: Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -Release Date: May 19, 2021 [eBook #65386] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Al Haines, Alex White & the online Distributed Proofreaders - Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE FRENCH GIRL *** - - - - - The - Little French Girl - - BY - ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK - (Mrs. Basil de Sélincourt) - - _Author of “Adrienne Toner,” “Christmas Roses, and Other Stories”_ - _“Tante,” etc._ - - - Boston and New York - HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY - The Riverside Press Cambridge - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY ANNE DOUGLAS DE SÉLINCOURT - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - - SECOND IMPRESSION, AUGUST, 1924 - THIRD IMPRESSION, SEPTEMBER, 1924 - FOURTH IMPRESSION, SEPTEMBER, 1924 - - - The Riverside Press - CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS - PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. - - The Little French Girl - - - - - PART I - - - CHAPTER I - -A clock struck eight, a loud yet distant clock. The strokes, Alix -thought, seemed to glide downwards rather than to fall through the fog -and tumult of the station, and, counting them as they emerged, they were -so slow and heavy that they made her think of tawny drones pushing their -way forth from among the thickets of hot thyme in the _jardin potager_ -at Montarel. Sitting straightly in her corner of the Victoria -waiting-room, the little French girl fixed her mind upon the picture -thus evoked so that she should not feel too sharply the alarming meaning -of the hour, and seemed again to watch the blunt, sagacious faces of the -drones as they paused in sulky deliberation on the tip of a spray before -launching themselves into the sunlight. What could be more unlike -Montarel than this cold and paltry scene? What more unlike that air, -tranced with sunlight and silence, than this dense atmosphere? Yet the -heavy, gliding notes brought back the drones so vividly that she found -herself again in the high-terraced garden under the sun-baked old -château. The magnolia-trees ate into the crumbling walls and opened -lemon-scented cups beneath her as she leaned her arms on the hot stone -and looked across the visionary plains to the Alps on the horizon, blue, -impalpable, less substantial to the sight than the clouds that sailed in -grandiose snowy fleets above them. Alix had always felt that it was like -taking great breaths to see the plains and like spreading immense wings -to see the mountains, and something of invulnerable dignity, of -inaccessible remoteness in her demeanour as she sat there might well -have been derived from generations who had lived and died in the -presence of natural sublimities. Her brows were contemplative, her lips -proud. She was evidently a foreigner, a creature nurtured in climes -golden yet austere and springing from an aromatic, rocky soil. The -pallor of her extreme fatigue could not efface the sunny tones of her -skin; her hair was the blacker for its bronzed lights, and if her eyes -were blue, it was not the English blue of a water-side forget-me-not, -but the dense, impalpable blue of the Alps seen across great distances. - -Two women, pausing on their way out to look at her, drew her mind back -from Montarel. She knew that she might look younger than her years. Her -bobbed hair was cut straight across her forehead and her skirt displayed -a childish length of leg. It was no wonder that, seeing her there, -alone, they should speak of her with curiosity, perhaps with solicitude; -for there was kindness in their eyes. But she did not like pity, and, -drawing herself up more straightly, wrapping her arms in the scarf that -muffled her shoulders, she fixed her eyes blankly above their heads -until they had passed on. They were kind women; but very ugly. Like -jugs. All the people that she had seen since landing on this day of grey -and purple flesh-tones had made her think of the earthenware jugs that -old Marthe used to range along her upper shelves in the little dark shop -that stood on the turn of the road leading down from the château to the -village. Their eyes were joyless yet untragic. Their clothes expressed -no enterprise. She did not think that they could feel ecstasy, ever, or -despair. Yet they were the people of Captain Owen, and she could not be -really forgotten, for Captain Owen’s family were to come for her. It was -only some mistake; but more than the strokes of the clock the women’s -eyes had made her feel how late it was, how young she was, and how -hungry. - -Maman’s _déjeuner_, the long buttered _petits pains_ with ham in them, -she had eaten on the boat; and, far away, seen across the leaden waters -of the November channel, was the bright _petit déjeuner_, in Paris that -morning, and Maman before the wood fire, her beauty still clouded by -sleep, sweet, sombre, and gay as only she could be, her russet locks -tossed back and her white arms bare in the white woollen _peignoir_. -“They will, I know, be good to my darling,” Maman had said, buttering -her roll while Albertine brought in the coffee, “and keep her warm and -well-fed through this hard winter.” Firmness and resource breathed from -Maman. She knew what she was doing and Alix saw herself powerless in her -hands. Yet she could read her, too. Even though she could not always -interpret the words, she could always read Maman, and the meaning, as it -were, of the sentence would come to her in a feeling rather than in an -idea. She had felt that morning that Maman’s heart was not at ease. It -was true that the Armistice had been signed but the other day, that the -war was hardly over, and that everything would be more expensive than -ever. It was true that she was going to friends, though to unknown -friends; to the family of their dear Captain Owen, killed in battle only -nine months ago. He had so often said that they must know his family, -and it had been his mother who had written so kindly to say that Giles -would meet her. But if all this were so natural, why had she felt that -touch of artifice in Maman’s manner, that resource in her so many -reasons? Perhaps they did not really want her. And perhaps there was -some mistake and they did not expect her to-night. If no one came, what -was she to do? She had only five shillings in her purse. The porter had -placed her little box and her dressing-case on the seat beside her, and -if no one came was she to sit on here all night, in the waiting-room, -this horrid feeling, half hunger, half fear, gnawing at the pit of her -stomach? “_Dieu, que j’ai faim!_” she thought; and as she now leaned -back her head and closed her eyes, the sadness that flowed into her -carried her far back to Montarel again and it was Grand-père that she -saw, passing under the pollarded lime-trees with his dragging footsteps -and looking down on the ground as he went, with no eyes for the climbing -vineyards, no eyes for the plains, the river, the Alps; his short white -beard and jutting nose giving him still the air of a _commandant_, high -on his fortress; but so old, so ill, so poor and so despairing. - -The dappled shadows of the limes lay brightly blue at his feet. His -bleached hands were clasped behind him on his stick. He wore a black -silk skull-cap and a white silk handkerchief was knotted around his -neck. It had always frightened her a little to see Grand-père, and it -frightened her now to remember him, the _commandant_, defeated, broken; -yet still with that sombre fire smouldering in his eyes. “_Tout-à-fait -une tête de Port-Royal_,” she had heard someone say of him once; and so -a devout noble of the time of Louis Quatorze might have looked. Only she -did not see Grand-père as appeased, withdrawn from the world and its -illusions; he brooded, rather, in bitterness upon them. He minded -everything so terribly. - -She remembered as if it were yesterday the dreadful summer afternoon -when the bell had clanged hoarsely in the courtyard, and Mélanie, wiping -her steaming arms on her apron, had come clapping in her _savates_ -across the paving-stones to let in the opulent gentleman who had arrived -in his motor to take away the Clouets. That was the day that had -revealed to her what Grand-père’s poverty must be. He had sold the -Clouets at last; after selling so many things. The great gaunt salles, -the little panelled salons, the rows of incommodious bedrooms, looking, -from high up, over the plains, all were empty; and the Clouets now were -to go. - -With a child’s awed heart, half comprehending, Alix had followed Mélanie -and the stranger, up the winding staircase in the turret—Mélanie took -him by that circuitous route so that Grand-père should catch no glimpse -of him; along the chill stone passages, to the little room where she and -Grand-père sat and read in the evenings. The _lit de repos_ stood there, -draped in its tattered brocades, dignified and irrelevant, for no one -ever thought of lying down on it; and Grand-père’s old _bergère_, and -her _tabouret_ drawn up to the table before her histories. And there, -upon the sea-green panelled walls, the silvery Clouets hung, Mouverays -among them; frigidly smiling in their ruffs. - -Mélanie, mute, grim, inscrutable, helped the gentleman from Paris to -take them down, one by one, and wrap them up and carry them across the -courtyard to the waiting car: and Alix had watched it all, knowing that -a final disaster had fallen upon her house. - -But poverty had not been the only reason for Grand-père’s bitterness. -Even when he sat to watch her and Marie-Jeanne, his hands folded on his -stick, quiet and at peace in the evening air as it might have seemed, -she was aware of the bitterness brooding there, unappeased, at the -bottom of the deep, considering look bent upon them. There had been no -time to think about it while she played with Marie-Jeanne. Marie-Jeanne -was the blacksmith’s daughter and there had been many happy days with -her at Montarel. Marie-Jeanne had black eyes and her pig-tails were tied -together with red tape and plaited so tightly that they surrounded her -shrewd little face with a wiry circle. They brought up a family of dolls -in a corner of the _jardin potager_; Alix was the father, for she had -never cared fosteringly for dolls, and Marie-Jeanne the mother. They -whipped their tops in the courtyard where the tall blue lilies stood in -the damp about the well. The Renaissance wrought-iron windlass was all -rusted and broken; and the lilies had thrust their cord-like roots -through the cracked earthenware of their great pots. Looking out of the -door in the courtyard, one might see the cheerful _matelassière_ sitting -in the shade of the enormous horse-chestnut-tree on the wayside grass. -The heaped wool seemed to curdle and foam about her like a turbulent yet -cosy sea. She combed it out on her loom and smiled and nodded at Alix. -“_Bonjour, la jolie petite demoiselle_,” she would say. Mélanie grumbled -at the _matelassière_ and said she was a thief; but she gave Alix a bowl -of _café au lait_ to carry out to her when she remade their mattresses, -and Alix felt a pleasing sense of complicity in lawlessness when the -_matelassière_, bending her lips to the steaming coffee, would close one -eye at her in a long wink. She seemed a very happy person. - -The road led down to the village, stony, steep, and golden with the -vineyards on either hand. The little houses were washed with pink and -fawn and cream and their roofs were the colour of the underside of an -old mushroom. Strings of onions hung from their eaves, and milk cheeses -in flat wicker baskets. After the village came the river and the old -stone bridge that led across to the forest, tall and dark, marching up -the mountain and haunted by legends of ghosts and knights and fairies. -Mélanie, when she was in a good humour, would tell of these, seated in -the evening on her own particular little terrace where she kept the -fowls and picked over the herbs that were to be dried for _tisane_. But -old Mère Gavrault was the best story-teller, and Alix was sometimes -allowed to go to the forest with her and find _cêpes_ and help her to -gather faggots for her winter store. Mère Gavrault told stories of -goblins and headless riders. They would have been blood-curdling -stories, had she not told them with such an unmoved, smiling face. It -was difficult to think that Mère Gavrault would find anything -blood-curdling. She had lost so many children and grandchildren and her -husband had been drowned in the river. She had lived through everything, -and only wanted faggots to keep her warm in winter. Her face in its -close, clean cap of coarse linen was hard and brown and wrinkled. Yet -she was only sixty-five years old; the age of madame Gérardin, one of -Maman’s friends in Paris, whom Alix did not like. Clean, clean, old Mère -Gavrault, and she had lived through everything and only wanted faggots; -while madame Gérardin wanted innumerable things—cigarettes all day, for -one of them; and if one were to wash her bright countenance, what -strange colours would stain the water, what thick, pale sediments sink! -Almost passionately Alix felt her preference for Mère Gavrault, who -smelt of dew and smoke and who was as clean as a stone or an apple. -Madame Gérardin was as much Paris as Mère Gavrault was Montarel. Yet -Maman was Paris, too, and there was nothing in the world Alix loved as -she did her mother. She had always loved her, and longed for her, -through all those mysterious yearly separations that took her away from -her to set her down at distant Montarel. And Grand-père must have known -that she longed for her. Was it not here that the deepest reason for the -bitterness lay? He had never spoken to her of her mother. Never; never. -Not once through all the years that she had gone to him. They had not -been unhappy, those days of childhood with Marie-Jeanne at Montarel; -even without Maman they had known a childish gladness. But it was as if, -from the earliest age, she had had, as it were, to be happy round the -corner. One’s heart was there, aching, if one looked at it; and one -tiptoed away cautiously and, at a safe distance, raced off to join -Marie-Jeanne. But at night, when she could no longer hide from her -heart, all the sadness of Grand-père’s eyes would flow into her and she -would lie, for hours, awake, thinking of him and of Maman. - -It was because of Maman that his footsteps had dragged and his eyes had -fixed themselves so obstinately on the ground; perhaps it was because of -her that the Clouets had been sold;—Maman who was his daughter-in-law -and who did not bear his name. “_La belle madame Vervier; divorcée, vous -savez._”—The phrase came back to her, with its knife-like cut, as she -had first heard it whispered. It conjured up a vision of harsh, cruel -repudiation, of Maman driven forth from Montarel, running out at the -courtyard door, down the steep road, like one of the hapless princesses -in the fairy-tales;—crying, flying, stumbling on the stones. Grand-père -and her father had driven her out. So it must have been. Because of some -fault; some disastrous fault. Yet they had been cruel. Her father’s -portrait hung in the dining-room at Montarel. He was in uniform; young, -though grey-haired; with stern lips and cold blue eyes; like -Grand-père’s; like her own. She was a Mouveray in every tint and -feature; yet how unlike them. For though, by chance currents, such other -aspects of the story as a child may apprehend came drifting to her, the -first picture of harsh repudiation made a background to the later -knowledge, and she saw Maman as a delicate flower or fruit crushed and -broken between stony hands. Passionately she was Maman’s child; -passionately she repelled their harshness. Yet her heart ached for -Grand-père, and his sadness flowed into her as she sat with closed eyes -thinking of him, of Marie-Jeanne, of Mère Gavrault and Montarel; -Grand-père dead and the château sold; the solitary, sunny old château on -the hill that she would never see again. - - - CHAPTER II - -Alix opened her eyes. Someone was standing still before her. Of all the -footsteps that came and went, these had stopped. For a moment, so deeply -was she sunk in the vision of the past, she stared bewildered at the -young man in khaki, forgetting where she was and how she had come there. -Then a jostling, irrelevant crowd of recent memories pressed -forward:—“They will be glad to see my darling”; the grey Channel; the -faces like earthenware jugs. And, even before she had identified him as -monsieur Giles, a suffocating relief rose in her at the sight of him, -while, strangely, one more memory seemed, on the threshold of the new -life, to offer itself with a special significance, a special -interpretation of what she was to find;—the memory of Maman, herself, -and Captain Owen standing together in the Place de la Concorde and of -Maman’s voice saying to him, as they looked at the spot where the -guillotine had been, at Strasbourg, still in her crêpe, and up the -Champs Élysées, while splendid clouds sailed in the blue above -them:—“We are not like you, _mon ami_. Tocsins, tumbrils, trumpets are -in our blood;—Saint Bartholomew; the Revolution; Napoleon. Your history -knows no rivers of blood and no arcs of triumph.” - -It was monsieur Giles, of course, and he was like Captain Owen, only _en -laid_. He was tall and young and grave with round, solemn eyes, staring -at her, and a big mouth. And he was very good; she saw that at once; and -then she saw that he was deeply troubled. “I’m so horribly sorry,” was -what he said. But it was more than embarrassment at the miscarriage of -their meeting and dismay at her plight, though the echo of her own -distressful state came to her from his face. She, who from the earliest -age seemed to have been fashioned by life to read the signs of -discomfort and restraint in the faces of those about her, knew now -unerringly that this good young man, who had no tocsins or tumbrils or -trumpets in his blood, was deeply troubled at seeing her. “I’m so -horribly sorry,” he repeated, and he seized her dressing-case, Maman’s -old discarded one with the tarnished monogram “H. de M.,” from which the -crest had fallen away. “You’ve been here for hours,” he said. “Your -mother’s letter did not give the day. Her wire only came this afternoon, -late. We are a good way from London and trains are bad.” He was not -trying to throw the blame on anybody. His voice accepted it all for -himself; but she knew that the mistake had been Maman’s, Maman so -forceful, so practical, yet so careless, too. Maman had taken it for -granted that they lived quite near London; she had taken it for granted -that the wire would arrive in good time. - -“Have you had anything to eat?” monsieur Giles almost shouted at her. -“Where’s your box? Is this all? I’m so horribly sorry.” - -“Yes, this is all. It has not been so long, really. I have not eaten. I -was afraid to go to the restaurant lest I should miss you.” - -Her English was so good that she saw him at once a little reassured. He -had shouted like that partly from embarrassment and partly because he -thought she might only understand if he talked loud. His face, as he -seized her box in his other hand, echoed her smile as it had echoed her -distress. It was a kind face. It echoed people’s feelings easily. - -“Let me take the bag; you cannot carry all,” said Alix. - -But he shoved himself sideways through the door and then held it open -while she passed out, commenting as he did so, “But, I say, you’re not a -child!” - -“A year makes a great difference,” said Alix. “And I was not really so -young; already fifteen, when Captain Owen first saw me, last October, in -Cannes.” - -Monsieur Giles said nothing to this, and she wondered what Captain Owen -had written of her and Maman after that first meeting. - -Now they were sitting opposite each other at a little table that seemed -to have a great many cruets and salt-cellars upon it. It was a very -bright and very ugly room, and through the doors, opening and shutting -incessantly, came the muffled roar of incoming trains; but after the -waiting-room it was homelike. She was safe with monsieur Giles. He was a -person who made you feel safe. Soup was put before them, all substance -and no savour, but she ate it eagerly, and said that, yes, please, she -would like fish. - -“And then the beef,” said Giles to the waiter, who had a pallid face and -looked, Alix thought, detached and meditative as he was, like a -_littérateur_. - -“I don’t advise the beef, Sir,” he said in a low, impassive voice. “It’s -specially tough to-day, Sir. You’d do better with the mutton.” - -“Mutton, then, by all means!” said Giles, laughing. “Rather nice, that, -what?” he asked, smiling at Alix across the table when the waiter was -gone. - -He showed beautiful white teeth when he smiled. They were his only -beauty; though she liked his golden-green eyes, fig-coloured. His face -was vehement, almost violent in structure with a prominent nose and so -high a top to his head that it seemed to be boiling over. Though he -looked so kind, he looked also as if he could get angry rather easily, -with a steady, reasonable anger, and the more she observed him the less -she found him like his brother. Captain Owen’s lips, though broad, had -been delicately curved, and his nut-shaped eyes had always seemed to -smile a little lazily. Sweetness rather than strength had been in his -face and an air of taking everything lightly. She had always felt of him -that he would fight just as if he were playing tennis; whereas when -Giles fought, she felt sure, he would clench his teeth and look fierce -and sick. And though he was younger than Captain Owen, he was far more -worn, strangely worn for one so young; and he was not at all _homme du -monde_. - -Captain Owen had always struck them as _homme du monde_. But even Maman -could not have been sure about that, since she had so emphatically -impressed upon Alix that she was to define for her with exactitude the -social status of the Bradleys. Maman was sure that they were not -_noblesse_; but Alix was to tell her whether they were _petite noblesse_ -or _haute bourgeoisie_, or, _tout simplement, commerçants_. - -“Not that, I think,” said Maman thoughtfully; “but with another race it -is difficult to tell.” - -“And since Captain Owen was so much our friend, what interest can it -have for us?” Alix had inquired, with the dryness she could sometimes -show towards Maman. - -Maman had replied that it made no difference at all as far as an -individual, at large, as it were, unattached and irresponsible in a -foreign country, was concerned; but that it did make a difference, all -the difference, when it came to the family itself and its _milieu_. “At -all events, they are rich, I am sure of that,” said Maman; but Alix, as -she ate her fish and looked across at monsieur Giles, was not so sure. -He was rather shabby; even for an old uniform. - -“You know,” he said, “I’m not going to take you to Sussex to-night. It’s -too late and you’re too tired. Don’t try to eat that nasty sauce; scrape -it off and leave it. I apologize for our sauces, Mademoiselle.—I’m -going to take you to my aunt’s. She’ll be able to put us up and I’ll -telephone to her now. Don’t run away in disgust with us and our sauces, -while I’m gone.” - -There was no danger of that. Even when he was not there, Alix felt -herself safe in the hands of monsieur Giles, and the waiter when he -brought the mutton helped her very considerately, as though he -recognized her as young and tired and a foreigner, and placed before -her, almost with a paternal air, a dish half of which was devoted to -_pommes de terre à l’eau_ and half to a slab of dark green cabbage -strangely struck into squares. - -“I’ve wired to Mummy, too,” said Giles, when he came back, “and told her -we’ll turn up to-morrow morning; so that’s all right.” And now he asked -her questions. What did she read? Did she care for pictures and music? -How had she learned to speak such admirable English? - -Alix told him that she and Maman had often spoken English together and -that she had had English governesses. “I always liked your books, too. -That made it easier. ‘Alice’ and the rabbit and ‘Pride and Prejudice’ -and ‘Dombey and Son.’ Have you read those?” - -He said he had. “There are no books in France for girls to read as far -as I can make out,” he added; and Alix, suspecting a hint of detraction, -replied: “Our _chefs d’œuvre_ are for later in life. Perhaps great books -cannot be written for girls.” - -“I question that!” said Giles, smiling at her. “Great books should be -written for everybody.” - -“We can read Racine and Corneille and Lamartine,” said Alix. - -“And Bossuet,” said Giles, grinning, “and ‘Les Pensées de Pascal.’ -Awfully jolly, isn’t it! Unfortunate child;—or, rather, fortunate, -since you _can_ read us.” - -Alix reflected, a little vexed. - -“Here’s another kind of sauce,” said Giles, as a portion of apricot tart -was placed before each of them surrounded by a yellow glutinous -substance. “I’ll grant you your cooking if you’ll grant me the best -books for everybody.—Anyhow, I see you’re too tired to argue. We’ll -fight it out some other time.” - -“But how did you come to appreciate our cooking so well?” Alix asked. -“It is made with flour, this sauce, not properly cooked;—that is the -trouble.” - -“The trouble is that it’s the same sauce as the one that went with the -fish, only coloured to look different.—I travelled in France when I was -a boy, you see. And I’m just back from nine months there. I was in the -East before that, for the first years of the war.” - -“In France for nine months? Why did you not come to see us?” Alix asked. -She asked it without stopping to think, for it was so strange that they -should not have seen Captain Owen’s brother. - -“I was at the front, and wanted all my leaves at home,” said Giles, and -he smiled very brightly at her. He did not look at all embarrassed now; -yet she had a surmise. He stopped himself from showing embarrassment. -Surely he could have come? Had he not wanted to come? And he was going -on talking, while he paid the bill, as if he felt she might be asking -herself that question: “My aunt lives in a part of London called -Chelsea. At the time ‘Pride and Prejudice’ was written, it was all -gardens there; it’s mostly flats now. We’ve changed very much, in all -sorts of ways from the England of ‘Pride and Prejudice’; just as you -have from the France of Lamartine.” - -Everything was dimmed with fog as they drove through the streets and she -was suddenly very sleepy, yet she kept on thinking, as she looked out, -of those nine months that monsieur Giles had been in France. He must -have been there, then, when Captain Owen was killed. How strange that he -had never come, and that Captain Owen had never spoken of him. She was -too sleepy, however, to think of it very carefully and, when they -stopped at the brightly lighted door of a large building, she stumbled -in alighting so that Giles, with a steadying “Hello, hello,” put a hand -under her elbow and guided her into a lift; and, still so sustained, she -was presented a moment later to a stout, rosy lady with _pince-nez_ and -smooth grey hair who herself opened the door of a white and green -_appartement_ and said: “Poor child, she must be put to bed at once.” - -From Giles she passed to Aunt Bella, who smelt of toilet vinegar and had -a seal ring on her small glazed-looking hand. - -After that Alix was only drowsily aware of a little pink bedroom where a -row of pink, blue and green water-colours framed in gilt hung upon the -walls. Her head sank into a pillow and all the troubled thoughts into -sleep; but, just before she was quite oblivious, a little tap came to -the door; it opened softly and a tall head, silhouetted on the lighted -hall, looked in, and Giles said, “Good-night, Alix.” - -It was treating her as a child and it made her feel very safe. - - - CHAPTER III - -For many hours the little French girl slept on dreamlessly, and when she -woke it was as if an abyss of space and time lay between her and -yesterday morning. As she gazed up at the dim ceiling, only the most -recent memories wove themselves softly into her returning sense of -identity: the yellow sauce that Giles had told her to scrape off; his -faded khaki necktie; Aunt Bella’s small, glazed hands. Kindness, -security, lay behind these appearances, and an apprehension of pain -seemed at first substanceless and irrational. Then, with a gathering -effort, it shaped itself: France; Maman; what was she doing and was she -happy?—She had not been really happy yesterday morning. Why had -monsieur Giles been so troubled when they met? And why had he never come -to see them in all the nine months he had been in France? - -There was a tap at the door and an elderly maid came in, neatly capped, -bearing a brass hot-water-can, which she stood in the basin. Then she -drew the curtains and turned up the electric light and placed by the -bedside a very amusing little tea-set on a tray. It was Alix’s -initiation into early-morning tea, and for a moment, as she gazed at it, -she feared it was to be all her breakfast until the maid, withdrawing, -said, very distinctly, as though she might be deaf: “Breakfast at nine, -Miss; and the bathroom is opposite.” - -That was all right, then. Alix lifted the lid of the little pot and -sniffed at the tea and decided that the afternoon was the only time at -which she felt drawn to it. And as for the two slices of bread and -butter, they were very thin, but she would rather save her appetite. -Meanwhile there was a real _brouillard de Londres_ pressing close -against the window, so close that one could see nothing—Alix had jumped -up to look—except the spectral top of a tree below the window and, -below the tree, a blurred street-lamp. It was interesting, exciting, to -get up like this as if it were after dinner instead of before breakfast, -for there were lights in the hall and bathroom and one’s morning face -had such a curious look as one combed one’s hair under an electric bulb. -She forgot her waking apprehensions as she dressed, and when she went -into the dining-room and found Giles there, the day seemed to have -started really well. - -Giles was reading a newspaper, standing under the light. The room was -small and he looked very large in it; so did a pink, frilled ham on the -sideboard and an engraving hanging over the mantelpiece of an old, erect -gentleman, _en favoris_, his hands on a book and with a very high -collar. When Aunt Bella came in a moment later, they all seemed quite -crowded between the fog outside and the steam from the shining kettle on -the table, and it was rather, Alix thought, as though they were floating -in a little boat on a misty sea or suspended—this was a more exciting -comparison—high in the air in an aeroplane. - -She was seated opposite the mantelpiece, Giles under it, and, following -her eyes, Aunt Bella said: “That is our great Mr. Gladstone, Alix. -You’ve heard of Mr. Gladstone.” - -Alix had to confess that she had not. - -“Well, you’ll have heard of George Washington, then,” said Aunt Bella. -“There he is, behind you.” And Alix turned round to look up at the -austere face in powdered hair. - -“He was an American, was he not, and your enemy?” she inquired. - -“He was the enemy of one of our foolish kings,” said Aunt Bella, “but an -Englishman, and one we are all proud of. And that’s Cobden.” She -completed her educational round with the third large engraving that hung -near the window. - -“And now, perhaps,” said Giles, “you’ll like to hear what they all did -and why Aunt Bella has them hanging here. By the time you do that you’ll -have quite a good idea of modern English history.” - -Alix for a moment was afraid that Aunt Bella might really be going to -instruct her, and she had not the least wish to know anything about any -of the respectable gentlemen who presided over the breakfast-table. - -But Giles was going on, with his bantering smile. “If you go to Aunt -Bella, you’ll get a one-sided impression, perhaps. She’s a great -Liberal. We are all Liberals in my family. What you’d call -Republicans.—Aunt Bella, you’re not asking this helpless French child -to drink tea for her breakfast!” - -“Doesn’t she have tea?” Aunt Bella asked, and though Alix insisted that -she did not mind it at all, there was much concerned conversation, and -the elderly maid was summoned and told to ask cook to make some cocoa -for the young lady. - -“You hate tea, I suppose,” said Giles, and Alix replied that she liked -it very much at five o’clock, and Giles went on: “Whereas Aunt Bella -likes it at all hours of the day and night; and Indian tea, I’m grieved -to say; it’s the only rift within our lute, Aunt Bella’s Indian -tea;—since we do agree about Gladstone. Now you’re a Royalist, I -suppose, Alix?” - -“But surely no rational person in France is a Royalist any longer,” said -Aunt Bella. - -“Grand-père did not love the Republic,” said Alix, “but Maman admires -Napoleon and the Revolution.” - -“I sometimes think we shall get both a revolution and a Napoleon in this -country,” said Aunt Bella, “at the rate things seem to be going.” - -“There’ll never be a revolution in England,” said Giles. “People who -drink Indian tea could never make a revolution, could they, Alix?” - -“I do not think so,” Alix smiled. “Nor in a country with such fogs.” - -“That’s a good idea! Eh, Aunt Bella? People must see each other clearly -in order to hate each other sufficiently.—What?” - -“That is just it,” Alix nodded, laughing. “And you are all so kind. -Kinder, I am sure, than we are.” - -She and Giles understood each other. He treated her like a child, yet -they understood each other, really, better than he and Aunt Bella, for -she looked a little cautious when Giles embarked on his sallies, as if -she did not quite know in what admission he might not involve her unless -she were careful. She took things _au pied de la lettre_, Aunt Bella, -as, after all, an elderly lady would do who sat down to breakfast every -morning with such cold comfort on her walls as Messieurs Gladstone, -Cobden, and Washington. A row of smiling Watteau engravings hung round -Maman’s little dining-room in the rue de Penthièvre. Alix did not think -that Gladstone, Cobden, or Washington would look with an eye of approval -at _Le Départ pour Cythère_ or the _Assemblée Galante_. Though -Washington might. She liked him far the best of the three. - -“And does your grandfather really expect to get the Bourbons back?” Aunt -Bella inquired. “You are a Roman, I suppose, my dear child.” - -“A Roman?” Alix, for all her English, was perplexed. “I have no Italian -blood.” - -“She means your church,” said Giles. “And Catholics, in France, do -really all want back a king, don’t they?” - -“I am a Catholic,” said Alix, “and so, of course, was Grand-père, and he -certainly did not like the Republic. We had a very unscrupulous, -intriguing mayor at Montarel and perhaps that was one reason. But I do -not think that Grand-père expected anything any more or thought at all -about kings.” - -“A very strange people, the French,” Aunt Bella remarked, as if the fact -were so patent that one of them, being present, could not object to its -statement. “A very strange people, indeed. And where do you say your -grandfather lives, my dear?” - -“He is dead,” said Alix. “It was at Montarel he lived; near the Alps.” - -“You may have noticed the water-colours of Avignon that I did some years -ago, hanging in your bedroom,” said Aunt Bella. “Parts of France are -very picturesque. But I prefer our scenery.” - -“And now,” said Giles, looking at his watch, “we must be thinking about -our train. Are you packed up, Alix?” - -“Tell your mother,” said Aunt Bella, “that I expect her on Thursday for -the two committees. She’ll spend the night, of course.” And when Alix’s -box and bag had been brought and a taxi summoned, Aunt Bella said to her -very kindly, as they stood for farewells in the hall: “You must come -again and see me, my dear, when you are in London. I could take you to -the National Gallery and Westminster Abbey, and, if you care about -Social Work, you might be interested in my Infant Welfare Centre and -Working Girls’ Gymnasium.” - -“Is she an official, your aunt?” Alix inquired as she and Giles drove -off to the station. - -“An unofficial official,” Giles explained. “She runs more things than -most officials. She sits on councils and governs hospitals and makes -speeches. There can’t be a busier woman in London and she’s a splendid -old girl;—though I do enjoy pulling her leg.” And then, since Alix was -startled by this expression, also new to her, he had again to explain. - - - CHAPTER IV - -The third-class carriage was not foul and wooden as it would have been -in France, and they had it to themselves; but the cushions smelt of fog, -and Alix thought she had never seen anything so ugly as the view from -the window. It had been too dark to see the suburbs of London the night -before, on the way up from Newhaven; but they lay all mean and low and -toad-coloured this morning, wet under the lifted fog, and for as far as -the eye could follow there was nothing to be seen but squatting roofs -and gaunt factory chimneys. - -“Bad, isn’t it?” said Giles. He sat opposite her, looking out with his -face so young and so worn. She liked him so much and felt so safe with -him, and yet it frightened her a little to look at him, just—strange -association—as it had frightened her to look at Grand-père. Only Giles -was kinder, far, than Grand-père. “But worse, do you think,” he went on, -“than the suburbs of Paris?” - -Alix did not quite like to say how much worse she thought it; it did not -seem polite. “There, at least, one has the sky to look at,” she -suggested. “It is happier, I think.” - -“We’re not always in a fog, you know,” said Giles. “And Aunt Bella is -very keen on Smoke Abatement. Perhaps we’ll look happier some day.” - -“I am very glad your family does not live in London,” said Alix. She -felt more shy of Giles this morning, shut up with him in the intimacy of -the chill, smoky carriage, than she had last night in the station -dining-room. And it was as if she felt him more shy, too. They were -making talk a little. - -“Wouldn’t you have come, if we’d lived in London?” he inquired. - -“Maman would have sent me just the same, I think,” said Alix. “She -wanted me to know England. And your family, specially, of course. -Captain Owen always said I must know his family.” - -“Oh, yes. Of course,” said Giles. He got up then and looked at the heat -regulator and said it was cold, did she mind? There seemed no heat. Then -he sat down again and fell into a silence, his arms folded, his long -legs stretched as best they could, before him, and they both, again, -looked out of the window. - -On it went, the dreadful city; but at last furtive squares and triangles -of green were stealing into it and sparsely placed trees edged streets -that adventured forth, at random, it seemed, to end, almost with a stare -of forlorn astonishment, in fields ravaged of every trace of beauty. But -the green spread and widened like a kindly tide, and though the brick -and slate was encrusted at intervals, like an eruption, upon the land, -there were copses and rises of meditative meadow and the white sky was -melting here and there to a timid blue above little hamlets that seemed -to have a heart and to be breathing with a life of their own. Beside a -brook a girl was strolling with scarf and stick, two joyous dogs racing -ahead of her; a cock-pheasant ran, startled, through a wood sprinkled -with gold and russet, and presently there was a deeper echo of the blue -overhead in the blue of quiet hills on the horizon. - -“This is better, isn’t it?” said Giles, bringing his eyes to her at -last. “Don’t you call this pretty?” - -“Very pretty,” said Alix. And it was pretty, though to her eyes it was -also insignificant and confused, its lack of design or purpose teasing -her mind with its contradiction of the instinct for order and -shapeliness that dwelt there. “Is it because of the season and your -mistiness that everything seems very near one? The horizon is so near, -and even the sky comes quite close down.” - -“Like nice, kind arms, I always think,” said Giles. “No, even in the -Lake Country, even in Scotland, we don’t get your splendid distances; or -very rarely.” - -“But it is very pretty,” Alix repeated. “I like the woods. Did you see -the girl and the dogs a little while ago? I imagine that your sisters -look like that.” - -“Our dogs look like that. Ruth and Rosemary aren’t quite so grown up. We -have three dogs. Are you fond of them?” - -“Oh, very fond; though I have never had a dog of my own. Maman thinks -them too much trouble for a little _appartement_ in Paris. But I had a -cat at Montarel. A yellow cat with blue eyes. Have you ever seen one -like that? He was so affectionate and intelligent and remembered me -perfectly from year to year. He used to put his paws on my breast and -rub against my face. The thought of seeing him again made it easier to -bear leaving Maman when my half-year at Montarel came round.” - -“Your half-year at Montarel?” Giles asked the question, but she saw that -it was after a hesitation. She wondered how much Captain Owen had told -them. She felt suddenly that she wanted to tell Giles everything there -was to tell. - -“I spent half the year with Grand-père at Montarel and half with Maman -in Paris. Did you not know?” she said, looking him in the eyes. “My -father and mother were parted. They were divorced. But it could not have -been more Maman’s error since the judge allowed her to have me for half -the time. It is arranged like that, you know, as fairer. And since my -father died when I was hardly more than a baby, it was Grand-père who -had me for that side of the family.—I tell it to you as I imagine it to -have been, for Maman has never spoken to me of it.” - -Giles was making it easy. He was looking at her with no sign of -discomfort, looking, indeed, as if he knew it already. “Oh, yes,” he -said. And then he added: “And when your grandfather died? Was there no -one else on his side of the family? Don’t you go to Montarel any more?” - -“No one at all,” said Alix, shaking her head. “I am the last of the -Mouverays. That was why the château was sold and why Maman has me now -entirely. But though it was sad to lose my grandfather, I love my mother -best of course.” - -“I hope you won’t miss her too much,” said Giles after a moment and in a -kind voice. “We’ll try to give you a happy life, you know.” - -“I am sure you will. But one must always miss one’s mother and one’s -country. And then I always wonder if she is happy. Though I am only a -child, she depends on me.” - -“You have the comfort of knowing that Paris is only a few hours away,” -said Giles, smiling. - -“Ah, but Cannes isn’t. She is to be at Cannes this winter.” - -“Oh, yes, I remember. She spends the winters at Cannes.” - -“She enjoys her life there. She plays tennis beautifully and has so many -friends, as perhaps Captain Owen told you. But I know that she misses -me. I have always been with her there before. I was with her, you know, -when Captain Owen met us.” - -“I should rather say I did know,” said Giles. “We heard all about your -kindness to him, you may be sure. You may be sure we are a very grateful -family.” Giles spoke with heartiness, and though she felt something a -little forced in it there was nothing forced in his evident kindness -towards herself. They were talking happily. As they had talked last -night at dinner. - -“And you may be sure we heard all about you,” said Alix, smiling across -at him. “All about Ruth and Rosemary and Francis and Jack. What a large -family you are. It must be very happy being so many.” - -“I say!” laughed Giles, “you have a good memory! To get us in our order, -too.” - -“But how could I forget when he told us so much! We saw all your -photographs so often. Only one does not get so clear an idea from -photographs. I would not have known you from yours. And there was -Toppie. After your mother, he talked most of all about Toppie. I shall -see her, too, shall I not?” - -It was as if she had struck him. The violent red that mounted to his -face was echoed in Alix’s cheeks. It was as if, with her innocent words, -she had struck him, and in the silence that followed them, while he -gazed at her, and she, helplessly, gazed back, she saw that what had -underlain the confusion of yesterday had simply been suffering. She had -laid it bare. She was looking at it now. - -He tried to master it; to conceal it; in a moment he stammered: “Oh, he -talked most about Toppie, did he?” - -“Was she not his betrothed?” asked Alix in a feeble voice. She felt -exhausted. He had struck her, too. - -“Of course she was,” said Giles, and his eyes now lifted from her face -and fixed themselves over her head on Maman’s dressing-case. - -“And—is she not still living?” - -“Toppie? Living?” His eyes came back to her. “I should rather say so. -You see,” he went on at once, though Alix could not see the relevance, -“she was so horribly cut up by his death.” - -“Of course,” Alix murmured. “I am so sorry. I should not have spoken of -him at all, when you have lost him. I did not mean to be stupid; -unfeeling.” - -“But, good Heavens! you’re not stupid! Not a bit unfeeling!” cried -Giles, and seeing her distress, his eyes actually filled with tears. -“It’s not Owen at all. We often speak of him. It’s Toppie. And it’s I -who am such a dunderhead. You see, she’s all that’s left of him. I mean, -all that’s loveliest; most sacred. She cared for him so much. She’s like -something in a shrine, to us all.” - -“Yes. Yes. I see. I understand,” said Alix; though, still, she could not -see. “I spoke lightly. I do not forgive myself.” - -“But it’s nothing to do with you,” Giles almost shouted as he had -shouted at her last night. “I always get like that when she’s talked -about, with him. You poor, dear child, it’s nothing on earth to do with -you. It’s absolutely my stupidity,” Giles assured her, their suffusion -giving his eyes a strange heaviness. - -It must be left at that. There was nothing for her to say. He was -suffering and he tried to conceal from her how much; but she had seen it -too plainly. All unwittingly she had blundered, blundered horribly, in -speaking of Captain Owen and his betrothed, and a sense of depression, -dark, like the London fog, penetrating and bitter like the London smoke, -settled upon her. - -“Here’s the station! There’s Mummy!” cried Giles. They had sat silent, -and now he sprang up as if with great gaiety. He was doing his best. He -was trying to make her forget; it was a little stupid of him if he -thought he could succeed, Alix felt; but she summoned a responsive smile -with which to greet Giles’s mother. - -She recognized her at once as the train slid into the little station. -She stood there, tall and slender, wistful and intent, with her spare -grey skirt and black hat and scarf, and hair straying about her ears, as -shy, as gentle as a girl. In her photograph, seen at Cannes, it had -seemed incredible that she should be Captain Owen’s mother, and though -her face showed as faded and worn in the morning light, it was even more -incredibly young. She must be fifty, yet Maman, unflawed and radiant in -her thirty-seven summers, had a greater maturity of aspect. “She is so -innocent,” thought Alix; not clearly seeing, yet deeply feeling the -meaning of the word. - -She was walking beside the train, smiling up at them, her hand laid on -the window of their carriage, and Giles did not wait for it to stop -before he sprang out beside her and kissed her, doffing his cap. There -was no confusion, no trouble, in the eyes of Giles’s mother; they had -nothing to hide; this was the next thought that came to Alix; they were -only shy and sweet and sad. She did not speak at first. She took Alix by -the hand and stood so holding her while Giles got out the dressing-case, -and then led her along beside them, glancing down at her as they went; -and Alix saw that with all the memories her own presence recalled, words -were too difficult. - -Giles was telling of the Victoria disaster. “I missed that first train, -Mummy. I didn’t get to Victoria till nearly two hours after hers had -come in. But she’s forgiven us. She’s a most forgiving disposition,” -said Giles, “I’ve discovered that. She won’t resent any of the wrongs we -put upon her.” - -“Two hours! How dreadful! Oh, how dreadful!” Mrs. Bradley was -exclaiming, “What must you have thought of us, Alix!” - -“But it wasn’t your wrong, at all,” said Alix; “it was Maman’s mistake. -I think telegrams take very long now from France to England.” - -“There always _are_ mistakes about meetings,” said Mrs. Bradley. -“Dreadful things always _do_ seem to happen.—Shall I drive, Giles, -dear? or sit behind with Alix so that we can talk? That will be best, I -think.” - -They drove over commons and along woodland roads. The air was white and -chill yet dimly transfused with sunlight, and there was a smell of wet -pine-trees and wet withered heather. Alix’s spirits lifted a little with -the scent and swiftness, and they lifted still further, seeming, like -the sky, to show a rift of blue, when in her gentle, slightly hoarse -voice, Mrs. Bradley said: “Is your mother well, dear? How did you leave -her?” This was the first inquiry about Maman she had heard, the first -interest she had seen displayed. Giles, she remembered it now, had -volunteered not a remark or question. - -“She wrote so kindly,” said Mrs. Bradley. “She understood, I know, how -much we hoped to see you here, how much pleasure it would give us. I -wish she could have come, too. Owen so often wrote about you both, from -Cannes. He said you made him think of Jeanne d’Arc, and your mother of -Madame Récamier.—I’m glad you still do your hair like that,” said Mrs. -Bradley, smiling shyly, and Alix saw that she had forgotten nothing and -that all the links that Giles had ignored were cherished by her. - -There were links, however, that she would not see. That must be, Alix -reflected, what she had felt as her innocence. The pleasure that her -coming might give to the Bradleys had never been part of Maman’s motive. -She had taken it for granted, but it had not counted. Maman had sent her -because she had conceived of the winter in England as an advantage for -her child and because—Alix saw further into these motives than Maman -intended her to do—it had not been convenient to take her to Cannes. -But there were few of Maman’s motives, Alix felt, as she listened to the -gentle, hesitating voice, that Mrs. Bradley would divine. Perhaps it was -that that made Maman seem so much the older. Yet Maman, too, might have -blindnesses. She would have been blind, for instance, in saying of Mrs. -Bradley—and Alix could hear her saying it: “_Un peu bê-bête, n’est-ce -pas, ma chérie?_” Mrs. Bradley was simple, very simple; but she was not -_bête_. Alix felt that she understood Mrs. Bradley as Maman would not -understand her, and it was perhaps because of this that Mrs. Bradley -spoke presently about her dead son, for to any one who did not -understand her she could not have spoken. She would never be _bête_ -about things like that. She was longing to speak about him, Alix saw; to -ask questions, to reënforce her store of precious memories by such -fragments as the little French girl could offer her. Alix told her of -their walks above the sea at Cannes, of the concerts he had so loved, -and of how much he had had to tell and teach them of flowers and birds. - -“Oh, yes, the birds; he loved them,” said Mrs. Bradley, turning away her -eyes that were full of tears. She was like this November day, with its -suffused sunlight, and fresh, sad fragrance; there were no tocsins or -trumpets in her blood, either; yet all the same she knew what suffering -was as well as Maman. The hoarseness of her voice had come, perhaps, in -part from crying; something scared, that one caught in her glance at -moments, had not been there, Alix felt sure, before the war; before the -news of her son’s death had been brought to her. And as Alix thought of -Captain Owen’s death and of what his mother must have felt, there rose -in her memory a picture of a Spring morning in Paris, the wild, wet day, -with shafts of sunlight slanting through the rain and striking great -spaces on the pavements to azure. She had been standing at the window of -their salon, looking at the rain and sunlight, and at the flower-woman -on the corner opposite, her basket heaped with pink and white tulips, -and she had heard Maman, suddenly, behind her, saying, as if she had -forgotten that Alix was there: “_Dieu!—Dieu!—Dieu!_” And, looking -round she had seen her with the letter in her lap and had read the -catastrophe in her white face and horror-filled eyes. So many of their -friends had fallen in the war, but for none of them had Maman mourned as -she had for Captain Owen. - -The car turned, now, with careful swiftness, into an entrance gate which -opened against a well-clipped hedge. A curve among the trees brought -them to the front of a large house, red brick below, gables above, with -beams and plaster. A great many gables, a great many creepers, large -windows open to the air. A kind, capacious house, promising comfort; but -how ugly, thought Alix, as they alighted; “_Combien peu intéressante._” -It was difficult to believe that from its cosy portals Captain Owen and -Giles had gone forth to tragedy. - -Two girls, at the sound of the car, had burst out upon the steps, and -three dogs; an Irish terrier, a fox terrier, and a West Highland -terrier;—“I like him best”—thought Alix of the last;—and they bounded -in the air while the girls shouted: - -“I say, Giles, you did serve us a turn last night! Your wire never got -here until this morning! We sat up till eleven!” - -They wore knitted jumpers and had corn-coloured hair and pink faces. -They were delighted to see their brother back after his misadventures; -the dogs were delighted to see him; only the dogs did not shout, which -was an advantage. Alix had never heard such a noise. - -“And here is Alix,” said Mrs. Bradley, who had stopped to take the -appealing fox terrier in her arms; the fox terrier was a lady, no longer -young, and the uproar affected her too much; Mrs. Bradley soothed and -reassured her. - -Ruth and Rosemary, as though aware for the first time of Alix’s -presence, turned their attention to her and cried “Hello” heartily, -while they shook her by the hand. They were like Aunt Bella in their -rosiness, robustness, their air of doing things all the time with -absorption and energy; and like Aunt Bella and the house they were “_peu -intéressantes_.” - -“Did you have a good crossing? Are you a good sailor?” asked Rosemary; -while Ruth said: “Let me carry up her bag.—Do you play -hockey?—_Jouissez-vous le hockey?_” - -“She speaks English better than you do,” said Giles, pulling his -sister’s rope of hair; “and your French is a disgrace to your family.” - -They all went into a hall that had wide windows in unexpected places and -an important oak staircase winding up from it, also in an unexpected -place. Alix was dimly aware of earnest, cheerful attempts at originality -in its design; but the originality did not go beyond the windows and -staircases, the high wainscotting and oaken pillars. Everything else, -from the brasses of the big chimney-place to the florid crétonnes on the -window-seats, followed a bright household formula. The brightness would -have been a little oppressive had it not lapsed to a benign shabbiness, -and the two good-tempered maids who followed with Alix’s box belonged to -it all, ornamental in their crisp pink print dresses, yet a little -dishevelled; their caps perched far back on large protuberances of hair -and fashionable whiskers of curl coming forward on their cheeks. - -Alix felt all sorts of things about the hall and about the crétonnes and -about the maids as Ruth and Rosemary and the dogs hustled her along. -What it amounted to she did not clearly know, except that Giles did not -really go with the hall, while his sisters did, and that Mrs. Bradley -did not like the caps and the whiskers, but that she would always -sacrifice her own tastes—hardly aware that she had them—to other -people’s cheerfulness. - -“Oh, well, of course you play tennis,” Ruth was saying. “Everybody plays -tennis. But you must learn hockey at once. It’s the great game at our -school and you’re nowhere unless you play it.—Down Bobby, down! He’s -made friends with you already.—The mud will come off all right.—One -can’t mind mud if one has dogs, can one? Down, you silly duffer!” - -“Never mind. Let him jump. I am fond of dogs,” said Alix, patting the -ardent head of the Irish terrier. “What is the name of the little, low, -white one? He is quieter, but I think he likes me too.” - -“His name is Jock, and Mummy’s fox terrier is Amy. Oh, they’ll all like -you, all right; they’re as friendly as possible—though Amy can be a bit -peevish at moments; Mummy spoils her.—Here’s your room,” said Rosemary, -ushering her in. “It’s a jolly room, isn’t it? Mummy thought you’d like -the one with the view best. The other spare-room looks over the -kitchen-garden. It’s a jolly view, isn’t it? One doesn’t often get a -view like that. Put the box here, Edie.—Oh, the bathroom is on the -landing, that door, you see. We have our baths in the morning and the -water doesn’t run very hot for more than two. So will you have yours at -night? Mummy does. Ruth and I like it best in the morning, and Giles -doesn’t mind if his is cold.—French people don’t care about baths, -anyway, do they?—Lunch will be ready in twenty minutes. Can you find -your way down?” Rosemary added rapidly, her eye on the staircase where -Giles was descending, “I want to speak to Giles.” - -“No, you don’t! It’s my place to tell him first!” screamed Ruth. - -“It’s about the football, Giles!” - -“Oh, shut up!” shouted Giles affectionately. “What a frightful row -you’re making!” - -And Alix at last heard them all hurtling down the stairs together. - -Jock, who was old and a little melancholy, remained with her, seating -himself on the hearth rug and surveying her with kindly but disenchanted -eyes. - -“_Dieu! Quel bruit!_” Alix addressed him. She felt that Jock agreed with -her about the noise and in finding Ruth and Rosemary, as well as Bobby, -too turbulent. She listened at the door to be sure that they were safely -gone. Then she tiptoed softly down and peeped in at the bathroom. It was -large and untidy. She, too, preferred her bath hot and in the morning. -Ruth and Rosemary were kind, but your preferences would never stand in -the way of theirs. No, never would she find them interesting. But they -did not ask it of you, Alix reflected, going back to her room. All they -asked of you was to let them bathe at the time that best pleased them, -play hockey with them, and admire their view. She went to look at the -view. A pleasant, heathery common dipping at its further edge to a -birch-wood. That was all. And another gabled roof rose among pines on a -near hillside. All comfort; no beauty, thought Alix, and the sky came so -closely down that it made her feel suffocated. And as she leaned looking -out she thought of the roll of the mighty Juras, and the plain, and the -river shining across it. How tame this was, a piping, perching little -bird beside an eagle of great flights and soarings. Why had Maman sent -her here? She could never be happy; never, never, under this low sky, -among these noisy girls. And wave after wave there mounted in her an -old, well-remembered homesickness for Maman and a new homesickness for -France. - - - CHAPTER V - -She was not to escape Ruth and Rosemary for long. Already, at lunch, she -felt that Giles, talking gravely with his mother of treaties and leagues -and such dull matters, seemed to have relegated her to their category. -Over the dining-room mantelpiece hung a portrait of the late Mr. -Bradley; she knew it must be he from his likeness to Aunt Bella and Ruth -and Rosemary, and Alix felt sure, as she looked up at his pink and -yellow, his tweeds and watch-chain and good, shrewd eyes, that Mrs. -Bradley’s sons must always have interested her more than their father. -But she would never have known this, just as she did not know, nor did -they, that she was fonder of her boys than of Ruth and Rosemary. “But I -believe that in this country everybody is fonder of sons,” thought Alix, -marvelling at the reappearance of the strange cabbage cut into squares -and recalling impressions of English literature where, despite romantic -surfaces, it was apparent to the discerning eye that men always counted -for more than women. - -Mrs. Bradley carved. It was a well-roasted leg of mutton, that made Alix -think of the mutton in “Alice.” The potatoes, too, were roasted and the -_entremets_ a bread-and-butter pudding. Mr. Bradley had been nourished -on such meals. They would produce Mr. Bradleys. - -“Now we will show you everything,” said Ruth when luncheon was over. The -implication seemed to be that a specially fortunate experience was in -store for her. A fond complacency breathed from both girls. “And it is -natural that one should love one’s home,” thought Alix, the tolerance of -her comprehension giving her childish face a maturity beyond its years. - -So she was led from the lawn to the shrubberies; shown the summer-house -where in summer they had tea and the herbaceous border, neatly disposed -for its winter sleep. The kitchen-garden was displayed, and at its far -end they passed through a door to a little path, bordered by -gorse-bushes, that ran beneath the garden-wall and then turned aside -over the common. It was a sheltered, solitary little path, the branches -of the garden fruit-trees hanging over it, and Alix felt that it might -often be a refuge for her. It was a pretty path and had a character of -its own. To Ruth and Rosemary its meaning lay in leading somewhere else, -and they crossed the common and rambled in the birch-wood, inciting each -other to long jumps over a sluggish little stream, half ditch, half -brook, that flowed through it, and encouraging the dogs with loud cries -to chase the scurrying rabbits on the further hillside. - -“There’s the jolliest walk along the top,” said Ruth, “among the -junipers. But perhaps you are tired. French girls aren’t much good at -walking, are they?” - -“I walk a good deal in the country,” said Alix, “but I think I will -unpack my box now.” - -“Edie will have unpacked it for you,” said Ruth, “so we’ll go on; only -say if you are tired. You wear sensible shoes, I must say. I thought all -French girls pinched their toes.” - -So they continued to walk, talking as they went, asking her for none of -her information, only imparting theirs, as if it must, self-evidently, -have superior value. Alix heard them with interest when they told of -Giles and of his scholastic feats at Oxford, feats interrupted by his -departure for the war, but now to be resumed. Philosophy was Giles’s -special branch, and they told her that he was going to teach philosophy, -at Oxford probably, and write it some day. - -“_Tiens!_” said Alix, relapsing, as was her wont when surprised, into -French. She knew nothing of philosophers and the word only conjured up a -picture of someone aged and bearded who drank hemlock. - -“Yes,” said Ruth, accepting the ejaculation as a tribute, “he’ll be a -great man, all right, Giles.” - -And Alix also learned that Ruth and Rosemary both intended following -professional careers and that their father had come from the north and -had built Heathside and that their mother was a Londoner and that her -father had been the editor of an important London paper. “What! Never -heard of ‘The Liberal’!” Ruth exclaimed. Ruth, as eldest, did most of -the talking, subjected to frequent interruptions from Rosemary. “I -should have thought even French people would have heard of ‘The -Liberal.’ Oh, yes, he was a great swell, our grandfather.” - -Alix did not think she would have found him so. France, she saw, mainly -existed for Ruth and Rosemary as a place where one’s brothers had gone -to fight and one’s friends to nurse. - -“And what is the pleasant house?” she inquired of them, when, after -their walk along the hilltop, they had crossed the wood and emerged -again upon the common. - -It stood, with an air of serenity and detachment, half a mile away, a -tall house of pale, eighteenth-century brick with a white door and white -window-sills, a formal garden before it and a neat hedge dividing it -from the road. One felt that the woods had grown up around it and that -it preserved a tranquil personality of its own, unmoved by the haphazard -accretions of a century. - -“Oh, that’s the Rectory; where Toppie lives,” said Ruth. “You can see -the church spire just above the trees to the right. Pleasant, do you -call it? I think it’s rather dismal; so bare and square. It needs lots -of creepers and shrubberies to make it cheerful; but old Mr. Westmacott -doesn’t like them.” - -“Creepers would not be in the character of that house, I feel,” said -Alix; “and they would hide the pretty colour of the brick. There are a -few roses, too, are there not?” - -“Yes; a few. Toppie would have her roses. I hate a house without -creepers.” - -“Shall I soon see Toppie, do you think?” - -“Oh, you’ll see her soon, all right,” said Ruth. “She’ll be coming in to -tea to-day, probably.” - -“I know she’s coming,” said Rosemary. “She asked me yesterday if Alix -would be here, and when I told her we’d had the wire, she said she’d -come. I think she’s rather keen on seeing you, Alix. Owen wrote a lot -about you, you see.” - -They spoke without any emotion of Toppie. They took her for granted. She -was not, to them, a shrine. But even before the scene in the train with -Giles, Alix had had a special feeling about Toppie herself, and as she -walked on with the chattering girls her mind went back to the day at -Cannes when Captain Owen had first showed her and Maman Toppie’s -photograph. He carried the little leather case in his breast-pocket, his -mother’s picture on one side and hers on the other, and Maman had said, -as she took the case from him and looked: “_Elle est tout-à-fait -ravissante._” - -“You don’t see very much of her in that,” said Captain Owen, wagging his -foot a little, and Alix guessed that he was moved in speaking of his -_fiancée_. “But it does show something. Lovely the shape of her face, -isn’t it? She’s not exactly beautiful.” - -“Oh! ‘exactly’! Who would care to be ‘exactly’ beautiful!” said Maman. - -He had told them that Miss Westmacott—Toppie’s real name was Enid -Westmacott—had come with her father to live near them when she was only -fifteen. Mr. Westmacott was the Rector of their parish and he had to -explain to them—for Maman said that with all her English she could -never get it quite clear—what rectors were and how they came to have -daughters; and when Maman said, as though rectors must make up for -having daughters by having devout ones, “_Elle est très dévote?_” -Captain Owen, with his charming smile, rejoined, “Oh, much better than -that!” - -Later on, when they were alone, Maman had remarked to her: “She is -pretty; but nothing more. _Elle est nulle, cette Toppie; très, très -nulle._” But Alix had not agreed. Often she did not agree with Maman. -The little photograph had not said much, but it had said something -definite. “She is like someone in a tower.” So she tried to fix her -feeling. - -“Even in a tower one may oneself be insignificant,” said Maman, and to -this Alix had replied: “Not if one _is_ the tower oneself.” - -Toppie was there when they got in. A fire had been lighted for tea in -the drawing-room, a long room with roses on the chairs and sofas and a -high wainscotting of dark woodwork, and above that blue paper with -old-fashioned crayon portraits and large photographs from famous -pictures. A tall grey figure stood at the further end, and Alix knew at -once that it was Toppie who turned her head to look at her like that. -She was helping Mrs. Bradley arrange flowers, Michaelmas daisies, oak -leaves, and sprays of golden larch. She held a large bronze vase and -wore a grey tweed skirt and a grey woollen jumper and grey shoes -strapping across the instep with a buckle. Her hair was as fair as -primroses and was ruffled up a little above the black ribbon that bound -it. - -“This is Alix, Toppie, dear,” said Mrs. Bradley in a gentle voice, and -she came forward and passed her arm in Toppie’s as if she knew that it -must mean something very special to her to see the little French girl. - -“I’m so glad,” said Toppie. She gazed at Alix for a long moment, as -though forgetting that she held the vase; then, looking round her, vague -in her absorption, she set it down on a table and held out her hand. - -The water from the vase had spilled over it, and as it closed on Alix’s -it made her think of the hand of a dryad, a naiad, or some chill, -unearthly creature. “Yes; in towers,” she thought, as Toppie’s eyes -dwelt on her. “And how much she loved him!” - -She saw then that Giles was there. He was stretched out in a deep chair -on one side of the fire, his hands clasped behind his head, and he was -watching Toppie; her meeting with Toppie. - -“And how much Giles loves her!” came the further thought, sharp with its -sense of sudden elucidation. If he sat there, in that rather mannerless -fashion, not helping with the water-cans, the baskets of flowers, the -scissors, it was because he loved her and wanted to watch her. - -Toppie, still with her absorption, had picked up the vase again and -carried it to a far table. - -“There; that’s the best we can do with the garden just now,” said Mrs. -Bradley, smiling at her. “And without you, Toppie, I’d never have made -the effort. Toppie thinks a room without flowers so sad. She made me -come out with her and pick all these. It’s astonishing, really, what one -can still find in a November garden.” - -“They look awfully nice,” said Giles. - -“Well, to tell you the truth,” said Ruth—Alix had already noted of her -that, on all occasions, she gave her opinion without being asked—“they -look to me rather dingy and frost-bitten. Rather a waste of time, I -think, all this messing about to arrange flowers that don’t exist!”—and -Ruth laughed, pleased with her own good sense, and went to seat herself -on the arm of Giles’s chair. - -“She bores him; but he would not like to say it,” thought Alix, seeing -Giles’s kind but unwelcoming look. She had a feeling of excitement, yet -of oppression. Toppie, she knew, was thinking of nothing but her. - -The tea-table stood before the sofa on the other side of the fire from -Giles, and Mrs. Bradley sat down to it and Toppie came beside her, and -then, looking up at Alix, laying her hand on the place still vacant, -said “Come here, Alix.” - -“There’s room for me, too,” cried Rosemary, plunging down between them. -“My place is always near the cake!” - -But Toppie looked at her quite coldly and said: “There’s not room for -you, Rosemary. Somewhere else, please. You make us all uncomfortable.” - -She was very fair, with a skin that would have been of a milky whiteness -had it not been thickly freckled. Her lips were small and pale, her chin -long and narrow; all her head, bound round with the black ribbon, was -singularly narrow, and that, perhaps, was why her grey eyes seemed to -look out from towers. “And how she has suffered!” thought Alix. - -Nights; how many nights of sleepless suffering had not Toppie known. The -tears had run down as she had lain in the long darknesses, remembering; -always remembering, seeing his face before her always. Tears; vigils; -remembrance;—all were in Toppie’s eyes. “Oh, no, Maman; not _nulle_; -anything but _nulle_,” Alix thought, while, with a great wave of -depression, the meaning of the war, of all its lonely suffering, swept -over her. Was Captain Owen worth so much suffering? His personality -lived most for Alix in the memory of his smile and his worth seemed to -live in that, too. He had been charming; and there was worth in charm. - -Tea was made and they were all talking of the things they did and the -people they did them with. Alix heard of a Women’s Institute, of Boy -Scouts and Girl Guides, and a village Choral Society that Mrs. Bradley -conducted. Giles sang in it, and the girls and Jack and Francis when -they were at home. “And you must sing with us, Alix,” said Mrs. Bradley, -and they asked her about her piano lessons and the singing at the Lycée, -and she had to confess that she had never heard “The Messiah,” at which -there was a shout of good-natured protest from Ruth and Rosemary. “But -you’re not a musical nation, are you?” said Ruth; and disposed of France -as a musical nation. - -The talk made Alix think of the thick slices of bread-and-butter that -Ruth and Rosemary and Giles were eating, it was so kindly and useful. -Very different from the talk to which she was accustomed in Maman’s -salon; and Maman’s salon itself was as different from this as the talk. -It was small, yet it was stately. She and Maman had done their best for -the “_petit trou_” of an _appartement_ in the rue de Penthièvre, and -Maman’s russet head, as she sat with her cigarette at the tea-table, had -melted and shone against the old tapestry, grey and green and citron, -and her lovely face had seemed to belong to the Empire sconces and the -carnations in their tall crystal vases that made light constellations on -the mantelpiece. Maman’s salon, though stately, was dense and rich and -sweet, and the talk that passed, soft and shining, was like a beautiful, -iridescent soap-bubble tossed so lightly from one to the other; from -monsieur de Villanelle, with his pointed red beard and sad blue eyes and -long Flemish nose like a Memling saint; to mademoiselle Blanche -Fontaine; and from her to monsieur de Maubert, with his Jovian head; and -from him to monsieur Jules, dark and gloomy, who sometimes let it drop -in his abstraction, unless Maman gave it a little puff that carried it -on to madame Gérardin, who received it with shrill little outcries, -prettily playing with it—Alix had to own that she played prettily with -talk—until it was safely back in Maman’s hands again. And then another -was blown. How Maman smiled; how she lifted gay yet sombre brows; how -lovely they all thought her. And though one might see talk so light only -as a soap-bubble, Alix dimly apprehended that it was fertile, creative; -that it spread, like a sweet fragrance; that it floated like a winged -seed on the breeze, out from Maman’s salon to permeate, alter the world. -It made a difference to the world what monsieur Villanelle thought about -the last book and poem; what monsieur Jules thought about the last -painter, mademoiselle Blanche about the last play, and monsieur de -Maubert about the latest feat of Léon Daudet or Charles Maurras. And -since, to all of them, it was in Maman’s reception of their ideas that -the final verdict lay, Maman, to the world at large, made the greatest -difference of all. - -“You’ll see what a jolly life you’ll have here, my dear kid,” Rosemary -remarked to her; Rosemary, undismayed by her rebuff, had worked through -the bread-and-butter and was now eating quantities of cake. She was only -six months older than Alix, but she assumed protecting airs towards her. -“Girls in France have a beastly mewed-up time, haven’t they?” - -“Have you been much in France?” Alix asked her. She felt no call to -combat Rosemary’s conceptions. She was, indeed, completely indifferent -to what they might be. She asked her question from mere politeness. - -“Not much; but Ruth and I stayed with a French family once. My word! -they were quaint! They thought the Bible improper reading for _jeunes -filles_ and picked their teeth at the table and I don’t believe they -ever took a bath. They almost had apoplexy when we said we had to have -one every day; thought it would be sure to give us _des rhumatismes_.” - -“Many of us are quite clean,” Alix remarked, and at this Giles laughed -loudly. - -“There’s one for you, you young savage,” he commented, whereupon -Rosemary bounded at him and grappled with his hair. - -“Help, Ruth! He’s choking me!” she screamed, and Alix, with some -astonishment, watched the uncouth game that followed, Giles throwing off -his sisters alternately until they tumbled on the floor and sat, -dishevelled and delighted, getting their breath and smoothing back their -loosened hair. - -“Not quite so much noise, dears,” Mrs. Bradley remarked once or twice, -but she continued calmly to converse with Toppie who glanced at the -_mêlée_, Alix thought, with a remote, repudiating eye, while she said: -“I find him a thoroughly bad boy. There’s something fundamentally wrong -with him.” - -“Oh, poor little fellow!” Mrs. Bradley sighed. “His home and heredity -are great handicaps, aren’t they?” - -“I don’t see why they should be,” said Toppie. “Mrs. Brown is a patient -hard-working woman and, though the father drinks, I don’t think he is -dishonest. Whereas Percy is a sneak and a liar. He does mean things and -then is too much of a coward to confess them.” - -It was strange, thought Alix, listening, though not in the least -interested in Percy Brown’s heredity, that with a face so sweet Toppie -should have so cold a voice. She would be sorry for Percy Brown, she -felt sure, if she were to see him confronting Toppie. - -“It’s very difficult to confess when one has done a mean thing,” Mrs. -Bradley mused—and Alix almost had to laugh at hearing her, so -impossible was it to imagine Mrs. Bradley involved in such a dilemma. -“The cowardice and the meanness go together, don’t they, and Percy is so -young that they are not worse, really, than weakness and timidity. He -may outgrow it.” - -“I don’t think he will. I think he is fundamentally bad,” said Toppie, -but now with more sadness than severity, and, turning to Alix she said: -“Will you come and have tea with me to-morrow? We could have a little -walk first, and then you could come back to tea with me and my father.” - -“But she’s going to school with us, Toppie! We have to teach her -hockey!” cried Ruth. - -“Not to-morrow. She need not begin till Monday, need you, Alix?” Alix -thought not, and though Ruth declared, “You can’t begin a day too soon -for hockey,” Alix and Toppie had decided the question between them. - - - CHAPTER VI - -“Tell me everything; everything you remember,” said Toppie. She was -striding along over the heather, a grey woollen scarf tossed over her -shoulder, a knitted cap drawn down closely over her ears, and she made -Alix feel shy. She had seen that Toppie liked her and she had foreseen -that she would question her. But as she felt the pressure of her longing -she knew how little she could satisfy it. - -“I think I remember him best of all as I first saw him,” she said, -searching her thoughts. - -“Yes. As you first saw him. Tell me about it. How did you first see him? -He wrote to me, often, from Cannes; so much about your mother; so much -about you. He said you were the dearest little girl. I understand why he -said it—if you don’t mind my saying so.—But he couldn’t tell me what I -most wanted to know, could he? How he himself looked to you.—What he -said to you.—How he seemed.—You understand, I know, though you are so -young, how one longs for everything that remains on earth of anyone one -loves. People’s memories; they are precious. You understand that,” said -Toppie. And Alix felt that only by the pressure of her longing was she -thus lifted above her natural reticence. The very words she used were -not habitual to her; she would have been shy of using such words -ordinarily. - -“Yes; I understand,” said Alix. “We saw him first on the great road that -runs above the sea. Maman and I were going up and he was coming down, so -that we saw him tall against the sky; limping a little as he came. He -looked at us, and we looked at him;—it is almost as if one recognized -the people who are destined to be our friends, is it not, -Mademoiselle?—and when we had passed, I looked back at him and he was -looking round at us. It had been a mutual impression. We talked of it -afterwards. We saw him against the sky and he saw us against the sea; as -if we had risen from it, like people in a fairy-tale, he told us; and -Maman laughed and said that people didn’t rise from the sea carrying -parasols. I remember so well the expression of his eyes”—Alix felt -still shyer, but she forced herself through the shyness—“gay and -searching like a dog’s; out-of-door eyes. He had field-glasses in his -hand. And that very evening, at the Casino, a friend of Maman’s brought -him and introduced him to her. So it all began.” - -“Tall against the sky. Out-of-door eyes. Yes, I can see him.—Don’t call -me mademoiselle, Alix; call me Toppie.—And with his bird-glasses. He -would have been watching birds. I see it all,” said Toppie, her eyes -before her. “And then?” - -“Then he came to see us every day. It was of birds we talked on the -first day that he and I and Maman went for a walk. I knew them a little; -not their names; but their songs and their habits, from having been so -much in the country; whereas Maman is so much the _parisienne_ that she -was very ignorant and she laughed at us and said they were all much -alike; small, grey silhouettes in the leaves. And he used to say that I -was like a black-cap and she like a nightingale; though we did not see -those birds at Cannes.” - -“And then?” Toppie repeated as Alix paused. - -“He was still very lame,” said Alix, “so that he could not play tennis, -but he used to come with us and watch Maman play; she is one of the -finest players at Cannes; did he tell you? It is beautiful to watch her; -she is perhaps at her best when playing tennis. And he used to write his -letters in the garden of our little villa;—it was lent us, that Autumn, -by friends; a charming little place; he will have told you of it. He -must often have written you letters from the garden. And he and Maman -sat there and read. He would read to her and she would correct his -French, and she would read to him so that his ear might become -accustomed to the correct accent. And sometimes it was I who read while -he held, I remember, a skein of silk on his hands for Maman to wind to -balls; lemon-coloured silk for a little jacket she was knitting me. She -is so clever with her fingers.” - -“Oh, she was so good to him! I know!” Toppie exclaimed, her eyes still -fixed on the distance. “I don’t know what he would have done with -himself if it hadn’t been for her kindness. He had been so frightfully -lonely there at Cannes. He found it such a dismal place until you came; -perhaps because it is supposed to be so gay; and that, in war-time, must -have been dreadful. No shade, I remember he said; only sun and shadows.” - -“Yes; I remember that he found so much sun depressing, and that seemed -very strange to us, for we so love the sun. But there was real shade in -our garden under the trees. The fuchsias, too, were in bloom everywhere, -I remember, and I associate them so much with him; gay, delicate -flowers.” - -“Fuchsias?” said Toppie. “But that’s a soulless flower. How strange that -he should have been associated with them in anyone’s -mind.—Fuchsias”—she seemed to be forcing herself to see them, too. -“They grow so much in the Riviera, of course. But I always think of Owen -with daffodils. Our woods are full of them here in Spring. Fuchsias. -Yes? What else? You all laughed together? Your mother is so gay. He was -happy?” - -“Very happy, I think. We all laughed a great deal. Maman is not what one -would call a gay person; but she can make gaiety. He teased me a great -deal. I have never cared for dolls and he teased me about them. He said -a girl must be made to care about dolls, and he bought dreadful little -ones with small feet in painted boots and hid them in my napkin at -dinner or even under my pillow, where I found them at night. I used to -fling them at him—rush down to the salon where he and Maman sat, and -fling them at him.—For I was already fifteen, and at that age one is -not supposed to care about dolls, in any case. We had great games, it -was a happy time, in spite of all the sadness. He was a happy person.” - -“Happy. Yes. A happy person,” Toppie repeated. She turned her strange -shining eyes on Alix. “He is happy now. He is here, you know. We are not -parted. I feel him every day; always; near me. His happiness shines -round me.” - -Alix was struck to dumbness. She felt afraid. Such thoughts were so -alien to her that she even wondered if Toppie were quite sane. - -Toppie went on. “You believe that, too, in your church, don’t you?—that -the dead are near us; not far away; not shut into a hard golden heaven -we can’t reach; but quite near and caring.” - -“We have purgatory. I do not understand all these doctrines. But I am -not _dévote_,” said Alix after a moment. - -“Purgatory? That’s only a name. That’s only a symbol, like the golden -heaven. And those who have died, giving their lives for us, will not -have to pass through such an intermediary state.—You are too young. You -have never lost anyone you loved.” - -“No one except my poor grandfather. I always pray for the repose of his -soul. That is what we do in my church. Is it different in yours? And if -they are reposing, how can they be near us?” Indeed, the thought of -Grand-père as near, in his new, unimaginable state, was even more -disquieting than Toppie herself. - -Toppie seemed to feel that she had drawn her young companion beyond her -depth. She was silent for a moment, gathering back her thoughts from -their search for sympathy, and she asked, then: “Why do you say your -poor grandfather? Was he unhappy?” - -“I am afraid he was. Very unhappy.” - -“Oh, I am so sorry. You felt and shared it. I saw in your face at once, -dear little Alix, that you had shared unhappiness.—You are so young; -younger than your age in one way; yet in another you are so grown up; it -is strange.” Toppie’s eyes mused on her for a moment. “Why was he -unhappy?” she added gently. “Though, indeed, most people are.” - -“He was ruined. He had lost everything,” said Alix. “Montarel, where the -Mouverays have always lived, is sold now, and he knew before he died -that it would be so. And he had lost everyone he loved, except me.” - -“Your mother is not his daughter, then?” - -“No; my father was his son; his only child.” - -“But you and your mother were often with him?” - -“Only I. He liked having me alone.” Alix did not require consideration -to find an answer. To Giles, in the train, frankness had been possible; -but it was difficult to repeat such frankness. And Toppie, Alix felt, -was so different from Giles. She would not understand Maman being -divorced as he had. So she evaded her question. - -They had reached the Rectory now, and she was glad not only that they -had passed away from Grand-père and his causes for unhappiness, but from -Captain Owen, too. She would have been sorry to have had to answer -questions about the Paris days when so much of the brightness had -dropped from him. Her memories of Captain Owen in Paris were all tinged -with sadness; perhaps because the war was so much nearer in Paris and -Captain Owen’s return to it so imminent. It was as if, in seeing him -there with them for his short leaves, they had seen death always beside -him. - -“I hope you will be here when our roses are out,” said Toppie, in the -Rectory garden. “Father and I are proud of our roses.” - -Alix counted on being back with Maman long before the time of roses, but -she said that she hoped so, too, and as they passed a window she caught -a glimpse of a tall, bleached man sitting at a writing-table, very -erect, austere, and absorbed; like an old eighteenth-century print of -d’Alembert, Diderot, or some such erudite wigged gentleman. - -“Yes; it’s my father,” said Toppie. “You’ll see him directly; at tea.” - -Alix stood still for a moment as they entered the drawing-room. It had -everything of charm that the Bradleys’ drawing-room lacked, except the -charm of cheerfulness, for it was, though so serenely beautiful, perhaps -a little sad. The eighteenth-century panelling was painted in dim green, -and three tall windows at one side looked out at the garden while, at -the other, was a beautiful fireplace. In the walls were deep niches -filled with rows of old china, and sedate chairs with backs and seats -embroidered in green and dove-colour were ranged along the wall. - -“And look at my china roses,” said Toppie, pleased, Alix saw, by her -involuntary pause of pleasure. “Aren’t they rather wonderful for -November? Only smell how sweet.” And Alix bent over the bowl filled with -the little deep pink roses. - -There was a sedate sofa to match the chairs, with the tea-table placed -as at the Bradleys’; but how different was this tea. No thick -bread-and-butter; no loaves of cake. Only a plate of little dry -biscuits, that Alix liked, however, and another of bread-and-butter cut -to a wafer-like thinness. And instead of the affectionate turmoil of -Heathside was Toppie’s sweet, chill voice and Mr. Westmacott’s silence. -He drank his tea, looking, with his crossed legs, which should have been -in buckled knee-breeches, more than ever like d’Alembert; addressed a -courteous question to Alix about her journey and her mother’s health, -and soon went away, back to his writing-table; but not, Alix felt, to do -much of significance there. He had a tall head and a meditative eye; but -there was something of the sheep in his appearance, too. If he had had -the close curled wig, that went with his type he would, Alix thought, -have looked very like a silent, dignified sheep that may, in the meadow, -as it looks at you, emit once or twice a formal baa. - -Toppie told her that her father was writing a book on the Stoics. “He -has, fortunately, a great deal of time. It’s a tiny parish; just right -for a scholar like my father; more a scholar than a priest, I sometimes -think. He is rather shy with people and his life here suits him -perfectly.” - -“Are not Stoics the people who do not mind the things other people -mind?” Alix inquired. - -“They cared, perhaps, so much for some things that other things did not -hurt,” said Toppie, smiling. “I don’t know much about them, myself, -though; I’m not at all learned. I’ve never been to school.” - -“I am glad you are not learned. One may go to school and yet not be -learned; as you can see from me,” Alix smiled back. “But I can’t imagine -what those things can be that keep us from being hurt; can you?” - -Toppie looked at her meditatively for a moment. “You said you were not -_dévote_; but doesn’t your religion tell you what things they are?” she -asked. - -“_Le bon Dieu_, do you mean?” Alix inquired doubtfully. “_La Sainte -Vierge?_ One’s Guardian Angel?” - -“Yes. When you go to church, to confession, aren’t you told?” - -“We are told a great deal; but I am afraid I have never paid much -attention. I only go to confession once a year. Maman insists on it. I -do not like it,” said Alix. “Had the Stoics a _bon Dieu_ and a _Sainte -Vierge_ to console them, then?” - -“Oh, no! no!—you very ignorant child!” Toppie was perforce smiling -again, though Alix saw that she was distressed. “They lived very nobly -without our faith to help them.—In my church we do not have your -beautiful _Sainte Vierge_ to look to, you know.” - -“I know,” said Alix. “And I do not understand why you should leave her -out. I like her better than _le bon Dieu_, I must confess. But then -rectors could not feel as we do about a _Sainte Vierge_, could they?” - -“And why not?” - -“Could one feel like that and be married?” - -“Oh, you funny child!” Toppie was really laughing, and Alix, seeing how -she amused her, laughed, too. This was so much better than talking about -the dead.—“You mean a priest could not? We are quite different about -that, too. But I see what you mean”—Toppie’s eyes dwelt on her—“and -sometimes I think that you are right. I think, perhaps”—Toppie was -grave now—“that the best life could be lived if one were quite free; -with no close human ties. One could live better for God, and for -humanity, then. And we have nuns in our church, too, Alix.” - -“Oh, but it is dreadful to be a nun!” Alix exclaimed. “I had an old -great-aunt who was a nun. Grand-père’s sister. I was always taken to see -her in her convent in Lyon. She came to a _grille_ and blessed me -through it. She was like a sad old fish in an aquarium. One felt that -her flesh must be cold. It would be death to me, such a life. And you? -Can you really imagine it?” - -“Perhaps not an order like that, that shuts one quite away,” said -Toppie; “but there are nursing and teaching orders. Yes, I can imagine -it. Not while I have my father; but if I were alone.” - -“No, no! Do not imagine it!” Alix exclaimed, and there rose before her -the memory of Giles’s face as he had watched Toppie yesterday evening. -“Do not even imagine it. It is too dreadful. I am sorry that in your -church you have nuns, too. That is foolish of you, I think, when you -need not have them. It is different for priests. They have to administer -the sacraments. But for a woman it is dreadful. Far, far better marry -and be out in the world.” - -“Perhaps.” Toppie was smiling sadly at her, seeing her, it was evident, -as quite a child, yet touched by her feeling. “But if all question of -marrying is over, the situation alters. You could not understand while -you are so young.—See, Alix, I want you to look at this.” She moved -forward a fire-screen, a square of satin on a mahogany stand. “Are you -interested in needlework? French girls do it so beautifully, I know. My -mother embroidered this. She copied it from those old chairbacks. Do -look at them. Her grandmother did those.” - -The screen, on a background of pearly satin, had two doves in a basket, -entwined with laurel; and the chairs, in a softer, sadder key, repeated -them. - -“They are beautiful,” said Alix. It seemed to her, as she looked at the -gentle doves, that the dead, in Toppie’s drawing-room, joined pale hands -around her and whispered: “We are here.” But it was so sad. The doves -nestling side by side, so confident of love, made her think of all the -partings of the world. - -“My great-grandmother was married to a soldier,” said Toppie, “and went -out to India and died there when my grandfather was born. She did all -those chairs while she was waiting for his birth. She was only -twenty-one. I often think of her; so young; stitching her thoughts of -home, her hopes for her baby—the past and the future—into the -embroidery. And one feels how happy she must have been in her marriage -to have chosen that design. My poor great-grandfather brought all her -things back to England, with his little boy.—That funny little -water-colour sketch is of him, in his frilled cap; with his ayah.—And -he grew up to be a soldier, too, and was killed, out in India, fighting -a frontier tribe. My mother was his only child. I was fourteen when she -died. How happy you are to have your mother, Alix. She makes beautiful -things, too. I shan’t forget the little lemon silk jacket.” - -Alix’s sense of sadness had deepened while Toppie spoke. So different -Toppie’s past; so different Toppie’s mother, she felt sure: and the -sense of sadness was in the difference. An abyss seemed to lie between -her and Toppie, an abyss that Toppie did not see and could not, perhaps, -even imagine. She could not place Toppie against any of the backgrounds -familiar to her. She could not see her in Maman’s salon, unless as one -of those dim evasive figures, the “Misses” of her childhood, someone -dressed differently, hovering diffidently and helping with the tea and -cakes. She could see Toppie in Maman’s salon as her governess, but in no -other capacity. Toppie would not understand anything said there, or -would not care to understand. She would draw away from the shining -soap-bubble. She would look with cold dismay at madame Gérardin and -mademoiselle Fontaine. It was sad to feel fond of someone and to feel -them fond of you, and yet to see that only here, among her doves, could -their worlds touch at all. - -It was growing dark, and Toppie said that she would take her home, and, -in the hall, lighted a little lantern for the walk across the common. -They had gone halfway when they saw, in the distance, another lantern -advancing towards them. - -“It is Giles,” said Toppie, pausing. “He has come for you. So I will go -back. I have some letters to finish for the post.” - -“But come to meet him. He will, I am sure, be glad of a word with you,” -said Alix. She felt sure that it had been in the hope of a word with -Toppie rather than to fetch herself that Giles had come. - -“Oh, we have so many words; every day; all our lives long,” said Toppie, -and, though she continued to advance, Alix felt a slight constraint in -her voice. “He is a dear, is he not, Giles?” she added, as if -irrelevantly. - -“Oh, a dear!” said Alix. “I felt him that at once. And so good; and so -intelligent.”—“More intelligent than Captain Owen; more good,” was in -her mind. But that made, she knew, no difference. People were not loved -for their intelligence, or their goodness, either. - -“A great dear, Giles,” Toppie repeated, but with no intention, -evidently, of being urged by her young companion’s warmth beyond her own -sense of due commendation. “Owen loved him devotedly. After his mother -it was Giles he loved best of all his family.” - -“They were all three of the same _pâte_, were they not.” - -“_Pâte?_” Toppie questioned. Her French was not quite so good as -Giles’s. - -“The paste, you know, of which earthenware or porcelain is made.” - -“I see. Yes. And Owen was porcelain; and Giles is earthenware; and dear -Mrs. Bradley is both together.” Toppie mused on the simile with -satisfaction. - -But it did not satisfy Alix. “Some earthenware is very rare and -precious; tough and fine at once. And it wears and wears.” - -“But it never has the beauty,” said Toppie. - -Giles was now within speaking distance, and by the light of their -lantern Alix saw that his eyes were fixed upon Toppie with an -indefinable expression; not alarm; not inquiry; but a steady -watchfulness that, to her perception, controlled these feelings. - -“I was afraid you’d run away with our young guest and came out to look -for you,” he said. “It’s six o’clock.” While Alix, feeling a soft touch -on her glove, looked down to see the earnest, illumined eyes of Jock. - -“I didn’t realize it was so late,” said Toppie, and to Alix’s ear the -tone of her voice was altered. Toppie, for all her familiarity, would -never, she felt, have talked with any of the Bradleys as she had with -her this afternoon. “We’ve talked and talked; haven’t we, Alix. I must -fly!” - -“Come in for a little. Mother’s just back. She’d love to see you,” said -Giles. - -“No, indeed, I can’t. Give her my love. I’ll drop in upon her to-morrow -afternoon, after my class.” - -“Well, we’ll go back with you, then. It’s late for you to be out alone.” - -“For me! On the common! How absurd you are, Giles! Good-night.” - -“Good-night,” said Giles. He showed no grievance; some shade, rather, -seemed lifted from him, and in a moment, as he and she walked on -together, Alix divined that his anxiety had been lest she had said -anything to hurt Toppie or revived memories that cut too deep. It had -not been so much to see Toppie as to watch over her that he had come. - -The lantern made a soft round of light into which they advanced and the -November air was pleasant. “And what have you talked and talked about?” -Giles asked. - -“All sorts of things,” said Alix. She was glad to feel that she could -give him fuller relief. “Her great-grandmother’s embroideries and the -Stoics and _la Sainte Vierge_.” - -“_La Sainte Vierge!_” said Giles, and he laughed. Yes, actually, he was -speaking with her of the enshrined Toppie and she had made him laugh. -“What did you have to say about _la Sainte Vierge_, pray?” - -“Well,” Alix paused. She saw that she had perhaps taken a wrong turn, -but it was best to go on as though she did not think so. “It was of -religion and _le Paradis_, you see; and whether the dead are with us -here. Do you, too, think that they are, Giles?” - -“The dead! With us here!—Oh. Yes, I see.” Giles, after his exclamations -of surprise, lapsed for a moment into silence. “She must like you very -much, Alix, to talk to you about that,” he said presently. - -“I think she does like me. He liked me. It would always be that for -Toppie, wouldn’t it? And then I can give her more about him. We talked -of that, too. Things she didn’t know.” - -She felt Giles’s eyes turn down towards her. He contemplated her as they -walked forward. “What sort of things?” - -“How we met him. How he looked. What we all did together. She loved -hearing; but especially that he was happy. And it is that she feels. -That he is with her now; and happy. Do you believe it, too?” - -Giles walked on beside her in the darkness that was not yet quite dark, -the light melted into it so softly and went so far. Alix could see Bobby -racing on ahead. Jock went just before them, and Amy followed meekly, -her nose at Giles’s heels. It was easy to talk together in the melting -darkness, and she must have given Giles a great deal to think about, for -he said nothing for a long time. Then, as if he brought his thoughts -back to her and her question with an effort, he said: “It doesn’t -follow, because we’re dead, that we’re happy.” - -“No; we are not happy in purgatory; and according to the church we must -all go to purgatory, unless we have been great saints. She asked me -about my religion. And we have purgatory, you see.” - -“I hope you didn’t say anything about it that may have troubled her.” - -“Oh, I said nothing at all that troubled her,” Alix assured him. “She -did not take purgatory at all seriously.” - -“Do you?” Giles was smiling a little. How much relief she had given him! - -“I am afraid not,” Alix owned. “I am afraid I do not take heaven -seriously either. But I did not tell her that. It might have grieved -her. It always seems to me that we must go out like blown candles, when -we are dead. I do not like to think it; but it seems so to me. Does it -not to you?” - -“No; it doesn’t. You are a little pagan, Alix.” - -“A pagan! Not at all! I am a Catholic. I go to confession once a year.” - -Giles now laughed out. So much had she relieved him that her unspiritual -state roused only mirth in him. “Doesn’t your confessor give you any -penances?” - -“Yes. I have penances. I do them as I am told. The _Chemin de la -Croix_—all round the church.—It is very tiring—dragging my _prie -dieu_.” - -Giles went on laughing;—“Is it? By Jove! And your first communion? -Weren’t you prepared for that?” - -“Yes. But that was five years ago. I was only a child then. I have -altered my opinion of many things since then.” - -How much Giles found her still a child she heard in his laughter as he -asked on: “But what right have you to say you aren’t a pagan? What right -have you to call yourself a Catholic?” - -“I have been baptized,” said Alix. “I have been confirmed. I go to -confession, and to Mass, at least at Easter. Most certainly I am a -Catholic. You might as well say I was not French because I did not -believe in the Republic as to say I am not a Catholic because I don’t -believe in heaven. One is, or one is not. It is a question of being born -so.” - -“I see. I see.” Giles was looking down at her, so amused, yet also, she -felt, touched by what she said. They entered the little door in the -garden-wall. “There’s something to be said for that way of looking at -it,” he owned. “It puts it neatly. It explains all sorts of things, in -Catholicism and in France. You are a wonderful people, Alix.” - - - CHAPTER VII - -Of all her new experiences Alix most enjoyed “The Messiah.” - -The village choir was a feeble enough little affair, its energy -concentrated in Giles’s disciplined, sustaining baritone and the robust -sopranos of Ruth, Rosemary, and the postmistress. The tenors were almost -non-existent, and the altos, among whom Alix was placed at once, -terribly weak. But the doctor’s daughter, at the piano, accompanied so -accurately, Mrs. Bradley, gentle and absorbed, with her wand, conducted -so carefully, that it was a pleasure to sing, and the grave exultant -music wove itself deeply into Alix’s impressions of the new life. It -made her think of Giles and of his mother, and of Toppie, too. It seemed -to go with them; just as it seemed to go with the walk home by -lantern-light, and even with the cheerful family supper afterwards where -Giles boiled eggs over the fire, and Mrs. Bradley made cocoa on a -spirit-lamp. - -The High School, to which she and Ruth and Rosemary bicycled every day, -was at once familiar and alien. It was like the _Lycée_, in shape, as it -were; but not in texture. Hockey could not give it the flavour that it -lacked. The girls, all of them, were too much like Ruth and Rosemary. -They lived, she felt, in what they did, not in what they thought. They -had a sense of fun, but no sense of irony, and with their sharp-cut -edges, their hardy colour, they seemed to repel any suggestion of -mystery, in life or in themselves. They accepted her at once. They -seemed to like her, just as Ruth and Rosemary did. But she felt that -anybody else who could hold a hockey stick and tell the truth would have -done just as well. - -With the Christmas holidays Jack and Francis came home from school. -Heathside seethed with noise, pets and handicrafts. Giles, now -demobilized, was preparing for his return to Oxford after Christmas. He -went up and down to London a good deal and she had the sensation of -having lost him; of being relegated by him to the family group. One day, -however, he came into the dining-room while she was trying to write a -letter on a corner of the table. It was only in the dining-room that a -fire was lighted in the mornings, and Jack and Francis were carpentering -at one end, while Ruth cut out blouses in the middle. It was difficult -to try to tell Maman about “The Messiah” in such surroundings, and -though she liked Jack and Francis so much she could not bring herself to -like the white rat that ambled heavily about among the tools and _crêpe -de Chine_. - -“I say, that’s not much of a place for letter-writing,” Giles remarked. -“Come to my study, Alix. I’m a favoured person and have a gas-fire going -all morning.” - -“But she’s going out with us directly, to see our ferrets!” shouted Jack -and Francis. They were dear little boys; Francis brown, like Giles, and -Jack fair like his sisters. Oddly, enough, with all their uproar, Alix -felt them gentler, more respectful of one’s identity, than Ruth and -Rosemary. - -“Do you want to see the ferrets, Alix?” Giles inquired. “Are you fond of -ferrets?” - -“I do not like what I hear of them,” said Alix. “But cats, too, do -dreadful things; and one loves cats.” - -“I’ll defy anyone to love a ferret.” - -“We’re not going to let her see the rabbiting. She says she doesn’t want -to, though she misses a lot. It’s far kinder than traps. Bobby kills -them in a minute.” - -“No; I do not want to see that. But will after lunch do for ferrets? I -would rather finish my letters now,” Alix owned. And though she was -sorry to disappoint Jack and Francis, it was with a sense of escape that -she followed Giles out of the dining-room. - -The study was small, warm, and untidy. Under an ugly mantelpiece of -carved oak was a bright little gas-fire, looking like incandescent dried -apples, and on the mantelpiece were ranged pipes, family photographs, -and quite a menagerie of small animal ornaments which Alix guessed to be -family presents. There was a small metal bear on his hind legs holding -spills in his arms, a horrible china cow, yellow with red spots and a -place in her back for matches, and a foolish puppy in black velvet with -a red flannel tongue and one ear that went up and one that went down. A -very grubby and irrelevant statuette of Venus de Milo stood among them -and Alix felt sorry for her. - -“Behold my jewels!” said Giles with a grin. “Francis gave me that -monster when he was three; that’s from Jack and that from Rosemary. The -Venus is an effort of Ruth’s; brought to me from Paris. Everything you -see there is either Christmas or birthdays.” - -“You are very faithful to your anniversaries,” said Alix, smiling. “What -a nice photograph of your mother.” - -“Isn’t it?” said Giles, pleased. “You like my mother, don’t you?” - -“I like all your family,” said Alix politely. - -“Well, of course, in a way, you’d like them all,” said Giles. “But I am -afraid they rather wear you out. There are so many of them and they are -so young and vigorous. You must take refuge here when they dash over you -too much. I’ll do my reading, and you can read or write or meditate, as -you like. I shan’t speak to you and you mustn’t speak to me. I’ve -noticed you are a kid who can keep still. We shall get on capitally.” - -So it was arranged, and as Alix took her place at the little -writing-table he pulled forward for her, she noticed that there were -many books along two sides of the room and along the other a row of -large framed photographs of Greek and Sicilian temples that more than -atoned for the mantelpiece. When she did not feel like reading or -writing, she would look at those. They made her think, in the sense of -space and tranquillity and splendour they gave her, of Montarel. - -For the first mornings of her withdrawal there mingled with her sense of -security an apprehension of the unsaid things that lay between her and -Giles and that might still have to be said; but this grew less with -every day. It became quite evident that Giles was going to say nothing. -Perhaps, indeed, she had imagined something of the trouble and confusion -she had felt in him at their first meeting. Perhaps in some odd, twisted -way, it had all been because of Toppie; because the sight of her brought -back so vividly the memory of the dead brother and of Toppie’s loss. -Whatever it had been, she did not think he would ever show it to her -again. - -She owed more than the peaceful mornings to him. He seemed to restore -Maman to her. Now, at last, she could really tell Maman, with a mind -composed, how surprised Mrs. Bradley had been at hearing that she wore a -linen chemise next her skin and felt no need of wool; how like a -dignified sheep was Toppie’s father; how strange the sense of growing -strength the choruses of “The Messiah” gave one, like a sort of -calisthenic. And how Mrs. Bradley had taken her up to London to choose a -delightful winter outfit; woollen jumpers, ribbed stockings, and a -winter coat and hat. Alix told Maman all about this and about the fat, -jovial old lady with short grey hair with whom they had had tea in -Kensington, a friend of Mrs. Bradley’s father and a public speaker. Some -things, however, she did not tell her. She gave no account of Toppie’s -beliefs in regard to Captain Owen, and, a lesser matter, yet -significant, she had never yet satisfied Maman as to the social status -of her new friends. - -Perhaps it was because Giles sat there, his pipe between his teeth, his -feet propped up against the mantelpiece, his hand, as he perused the -tome upon his knees, raised now and then to rub his hair on end, that it -seemed so irrelevant to write about such things. After all what business -was it of Maman’s? She had had no further use for them than that they -should warm and feed her child during a hard winter; what difference did -their status make to her? It was true that she and Maman had always -shared impressions to the last crumb of analysis, and it was with a -slight sense of _malice_ that she thus withheld from her the crumb for -which she asked more than once. “Who are they? What are they, _ma -chérie_?” Maman, from Cannes, inquired. “The _train de vie_ you -described seems that of the true _confort anglais_; but, apparently, -there is no elegance. What are their _relations_? Do they go at all -_dans le monde_? Is there a _vie de château_ in the neighbourhood? I am -interested in all you have to tell me of these excellent people.” -Naturally. But though Alix might not have felt it unmeet, a month ago, -to tell Maman all this, she would have felt it unmeet now. How funny -Giles would have thought it if he had known that she sat there informing -Maman that his family did not go _dans le monde_ at all, in the sense -that Maman meant by _le monde_; and that they were decidedly of the -_bourgeoisie_. It was not that Maman was wrong in wanting to know, or -that Giles would have been right in thinking that _le monde_ didn’t -matter. It was simply that she did not care to write in that way to -Maman about him and his family. - -Maman, meanwhile, was evidently enjoying many _relations_; dancing, -dining, playing tennis, entertaining her friends. There were important -names in her letters and Alix sometimes meditated a little over them. -When she did not write or read, she meditated Giles’s Greek temples and -Maman’s _relations_. The important names, in the world of art and -letters—but that was not the world Maman meant in asking about the -Bradleys—were male and female; in the world of fashion, male only. It -was the marquis and the prince; but never the marquise and the -princesse. Why? Alix wondered. Did Maman find the wives of fashion dull? -But if one didn’t know them, too, could one be said to be _dans le vrai -grand monde_? She knew how Maman’s gay, sombre eyes would meet the -question (not that it was one that Alix would ever dream of putting to -her): “_Je suis du monde qui me plaît, ma chérie._” But Alix was not -quite sure that this was true. She was not sure that Maman’s -indifference was as securely grounded as Giles’s. Perhaps real -indifference only came from reading so much Plato and Aristotle. Yet she -herself, who did not read Plato, was indifferent. It was only in regard -to Maman that she was not indifferent, and perhaps it was true that it -was only in regard to herself that Maman was not. Poor, beloved, -beautiful Maman; and wronged; deeply wronged, Alix felt sure. Always, -when she thought of her, her heart expanded in love and then contracted -in anxiety. She saw her as a wild, lovely creature caught in a trap and -only escaping maimed for life. She could not range as far and as freely -as the unmaimed creatures; dimly Alix saw that, as the explanation of -what was ambiguous in her position. She had lost the full liberty hers -by birth and instinct. Yet, despite the limitations of her misfortune, -she had every right to her own standards. - -Judged by Maman’s standards Alix could not conceal from herself that the -Bradleys were very undistinguished. Maman would have hated the -bounteous, graceless meals; Mrs. Bradley sitting at breakfast among the -noise and porridge and kippers, heaped round with letters and circulars, -reading an appeal for crippled babies while she poured out the tea and -coffee and oftener than not slopping it into the saucer. “Oh, I’m _so_ -sorry, dear,” she would exclaim; but Maman would have commented, dryly, -that a woman so much occupied had better breakfast in bed and get -through her correspondence out of sight. Maman could be terribly dry -about disorder and gracelessness. Alix had never forgotten the terse and -accurate reproofs that her own lapses in these respects had called down -upon her in her childhood. As for the uproarious children, “_Ces -marmots-là ne sonts pas appétissants_,” was what Maman would have said -of Ruth and Rosemary, taking their ease during the holidays and padding -from sideboard to table in shabby bedroom slippers, while Jack and -Francis had already got their hands dirty. Alix could not see Maman at -that breakfast-table; but then there was no need to try to. She would -never have come down at all to breakfast, and Alix could not really -think of anything later in the day that she would have thought it worth -while to come down to. A drive with Giles in the car, perhaps. She would -have liked Giles. She would have liked him, perhaps, as much as she had -liked Captain Owen. But as for the rest of the family, she would have -found them only fit for the happy task of warming, feeding, and clothing -her child. “_Trop honorée_,” Maman might even remark, in the mood of -mirthful impertinence she could display. Maman’s impertinencies usually -amused Alix; but she did not want to see them evoked, ever, by the -Bradleys. It hurt her to think of it. Already she was too fond of them. -Maman must never come to Heathside. - -Christmas was now close upon them, and the house, like a mysterious -boiling pot, bubbled with happy secrets. Francis came to lunch unaware -of the strip of gold paper gummed to his nose; Ruth and Rosemary sat -hunched in corners working surreptitiously at belated pieces of -knitting. Giles went up to London with his mother for a day’s shopping -and came back in the evening with parcels hanging from every finger, and -she and Toppie had a wonderful day there, for Mrs. Bradley had given her -pocket-money to spend on presents and some had come from Maman, too, so -that there was a real meaning for her in the long indecisions over -crowded counters. - -Alix usually went over to the Rectory to work at her presents with -Toppie. She was making a tea-cloth for Mrs. Bradley and embroidering -monograms, that elicited Toppie’s admiration, on fine handkerchiefs for -Ruth and Rosemary; and she had found the right books for the boys and a -silver pencil for Giles. Toppie had a beautiful cushion for his chair at -Oxford, and Toppie, too, had thought of Maman. Alix almost felt the -tears rise to her eyes when she showed her the little frame of blue and -silver she had embroidered enclosing a snapshot of Alix herself, -standing at the edge of the wood with the dogs about her. She had not -expected anyone to think of Maman. Maman, she knew, would not think of -them. And then Christmas was different in France. - -But Maman, all the same, remembered that it was specially kept in -England. It was on Christmas Day itself, and not on the _Nouvel An_ as -Alix had expected, that the long parcel, brought over by a friend of -Maman’s, arrived for her from Cannes. Already she had had more presents -than ever before in her life. A toilet-set from Mrs. Bradley; a -writing-case from Giles; a scarf from Ruth, and a pair of stockings from -Rosemary; from Jack a neat penknife, and from Francis a box of small -brightly coloured handkerchiefs that were obviously what a little boy -would admire. All the distributions took place at the breakfast-table, -and Maman’s parcel had not yet arrived when Alix unrolled from its -tissue-paper Toppie’s gift, and saw, in a tiny box of faded leather, the -beautiful little old brooch, an emerald surrounded by pearls. It made -her think at once of the doves and the laurel wreath and of Toppie’s -great-grandmother; of the past, brooded upon; never forgotten. She gazed -at it in astonishment. - -“I _say_!” Ruth exclaimed. They had all crowded round her to look. “She -used to wear that. It belonged to some ancestress. She must be most -awfully fond of you to give it to you, Alix.” - -Alix met Giles’s eyes looking down at the brooch over their heads. She -felt that she had gained in value for him from Toppie’s fondness. - -And it was after all this excitement that the post brought Maman’s box -and that the many wrappings of tissue-paper disclosed the most exquisite -of evening dresses; white taffeta; crisp, supple, silvery; girdled with -small white roses and their green leaves. The little card pinned to the -breast said: “_A ma chérie lointaine_.” - -“I never saw anything so lovely!” said Rosemary, and Alix felt a wave of -warmth for Rosemary go through her. - -“It’s too beautiful,” said Mrs. Bradley. - -“She made it herself, I am sure,” said Alix. “It is wonderful how she -makes these lovely things.” - -Giles was looking at her again. His look was different. It was as if her -pride in Maman touched him as much as Toppie’s brooch had done. - -“It’s so much too pretty for anything you do here, isn’t it, dear,” said -Mrs. Bradley. “I think we must have a little dance when Giles comes home -for the Easter holidays, so that you can wear it.” - -“Oh, Mummy!” cried Ruth and Rosemary. Rosemary had never yet been to a -real dance. - -“We’ll have new dresses then, too,” said Ruth. “Pink’s my colour, and -blue’s Rosemary’s.” - -“But can’t I wear pink, too? Toppie wears blue in the evenings,” -Rosemary objected. - -“Well, why shouldn’t you both wear blue? I don’t like to see sisters -dressed alike. Besides, will Toppie come?” Ruth wondered. - -“I believe she will, for Alix’s sake,” said Mrs. Bradley. “This will be -Alix’s dance.” - -“Blue will be much more becoming to you, really, Rosemary, with your -golden hair,” Alix assured her younger friend, who was looking a little -sulky. - -“And you must go and see if you can persuade Toppie to say she’ll come, -Alix,” said Mrs. Bradley. - -Alix saw how much Mrs. Bradley hoped that Toppie would consent, and -Giles, his hands in his pockets, walked away to the window and looked -out. “And how happy it would make Giles to see her in blue again,” she -thought. - -They were all going for tea to the Rectory next day, but though it was -stormy Alix put on her raincoat and made her way across the common that -very afternoon. So familiar was that path now, so familiar the old -gardener, in holiday attire to-day, touching his hat and wishing her a -happy Christmas, and then Toppie’s face of welcome at the door, for, -seeing her from above, Toppie herself ran down to open to her. - -“How sweet of you to come! There’s just time to see you between -services. Come in. Happy Christmas, dear child!” said Toppie. - -“Oh, Toppie—the emerald! Never have I had so beautiful an ornament!” -Alix exclaimed while Toppie helped her strip off the streaming coat. - -“And never have I seen a little box as beautiful as yours,” said Toppie, -leading her into the drawing-room. Alix had made for Toppie a little -satin box and had carefully copied the doves in the laurel-wreathed -basket upon it. “It’s too beautifully done,” said Toppie. “How did you -manage from memory?” - -“I drew the doves one day, quickly, when you went out, and the colours -are easy to carry in one’s head. I am glad you like it. I am so fond of -little boxes.” - -“So am I. I love them. I never can have too many of them.” - -The fire was lighted in the drawing-room, and in the soft obscurity -Toppie with her high golden head looked like a tall white lighted -_cierge_; a Christmas _cierge_ in a votive chapel of a great cathedral; -for though so sweet, so almost gay, the background to Toppie’s gaiety -was something dedicated and remote. - -“Mine are not very exact. They are too big for the basket,” said Alix, -looking at the doves. - -“I like them the more for that. I love the way they overflow,” said -Toppie. “Alix, can you guess what I have put in your box?” - -They were sitting on the sofa, side by side, and Toppie’s eyes, sweet, -austere, were on her. “His letters from France. All the letters about -you and your mother.” Alix had not needed to be told. She had guessed -from Toppie’s look. “They just fit it,” said Toppie. “As if it had been -made for them.” And, leaning forward, she kissed Alix lightly on the -forehead. It felt a little to Alix as though the Virgin in the votive -chapel had stooped down from her altar to kiss one. It was sweet; and it -was also a little frightening. There was always something about Toppie -that almost frightened her. - -“Now, Toppie,” she said presently. “I have come about something very -important. I had from Maman this morning the very dress to go with your -brooch; green and white; the loveliest dress. And Mrs. Bradley says they -will have a dance at Easter so that I can wear it. And what we all hope -is that you will be there. You will come, will you not, Toppie?” - -Toppie was looking at her with her cold sweet look and it did not alter -as she smiled and said: “Of course I’ll come; and sit with Mrs. Bradley -and look at you all.” - -“But you would dance, Toppie? And wear pale blue? It is your colour they -say, and I have only seen you in grey. You must be very lovely in blue.” - -“Must I?” Toppie still smiled, and Alix had long since divined her to be -invulnerable to praise. She wore her grey to-day; her Sunday grey; and -her white neck and throat, unfreckled, were so fair that, imagining her -in blue, Alix saw her as a birch-tree against the pale spring sky. But -with the cold yet loving look she shook her head and said: “No; I won’t -dance.” - -“Oh, Toppie—No? Do you mean never?” - -“Never,” said Toppie. - -“You can say that? When you are so young?” - -“It doesn’t need a promise, you know,” said Toppie. “I don’t have to -take a pledge. Some things are for one time and some things for another. -That time is past. But I’ll come to the dance, of course, and love -seeing you all; and grey, really, has always been my colour more than -blue. I’ve always worn grey,” said Toppie, smiling; and she went on, -leaving that subject very definitely disposed of: “Tell me what you have -all been doing since I saw you. Tying up parcels? Your box was so -prettily tied.” - -“I like ribbons on _étrennes_. And green ribbon seems to go with -Christmas and snow and fir-trees.” - -“Ruth and Rosemary had old knotted string round their parcels, poor -dears, and brown paper,” Toppie remarked. She always showed a certain -kindly ruthlessness in her allusions to the Bradley sisters and Alix -sometimes wondered what, if she had married their brother, their -relations with their gentle but inflexible sister-in-law would have -been. They admired Toppie; they feared her, a very little, for they were -not of a nature to feel fear easily; but they did not love her. Already, -strange though that was, they were far fonder of herself than of Toppie, -and took her for granted as part of the family pack. - -“It was a desperation at the end—for string! And all the shops shut,” -said Alix. “I bought my ribbon long ago. I had such nice presents from -Ruth and Rosemary. Such patience it must take, to go down two whole -stockings.” - -“Good girls,” said Toppie. “And Giles gave you the writing-case.” Her -voice in speaking of Giles was so much kinder than when he was there—to -be kept away. Alix always felt a little rise of indignation on Giles’s -account when she heard it. It was not as if Giles ever tried to draw -near. - -“Yes; a delightful writing-case. I keep finding new wonderful flaps and -pockets in it. Everything is remembered. And a fountain pen, too. I have -never had one before. It makes one’s thoughts come so much more easily -if one does not have to dip in the middle of them. I wrote to Maman with -it this morning, when they were all at church. It is very happy for me, -being there with Giles in his study.” - -“He told me that you were one of the very few people he could imagine -having who wouldn’t disturb him,” said Toppie. “He said you were the -most peaceful person.” - -“Did he? I am so glad. I like so very much being there— Toppie,” she -found herself saying quite suddenly, “Giles is the kindest person in the -world.” - -Toppie looked at her. “Have you only just found that out?” - -“No, I knew it the first time I saw him, I think. But he is more than -that,” said Alix, feeling the inadequacy of the word. “He is good. -Because he understands. Some people are only good because they do not -understand. You know what I mean?” - -“Perfectly,” Toppie nodded, grave and gentle. “You see things more -clearly than most people, Alix. That is one of the reasons I am so fond -of you.” - -“I don’t see them as clearly as Giles does. Giles would see everything -and never fail. It is his courage. The more there was to see, the more -there was to bear, the more he would be standing there beside you.” It -was strange to her, as she spoke, to feel how deeply she knew all this -about Giles, though she had never before formulated it to herself. And -she added: “And never would he ask for anything for himself, Toppie.” - -Toppie considered her, arrested, it was evident; perhaps a little -surprised. “Have you and Giles talked a great deal? Dear Giles. All that -you say is true.” - -“No; we have talked very little.” - -Toppie continued to observe her. “You can’t talk too much with him,” she -said after a little silence. “You can’t see too much of him. He’s a -rock, Alix, and you can build on him.” - -“You, too, can build on him, Toppie,” said Alix at this. Something -changed in Toppie’s look at that. It was withdrawal rather than reproof -that Alix felt as Toppie said: “I have built on Giles for years. We have -known each other for a very long time, you see, Alix.” - - - CHAPTER VIII - -It was only a few days after Christmas that a dreadful thing happened to -Alix; the most dreadful thing that had ever happened to her. - -They were all in the drawing-room after dinner—all except Francis and -Jack who had gone to bed;—Ruth writing, Rosemary altering a blouse and -Giles reading in his accustomed place. Alix sat beside Mrs. Bradley on -the sofa, turned sideways while she held a skein of wool for her to -wind, and she was never to forget the look of that heather-coloured -wool. - -“Alix,” said Mrs. Bradley suddenly, “how was it that Owen didn’t see you -when he went to Paris on leave?—that one leave he had; in February last -winter. You must have been away, I think, for he said nothing of you.” - -Alix sat there, holding up the wool, and, even as she faced Mrs. Bradley -thus, steadying eyes and lips and hands, she was aware, though she could -only see him as a blurred form, that Giles, suddenly, was watching her. - -Captain Owen’s leave! His one leave! He had come to Paris three times in -that last winter, and the last had been in April only a fortnight before -his death. And he had never told his family! Why had he not told them? -Why! Why! The clamour of her thoughts seemed so to fill her ears that it -was like sinking in the sea. She had the sensation of drowning, yet of -keeping calm while she drowned, resourceful, even as she measured her -calamity, and she heard her own voice speaking from far above her it -seemed—while beneath Mrs. Bradley’s eyes, beneath Giles’s, her thoughts -raced swiftly, swiftly;—“Yes; we should, of course, have seen him, but -we were away; we were away in the country at that time.” - -“At Cannes, I suppose,” said Mrs. Bradley. “What a pity for Owen. How -lonely he must have been. He hadn’t time to come home, you see; only the -two days. And he knew nobody in Paris except the old professor’s family, -where Ruth and Rosemary stayed before the war.” - -“No; we were not at Cannes; we had gone to the sea in Normandy,” said -Alix. It was in her tradition, that an emergency should find one -resourceful, yet, had she had time for the reflection, her own swiftness -in resource might now have surprised herself. “Maman has a little house -on the coast that we sometimes go to, but that she usually lets. We -depend very much on letting it every summer. We went that time in -February to put it in order for the spring. It could not be helped; -tenants were coming early,” said Alix. - -“What a pity,” Mrs. Bradley repeated sadly. “Or if only he could have -managed to go to you there.” - -“You may be sure that we wired at once and suggested it; but the time -was too short,” said Alix. - -Now she was able, since Mrs. Bradley said no more, to come to the -surface, alive and apparently uninjured, but to her own consciousness -floating like a helpless, battered object. Something dreadful had -happened to her; she knew that; and to Maman; and to them all. But she -could not see it clearly. Only by degrees, as Mrs. Bradley wound her -last loops of wool and said, “Thank you, dear,” and her hands could fold -again in her lap, did it come to her that the dreadful thing was -something that Captain Owen had done; and most of all to Maman. - -He had been with them; staying with them; three times; the cherished -friend; and he had never told his family. She sat there, very still, and -tried to think why it could have been, and the picture that came to her -was of Captain Owen sitting on one side of the fire in the little salon -of the rue de Penthièvre; sitting as Giles now sat; looking across at -Maman who, her finger in the pages of a half-closed book, returned his -gaze with a strange sadness. And from this picture, lifting her eyes, -she met Giles’s fixed upon her and saw that Giles knew, too. - -She looked back at him. All she could do was to look. To pretend not to -see that he knew, to look away while she pretended, would only be to -reveal more glaringly to him her sense of their mutual misfortune. -Giles, too, knew that Captain Owen had been with them in Paris; he would -not have looked at her like that if he had not known; with that dark and -heavy look. - -“Oh, I say!” groaned Rosemary, stretching herself out in her chair with -a wide yawn of fatigue, “why was I such a fool as to take out this -sleeve! It was well enough long, and I’ll never get it in properly -again.” - -“I told you to cut it kimono shape; you’d have had no trouble then,” -said Ruth. “Where’s your house in Normandy, Alix? We were in Houlegate, -years ago, when we were kids. I never thought of you in Normandy -somehow. Only in Cannes, among the orange-trees you know, romantic -child.” - -“It is at Vaudettes-sur-Mer,” said Alix. “I like Normandy better than -the Riviera.” - -“I never heard of Vaudettes-sur-Mer,” said Ruth. “Is it pretty? Has it -got a sandy beach?” - -“No; it is _galets_, not sand; not until the tide is low; and Vaudettes -is up on the cliff so that one has a long climb down to get to it. But -the village is very pretty.” - -“Most French seaside villas are such hideous gimcrack things; worse than -ours, I always think. Is your house an old one?” - -“Yes; quite old; quite unspoiled. There are no modern villas yet at -Vaudettes.” - -Giles got up. - -“Are you going to bed, dear?” Mrs. Bradley asked. - -“No; I’m going to read in my room.” - -“Do we make too much noise?” - -“A little too much. Good-night everybody,” said Giles. - -“How tired Giles looks,” said Mrs. Bradley. - -“He’s grinding too hard at his work,” said Ruth. - -Alix felt that it was not his work. Giles, too, had had a blow; and he -was angry with her; darkly, heavily angry; why she could not tell. Only -her heart swelled with a suffocating sense of resentment and of tears. - -She did not go to the study next morning. She had thought and thought in -the night, and she saw now that if Giles knew something that she knew, -he also knew something she did not know. She was afraid of Giles and his -knowledge; afraid of what they might have to say to each other. And she -was angry with him, too, for making her afraid. Pain, dark and -mysterious, pain that seemed to have come to her from his eyes, pressed -upon her. And it made her think of the suffering that Grand-père’s eyes -had conveyed; and of Maman. What she feared was that he would speak to -her of Maman. - -She did not go; but Giles came to her. She was curled up in her scarf on -the sofa in the cold drawing-room, and it made her think of the time -that she had waited at Victoria and Giles had been so late. He was not -late now; he was early; and he said at once, making no pretence about -it: “Come, please, I want to talk to you.” - -She had felt herself angry with Giles, because of the injustice of his -anger towards herself; but as she faced him in the study, the grey -January morning outside the window, the gas-fire creaking in its dismal -mirth in the grate, her anger went down. She felt pity for him. He, too, -had not slept; he, too, had had a horrible night; and if he looked at -her thus sternly it was, she saw, more because he was suffering than -because he was angry. He stood before her, his hands thrust deeply in -his pockets, and what he said was: “Look here, Alix, were you lying last -night?” - -Astonishment almost bereft her of breath. Lying? Could he have thought -it possible that she was not lying? Could he have thought it -possible—turning it over and over in his mind during the night—that -she did not know about Captain Owen’s leaves? It flashed across her -that, if she could find another lie, now, for him, and say that she had -not been lying, he might believe her. He would have no knowledge with -which to contradict that lie. But, while she looked at him, feeling her -face getting whiter and whiter, what strangely came to her was that she -could not lie to Giles. It was better to share whatever pain there was -to be shared with him than to be shut out, with her lie, in loneliness, -if in safety. So, keeping her eyes on him, in a steady voice she said: -“Yes. I was lying.” - -Giles at this contemplated her for a long time and it seemed to be with -deep thoughtfulness rather than with any other feeling. - -“Why?” he said at last. - -“How could I not?” asked Alix. - -“How could you not?—You can invent such a story, in every detail, and -then come and ask me how not? What in Heaven’s name do you mean?” said -Giles. “Have you no sense of truth?” - -“Your mother did not know. Captain Owen never told your mother.” Alix’s -voice was trembling, for she heard the emotion in his. “Would you have -had me say to her, after he had kept silence, that he had been with us -three times in Paris?” - -Giles’s expression altered. “Three times?” - -“Yes. Three. Not the once she thought. That time in February was the -first. He came twice afterwards. You did not know?” - -“No,” said Giles, “I didn’t know that. I thought it was only the once.” - -He stopped. He stopped for a long time after saying this and suddenly -she saw the blood mounting to his face. He became, slowly, crimson. He -did not know what to say. Oh, poor Giles, what was this horrible -perplexity that so darkened his good face when all that he had to tell -her, when it finally came, was so simple? “I wasn’t in the same part of -the front as he was. I didn’t follow what he did. It was by chance that -I saw him in Paris, that time in February. I had a leave, too. And I saw -him there, walking in the Bois with your mother.” - -Giles had seen Maman! Alix felt herself grow dim with perplexity. She -looked about her and sank down on a chair before her little -writing-table. “Did you not speak to them?” - -“No, I didn’t speak to them.” Giles stood there, in his helplessness, -before her. “I thought they wanted to be alone.” - -“But Maman would so have wished to know you. I do not see why you did -not speak. Yes. I remember that they went to the Bois. He was with us -all the time, you see. He stayed with us,” said Alix. - -Poor Giles. How overwhelming was his plight! Could shame for his -brother’s inexplicable duplicity, shame for his own strange silence, -that day in the Bois, account for such confusion? “Yes. I was afraid you -were lying,” was all he found to mutter. - -“But you knew. You knew, and yet you kept it from your mother. It was -for her sake that you kept it from her. It was for her sake I lied. What -else could I do?” said Alix. - -“Do you often lie like that? I mean—the house on the cliff;—the -_galet_ beach; the wire you sent him to come to you in Normandy;—were -they all invented?” Giles ignored the question of his complicity. - -“Some were invented and some not.” Alix tried to steady her thoughts so -that she might satisfy Giles as to this point—so irrelevant a point it -seemed to her. “I do not think I could have invented it all so quickly. -We have the little house at Vaudettes. We often go there. But of course -we were not there then. I do not think I often lie. Only when it is -necessary; like this.” - -Giles’s eyes studied her. “And if you had spoken the truth last -night—the whole truth—as you know it—what would you have said?” - -“But what I have said to you, Giles. That he was with us three times. -That all his leaves were with us;—the last a fortnight before he was -killed. Was it not better that I should lie to her than that she should -know her son had been disloyal to her—as well as to my mother?” - -Giles, while she spoke, had put up his hand to rub in perplexity through -his hair; now it paused. “To your mother?” - -“Was it not a great wrong he did her, too?” - -“How do you mean?” Giles’s voice was short and sharp. - -It came over her with a wave of old bitterness that this was an aspect -of the question he had too much ignored. “Does my mother’s dignity not -count? It was as if he had something to hide in their friendship; as if -he were ashamed. That was to do her a great wrong. He owed Maman so -much. She had been home to him.” - -The memory of all that he owed Maman, the lonely young soldier; fireside -talks; happy walks; plays, pictures, people; the lavishing of all she -had to give;—the best, was it not, that life had to show?—struck too -deeply at her, and suddenly she felt her eyes fill with tears. For -Giles, too, made part of the wrong to Maman. His silence had had its -complicity. It was as if he, too, tacitly, had helped Captain Owen to -hide something of which he, too, was ashamed. - -“I know, I know,” Giles muttered. He saw her tears and he was dreadfully -troubled. “Of course she was most awfully good to him.—I mean—I can’t -imagine why he said nothing—I can’t imagine why.” - -But wasn’t he lying now? He who had not spoken to his brother and to -Maman in the Bois? The sharp tangle of her thoughts hurt her. She leaned -her elbows on the table and her forehead on her hands. “I don’t -understand,” she said, keeping herself from crying. - -“Poor little kid! Poor little kid!” broke as if irresistibly from Giles. -He was almost crying, too. He walked up and down behind her. She felt -that he would have liked to kiss and comfort her as if she had been Ruth -or Rosemary. But, turning away at last, he dropped into his chair before -the fire and for a long time they were both silent. - -“Look here, Alix,” he said suddenly at last. He had, it was evident, -been thinking things out to quite new conclusions. “I wasn’t quite -straight with you just now, and I want to be straight with you. I want -you to be straight with me. Will you promise me to? Will you promise not -to lie to me, ever?” - -“Ever? How can I tell?” said Alix from between her hands. “It is -sometimes necessary; if someone one loves is concerned.” - -“Well,” Giles reflected on her proviso and, apparently, accepted it, “I -can know you’ll _want_ to tell me the truth, can’t I?” - -“Yes. Oh, yes, Giles.” - -“Good. I believe you’ll come to see it’s always better. Even in a -hateful puzzle like this, perhaps. Well, then, I’ll begin. I wasn’t -straight just now. I _can_ imagine why Owen didn’t tell us about those -Paris leaves. And I think it best you should be able to imagine it, too. -It was because of Toppie.” - -“Toppie?” Alix echoed faintly. - -Giles’s back was turned to her as he sat before the fire. She could not -see his face as he went on: “Yes, Toppie. They were engaged. They loved -each other. You’ve seen what Toppie feels about him now. He is her past -and he is her present; and her future, too. There’s nobody in the world -for her but him. Well. That’s it. Can you imagine Toppie, while he was -away in France, seeing as much of another man as Owen saw of your -mother?” - -Alix sat staring at the back of Giles’s head. “She was not alone; in a -strange country. Why should he not find a little peace and happiness -with a friend?” - -“Yes, I know. That seems all right. But why didn’t he come home and see -Toppie? He could have managed to get one leave for England, instead of -three for Paris; almost certainly, if he’d wanted to. And put all that -aside. The worst thing of all, the thing that would shatter Toppie’s -life if she could know it, is that he kept quiet about the last two -leaves, and never wrote to any of us that he’d been with you and your -mother for the first. What would Toppie feel if she could know that? I -ask you.” - -“You mean,” said Alix, pressing her forehead on her hands and staring, -now, down at the table, “that he cared most for Maman?” - -“Doesn’t it look like it?” - -She tried to think. “He would have come back to Toppie after the war. It -was perhaps because of the war. He did not know, those times he came to -us, that it was the end.” The new, strange shapes of things Giles had -set before her were mingling irrefutably with all her memories, and the -memory of last night returned to her. Captain Owen and Maman on either -side of the fire. Captain Owen’s dwelling eyes. How much he had cared -for Maman! Oh, how much! And, trying to answer her own thoughts, she -went on: “Maman did not care most for him. I do not think so. She cared -very much. His death was a great blow. But so many people care for -Maman. He could have come back to Toppie; Maman would not have kept -him.” - -When she had said this, it was as if the silence between her and Giles -was altered in its quality. He said nothing for so long a time that the -echoes of her own words began to sing in her head like brazen bells. -They were true words. Yet they did not ring true. Long before Giles -spoke, she wished she had not said them. - -“And you think,” he said, “that Toppie would have cared to marry a man -who hadn’t been kept from marrying her?” How dreadful was Giles’s voice. -Dark and heavy, as his eyes had been last night. - -“No; no, Giles. I do not mean that. I am sorry. Not that. It was of -Maman I was thinking. You think of Toppie and I think of Maman; the ones -we love most. No; I see that she would not have married him.” - -“You _do_ see, Alix. That’s all I wanted. You see why he didn’t tell us. -And that’s all we need say about it. He was my brother, and I was -awfully fond of him. But he was very wrong. He did a great wrong. And -you have lied for our sakes, and we’ve profited by it; if it is profit. -All I pray is that you’ll never feel you have to lie, for anyone’s sake, -again. There. That’s over. We’ll get to work. Have you everything you -want?” Giles got up and took his pipe from the mantelpiece and his -tobacco-pouch from his pocket. “And don’t let me ever see you afraid to -come in here in the morning. It made me feel quite queer to find you -crouched away in the cold as if I’d been an ogre.” - -“I thought you were angry with me, Giles; and I thought I was angry with -you. It makes me angry, always, at once, if I think people are -displeased with me unfairly. I am like that.” - -“Jolly well it may have made you angry. Of course I was fairly sick -about your lying; and the house on the cliff; and the wire to Owen; on -the top of everything else.” - -“And even the house might have been a lie, you know,” said Alix, looking -up at him. “If it had needed to be invented, and if I could have -invented it in time.” - -“I’m afraid it could. Yes; that’s what I thought. And it made me feel -sick. But you’ve promised me about lies, haven’t you; and you must -promise me, besides, that if you’re ever angry you’ll come and tell me -so. To work, then,” said Giles, and he dropped into his chair and took -up Bergson. - -Alix did not take up her pen. She sat above her paper, but she knew that -the last thing she could think of doing that morning was to write to -Maman. She might be able to read the book about birds, by Hudson, that -Giles had given her, and she drew it towards her and opened it; but soon -found she could not read. Her heart seemed to be trembling and her blood -trembling. All her mind was shaken; and the picture that flashed, -disappeared, and flashed again, was always that memory of Captain Owen’s -eyes as he gazed across at Maman from his place before the fire. It was -not Maman’s fault. How could she have averted, how could she have -avoided such a devotion? A sense of intolerable grief broke down her -silence. - -“Giles,” she said suddenly. - -“What?” He put down his book at once. He, too, was not really reading. -Perhaps his heart was trembling, too. - -“May I say one thing more?” - -“All right.” - -“It is Maman, Giles. It is what you think of her. Perhaps I am always -angry with you, because of what you think of her. Let me say it now, -then. He cared for her most. But if you knew her you would understand; -you would not blame her; perhaps you would not blame him so much.” - -Giles had turned in his chair and was looking at her over his shoulder, -in deep astonishment. “I’ve never said a word against your mother, -Alix,” he said in a low voice. - -“It is worse than words, Giles. I am not so stupid. You put her out. You -will not look at her. But if you could see her you would understand. -Maman never asks for anything. Why should she? She only gives.” - -“I have seen her, you know,” said Giles. In sudden, intense uneasiness, -distress, even, he got up and walked away to the window and stood there, -his back to her, looking out. - -“Did that explain nothing?” said Alix. - -“She is very beautiful,” said Giles. “I never saw anyone so beautiful.” - -“Oh, more, much more than that. How could he help caring for her? How -can one govern one’s love for people? I do not mean that he was right. -But he had always known Toppie, had he not? While Maman was something -quite strange to him. And one thinks most, perhaps, of what is strange. -Oh, I do not forget Toppie. But it would not have been to keep him true -to Toppie, if she had sent him away.” - -“She is very beautiful,” Giles repeated, almost dully; as if that were -all he could find to say. - -“Oh, Giles, if you could only know her!” said Alix. It was possible to -speak like this to him now. And his back was turned to her and that made -it easier. She leaned her forehead on her hands and looked down at the -table while she went on: “Let me tell you what Maman makes me think of -always. A mountain torrent. We have them in the mountains near Montarel. -So swift, and dark, and clear, with such deep pools among the rocks; and -such great leaps. Oh, more than beautiful! I saw an eagle once when I -was kneeling by a pool. As I looked down into the water, it was as if I -looked down into the sky and there was an eagle, wheeling in the -blue—far, far below me. It gave me the strangest feeling; like Maman -sometimes. And her lovely, small things; like the little pinks and -campanulas that grow along the banks; so sweet and tiny; and little -_mésanges_ with bright blue heads, hanging upside down in the birches. -There is no one like her. Everyone else is still and dull beside her. -Who could help loving her? Toppie would love her, I am sure. You would -love her, too, Giles, if you knew her.” - -He had turned, while she spoke, and was looking at her and, lifting her -head, she met his eyes and saw how deeply she had touched him. Deeply -touched, deeply troubled, Giles looked across at her; but she saw that -he was thinking of her and not of Maman. It was as if he were so sorry -for her, and so fond of her, that he hardly knew what to say. And what -he did say at last was: “You are rather like a mountain torrent -yourself; eagles and campanulas and all!” - -“I? Oh, no.” She was glad that Giles should think that of her, but it -was of Maman she wanted him to think. “I am one of the still ones; one -of the dull ones, beside Maman. And I never have great shattering -leaps.” She looked away from Giles as she saw further into her simile, -saw things she wanted him—oh! so wanted him—to see and understand. -“Let me tell you, Giles. When one loves her, that is what one fears for -her—those great leaps down from the rocks. So splendid; so bright and -splendid; but so dangerous. There is danger for her always. When one -loves her, that is what one fears.” - -He said nothing. He stood there, leaning back against the window. Never -in her life had she so spoken to anybody. For no one but this young -Englishman, so lately a stranger, could she have found such words. They -rose up from her heart unbidden, and the impulse beneath them was the -deepest impulse of her life. More than the child’s love for its mother. -There was in it a maternal love, watchful and succouring, for a creature -cherished and in peril. - -She had not looked back at Giles, and he came presently to her table and -stood above her, moving the objects upon it here and there, as if he -could not find the words to use. And at last he said: “You are right to -love your mother. Never think I don’t understand that.” - -“Perhaps we both love in the same way, Giles,” said Alix, still not -looking at him. “You think of Toppie—and I think of Maman—perhaps in -the same way.” - -Giles stood very still. Then he said gently: “Perhaps we do. I feel -Toppie in danger; in dreadful danger of being hurt; if that’s what you -mean.” - -“Yes, that is what I mean. And I can help you with Toppie. I can help -you to keep the things that would hurt her from her. And perhaps, some -day, if the time came, you would help me with Maman.” - -Giles had ceased to move the inkstand and candle-sticks. He put his -hands in his pockets. “What do you think of as her danger, Alix?” he -brought out. - -Alix had to think; it was not a new wonder; but she seemed to feel it -newly, now that Giles was there to help her with it. “Perhaps you see -it, Giles,” she suggested. “Is it something in her nature? Is it because -she left my father? Perhaps you see the danger I can only fear. You give -me that feeling sometimes. I am so much younger than you. There are -things I do not understand.” - -“Yes. I see. Yes.” Giles stood there. “You trust me with it all, then.” - -“I trust you with everything, Giles.” - -“You help me, and I’ll help you if ever I get the chance. I’ll not -forget, Alix.” He put out his hand as he said these words and Alix felt -that their clasp was on a pact. Yet, as he turned from her and went back -to his chair, she had still the feeling that it was of her, not of -Maman, that he was thinking. It was as if he saw _her_ in danger. - - - CHAPTER IX - -It was evident to Alix, thinking and thinking of it in the day and night -that followed her talk with Giles, that the best way of helping him was -not to be there at all. The greater the distance between her and Maman’s -life and Toppie’s life, the safer would Toppie be. She should never, oh, -never, have come at all, and Maman would never have let her could she -have known that Captain Owen had kept that inculpating silence. But she -could not tell Maman of that now. If Toppie must not be hurt, neither -must Maman. It would hurt her, terribly, even if she, like Giles, saw at -once the reason for it. But she wrote to Maman the next morning, sitting -there behind Giles, and begged that she might come home. - -She had been long enough in England, she said. It was not that she was -unhappy; they were all too kind for that. But it was not her life. She -was a sea-fish—Alix found the simile, feeling that it would be helpful -with Maman—and they were river-fishes, and she was not comfortable in -their water. _Je vous supplie, Maman chérie, laissez-moi revenir._ - -Eight days passed before Maman’s answer arrived. It was decisive. She -could not think of having Alix back till Spring. It was everything to -her to know that her darling was benefiting by all the advantages of -Heathside. Even had there not been the wretched question of money, she -would have chosen to have her there and Alix must not fret; how far less -trying it was for her to be at Heathside with such good friends than if, -like so many _jeunes filles de son âge_, she had been in a convent. As -for herself, she was starting in a few days with friends for a little -trip to Italy and would not be back in Paris till April or May. Maman -was evidently preoccupied, yet determined. There was nothing for it but -to submit. - -A few days after this, Alix and Giles and Mrs. Bradley motored to -Oxford. She did not enjoy the drive. It was sad to be losing Giles. She -did not know how she would find Heathside without him. The cold, grey -day matched her mood, and as they entered the mean, modern streets of -Oxford, at dusk, she thought that she had never seen so _triste_ a town -and wondered that it could harbour beauty and antiquity. - -Giles’s rooms, however, were amusing. They belonged to another world. -One went through old courtyards where the stone was peeling in great -flakes from the walls, up narrow stone staircases, winding and winding, -with names on the doors one passed, and found oneself at last, high up, -overlooking a quadrangle of green, in a solid, pleasant room which might -have been waiting for Giles during the years of his absence, so -expressive of his personality were the blazing fire, the deep chairs, -even the blue-and-white tea-cups that waited on the central table. - -The books and pictures were to go up next day; but even so the room was -cheerful, and a wise, middle-aged man, whom Alix at first, in some -bewilderment, took to be a professor lending himself to friendly -offices, perhaps in some English ritual of self-effacement, brought in -an excellent tea. - -“He’s what we call a scout,” Giles, smiling, explained to her. - -“Not a Boy Scout!” Alix exclaimed. It was very confusing, and Giles had -to explain it further. - -She and Mrs. Bradley slept that night at lodgings in the town and Alix -made her first acquaintance with the English lodging-house bed. There -was no _sommier_ and the mattress seemed to be filled with potatoes. One -wound oneself among the lumps and contrived at last to sleep. - -They helped Giles with his books and pictures next morning, and in the -afternoon he said he must show her Oxford while his mother shopped. It -was raining. Giles had on a raincoat turned up about his ears, and so -had she. She had never seen so many bicycles, and from under a dripping -umbrella, after one had dodged them, she found the Gothic quadrangles -and deep emerald gardens, the meditative swans gliding, at Worcester, on -the water, and the mist-washed vistas of the High, all _triste_. She was -depressed at the thought of leaving Giles behind in such a damp, -crumbling place where it was, indeed, natural to think of philosophers -drinking hemlock, and where only in the refuge of one’s own room with -the wise scout to take care of one, might one find a sense of warmth and -cheerfulness. - -“You can’t very well imagine how jolly all this is on a fine day,” said -Giles: “when the sun comes out, you know, and the distances are blue, -and the stone golden, and the gardens full of flowers.” - -He was sad, too, Alix felt, though he tried to speak cheerfully and the -day was unbecoming to him as to everything else. He looked a gaunt, -uncouth student, his nose projecting under his cap and his eyes making -Alix think, in their meditative melancholy, of the swans. He would, of -course, be missing Toppie. - -“All the women wear velour hats of the same shape,” she observed as they -made their way along the High. “All turn up behind and down in front. -Now I would turn mine down behind and up in front—with a very slight -curve to the side; the line is better. And for _costumes tailleurs_ it -is so needful that the skirt should hang evenly.” - -“Is it?” said Giles with a gloomy grin. “I’m showing you the -architecture, not the clothes of Oxford.” - -“Are they all the wives of philosophers?” Alix inquired, and the -question indubitably interested her more than the architecture. - -“A good many of them are, no doubt,” laughed Giles. “Do you wonder if my -wife will look like that?” - -Alix had a sudden vision of Toppie in the rainy High Street. Yes, even -dear Toppie would sink, she felt, into the fatal sameness, embody the -type. She could see her, slender, in her wet grey tweed, speeding on a -bicycle in just such a velour hat. They, too, were perhaps Toppies if -one could have a careful look at them. - -“Do you intend to live in Oxford, Giles?” she inquired. - -“I’d like to.—Here is Magdalen and the tower. Let’s cross the bridge so -that you can see the tower.—It’s where I want to live.” - -They crossed the bridge and he told her about the tower and the May -morning ceremony. - -“It must be very charming, very gay,” said Alix. “And would you care to -marry soon?” The question, she knew, was academic, merely. There could -be no hope of marriage for Giles as long as Toppie thought only of -Captain Owen. But they could both pretend. - -“I couldn’t marry soon.” Giles was still laughing, though evidently a -little disconcerted by her lack of appreciation. “I’ve no money.” He led -her off to Christ Church meadows. - -“None at all, Giles?” - -“Well, only enough to have a very dowdy wife. To buy her a better hat -and a smarter _costume tailleur_ I’d need a great deal more.” - -“But Captain Owen was to marry.” Alix ventured it. It was all so remote. - -Giles felt it so. He elucidated the financial differences of the family. -“We’ve all got a little. He went into the city, into stock-broking, and -was making a very good thing of it. He could very well afford to marry.” - -“And do you not care for stock-broking?” - -“No; I care for philosophy. Unlucky for my wife, isn’t it, Alix?” - -“I do not know. Perhaps not if she had taste. One can do so much with -very little money if one has taste. But would they know—the others—if -she had to live in Oxford, that her hats and dresses were different?” - -“Oh—I expect women always know that—even the wives of philosophers!” -laughed Giles. - -In spite of her æsthetic deficiencies, she felt that she kept up his -spirits. - -For tea they went to a professor friend—a real professor this time—who -had known Mrs. Bradley’s father. Everybody seemed to have known Mrs. -Bradley’s father. He lived in the Banbury Road with two unmarried -daughters, and was old but robust and bearded and jovial, and he kept a -hand on Giles’s shoulder for a long time and promised Mrs. Bradley good -things of him. - -Giles stood and smiled and promised nothing. She had an impression of -his strength and self-knowledge. - -Monsieur le professeur’s daughters were middle-aged ladies with lean red -faces and grey hair strained tightly back above their ears and clothes -of which all that could be said was that they were warm and clean. So -tall, so spare they were, the pair of them, so rigid and with such -ingenuous eyes, that they made Alix think of the elongated figures on -the western portals of Chartres; only the Misses Cockburn were not -beautiful in their strangeness and had none of the exquisite -_chinoiserie_ of aspect upon which Maman and monsieur Villanelle had -discoursed on that summer afternoon when they had visited the great -cathedral. How it all rushed over her as she sat at the little table -Miss Jennifer had placed for her near the window! She saw them all -three, Maman in white under her white sunshade, in the hot French -sunlight before the sublime object. Up into the blue it went, august, -almost terrifying, so beautiful that it made one want to cry. And as -they had wandered in and out, into the vast, illuminated darkness where -the rose windows hung like apparitions, out into the fretted portals -with the sunlight washing up their steps, Maman had told her of a Queen -Alix who had borne a part in its history. Her heart contracted as she -remembered it all. Maman might have been one of those queens. She so -belonged to Chartres. When Chartres was in one’s blood, what could one -feel for Oxford? - -She had time for these comparisons. The Misses Cockburn were kind, but -they paid no attention to her beyond carefully feeding her; as if, she -reflected, she had been a pet dog led in by Mrs. Bradley. People in -England, she had already surmised, did not feel an obligation to -entertain, further than by feeding, other people’s friends. - -She sat and ate her scone and drank her tea and looked out at a -laburnum-tree and a hawthorn-tree, all leafless and dripping on the -background of ornamental red brick opposite. All the houses were of red -brick and all so singularly alike in spite of their adventurous -excrescences. “_Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose_,” thought -Alix, as she watched the tea-time lights come out in the bow-windows -with Gothic points over them, and felt that they held learned, innocent -people who would not be disconcerted by anything that happened in the -universe. She had never seen a place that seemed to her quite so safe as -the Banbury Road. And yet such safety made part of the _tristesse_. -Dieu! how _triste_ it was! How dreadful it would be to be caught and -imprisoned there. - -Miss Grace came to draw the curtain and asked Alix if she were warm and -Alix said she was. Giles seemed quite at home, seemed, indeed, part of -it, lifting the scones from the little brass stand before the fire, -talking about municipal elections to Miss Jennifer and about the Bach -Choir to Miss Grace. With Giles as the link of identity between them, -she saw that Heathside was part of the Banbury Road, too. Even Giles -seemed far away as the sense of alienation grew within her. - -Then as she sat there, alone, apart, the throb of a big motor came up to -the gate, and a moment afterwards a lady was among them who, by her -presence, dispelled the sense of loneliness. It might have been into -Maman’s salon that she came, so vivid was Alix’s sense of knowing what -she would do and say and of liking both beforehand. All furs and pearls -and softness, and such sweet smiles, she was one of the people who could -see and blow and catch the soap-bubbles, the beautiful, impalpable -things of human intercourse, and while she talked to monsieur le -professeur, she cast mild, bright glances at Giles, at Mrs. Bradley, at -herself. Alix saw that it was at herself that she looked most, and -presently, when the lady and Mrs. Bradley talked, Mrs. Bradley called -her to them, and holding her hand, scanning her face, the lady said she -knew her name. “It’s there behind me; where I don’t quite know;—in an -old letter; a volume of _mémoires_; an ancestor of mine, I feel it must -have been, who knew a Mouveray in Paris before the Revolution. Yes, that -was it. It comes back to me. A comte Henri de Mouveray.” - -Alix remembered, too. “He was guillotined at Lyon. He was a great-uncle -of Grand-père’s.” - -“And where is Grand-père?” asked Lady Mary Hamble, for such was her -name. “Do you live with him?” - -Alix told her that she had lived with him; but that he was dead. “I live -with my mother in Paris,” she said. - -When Lady Mary was gone, Alix felt herself scanned by Miss Grace and -Miss Jennifer as if from a spaniel she had altered to a monkey; not more -interesting, but more curious. Monsieur le professeur still didn’t see -her at all. He brushed aside Lady Mary and went on talking about -Relativity to Giles. - -“Yes; was it not strange?” said Alix, as, in Giles’s rooms again, Mrs. -Bradley commented on the romantic encounter. “There was his portrait at -Montarel, that Henri de Mouveray. So grave yet so gay a face, blue-eyed, -and with dark hair.” - -“Like you, Alix,” said Mrs. Bradley, and Alix remembered that he was -like her; very. - -“And to think that someone so near you was guillotined at Lyon,” Mrs. -Bradley mused. “He could have known your grandfather.” - -“Yes. If he had not been guillotined, if he had lived long enough, he -could have.” - -“Don’t you think Lady Mary very lovely, Giles?” said Mrs. Bradley. “She -must be as old as I am, I suppose; yet how lovely.” - -“She’s not nearly as lovely as you are,” said Giles, poking the fire. - -Mrs. Bradley laughed at the absurdity. “That’s loyal—but not accurate, -my dear.” - -“She’s very pretty, and she’s never had a doubt. She’s always felt that -she was lovely and that everyone thought her lovely, and I suppose that -preserves the complexion,” said Giles. - -“But if everyone thinks one so, is it not likely that one is lovely?” -Alix inquired. “And if one is so, why should one not think so oneself?” -She considered that Giles was captious. - -“No one is as right in every way as she thinks herself,” said Giles. “No -one can be so smooth without being artificial. She’s awfully nice, I’m -sure; but for beauty, give me Mummy.” - -It would not be polite to contradict him, but Alix, too, thought Giles -absurd. - - - CHAPTER X - -She and Mrs. Bradley motored home together next day. It had stopped -raining and the air had the unexpected softness that mid-winter in -England can mitigatingly display. Alix had never yet seen so much of -Mrs. Bradley as on this drive. She was the most occupied person; she was -always immersed in occupations; and to have her beside one, with nothing -to occupy her except driving the car, was to see her with a new -completeness. Mrs. Bradley was only not intimate because absorbed in -affairs remote from her own interests. She was not even intimate with -her own children, for Alix could not remember ever having heard her talk -with them about herself. She tenderly took them for granted and took for -granted—too much, Alix considered—their capacity for directing their -own lives once the main lines were laid out for them. But to-day, with -its sense of interlude, no papers to read, no committees to attend, it -was as if without becoming intimate she became confiding. It touched -Alix to hear her. It touched her because she felt that Mrs. Bradley must -so often need to confide and would not know it. She talked to her about -Giles. “I know he’ll do well. I know he will be useful. Giles will -always pull his weight wherever he is,” she said, and the conception of -life as a boat where one’s meaning consisted in pulling one’s weight was -a very new one to Alix. When his mother so spoke, she saw Giles sitting, -half stripped, in the chilly English air, grey water beneath, grey sky -above, bent to the oars among comrades and ready for the word of -command. That was what his mother desired for him; that strenuous, -rigorous life. Maman did not think of life like that. She wanted no -rigours for her child. She didn’t care a bit about her being useful. -Other people were to be of use to her and she was to enjoy herself. That -was Maman’s idea. - -“You’ve seen, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Bradley, her gentle eyes fixed before -her as she drove, “how fond he is of Toppie. It’s always been so. He’s -never thought of anybody else. Even before she and Owen fell in love -with each other. I’ve sometimes wondered—I’ve sometimes wished—” Mrs. -Bradley’s voice dropped to a musing uncertainty. - -“Giles was much younger than Captain Owen, was he not?” said Alix. - -“Not so much younger. He is a year older than Toppie. Twenty-five. But -it wasn’t that. She would, I’m afraid, never have thought of him, with -Owen there. Perhaps she had always been too sure of him and taken him -too much for granted, while with Owen, until he did, at last, fall in -love with her, she was never sure. He was fond of several people, you -see, before he was fond of Toppie. I’m afraid she suffered, poor -darling. And that’s what one feels,” Mrs. Bradley mused on, while Alix -knew a growing discomfort in hearing her. “Owen could have been happy -with so many girls; it wasn’t, with him, the one great thing only; -whereas with Giles it was.” - -“And perhaps if she had married him,” said Alix, her thoughts held by -that sense of something painful, twisted, difficult to see plainly, “she -would have suffered even more. If he continued to be fond of other -people.” - -“Oh, but that couldn’t have been after they were married!” Mrs. Bradley -exclaimed, and with a shock of surprise in her voice, while her eyes, -almost scared by the suggestion, turned to scan the meditative face of -the little French girl beside her. “That couldn’t have been after he -loved her at last; after they were engaged. Oh, no; Owen would have been -faithful, always.” - -“But all men are not faithful, are they?” Alix commented, keeping her -eyes before her and her voice quiet and impersonal. She felt that she -would like to know what Mrs. Bradley thought on this subject. Had not -Giles’s horror been somewhat misplaced? “So many wives, I mean, from -what one hears, have unfaithful husbands.” - -Mrs. Bradley continued to scan her and with even more alarm. - -“But I hope you don’t hear of such dreadful things, dear child. No good -husband is unfaithful.” - -“Is it so very dreadful? Can one govern one’s heart? I see that it is -different for a wife,” said Alix. “She is at home and has the children. -But a man—out in the world—May he not form many attachments without so -much blame?—I do not understand these things, but I cannot see why it -is so dreadful.” - -“You are too young, dear, to understand them. Yet even you, I am sure, -can imagine how terrible it would be to know that your husband, whom you -loved and trusted, loved other people.” - -“It might be very sad.” Alix considered the remote contingency. “I see -that it might make me sad—if I loved him very much. But I should have -the children, the _foyer_. And then he might still love me most, while -loving others, too. Do you not find that possible, here in England? In -France, I am sure, we do not feel it so strange a thought.” - -“We feel it strange; very strange and dreadful,” said Mrs. Bradley with -as much vehemence as she ever displayed on any subject. “And you will, -too, I am sure, darling, when you are older and understand what it means -to trust someone with your life.—No, no; such a thing would have been -impossible with Owen and Toppie. All that I meant was that his love was -different in quality from Giles’s. Giles’s nature, in some ways, is -deeper than dear Owen’s was.” - -“Oh, yes. Deeper. One feels that at once,” Alix murmured, while the -thought, seen at last clearly, pierced her through that Giles was held -from his happiness by an illusion since Toppie might not have cared for -Captain Owen had she known how much he cared for Maman. “Perhaps in time -she will come to see what Giles is and love him. Do you not think so?” - -“It’s what I hope for more than anything, Alix,” said Mrs. Bradley. -“Giles has had such a sad life. You wouldn’t think it, perhaps. He -doesn’t show it, unless one knows him very well. Even as a little boy I -always felt him rather frustrated and sad. He adored Owen, who didn’t -pay much attention to him; and he adored Toppie who never gave him a -hope. And then the war came and ended his youth and he saw worse things -than Owen saw. He saw the worst things. His best friends were killed -beside him. He went through everything. They all had to face the problem -of it, the boys like Giles. It was never such a problem to men like -Owen. They accepted it and didn’t try to understand. Giles hasn’t been -embittered, as some of our young men have; but there is such a weight of -grief on his heart. I feel it always. I so long for some happiness to -come to him.” - -It was all true. Alix had seen it in Giles’s face. Under his vehemence, -his gaiety, he carried dark memories in his heart; and there were -darknesses his mother did not know of. Perhaps it helped him to be less -lonely that she should know of them and that they should be her -darknesses, too. It gave Alix courage to bear the weight of perplexity -and fear, during the winter, to feel that she shared the weight with -Giles. She missed him so much at Heathside; yet he was there, too, in -her sense that she was helping him with Toppie, that she, too, was -shielding Toppie from hurt. - -He wrote to her, and though he did not ask her for news of Toppie, she -knew that was what he wanted and gave him every detail when she -answered. Toppie went away to Bath at the end of February, but until -then Alix sent Giles her bulletins. She and Toppie often walked -together; they read together, too; and she often made Toppie laugh with -her stories about the people at Montarel, the funny things they did and -said. Giles was told of all this, and about the Greater Spotted -Woodpecker that she and Toppie saw in the birch-woods, tapping with -stealthy fierceness at a tree-trunk, beautiful in his Chinese white and -black and vermilion; and about Jock who always came with them on their -walks and had really adopted her as his most authentic mistress. She had -not much to say about the High School and Ruth and Rosemary. But then it -was Toppie Giles wanted to hear of. - -Spring came at last, the early flowers, the returning birds, Toppie back -from Bath and the Easter holidays hovering on a near horizon. And one -day at tea-time Mrs. Bradley handed her a letter she had just received -from Lady Mary Hamble, a letter in its unexpectedness and sweetness that -was like the Spring. Could Mrs. Bradley lend Alix to them for a -week-end, Lady Mary asked. There were to be young people in the house -and a little dance and they would all enjoy having her. - -At first, in her pleasure, strangely compounded of a sense of relief, -escape, and the soft breath of a familiar balm wafted towards her, Alix -did not notice the dates. Then, after Mrs. Bradley had said, “How -delightful; of course you must go, dear,” she saw that the Monday of -Lady Mary’s dance was the Monday of Mrs. Bradley’s; the dance to which -Toppie had promised to come; the dance for which Giles would be back; -the dance to show her white taffeta dress; _her_ dance; the invitations -all out and all accepted. “But our dance is on that Monday,” she said. - -“It can’t be helped,” said Mrs. Bradley. “We’ll have to give another -smaller one some day later on. I don’t think you ought to miss the much -prettier dance at Lady Mary’s. You have us always, you see, dear.” - -“But Giles.” - -“Giles doesn’t really count at a dance,” smiled Mrs. Bradley. “And he -will be at home all the holidays. You won’t be missing Giles.” - -Toppie was with them, and she smiled, too, looking at Alix and said: -“You’re right not to go. Giles will be coming home that very Saturday. -You couldn’t miss his coming home even if you did miss the dance.” - -“But she really mustn’t miss the week-end at Cresswell Abbey,” said Mrs. -Bradley. “It’s such a lovely place, I’ve always heard. And she’ll be -back on Tuesday.” - -“They’ll ask her another time,” said Toppie. “People would ask Alix -another time,” and she smiled on at her young friend, well pleased with -her, Alix saw. - -“Of course they’ll ask her, Mummy!” cried Ruth who, with Rosemary, had -sat transfixed with indignation while the invitation was thus discussed. -“And it makes no difference if they don’t. Who are the Hambles, anyway! -What does Alix care about them? She doesn’t know them and doesn’t want -to. I’ve seen your Lady Mary’s picture in the ‘Daily Mirror’—drooping -around with bare shoulders and a plume and pretending not to know she’s -being snapped. I hate such empty-headed creatures, and Alix would be -bored stiff by them. Of course she can’t go! Of course she must be here -for our dance!” - -Alix was quite sure that she would not be bored by Lady Mary; but she -was also sure that she could not go. No one at Heathside would -appreciate the white taffeta as Lady Mary would. There would be no one -at the Heathside dance she would like as much, she felt sure of it, as -those young people at Cresswell Abbey—no one, that is, except Giles; -and he, as his mother had said, truly she felt sure, did not count at -dances; but all the same she could not go, and Ruth and Rosemary might -think, if they pleased, that it was for their reasons. - -She did not tell Giles in her next letter about the visit to Cresswell -Abbey; but when he came home, Ruth told him, the first thing, at -tea-time, all assembled as they were in the drawing-room, Toppie and -herself in their accustomed places on the sofa beside Mrs. Bradley, and -Ruth sitting on the arm of her brother’s chair. - -“Only think of it, Giles! Mummy actually thought she ought to go, -because Cresswell Abbey is such a lovely place! The day of our dance, -mind you! Toppie’s cousins here and all!” - -Giles seemed taken aback. “The week-end? She’d have been going to-day,” -he said. - -“And missed your coming home, Giles! As if she _could_!” cried Rosemary. - -“And Amy expecting her puppies any day now,” said Jack. “I thought -they’d have come this morning. She’d want to see them as soon as they -were born, wouldn’t you, Alix?—only we must be very careful not to look -at them too often. Amy’s awfully nervous when she has her pups.” - -“Mummy,” said Giles, eyeing his contented sisters, “you ought to have -made her go. Alix is over here to see England, all she can of it. And -she really doesn’t see so very much of it with us, you know.” - -“I did my best, dear,” said Mrs. Bradley, pouring out her tea. “She -quite refused. And Toppie aided and abetted her.” - -“Yes. I aided and abetted her, Giles,” said Toppie, and she smiled now -at him with more sweetness than Alix had ever yet seen on her face for -Giles. “She can go another time to Lady Mary’s.” - -“Oh, one never knows about that,” Giles murmured. But now he was -thinking more about Toppie’s smile than about Alix’s frustrated visit. - -“Didn’t you want to go to Cresswell Abbey?” he asked Alix next morning -in the study, and with the question the time of their separation -collapsed and, his eyes on hers, she felt him near and familiar once -more, concerned, as always, for her welfare. - -That was it. He understood that it might have given her so much pleasure -and Ruth and Rosemary didn’t understand that at all. And he wanted her -to have gone because he wanted her to have pleasure. He was like Maman -in that. - -She confessed. “Yes, I did. But not so much that I could miss you and -our dance. The dance was planned for me, Giles.” - -Giles rubbed his hand through his hair.—His mother should have -corrected him of that trick, though Alix rather liked to see him do it; -it left his hair very much on end. - -“It’s decent of you; awfully decent of you. But you wanted to go, of -course, you dear little kid. And I’d like to think you were to get a -wider look at England than you get with us.” - -“I think she will ask me again, Giles. Your mother wrote and explained -it to her and she wrote back and said it must be for another time. I -think she likes me,” said Alix. “And I like her, too. Though Ruth and -Rosemary find her empty-headed. Perhaps it is empty-headed people that I -do like,” Alix smiled. “Perhaps I am empty-headed myself.” - -“I saw you took to each other. I saw you belonged with each other,” -Giles mused. “I’m awfully sorry you didn’t go.” - -“Would you rather I were staying with her than here with you, Giles?” - -“No; I’d rather you were staying here. But I’d like you to have a slice -of cake now and then after all the thick bread-and-butter. Now you, of -course, would like to have the cake all the time,” and Giles smiled at -her, summoning her to confess to her frivolity. But when he asked her -like that, there in the study, with the gas-fire and the untidy heaped -books and the Greek temples and the foolish animals on the mantelpiece, -Alix did not feel so sure. She liked Lady Mary. She loved the balm she -wafted. She felt sure that no one here would appreciate her white -taffeta; they would think Ruth’s pink silk ninon with the embroidered -edges just as pretty. But there would not, she felt even surer, be any -one at Cresswell Abbey who would understand as Giles did. - - - - - PART II - - - CHAPTER I - -“_C’est la France_,” said Alix. She leaned beside him on the railing of -the Channel steamer and looked through the blue of the July day to where -the town thinly shaped itself, like a line of grey-white shells floating -between sea and sky. Her phrase was spoken in a tone of quiet statement, -unstressed by any emotion, yet Giles, while they watched the shore -together, felt its echoes stretching back revealingly into the past and -out towards the future. - -That was really what had been at the bottom of her heart during all her -time with them; France. And if she had talked about it so little that -must merely have been, he reflected, because she cared about it so much. -Of course she loved her own country; he could not expect or wish -anything else; but had she, he wondered, any more love for England now -than when she had first come among them? And he felt, when he asked -himself the question, a little rueful and a little vexed. She was not a -shallow child; that he knew; it was because she was not shallow that he -minded her imperviousness to all that meant so much to them. With the -imperviousness went an oddly mature security, as of a creature formed -and fixed and not to be altered by circumstance; and it was when he -thought of this security that Giles felt a little angry; for, after all, -what had France given her, poor kid? - -Giles did not think of his family, in particular, as benefactors to the -little French girl. That side of her indebtedness was not one to engage -his attention. It was England as a whole that he had hoped would by this -time have crept about her heart; England with its gentle days of Spring, -its balmy days of Summer; all the happy family life they had just come -from; tennis, dogs, strawberries on the lawn, and long bicycle rides -over the hills; England’s sweetness and fidelity embodied in his mother; -its holiness in Toppie. - -The starlike image of Toppie rose before the young man’s mind and with -it his deepest doubt of the little French girl beside him. He had come -from pity for the child’s unconscious plight, pity for the cruelty of -her position there among them—a little creature so proud that it would -have been to her a burning humiliation could she have guessed how her -mother had dealt with her and them in foisting her upon them—he had -come, from this initial pity, to feel affection, then an odd, perplexed -respect, and finally a profound, a tender solicitude. It was upon her -future in France, with her mother, that it centred; but that was the -outward aspect of the inner fear; for when he thought of Toppie and of -holiness the question he had also to ask himself was whether Alix was -impervious to holiness, too? - -Giles felt that he would be better able to face that question, and with -it the whole problem of the child’s future, when he had seen “Maman.” -That was why he was here. That was why he had said “yes,” on the -morning, a fortnight ago, when Maman’s letter at last had come summoning -Alix home. Since their interview, long ago in the Winter, he and Alix -had never spoken of their mutual secret, that dreadful one-sided secret -that Giles visualized as an unexploded bomb lying there between them and -liable at a touch to go off and scatter the family happiness to -fragments. The interview had ended in a pact. She was to help him; she -had, poor little creature, helped him; he still felt stung with shame to -think how much; to think how he had profited, how they all had profited, -by her falsehoods. And he was bound to help her. He knew, when Maman’s -letter came, all that lay behind the appeal as she said: “Oh, Giles, -could you not come with me? and stay if only for a little while; so that -at last you and Maman may meet?” - -She felt that it would help if he were to know Maman. And it might well -be that he could only effectually help Alix if he faced at last the -baleful woman who had brought the hidden disaster to their lives. It was -better that he should know, in regard to Alix’s future, what they were -“up against.” It had not been of Maman he was thinking when he assented; -it had been, as on that day last Winter, of Alix herself. And that was -why he was here, on his way to Normandy and the village on the cliff, -and it was Dieppe that was showing now, along its wharves, façades of -sunlit houses. - -“Don’t you think, Giles,” said Alix, “that the air in France is very -different? Like golden wine?—There was a wine made at a little mountain -village near Montarel—Vernay-les-Vouvières it is called—and the wine -after it. I wish you could see that village. So high and steep it is, -the road climbs for miles before you reach it; and higher still, above -the village, is an old, old statue of _la Sainte Vierge_, looking down -over the vineyards and blessing them. When one stands beside her one -sees over all the crests of the mountain-ranges; like blue rolling -waves. We used to drink Vernay-les-Vouvières at Grand-père’s. It was -very cheap, for it could not travel; it lost its bouquet at once if it -travelled. And it was a delicious wine; so pale, so light, so delicate. -One felt like singing when one drank it. I think the air of France makes -one feel like that.” - -Mrs. Bradley’s household, though not pledged to teetotal principles, -eschewed all alcoholic drink, and Giles, as he listened, seeing the -Virgin, the vineyards, the ingenuous piety, the pagan gaiety that Alix’s -words conjured up, wondered what her impressions of their unenlivened -meals must have been. - -“I wish I could see Vernay-les-Vouvières,” he said. “A beautiful country -yours must be, so near the Alps.—We have sunny days in England, you -know. It’s a French superstition to think that English people go -staggering about in a fog all the year round. You ought to have got over -that,” he added. “Our weather is as good as the weather in Northern -France; every bit.” - -“But different, Giles. As good; but not so happy. Never like wine, I -think. Always there is something soft and sleepy in the air. After the -air of France it is like milk.” - -“Milk is a very excellent thing.” - -“Yes. Excellent. As a food. But it does not make one want to sing.” - -To this Giles said nothing. - -“For a French town Dieppe is not so specially beautiful,” Alix took up -presently; for she and Giles knew each other so well that a disagreement -could be allowed to fall between them disregarded. “I do not think that -for a French town it has special beauty; yet, seen like this, with the -harbours, and the wharves, and houses—all so golden, do you not think -it is very lovely?” - -Giles had just been thinking so. “Yes. Quite lovely,” he admitted. “For -a French town it’s rather rambling and shambling, too, and I like that.” - -“Ah, but it keeps its dignity all the same,” said Alix. “It has gone -where it meant to go and when it got there it stood up well.” - -“We have dignified towns,” said Giles. “Edinburgh; you must see -Edinburgh one day, Alix; and Bath; and Ludlow. Of course, as to ramble, -London is a bad offender; but London is beautiful all the same.” - -“Beautiful, do you think, Giles? Beautiful you mean, then, as one might -find the face of a dear, funny old great-grandmother beautiful, for what -it means; but not for what it looks; I think it a very ugly town,” said -Alix in her tone of happy statement—for Alix was very happy to-day. “It -is like an old great-grand-mother over a tea-pot; and Paris is like a -goddess with a wreath.” - -“I like old great-grandmothers much better than goddesses,” said Giles. - -All the same he understood. She was initiating these comparisons—and it -was so uncharacteristic of her to make comparisons—not from any desire -to disparage, but from the deep, joyous excitement, the love and pride -that could not be repressed and that she could not overtly have -expressed without expressing emotion as well. She thrilled with it, he -knew, leaning beside him, her profile, forcible, intent, golden against -the sea. It looked golden like that because the sun fell on it and the -sea was blue; but he had always thought Alix’s skin a queer colour and -never knew whether he liked or disliked it. Sometimes it was grey, like -pussy-willows: and sometimes it was green, making one think of -olive-trees or the patina on an old bronze; and sometimes, as to-day, it -was pure gold; and always it seemed to be the final expression of -significant structure rather than a decorative bloom, and to go with her -blue eyes and black hair whichever tint it took. But, as he told -himself, he was a sentimental Englishman and liked girls to be the -colour of apple-blossoms. - -Alix had fallen to silence now, and he was keeping his mind rather -consciously on their friendly altercation, and even on Alix’s profile, -because he did not wish to reflect on what lay before him. He had not an -idea of what he was to say to Alix’s mother, or to do with her; and it -was no good thinking about it until he saw her; saw her again. - -Saw her again! How the phrase brought back the unforgettable pang and -misery. How the unforgettable image floated in his memory, vivid yet -unseizable; irrelevant as it were and not to be woven to any secure -conclusion. It had been the stillest day, that Spring day in the Bois. -The purpling grey of branches, above, behind the wandering pair, had -melted to shroud-like distances and they had emerged before his -astonished eyes like the spectral creatures of a clairvoyant vision; -silent, and with linked arms. He had gazed at them, and as he gazed his -impulse to go forward and greet his brother was checked ere it was -formed. Owen here in Paris: Owen with madame Vervier—he had known at -once that it was she; Owen to look like that. Rooted among the thinly -scattered saplings of the wood he had remained, gazing until they passed -away and the white distance received them into its folds as it had given -them up—ominous disappearance of the brother he was never to see again. -Rooted he stood, and heard the wild, monotonous phrase of a -missel-thrush ring forth suddenly from overhead and felt his mind slowly -take possession of the icy grief that crept upon it. Owen’s face had -given him all the truth; its rapture; its terrible stilled restlessness. -And though she was so quiet, walking there, her head bent down a little, -her eyes fixed before her, Giles had felt, for all the innocence of his -chaste boyhood, that she was so quiet because she possessed him so -completely. - -How clearly he could see her still, with her brooding brightness, her -soft gloom. He could not see her as baleful; he could not see her as -guilty; he only saw her walking there secure in power and loveliness. -And this was the irrelevance, the tormenting discrepancy; for she was -the woman who had taken Owen from Toppie; she was the woman who, after -her lover’s death, had placidly made use of what assets he had left her; -his family; and its trust in him and her. And she was the more baleful -to him from the fact that, though he remembered her so vividly and knew -such portentous things about her, herself he did not know at all. - -There was one thing about her, however, that he could and ought to know -at once, and the thought of it worked its way up into his mind while he -and Alix leaned there. They had never again spoken of their secret, but, -before he met her mother he ought to know whether Alix had told her what -he knew of Owen’s stays with them in Paris. Before he saw madame Vervier -he ought to know what she knew about him; and suddenly, his eyes fixed -upon the wharves and houses of Dieppe, he said: “You think she’ll feel -it all right that I’m come?” - -“I wrote to her that you were coming,” said Alix. Her mind had perhaps -been following some train of thought not far removed from his, for she -spoke as if they were continuing a theme rather than taking it up. “She -will be delighted.” - -“Will she? Look here, Alix”—Giles gazed down over the railing at the -sea—“she couldn’t be delighted, I take it, if she knew that I had a -grievance about my brother on her account.” - -He had spoken very abruptly, yet he had, he felt, put it well. In the -little pause that followed his words, he was pleased with himself for -having found any so colourless and unprovocative. - -“What we know of your brother,” said Alix after her pause, “would not -give her a grievance against you; only against him.” - -“Against him?” - -“Did he not deceive her, too?” - -“Deceive her? Oh, I see. You think he didn’t tell her that he’d kept us -in the dark?” - -“He could not have told her, Giles; if that is really what you are -asking me.” - -Giles, a little confused, retraced his steps. “What I’m really asking -you is whether _you’ve_ told her. I want to know where I stand with her. -Haven’t you felt that she ought to be told?” - -Again Alix was silent, and for a longer time. Then she said: “It has -been my great perplexity. She does not know. Of course she does not -know. But I wrote to her at once, that time last Winter, and begged that -I might come home; and when I found she could not have me, I thought it -best to say nothing then. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps you will blame -me, Giles. But I thought it best to wait. It will give her such pain -when she knows.” - -It would never have given her so much pain Giles, with a sudden glow of -indignation, felt, as it had already given her daughter. What Alix had -suffered in wrestling with her problem was in her voice. “Blame you? I? -You poor kid!” he exclaimed. And he added: “After all, his silence meant -devotion to herself.” - -“Do you think so?” said Alix. “I am afraid she will not feel it so. I am -afraid she will feel that it meant cowardice and lack of loyalty;—as it -does to me.” - -Giles was now aware of an uncomfortable astonishment. He had to remember -that Alix was nearly seventeen. A woman could not have spoken with a -more secure assurance of putting him in his place; and if, by the same -token, she put Owen in his place, was she not, from her own point of -view, her woman’s dignity veiled only by her child’s ignorance, -justified in doing so? For if Owen had really kept madame Vervier in the -dark she might have a right to resentment. The two culprits should have -had no secrets from one another. - -“I see,” he repeated, lamely, as he felt. “And you would not like to -spoil her memory of him?” - -“We kept it from your mother and from Toppie because it would spoil -their memory of him,” said Alix. - -“I know; but you’ll own, won’t you, that it would be a far worse -spoiling for them?” - -“Yes. For them it would be worse. But why should anyone feel pain now, -when it is all over? Why should anything be spoiled?” - -“It’s only,” said Giles, going carefully, “that it seems unfair to your -mother to let me come and keep her in ignorance of what I know. It’s for -you to judge, Alix; but since you love your mother so much, I rather -wonder that you can bear to keep such a secret from her. And, quite -apart from me, oughtn’t she to know just what she does send you back -to?” - -“Send me back to?” Alix echoed, and her eyes met his strangely. - -“Yes. Before you come back in the Autumn, don’t you think she ought to -know?” - -“Do you really imagine, Giles, that if Maman knew, she would send me -back?” - -“Well”—he felt that he flushed. He had not foreseen this -emergency—“since I know, and since I want you back;—why not she?” - -“Do you count Maman’s pride for nothing, Giles?” - -Madame Vervier’s pride had never for a moment engaged his attention, and -did not now. His attention was fully engaged by Alix’s pride, facing him -with a look of granite. - -“I don’t really see why she should take it so hardly,” he said after a -moment; but he was horribly uncomfortable, for he was not speaking with -frankness to his young friend. “Your relation to us has, really, nothing -to do with her relation to Owen. It’s a new thing; and that’s an old -one; and as you say, it’s all over.” - -“But she could not have me there on false pretences, Giles,” said Alix. -The pride had dropped now. It was as if with sudden sadness she saw too -well the reasons for his misunderstanding. “I could not be there on -false pretences. You have a right to think it of me since I have never -told her. But it is all over now; the new as well as the old. I need -never tell her. For I am at home again and I shall never go back to -Heathside.” - -“Never come back to Heathside!” Actually for the moment Maman, Owen, -Toppie, all the grief and perplexity that hung about these figures, were -swept from Giles’s mind by his deep discomfiture. “But this is only your -holiday. Your mother’s letter said so.” - -“She thinks it is only my holiday. But I am older now. I shall see to it -that I do not return to England.” - -Ass that he had been not to realize the _impasse_ to which their talk -was leading them! Too obviously, from Alix’s side, this was an -inevitable decision. And Giles saw that from his side it should have -been so, too. With Alix safely back in France, there would be no more -danger of pain for his mother and wreckage for Toppie; Owen’s memory -might sleep in untarnished peace. - -But Alix herself had come to count for far too much. It was as if he saw -her walking away into a dark forest where dreadful creatures prowled. -Ever since that day in his study, she had counted for too much. She was -too fine, too brave, too loyal a little creature to be given up to her -fate. He had felt that day that he would fight her fate for her, and he -felt now that the moment had come for the first grapple. But the worst -of the problem was that in fighting Alix’s fate he must fight her. He -could not tell her the fact that would have turned her pride to dust and -ashes. He could not tell her that her mother had sent her to them on -pretences so false that the minor falsity she repudiated paled beside -them. Horribly handicapped as he was for the contest, he seized his bull -by the horns: “Look here, my dear child,” he declared, speaking with all -the elder brother authority he could summon up, “you said to me that day -when we talked that you were going to trust me. Well, I ask you to trust -me now. I want you back. We all want you back. Let that suffice. No; -wait a moment. I know what you are going to say;—if Toppie knew would -she want you? I’ll take the responsibility of answering for Toppie. She -is so fond of you that I know she would. Isn’t that enough, really? -Can’t we leave it at that? And you’re quite right not to tell your -mother. Let the whole thing rest for ever.” - -Her eyes were on his while he spoke to her and she listened to him -gently; but her face still kept the invulnerable look strange in one so -young. “You are kind, dear Giles,” she said. “I do trust you. But you -can’t answer for Toppie. You can’t answer for anybody. And I have not -only myself to think of. I have Maman. I _can_ answer for Maman in this -matter. She would not let me come.” - -“Are you so sure of that?” broke from Giles. And now, pushed to it, he -ventured far; he ventured very far, indeed. “After all she must have -known that he kept a great deal from us. After all she must have known -that he cared more for her than he did for Toppie; that he had been -faithless to Toppie because of her.” - -Poor little Alix. It was not fair. She paled in hearing him. And for a -long moment she stood silent beside him, looking down at the sea. “May -he not have kept that from her, too?” was what she found at last to say. - -“Do you think that possible?” Giles asked; but he was sorry now, seeing -the deep trouble on her face, that he had spoken. - -“Perhaps it would not have been possible,” she said slowly. “But things -may be known and yet remain unspoken, Giles.” - -He could not question her further. He could not ask madame Vervier’s -young daughter if she really believed that those things had been -unspoken between his brother and her mother. There had been an element -of desecration in going even so far as he had gone. And he had gained -nothing by it, for after the little pause that fell between them, Alix -added, in no spirit of retaliation as he saw, but as though she put up a -final barrier against his persistence. - -“And even if they were not there, Giles; even if all the difficult -things we know of were not there, I should still not come back to -Heathside. I do not care, ever, to leave France again. I could not, -again, leave Maman.” - - - CHAPTER II - -The train moved slowly, almost ruminatingly, along the golden landscape, -a little local train stopping at every station. The crops were still -uncut and their vast undulations were broken only by lines of lonely, -poplared road, or marshalled woods venturing out, here and there, upon -the plains. Empty and rather sad, for all the splendour of the gold -beneath, the blue above, it looked to Giles; but that might have been, -he knew, because of its associations for him with scenes of the war; and -he was feeling a little sick, too, apprehensions of the approaching -future seizing him as he and Alix sat silent in the second-class -carriage, where both the windows were tightly shut. Alix had widely -opened hers on entering, but at the first station a lady had got -in—little shopping people of the local _bourgeoisie_ the passengers -were, more estranged from fashion, Giles thought, than their equivalent -English types—and, wrapping a scarf at once about her neck, she had -complained of the effect of the _courant d’air_ upon her _névralgie_. -Without comment, Alix at once closed her window. No doubt she knew her -compatriots and recognized the futility of discussion on this theme; but -Giles reflected that Ruth and Rosemary would not so have submitted. They -would have entered into altercation with the lady in the scarf and found -pleasure in demonstrating her folly to her even if they did not succeed -in keeping the window open. But to Alix altercation had no charms. Even -when the lady, still mysteriously aggrieved in her furthest corner, -murmured resentfully on about _les anglais qui viennent nous déranger_, -Alix glanced meditatively at her for a moment and then resumed her -survey of the landscape, indifferent to the misapprehension; and since -Giles could not repress a smile, the lady, who still held up her scarf -in retrospective protest, kept indignant eyes upon him. - -“Now, you know, you _are_ a worse-tempered people than we are. She’s -still nursing her wrongs,” Giles murmured, and Alix, glancing at the -lady of the _névralgie_, answered, “She is negligible.” - -Two men sat further on; one young, with high, ardent, excited eyes, like -a collie’s, in a thin head; the other obese and red with white hair _en -brosse_ and a purple nip of ribbon in his button-hole. They leaned -across the carriage towards each other and talked without cessation, -rapping each other on the chest to a constant refrain of: “_Puis—il me -dit;—Et—je lui dis._” Passionately swift and even vindictive in -utterance as they were, their personal geniality remained unimpaired. - -A little boy on his mother’s lap ate chocolates, smearing his cheeks and -palms. Clambering down, he was permitted, unchecked, to lurch towards -Alix, staying himself on the knees he passed, and when he reached her he -stretched forth his hand with assurance for the box of apricots she -held. “_Est-il mignon!_” exclaimed the fond mother. But Alix did not -even turn her eyes from the landscape. The disconcerted child stood -gazing at her, too much astonished even to weep, and Giles, taking pity -on him, offered the tick of his watch and jingled his bunch of keys in -an attempt to distract his attention. But the little boy gave him no -heed, and after a prolonged stare at Alix he made his way back to his -mother; his first encounter, Giles imagined, with an unresponsive -universe. - -“I say, you are really rather hard-hearted,” he remarked. Here was -another difference, for neither Ruth nor Rosemary could have remained so -impervious to even such a repulsive little boy. - -But Alix said: “I cannot look at a dirty face like that. If his mother -had cleaned his face, I would have given him one.” - -“Well, since he’s gone back to her, and you needn’t look at him, may I -give him one?” said Giles; and, as Alix smiling, assented, Giles handed -an apricot to the little boy, who took it without thanks and ate it, -staring solemnly at Alix the while. - -A thin blue crescent of sea cut into the fields on the right. In the -distance, on a rise of country, a pale pink château stood with wings of -sculptured woodland on either side, a long green lawn in front. - -“It cannot be far now,” said Alix. The lady with the scarf, the mother -with the little boy, the stout marketing lady, had all left them by now -and she could open her window and stand by it to look out. “Vaudettes is -four miles from the station. Maman will come to meet us, with monsieur -de Maubert.” - -“Who is monsieur de Maubert?” asked Giles. He had never heard the name -before. But then he had never heard any names connected with Maman. How -could he, since he never spoke of her? - -“He is an old friend of ours; a very old friend,” said Alix. “I do not -remember the time when we did not know monsieur de Maubert.” - -“You like him?” - -“Oh, very much. _C’est un homme fort distingué_,” said Alix, relapsing -into French, with the effect, to Giles, of not sparing more than -convention for their conversation. Her thoughts were fixed in -anticipation. He could almost see her palpitate in her stillness with -it. She might have been kinder to the little boy had she not been so -unaware of everything but the approaching figure of Maman. - -“How distinguished?” Giles, however, persisted. - -“Oh, I am so ignorant, Giles. Wise things do not interest me, you know.” -Alix smiled slightly down at him over her shoulder. “He has excavated -cities; Persian; Mongolian;—_que sais-je_. He writes on antiquities. He -has a beautiful _appartement_ in Paris with collections of gems and -bronzes. He is at once _savant_ and _homme du monde_.” - -“And will he be the only guest except me?” - -“Ah, that I do not know. There are three _chambres d’invités_ at Les -Chardonnerets. But I have not heard that there is, as yet, anyone else.” - -“Chardonnerets? That means?” - -“It means goldfinches. That was a bird we always knew, even”—Alix -paused—“even before your brother told us more of birds. Flocks come in -Autumn to the thistles on the cliffs outside our gate. When they all fly -together one sees the squares of gold on their wings—it makes a pattern -on the sky, like a chain of golden coins; monsieur de Maubert’s strange -old square coins. And their little twitter is like the chink of thin -gold. We love them, Maman and I, and there is a tall ash-tree in the -garden where they often perch in summer. You will see them, Giles. You -will like Les Chardonnerets, I think.—Oh, now—I recognize now—I know -those woods. We find daffodils in them, in Spring, among the faggots. -You have not in England, have you, Giles, our great woods with all the -ranged faggots that the woodmen pile so carefully in winter. And in -Spring, at the edge of the wood, one sees around one the great plain, -champagne-coloured. The next station will be ours,” said Alix. - - - CHAPTER III - -He could hardly find again the face of the February day in the Bois. It -was her form, her poise that gave her to one now, and Giles’s first -impression of the white, sunlit figure waiting on the platform was of a -Greek Victory, splendid, strong, exultant. Her face, under the falling -lines of a white hat, was almost dissolved in a transparent shadow; only -its grave, fixed smile, like a pearl in golden wine, remained, as it -were, shaped and palpable. - -He had seen her as the _Parisienne_; the creature of elegance and -artifice; but he found her almost primitive, set here in the -sea-breezes, and so much more robust than he had remembered; if anything -so delicate could so be called. Freshness and force breathed from her, -and the classic analogies she brought to his mind were emphasized by her -straightly falling dress—a tennis-dress, perhaps, for her arms were -bare—tying at the breast with tassels and at the waist with a loosely -knotted sash. - -“_Ma chérie! Ma petite chérie!_” she said. - -The train had come to a standstill and it was as if Alix had flown into -her arms. She had been as silent as a spectre on that spectral day when -he had first seen her. Her voice now startled him, as the -missel-thrush’s voice had done. Tears were in it and tears were in her -eyes as she clasped her child. And then, again, as they stood embraced, -it was of something Greek they made Giles think; some beautiful relief -on the pediment of a sunlit temple; garlands above them and happy -maidens in procession on either side carrying baskets of fruit and -chanting the reunion of mother and child. Ceres and Persephone it might -be. Happy little Persephone, escaped at last from the kingdom of Dis. - -Giles stood by, holding Alix’s dressing-case, and felt himself a modern -tourist gazing at the masterpiece. Just as little difference, he saw it -suddenly and clearly, any knowledge of his would make to madame Vervier. -She was lifted, how or why he did not know, far above the dusty -impressions of the throng, impervious to their comments, whether of -blame or admiration. Even when in another moment her lovely eyes turned -on him and, holding Alix against her with one arm, she stretched out a -welcoming hand to him and said “_Soyez le bien-venu, monsieur Giles._ My -little girl has had only good things to tell me of you”—even then he -could not feel that he had gained in significance. So a queen might have -received the young equerry who had safely restored to her the princess -royal. They had been good to her child, the dusty throng. That was the -importance they had in madame Vervier’s eyes; that, and no more. - -Struggling with many thoughts Giles followed mother and daughter. The -ghost of Owen walked beside him, and did it whisper: “You see: how could -I have helped myself?” - -Two other young men were also following madame Vervier and Alix. “_Vous -jouez le tennis, monsieur?_” said one of them, the elegant one, in a -gentle voice. He was a charming white-clad person, tall and slender, -with eyes intensely blue, black hair brushed back from a starry -forehead; and a face like a fox for _finesse_ and _flair_ and like a -seraph’s for sweetness. Perhaps he had perceived the something gagged -and struggling in Giles’s demeanour and had wanted at once to make him -feel that, unimportant as any young man must be to a goddess, he might -count on having significance for a new friend. Giles said that he did -play, and he and the charming person exchanged smiles. They might, -somehow, have fought in the same trenches, side by side, Giles felt. -There was at once a link between them. The other young man, who must, -Giles thought, be an artist, was dressed in brown velveteen and blue -linen and had a dark, square, suffering head. - -The _place_ outside the station was white and glaring, and the noises -that came from the café across it were glaring, too. Giles reflected, -with a certain satisfaction, that Alix need, at all events, feel no -pride in this typical scene, and it was disconcerting to have his -companion, as they made their way to the little waiting car, indicate -with a wave of the hand the dusty green trees, the dusty white houses, -the untidy green shutters, and the brittle lights on glasses and brasses -in the restaurant and say: “This is the subject that our friend here has -just been painting. You shall see it. A little masterpiece of light and -colour.” - -Of course, Giles growled inwardly as he doubled himself up on the -_strapontin_ at right angles to Alix and her mother—the two young men -in front—of course, the fact that a beautiful picture might be elicited -from the stimuli of the _place_ did not make the _place_ itself more -beautiful. And yet the memory of it, framed in this new conception of -its uses, grew vexatiously in his mind as they left it far behind, -eliminating the weary traveller’s impressions of noise, dust, and -disorder, and growing to a pattern of white and green and grey wreathed -harmoniously about a tawny ellipse. Yes, one could make something -æsthetic out of it, ugly though it was for practical purposes; even -inartistic he could see that—hang it! - -The road counted off its sections in tall poplars. They passed behind -madame Vervier’s head, and, though Giles was so aware of her, he looked -at the poplars and the fields beyond them rather than at her. She and -Alix talked in French together and Alix’s voice was revealed to him as -like her mother’s when she spoke her native tongue; musical; rhythmical; -dipping; poising, and then rising to a final lift, like a swallow’s -flight. Their hands were clasped. Their eyes were on each other. - -He could look at Alix after all, and from the poplars he shifted his -eyes to her. He had never seen the child with that face before. Tender, -radiant, and with something of pride so deep that it hovered on the -brink of tears. Her glance met his and was tender for him, too, as -though with Owen’s ghost it said: “You see: how is it possible not to -love her?” - -But was she as beautiful as all that? Giles gathered himself away from -the admission. Was she even beautiful at all? He would have to look at -her carefully if he were to say, and he stayed himself on the conviction -that if it came to structure and line she could not be compared to Alix. - -It was not what she looked like; it was what she meant that he was so -aware of now. He had never before found himself in the company of a -woman who seemed so to typify the _femme du monde_, and if she were no -longer of it, that fact was merely accidental. With every glance, -gesture, rise and fall of voice, it was there that she belonged. He did -not think that he liked the _femme du monde_, so apt, he felt, at -showing you no more than what she intended to show you of her real -purpose, so sure that for every occasion she would know what to do far -better than you could even understand. And yet, more than the _femme du -monde_ she made him think of the mountain torrent—Alix had been -right—in its strength, its splendour, and its danger, too. And he knew -that he did not like dangerous women. - -He had expected to find her gay, and, in spite of the memory, brooding, -almost sombre, of the spectral spring day, to feel in her something of -artifice and allurement. But if artifice there were, it was nothing -added or adventitious; and of allurement there was none. She stood in -her place, a goddess, and watched her worshippers, and when her human -smile came, modelling her cheek to a sudden childlike candour, it had -the oddity of an unexpected weakness. - -It was to Alix alone that she talked; she had no word for him. Yet once -or twice, as they drove, Giles was aware of being observed. All -unimportant as he was, he felt her dark eyes turned on him, resting upon -him, in meditation rather than in surmise. It was—he had noted this -already—a curiously widely opened eye. Its rounded darkness gave to her -contemplative gaze a fixed, abstracted quality. When you found her -observing you, she did not look away; so that presently you wondered -whether she was seeing you at all; whether the soft, wide gaze had not -travelled to spaces far beyond you, including but forgetting you. - -They had left the poplared road behind them and were among great fields, -stretching on one hand to the horizon and on the other to the -cliff-edge. A line of docile cows, tethered side by side, ate their way -into a strip of wine-coloured clover; meadow pipits mounted from the -turf and filled the salt, sweet air with myriads of falling silver -bells; in the distance the tall palisades of a wood rose against the sky -and it looked like an island floating on the level sunlight of the -plain. The glimmer of white houses among the grey boles revealed, as -they approached, an embowered village on the cliff and Giles needed to -make no mental reconstruction of beauty here. He felt the authentic -essence fill his breath as he gazed at the picture, never to be -forgotten, he knew, of the vast blue sky, the vast sunlit plain, the -tall trees green and silver, threaded with white cottages. His eyes were -full of his delight. - -“You know our villages?” said madame Vervier. It was the first phrase -she had addressed him since they started. - -“Only a few. Further north; and usually ruined ones,” said Giles. - -“Only the tragic ones,” said madame Vervier. “Here we were untouched by -the war, and our villages, too, are more beautiful than further north. -In this part of Normandy they are often surrounded by these great -ramparts of trees. It gives much character, much charm, does it -not?”—and she smiled at him. She had noted his delight, and Alix was -smiling at him, too. - -“I’ve seen French pictures like it,” said Giles. - -“Yes; some of the early Corots give one the grey and green and white.” - -“Ah—it is too stately for a Corot.” The young man in white flashed a -smile round at her as he drove. “Corot would see its intimacy, its -charm, rather than its gravity. That great design against the sky;—no; -we must find somebody else.” - -Madame Vervier smiled back, sure of her point. “He would not look at the -sky, my early Corot; he would look at the little white houses nestling -in the trees; he would look at the curve of the white road with the -whitewashed wall. That girl in the faded blue, with the brown hoop of -bread upon her arm, he would put her in. Oh, yes; it is a Corot; an -early Corot, André. I see the happy gentle touches of his brush.” - -“_Elle a raison_,” said the young man with the dark square head, and -André, driving with his easy skill, waved a hand of contented -concession. - -When they had passed within the precincts, the little town opened -clearly to the sunlight and they were at once in the _place_ that -circled round a large pond where patient men in large straw hats sat -fishing. Houses, stately in their modesty, looked over rows of pollarded -fruit-trees and high walls tiled in red. Built of pale old brick and -flint, with high-pitched roofs above dormer windows, they seemed to -speak of a delicious leisure that was, in itself, an occupation. People -who lived in such houses, Giles thought, would never be idle; yet all -their industry would have the savour of an art. How darkly lustrous the -windows shone; how unremittingly were those bright gardens tended. He -saw, as they passed an open gate, a stout old man in a white linen coat -tying muslin bags over the pears that ripened on the wall. Under a -_charmille_ a woman sat stemming currants. A family group in front of a -shop were already taking the afternoon repose, the father with his -newspaper, the wife and daughters with their sewing. Along the broad -white street a peasant girl, her bare head as neat as a nut, clattered -in sabots, carrying a great earthenware jar, and a small white woolly -dog, of a breed unknown to Giles, barked languidly from his doorstep as -they passed. - -From the _place_ the little town rayed out into leafy lanes and, as they -entered one of them, a sunny round of sky and cliff-edge at the other -end, framed in foliage, showed Giles that they were at their journey’s -end. High hedges and thickets of wind-swept trees protected the little -house, brick, flint, and tiles, from the gales that must, in stormy -seasons, beat upon it from the sea. Flowers grew gaily, though untidily, -beside the narrow flagged path that led from the wicket-gate to the back -door. They crossed a band of cobblestones where oleanders grew in tubs, -and, as they entered, passed a kitchen gleaming with ranged coppers. -Giles as he followed madame Vervier and Alix, had the sensation of -stepping into a fairy-tale. The Three Bears and Goldilocks might have -welcomed one to such a bright, dark little house among its sunny -thickets; its very smell was a fairy-tale smell; beeswax, seashells, and -coarse clean linen. Such a smell as a child, once meeting it, would -never in a long life forget. A tall clock tick-tocked on the stair; -there was a great Normandy _armoire_, softly gleaming, old and worn, at -a turning of a passage; madame Vervier’s white figure went on before, -and as she bent her head to lift a latch he saw her russet hair twisted -up from the nape of her neck; and that, again, was like a picture he had -seen. And then they were suddenly out upon a broad verandah, broad and -wide, washed with sunlight and opening only on the blue. Sea-gulls -floated by, high above the sea, at the cliff’s edge, on a level with the -eyes. Vines fluttered, translucent, against the sunlight; the scent of -the honeysuckle came balmily; the sea was sprinkled with white and -russet sails. - -A stately personage was reading in the shade. He was dressed in white; -he had thick hair and a grey divided beard. Lifting his tortoiseshell -eye-glasses from the bridge of his nose, he rose to greet them, and -Giles found himself penetrated by the deep gaze of Jovian grey eyes set -under a Jovian forehead; penetrated by the gaze and appraised, for the -first time in his life, by standards mysteriously remote. This must be -monsieur de Maubert, and Giles had never seen anyone like him, except -once, perhaps, at Oxford, when a distinguished Frenchman had received a -degree. Only the distinguished Frenchman, black, shrill, and restless, -had so much less looked the part than did monsieur de Maubert. It was -not exactly sustaining to say to himself that, hang it, monsieur de -Maubert, after all, had probably never seen anyone like him; the -advantage, he felt, must seem only to be his. But, under all his boyish -perturbation, Giles knew that he was appraising monsieur de Maubert, -too. Monsieur de Maubert was a magnificent person—magnificent, although -his legs were short;—and he was a pagan. It was rather magnificent to -be a pagan and Giles knew just how well he thought of the creed; but -there were all sorts of things that monsieur de Maubert—he felt sure of -it—could never see, and the difference between them was that, while -Giles knew that he often groped in mystery, monsieur de Maubert would -remain unaware that there could be anything significant unknown to him. -Life, to him, was bathed in _la lumière antique_, and anything not so -bathed was inessential. All sorts of things that Giles had only wondered -about or surmised were suddenly made clear to him as he looked at madame -Vervier’s other guest. - -Monsieur de Maubert turned from Giles to put his hand on Alix’s -shoulder. He observed her in silence for a moment with a most benignant -smile, and then remarked: “_Te voilà presque une grande personne, ma -chère enfant_,” and, stooping his head, he kissed her hand. - -“Now you will want to see your room,” said Madame Vervier. - -She had taken off her hat, and Giles for the first time saw her -bareheaded. She stood there, looking at them, a little preoccupied, her -hat hanging against her dress as she held it, and the sun flickered in -upon her high-wreathed russet hair. Cut across her forehead and half -tossed back, it seemed as simply, as cursorily done as that of a little -girl who, for the first time, sweeps up her tresses. She was looking at -them all; at monsieur de Maubert, at Alix, as he kissed her hand, and at -Giles; but Giles felt, as he turned to her, that it was upon himself -that the wide, abstracted gaze was dwelling. Monsieur de Maubert had -appraised him; it was probable that madame Vervier had appraised him, -too. - -“After you have had your tea,” she said, “you will perhaps like to rest. -Or would you care to come with us to Allongeville, where we are to play -tennis?” - -Giles said that he would write some letters after tea. He did not see -his friend in white, who had apparently gone away with the car. And the -dark young artist, too, had disappeared. - -With Alix’s arm passed in hers, madame Vervier led him up a narrow -staircase where the smell of beeswax, seashells, and linen seemed to -cluster yet more thickly, and along a passage carpeted in matting where -the sea-breeze, blowing in from windows at each end, made a singing -noise. “Is Giles to have the _chambre rose_, Maman?” said Alix, and she -exclaimed, as her mother, smiling, said, “Yes,” “Oh, I am so glad! I -hoped for that!” - -It was at the end of the passage, and when one entered one had before -one in the windows nothing but sea and sky. Grey woodwork framed panels -of _voile de Gênes_, rose, white, russet, and sepia. The little Louis -Quinze bed was of grey painted wood, stately under its pink and russet -embroideries. A bowl of rose-coloured carnations filled the air with -spicy fragrance, and there was a tiny _cabinet de toilette_ with an -ancient set of rose-and-white china. Giles had never found himself -installed in such a lovely room. - -“Yes; this is your room,” said madame Vervier, as if she replied to a -question. “You will be happy here, I think.” - -Giles could only murmur that he would. - -“We are very primitive,” said madame Vervier. “There are no bells. If -you want Albertine, you must go to the stair and call down for her. She -will hear and come.” - -“Ah, she will not always come,” Alix demurred; whereat madame Vervier -smiled and said that in that case he must call Alix. - -Then they left him, and he could go to the window, turning away -instinctively from the room and all it meant of madame Vervier, and -stare at the sea, and, with a rising sense of dismay and fierceness in -his heart, ask himself what he did there in the Circe sweetness. He was -there because of Alix, of course; but how far away Alix had become. The -process of removal seemed to have begun as they had leaned on the -railing of the deck and seen Dieppe emerge over the water. In her -declaration to him, when their talk so disastrously ended, she had drawn -still further away; and now he saw her almost as a stranger, in a -strange land. A foreigner; French; the daughter, only, of madame -Vervier; no longer his little Alix. - -When she knocked at his door, twenty minutes later, and told him that -tea was ready, he felt that it was with a dull gaze that he met her. She -had asked him to come because of something he could do to help her, but -now her radiant demeanour seemed to demonstrate that she had brought him -so that he might be enchanted. Madame Vervier was not a person in any -need of help. There was nothing she asked less of you. Circe, Circe; -that was the word in his mind. Only Circe, he supposed, allured; -enticed; while madame Vervier only gazed at you with those wide, intent, -indifferent eyes. - -“Do you like Les Chardonnerets?” said Alix, standing in the door and -smiling at him. She had changed her travelling dress for a white one, a -straight white one made of a thin woollen stuff, like her mother’s; and -her mother must have had it in readiness for her, for he had never seen -her wear it before. Nor had he ever seen her look so happy. - -“I suppose,” he said, with his hands in his pockets, standing in the -middle of the lovely room, “you feel England has ceased to exist; and a -good job, too.” - -“But not at all, Giles,” said Alix, and there was a touch of gay malice -in her smile. “How could I feel that when you are here?” - -“Will cease to exist, as far as you are concerned, once I’m gone,” Giles -amended. - -“France has never existed for you at all,” Alix remarked, though her -smile did not become less kind. - -“I beg your pardon, young woman, it existed for me from the moment I set -eyes on you,” said Giles gloomily, “to say nothing of the year I fought -over here.” - -Alix then did a very unexpected thing. She advanced into the centre of -the room and clasped her hands around his arm and looked into his face. -“Do not be heavy with me, Giles,” she said, “when I am so happy.” - -He looked down at her fondly and sadly. “I suppose it’s because I see -you happy, for the first time, that I feel heavy.” - -“But why, Giles? Why? Must not a child be happy at finding herself again -with her mother; in her own country? Would you not be happy in such a -case? Were you not happy when you returned to your home and to your -mother after the war?” - -“That’s not quite the same,” Giles objected. “After all, you’ve not been -in daily peril of your life. Of course you’re happy. But try not to show -me, too plainly, how little we all mean to you. Try not to show me how -quickly you’ll forget all about us when I’m gone.” - -“But I should never forget you, Giles, even if I never saw you again!” -said Alix, holding his arm and looking into his face. - -Madame Vervier, as they stood thus, passed along the corridor and paused -and looked in at them; looked, Giles felt, with surprise. Alix smiled -round at her. “He thinks I do not care for England any longer, Maman, or -for him, because I am so happy to be back in France with you,” she said. - -Madame Vervier, after her pause, advanced slowly into the room, and her -smile did not conceal from Giles her covert examination of himself. It -was a smile deep and soft; superficially acquiescent; but concealing -much. Vigilance was in it, and the sense, perhaps, of a special need for -vigilance; the recognition, too, perhaps, of something unforeseen that -England had already done to her child. Such untroubled intimacy between -young man and maiden was not, Giles divined, in the traditions to which -madame Vervier was accustomed. Yet her smile suggested no reproof and -seemed to acquiesce serenely in Alix’s demonstration of alien habits. - -She moved to them, and passed her arm in Alix’s, so that they stood, all -three, linked together, and, smiling on, she remarked: “You must not -give your good friend cause for such fancies, darling.” - -She spoke in English and her English was almost as perfect as Alix’s. -The _r_ of “darling,” just rolled, like the almost imperceptible ripple -on the smooth surface of a shell, made the word at once more playful and -more caressing. And she went on, looking from one to the other: “You -must not seem to forget him in finding me. Our kind allies must have no -cause, at any time, for suspecting that we French have not faithful -hearts.” - -“But I have just told him, Maman, that I should never forget him,” said -Alix as they moved towards the door. “And there can be no question of -that, Giles, for you will come often and often to Les Chardonnerets, -will you not?” - -Giles did not answer this question. It was unexpected, and its sweetness -was unexpected. His mind, however, was occupied with the discomfort that -came to him at seeing himself made to appear so personally involved in -regrets for Alix’s removal. It was not himself, first and foremost, he -had been thinking of at all when he felt those regrets; it was of -England; of his mother and Toppie; of the noisy, untidy, but devoted -family life; of the birch-wood at evening where he had taught Alix the -song of the willow-warbler; of his beautiful Oxford and “The Messiah” on -Winter evenings. These were the things he wanted Alix to remember, and -it could not console him to know that she expected to see him again when -he felt sure that she would see his England disappear from her life -without one pang. - - - CHAPTER IV - -A table had been laid in a corner of the verandah, and a stout woman, -bareheaded and in _savates_, was carrying out tea and coffee. - -Madame Vervier rearranged the tray, setting the tongs on the sugar, the -strainer on a cup, placing the plate of _madeleines_ here, the -_brioches_ there; all mildly, with no savour of criticism for -Albertine’s haphazard methods. In England such a ministrant at the -tea-table would have been felt as a flaw on the prevailing perfection; -yet Albertine, Giles divined, was also the cook; and a bevy of trim, -capped English maids could hardly have evolved the lustre of cleanliness -that reigned throughout the lovely little house. It was difficult to -think of madame Vervier as poor; and more difficult to think of her -doing things for herself. Yet all the loveliness had, he felt, been -gathered together with something of the same mild dexterity that now -brought order and comeliness to the tea-table. Madame Vervier was the -sort of person who would pick up lovely things for a song; the Louis -Quinze bedstead, the _voile de Gênes_, the tall cream-white _cafetière_, -like one he had seen in a picture by—Chardin, wasn’t it?—and the -teapot with a delicate spray of grey flowers, just touched with gilt, on -its side—had all, he could imagine, been brought to her nest by the -unerring instinct that leads the bird to select the white feather or the -lichen. Alix had said, he remembered, that part of their revenue was -derived from the rent of the fairy-tale house; he was sure that it was -an investment that paid well. And she had probably herself made the -dresses she and Alix wore. She could be extravagant if the money were -there; if it were not, she was careful. One felt in her the essential -freedom from material bondage. - -Monsieur de Maubert was still in his shady corner with the _Nouvelle -Revue Française_ on his knee. The young artist had reappeared and was -sitting on the steps, his chin on his hands, looking out at the sea. -Madame Vervier took her place at the tea-table, monsieur de Maubert drew -his chair beside her, and Giles’s friend strolled up from the cliff-path -accompanied by yet another noticeable personage. - -This was a youngish woman, though younger in form than in face, -bareheaded and wearing a very short white skirt and a flame-coloured -silk jacket. It was almost like seeing a tongue of electric fire, -brilliant, supple, cold, run in among them, so different was she from -the sunlight which seemed so completely madame Vervier’s element. It did -not surprise Giles to gather, presently, that mademoiselle Blanche -Fontaine was an actress, and a distinguished one. She was charming; he -had seen that at once; but he had seen as soon that it was a charm with -which he had nothing at all to do; the sort of charm one expected to pay -ten-and-six for the sight and sound of and to feel, while it operated -upon you, safely barred away from by a row of footlights. A presence so -brilliant could not be said to cast a chill, but for Giles it certainly -cast a discomfort. Who was she? What did she mean? Where had she come -from, this young woman so lean, so white, so sickly-looking, yet so -tough? Her smile, as she bit into her _madeleine_, brought a long dimple -that was almost a wrinkle into her cheek and her long, pale eyes -scintillated under darkened lashes. He realized how noticeably -independent of artificial aids to significance was madame Vervier from -noting how frankly mademoiselle Fontaine had made use of them. She might -even, by nature, he surmised, be a swarthy woman; but art had -transformed her to a dazzling whiteness and her crinkled hair, that -might be really black, repeated the lustrous flame of her jacket. -Something in the fervour of her thin, gay lip, in the vigour of her -thin, questing nose, even suggested to Giles a Semitic strain; but upon -the racial edifice she had laid a pattern of strange, chiming colour -that seemed in its vehemence and oddity to alter the very contour of her -face. She had made of herself what she would; what she was, was -unfathomable by any plummet in Giles’s possession. - -They were all talking and laughing, all except Alix, who sat silent -beside her mother, and the young artist with the dark, suffering head. -He drank coffee; three cups of it, and black. Monsieur de Maubert’s -sonorous tones were lifted by a note of drollery. - -“He has lost himself in the clouds of mysticism.” They were talking of -the book of a friend. “To stumble among rocks is less disconcerting than -to stumble among clouds. _Il erre—il erre_— One sees him wandering -away into the fog of his own imaginations.” - -“Did you enjoy yourself in England, mademoiselle Alix?” mademoiselle -Fontaine asked. “Did you make good studies there?” - -“Yes. I went to a Lycée with the sisters of monsieur Bradley,” said -Alix. - -She looked more of a child, seen in this setting, than Giles had ever -seen her look. Her silence was childlike; and her attitude, leaning -slightly against her mother, her chair placed a little behind her. Yet, -at the same time, Giles had never felt her manner more mature. She was -familiar with mademoiselle Fontaine. She knew her of old. Yet what a -sense of distance there was between them. Giles could not tell whether -it was kept there, so unerringly, more by her manner or by mademoiselle -Fontaine’s. They knew their place; both of them. Giles suddenly -perceived that people in England did not know their places with anything -like the same accuracy as people in France. Mademoiselle Fontaine was -the distinguished actress. Alix was the _toute jeune fille_; under her -mother’s wing. They might meet for years and never advance by a -hair’s-breadth to greater intimacy. - -“Ah. Yes. You were with the family of monsieur.” The dimple came for -Giles. The brilliant eyes circled round him; pierced him; cogitated; -deduced; summed him up probably, Giles felt—(so much more shrewd was he -than mademoiselle Fontaine could guess, for all her brilliancy)—as -“_Jeune homme respectable et tant soit peu lourd_.” - -“You must bring monsieur to tea with Grand’mère, Maman, and me, one day -mademoiselle Alix,” she said. It was surprising to find that -mademoiselle Fontaine was so immersed in family ties. “I have _un petit -‘foaks’_.” So she pronounced the French term for fox terrier. -“_Tout-à-fait charmant._ He will delight you.” - -“There is a charming ‘fox’ in the family of monsieur,” said Alix. - -“Some admirable work is being done in England,” said Giles’s friend, -whose name, he now gathered, was monsieur le vicomte de Valenbois. “Your -school of Bloomsbury. They are remarkable writers. They have invented a -new method; oh, deep, crafty; though it seems to blow as easily as a -flower. But then a flower has always its roots; its soil.—Tchekov, do -you think? Dostoievsky?—They are much inspired, one feels, for all -their sincerity, by the Russians. Or is it truly indigenous? Do the -pavements of Bloomsbury really grow it quite spontaneously? That -delicious Bloomsbury,” monsieur de Valenbois mused, his happy eyes on -Giles, “of the Museum, the squares where Thackeray walks, the smell of -fogs and jam.” - -Giles was much bewildered. He did not remember ever having heard of a -school of Bloomsbury. - -Monsieur de Valenbois enlightened him and went on, putting Giles’s best -foot forward for him, since it was evident that he did not know how to -put it forward for himself. “And then your extraordinary Joyce. Ireland -is his soil, indubitably, and no alien pollen has visited him. What a -talent! Solitary; morose; erudite. He will found a school here among -_nos jeunes_. That is already evident. You have writers to be proud of. -It is true we have our Proust to put beside them. You admire our -Proust?” - -“I’m sorry to say I don’t know him; or the morose Irishman either,” said -Giles, with a genial grin for his own discomfiture. - -“Monsieur Giles is a philosopher,” Alix now suddenly and surprisingly -contributed. Though so withdrawn she had been listening, watching, and -it was evident that she had a different conception of Giles’s best foot. -“He is going to found a school, too. At Oxford.” - -“I say! Draw it mild!” cried Giles, casting a glance of delighted -amusement at his young friend. - -“But is it not true, Giles, that the old philosopher, with the beard, -thinks that you will found a school?” said Alix. - -“I’m afraid he only hopes I’ll follow his,” said Giles. - -“Philosophy is, indeed, a magnificent subject,” smiled monsieur de -Valenbois, all gentle respect. “To follow a school adequately is often -to find that one has founded a new one.—Does our Bergson interest you?” - -Giles said that he did, very much, and found that Alix had succeeded in -putting his best foot forward, for they now all talked about philosophy. -Monsieur de Maubert, he gathered, was a disciple of Croce’s; monsieur de -Valenbois had read William James and the Pragmatists; and madame Vervier -had attended Bergson’s pre-war lectures at the Sorbonne. She found the -_élan vital_ in too much of a hurry. - -“We gallop, we gallop,” she remarked;—“but if I may not see my goal, -let me linger by the way.” - -“As for me,” cried mademoiselle Fontaine, “give me _le bon vieux Papa de -bon Dieu_ of my childhood! With him, at all events, one knows what to -expect and where one is.” - -The young artist had made no attempt to join the conversation and, now -that he had finished his coffee, he got up, taking an easel, a -camp-stool, and a box of paints, and went away out on to the cliffs. His -morose profile passed along against the frieze of floating sea-gulls and -madame Vervier, sadly shaking her head, said that Jules was in one of -his _humeurs noires_. - -“_Pauvre cher_!” sighed monsieur de Valenbois. - -It seemed that the young artist had an adored wife who was in a -madhouse. - -“I saw her before leaving Paris,” said madame Vervier. “She is quite -gentle. She allowed me to hold her hand.—But lost; altogether lost; she -was like a tame bird that has strayed from its cage and cannot find its -way in the forest. There it sits, on a branch, and stares into the -darkness. It is pitiful.” - -A silence fell for a while after that, and Giles heard in it the echoes -of the compassionate voice beating softly against each heart. - -“He will do great things,” said monsieur de Maubert presently. It was as -if he turned away from the gloomy fact and displayed for their comfort -the golden coin it had minted. “It is an authentic genius.” - -“Yes. If we can keep him alive to give it to us,” said madame Vervier. - -“If anyone can keep him alive it is you, Hélène,” said monsieur de -Maubert. - -Charming people they were, and compassionate and wise, thought Giles, -sitting there among them in the pellucid shadow while the gulls floated -past in the golden light. Strains of Gluck’s “Orpheus” floated with the -gulls through his mind. The thought of the young painter’s wife, lost in -the shades, suggested that music, perhaps. But it was an Elysian scene. - -When they were dispersed, all driving in monsieur de Valenbois’ car to -Allongeville for tennis, all except monsieur de Maubert who withdrew to -his room—to sleep, Giles imagined—Giles himself did not write letters. -He wandered along the cliff-path and saw the lovely shore curving, far -away, in azure bays beneath the gold-white cliffs. He looked at the -scene and was not consciously absorbed in thought; but a process of -testing, of reëstablishing, went on within him as if he felt about his -roots to see that they were firm. He would have need of firmness, and -the figure of Toppie went with him as an exorcising presence. - -It was late when the party returned and assembled for a supper of -_consommé_, chicken salad and a cream for which Albertine, saturnine yet -complacent, was warmly praised. Alix looked drugged with happiness and -fatigue and madame Vervier soon sent her to bed. Mademoiselle Blanche -Fontaine, in the drawing-room with madame Vervier and monsieur de -Maubert, read aloud the manuscript of a new play; the young artist went -away to his hotel on the _place_, and monsieur de Valenbois sat for a -little while with Giles on the steps of the verandah to look at the -fading dyes of the sunset and to talk of Scriabin, Stravinsky, and the -Russian ballet. Giles had to own that he did not care much about the -Russian ballet. He was always having to own things to monsieur de -Valenbois who showed the happiest interest in his lapses, giving -utterance, now and then, to a gentle long-drawn “_Tiens!_” Giles himself -was very tired, however, and felt that he could not adequately defend -his theories which rested upon an objection to the use of the body as a -means of primitive expressionism. He soon said good-night and went up to -his wonderful little room. - -After he had gone to bed he lay for a long time awake, a fold of the -coarse cool linen that smelt of orris root against his cheek. He heard -mademoiselle Fontaine go away to her own villa, escorted by the other -three. Then, when they returned, the _Sacre du Printemps_ came softly -humming up the stairs, showing him that monsieur de Valenbois was also -going to bed. After that the only voices left below were those of -monsieur de Maubert and his hostess, sitting in quiet converse on the -verandah. - -They talked meditatively with pauses of appreciation for the beauty of -the night, and madame Vervier must once have risen to advance and look -out into the starry vastness, for Giles heard her say “_Tiens;—qu’elle -est grande, notre étoile, ce soir!_” - -It was late before the final words were vaguely wafted up to him: -“_Bonsoir, mon ami._” “_Bonne nuit, ma chère Hélène._” - - - CHAPTER V - -He had not imagined madame Vervier coming down to breakfast; but she was -up long before it. Giles, looking from his window at seven, was -astonished to see her form, wrapped in a white bath-robe, advancing -leisurely from the cliff that she had, evidently, just ascended after a -morning swim. She was alone. It was so early that she had awakened no -one to share with her the delicate sting of the morning waves. Giles -indeed imagined, watching her, that these early hours were set apart by -her for solitude; that no one ever shared them with her. She walked, her -russet head bent down, a little as she had walked in the Bois; -meditating, it seemed. He heard her afterwards on the verandah, in the -salon below, moving quietly to and fro. Her calm voice directed -Albertine. “_Ne réveillez pas mademoiselle. Elle est si fatiguée_,” he -heard. - -A little while later, Albertine’s voice broke out far away, at the -garden gate, in vehement yet not unfriendly altercation with the baker’s -lady; and then, stealing deliciously into his sleepy senses, mingling -with the fragrance of the carnations by his bedside, the aroma of -roasting coffee-beans delicately tinctured the air. Albertine came in -with a jug of steaming water and it was time to get up. - -When he went down at half-past eight, monsieur de Valenbois was singing -in the drawing-room with madame Vervier at the piano; the song was -“_D’Une Prison_,” and he sang well. - -Albertine was laying breakfast on the verandah, and Giles stood leaning -against a pillar listening to the song. At its end madame Vervier -soberly commended the singer, yet turned a leaf, here and there, to -suggest an alteration. “_Qu’as-tu fait de ta jeunesse?_” monsieur de -Valenbois sang again, with a new poignancy; and yet again. “_Bien; très -bien_,” said madame Vervier’s quiet voice. - -Then monsieur de Maubert appeared, and they came out to greet him and -Giles. Monsieur de Maubert wore a small white woollen shawl over his -shoulders and madame Vervier asked him with solicitude whether he would -rather have breakfasted in the _salle-à-manger_, as usual. It had seemed -so deliciously mild a morning that she had told Albertine to lay the -table here. - -Monsieur de Maubert said he delighted in the plan. He would merely take -precautions against a _courant d’air_; and to ensure him further from -this calamity his chair was placed in a corner behind the table, Giles -aiding in his disposal and amused by the idea of Jove sheltering from a -_courant d’air_. - -“Oh, breakfast here! _Quel bonheur!_” cried Alix, emerging. She made -Giles think of a swallow as she skimmed out, her feet in their heelless -_espadrilles_ hardly seeming to touch the ground. André de Valenbois -also, he saw, noted her swiftness, her light, direct movement; noted, -too, no doubt, her clear face, stern in its carven structure, yet sweet -in smile and glance. Alix was really growing up; she was already a -person to be noted by a young man with an eye for beauty in all its -manifestations, and Giles, while monsieur de Valenbois’ eyes rested -almost musingly upon her, knew a fraternal, nay, almost a paternal, stir -of anxious surmise. Would that be a solution? He did not feel the need -of a solution for Alix’s problem to be so pressing as he had on the -steamer yesterday. It was difficult in this radiant _milieu_ to believe -her so in need of rescue. However heinous madame Vervier’s fault, she -could not, without manifest priggishness, be seen as a mother unfit to -care for a daughter. But problem or no problem, it would be a comfort to -know Alix settled, and during coffee and rolls he began to see, very -plainly, that this settlement must almost certainly have presented -itself to madame Vervier. If André de Valenbois were here on these terms -of happy intimacy, when her child arrived, had she not seen to it that -he was here? Could she have chosen better? If Alix was charming, so was -he; he was, indeed, Giles considered, having not thought much of Alix as -in the category, more obviously charming than she was; a veritable -prince of the fairy-tale in face, form, and demeanour, and if Alix was -not already affected by his presence that could only be because she was -still so much a child. He was not a young man to leave a maiden’s fancy -unaffected. - -“A penny for your thoughts, monsieur Giles,” monsieur de Valenbois’ -voice broke in, disconcertingly, upon his meditations. That he had -allowed them to become absorbing was evident to him from the smiles that -met his eyes as he raised them. He felt himself foolishly blushing. - -“Giles never talks much at breakfast,” Alix commented. - -“I don’t get much chance to, at home, do I?” said Giles, grateful for -her intervention. - -“You shall have every chance here,” said madame Vervier. “We rarely have -a young English philosopher among us. We must profit by the occasion.” -Her smile was very kind. - -“I know what monsieur Giles was thinking of,” said monsieur de -Valenbois. - -“Oh, no, you don’t,” Giles laughed. - -“I wager you!” monsieur de Valenbois challenged him, tilting back his -chair, his brilliantly blue eyes on his friend. “Do you defy me?” - -“Absolutely,” said Giles. - -“Well, own to my perspicacity when I tell you, then, that you were -thinking about mademoiselle Alix. You were reassembling your arguments -against the Russian ballet and reflecting that the best of them would be -that it is idle to go to art for something we can find more perfectly -displayed in nature.” - -Giles stared at him. It was near enough to cause him to stare. - -“Well?” smiled monsieur de Valenbois. - -“How did you know I was thinking about Alix?” Giles demanded. - -“How did I know?—Because I was!” laughed monsieur de Valenbois. “And -the same thoughts.” - -Madame Vervier was looking at them both, and again, Giles imagined, with -her veiled vigilance. “The Russian ballet?” she questioned. “What has -Alix to do with the Russian ballet?” - -“Forgive my execrable taste, _chère madame_!” exclaimed monsieur de -Valenbois, “in making mademoiselle Alix the subject of these -divinations! But did you remark the way in which she bounded out of the -house just now? It was a remarkable bound,” smiled monsieur de -Valenbois. “It started the same strain of thought in me and in monsieur -Giles, you see. We were discussing the Russian ballet last night.” - -“But I wasn’t thinking about the Russian ballet,” Giles rather -helplessly protested, and he felt madame Vervier not quite pleased. -“That’s what I should have thought, no doubt, if it had come to my mind. -But it didn’t.” - -“Ah; but the essential you will not deny,” said monsieur de Valenbois, -and Giles, feeling his blushes mount again, wondered just how far the -essential had indeed been divined. - -Alix was gazing first at him, then at monsieur de Valenbois and then at -her mother; and her mother’s eyes, while they caressed and approved her -silence, put her aside into the retirement suitable to a _jeune fille_. - -“Monsieur Giles has disowned the essential,” she remarked. - -“Do you like him, Giles?” Alix questioned when, after breakfast, she -moved off with her friend to the cliff-path. - -Giles really felt a little abashed before her calm; felt that he -deserved, rather than monsieur de Valenbois, madame Vervier’s implicit -reproof. - -“Monsieur de Valenbois?” he questioned. “Very much. Don’t you? I think -him charming.” - -“Charming,” Alix reflected. - -“Have you known him for a long time?” Giles inquired. - -“A long time? I?” Alix’s eyes came back to him surprised. “I never saw -him before.” - -“Really. He’s a new friend of your mother’s, then.” - -“Yes. They met at Cannes last winter,” said Alix. “Charming. He is that, -I suppose; but I think it a little _agaçant_ for anyone to look so sure -of happiness.” - -“Sure of happiness? You think he looks that?” - -“Yes. As if, always, he had had everything he wanted. That is a little -_agaçant_, I think. Though of course it is not his fault.” - -“It may be only a part of his intelligence, his general tact and taste, -to look it,” Giles suggested. “He would always be thinking about his -responsibilities towards his surroundings. If he wasn’t happy, nobody -would know it.” - -“But would that not be for his own sake rather than for theirs? He would -feel it a disadvantage to look unhappy,” said Alix. - -“But he’s so kind,” said Giles. “He seems to me, now that I come to -think of it, even more kind than he is charming. He’s been most awfully -kind to me already.” - -“And why should he not be?” Alix inquired. She took off her hat and the -morning breeze blew back her hair. - -“Well, I’m a rather unprepossessing young foreigner. I shouldn’t have -known how to be kind to him.” - -“He is quicker on the surface than you are, Giles; but you are quite as -quick beneath it, and deeper far, I feel sure,” said Alix. - -“Hang it!” said Giles, laughing, “how do you manage to think these -things at your age?” - -“I am of an age, it appears, to have monsieur de Valenbois discuss my -appearance in my presence,” said Alix. - -“Oh—but just because you are so young,” Giles, already alarmed for the -good fortune of his romance, protested. - -“Ah, but if I were as young as you mean, I should not be worth -discussing,” Alix returned. - -Giles glanced at her from the tail of his eye. How young, how old, -indeed, was Alix. His sense of a suffering only biding its time to -spring upon her came strongly to him as he scanned surreptitiously the -high young face that seemed to soar beside him, the vast background -lending an added haughtiness to its delicate projections. How French, -how French she was; how much a foreigner with all her familiarity; so -much so that he could not, even now, foresee what she would feel, what -love, what suffer. “And monsieur Jules;—I’ve never heard anyone call -him anything but Jules.—And mademoiselle Fontaine? Give me your -impressions of all these people,” he said. “They are so strange and new -to me.” - -“Poor Jules. I am fond of him. Very. I have known him for many years,” -said Alix. “Ever since Maman admired a picture of his and bought it and -then found him, starving, with his little wife. Maman has been their -good angel always. Success is coming to him now; now when it is too -late. And mademoiselle Fontaine is an old _habituée_ of Maman’s salon. I -have not seen her in the country before. She has taken this little villa -for the summer to be near Maman. She does not seem to belong to the -country. We will go one day to have tea with her and her mother and old -grandmother and see the little ‘fox,’” Alix added. “Her grandmother knew -Chopin. She will tell you so at once; and George Sand. She was an -actress, too. I do not think that I care much for actresses.” - -“And was mademoiselle Fontaine’s mother an actress?” - -“Oh, not at all. Her mother is quite different. _Une bonne petite -bourgeoise tout simplement_; quite insignificant and creeping. They both -adore the grandmother. You must see them,” Alix repeated, a slight -amusement on her lips, as if she spoke of quaint animals she had to -display to her friend. - -He and Alix and monsieur de Valenbois bathed before luncheon. Bathing at -Les Chardonnerets was a rather arduous affair. One undressed in one’s -room and ran out over the cliff-top in _espadrilles_ and bath-robe. The -long iron staircase down the face of the cliff was almost as steep as a -fire-escape in places, and at the bottom there was shingle to traverse -and then, if the tide was low, as on this morning, a stretch of wet -sand. Giles was an excellent swimmer and so was monsieur de Valenbois. -Alix, not yet proficient, though her stroke was good, swam between them -out to sea, and Giles, as he and the young Frenchman smiled at each -other over her dark head, felt a growing assurance for his romance. -André de Valenbois, he saw, found Alix a charming young creature, and -what could be a better beginning than that? She rested, when they turned -to come back, holding first Giles by the shoulders and then monsieur de -Valenbois. - -Madame Vervier was sitting on the grass, high against the sky. She -watched them from under a white sunshade, monsieur de Maubert, under a -green-lined one, extended beside her. “Now let me swim again and show -her how much progress I have made,” said Alix, and she bravely pointed -her hands through the waves, Giles and André beside her, exhorting, -directing, commending. Giles felt that madame Vervier, on her height, -watched it all complacently. Complacently, yet with that vigilance, too. -Alix was given the full liberty of the _jeune fille moderne_; but he had -already noted that however far and free her roamings her mother was -always aware of when, how, and with whom they took place. - -It so befell that Giles made the acquaintance of mademoiselle Fontaine’s -family that very day. Madame Vervier and monsieur de Valenbois went off -for a long motor drive and it was arranged with mademoiselle Fontaine, -who appeared soon after the swim, that Giles and Alix were to drink tea -with her and Maman and Grand’mère at their cottage. Monsieur de Maubert -was spending the afternoon with friends in the country. - -The smallest, most smiling little house it was, that of mademoiselle -Fontaine’s family. It stood behind a pink-and-grey wall in a tiny garden -and when they entered the gate at four o’clock they were welcomed by the -fox terrier, and found old madame Dumont, crumpled up in black draperies -and under a black parasol all lace and fringes, sitting out in the sun -on the flagged path with a row of white and purple petunias leading up -to her. Mademoiselle Fontaine stood behind her chair and gently but -forcibly shouted their names to her, and mademoiselle Fontaine’s mother, -who did not bear her name, but was plain madame Collet, emerged from the -house with a tray of tea and coffee. She was a stout, pale little woman -with a high, old-fashioned bosom and prominent, old-fashioned hips and -an old-fashioned fringe across her faded forehead. Careful, cautious, -grave and happy, she seemed as one who moved among precious objects to -whose well-being and security she knew herself essential. “Is that as -you wish it, Blanche?” Giles heard her whisper to her daughter; and to -her mother, “You are warm enough, Maman?” - -As for Grand’mère, Giles, in spite of Alix’s intimations, was hardly -prepared for such a fearsome old lady. Very fearsome he found her, -peering shrewdly up at him through the fringes of her parasol with the -beady eye of an old raven under a dark-blue beetling eyebrow. She was -powdered and dyed, and an erection of black lace ornamented her ample -indigo wig and fell in lappets on either side of her long Semitic -cheeks. Her smile was histrionic and her voice hoarse as if with years -of use for public purposes. Now and then she emitted a loud gong-like -laugh, and Giles could somehow imagine her, so full of vitality did she -still seem, standing in classic draperies on a vast stage and bellowing -forth passages from Victor Hugo. She talked almost immediately of Chopin -and mademoiselle Fontaine stood leaning on the back of her chair -listening to her as if she felt the rôle of listener, for herself as -well as for them, a privilege. Giles could not but admire what, he -supposed, was the effect of the French tradition of family life. It was -difficult to associate an intelligence as versatile as mademoiselle -Fontaine’s with this derelict antiquity, and even more difficult to -think of her as the daughter of the homespun little person who poured -out their tea and coffee. But mademoiselle Fontaine showed no sign, -apologetic or explanatory, of finding anything amiss with either of -them, and if her manner towards madame Collet was often curt and -authoritative, an affection that could show itself at moments in quite a -pretty playfulness evidently underlay it. - -“See what a naughty little mother I have, monsieur Bradley,” she -exclaimed. “She pretends always to forget that I do not like my -afternoon coffee made with chicory. In the morning, yes; I admit it; -later in the day, no. Ah, Maman! no excuses!! _Je vous connais._ Economy -is the motive!—She has never escaped the fear that unless one saves all -one’s _sous_ one may die in indigence.” - -“Chicory, Blanche? What do you say of chicory?” the old lady inquired, -leaning an ear towards her grandchild. “_Mais c’est très sain, la -chicorée. Ca rafraichit le sang._—If you drink chicory every day in -your coffee”—and now it was an eye she turned, half closed in sagacious -admonition, on the startled Giles—“you will not need to purge yourself, -my young man.” - -“_Fi donc, Grand’mère!_ We do not talk of _l’hygiène_ now!” laughed -mademoiselle Fontaine. - -“Ah, it is a thing never to forget,” said madame Dumont. “If Chopin had -not neglected his health, how many more works of genius he would have -given to the world.—He was my master, did I tell you, monsieur -Gillet?”—mademoiselle Fontaine had not succeeded in conveying Giles’s -name to her in a retainable form. “I had great talent for the piano. It -was said to me, when I chose the theatre as a career, that it was one I -chose and one I threw away.—You have heard of George Sand in England?” - -Giles said that they heard of her. - -“_Femme exécrable!_” madame Dumont exclaimed. “_Femme sans cœur!_ How -many lives did she not destroy!” - -“Ah, but I am always on the side of the woman, when it comes to _les -affaires de cœur_,” said mademoiselle Fontaine, with a smile at Giles. -“We are so often the losers that I feel a certain satisfaction when a -woman, even if ruthlessly, redresses the balance. And with all its -romanticism, what a great talent it was, that of the good George! Do not -say too much ill of her.” - -“Good! You can call a woman good who tricks one lover under the nose of -the other! Do you forget Pagello and Alfred de Musset!” cried madame -Dumont. “As for Musset; let it pass; he was not one to be pitied.—But -Chopin! A man as simple as a child. _Non. C’était un monstre!_” madame -Dumont declared. - -“And I will leave you to tell monsieur Giles what you think of George -Sand while I ask mademoiselle Alix to come upstairs with me and see a -new dress that has come from Paris,” said mademoiselle Blanche, thus -further demonstrating her intelligence to Giles, for indeed madame -Dumont’s reminiscences had begun to make him uneasy. - -Alix had picked up the friendly “fox” and was giving scant attention; -but once her impeding presence was removed, madame Dumont’s recitals -took on a disconcerting raciness and when, presently, madame Collet -gathered together the tea-things and carried away the tray, the old -lady, as if she had bided her time, lurched towards Giles, with a -terrible leering smile, to whisper: “_Elle est belle, n’est-ce pas, -madame Vervier?_” - -“_Très belle_,” said Giles, drawing away a little. - -“_Sa fille ne sera jamais aussi belle_,” whispered madame Dumont. “She -need not fear her. What fate more pitiful for a beautiful woman than to -find a rival in her daughter!” - -“Nothing of that sort could ever happen between Alix and her mother,” -said Giles angrily. - -“Nothing of that sort. _Précisément._ You, a young man, and I, an old -woman, see eye to eye when it comes to such a comparison,” madame Dumont -disconcertingly concurred. “_La petite_ Alix is not of a type to seduce. -She has distinction; an air of race; _mais elle n’est pas -séduisante!—Tandis que la mère!_”—and madame Dumont, with eye and hand -uplifted, took Heaven to witness of her appreciation. - -“That’s not what I mean at all. You quite misunderstand me,” said Giles, -more angrily. - -“_Vous dites, monsieur?_” said madame Dumont, fixing a very shrewd, -sharp eye upon him as if she suddenly discerned new aspects of an -obvious case. “It is the daughter you admire?” - -Madame Collet reappeared and Giles maintained a hostile silence. To -attempt to enlighten madame Dumont would be futile. - -“It is time for your _repos_, Maman,” said madame Collet. “She is so -old, so very old, monsieur,” she added, casting a glance of proud -possessorship upon Giles. “Only by constant care do we keep her with us. -And now it is time for the little afternoon nap.” - -The old lady, muttering something about chicory and _hygiène_, signified -her readiness to withdraw and Giles assisted her daughter in hoisting -her upon her feet. But for all her decrepitude she was still not lacking -in female sensitiveness and had time, it was evident, to make her -reflections upon something unflattering in the attitude of the young -Englishman, for, before she disappeared into the house, she bade him -farewell with an extreme and sudden haughtiness. - -Alix soon came down after that and they went away. - -“Well?” smiled Alix. “And did you appreciate the celebrated madame -Dumont?” - -Her smile hurt Giles. Its unconsciousness of what madame Dumont really -meant; her ignorance of what such old harpies thought and said of her -mother. “Horrible old creature!” he could not repress. - -“Horrible?” Alix was evidently surprised. “That is very severe.” - -“I want to be severe. I think she is quite horrible.” - -“It is always horrible to be so old. But she is not stupid, Giles. She -has been a great actress; at least, almost great. Monsieur de Maubert -saw her act years ago, and says that it was good. And sometimes she will -still repeat one of her famous scenes—as Phèdre or Athalie—to make -one’s blood run chill.” - -“She makes my blood run chill without any acting,” said Giles. - - - CHAPTER VI - -“_C’est la belle madame Vervier_,” said a contemplative voice behind -him, and Giles, glancing round, as he sat in the thatched chalet -overlooking the tennis courts, saw that it was the lady in grey who -spoke. - -He had played tennis all the morning with Alix, André de Valenbois and -another young man, a friend of André’s, who had motored over from a -neighboring château, and now that they had come back after tea, and, -with madame Vervier added to their number, made a quartette without him, -he watched them from the chalet, with a book. The small old houses and -large new villas of Allongeville climbed a valley that rose in a wooded -amphitheatre about the little watering-place and the tennis grounds lay -just outside it, pleasantly disposed, the highroad with its poplars on -one hand and on the other a hillside of tall grasses and wild flowers. - -Giles that afternoon had strolled back into the town to look at the -church and buy some tobacco. He liked the church, with its austere, -benignant Gothic and whitewashed cool interior, clumsy wooden beams -meeting in fishes’ heads above his head and clumsy old wooden figures of -saints standing against the pillars. Saint Martin was there with his -cloak and the beggar; Saint Roch and his dog and a little round-faced -Virgin Mary at the knee of Saint Anne. It was a homely, intimate church -and a sense of peace fell upon the perplexed heart of Giles as he -wandered about it. He wished, or almost wished, that he could kneel with -as simple a faith as the washerwoman who set down her basket of snowy -clothes in the aisle and said her rosary before the bright modern statue -of the Virgin. The mere sense of haven expressed in the attitude of a -sleeping old fisher-woman, with bare legs and hair like tangled seaweed, -was enviable. Giles would have found comfort in placing a taper to burn -on Toppie’s behalf before the gold-crowned Virgin and he would have -liked to doze beside the fisher-woman and feel that he had a right to do -so. And although he did not belong there, the church seemed to accept -his presence with a special placidity and kindliness as though it saw in -him merely a strayed sheep. It was the true fold, it seemed to say, and -it could afford to await, for centuries if need be, the return of all -such wanderers. - -From the church he crossed the _place_, paved with cobbles and bright -with awninged shops, and entered a leafy path that led up to the -cliff-top. A bench was placed in a grassy recess where one could sit and -look out at the sea, and it was while he rested there that Giles saw the -lady in grey emerge from a white house further up the cliff-side; a -tall, sad, slender, beautifully dressed woman of middle-years, whose -face, turned on him as she passed, made him think, with its inscrutable -calm and mild dignity, of the face of a Japanese lady. As much as the -Japanese lady, Giles felt, she belonged to an order, and the meaning of -life for her would be in the fulfilling its requirements. - -He was glad to see her reappear after he had established himself in the -doorway of the chalet. A friend was with her, a stout, dark, sagacious -person, and theirs were evidently the young people who played in a -further court. - -Giles rose when they entered and inquired whether his smoke incommoded -them, and the lady in grey, seeing again the stranger of the cliff-seat, -smiled kindly and said: “_Mais pas du tout, monsieur._” She was charming -with her slanting eyes and delicate, faded face. She carried still -further, though, as it were to a different conclusion, the impression -that madame Vervier had so strongly made upon him, of always knowing -what she meant to do and of saying what she meant to say. Even her -manner of bowing her head and smiling as she replied to him had a -technique. That was the only word for it. They had a technique for -everything, these French people, Giles more and more clearly saw it, and -not only the Samurai-like ladies, but the peasants, the shop-keepers, -the maids and waiters. If you presented them with a new situation, they -passed the novelty by and gave you the old answer. - -The friends looked about them. The stout lady had a long piece of -_broderie anglaise_, fastened, for more facility, to a strip of glazed -green leather. The lady in grey had silk and a fine steel crochet -needle. Giles could just see her long white hands from where he sat, -with rings of black enamel set with pearls, and the long earrings on -either side of her long white face were also of pearl and enamel. - -They observed the play of the four courts. Madame Vervier and her party -played in the nearest, and what more natural than that the lady in grey -should make her quiet comment. But though there was no disparagement in -her voice, Giles felt a slight discomfort in hearing her. Had she not -noted him as a foreigner and seen him as unattached, she would not, he -knew, so have alluded to his hostess. - -“_Tiens!_” said the stout dark lady, and she laid down her embroidery to -look at Alix’s mother. - -Madame Vervier playing tennis became an Artemis for speed, strength, -lightness. She flashed there in the sunlight before them, her russet -locks bound with white, her beautiful arms bare in the white tennis -dress, her slender white-shod feet exquisite in their unerring -improvisation. Her uplifted face, though so intent, had a curious look -of indolent power. - -“And the tall child, is she the daughter?” the dark lady inquired. - -“I believe so. Yes. The daughter. She bears the name of Mouveray,” said -the lady in grey. - -“Mouveray. _Précisément._ Her husband divorced her?” - -“Or she him. I do not remember. I do not know where the fault lay.” - -“And this is the husband’s child?” - -“Ah, that, _ma chère_, is more than I can tell you,” said the lady of -the earrings with a touch of melancholy humour. “But she, also, is -beautiful. I find her more beautiful than the mother.” - -“But with less charm,” said the stout lady, evidently of madame Dumont’s -opinion, and she had even something of madame Dumont’s expression in -pronouncing it. “_La mère est toute-à-fait séduisante. C’est une femme -exquise._” - -“But the child has more distinction,” said the lady of the earrings. - -“It is a head that would tell well on the stage,” the stout lady -suggested. “And speaking of the theatre I saw mademoiselle Blanche -Fontaine bathing here the other day. She is very well in the water.” - -“Yes. She is staying near madame Vervier at Les Vaudettes. She is a -friend. The child is perhaps destined for the theatre.—I can hardly -imagine mademoiselle Fontaine in the water,” and the lady of the -earrings smiled. “I can hardly see her off the stage.” - -“Ah, she is very well in the water,” the stout lady again asserted. -“_Elle est fausse maigre._ And she swims as well as she acts. What a -talent it is?” - -“A little shrill, a little metallic, perhaps,” said the lady of the -earrings; but the stout lady was quite secure of her admiration and said -that she considered mademoiselle Fontaine the foremost of their young -actresses. - -A little silence followed, and Giles, who had contemplated withdrawal, -settled himself again to his book when the talk, as the friends resumed -it, turned on their families. The stout lady spoke of her Jacques at the -Ecole Polytechnique; of _le petit_ Charlot and his love for music. The -lady of the earrings spoke of Andrée, who would soon be old enough to -marry, and of Grand-père, left up at the white house on the cliff with -Yvonne to entertain him. _Ma tante_ arrived to-morrow to open Les -Mouettes and was bringing a _religieuse_, an admirable woman, who was to -take charge of Grand-père. “_Quel homme surprenant_,” said the stout -lady, and the lady in grey said that he was, indeed, wonderful. -“Eighty-two, and interesting himself still in all our lives. I was -discussing Andrée’s marriage with him yesterday. We are fortunate, -indeed, in having kept him so long with us.” - -Giles, as he half listened, gained a further impression, after his -impression of the Dumont _milieu_, different, yet vividly the same in -its one essential, of the solidly, complicatedly built structure of -French family life; its dependencies; its responsibilities; its -ramifications. They all meant each other. They all lived with and for -each other, and the longer they lived the more important they became, -thus inversing the natural course of family life in England. Andrée, old -enough to marry, was a very insignificant person compared to Grand-père. - -“And who is the young man with madame Vervier?” asked the stout lady, -who had evidently just arrived at Allongeville, since she thus plied her -friend with queries. “The little one is René Claussel, I know.—But the -tall one? He is as handsome as madame Vervier herself.” - -“That is André de Valenbois. My uncle named him to me yesterday. -_Charmant garçon, n’est-ce pas?_” - -“André de Valenbois! But is he not to marry Babette de Cévrieux’s -daughter? Surely I have heard something of a marriage in contemplation -there.” - -“Ah. That is a sad story. It was, indeed, arranged; the preliminaries, -that is to say, in progress; the young people brought together; two very -pretty little fortunes and a happily matched young pair. But it is -owing, precisely, to madame Vervier that all has come to a standstill, -as you can imagine from seeing him with her. He is the present lover. -They were in Italy together last winter.” - -“But surely I heard of monsieur de Maubert as the present lover.” - -“Ah—no; that is ancient history. My uncle, who knows monsieur de -Maubert, believes that the relation, for years, has been platonic. There -have been many names since he was favoured. He is with her now, and it -may, of course, be that he is an _amant complaisant_, though it does not -seem probable. André de Valenbois, at all events, is the lover of the -moment, and from what I see and hear poor Babette will have to be -patient if she still thinks of him for Rose-Marie. A vulgar love would -have been less devastating in a young man’s life.” - -Giles now got up. Thrusting his book into his pocket he stood for a -moment staring out at the tennis players. He could not pass them without -speaking to them and thus reducing to painful confusion his unconscious -informants. Yet he must get away. After a moment of hot uncertainty, he -turned sharply round the chalet and began, behind it, to climb the -hillside. - -Well?—in what way was it a surprise? He almost challenged his sick -dismay with the question as he went knee-deep through the daisies and -scabious. Had not the horrible old woman’s intimations of the day before -prepared him for it? Had he really cherished the belief that madame -Vervier, after her first disaster, might have known no other love than -Owen? But the sickness answered for him. He had cherished just these -beliefs, and if madame Dumont had left his illusions unimpaired while -the ladies of the chalet destroyed them, that was because the first was -an old harpy while the latter were women of madame Vervier’s own world; -of what had been her world. The truth, now, was not to be evaded. Alix’s -mother was a light woman; an immoral woman; only not of the _demi-monde_ -because, he might still believe it, she was not mercenary. His heart was -cold with repudiation as he climbed. Owen was belittled by what he had -learned; Toppie was more basely wronged; Alix’s poor, proud little face -sank beneath the waters. What spar of pride would be left for Alix to -cling to when she knew? What would she feel? - -But what did those women feel? Suddenly, the racial difference more -sharply revealed to him than ever, he was aware that the cold -repudiation was for them, too. It was the colder because of their -kindness. They were safe in the citadel of their order. They were kind -because they were safe. Because they were safe they accepted the jungle -as having its own and its different code. They strolled peacefully along -the city walls and looked down at the bright, prowling, supple creature -without the city, and commented on its skill and beauty. One might -almost say that the jungle itself was part of the order, since the -_demi-mondaine_ was taken as much for granted as the _femme du monde_. -The bright creature was seen as dangerous, no doubt, to adventurers such -as André de Valenbois; but Giles surmised that the danger was not great. -Inconvenient was the apter word; inconvenient to the plans of the _mères -de famille_. Young men who belonged to the citadel had, as it were, the -freedom of the jungle; that was where it came into the order; for their -pleasure. They issued forth to adventure; but they came back, they -always came back—to Babette’s daughter—in the end. Cruel; abominable, -such tolerance, such connivance, combined with such repudiation. For it -was there that Giles’s austere young eyes saw the evil manifest, while -the conception of a social structure more complicated and more rigid -than any England could ever produce grew upon his vision. For nothing -was worse than cruelty, and what was more cruel than to repudiate after -you had connived? - -And where did Alix, child of the citadel, but habitant of the jungle, -come into the picture? His mind turned to her as he had left her, -leaping in the sunlight, her head thrown back, her arm uplifted; -straight, white, unaware. - -He felt himself looking steadily at Alix, eliminating her companion from -his field of vision. He could not look at André de Valenbois yet. He -could never look at him and at Alix, together, again. The memory of his -romance for them gave him almost a qualm of terror. André as an -individual was hideously eliminated from any such romance; but, as a -type, Giles could feel between him and madame Vervier’s daughter no -disparity or inappropriateness; none if he were a man with a spark of -generosity or insight. But, as he looked at Alix and her future, Giles -saw that for young men of the French citadel generosity and insight were -sentiments strictly appointed and conditioned. They did not enter into -the choice of a wife. How could they, since the choice was made as much -by Grand-père at eighty-two, by all the family, as by the young man -himself. There was in her own country no future for Alix at all; that -was what he saw quite plainly as he turned down from the hillside a mile -beyond Allongeville and marched across the road and made his way up the -opposite rise of meadow towards Les Vaudettes. - -He was striding along the upland now, among the fields of golden grain. -The sea-breeze blowing on his face seemed to speak of Alix, and his -thoughts, almost with a sense of tears, dwelt on her, on what he divined -of the child’s nature; so young, yet so mature; so sensitive, yet so -hard; and above all so passionately loyal. What would she feel when she -knew the truth?—He came back to the first question. They must all have -an order, a code, these strange French people. They none of them stood -alone. The individual was implicated through every fibre in the group to -which he belonged. Would Alix, when she knew, accept the jungle and its -code? What else was there for her to do? Giles was asking himself this -fundamental question by the time he reached Les Chardonnerets and was -finding the only answer to it. There was nothing that Alix could do. But -he could do something. He and his mother and all of them. Keep her. Away -from the jungle; and away from the citadel, too. “Damn it!” Giles heard -himself remarking as he marched towards the verandah. “It thinks itself -too good for her and she’s too good for it. She shall belong to us. It’s -the only way out,” said Giles. - - - CHAPTER VII - -He had mounted the steps, head bent, hands thrust deeply into his -pockets, and had actually cast himself into a garden-chair before he saw -that he was not alone. Over there in the corner near the little table -where the reviews and newspapers were laid, and the fluttering vines -tempered the sunlight, sat monsieur de Maubert, a book upon his knee and -his eyeglasses on his nose. He was looking above them, across at Giles, -and the young man was terribly disconcerted in seeing him. - -“I beg your pardon,” he muttered; “I didn’t know anybody was here.” - -“I have only just returned,” said monsieur de Maubert in his Olympian -tones, “and there is no occasion for apology. You were coming fast and -you were thinking deep. You seem disturbed, Monsieur. Has anything -occurred to incommode you?” - -Giles had pulled his chair around a little so that he faced monsieur de -Maubert and as he heard the suave question he suddenly determined to -answer it. Whatever monsieur de Maubert’s past relation to madame -Vervier, he felt assured from what he had observed that his present one -was based on a disinterested devotion. If he must try to persuade madame -Vervier to give Alix up to them, it would assuredly be as well to gain -monsieur de Maubert’s sympathy. - -“To tell you the truth, I am incommoded,” he said. “I’ve had a very -nasty shock. Is that right? _Un mauvais coup?_—Well, you understand, -I’m sure. We’re so fond of Alix, all of us, my mother and brothers and -sisters; she almost seems to belong to us; and I’ve just been hearing -two women talking at the tennis about her, and her mother; and about her -future. Nice women. And they seemed to think there wasn’t any future for -her except the theatre.” - -“Well?” monsieur de Maubert removed his glasses as if for a more -unimpeded observation of his companion. “And what is amiss with the -theatre? You did not, evidently, suppose that they narrowed the -opportunities of a young girl such as Alix to that career only; but it -will suffice for the argument. What is amiss with it? It may be a great -career for a woman of talent. Our friend mademoiselle Fontaine, for -example, has made for herself a distinguished name.” - -Giles felt that his face was hot, but he went doggedly on: “I know. I’m -not belittling it. But, from the way they spoke, I infer it’s not what -it is with us.” - -“A playground for pretty amateurs? A display of dressmakers’ -_mannequins_? No; it is not. We are a more serious people than you when -it comes to art.” - -Giles was not to be abashed. “With us it is one honourable alternative -among others. It’s a career any young girl can follow, except among -old-fashioned, prejudiced people. And I mean young girls of good -character; of good standing.” - -“What you mean, I think,” said monsieur de Maubert, “is that with us it -is not seen as a suitable career for a _jeune fille du monde_. Alix is -not a _jeune fille du monde_.” - -“No; I don’t mean only that,” said Giles. - -“Or perhaps that it is not with us a career _pour une vierge_,” monsieur -de Maubert further defined. “There you are right. I do not easily -imagine a great actress who is not also a woman of experience. That is -all that it comes to, is it not?” - -Giles wondered for a moment if this, indeed, was all that it came to for -him. He had not thought of it in those terms, and it gave him an added -chill to find that monsieur de Maubert did. “What it comes to for me,” -he said, “is that I don’t think it a suitable career for -Alix;—precisely because of what you say; and what’s more, I don’t -believe her mother does, either.” - -At this monsieur de Maubert was silent for some moments, and in the -silence Giles felt anew that, ambiguous, even sinister as he might be, -his sympathy could be counted upon where any interest of madame -Vervier’s was in question. If he reflected thus carefully, it was, Giles -felt, because from Alix they had passed to madame Vervier. - -“You are right. Her mother is with you,” he said at last, surprisingly. -“It is because she is with you that she sent the child last winter. She -sees the difficulties that you see. She would prefer, to any artistic -career in France, that Alix should marry in England. Marriage is what -she intends for her. She would, I am sure, be glad to talk of any -possibilities for Alix with you.” - -“I hope she’ll let me have a talk with her; I’m glad of what you tell -me,” Giles muttered, though bewildered by monsieur de Maubert’s calm -assumptions. - -And he was going on as calmly: “For myself, I do not know that I am in -agreement with her. Where her child is concerned, she shows, at times, -for a woman so gifted and so sagacious, a certain conventionality of -outlook. She who, for herself, has chosen the path of freedom, should -have more courage for her child.” - -“Isn’t it something of a criticism of the path of freedom that she -doesn’t choose it for her child?” Giles felt himself impelled to -comment. “Aren’t all mothers conventional when it comes to their -daughters? Isn’t convention, in that sense, only another name for -safety?” - -“Ah; you are a shrewd young man,” said monsieur de Maubert with a smile. -“Perhaps it is. Personally I feel that for our little friend the free -life of the artist would be a happier one than the life of the English -country lady. That life, for a vivid, vigorous nature such as hers, -would be, I should imagine, _bornée_; _fade_.” - -“I don’t see why it should,” said Giles. “But I wasn’t thinking of -country ladies, or of marriage at all. We don’t think of marriage like -that. I thought of Alix making her living in England. I thought of a -life where she would have love and respect about her and be useful and -happy.” - -“I do not think that such a prospect would at all attract her mother,” -monsieur de Maubert remarked. “I do not see what more advantage it -offers than a similar life in France. Do you consider, then, that madame -Vervier has not love and respect about her and is not useful and happy?” - -Giles at this, struck to silence, sat staring at monsieur de Maubert. - -“You have doubtless,” monsieur de Maubert continued—and Giles saw that -it was not through any inadvertence that he had thus placed the -situation of madame Vervier squarely between them; without any -embarrassment, without any hesitation, he calmly selected the -theme—“you have doubtless heard those women speaking of our hostess as -if they did not respect her.” - -“Not quite that,” Giles muttered. “They spoke merely as if she didn’t -count with them at all.” - -“And do you imagine,” monsieur de Maubert inquired, “that they count -with her?” - -In spite of his confusion Giles could answer this question immediately. -“They count with her for Alix,” he said. - -“For Alix?” monsieur de Maubert mildly, yet perhaps not quite -ingenuously, questioned. - -“You’ve owned to it yourself,” said Giles. “It’s their life she’d want -for Alix. The safe life. The respected life. She’d rather that Alix -should marry one of their sons than be the most wonderful of actresses.” - -“It may be so. Gifted and sagacious people have their weaknesses. You -speak again of respect,” said monsieur de Maubert. “All those who are -honoured with her friendship respect madame Vervier. You speak of -marriage. What wife can hope for adoration? Madame Vervier is adored as -well as respected.” - -“I should have said that a wife could hope for adoration—and for -fidelity as well,” Giles returned. - -“Very rarely,” monsieur de Maubert smiled. “And I do not imagine that -our hostess—of whom I speak thus openly because I see that between us -there is nothing to conceal—has ever had to fear infidelity. She is in -the fortunate position of a woman free to choose. She gives happiness -when and to whom she wishes.” - -Giles sat battling with a confusion of thoughts. He had not meant to -discuss madame Vervier with anybody. It was horrible to him that he and -monsieur de Maubert should thus be discussing her. But without implying -her present it was impossible to discuss Alix’s future. “I don’t call it -fortunate,” he said. “I don’t call it happiness.” - -“You do not call it happiness to love and to be loved?” monsieur de -Maubert inquired. “You have, perhaps, mystic consolations, monsieur -Giles; but to the majority of our poor humanity this will always remain -the one authentic happiness of life.” - -“We have different ideas,” said Giles. “I don’t see love like that. When -you speak of her giving happiness, you mean, I suppose, that she has had -a great many lovers. That is what those women said. I think that a -tragic life, you see; and the more tragic, the more lovely the woman is -who leads it.” - -“A great many?” monsieur de Maubert weighed it. “Hardly that. She is a -serious, not a frivolous woman; and beauty accompanies her always.” - -“You see, we have different ideas,” Giles heavily repeated, looking down -and tugging at the wicker of his chair. “A love that can be repeated -over and over, I don’t call love.” - -“_Bonté divine!_” monsieur de Maubert laughed suddenly among the vines. -“A fountain cannot throw itself into the air repeatedly and remain -itself? Spring cannot return to us again and again? It is with our -hearts as with nature; a renewal; a discovery of fresh beauty. And since -we are all different, with each new love there is the discovery of new -beauty.” - -“Love to me means nothing—worse than nothing—unless it means -dedication; permanence; unity,” said Giles. - -“Ah, but then it ceases to be love,” said monsieur de Maubert, “and -becomes duty, affection, the joys and cares of the _foyer_; what the -wives—if they are fortunate—may count on. A young man like you is -surely aware of the difference between love the passion, and love the -affection. We feel the latter for our wives and mothers; we feel -something very different for our mistresses.—You will agree to that, I -think.” - -“I’ve never had a mistress,” said Giles. - -“_Tiens!_” It was an exclamation of blended amusement, astonishment and -most courteous respect for a strange idiosyncrasy, and Giles saw -monsieur de Maubert in his dappled sunlight opening large eyes. - -“What I’d like to ask you, if I may,” said Giles, “is what you feel for -mistress number one when mistress number two has deposed her; and what -you feel for number two when you are devoting yourself to number three. -You can’t feel passion for them all, at the same time, I suppose. The -present lady preoccupies you. What of the others, then? Have they ceased -to arouse any solicitude or interest?” - -“From the fact that they are gone, far less,” monsieur de Maubert owned, -shifting himself now in his chair the better to contemplate his -companion. “One may think of them with gratitude or regret; with pain or -indifference. One may have been abandoned, or one may have found oneself -ceasing to desire. A man of honour will do all in his power for the -woman who has been dear to him; who may still be dear. Affection and -trust may still be there, though passion has burned itself away.” - -“That must fill your time,” Giles muttered, “pretty considerably.” - -“Ah, it might”—if monsieur de Maubert felt the dryness of the young -man’s tone he did not stoop to any retaliation; he was all -kindliness—“but charming women are rarely in need of consolation. Is -not the fact you will not face, my idealistic young friend, the fact, -simply, that passion, the flame, does burn out? That is a law of life. -You will not alter it with all your ascetic moralities. And shall we -turn from the flame, its ardour and beauty, because it cannot burn for -ever? That would be an anchorite’s error. Let us burn with it and -rejoice, until it sinks. Unfortunately, the time of renewal passes,” -monsieur de Maubert sighed. “Spring goes, and Summer goes, and even of -Autumn there is little left. Winter approaches and one grows old.” - -Giles sat silent looking out to sea. The things he held to be of -infinite value were invisible to monsieur de Maubert. The things -monsieur de Maubert held to be of value were clearly visible to him. He -saw the beauty of flame and fountain and the old paganism in his human -heart echoed to the thought of love the passion. But he saw something -else, that underlay them all, not contradicting, as monsieur de Maubert -imagined, but completing them. What that something was it would be -useless to describe. If one had come to life asking only of each moment -what it gave and never what it meant, one became blinded to the meaning. - -Sadness fell between them sitting there, and presently monsieur de -Maubert said, showing that he felt it, “Well, the sun is setting; I will -go in. You are sorry for me and I am sorry for you.—Do we terminate our -discussion in a mutual sympathy?” - -He had risen from his chair with a rather porpoise-like roll of his -stout white body and stood, complete, assured, benevolent, looking down -at Giles; and Giles wondered, looking up at him, whether the price one -paid for such completeness was just that blindness. - -“I suppose there is sympathy,” he vaguely murmured. “I’m afraid it’s -true, though. I think you quite as wrong as you think me.” - -“Ah, when you are as old as I am,” said monsieur de Maubert, -unperturbed, “you will think differently. You will by then, assuredly, -intelligent as you are, have learned to make a better use of your time. -You will have learned to round out your life by a richer experience.” - -Giles, too, had risen, and he could almost have laughed as he listened; -it struck him as so comic, with its sadness, that the traditional rôles -of youth and age should be thus reversed. “You will have learned,” -monsieur de Maubert was going on, “to accept the full gamut of our human -nature. There remains nothing, nothing, for the anchorite in his -desert—let me assure you of it—but the handful of sand his dying hand -clutches at. He has had, you will say, his mirage with which to console -himself. That is a sorry consolation at the end. Accept reality, my -young friend. Accept the full gamut. Neglect none of the strings of your -violin. It is broken all too soon. And what more sad than to have -stopped your ears against its sweetest melody?” - -“What, indeed?” said Giles. There was hardly irony in his voice. It was -contemplative rather. And smiling at monsieur de Maubert as they stood -there in the sunset, he added: “We want different things.” That simile -of the unheard melody summed it up. - - - CHAPTER VIII - -It was strange to meet them all again that evening, so unchanged to -their own consciousness, so changed to his. Strange to find them still -so charming and so to shrink from their charm. They came laughing up the -steps of the verandah where he still sat, and he wondered if they felt -in his voice and look, as he greeted them, any difference. - -“Ah, it was an excellent set,” André de Valenbois said, laying down his -racquet and seating himself next to Giles. “Where did you disappear to, -_mon ami_? We looked, and you were in the chalet, and when we looked -again, you were gone.” - -“I felt I’d like a walk. I went up the hill behind the chalet,” said -Giles. “The country is lovely up there.” - -Madame Vervier’s eyes were on him, hardly cogitative in their gaze, yet -perhaps conjecturing something. She, doubtless, knew the names of the -ladies of the chalet as well as they knew hers. She might infer the -reasons for his flight. At all events, saying nothing, only maintaining -her cool dim smile, she crossed the verandah and went into the house. - -The evening meal at Les Chardonnerets was irregular in its hour and -informal in its habit. Monsieur de Maubert and André de Valenbois only -changed their flannels for light afternoon clothes, and Jules, when he -came, did not change at all. Giles maintained his custom of evening -dress, but he waited for some time alone in the drawing-room that -evening, and even after André had joined him, exquisite in pale blues -and greys, another five minutes passed before madame Vervier and Alix -appeared. - -Madame Vervier wore a dark silk dress, purple or red or russet—Giles in -the waning light could not define the tint—fastening at the breast with -a great old clasp of wrought gold. A fringed Empire scarf, purple, -silver, and rose, fell about her beautiful bare arms; a high Empire comb -was in her hair, and with her dark gaze she made Giles think of a lady -drawn by Ingres. - -She moved across to the window, her arm around Alix, and said, standing -there and looking out: “_La belle soirée!_” It was a citron and ash sky -above a golden sea. - -“Maman, you will sing this evening,” said Alix. “Giles has not heard you -sing.” - -“Monsieur de Valenbois is the singer. I have no voice,” said madame -Vervier. - -“One needs no voice to sing the songs I mean,” said Alix. “Do you know -our old songs of France, Giles?” - -She looked round at him over her shoulder, palely shining in the white -taffeta, and Giles, with a sinking and sickening as of an unimaginable -yet palpable apprehension, saw that André de Valenbois’ appreciative -eyes were upon her; upon her, rather than upon her lovely mother. - -“Do you know the one beginning, ‘_L’Amour de moi_’” asked Alix. - -Giles said he did not. - -“Ah, it is the very dawn of loveliness, that song,” said André, and in -the words Giles felt the expression of a perhaps subconscious train of -thought. “It is so young. It is all dew and candour. You must hear it, -monsieur Giles.” The young Frenchman wandered about the room, his hands -in his pockets. “Of the time of your Chaucer,” he went on. “Our -countries then had much the same heart. It was the time when our great -cathedrals rose and miracles were as plentiful as turtle-doves.” He -paused before the mantelpiece and took up one of the photographs set -there. “This is of you, mademoiselle Alix?” - -Madame Vervier had turned from the window, and, still holding Alix, she -approached him. - -“Yes; it is of me. It was taken in England,” said Alix. - -Giles had not noticed the photograph, but he noticed a change in Alix’s -voice. He, too, drew near, and saw the little snap-shot of Alix with the -dogs at the edge of the birch-wood. But it was in a frame delicately -embroidered in blue and silver, and he asked in all innocence, “Where -did the pretty frame come from, Alix?” - -“Toppie made it,” said Alix. The alteration in her voice was now -evident. He now knew why, and fell to instant silence. - -“Toppie? What is Toppie?” André de Valenbois asked, laughing a little -and looking at Alix over her photograph. “That is a name I have never -heard before.” - -“It is _le petit nom_ of mademoiselle Enid Westmacott,” said madame -Vervier, in tones sad and gentle. “She was the _fiancée_ of monsieur -Giles’s brother, our friend, killed in battle, of whom you have often -heard me speak. Mademoiselle Toppie”—how strangely the childish -syllables fell from her untroubled lips—“made the little frame for me -as a Christmas gift. Had you not seen it, monsieur Giles? It is -exquisite. I was infinitely touched by her thought of me.” - -“Ah. It is, indeed, exquisite,” André murmured, while Giles found no -words. “One feels that only an exquisite person could have made -it.—Yes, certainly I have heard you speak of monsieur Giles’s brother, -_chère madame_. But I did not know that he was betrothed.” - -He spoke in a respectful tone, holding the frame, but for all his -resource and grace of bearing, filled, Giles suddenly felt, with a -conflict of thoughts. Did he know of Owen? Did he accept his place, in -the succession? Was he jealous in retrospect; or, like monsieur de -Maubert, in retrospect _complaisant_? And that there was something to be -kept up—or was it for him, Giles, that she kept it up?—was manifest to -him from the deliberate adequacy with which madame Vervier advanced to -meet the occasion, while Alix, her eyes turned away from them all, fixed -her gaze upon the sky. - -“She is, indeed, exquisite. I can say it, monsieur Giles, although I -have never met her. It is not only from Alix’s letters that I know her. -Before that. Your brother talked of her always. She was always in his -thoughts. One could not know him well, or care for him as we did, -without coming to know and care for his beautiful Toppie. It was a great -devotion,” said madame Vervier, and her voice, in its sadness, -sweetness, and decorum, seemed to lay a votive offering before Toppie -and her bereavement. “I have never known a greater.” But as she thus -offered her wreath and bowed her head, Giles saw a deep colour rise -slowly in Alix’s averted face. - -“And here is monsieur de Maubert,” said madame Vervier, turning to greet -the latest entry. “Jules evidently is belated in some distant village. -We will wait no longer, I think. Albertine’s soup will be spoiled.” - -“Have you not a picture of this lovely mademoiselle Toppie?” Giles heard -André say to Alix as they moved to the dining-room, madame Vervier -leading the way on monsieur de Maubert’s arm. - -“No, I have no picture of her,” said Alix. - -“You know her well?” - -“Very well. She lives near Mr. Bradley’s family.” - -If madame Vervier’s voice showed full adequacy, so did her child’s. -Alix’s adequacy, her grave courtesy, untinged by withdrawal, yet setting -a barrier, filled Giles’s thoughts during the meal. She, too, knew just -what she wanted to say and just how to say it; yet how much deeper, he -felt sure, was her perturbation than madame Vervier’s. She had seen her -mother, before the eyes of her English friend, involve herself in a web -of implicit falsehood. How false was madame Vervier’s web Alix could not -know; but she had known enough to feel ashamed before him; not, Giles -knew, because Maman lied; but because she had need of lies. She herself -had also lied. Giles, on their journey, had seen Toppie’s photograph in -her dressing-case. She had lied because she wished to remove Toppie, as -well as herself, from even an indirect intimacy with André de Valenbois. -It was as though some deep instinct warned her against him. And though -Giles again deplored her readiness, he could not feel that he regretted -it. - -She sat opposite him, all silvery in the soft candle-light, her young -downcast face set in its narrow frame of hair, and he knew that grief -and fear were in her heart. Madame Vervier talked much, for her, and her -gaze, turned once or twice on her child, seemed, as was its wont, to -include her and to carry her on to further depths of contemplation. But -even madame Vervier could not guess what was in Alix’s heart. - -After supper they all went out on the verandah. The vines fluttered -against a moonlit sky and moonlight washed in upon them like a silvery -tide. Mademoiselle Blanche, wrapped in swansdown, came gliding in, and -Jules, with a pipe, emerged from the shadows and sat in his accustomed -place on the steps. Giles felt that it soothed the lacerated heart of -the young artist to be with madame Vervier. Like a wounded wild animal, -he drew near the hand he trusted. She was capable of compassion; of -great gentleness; of most disinterested friendship. An enigma to Giles, -there she sat, and her soft, meditative alto joined in the old songs -they all sang together, while Alix, behind her in the shadow, leaned her -head, as if weary, upon her shoulder and listened. But more than -weariness was expressed in the child’s attitude. Giles, listening to the -dove-like tenderness of “_L’Amour de moi_,” divined it all. Alix sought -comfort from the pressure of new apprehensions, new intuitions, new -complexities; and more than for herself, it was for Maman that she thus -drew near. The very love, tender, devout, brooding, of the song, was in -the gesture with which she laid her head beside her mother’s and looked -out across her breast into the unknown future. - - - CHAPTER IX - -Madame Vervier did not come down to breakfast next morning. Giles had -heard a murmur of voices in the room next his till late into the night -and he saw from Alix’s eyes that she had slept little. They breakfasted -as usual in the little dining-room which overlooked the garden at the -back of the house and might have been dark, with its old polished -panelling, had not the sunlight at this hour so flooded it. A linen -cloth of blue-and-white squares was on the table, and a bowl of -marigolds, that seemed to bring the sunlight clotted and palpable among -them, in the middle. Above the marigolds, Alix, in Maman’s place, poured -out their coffee, heavy-eyed but still adequate. - -Monsieur de Maubert and André argued about politics with an impersonal -vehemence that recalled to Giles, in its transposed key, the altercation -of the friendly men in the train. He gathered, however, that they were -both agreed on the necessity of a strong man for France and on many -lopped heads. The French had not changed so much since the Revolution -after all. Whatever the party, the solution seemed the same. -Mademoiselle Fontaine, rushing in with a wonderful pink sunbonnet on her -head, vividly contributed her own brand of violence, and then announced -that it was the very morning for _la pêche aux équilles_. The tide was -low; the sun shone; the breeze blew; and she had promised Maman and -Grand’mère a marvellous _friture_ for their _déjeuner_. - -Giles had not yet seen this mildest sport. Armed with spades, -bare-legged and shod in _espadrilles_, they made their way to the beach -and, following the receding waves, dug vigorously for the evasive prey, -half fish, half eel. He found himself laughing with them as they climbed -rocks and raced to fresh stretches of wet, shining sand. He had never -known anything more disquieting than the mingling of aversion and liking -he felt for them. He and André and mademoiselle Blanche sat on a rock to -rest while, at some distance, near the edge of the waves, Alix dug -alone, and, as he listened to them and watched her, Giles realized that -Alix had been with rather than of them. She had smiled, also, she had -even laughed; but there was a disquiet in her deeper even than his own, -and if she dug there so intently it was because she found relief in the -childish toil. - -“What a sky!” said André, looking up at the rippled blue and silver. “It -is like music, is it not? Music of a celestial purity. Are you fond of -César Franck, monsieur Giles?” - -It filled Giles with gloom to hear André speak of celestial purity. It -was not that he felt the charming young Frenchman to be impure. What -separated them was their conception of life. André’s, like monsieur de -Maubert’s, like madame Vervier’s, was a pagan philosophy and his was a -Christian. He did not believe that they could understand César Franck. - -“Ah! He is not for me!” cried mademoiselle Blanche, appropriately, her -chin in her hand as she looked out with brilliant, intelligent eyes at -the far horizon. It was strange to see her sitting there, her face -whetted by artificial emotion, dyed and touched and rearranged to suit a -fashion, among things as primitive as rocks and cliffs and sky. “It is a -music without breathing; without blood; the music of a trance. The waves -do not break, the clouds do not sail, the birds are silent; one is fixed -in an eternity. I do not like eternity.” - -“Ah, mademoiselle,” said André, “monsieur Giles here, who is a -Platonist, will tell you that only when we reach eternity do we find -life.” - -André’s fox-seraph face was artificial, too, though so differently. -Everything he had experienced had been a selection. He had had, all his -life through, only to stretch forth his beautiful hand and take from the -heaped and splendid _corbeille_ offered him by destiny what fruit, -curious or lovely, most tempted him. And his grace, his gift, lay in the -fact that he was tempted only by what was curious or lovely. There was -nothing of sloth or sensuality in his being. Tempered like steel, he -mastered every lesser taste by one finer, and Giles saw him like one of -the gravely joyous youths of the Parthenon frieze riding life, as if it -were a perfectly broken steed. How exquisite a being must madame Vervier -be to have attached him! Such was the thought that passed through -Giles’s mind, revealing to him, as it did so, how far he had advanced in -the understanding of pagandom. And a stranger thought followed it. -Unwilling as he was to admit it, it was yet indisputable that Owen had -gained a value in his eyes from having been chosen by such a being; from -having been André de Valenbois’s predecessor. Whatever Owen had -lost—and Giles knew that the loss was beyond computation—that he had -certainly gained. Meanwhile, on the subject of eternity and César -Franck, he maintained a silence which, he hoped, might not seem too -morose. - -When they returned to Les Chardonnerets with their _pêche_, madame -Vervier sat on the verandah embroidering. Monsieur de Maubert was beside -her, and Giles felt sure, from the moment he set eyes upon them, that -monsieur de Maubert had by now fully repeated to her the conversation of -yesterday. Giles’s impressions and discoveries and beliefs were known to -her; and, no doubt, the fact that he had never had a mistress. She and -monsieur de Maubert had talked him over and over and up and down, but -what they had made of him he could not even imagine. - -Her eyes met his with the bland serenity of a statue’s. “Have you had a -good _pêche_?” she asked Alix. She took her by the hand and drew her to -her side and looked down into the bucket. “Admirable! Albertine will be -overjoyed. _Dieu, que tu as chaud, ma chèrie!_” - -“It is the climb up the cliff, Maman,” Alix bent her head obediently -while her mother passed a handkerchief over her neck and brows. - -Monsieur de Maubert had got up and gone inside and mademoiselle Blanche -had parted from them at the cliff-top. - -“I will sit here in the shade with you and rest, _chère madame_,” said -André, casting himself into monsieur de Maubert’s vacated garden chair. - -“And you, _ma petite_,” said madame Vervier, still holding her child by -the hand, “may, if you wish, and if monsieur Giles will accompany you, -bathe now. You will have time before lunch.” - -“I should like that very much. But I do not need anyone. It is quite -safe,” said Alix, with a curious lassitude in her tone. - -“But, indeed, you may not go alone,” smiled madame Vervier. - -“And I should love a swim,” said Giles. - -So, presently, he and Alix were on the beach again. - -But when they came to the rock where, with safety, the bathing-robes -might be deposited, Alix, instead of doffing hers, sat down and said: -“Shall we talk a little?” - -“Do let us talk,” said Giles, and a great wave of relief went through -him. At all events, Alix would not keep things from him. He sat down -beside her. Only the sea and sky were before them. - -“I had to tell Maman last night, Giles,” said Alix. She looked straight -before her, wrapped to her chin in the white folds of her robe, and he -felt that she had to keep herself by sheer self-mastery from reddening -before him now, as she had last night when she had heard Maman talk of -Toppie. - -“Ah. Yes,” said Giles as quietly as he was able. “I thought perhaps -you’d feel it best.” - -Alix, her dark brows slightly knotted, looked before her. “And I think -she sent me here with you so that I should tell you,” she went on. “Tell -you, I mean, that she believed what she said last night about Captain -Owen and Toppie. That Toppie was first with him. Not until I told her of -his silence to you all did she see—what you and I saw, Giles;—that he -cared most for her.” - -Giles sat, struck to an icy caution. Yes; he saw it in a flash; that was -how she would put it to Alix. He could find no word. But Alix expected -none. Carefully she continued her tale. “It made her very sad when I -told her of his silence. It made her cry. But she was not angry with me -for having kept it from her. She understood.” - -“And was she angry with him?” Giles asked after a moment. - -Alix at that turned her eyes upon him and he read in them a deep -perplexity. “I do not know,” she said. “She did not say. I do not think -she was angry with him either. She is a person who understands -everything. But I do not think she would have been so unhappy if it had -not hurt her very much. Why else should she cry?” - -Why, indeed? Was it for her unveiling before himself? How difficult to -think it after the blank gaze of those dark eyes. Was it not, rather, in -fear and grief at seeing her child entangled, at last, in her -vicissitudes? However it might be, there was a new burden on her heart -and, inevitably, Alix now must bear part of its weight with her. - -“Well, I’m glad it’s all out,” Giles murmured. “It makes everything -simpler, doesn’t it?” - -“Does it?” said Alix. - -When she asked that, he was aware that part of his thought had been that -it made it simpler in regard to Alix herself and what he hoped to do for -her. But was he really so sure of this? Would madame Vervier be more -willing to let them have Alix now that she saw all her vicissitudes -disclosed to him? - -“I hope she’ll have a talk with me,” he said. “One can’t talk, really, -if things aren’t clear.” - -“She is going to talk with you, Giles,” said Alix. She still spoke with -her lassitude. It was as if Maman had stretched her too far. “I do not -know when. She is occupied, as you see, with her other friends. But she -will talk with you. You please her. Very much.” - -“Oh, do I?” Giles murmured. If it hadn’t been his dear little Alix he -could hardly have kept the irony from his voice. “I hope it will be -soon,” he said. “I hadn’t intended my visit to last over the week, you -know.” - -“I think it will be soon,” said Alix. “But I cannot say for Maman. Shall -we swim now, Giles?” - -When they all met again at lunch, over the marigolds, it seemed to Giles -that madame Vervier looked at him with a new kindliness. She seemed to -take it for granted that from his little interview with Alix there must -have come a gain for their relation. She asked him if he was coming this -afternoon to tennis, and when he said no, that he had work to do, she -went on, smiling at him: “You will be abandoned, then, for we all have -our tea at Allongeville. But perhaps you will take refuge with madame -Dumont and her daughter.” - -Alix had told tales. That was evident. Giles summoned an answering smile -with which to own that nothing could be further from his wishes than to -have tea with mesdames Dumont and Collet. - -“You do not care for our ancient neighbor?” - -“Not at all,” said Giles. - -“Ah, in her day, _la pauvre vieille_, she had her qualities,” said -monsieur de Maubert. - -“Blanche told me that Grand’mère found you _un jeune homme très -sévère_,” said madame Vervier, her eyes still resting on him as if with -a mild amusement. “She is not accustomed to young men such as you. I do -not think she has ever met such a one. It is a heavy intelligence”—she -now addressed monsieur de Maubert. “It must always, I imagine, have been -a heavy talent. One wonders where Blanche found her delicious gift.” - -“A grandfather, a father, might account for that,” said monsieur de -Maubert. - -“A father might. A grandfather has only madame Collet to his credit,” -smiled madame Vervier. - -“Her talent is too sharp. Like herself,” said André. - -“But the parts she prefers need the keen edge,” said madame Vervier. - -“Every part needs a soul, and she has none; _elle n’a pas d’âme_,” said -André. - -Madame Vervier defended her friend. - -“With so much intelligence she needs less soul than other people.” - -“Pardon, _chère madame_. With so much intelligence one needs more. It is -that one feels in her. The sheath is too thin. The blade comes through.” - -“_Vous êtes méchant_,” said madame Vervier, and there was in her voice -none of the inciting gaiety usual to the reproach; she spoke gravely, -looking down at the cloth and slightly moving her spoon and fork upon -it, and Giles suddenly divined that poor mademoiselle Blanche was in -love with André. - -“_Mais non! Mais non!_ I think her charming,” laughed André. “But I can -understand that madame Dumont is her grandmother.” - - - CHAPTER X - -It was not until next day, after luncheon, that the time came, and -Giles—as madame Vervier said to him, “I find it too hot for tennis -to-day. Will you stay behind and talk with me, monsieur Giles?”—felt -sure that it all had been planned, intended from the first. If she had -thus delayed, it was in order that he should come to know her better and -feel more at home with her. It was also in order that she should take -his measure and see more surely what she was going to do with him. - -Monsieur de Maubert, also, was going to Allongeville; André’s motor -waited at the gate. He and madame Vervier were to have the afternoon to -themselves, and as they all parted on the verandah, Giles saw that Alix -cast a long look at him.—Poor little Alix! How little she could guess -at what he hoped for from this interview! If madame Vervier had her -intentions, he had his. And though he believed they would not clash, his -heart was beating quickly as he followed her to the drawing-room. So -many things, lay between him and madame Vervier and her glance, her -voice, seemed to tell him that none of them were to be evaded. - -The drawing-room was fresh and pale; so pale in its citrons, whites, and -dim jade-greens, that the sunlight outside, shining against the -transparent reed blinds, looked tawny in its fierce, prowling splendour. -The sea was there, sparkling in its immensity across the lower half of -the long windows, and the sky of another blue was across the upper half -and the vines and honeysuckle that garlanded the verandah outside hardly -stirred in the brilliant air. There were bowls of sweet-smelling small -white roses from the garden, and madame Vervier was in white, the thin -woollen dress with the sash at her waist and tassels at her breast that -left bare her lovely arms and neck. Her russet hair was all tossed back -to-day and there was something ingenuous in the shape of her forehead -thus uncovered; something candid and childlike. In her hand, as she sat -before Giles, she held a stone, a flat, smooth stone, pinkish-grey, that -she had perhaps picked up on the beach in one of her walks at dawn. She -held it, weighing it slightly from time to time and from time to time -putting it against her lips or cheek, as if to enjoy its coolness. - -Giles had never in his life seen anything so beautiful. He knew that she -was not beautiful if computed or examined by standards of exactitude; -that her eyes were small, her nose a little flattened, her mouth -clumsily drawn; but power so emanated from her gaze, magic so pervaded -her lips and brows, sweetness lay with such a bloom of light upon her, -that every imperfection was dissolved in the unity that made a sort of -music in his mind. She was like an embodiment of music—and what was -that urgent, searching rhythm, that evocation of flowers and dew and -night? The melody of Brahms’s “Sapphische Ode” surged into his mind and -with it a deep, an almost overpowering sadness. With the song he -remembered everything; everything was evoked. The Spring day in the -Bois; Owen’s face of love; and Toppie, far away, betrayed and forgotten, -fixed in her trance of fidelity. To see madame Vervier, to remember -Toppie, was almost to feel that he himself was Owen. - -“You know, then,” said madame Vervier. Her arm lay along the table -beside her. She looked across at him and held the stone in her upturned -palm. - -That was the way she began; those the very first words she said after -she had led him in, after their long silence, when they found themselves -alone together. The throb of André’s car had long since faded down the -lane. The house was still; and Giles felt that his heart was trembling. - -“Yes. I’ve known from the beginning,” he said. - -“Alix told me,” said madame Vervier. “You saw us one day in the Bois.” - -“Yes,” said Giles. - -“And she tells me that you feel him to have been unfaithful to his -betrothed.” - -“Yes,” Giles repeated. He was amazed yet not overwhelmed by her direct -approach. He kept his eyes upon her. “Unfaithful.” - -There was a weight in the word that madame Vervier would not feel, for -André was now entangled with his thought of Owen. It was hardly eighteen -months ago; and André had succeeded Owen. But all unaware, as she might -well be, of his further knowledge, her next words answered, by -implication, the charge. If she admitted contemporaneity in love, why -not succession? “There,” she said, “you were mistaken. We were lovers, -it is true; but he knew that it was not to last. He knew that if not -death, then life must part us. In his heart he was not unfaithful. He -would have gone back to her.” - -“Do you mean with a lie?” asked Giles. - -“With a lie? Yes; I imagine it would have been with a lie,” madame -Vervier did not hesitate. “But the essential would be there. He had not -ceased to love her.—It was not his fault. He was swept away,” she said. - -Had she looked like that when she had swept Owen away? Was it an easy, -an everyday thing to her, to see men swept away? He tried to beat down -the visions that assailed him, but again and again, on the rising surge -of the “Sapphische Ode,” they returned. Owen sitting before her, as he -now sat, in the pale, fresh, shaded room; Owen rising suddenly to take -her in his arms.—There would be no surprise to her in that.—She would -have seen it coming. “You mean that it was your fault, then?” Giles -muttered. - -“No. I do not mean that,” madame Vervier answered, and as, in speaking, -she weighed her stone lightly up and down, her eyes on his, he felt that -it was his heart rather than her own guilt she weighed so in her -hand.—How often she had weighed men’s hearts! How conversant with their -trembling must she be! “No; that is not what I meant.—He moored his -boat at the edge of a torrent. That was all. He was swept away,” madame -Vervier repeated. - -“That was what Alix said of you,” Giles muttered again. He felt as if -madame Vervier must see the throbbing of his heart. - -“What Alix said of me?” - -“That you were like a mountain-torrent. She wanted me to understand you. -She thought I might be of help to you some day. She thought of you, poor -child, as in some kind of danger; beautiful and in danger.—How can you -say it wasn’t your fault?” Giles demanded, and, with the thought of Alix -and what she hoped from him, he felt that he struggled to keep his -footing. “If you carried him away, it was your fault.—I believe that’s -what you live for; to carry men away,” he heard himself unbelievably -uttering, and it seemed to him, as the sombre magic of her eyes dwelt on -him that it was for Owen he was speaking, and for all the others; since -now he understood them all. - -Madame Vervier, after he had said these last words, contemplated him in -silence. For a long time she said nothing, and Giles, in the silence, -felt that their confrontation was altered in its quality. When she spoke -at last, it was not in anger. It was, rather, with a strange mildness. -“I do not overflow my banks, ever,” she said. “You must not launch your -boat upon me; that is all.” - -If he had found himself understanding them all—all those others—was it -possible that she saw him merely as one of them? Was she warning him? -Had she seen his need of warning? Giles felt his face growing hot. - -“You must not launch your boat upon me,” madame Vervier repeated, -observing him with grave but faintly ironic kindliness. “If I am a -torrent, if I am dangerous, to myself and others, my nature is there as -it was given to me. I may not alter it. The blame lies with those who -are unwary.” - -“That may be true,” Giles muttered. “I have nothing to do with you, of -course. I don’t understand you. But I do understand my brother. His -weakness doesn’t excuse him.” - -“You are severe. You have never felt a great passion, that is evident,” -madame Vervier observed. “The feeling he had for me was so different -from the feeling he had for Toppie that infidelity was hardly in -question.” - -“Hardly in question? Don’t you see that it shut him away from her for -ever?” Giles’s voice was dark with grief. “Don’t you see that a man who -chooses one kind of love turns his back on the other?” - -“Not if he is strong enough,” madame Vervier, with her mildness, -returned. “Your brother, I think, gained in strength from our -friendship. We pay, it is true, for most things in life. It is painful -to have a secret from the heart nearest ours; yet one need not regret -one’s secret. I believe that Owen would have been strong enough not to -regret. Strong enough”—madame Vervier, while she dropped the quiet -phrases kept her faint smile—“not to grow to hate me because he could -not tell Toppie how much he had loved me.” - -Was it true? Giles wondered, sitting there before her, his head bent -down while he stared up at her from under his brows, frowning and -intent. Could Owen, ever, have been as strong as that? And would it have -been strength? No; madame Vervier might have armed him against remorse; -but she did not know Toppie. Toppie’s radiance would have fallen back, -dimmed, startled, from the presence of the thing hidden yet operative in -her life and Owen’s. A canker would have eaten; bitterness and darkness -would have spread. Either her radiance would have withdrawn from him, -or, beating too strongly at his defences, it would have discovered all. -Dismay, devastation would have broken in upon them, and if Toppie could -still have forgiven it would have been with a sick and altered heart. -But he could not talk to madame Vervier about Toppie. The strange thing -was, as he saw Toppie’s radiance, that he felt himself safe from the -torrent, and that he began to understand madame Vervier. - -“You think of yourself as very strong,” he said suddenly, and in their -long silence he could see that something of her security left her; it -was as if she felt the approach of an unexpected adversary. “You think -you can do as you like with life. You’re not afraid of life; and that’s -rather splendid of you—if I may say so. But it’s never occurred to you -to be afraid of yourself. And the time might come, you know, when you’d -be carried away, too.” - -“Carried away?” madame Vervier repeated. Her voice was altered. She was -unprepared. And in her momentary confusion it was with haughtiness that -she spoke. - -“Yes, carried away,” Giles repeated, understanding madame Vervier more -than ever and that the haughtiness was a shield. “And if you were, you’d -be helpless, as he was; as all the others are;—and you’d find, I -believe, that you couldn’t go back quietly to the things you’d -jeopardized.—I mean, they’d have changed; they’d have been spoiled. You -made Owen suffer; I’m sure of it. You gave him more suffering than -happiness. He lost Toppie through you, and he knew he’d lost her. He -couldn’t have lived with Toppie on a lie. The payment may be more than -our own suffering; it may be other people’s. That’s what you don’t seem -to see.—And as for doing as you like, with yourself and other people, -it doesn’t work, the kind of life you lead. I’m sure it doesn’t work. It -will spoil you, too. More and more you’ll be battered and bruised;—it’s -horrible to think of;—and at last wrecked. Or else so petrified and -hardened that nothing can really come to you any more. That’s the way it -would happen with anyone like you.” Giles had looked away from her in -speaking, but now he lifted his eyes to hers again. “I feel sure of it.” - -Madame Vervier sat there, her arm lying on the table, her hand holding -the stone, and looked fixedly upon him. He had thought of nothing -definite, of nothing imminent in speaking. He had been able to speak -only because the thought of Toppie had come to him so overmasteringly, -arming him with such repudiation of madame Vervier’s philosophy. But -now, as she sat silent for so long, he saw suddenly what the fear was -that, like a Medusa head, he had held up before her. She was older than -André de Valenbois; she loved him passionately; and she was not sure of -him. It was in her eyes, in her silence, as she faced him, that Giles -read the fear; definite; imminent. And he was horribly sorry for her. - -“You are a strange young man,” she said at last. The haughtiness was -gone. There was no resentment in her voice. She only spoke carefully, as -though she felt her way in a world changed to ice. “How can you think -you know me well enough to say these things?” - -“I don’t know you well enough. It’s because we are so near. Through -Alix. Through my brother. You’ve made such a difference in my life. -Everything is changed for me because of you.” - -“It need not be as you say,” said madame Vervier, and after her long -pause it was as if the strength he had called in question came creeping -back into her frozen veins. “Not as you say;—if one has wisdom. One may -suffer;—do you imagine that I have not already suffered?—but one need -not be wrecked. And I have great wisdom.” - -“I don’t want you to be wrecked.—You know that,” Giles muttered. - -“Yes. I know it. I see it. You are not an avenging angel,” said madame -Vervier, and she was able once more to summon the faint, ironic smile. -“You are really, under all the denunciation, so full of kindness. That -is what makes you so unexpected.—So very strange.—But do not fear for -me too much. I shall know when youth is over. I shall know when the -laurels are cut and winter has come to the woods. I shall be able to -furl my sails before the night comes on; and if one furls one’s sails in -time, monsieur Giles, one is never wrecked. And there will be, I trust, -a little harbour for me somewhere. Alix’s children to love. And my -memories. I shall be in old age a much happier woman than most. Most old -women”—madame Vervier smiled on, her eyes on his—“have only to -remember how they were loved by nobody at all.” - -What was there to say to her? Giles, as he considered her, felt a dim -smart of tears rising to his eyes. She had done with him as Alix had -hoped she would. He saw her as lovely; as menaced. He wished that he -could protect her. “I hope it will be with you like that,” he said. - -“Perhaps it will,” said madame Vervier. “You have seen me and my life a -little too logically, too rigidly, my kind monsieur Giles. I did not -choose it so. It chose me, rather.” - -“Ah,” Giles exclaimed, “that’s what I feel in you. That’s my excuse for -what I’ve said to you. Why can’t you turn back even now? You are so much -too good for it. You’re good enough,” Giles declared, with a sense of -further illumination, “for anything.” - -Madame Vervier, again arrested, considered him. Then, gently, sadly, -with a compassionate sincerity, she shook her head. “One never turns -back at my age. One’s path has grown too closely about one. Other paths -are all blocked out. And I was perhaps destined for it. For some women -the life of home, the still, deep stream suffices. Children may fill -their hearts and stifle the personal longings; but for others these -compensations are not enough. They must have love. They must have a -lover. And in France husbands are seldom lovers. So, if one is a -mountain-torrent, one leaps over the precipice. Do you see? That is my -history.” - -“It’s different with us,” Giles murmured. “We have different hopes for -marriage. You didn’t give yourself time. If you turn your back on a -thing, you can’t find out its reality.” - -“The mountain-torrent, at twenty-three,” said madame Vervier, “is not a -philosopher. No; I did not see what I was leaping to, but I saw plainly -what I left. And I do not say that I regret. All that I do say is that I -wish no leaps for Alix. Let us now speak of Alix. You have done your -duty by me and read me my lesson, and it is all because you want to -speak of Alix. I am well aware that you have not come to France in order -to understand or grow fond of her mother—kind though you are.” - -“No; it was for you—only for you.” Giles did not know how to put it. -“Because of what I see in you. As to Alix, you want for her what I -want.” - -“Safety. Yes,” said madame Vervier. “The deep, quiet stream.” - -“She’s that already,” said Giles. “Alix isn’t the mountain-torrent.” - -“Ah, we none of us know what we are till we come to the precipice,” said -madame Vervier. “But I am glad you feel that of my Alix. I trust your -reading. I could almost believe, at moments, watching you with her, that -you understand her better than I do. There is in Alix an austerity that -sometimes disconcerts me. Yours is a nature nearer hers than mine. I -have thought of it deeply in these last days, monsieur Giles, and I have -made up my mind. Will you marry her?” said madame Vervier, laying down -the stone. - - - CHAPTER XI - -“There are many things to consider,” madame Vervier pursued, simply and -tranquilly, while Giles sat transfixed. “I should have to think of many -things.—Your position; your prospects; they are not, I gather, -brilliant. But one of the gravest disadvantages of a position like mine -is that it narrows my field of choice; terribly narrows it. Family and -position count for everything here in France. It is not one little -individual choosing another little individual; we are more serious than -you in that. It is one family choosing another. It is two _foyers_ -coming together to found a third. I have spoiled all this for Alix.” -Madame Vervier took up her stone again, again weighing it in her hand, -and now it was as if she weighed the sense of her culpability towards -her child. “I have spoiled it. Money would have helped me to atone; but -not only was I not _philosophe_ at twenty-three; I was also credulous; -ignorant; reckless. The man for whom I left my husband was poor and had -great schemes. I gave him all I had. He sucked me dry. _C’était un bien -méchant homme_,” madame Vervier remarked in a tone of surpassing -detachment, “and what would have been my fate I cannot tell had not the -admirable friend who rescued me from his clutches left me, on dying, a -small annuity. That is all I dispose of. And with what I have been able -to set aside for Alix year by year, I have amassed only the tiniest -_dot_; hardly enough to clothe her.—I go into all this very summarily -for the moment, though I owe you every detail. You shall have them later -on. You shall hear of the old aunts who brought me up and who were, -also, inveigled by monsieur Vervier. Even my family did not save me -since I was so unfortunate as to marry him after the divorce. It is a -long story. But for the present it is enough that you should see why, -aside from my own position, there is for Alix no possibility of a -suitable marriage in France. Whereas in England all is different.” - -“Yes, it’s different in England,” Giles muttered, since she paused as if -for his assent. He was still too transfixed by the sudden theme to -dispose of his own thoughts. He felt as if madame Vervier, with her -calm, her deliberation, her fluency, were casting, loop by loop, a -silken net about him. And he, the dismayed and astonished fish, looked -here and there through the meshes for a means of escape that would not -too violently tear the web. - -“Quite different,” said madame Vervier with confidence. “That is why I -sent her to England. That is why I make you my proposal now. In blood -Alix is much your superior; your fortune, I know is small; your position -obscure. But I like you monsieur Giles;—I like you very much. Oh, I -have studied you since you came among us! And,” madame Vervier added, -smiling with a kind of indulgence upon him, “you like Alix very much. I -have seen that.” - -So she gathered up the last strand and considered her captive before -drawing him definitely on shore. - -“And poor little Alix? Where does she come in?” broke from Giles. After -his long mute immobility these were the first words that came to him. -“Is she to be considered in the matter?” - -“Poor little Alix? Why poor?” madame Vervier questioned kindly. “It -would not with you be brilliant; but it would be safe. You will be -tender and faithful always. You have not to assure me of that. And you -would, I am convinced, do all that is in your power to do in order that -she may be well placed in the world.” - -“And aren’t her feelings to count at all in this disposal of her? She’d -never have me,” Giles declared with a sort of indignant mirth. “I’m the -last person in the world she’d ever think of.” - -“You underrate your attractions,” said madame Vervier, still more -indulgently. “Alix is very fond of you. And she is still a child; -singularly still a child. We may for a year or two put the question of -Alix’s feelings aside. At her age one has no feelings. It lies with you, -and with me, to see that when the time comes they are the right ones. -She is devoted to you”—madame Vervier enlarged her assurance. “That is -unquestionable.” - -“But I care for somebody else!” Giles heard himself almost shouting. It -was unbelievable that he should have to say to madame Vervier what he -had never explicitly said to himself; unbelievable that he must set the -sacred figure of Toppie between them. But she was actually drawing him -on shore and there was nothing for it but to break through. - -“Somebody else?” madame Vervier repeated. Giles had grown pale with the -shock of his own avowal, yet, all the same, he was aware of a side -glance at the comedy of her discomfiture. It was as if all the strands -dropped from her hands. - -“Yes,” he nodded; “I love somebody else.” - -She might be discomfited, but she retained her resourcefulness. -“Somebody I know of?” - -“Yes,” Giles doggedly repeated. “Somebody you know of.” - -It was then madame Vervier, after their little pause, who supplied, with -a strange softness, the evident name.—“Toppie.” - -“Yes, Toppie.” Giles turned his head away and fixed his eyes on the blue -outside. - -And madame Vervier sat silent. Very gently she laid down her -stone—Giles was never to forget the look of that smooth, pinkish-grey -stone—and folded her hands in her lap. She rested her eyes upon the -young man—though his head was turned away from her Giles knew that she -was looking at him;—and the silence, in the pale room, with the -brilliant day beating from without upon it, grew long. It grew so long -that Giles had time to draw his mind from his own confusion and to -wonder what was in hers. - -Then, when she spoke, her voice was so new to him, so unexpected, that -it was as if a new chapter in his knowledge of her opened gently before -his eyes. Uncertainty, hesitation was in it; something almost shy; a -lovely sweetness. It was revealed to him that for all her goddess-like -invulnerability she might have known a qualm of pity for Toppie; it was -revealed to him that a romantic girl still lived in her heart, rapt in -the wonder of a love-story. “But then—does not that make it all right?” -she said. - -“How do you mean, right?” Giles asked. - -“If you love Toppie?—Will you not marry her? Will you not both be -happy?—In your beautiful English way of happiness—for ever after?” - -She was smiling at him from her cloud of shyness, seeming to feel the -secret disclosed to her too beautiful and delicate for her to venture -near its nest; and the childlike quality he had seen in her forehead -irradiated all her features, while in sincerest, most ingenuous joy she -forgot her own hopes. - -“You see,” said Giles—and he spoke gently to that child—“Toppie would -never have me. She’ll never love anyone but Owen.” - -Owen’s name did not for a moment stay her. “Never? Oh, no. You are young -enough to believe in that word; and so is she. I am old and wise in -that. You may trust me when I tell you that it is a word too large for -our slight human nature. So many eternities”—madame Vervier smiled at -him—“I have seen melt away.” - -“She’d never have me,” Giles repeated. - -“You think that no one will have you. It is not so.—Have you tried?” - -“No.” Giles shook his head. “I don’t think I want to try, really—I -don’t think I want her different.” - -“_Dieu!_” madame Vervier now breathed. “You will embrace a celibate -life?” - -“I don’t know. Perhaps I shall. I never thought about it,” poor Giles -muttered. “I’ve never thought about Toppie in that way. I’ve always -loved her—ever since I was a boy—knowing that she could only be for -somebody else.” - -“But then”—madame Vervier in a slight bewilderment groped her way among -these unfamiliar shapes—“if you have never thought about her in that -way—perhaps you will be able to think about Alix. She, too, cares so -much for your Toppie. Toppie would become your patron-saint. Together -you would worship at her shrine.—Does it interfere with what I had -planned for you and Alix?” - -“I’m afraid it does. I’m afraid it absolutely interferes.” Giles, his -face suffused with red, sat looking down, struggling with difficulty to -master a sense of tears. “It’s impossible, you know; quite impossible. -Dear little Alix. All I ask, you must see that, is to take care of her.” - -“I have blundered,” said madame Vervier. “Forgive me. We will speak of -it no more.” - -“But you’ve spoken of it beautifully. I’m glad to have you know,” said -Giles, and the strange sense that this was so made part of his -amazement. - -“We will speak quite differently, then, of Alix,” said madame Vervier. -“We will talk of her, not as your future wife, but as your little -friend. Even so she is fortunate. And I!—how fortunate I am—for I know -that I can count upon you absolutely. You will help me as no one else -can help me. If not you, then another English husband. Who is this Lady -Mary of whom Alix has written to me? She has sons?” - -It was like being borne on the wings of a great aeroplane from continent -to continent;—one nearly as strange as the other. Giles really felt -inclined to gasp and ask for mercy. He could not go so fast or rise so -far without a sense of giddiness. - -“Lady Mary Hamble? Sons? I’m sure I don’t know,” he said, staring at the -pilot. - -“You do not know her? You have no _relations_ with her?” - -“I’ve seen her only once in my life. Alix, as far as I remember, has -seen her only once. Last winter. She’s a nice woman. That’s all I know -about her.” - -“Yes. It was last winter. But she asked Alix to go to them. It was very -foolish of her not to have gone. If I had been there it would not have -happened so. Alix wrote of her with much liking. I gathered from the -impression Alix had of her that it would be a good _milieu_.” - -“Oh, excellent I should say. Much better than ours, of course.” Giles -was able to recover something of his own broad smile, the farce of it, -to his seeing, breaking through too strongly. “You’re quite right about -us. We’re not brilliant at all.” - -“So I had inferred.” Madame Vervier considered him with kind and lucid -eyes. “She is a _femme du monde_.” - -“Very much so, I imagine. I don’t know any _femmes du monde_, except -you,” said Giles. - -“Ah, my claim to the rôle would be disputed,” madame Vervier remarked. -“She will, I think, have sons. Since it is a position, there will be a -son to inherit it.” - -“Well, yes. There certainly might be,” said the laughing Giles. He -leaned back, clasping his ankle with his hands, and took open possession -of his mirth. - -Madame Vervier, all indulgence, showed her awareness of its grounds. “It -is strange to you, almost horrifying, that I should have such -computations; is it not?” - -“Well, I don’t know. Plenty of English mothers have them, of course. -Only they’re not so frank about them. All the same, you know, you -mustn’t count upon us. We couldn’t do much in that line. My mother, for -instance, would never think of such a thing, and if Alix came back to us -she’d be like one of my sisters; trained, if you like, to a profession. -Marriage would only be by chance; for her, as for them.” - -“_Dieu!_ You are a strange people!” said madame Vervier. “To leave to -chance what is of the most vital importance in a woman’s life! No; you -are not serious. You live _dans le brouillard_. Life must be less -difficult a thing with you since it is possible to face it so lightly. I -should not, it is evident, care to leave Alix among you unless it were -in the hope of marriage. I could myself have her trained to a -profession. If I gave her up again, it would be because I hoped for -something better. I am not _féministe_. I think a professional life -deplorable for a woman. A necessity in many cases, no doubt; but a -deplorable necessity. An artist’s life is happier; but I hope that my -Alix may find the happiest life; the life of a woman married well. So, -if she returns to England, it is for the sake of the chances, and you, I -believe, will help to make them for her. To begin with, you will see -that she accepts Lady Mary Hamble’s next invitation.” - -“Confound her impudence!” Giles was saying to himself, but he was saying -it tenderly. He was enjoying her impudence; it was part of the comedy -that, for all her pitiful, her tragic aspects, she offered him. “I see -that I am to be counted upon as a sort of _père de famille_ for Alix,” -he observed, and though genial his tone was certainly ironic. - -“_Précisément_,” smiled madame Vervier. “You will not, I know, be a dog -in the manger and grudge to others what you do not want for yourself.” - -“Ah, but that’s a very different thing from asking Old Dog Tray to go -trotting about to find her a husband,” Giles objected. “I don’t see -myself as a matchmaker, you know; I can’t promise to do anything at all -in that line for Alix.” - -“You were not asked to be Old Dog Tray. You were asked to be _le Prince -Charmant_,” madame Vervier returned, a hint of the caustic in her -kindness. “And I do not now ask you to trot. I ask you only, if an -occasion offers, to see that she does not miss it. She has not the -heredity of the English girl. She will not know how to make, or take, -occasions for herself.” - -“I think you are being rather nasty about the English girl,” Giles now -commented. He and madame Vervier were on strangely intimate terms and -could deal out friendly irony to one another. “The English young man -counts for something after all. What we hope for, we romantic English, -is that he will make the occasion.” - -“Oh, no. Not nasty; not at all nasty. I admire them, your English girls; -I admire their enterprise,” smiled madame Vervier. “Young men do not -know how to make occasions, and since the English mother feels it -beneath her dignity to make them, it is left for the girl to combine the -rôle of mother and daughter. It is a difference of _mœurs_, that is all, -and I wish Alix to have the advantage of your _mœurs_ while keeping the -immunities of her own. The question that now remains is: Does she return -to you? She does not expect to. You will have gathered that she feels -very keenly your brother’s silence in regard to his visits to us in -Paris.” - -Again it was a case of her surpassing detachment. She went to the heart -of the matter as if it had been, merely, a question of his brother. Yet -the strange thing was that, though so detached, she did not affect one -as callous. - -“Yes. She feels it very keenly,” said Giles. “She can’t, of course, -understand the grounds of his shrinking. She was sure that when you knew -you would feel as she did and would not think of letting her come back.” - -For madame Vervier had not known. He was sure of that now. She might be -detached, and even callous; but she was not brazen. - -“_La pauvre chérie!_” the mother ejaculated and it was on a sudden note -of profound tenderness. “She is sensitive to such a point, and it is -obvious that, had I imagined such a predicament for her, I could not -have sent her among you. We must not blame him. He could not have -foreseen what was to come.” She mused now, compassionately, upon the -grounds of Owen’s shrinking. “But how much wiser had he written quite -openly and naturally of his leaves to Paris. The tone should have been -kept to the tone of Cannes. Ah, it is indeed a pity that he showed so -little resource!” - -“I don’t suppose Owen was in a state of mind to feel resourceful,” said -Giles sombrely. When madame Vervier spoke like this, chasms opened -between them. But were there not just such chasms between him and Alix? -“I think I like him the better for it,” said Giles. - -“Ah—and I do not love him the less!” madame Vervier returned with an -effect of quickness, though she spoke quietly. “I do not love him the -less. I do not even blame him. And it is this leniency of mine that has -given Alix her first perplexity in regard to my conduct.—Or is it her -first? Who knows what goes on in those innocent but astute young -hearts!—Ah, monsieur Giles, that, you would like to tell me, will be -the worst punishment of all;—when Alix knows.” - -“I don’t want you to be punished,” said Giles sombrely. “I don’t want to -tell you anything.” - -“It is so sure to come that it needs no telling. That is perhaps what is -in your mind.—Or, no; it is only that you are kind, strangely kind to -me,” said madame Vervier, rising as she spoke and moving, with her -light, majestic step to the window. She pulled up the blind, for the sun -no longer beat into the room, and stood looking out for a moment without -speaking, her back turned to him; then she said: “Alix, too, is kind. I -do not fear for our relation, hers and mine. When she is of an age to -hear the truth, she shall hear it.” - -“She loves you very deeply,” said Giles. - -“She loves me very deeply,” madame Vervier repeated. “I have no fear.” - -Giles, too, had risen, and moved to the mantelpiece where the picture of -Alix in its blue-and-silver frame stood. He looked at it in silence for -some moments. - -“And how will you persuade her to come back?” he said at last. - -“You want her back?” madame Vervier asked from the window. - -“Of course I want her back,” said Giles. He spoke quietly, almost -casually; yet it was strange to feel the weight of his own decision. He -pledged himself to something with his words. They implicated him in the -situation from which he removed Alix. It was only for himself that he -had a right to speak and in accepting Alix he accepted the cloud that -hung about her; he brought it back among them; and he knew that the -responsibility was heavy. - -“Then she shall go to you,” said madame Vervier. “I shall not be able to -persuade her. I shall attempt no persuasion. She will obey me. That is -all. She will wonder at me for sending her. She will feel that it should -too much offend my pride to send her back on false pretences”—how they -understood each other, mother and child—“but she will go. Our French -children learn to obey. It is the first article in their creed.—And -since the pretences are not too false for your taste, monsieur Giles, -they are not too false for mine.” - -“They are too false for my taste,” said Giles. He was implicated, but -madame Vervier must see just how and where. “It’s Alix I’m thinking of. -I sacrifice my taste to her.” - -“And I,” said madame Vervier, “sacrifice my pride.” - -She stood there looking out, white against the blue, and her voice, for -all its calm, was sombre. “I am not ungrateful,” she added. “Do not -think me ungrateful. I see what you do for my child.” - -“I see what _you_ do for her,” said Giles. - -“Yes;—but I am a mother!” - -“It must be all the harder,” said Giles. “You consent to see yourself -belittled in her eyes. And you consent to live without her.” - -Madame Vervier stood silent at that for a long moment. Something of the -grave ardour in the young Englishman’s voice may well have touched her -to a deeper vision of herself, and of him. It was as if arrested that -she stood contemplating the novel homage laid at her feet. For, after -her pause, she turned suddenly, and fixed her dark gaze upon him. He was -never to forget her as she stood there, against the great sea and sky; -never to forget, as the last of all the varying impressions of the -afternoon, his sense of a greatness, a magnanimity, like the sky’s, -arching above her earthly errors. It remained with him even though the -last words she spoke were so sad, as if, instead of the splendour he -divined in her, she held out to him a handful of dust. “Do not think too -well of me,” she said. “I like you too much. With you there can be no -pretence. Do not think too well. It is best for Alix; but it is best for -me, too, that she should not be near my life.” - - - CHAPTER XII - -The tennis-players returned at tea-time, bringing monsieur Claussel with -them. He was a young man with shy, soft, prominent dark eyes and the -smallest dot of a dark moustache on either side of a nervous upper lip, -and, when tennis was not in progress to absorb his attention, it was -excessively directed to the social exigencies of the occasion. Giles -imagined, as he watched him spring from his chair to offer it, stand -back to let a lady pass, bow with heels together, and tentatively resume -his seat only again to leave it, that he was perhaps less at home in the -jungle than André, and felt, in his introduction to it, a doubled need -for every amenity. It was his first appearance at the Chardonnerets -tea-table, and in his presence, the presence of mademoiselle Fontaine, -her mother and grandmother, madame Vervier may have felt a convenience. -If she found it at all difficult to face Alix and André and Giles after -the interview from which she had just come, her guests, and monsieur -Claussel in particular, gave her an excuse for looking at them rather -than at her intimates. And Giles felt sure that she avoided her -daughter’s eyes. - -They were on her, those remote blue eyes of Alix’s, with no insistence, -no appeal. They dwelt in a wide contemplativeness that recalled to him -madame Vervier’s own, were it not that proud patience rather than -security lay behind it; and Giles had the fancy, as he looked at her, -that, in the gaze of Alix, the Mouverays, beneath the threshold of the -child’s consciousness, were judging Hélène Vervier. Whatever the -verdict, Alix’s tenderness for her mother would not waver; but he -watched the Mouverays imparting to her need a further reënforcement of -pride and courage. - -Tea was prolonged. Madame Dumont, in a great crested bonnet, sat -enthroned, receiving cakes and homage. She was rather silent, rather, in -her black draperies, the sunken old raven, its feathers ruffled high. -Yet Giles caught more than once the piercing glint of an avid eye, -turning in conjectures that he could too well imagine upon madame -Vervier and André; upon himself and Alix; and once, in the glance of -mademoiselle Blanche, he seemed to see a stealthy hereditary surmise, -and Alix rather than madame Vervier was its object. - -Monsieur Jules was persuaded to bring out his canvases and range them -for monsieur Claussel’s admiration. The painful, vivid patterns and -colours still distressed Giles, but, his eyes already acclimatized to -their strangeness, began to exercise a charm. “_Quel horreur!_” madame -Dumont cried, but was fondly checked by mademoiselle Blanche, who -murmured to her, smiling over her head at Giles: “We are no longer in -the days of Bouguereau and Meissonnier, Grand’mère!” - -She confided to him, as they stood side by side, that monsieur Claussel -was a devout admirer of modern art and that his admiration, since he was -the heir to a _fortune princière—faite dans les pâtes_—might be of -much significance to poor Jules. “She arranged it all, you may be sure,” -said mademoiselle Blanche, casting a fond glance upon their hostess. “It -is always she who thinks of such opportunities for her friends.—What a -heart, what a mind it is!—Whatever her own perplexities and -anxieties—and I can assure you that her life does not lack them—she -never fails in resource and kindness when it is a question of her -friends’ interests.—She is looking pale—very weary, is it not so?—You -take mademoiselle Alix back to England with you?” And since Giles, -disconcerted, remained silent, mademoiselle Blanche added: “She is ready -always to sacrifice herself.” - -“_Mais oui, c’est très bizarre_,” little madame Collet murmured, craning -her neck to see the pictures, while Giles wondered over mademoiselle -Blanche. - -André, meanwhile, smiling in a happy confidence, pointed out planes and -stresses to the heir of _les pâtes_, who stood with his little shoulders -screwed up, his elbows in his hands, rapt away from shyness and -self-consciousness by his sincere delight. Monsieur Jules remained -morose; but it was evident that he had found a munificent patron. - -And when they were all gone and an evening of dusky rose began, after -the hot day, to drop softly from the sky, madame Vervier said to André -that she must take the air. She would go with him for a little turn in -his car. - -She was not yet ready for a meeting with her child. If she was to think -things over and decide how she should put them to Alix, she must get -away to do it. Giles understood; but how could Alix understand such -necessities? He guessed at the grief and perplexity that must strive -within her. - -“And now, indefatigable as you are, _ma chère enfant_,” said monsieur de -Maubert when he and Giles and Alix were left alone, “framed of steel and -india-rubber as I sometimes feel you to be when I watch your day, you -will doubtless wish to go for a walk with monsieur Giles. Do not -hesitate to leave me. I shall, I think, have a siesta here with my head -in the shade and my feet in the sunset; even in the details of life, -monsieur Giles, I am, you see, the Epicurean.” - -Giles knew, then, that madame Vervier’s intentions, in regard to himself -and Alix, had been imparted to monsieur de Maubert who thus took -occasion for furthering them. - -But Alix said: “No; the walk is not to be with Giles. I have promised -Annette Laboulie to catch shrimps with her on the beach till -supper-time.” - -“And who,” monsieur de Maubert, kindly, yet with a certain austerity -inquired, “is Annette Laboulie?” - -“She came with my shoes her father had mended, the other afternoon. Do -you remember? A dark, thin girl. She has not enough to eat.” - -“You mean the sad young ragamuffin with the untidy hair? Not enough to -eat? That must be seen to.” - -“She is a ragamuffin; and untidy; I reproach her for that. But she is -clean. And she is a clever girl in all sorts of ways. There are eight -children, and Annette is a mother to them all. We are great friends. I -used to play with her when I was little and Maman and I first came -here.” - -“Monsieur Giles, you are not flattered by this preference!” smiled -monsieur de Maubert. - -“And they don’t even invite me to join them!” laughed Giles. - -But he understood. After the longing to know what Maman had said to -Giles must come the longing to know what Giles now felt about Maman; but -Alix wanted none of his impressions until those of Maman had been -vouchsafed to her. As if by some deep instinct she knew that her destiny -had been in question that afternoon. - -“But do come with us, Giles,” she now said, and he replied that he -really had letters he ought to write. “Letters home. You see my time -here is up.” - -“Up? Indeed? Why up?” monsieur de Maubert inquired very kindly. - -“Well, I’ve stayed already longer than I intended and they all expect me -back in time to start next Monday on a walking tour around the coast of -Cornwall.” - -“Next Monday? But that means that you will leave us the day after -to-morrow. You will miss our Sunday excursion to Caudebec.” - -“I’m afraid I must.” - -Alix was looking at him; wondering, he knew, whether his resolve was -sudden. - -After he had written his letter to his mother, he went out into the -village to post it, and coming back by the cliff he was able to see that -even if Annette had been an improvisation the drama of the shrimping was -being carried out. The two girls were pushing their nets before them on -the sands, bare-legged, in the shallow water. Their voices, bell-like, -came to him through the evening air. Alix laughed. - -Her faculty for fraternizing with the people seemed to him a charming -gift. Neither Ruth nor Rosemary would have known what to do with Annette -in tête-à-tête. They could have dealt with her coöperatively; in the -Girl Guides or one of Aunt Bella’s clubs; but not as an individual. And -Toppie, full of still solicitude, would have dealt with her as a soul. -The difference was that Alix was not dealing with her at all. She was -enjoying Annette as much as Annette was enjoying her. They were simply -two girls engaged in a pastime delightful to them both; and Giles -surmised that such easy intercourse was perhaps only possible in a -country where caste was a thing so impassable that intimacy lent itself -to no misinterpretation. Caste in France, he was coming more and more to -see, centred itself on the question of marriage. In a country where the -romance of the _mésalliance_, so dear to English hearts, was nearly -unknown, there was little likelihood of its disintegration. How little -do those know France, thought Giles, who imagine her republican at -heart! - -Madame Vervier did not return from her drive till supper time, and after -supper, during which she talked cheerfully, if with a certain languor, -she established herself in the drawing-room with monsieur de Maubert. -There was no moon to-night and the light streamed out over the verandah -from the drawing-room window. Giles, from his place on the steps, could -see that madame Vervier, beside the lamp, had her embroidery and that -she spoke to monsieur de Maubert in low tones. - -Alix brought out a saucer of milk for a stray kitten that she and -Annette had found. “I shall take it to Paris with me,” she said, -stroking the back of the little creature, while it drank, half choked -with purrs and lapping. - -“It is not a pretty kitten, mademoiselle Alix,” said André, who sat -beside Giles smoking. - -“No; it is not pretty; except as all kittens are pretty—the delicate -little paws; the beautiful movements. In time it will look better; with -brushing and good food,” said Alix. “And it has a charming little coral -nose to match the coral beads under its feet.—Only hear it purr, Giles! -Have you ever noticed the softness of a kitten’s feet?—they are like -raspberries to hold in one’s hand.” - -André watched her meditatively. - -“It is time for your bed, _mon enfant_.” Madame Vervier’s voice came -from the drawing-room. “I will visit you before you sleep.—Ah, _mais -non_! You must not have the kitten with you. You would be devoured by -fleas. It will be quite happy shut into the kitchen.” - -“But it is so young, Maman; so lonely. It must so miss its mother.” Alix -stood supplicating, the kitten held to her cheek. “I do not mind the -fleas.” - -Madame Vervier was melted; or it was, perhaps, an evening on which she -was inclined to indulgence. “Very well. If you do not mind the fleas! -While it misses its mother, then. Too soon, alas, it will be a mother -itself!” - -“No; for it is a male cat, Maman,” said Alix with austere realism. “You -need fear nothing on that score. There will be no more kittens to -trouble you.” - -“_A la bonne heure!_” laughed madame Vervier. - -“But she returns to you, after her holiday with us here, the charming -young creature,” André, when Alix had carried away her kitten, observed -to Giles. It was remarkable, the sense they all gave Giles, that Alix -was permanently his responsibility, and André’s voice had almost the -geniality of family affection. If not he, then another English husband. -Alix’s future had been, by those most concerned with it—by himself and -by her mother—definitely agreed upon; that was the fact to which -André’s voice and smile bore witness; and madame Vervier was certainly -imparting the same news to monsieur de Maubert as she now sat -embroidering beside him in her Ingres dress and scarf. - -Alix herself, meanwhile, remained in ignorance of her destiny. - -“Rather a shame she shouldn’t know it yet,” said Giles. “She thinks -she’s going back to Paris, you see.” - -“Shame? Oh, no,” said André in gentle surprise. “It is much better that -she should have her holiday unspoiled. We are to say nothing of it to -her—as madame Vervier will tell you.—It would grieve her too much to -hear it now. By degrees, as the time draws near, her mother will prepare -her mind and bring her to see the wisdom of the decision.” - -That, of course, would be André’s point of view. He took it for granted -that _jeunes filles_ should be kept in ignorance of their destiny until -such time as their elders thought fit to enlighten them. - -Giles was aware of a confused anger that seemed to involve himself as -well as André and madame Vervier. “Since she and her mother are so -devoted, it’s a pity, I think, to hoodwink her,” he said. “I hope her -mother will tell her what she’s decided on at once. I shall advise her -to tell her.” - -At this point, suddenly, a voice dropped to them through the darkness. -“I am sorry. My room is above you. I can hear all that you say.” Alix’s -voice. Thrilling with bitterness. - -The young men sat mute, eyeing each other. - -“_Dieu! Quelle gaffe ai-je commise!_” whispered André, and—“How much -has she heard?” - -“As little as she could, you may be sure,” Giles muttered. - -André found his resource. “_Très bien! Très bien_, mademoiselle Alix,” -he called. “But this is a case where _une écouteuse_ would hear only -good of herself.” - -Alix made no reply. The windows of her room, Giles now remembered, -opened beside his, on the roof of the verandah. She must have heard all -if she had stood near them. - -“This is very unfortunate,” André murmured. “I have been stupid; very -stupid. I must at once make my confession.” - -“Yes. You’d better,” said Giles grimly. “It wouldn’t do for her mother -to go up now and pretend she’d made no plans at all.” - -“Oh—our hostess would be able to meet even that contingency,” said -André with, perhaps, the slightest flavour of irony. “A daughter, with -us, knows too well that she may trust her mother to do the best for her -happiness.” - -But, as Giles remained sitting on, hearing in the drawing-room the low -murmur of consultation and André’s repeated “_Je suis désolé_,” it -became disastrously clear to him that, more than Maman’s intended -accommodations of the truth, Alix would resent André’s admission to -Maman’s confidence. How, indeed, could she interpret that? - -The murmur in the drawing-room ceased, madame Vervier rose and went -upstairs, and, before André could rejoin him, Giles had taken refuge in -his own room. He could not face André; he could not face monsieur de -Maubert, or madame Vervier herself, again that evening. None of them, -not even madame Vervier, could see as he saw the disaster that had -befallen his poor little friend. He leaned at his window feeling hot and -sick, but even here, though the windows of Alix’s room had been closed, -the voices of mother and daughter came to him through the flimsy barrier -of the wall. He could not hear the words, but in their sharp passionate -rhythm he discerned what the words must be. “Why to him, Maman! What are -his rights! He was a stranger to us when I left you!” - -But madame Vervier would, indeed, never lack resource. Unready as she -must feel herself to face this further predicament, Giles heard the -muffled murmur of her voice, rising, falling, expostulating; urgent, -tender, invulnerable. She would find answers to everything. Or was it -that there were some questions her child would not ask of her? When, at -last, she ceased, there was no reply. He heard that Alix was crying. - - - CHAPTER XIII - -Next day, his last at Les Chardonnerets, dawned high, blue, beautiful, -and looking out at sunrise Giles saw his wonderful hostess, as he had -seen her on his first morning, walking back to the house across the -grassy cliffs, wrapped in her bathing-robe. She came slowly. Her tread -had not the buoyancy of the first day. Her head was bent; she meditated -gravely. But she made him think of a goddess who had sought inspiration -and sustainment from immersion in her own elements of sunlight and -sea-water. Power breathed from her as she moved, and Giles, looking out -at her, was filled with a deep yet beautiful sadness. It was like -looking at a goddess. Madame Vervier seemed separated from him by -thousands of years. She might have been a figure of myth and legend -walking there, the outlines of her ruffled hair all haloed by the -sunlight, her white arm crossed upon her breast. - -When breakfast brought them all again face to face, Giles marvelled at -Alix. If madame Vervier was ready, she was not less so. Pale, with -darkened eyelids, there were certain appearances that she need not be -expected to keep up. Monsieur de Maubert and André de Valenbois would -understand that it had been a shock to her to learn that her mother was -again to send her from her. But beyond the evidences of this shock they -were to see nothing. Of the greater shock she had received, not a shadow -showed itself in her glance or voice. She was grave and quiet only; she -showed the calm resignation of the _jeune fille sérieuse_ who bows to -the decisions of her elders. She smiled at her mother; she held her -kitten to lap milk. And Giles was sorry for his invulnerable goddess, -for, if it was hard that she should have to shoulder the burden of André -under Alix’s eyes, when she already had more than enough to carry in -Owen, it must be for her the bitterest of alleviations that Alix should -do all in her power to make the burden light. Madame Vervier must feel, -as he felt, that such resource, such understanding in Alix could only -rise from the child’s intuition of how sharp was her mother’s need. She -stood beside her mother. She helped her. - -“Maman is going to take charge of my kitten while I am away,” she said -calmly to André. - -If Alix could help her mother, Giles could help her. This was an -opportunity. “But why shouldn’t you bring your kitten to England, Alix?” -he said. “There’s no quarantine for cats. You could carry it easily in a -basket.” - -From the quick, upward glance that Alix cast at him above the kitten’s -lapping head, he saw that its fate, in spite of Maman’s assurances, had -indeed preoccupied her. “Oh, may I, Giles?” - -“Of course you may. _Rather!_” - -“Your mother will not mind?” - -“Can you imagine Mummy minding another animal at Heathside? Why, she’s -lived and breathed and had her being, always, in a swarm of dogs, cats, -and guinea-pigs. You don’t forget, I’m sure, those white rats all over -the place last winter. She never said a word even when she found them in -her bed.” - -“I remember. Yes. She is so kind. I should be very glad to have my -kitten.” Alix stroked the kitten’s back. She looked down at it, and for -a moment Giles was afraid that she might be on the verge of tears. - -“And if mademoiselle Alix will permit me,” said André, wishing to do his -bit, but, for once, blundering sadly, “I will present her, in place of -this very ugly little cat, with the most beautiful _chat_ Angora that -can be found in Paris. A superb white Angora, mademoiselle Alix; with -blue eyes like those of a saint in a missal.—_Cela vous sourit?_” -André’s own eyes were as blue and as bright as those of any saint in any -missal. - -“Not at all, thank you,” said Alix. “This ugly little cat is the only -one I want.” - -Giles wondered, as the day went on, whether Alix was going to let him -see nothing more than she showed the others. There must be for her a -sense of bitter humiliation in Maman’s failure to fulfill her proud -assurances. And it would be like Alix to keep silent if she were -humiliated. But how near him she felt herself to be was shown to him -when, after tea, following the others along the cliff-path, she said: -“So I am to go back to you, Giles.” - -She ignored the morning interlude. She dismissed it as the piece of -acting it had been. She faced the whole subject for the first time, with -him, her friend. - -“Yes. So your mother told me. I hope you’re not too sorry; for I’m so -awfully glad,” said Giles. - -Madame Vervier, with monsieur de Maubert beside her, and André de -Valenbois with mademoiselle Fontaine, went on before them. They were -taking Giles, on his last evening, to see a little château that lay in -its woods near the coast, in the opposite direction from Allongeville. -Giles knew that madame Vervier had arranged that he and Alix should go -together and that she trusted him to uphold her cause as best he could. -“It was what I wanted, you know,” he added. - -Alix, as she heard him, fixed her eyes upon her mother’s form, rounding -a green projection of the path, her white sunshade upon her shoulder. -“It was most of all what Maman wanted, was it not, Giles?” she observed, -with a faint, curious smile. - -“Not at all,” said Giles. “You know how much I wanted it.” - -“You will hardly make me believe,” said Alix, her lips keeping their -smile, “that it was you who persuaded Maman rather than she you.” - -“There was no question of persuasion. How could there have been? When we -were both agreed from the first.” - -“I wish I could understand what it was that made you agree so strongly,” -said Alix after a slight silence. “Maman says that it is for my good to -finish my studies in England, among such friends. That does not seem to -me a sufficient reason. I could finish my studies in my own country; and -I have good friends here.” - -“She thinks, and so do I,” said Giles, “that we are the best friends you -have. Isn’t that a sufficient reason?” - -“It seems to me a reason for not taking advantage of such friends,” said -Alix, startling him. - -“But that is what good friends ask,” he said. “To be taken advantage -of.” - -“You speak for yourself, Giles. There are others besides you. You have -no right to speak for them.” - -She had his back against the wall, and Giles knew it. The worst of it -was that she knew it, too. - -“I can answer for them. I told you I could. I told you that Toppie was -so fond of you that she’d feel as I do.” - -To this, after a moment’s silence, Alix only said in a voice suddenly -grown sombre, “I do not blame you, Giles.” - -“I hope you don’t blame your mother,” said Giles. - -There before them went madame Vervier, her white, heelless feet hardly -seeming, in their beautiful tread, to touch the grass she passed over. -They had no glimpse of her face. She left them in their privacy, feeling -so secure that their privacy, since it was in his hands, could only be -for her benefit. How deeply madame Vervier had read his heart yesterday! -How clearly she had seen that all that he asked was to show her beauty -to her child and to help her, always, in hiding from Alix the pitiful -handful of dust that, in her truth to him, she had displayed! “I hope -you don’t blame her,” he repeated, for Alix had made no reply, and, -glancing at her now, and seeing her eyes bent down, he guessed that at -his question they had filled with tears. - -“It would be strange, wouldn’t it, Alix,” he said gently, “if it were I -who had to defend your mother to you.” - -“Very strange, Giles,” said Alix in a low voice. - -“It’s all for love of you,” said Giles; and in spite of the handful of -dust he knew that this was the fundamental truth about madame -Vervier—“because of what she thinks best for you.” - -“But may one never be a judge of that oneself?” said Alix. - -“Not if you are a young French girl; no; you may not,” said Giles, after -a moment’s reflection. “Isn’t that just the great difference between you -and us? We think for ourselves; but you, if you are a girl, may only -think for yourself when you are married.” - -“I like England better in that,” said Alix. “One should have a voice.” - -“Perhaps your mother feels that you’ll learn to have a right to a voice -by being in England.” - -“I do not think so,” said Alix. “I do not think she believes in having a -voice. That is another great difference. You believe that one learns to -have a voice by being given freedom.” - -“You can’t be free here, Alix; I see that for myself,” Giles said, -looking at her and wondering how far her thought could follow. Already -in such unexpected places it ran ahead of his own. - -She raised her eyes to his. “You mean it is not safe, in France, for a -girl to be free?” - -“I’m afraid not. Not yet.” - -“And what is our danger? Can you tell me that?” - -Giles found an answer that he had only recently seen for himself: “The -danger of growing up; in the wrong way; and too soon.” - -“And Maman thinks that I run that danger by remaining with her? Why am -I, then, different from other French girls whose mothers keep them with -them? Why is she different from other French mothers? You need not tell -me that she loves me. I see how it breaks her heart.” Alix’s voice -trembled suddenly. “It breaks her heart to have to send me away. And why -should it be so?” - -She mastered the tears that had risen while she spoke, and her eyes held -his. It was the strangest thing in his experience of Alix to feel -himself seeking the right word in which to justify her mother to her. - -“She has special difficulties,” he said slowly. “You see some of them -already. You remember what you said to me long ago about her beauty and -bravery, and her danger. It was all true. I’ve seen it now myself. And -you wanted me to help her. You felt sure that if I knew her I’d want to -help her. Well, I do. You must trust us both. For what I have to tell -you now is that I can best help her by showing you how you can.” - -Alix’s eyes, widened by the unshed tears, gazed at him. “I help her by -not being with her?” - -“Yes, by not being another difficulty, and the greatest of all.” - -“And for how long must I be removed?” - -“Until you are old enough to be free.” - -“Until I marry?” - -“Marry, or get the freedom of the English girl; the right to choose -whether you’ll marry or not.” - -“But how can I marry if I am in England. Is it to have me marry there -that Maman removes me? Because,” said Alix—and her voice, tearless now, -dropped to an iron note—“that will never be.” - -Poor madame Vervier and her hopes! Giles continued to play her hand as -best he could. “You wouldn’t be made to marry in England against your -will. You might meet someone you cared for enough. How can you tell?” - -“Cared for enough! To leave Maman! To leave France!” Alix held her head -high and stared before her, facing this confirmation of her fears. And -suddenly, her last words echoing too unbearably in her heart, he saw her -lips tremble; part; and the tears, at last, helplessly ran down her -cheeks. - -“Oh—my dear little Alix—don’t grieve like that,” Giles implored. “Of -course you won’t leave them;—unless you come to feel that you care so -much for someone that you can.—And it would never be really to leave. -And while you’re over there, can’t we count a little for you? Can’t I -count? You know how much I care for you. I’ll do my best to make you -happy.” - -Alix shook her head. “It is not that,” she uttered brokenly. - -“What is it, then? You shan’t be married against your will.” Giles tried -to smile at her. - -“It is not that,” Alix repeated. “Already you are too good to me. You -are unbelievably good to me.—It is Maman.” Alix put her hand up to her -eyes and hid her tears from him as she walked. “It is Maman.—How can -she bear to let me go?—How can I bear to be parted from her; far away; -hardly seeing her; until I am old?” - - - CHAPTER XIV - -“Then she is coming back. I am so glad. I was afraid, from things she -said, once or twice, about herself, about her life in France with her -mother, that she might not be coming,” said Toppie. - -She and Giles sat up on the ridge where the junipers grew. The -pine-woods were behind them; below were the birches in their autumnal -dress of bronze and gold; and brooding over all a sky of dusty rose. It -was the evening of the hottest September day and the breeze hardly -stirred the spices of the pines. - -Giles was only just back from his Cornish trip and Toppie and her father -had been in Bournemouth when he had returned from France, so that this -was their first meeting. Mr. Westmacott was not well and the sea had -done him no good. Toppie was worn with nursing him. Giles had never seen -her look so white. - -From something deep and watchful in her eyes the feeling came to him -that her father was even more ill than they had guessed and that she was -schooling herself to the thought of losing him. With her father gone, -Toppie’s last close link with earth would be severed. - -But she had not spoken of herself or of her anxieties this afternoon. -They had climbed the hill slowly, stopping to look back at the sky, and -Toppie had found this favourite spot among the junipers and had sunk -down, taking off her Panama hat, battered like a boy’s, and holding it -with both hands clasped around her knees as she sat in the deep heather. -She wore her usual grey, again an almost boyish formula; the thin silk -jumper rolled back from the throat, the thin pleated skirt falling to -her ankle. Her pale hair was ruffled up over the black silk ribbon that -bound it. As she sat there while he lay beside her on his arm, Giles had -never felt Toppie so near him. It was more sad than sweet to feel her -so. It gave him the feeling he would have had if she were going away on -a long journey and could be so near because she was to be so far. And -she talked to him of his time in France and of Alix. - -“Yes. She’s coming back all right,” Giles said. “I am glad you are glad; -for I am. It’s as if the child belonged to us, isn’t it?” - -“It is quite strange, Giles, how much I feel that,” said Toppie, turning -her eyes upon him. - -They were such lovely eyes, those of Toppie’s. Giles had always felt -them, since he had first, a boy of fifteen, seen her, the loveliest eyes -in the world. Not large; not vividly marked; her brows and lashes only a -shade darker than her hair; they conveyed the impression of light rather -than colour and of radiance rather than of warmth. It was as if they -looked at you from the zenith on a cloudless, cold Spring day. And the -words that had always gone with them, in Giles’s mind, from the time -that he had first seen Toppie, in church, in Advent, with pale, wintry -sunlight streaming in over her, had been: “Dayspring from on high.” - -She had stood there, in the Rectory pew, all alone, tall and slender in -her grey, with a little high tight fur collar up to her chin and a -little round fur cap coming over her golden hair and down to her ears, -and she had, while the Psalms were being sung, turned her eyes on the -Bradley family in the pew across the nave; looking at Owen; at Owen -first—Giles felt it even then; Owen, his nut-brown head held high while -he happily chanted out the responses in his sweet, accurate tenor. And -then her eyes had met Giles’s solemn gaze. And those had been the words -that had come to him; full of the Christmas beauty; full almost to -tears, for the boy standing there, of radiant promise and of heavenly -love.—“Whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us.” - -So he had seen her first. So he had always thought of Toppie’s eyes. -They showered light and loveliness upon you; and it came from far away. - -“Quite strange,” she was saying now, thinking of him because she was -thinking of Alix, just as she had always, in the past, thought of him -because she was thinking of Owen. “From the first moment I saw her I -felt that she belonged. Perhaps it was because of what Owen had written. -He was so fond of her. She was the dearest little girl he had ever seen. -Even then I used to think that some day, if the war left us to each -other, we would have Alix come and stay with us often. And then the -moment I saw her I felt that I loved her.—Giles, you were very bad -about letters while you were in France. Never one to me; and hardly -anything to your mother about madame Vervier. Only that she was charming -and had a charming house. You told us more about monsieur de -Maubert—was that the name?—and the young man who ought to have worn a -ruff and fought with Henry of Navarre. I liked so much what you said -about him. I felt as if he ought to have known Owen. As if they would -have been friends. But of course what we most wanted to hear was about -Alix’s mother. Tell me everything now; everything you thought.” - -“Everything. Well, that’s rather difficult, you know.” Giles turned over -on his elbow and looked down at the heather, pulling his hat over his -eyes. “She’s very different from Alix.” - -“Is she? I’d always imagined her so much the same.” - -“Almost as different as it is possible for a mother to be from her -child,” said Giles, while he thought intently. How it had pleased, how -it had lightened his heart to hear what Toppie had just been saying of -Alix and her return to them; and how dismayed he knew himself to be by -this further stretch of her interest. - -“As different as that?” Toppie questioned, and with the faintest flavour -of distress in the question. “Owen always wrote as if she were lovely, -too.” - -“Oh, as far as that goes she’s lovelier, I suppose. Where Alix is like a -crystal she is like a flower. And they both have that dignity and -security, you know. Alix is such a dignified little creature, isn’t -she?” - -“Yes. Beautifully dignified; beautifully secure. I always feel of Alix -that she would be safe, always and everywhere. Yes; those are just the -words for Alix.” - -“And it’s not exactly righteousness, is it?” Giles went on, finding more -words since Toppie liked these ones. “It’s integrity. Like a little -noble Roman girl.” - -“Integrity. Yes.” Toppie mused on Alix. But then, alas, she came back to -Alix’s mother. “The same in loveliness; the same in dignity and -security.—In what ways different, then, Giles?” - -He knew that there was hardly anything he could say of madame Vervier -that it would not be unwise to say. He watched an ant, disturbed by his -change of posture, thread its anxious way amongst the tufts of heather -and felt that he was like the ant. He, too, must go forward and find the -path that promised most safety. “Well, she’s more impulsive, I feel; -more selfish; less fastidious.” - -Toppie, for a moment, reflected in silence. He saw her dimly, sitting -there beside him, a grey silhouette against the sky. “Less fastidious?” -she then said, and it was as if he had presented her with an object that -she turned reluctantly, and with surprise, in her hands: “How strange. -Owen gave me no impression of that. He gave me the impression of someone -quite finished, quite exquisite; in every way. How do you mean less -fastidious?” - -“Oh, I don’t exactly know,” said Giles, and he feared it was uneasily. -“Merely in the sense, perhaps, that she’d put up with all sorts of queer -people, for the sake of not being bored, that Alix wouldn’t care to -have. She is exquisite; very exquisite.” - -“You did like her, didn’t you, Giles? Very, very much?” - -“Well, hardly very, very,” he qualified, pausing with wary antennæ, as -it were. “She’s not my sort, really. That’s all that it comes to.” - -He could not see Toppie’s features, but he felt her more intent, and in -her next words he saw that he had seemed to call Owen’s taste in -question—as well as madame Vervier’s. “Wasn’t that only because you -didn’t see enough of her? She was so much Owen’s sort.” - -“It doesn’t follow she’d be mine, would it? Owen and I were really very -different, weren’t we, Toppie, dear?” - -“Yes; very different. But you always liked the same people. It surprises -me—so much—that you shouldn’t like Alix’s mother.” - -“But I didn’t say that, Toppie! ‘Liking’ isn’t the word. She is -charming. She is too charming; that’s what it comes to.” Giles felt -himself go forward to a new outlet. “Too much the woman of fashion; too -sophisticated and highly flavoured for anyone so simple as I am. You -know I am much simpler than Owen. He was a man of the world, and I, -however long I live, will never be a man of the world. If one’s just the -shambling, shabby, scholastic type one will never feel at home with -brilliant, resourceful people. It’s as if”—Giles found the simile with -satisfaction—“I liked rice pudding while Owen could appreciate caviare. -Madame Vervier is caviare, as far as I am concerned.” - -He glanced up at Toppie to see how she accepted the metaphor; but if she -smiled it was with reserve. “You like me, Giles. I’m not caviare; but -I’m not, I hope, rice pudding either.” - -“No, you don’t come into such categories,” Giles smiled back. “If one -could find a fruit that tasted of frost and sunlight, a fruit one could -pick only at daybreak—golden, and chill and sweet—that would be you, -Toppie. A sort of apple of the Hesperides—that one must sail and sail -for ever and a day to find.” - -Something that came into his voice made him stop suddenly. And Toppie, -too, was silent for a moment. When she spoke it was carefully, as if -guiding their steps away from a menace to their quiet. - -“That’s a charming compliment, Giles,” she said. “I sometimes think, -shambling and shabby though you call yourself, that you are a poet as -well as a philosopher. But I’m sorry, you know, to feel madame Vervier -lose by what I gain. Owen always wrote of her as someone he so wanted me -to know. I can’t believe he’d have wanted me to know anyone who was -worldly and luxurious and meretricious. I can’t help feeling that you -must be unjust.” - -Meretricious, luxurious, worldly? Was that the picture he had, all -unwittingly, drawn for Toppie? The blood came to Giles’s face. It was to -be displayed to his own eyes as disloyal. He saw madame Vervier’s figure -standing against the great arch of the sky; he saw her rising up from -the sea at dawn; he smelt the beeswax and seashells and cool, clean -linen. - -“But I don’t mean that at all,” he stammered. “I don’t think of her as -any of those things. Nothing could be further from my mind.” - -“If she’s like the things rich people eat in restaurants; if she’s -selfish; if she’s unfastidious and resourceful—” Toppie’s voice built -up before him the shape of madame Vervier as she had seen him draw it. - -“You mustn’t press mere metaphor so far, Toppie. I said she was like a -flower, too. She is as out-of-door a creature as Alix herself. She -belongs more to the cliffs and the country than to restaurants.—That’s -really the most vivid impression I have of her”—he was striving to -atone to madame Vervier for the false picture he had put before Toppie; -yet trying at the same time for truth to Toppie. “As I used to see her -at sunrise; coming up from the sea after a morning swim. Like poetry and -music personified, she used to look, walking against the dawn.” - -Toppie’s eyes were on him. It was curious how cold her eyes could be. It -was as if, though Toppie herself were not judging you, the height, the -light that her eyes conveyed revealed you to her as creeping and dingy. - -“I don’t understand you,” she said. She spoke gently, as if to mitigate -the coldness that fell from her gaze. - -“But what is it you don’t understand, Toppie!” Giles exclaimed, and he -heard that it was with irrepressible fretfulness. He felt it so unfair -that he should be displayed to Toppie as creeping and dingy when all -that he was trying for was to shield her from any hurt. Yet that there -was another reason for his fretfulness, he knew. His loyalty to madame -Vervier had betrayed him to too much ardour. Ardour had been in his -voice. And Toppie must have heard it. - -“That you should say such different things of Owen’s friend,” Toppie -replied at once. “You contradict yourself. It’s as if you were hiding -something from me.” - -Poor Giles. His hat-brim was drawn down, but that could not conceal from -Toppie the helpless red that surged up over his face and neck as he -heard these words. He felt it rise, the burning, dark confusion, while, -with sudden fear and sickness of heart, he groped for an answer. And her -blow had been so sudden and unlooked for that the only answer that came -was as helpless as his blush, “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. What -could there be to hide?” - -But there was no escape for him in Toppie’s gaze. Giles, his eyes fixed -on the heather, felt it dwell upon him, and when, at last, she looked -away, it was as if she had seen the falsity between them. And all that -she said, in accents of snow, was: “I’m sure I don’t know. Perhaps you -will tell me.” - -“Toppie, this is absurd, you know,” Giles muttered, staring down. “You -put me in a ridiculous position. It upsets one, naturally, to be -cross-questioned as if one were a shifty witness in the witness-box. -People are complicated and contradictory creatures. One can’t draw a -consistent picture of them. On one side of her nature madame Vervier may -be weak and erring and on the other she may be like a goddess. How do I -know? I’ve hardly seen her.” - -And then Toppie made an astonishing statement. Turning her eyes from -him, looking before her at the dull rose sky, coldly, though gently, and -with a poise of tone that showed how deeply she was feeling, she said: -“If you have fallen in love with her, Giles, why should you not say so? -Why should you try to hide it as though you were ashamed? She is a -widow, is she not? There is no reason, is there, why you should not love -her?—It hurts me that you should speak like that—keeping things back; -twisting your real feelings lest I should see them.—You speak of her as -though you were ashamed of loving her.” - - - CHAPTER XV - -Giles, while Toppie spoke, had started up, resting on his hand and -staring at her with eyes aghast and stupefied. What folly, what madness -was this? How could Toppie find it in her heart to speak like this; to -him—to him of all people? - -Yet, in another moment, while he stared at her, memory had answered him. -A vein of piercing intuition underlay Toppie’s blunder. It was only a -half blunder. His misery of confusion had been for Owen, because of -Owen’s secret that he had to hide. And she had seen it as for himself. -But it was true that he had, if only for a moment, been in love with -madame Vervier. He had, for a moment, partaken of the experience that -swept men away. The figure of madame Vervier was haloed for him by -fiery, dewy associations, and the pang of his sense of disloyalty to her -would not have been so deep had he not known in her presence that -poignant, perilous revelation of beauty. He saw all this while, -silently, he stared at Toppie, and he saw that she could never, never -understand or admit his half truth. It was a weakness even to think of -its avowal. - -“How can you say anything so monstrous to me, Toppie,” he questioned, -and it was sternly, “when you know I’ve never loved anyone but you?” -This, indeed, was a whole truth that it behoved Toppie not to traduce. - -But his sternness did not deflect her. “There are different kinds of -love. I know you love me. I know you’ve had, always, a boyish, -idealizing devotion for me. I will always be grateful to you for your -devotion. But you are not in love with me. You’ve never known what it -was to be in love till you met madame Vervier. Oh! Giles—you must see -what I see so plainly! Perhaps you really think that I could be hurt and -jealous in feeling myself no longer first. That is so wrong of you. It -would lift a burden from me if I could see you married. I should be so -glad, so glad of your happiness.” - -“Good Heavens, Toppie!” Giles had started to his feet and stood above -her, crimson with grief and dismay. “This is the most extraordinary -nonsense! Happiness! With another woman! With Alix’s mother! She’s old -enough to be mine if it comes to that; and as to marrying me—she’d as -soon think of marrying a Chinaman. People haven’t these romantic ideas -about marrying in France, I can assure you. Marry me!” Giles suddenly -found himself forced by the thought to a loud laugh. “Besides,” he -added, “why should you think that monsieur Vervier is dead? Why should -you think that madame Vervier is a widow?” - -He felt in the silence that followed these last unguarded words that -Toppie looked at him strangely and, as he heard them echo—what, indeed, -did he know about monsieur Vervier, damn him! He had, actually, never -considered monsieur Vervier except as a discarded, dangling phantom of -the past—as he heard the words that disinterred monsieur Vervier and -set him there between him and Toppie, he felt that the bewildered ant -had, indeed, stumbled on a luckless path. - -“Owen always wrote of her as though she were a widow,” said Toppie, -going slowly. She was not bewildered. She looked carefully, if with -shrinking, at the figure he had placed before her in his foolish haste. -“But you know so much more about her than Owen ever knew.—In those few -days you saw and learned things he never saw. Perhaps you do know about -monsieur Vervier. Perhaps you know that he isn’t dead; that she isn’t -free. If that is so—doesn’t it explain even more?—Oh, Giles—I am -afraid”—She stopped. She looked away. He saw the blood rising in her -cheek as she checked the speech that must give him too much offence. - -“I suppose what you mean,” said Giles gloomily, thrusting his hands into -his pockets as he looked down at her, “is that I do know she isn’t free, -and that, therefore, being in love with her, my love is a guilty -passion. Something of that sort, what? Well, if you won’t take my word -for it, there’s no more for me to say, is there?” Resentment had come -into his voice. “We’d better be going.” - -“I accuse you of nothing, Giles,” said Toppie, still dyed with her -blush; “only I am sure that I am right in feeling that something has -happened. I am sorry, but I can’t help feeling it. From the moment you -spoke of madame Vervier I heard that your voice was changed;—so -strained and strange; so full of reluctance. You wanted to say all -against her that you could find to say. You wanted to guard yourself -against your own feeling. But what came through, from the beginning, was -that you found her—beautiful; mysterious; compelling.” Toppie found the -words, a strange tremor in her voice. “What came through was that she -was a goddess.” - -Giles stood motionless, gazing down at her. He was seeing, suddenly, -straight into Toppie’s heart; straight into the heart of their -situation. How futile were his denials, when he could deny only for -himself—and not for the other. The vein of piercing intuition in Toppie -had led her to the portals of the truth. The name she saw inscribed -there was the wrong name; that was all. Change Giles to Owen, and the -truth was in her grasp. She knew that madame Vervier was beautiful, -mysterious, compelling. She knew that both he and Owen had felt her a -goddess. A chill of fear crept about Giles’s heart. - -“Come; we’d better be going,” he repeated. He heard that his voice was -harsh. He would discuss no further and he held out his hand to her. -Toppie took it and rose to her feet. - -She meant to be kind to him. She meant to be his friend;—Giles said it -to himself as, silently, they went down the hill together. But in spite -of all his compassionate understanding of her, his fear for her, what -came over him, in wave after wave of grief and resentment, was that she -was cold and hard. He had made her suffer because of what she had felt -as false in him; but it was now, as it had always been, of Owen that she -was thinking. He had cast, thank Heaven, no shadow on Owen; but -perplexity, mystery, pain had come into her vision of Owen’s friend. - -“Owen never said she was a widow; but I’m sure he believed her to be -one.—Forgive me, Giles, but have you heard what makes you think she may -not be? What do you know of monsieur Vervier? Alix has never spoken of -him. It is so strange; for if he were alive he would be with them, would -he not?” - -“_C’était un bien méchant homme._” These words, in madame Vervier’s -tones of surpassing detachment, came back to Giles. “Alix probably never -saw him. Her mother spoke of him. She said he was a bad man.” - -“She spoke of him to you?” - -“Yes, to me.” - -“And she didn’t say whether he were alive or dead?” - -“No. We weren’t talking about him. We were talking about Alix and her -future. Alix will have hardly any _dot_, it seems, because monsieur -Vervier made away with all her mother’s money. They are parted.” - -“Did she leave him, or did he leave her?” - -“She left him,” said Giles after a moment and he felt his voice harden -towards Toppie. “Continue your cross-examination, pray.” - -“But you know so much, so surprisingly much, Giles. How can I help -asking? How can I help feeling interest in Alix’s mother, in Owen’s -friend? It isn’t cross-examination. It is unkind of you to say that. -Horribly unkind.” - -“I don’t mean to be unkind. It’s you who are unkind, I think. Ask any -questions you like.” - -“How long after her first husband’s death did she marry monsieur -Vervier? May I ask that?” - -“Certainly you may,” said Giles. His bitterness carried him so far. Then -he paused, aghast. He had known that to Toppie Alix could never have -spoken of her mother’s misfortune as frankly as she had to him. He had -forgotten the first misfortune. He was aghast; but while he made his -pause he determined that there should be no half-measure here. Toppie -should not again accuse him of double-dealing. “Didn’t Alix ever tell -you that her mother was divorced?” he demanded, and he heard how hard -and dry was his voice. - -For a moment Toppie said nothing. Then she spoke, softly, as if in all -sincerity she could not believe what she heard. Disastrous, indeed, was -the time for such a hearing. “What did you say, Giles?” - -“Alix told me, the day I brought her here last winter, that her father -and mother had been divorced. If she didn’t tell you, that was, no -doubt, because she took it for granted that I would.” - -And again came Toppie’s dire silence. “And why didn’t you?” - -“Why should I? It was none of our affair.” - -“Isn’t Alix our affair?” - -“Certainly she is. And she has nothing to do with monsieur Vervier.” - -“She has something to do with her mother.” - -“Yes.” Giles’ voice grew harder, dryer. “What she has to do with her -mother we see. She is the product of her mother. Do you find fault with -it?” - -They had reached the road that wound among the birch-woods and dusk had -fallen in it. The sky, paled to a faint apricot tint, shone dimly -between the trees. Toppie stood still on the wayside grass and looked at -him. Ineffaceably, in this instant of strange, unbelievable alienation -(for had he not, in his last words, challenged Toppie with madame -Vervier’s standards as set against her own?), Toppie’s image was stamped -upon his mind; as ineffaceably as on that first time he had seen her. -And now all her light was withdrawn. It was the end, as that had been -the beginning. Pale, wraith-like in the dusk, she fixed her eyes upon -him and they were dark with their repudiation. “Alix is not the product -of her mother. Alix is good and her mother may be bad. You know better -than I do what you think of her mother. It’s you I find fault with, -Giles. Your words don’t tell me what you think.” - -“I’ve kept nothing from you,” said Giles. It was a lie. He knew it, and -he saw that Toppie knew it. He attempted an amendation of his statement. -“Everything you’ve asked I’ve answered.” - -“Have you? I will ask this, then. Did she leave her husband with -monsieur Vervier? Did her husband divorce her because of monsieur -Vervier? Was she unfaithful to her husband?” - -“There were faults on both sides, I believe. Alix wouldn’t have been -given for half the time to her mother if there hadn’t been faults on -both sides.” Giles forced himself to speak steadily. “She was very -young. People don’t judge these things so hardly nowadays.” - -Toppie, her eyes on his, put aside the palliation. “Did she leave -monsieur Vervier with another man? Was she unfaithful to monsieur -Vervier, too? Is she a woman who has had lovers?” said Toppie, and the -word was strange on her lips. - -Giles stood there, stricken. He was so aware of horrible danger, -pressing in upon him and Toppie from every side, that he could hardly -command his thoughts to an order. All that came was a helpless -literalness. There was no refuge from Toppie’s eyes; for her, or for -himself. “Yes,” he said, “I’m afraid she is. That’s the trouble, you -see.” - -Toppie then looked away from him. She looked round her, standing so -still, with no gesture of amazement or distress. But there was a sudden -wildness in her eyes. - -“Toppie, dear Toppie,” Giles pleaded. “She is not a bad woman. Wrong; -but not bad. You can’t judge of these things. I’m not defending -her.—It’s only that, seeing her, seeing all the beauty she has made in -her life, I cannot feel about her mistakes as I should have thought I -would. That’s why you felt me strained in speaking of her. It was a -shock to me. And I didn’t want you to know. Put it away now, Toppie, I -do beg of you. It has nothing, nothing to do with us. She’s a very -beautiful, a very unfortunate woman, and it’s only by chance that we’ve -stumbled upon these unhappy things in her past.” - -Oh, the fatal background to his words! He knew how false they were, -spoken to Toppie, for all that there was of truth in them for himself. -“Let’s go home,” he urged, “and not talk about it any more.” - -Toppie stood, her eyes fixed as if in careful scrutiny upon the -distance. She had raised her hand, as he spoke, and pressed her fingers, -bent, against her lips. He saw that she kept herself with a great effort -from breaking into tears. - -“It’s not that,” she uttered with difficulty. “It’s you.” And now she -moved away. “I’m going home from here. I would rather be alone, please.” - -The road led over the common to Heathside; there was a short cut through -the woods to the Rectory. - -“But, Toppie—I do implore you.” Poor Giles with his rough head and -great round eyes stood and pleaded. “What have I done? What have you -against me?” - -“It’s everything, everything,” Toppie murmured. “It’s all I’ve felt in -you this afternoon. I’ve stumbled—from one hidden thing to another.—It -gives me dreadful thoughts. It’s as if”—she stopped again, her eyes -still fixed on the distance—“as if there might be anything. She’s -changed you so much.” And, her eyes coming to him at last, she spoke on, -helpless in the urgency of her half-seen fear:—“It’s as if she might -have changed Owen;—if he had ever come to know her as well as you -have.” - -Suddenly, at this climax, Giles found himself prepared. “What if she -had?” he demanded, and it was like riding, with a great thrust, to the -top of the breaker that threatened to engulf them. “What if she had made -him judge things more kindly? No doubt she would have changed him. He -would have felt her beauty, too. But she wouldn’t have changed him -towards you, Toppie; any more than she has me.” - -Then Toppie drew back. Seeing suddenly where she stood, seeing her fear -as a disloyalty, she drew away. She looked at Giles and he saw the door, -as it were, mercifully or terribly close against him and Toppie, -demanding no further lies, shut herself away. “Perhaps you are right,” -she said slowly, and each word came with an effort, for they were, -doubtless, the only false words Toppie had ever uttered. “Perhaps I am -too ignorant of the world. I do not judge your friend. But if I knew -her, I could not think her beautiful. I could not think a wicked woman -beautiful. We must be different in that.—I’ll go home now. I’d rather -be alone. Good-bye.” - -She moved away into the wood. - -Giles, standing where she left him, had the sensation of feeling his -heart break. “Toppie,” he said in a choking voice. - -She stopped and looked round at him. Her grey form among the birches was -almost invisible, but he saw the thin oval of her face. - -“Toppie.”—Only this—He could hardly speak. He was not thinking. Only -that stifling pressure in his heart seemed to break its way out into -words—“I do so love you.” - -He saw that he touched her. If not his words, then his face of anguish. -For the first time that day, if only for a moment, her thought was given -to him alone and he felt rather than saw pity in her eyes. - -“Giles—I’m so sorry,” she murmured. - -“I do so love you,” he repeated, gazing at her. But, even as he gazed, -the worst of the anguish was to know that something in his love was -changed for ever. - -“Dear Giles,” Toppie murmured again. “Forgive me.” And again she -repeated, and the phrase was like a fall of snow: “I’m so sorry.” - - - - - PART III - - - CHAPTER I - -What had happened to Giles? - -He was waiting for her on the Victoria platform and his patient gaze and -poise told her that her train was late;—but fatigue did not account for -what Alix saw at once as she stood at the door of her carriage and found -his face. Her dear Giles. Her good Giles. What had happened to him? - -Alix was aware that a great deal had happened to herself since she had -last seen Giles, only two months ago. It was not only her lengthened -skirts and her turned-in locks that gave her her new sense of maturity. -Perhaps one only began really to be grown up when one began to know why -one was unhappy. A child suffers in ignorance of the cause of its -suffering and it can forget more easily because of that merciful -vagueness. Unhappiness is only a cloud to put away or pass out of. But -grown-up unhappiness was four solid walls of fact enclosing one. - -Groping round and round her prison and finding always that solid facts -were there resisting all attempts at forgetfulness, Alix, though she -still could not see just what they were, sometimes asked herself if that -was because she was still too young to understand, or because Maman, so -deftly, so tenderly, with as much compassion as compunction, passed a -bandage round her eyes and kept her blindfolded? She could not tell; but -she knew that another mark of her own maturity was her understanding of -Maman, her new capacity for helping her; and more than in any other way -she helped her by never lifting a hand to push away the bandage and by -never asking a question that Maman might find it difficult to answer. - -She had known intuitively, in the past, that some questions must not be -asked; questions about her father; about monsieur Vervier; about -divorce. But now there were more pressing questions, and the first and -foremost of them was the question of André de Valenbois. - -He was there; in their lives. She had left him behind her in Paris; no -longer their guest, but as much as at Les Chardonnerets the presiding -presence. He was a great friend. So Maman had said to her, strangely -pale, on that night when at Les Chardonnerets she had heard Giles and -André de Valenbois talk of her return to England. Maman had great -friends. And great friends made one suffer—Maman had not said that but -Alix had seen it—and many things in life must be sacrificed to them. It -was not that they were more loved than a child—oh, she was sure -not!—though that was a surmise that had pierced her through; it was -simply that one could not be sure of keeping them always; as one was -sure of keeping one’s child; and because one was not sure, one suffered. -It was something from which one could not free oneself. It was something -that made one helpless. - -So Alix knew herself changed; a grave, meditative person; garnering in -her silence and her submissiveness a power to meet all the emergencies -that must lie in her path since, so obviously, they lay in Maman’s. - -“Hello, Alix,” said Giles. His eyes had found her and he was there below -her, taking from her the basket she had lifted off the seat; and she -said, “Hello, Giles,” though it seemed to her always such an odd phrase -to meet upon. - -“Is this the kitten?” said Giles. - -“Yes. This is Blaise. You expected him? I wrote to Mrs. Bradley.” - -“Expected him! Rather! They’re wanting to see him almost as much as to -see you.” - -“That is well, then,” Alix smiled. “You haven’t been ill, Giles?” - -“Ill! Rather not! I’m as right as rain,” said Giles; and he added, -hastily she felt: “But I say, you’re quite different. What is it? Your -clothes? Your hair?” - -“Maman thought I was getting too old for short hair. It is taken back -from my forehead, too. It makes me very _digne_, I assure you. And my -skirts are nearly as long, you see, as anybody’s skirts.” - -Alix wore a dark blue dress and a dark blue cape, buttoned with little -buttons on her breast and showing a satin lining of striped grey and -blue. Her shoes and stockings were grey, and her loose, long gloves, and -her soft little hat curving down over her brows with the big bow knotted -at the side. Maman had made her, though so sober, very _chic_, and Giles -was taking it all in; as far as he could; and that, she feared, with -tender irony, was not very far. - -Giles, as they moved along the platform, pursued the topic of her -appearance, feeling it evidently opportune. He did not wish to speak -about his own. “It’s that you look so tremendously foreign;—the way you -walk; the way your things are put on; the way your hat comes down like -that. Even the way you speak English is as French as possible, for -anyone who speaks it perfectly; and I’d never noticed that before.” - -“When you first met me,” said Alix, putting the obvious explanation with -mild competence before him, “what chiefly engaged your attention was -that I spoke English at all. Now you notice that though I speak it so -well I speak with my French accent. I am French, Giles.” She slightly -smiled round at him, for she need not emphasize it. He as well as she -would remember their last talk on the cliff-path. “I am a foreigner.” - -“I suppose you are,” said Giles, and it was gravely, almost gloomily -that he said so. - -“Was the walking tour a success?” Alix asked him, while they waited at -the customs, Alix’s box, this time, being larger than the last and -subjected to the vicissitudes of a separate transit. “You did not -overtire yourself? You look a little tired, you know.” - -“Do I really? I haven’t been sleeping very well; it’s been so hot. -Cornwall was a great success. I want you to see Cornwall some day.” - -“It has been hot in Paris, too. But I always love Paris at this season, -the stones all baked with sun, the trees all bronze. We have been dining -in the Bois almost every night, at a little restaurant under the trees. -It has been delicious. And the drive back down the avenue du -Bois.—_Calme-toi, mon chéri_,” she addressed the kitten who was -wailing. - -“Poor little chap. He hasn’t liked the journey. Is he prettier?” asked -Giles. - -“He is uglier,” said Alix. “It is _l’âge ingrat_, you know. No longer -kitten, and yet not cat. Like me. It is only the basket that troubles -him. I had him out for most of the day, in my arms, and he was quiet and -good.” - -“It reassures me to see you still so fond of kittens,” Giles smiled at -her. “It makes me feel you are still something of one yourself.” - -“But I shall always be fond of kittens,” said Alix. - -They were again to spend the night with Aunt Bella and in the taxi Alix -opened the basket and displayed her pet. Very ugly indeed; gaunt in -structure, though fully fed, of a most undistinguished white and -brindle, with a nose already over-long and ears over-large; but as it -nestled into Alix’s neck with loud choking purrs Giles owned that it was -a nice little beast. - -“And so full of love; and so intelligent, Giles,” said Alix, pleased by -his commendation. “More loving, more intelligent, these common little -cats are, than _chats de race_, I always think.” - -London, dusty and drowsy on this Autumn evening, seemed to yawn and -smile and had, Alix thought, a welcoming air. It was a kind city. She -even saw beauty in it, and commented on the Royal Hospital as they drove -through Chelsea. “How well it goes in the thick, soft air—that period, -that colour.” She had never liked London so much, although she came to -it with an unwillingness so much greater than the unwillingness of last -year, and it seemed to her, leaning back in the taxi beside Giles, her -kitten against her cheek, that the dropped aitches, the little -green-grocer’s shops, the strolling lovers, and the river gliding -silvery-grey behind its trees, all went together in the impression of -ease and kindliness. - -In Aunt Bella’s flat all the windows were widely opened to the -freshness, and Aunt Bella received not only her, but Blaise, quite as a -matter of course. This matter-of-courseness, Alix had begun to feel, was -a distinctive English trait. Once they knew you, they accepted you; you -and your kittens. They had no surmises about you. You were simply there. -Was it, Alix wondered, while she changed her dress in her little pink -room—Blaise cautiously reconnoitring from piece to piece of the -furniture—was it that Aunt Bella saw her benevolently as an _œuvre de -guerre_, or sentimentally as a legacy from the dead nephew? As she -reflected on her own presence, so intimately among them, Alix felt that -if Maman’s motives were mysterious to her from their complexity, Aunt -Bella’s would be mysterious from their simplicity. And it was all like -London again; like the cosy little shops with the carrots and cabbages -heaped before their windows, the muffling air and unadventurous river. -There was peace in such simplicity, peace in being among people who had -nothing to hide and who would hardly be able to imagine that you might -have. - -She felt at dinner that Aunt Bella looked at her, in her altered way of -dressing, a little as Miss Grace and Jennifer had looked when Lady Mary -talked to her about Henri de Mouveray. Aunt Bella, no doubt, found the -little dress that Maman had so cleverly contrived out of two Empire -scarves, curious rather than interesting. Charming in colour, dull blue -shot with silver, it was a marvel of convenience as well as so pretty. -One turn and it fell into place, leaving arms and shoulders bare, -knotting low about the hips and falling in long silvery fringes to the -ankle. Seen in Aunt Bella’s flat it had undoubtedly a very Parisian air, -and perhaps Aunt Bella felt it too Parisian, for she began to question -Alix about France’s foreign policy with some severity. Alix gathered -that in Aunt Bella’s eyes her country was behaving badly. - -“But we want the Germans to suffer,” she said. “If they are not made to -suffer sufficiently, they will make us suffer again and perhaps destroy -us.” - -“But that is being revengeful, my dear child. And so short-sighted, too. -You don’t change people’s hearts by making them suffer. You harm -yourself as well as them.” - -“I do not think we want to change their hearts.” Alix, all unversed in -these large subjects as she was, felt herself impelled to make the -answer so obvious to every French mind. “I do not think we care about -their hearts. When a bad man is guillotined, it is sufficient that his -head should be gone. His heart does not concern us.” - -Giles at this laughed loudly and Aunt Bella’s eye-glassed gaze turned to -glitter reprobation at him. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying, Giles. -She is too young to have followed or understood the lamentable policy of -her country. You really shouldn’t encourage her.” - -“But it seems to me she has been following. She’s made the only honest -answer. Have you heard people talking about it a good deal, Alix?” - -She did not mind his mirth or Aunt Bella’s reprobation. She did not care -at all what they thought about France. How could one expect even English -friends really to understand? “I have heard people talk at Maman’s,” she -said. - -Blaise was on a chair beside her eating an excellent dinner, and Giles, -still laughing, said: “Do you know what he looks like? A Boche baby. -There was one born in a village we occupied after the Germans had been -there for two years. It was the funniest, jolliest little fellow; but -awfully ugly; with a face just like that.” - -“But it was half French, I imagine,” said Alix dryly. - -“Certainly half French, I regret to say. But he looked all German. And -I’m sure that if you’d had to take care of him you’d have been as kind -to him as you are to your kitten.” - -“I do not care for babies,” Alix objected. - -“You’d have been kind to him all the same. You wouldn’t have wanted to -see his head cut off.” - -“I do not want to see anyone’s head cut off; but if it were a choice -between a Boche and a French baby, I should choose the French one to -live. That is all we ask of our allies,” Alix added, looking over at -Giles with kindly determination; “to help us to live;—as we have helped -them;—even at the expense of the Germans.” - -Aunt Bella, now, changed the subject. “How is Mr. Westmacott, Giles?” - -“No better, I’m afraid.” - -“Have they a trained nurse yet?” - -“He won’t have one. He won’t admit he’s so bad.” - -“It must be very taxing for Enid.” (Aunt Bella always called Toppie by -her real name.) “How does she bear it?” - -“She looks very worn,” said Giles. - -“And I’m afraid she won’t be at all well off when he dies,” said Aunt -Bella, as though she placed Toppie’s approaching bereavement and -subsequent impoverishment in the same category. “She won’t be able to go -on living in the way she does now. And she has been trained to no -profession. I have always so blamed Mr. Westmacott for keeping her with -him and giving her no education.” - -“Toppie is educated, I think,” said Giles, dryly, but his dryness did -not conceal from Alix the distress Aunt Bella’s surmises caused him. How -much more capable Aunt Bella was, Alix reflected, of sympathizing with -large vague masses of humanity than with one human being. - -“Not educated at all from the modern point of view,” she returned -decisively. “Quite incapable of making her own living. A very dear, good -girl, but a useless girl, and there is no room in the world nowadays for -useless people.” - -“There’s room for Toppie,” said Giles coldly; and then, perhaps, Aunt -Bella remembered that he had a special feeling about Toppie, for she -desisted. - -“I didn’t know Toppie’s father was so ill,” Alix said to Giles when he -and she were for a little while alone in the drawing-room, Aunt Bella -engaged on the telephone in the hall. “I had only one letter from her, -from Bournemouth, and it did not lead me to think he was so seriously -ill.” - -“I’m afraid he is. She didn’t realize it then, perhaps. I’m afraid it’s -only a question of time now,” said Giles, sunk in a deep chair and -watching her while she pretended to play with Blaise. Was it grief, -anxiety about Toppie, that had wrought the change in him? It had to do -with Toppie she felt sure; but had it to do with her as well? Aunt Bella -still issued directions on the telephone and Alix felt suddenly that she -must ask him. - -“Giles,” she said, not looking up from Blaise, who made soft onslaughts -at her hand, “does Toppie know?” - -“Know?” His echo had the strangest reverberations. - -“About Captain Owen is what I mean;—that he cared so much for Maman.” -She looked down at Blaise and moved her knotted handkerchief before his -nose; and she felt the colour rising in her face. - -Perhaps it was because he felt her confusion and shared it that he had -to pause before replying. “Of course she doesn’t know,” he then said -very gently. - -“And you will not forget what you promised me?” - -“What did I promise you?” - -“That if she did know she would still want me back.” - -And again there was a silence. How carefully Giles was considering his -answer was made apparent by the length of the silence; but what he said -finally, more gently than ever, seemed clear. “I’m more sure of that -than ever, Alix. You see, she’s so fond of you.” - - - CHAPTER II - -If Toppie, too, was changed, she was not changed to her. That was the -first thing that Alix felt when she saw her again; next day;—for a note -had been waiting for her at Heathside asking her to come to the Rectory. - -It was a hot, still day and a bee was droning lazily about the Rectory -drawing-room, flying out into the sunlight and in again to the bowl of -mignonette that stood on a table near the window; and the bee made the -day more still. It had been strange to find herself thinking of Racine -as she waited for Toppie. Nothing so trivial and intimate as a bee could -be imagined in any play of Racine’s; yet its soft drone had accompanied -her sense of a pause, of an ominous interlude, like the pause before a -scene where the heroine was to enter with some quiet, conclusive word. -It was, perhaps, because of this association of ideas that Toppie, when -she entered, had looked to her like the Racine heroine, like a creature -delicate and austere, dimly conscious of an impending doom. There was -fear in Toppie’s face as it found her there. Alix saw its white gleam -mastered, resolutely veiled, while, at the same moment, the full -security of Giles’s assurance was brought warmly home to her by Toppie’s -encircling arms, by a new note of emotion in her voice as she said, -kissing her, “Dear, dear child.” - -Toppie was changed; but it could not be because of her. It was her -father’s illness that had changed her and Giles had spoken the whole -truth; but all the same, involuntarily, she found herself saying, while -Toppie’s arms were still around her: “Are you glad to have me back?” And -she heard that her voice trembled in speaking. - -Whatever the fear had been, Toppie had mastered it. She held her by the -shoulders and looked at her, smiling, and said: “So glad, dear little -Alix, that I feel we ought to keep you always.” Then she held her off -and looked her up and down, still smiling, and added: “But it isn’t a -child any longer. It’s an almost grown-up young person.” - -It was strange to feel herself, all reassured as she was, wanting -dreadfully to cry; but Alix, too, was an adept at mastering emotion, and -she said, taking off her hat so that Toppie should see all the changes: -“Do you like my hair?” - -“I like it very much.” Toppie kept her hand, turning her round. “I like -seeing your forehead, such a gentle, thoughtful forehead. I like that -big black bow at your neck.” - -“That is a _jeune fille_ bow—a bow of transition,” smiled Alix. “It is -to be there while the hair grows long enough to make a knot.” - -“I like it all,” said Toppie. - -They sat down on the sofa side by side, Toppie still holding her hand, -and then she said: “Toppie, I had not realized from your letter that -your father was so ill.” - -Toppie looked at her in silence for a moment and, slowly, her eyes -filled with tears. “He is going to leave me, Alix,” she said. - -It was her father, then. Alix could not but feel the deep, selfish -relief. “Oh, you must hope,” she said. - -“I do try to hope. I try to live on hope. But I am afraid he is going to -leave me,” Toppie repeated. “He is not much changed,” she went on, for -Alix found nothing to say. “You will not see much change in him, I am -sure. I will take you up to him presently. He likes to follow what goes -on. In a way he follows more than he has ever done. It is a sort of -clinging, I think. And he is quite cut off from his own work. I read to -him a great deal. Perhaps you will come sometimes and read to him in -French. He likes that, you know.” - -“I like it, too. You must let me come often. It is curious, Toppie, but -when Giles is away my English life is really here with you; not that I -am not very fond of them all at Heathside.” - -“Is it?” Toppie looked at her very intently. “I am glad of that. Glad -that I can mean home to you.—Dear little Alix.—But you _are_ fond of -them.” - -“Especially of Mrs. Bradley. Only she is there so little. One hardly -sees her. I am fond of Ruth and Rosemary, too. But I would rather be -with you.” Alix smiled a little. - -“And it will be Rosemary only this winter, since Ruth is going to -Oxford. I am glad she is to be there. Giles will like having her near -him.” Toppie spoke calmly the name of Giles. - -“Do you think so?” said Alix. “Do you think she means much to Giles?” - -“He is devoted to all his family. It will certainly be a pleasure to him -to have her,” said Toppie, and Alix now thought she detected in her -voice a strange detachment. - -“He is fond of them to do things for them; not to be with them—I mean -his sisters. He is so unlike his sisters; and most of all unlike Ruth. -Ruth is so stupid beside Giles.” - -“She is a very good girl; very courageous and honest,” said Toppie. “I -think I see Ruth’s good points more than I used to. I think, Alix, the -older one grows, the more one cares for those sterling qualities. Black -would always be black to Ruth, and white, white. That has value, the -highest value, in a person’s character, you know.” - -Something in Toppie’s tone now dimly offended Alix. “But you could not -really compare Ruth and Giles, Toppie. Giles is all that she is and so -much more besides. He sees the greys and all the delicate in-between -shades, too. Nothing is really black or white, and that is what is so -stupid in Ruth; she sees things so.” - -“It sometimes seems to me that they are nothing else,” said Toppie very -calmly. “And Ruth has, I think, because of that downrightness in her, -more strength of character than Giles. He would so much more easily be -mistaken;—misled.” Toppie paused before finding these words. “He has -what would be called the artistic temperament, I suppose; and that is -the penalty one pays for having it; a certain weakness; a certain -yielding. I feel that Giles would yield where Ruth would stand up like -granite;—and I like the granite thing in people.” - -Alix sat in indignant astonishment. “I have never known anyone so true -as Giles,” she said slowly. - -“I did not say that he was not true,” Toppie returned, with a touch of -severity. “I said that he would be more easily misled than Ruth. I said -that he was weaker than Ruth.” - -They sat for a few strange moments silent. - -“But it is as if you were changed to Giles,” Alix cried suddenly. She -could not repress the cry. “What is it, Toppie? What has he done to -displease you? You are unkind to him. You speak as if you did not care -for him.” - -A deep blush rose in Toppie’s face; but it was not the blush of surprise -or confusion. Alix saw a competent sternness in the eyes bent upon her. -“You must not say things like that,” Toppie said slowly, considering -every word. “There are things you do not understand. I shall always care -for Giles. I have not changed to him. No,” she repeated as if to -herself, “I have not changed to Giles.” - -They sat there, still hand in hand. Alix felt that she wished to fling -Toppie’s hand aside. In answer to her sternness she had felt an instant -anger rise within her. That Toppie should reprove, rebuff her, was -itself an affront she bore with difficulty—and bore only because she -feared to damage Giles’s cause by rejoinder; but her anger passed the -personal wrong by and fastened itself, strangely, inevitably, on the -figure of Captain Owen. - -It was Toppie herself, in the picture she had drawn of Giles, who had -set him so vividly before her. Captain Owen, not Giles, was the person -who would blur black into grey; Captain Owen was the person who, in -comparison with honest Ruth, lacked something. Giles was everything that -his brother had not been, and yet it was Captain Owen who had betrayed -Toppie—she found the word and it sank with a cold weight on her -heart;—it was Captain Owen, now, she felt sure of it, who parted Giles -and Toppie. She sat, her eyes fixed proudly before her; her lips hard. - -“Alix,” Toppie said in a gentle voice, “if so much has changed in my -life—you mustn’t change.” - -“It feels to me as if it were you who were changed, Toppie,” said Alix. - -“You must forgive me, then,” said Toppie with her firm gentleness. “I am -not quite myself, perhaps. I am rather on edge. I know I seemed to speak -harshly. You see, dear Alix, you are still, really, a child—one cares -for you so much that one forgets it. But there are things you cannot -understand.” - -“Perhaps I understand some things better than you do, Toppie,” Alix -returned, still not looking at her friend. - -At that, for a moment, Toppie sat quite silent. “Perhaps you do,” she -then said. “Some things, perhaps you do. But I feel sure that you do not -understand the things I am speaking of.” - -After that they tried to talk as if nothing had happened. Toppie’s -manner had an atoning sweetness. Once or twice, in the way she spoke, -the way she looked at her, it was as if, Alix felt, one of Toppie’s -doves had spread its brooding wings over her, protectingly, tenderly. -She knew that she had not forgiven Toppie; and yet she was the fonder of -her because she had not forgiven her. - -She was taken up to see Mr. Westmacott, who sat at an open window, a -reading-table before him with books upon it. Sitting there, as formally -courteous as ever, with his tall pale head and eyes still clearly blue, -he did not look so ill. It was more in his voice as he questioned her -about her journey that she felt change. His voice had become dry and -brittle, like a glacial wind fluttering the leaves of an old abandoned -volume that no one would ever read again. He would soon die; Alix felt -sure of that as she heard him. He would die, and Toppie would leave the -Rectory and wander forth desolate, among her doves. Why, oh, why, would -she not see and understand Giles? Why would she not marry him? “Oh, if I -could see her married to Giles,” she thought, when she had said good-bye -to Toppie and was out again upon the common. “If I could only help Giles -so that he should marry her, it would have been worth while that I -should have come to England!” And that there was mistake, -misunderstanding between Giles and Toppie, she was now sure. - -She had gone halfway across the dried heather, when, as on the evening -of her first visit to the Rectory, she saw Giles approaching her, Jock -at his heels, and she knew now, as she had then only felt instinctively, -that he had been waiting for her and that he was afraid of something. Of -the same thing; yet of more. - -Jock saw her and raced ahead to jump against her knees. He was still her -special pet among the dogs and had received Blaise kindly. Alix stooped -to caress his head while she watched Giles approach her. - -“Well, how did you find Toppie?” he asked simply, as they met.—Giles -not true! Giles easily misled! Alix felt herself suddenly blushing with -anger as the thought of Toppie’s strange delusion returned to her. Giles -drew her arm within his and they went across the common towards the -birch-wood. It gave her a deep feeling of consolation that he should -thus seek refuge with the one person who could understand him. - -“I find her changed, Giles,” she said. - -“In what way changed?” said Giles quickly. - -And as quickly Alix answered: “Not at all to me, Giles.” - -“You see how desperately ill her father is, don’t you?” said Giles. -“She’s quite worn out with nursing him, you know. In what way do you -feel her changed?” he repeated, looking down into her face. - -Alix was pondering. She was not a person who believed in black and -white. She believed in the greys and the in-between shades. She did not -mean to tell Giles how she thought Toppie changed. What she found to say -was: “If Toppie were happier she would not be so hard.” - -“Hard?” She was looking at the ground, but she heard in Giles’s voice -how the word startled him. - -“Do you not think Toppie hard?” she asked. - -“If she is,” said Giles after a moment, “it’s because of what you -say—that she is unhappy.” - -“And because she is too sure,” said Alix. They had entered the -birch-wood and their footsteps rustled in the fallen golden leaves. They -went forward, aimlessly, not thinking of where they went, Alix intent on -her reading of Toppie, Giles listening. “Too sure of what she loves and -believes in. She has had to be too sure, because she is so unhappy.—Is -that it, Giles? And the things she loves and believes in are not the -things she sees. Perhaps that makes us hard—if we can only think of the -things we love and never see or touch them—makes us hard, I mean, to -the things we have with us.” - -Giles was, she knew, keeping his eyes on her as she put together these -suggestions, and as he meditated for a little pause, her thoughts, in -the silence, while she watched the golden leaves, took a long flight to -France and she found herself suddenly wondering if perhaps Maman and -André de Valenbois were wandering under the autumnal trees in the -Bois—as Giles had seen Maman and Captain Owen wander under the Spring -trees. And with the thought came such a pang of fear and grief. - -“You’re right, I think,” Giles said. “And I see no help for it. She’ll -grow more and more away from the things she has with her and shut -herself more and more into her solitude—where she is safe with the -things she can’t see.—What can we do about it, Alix?” said Giles -gently, a little as if he spoke to a child from whose ingenuous wisdom -he sought an oracle.—“Who can help Toppie in any way in which she’d -accept help?” - -Suddenly it was very easy, there in the twilight woods, to be -courageous. She was so near Giles. It was as if her heart beat in his -side. “No one can do anything for her but you, Giles. You must marry her -and make her happy.” - -“Oh, my dear little Alix,” he said, smiling bitterly, not even pausing -to assess her daring, just as she herself had not needed to pause. -“There’s no hope for me. No one can help her less than I.” - -“Do you mean there never was hope;—or is none now?” - -“There never was, perhaps;—but there’s less now. Her heart is full of -Owen.” - -“Yet if he had not been there, it would have been you she would have -loved.” - -“Who can tell? Perhaps.” - -“And is it because of him that there’s less hope, even, now?” - -“Put it like that if you choose,” said Giles. “Yes. Because of him.” - - - CHAPTER III - -The old life flowed round her again, outwardly the same, inwardly so -altered. She had been, she saw it, like nothing but a glass of _eau -sucrée_ when she had first come to Heathside;—or if that was a simile -too insipid for even her youngest consciousness, like _eau sucrée_ with -a squeeze of lemon in it. Now the wine of new perceptions, new emotions, -tinged her deeply, and because she was enriched she saw a richer world -about her. English history, from being a mere flat picture, dull at best -compared to the splendid pageantry of France, began to take on depth and -distance in her eyes. It was English history she saw now when she went -up to Oxford with Giles and Ruth, and English history was English -character; whereas event, in French history, played so much more potent -a part. Wandering in and out with Giles, the beauty of the town, with -its significance, stole upon her mind and senses. Meditative, benign, -and so humane, it seemed to smile at you like an old ecclesiastic with -kindly eyes for youth. As one sat in a sun-steeped garden or dim, carved -chapel, one felt its quiet like that of a tree, full of life and growth, -so that, though it was old, it was also young; the sap moved on to fresh -leaves while the calm old trunk endured. Time had been distilled and -preserved in it without a break or cleavage and its very light, she -felt, in this autumnal weather, had that colour of time, as though it -came through ancient glass. The quadrangles were brimmed with time and -it brooded on the lawns of Saint John’s where the Michaelmas daisies -growing against the grey stone walls made her think of the ring on the -benignant hand of the bishop. “One would grow wise by being here even if -one only sat still, like this, and looked at it,” she said to Giles. “I -only wish one did!” said Giles. But he felt what she felt and was -pleased with her for, at last, understanding his Oxford. - -She began to wish for wisdom. Back at Heathside she bicycled to the High -School every morning with Rosemary, through the birch-wood, past the -red-brick villas of the town—villas upon which time had laid no kindly -hand—and all the ugliness that had so fretted her fell into an -insignificant background, since, for the first time, the day had its -object. Knowledge, of course, was quite different from wisdom. The happy -life depended on eyes to see the hands that blessed and the smile on the -face of time; but it was knowledge that opened one’s eyes and she found -in its acquisition a zest and an enfranchisement. It was in order that -she might see that smile in France that she worked so hard. The sooner -was she equipped, the sooner could she return to France and Maman. -Already she outdistanced Rosemary, and she had a touch of kindly malice -at seeing her friend of the chaffing complacencies and cheerful bullying -left behind. - -Rosemary was not ungenerous. She showed her chagrin and her admiration, -openly. “It’s not even as if it were your own language,” she grumbled. -“And you don’t seem to take half the trouble over it that I do.” - -“Perhaps it is because you are in your own country and I out of mine,” -Alix suggested. - -“Now what on earth do you mean by that?” Rosemary inquired. - -“I have nothing else to do but think about my studies,” said Alix. - -Rosemary stared. “You’ve got the same things to think about that I have. -Surely you are at home by now. All the girls like you and you’re never -left out of anything.” - -“It is not anything like that. Everybody is as kind as possible,” said -Alix. She could not, she knew, make Rosemary understand. Rosemary, -fundamentally, could not take foreign countries seriously—could not -believe that anyone lucky enough to be in England should have all their -energies bent on leaving it. - -“And what do you girls intend to do with yourselves?” Mrs. Bradley asked -them one day at the firelit tea-table. She had, as usual, a pile of -papers beside her and laid down her fountain pen to pour out the tea. -“Alix is doing so well that she can really begin to think of choosing a -career and it’s not too soon to turn things in that direction.” - -Even dear Mrs. Bradley took it for granted that she might be quite -satisfied to make a career out of her own country. - -“I hope I shall marry when I go back to Maman,” said Alix. - -“Now isn’t she altogether too priceless, Mummy!” cried Rosemary. “One -would have thought that with all the time you’ve been in England, Alix, -you’d have got over those French ideas about marriage.—I suppose you’ll -actually say that you’d let your mother choose a husband for you.” - -“But who would choose one so well?” said Alix. Yet it was not true; it -was not true that she still believed this of Maman. England had already -changed her so much. But she did not intend that Rosemary should guess -it. - -“Who would? Why, you yourself!” cried Rosemary. “What can your mother -know about it? Aren’t you an individual with your own tastes and -feelings? And do you seriously think marriage the only career for a -woman?—Do you really think getting married the whole meaning of life?” - -“It is a sad thing to be a _vieille fille_, I think,” said Alix. - -“Sad? Why sad? You don’t call Aunt Bella sad, do you? And there’re -thousands and thousands more like her. All of ’em as jolly as possible; -the unmarried people nowadays. Jollier than the married ones, I -think;—and no wonder.” - -“In their hearts, you may be sure, they wish they did not have to be -quite so jolly,” Alix demurred. “They must feel it sad when they reflect -that they have only other people’s children to care for—and those not -the most interesting. And it must be sad to be alone at one’s _foyer_.” - -“One may have one’s own children and yet have to take care of the -others, too, you know, Alix,” Mrs. Bradley smiled, finishing her tea and -taking up a packet of case papers. “All these are other people’s -children.” - -“One needn’t care for one’s own, or for other people’s unless one wants -to,” Rosemary commented. “People specialize nowadays and know that some -women are maternal and some aren’t. I’m sure I’m not. I couldn’t be -bothered with children, or with a husband either—It’s as good as a play -to hear you talk, you know, Alix—all your quaint French ideas. What can -one hope of a nation that still has them!—Cradles, hearthstones, -hubby’s socks to mend;—that’s what really appeals to you, I suppose.” - -“What appeals to me is to be established,” said Alix. “I do not care for -babies; but they are a part of marriage, and no doubt one would come to -like them when one had them. As for the socks—I should hope to marry -well enough to have a maid to do that.” - -Rosemary’s eyes rounded. “You mean you’d marry for money?” - -Alix smiled: “You are so _réaliste_ in some ways, Rosemary, and so -romantic in others.” - -“I hope, dear, you’d never think of marrying for money,” Mrs. Bradley -put in. “Money is a very minor consideration in marriage.” - -“Romantic! I romantic!—It’s merely a question of one’s own dignity!” -cried Rosemary; while Alix said: “There would have to be character and -taste and position as well;—but don’t you think, _chère Madame_, that -it is well to marry suitably?” - -“Suitably? Yes, of course.” Mrs. Bradley was gently bewildered. “But the -most suitable thing of all is to marry someone one loves.” - -Alix, in silence, wondered. - - * * * * * - -Mr. Westmacott seemed a little better now. She went to the Rectory twice -a week and read aloud in French to him and Toppie. He seemed to enjoy it -and followed if she read very slowly and distinctly. Toppie sat, her -fair head bent over her knitting. She was knitting endless little vests -for the poor babies of one of Mrs. Bradley’s charities. Alix wondered -sometimes what was to become of all those babies. Were they passed on -from Mrs. Bradley to more Mrs. Bradleys, until, at last, in one of the -hospitals administered by the Aunt Bellas, they closed their eyes? Would -some be good citizens and some mere beasts of burden, and some, perhaps, -thieves and scoundrels? All were to begin with those little snowy -woollen vests, and all were to end in coffins. It made her feel strange -to think of it. But when she expressed something of these thoughts to -Toppie one day, Toppie looked at her very gravely, and said: “They are -all to end in heaven, Alix. We are all of us only that; souls setting -out on our journey.” But Alix found it so difficult to think of some -people as souls. - -The babies’ vests were a strange accompaniment to Saint-Simon’s -“Mémoires.” She found these on Giles’s shelves and asked Toppie if they -would do. She had so often heard André de Valenbois and monsieur de -Maubert and Maman quote Saint-Simon. Neither Toppie nor her father had -read him and were quite contented with her choice, and she skipped about -and found the people who most interested her. The French was strange, -but it seemed to say more than modern French. The strangeness, she saw, -was not apparent to Toppie and her father, nor was the acid irony nor -the often unconscious humour. Toppie and her father rarely found -anything to laugh at. Mr. Westmacott’s chief preoccupation was to follow -the relationships of the characters and to place them correctly against -the background of contemporaneous history, and for this purpose there -were many interruptions while Toppie went to fetch the encyclopædia. -Alix saw that Toppie sometimes listened with a vague distress. -Saint-Simon and the people he wrote of were as alien to her -understanding—to say nothing of her sympathies—as the Chinese. To -Alix, for all the travesty of their tails and crests, they were clearly -recognizable types. She saw the court of Louis Quatorze as a great -golden aviary where splendid creatures, plumed, absurd, and beautiful, -paced and preened and surreptitiously pecked at each other beneath the -proud gaze of the monstrous bird of paradise on the throne. There was -something sinister about them, there behind their bars; but something -familiar and lovable too. Toppie only saw them as the denizens of a -rather disagreeable fairy-tale, though at some moments of the recital, -obscure to Alix, she saw that Toppie’s eyes rested upon her in a -cogitativeness that seemed aware of too much reality. “They are all -odious people, Alix,” she said to her one day. “Odious; vindictive; -vulgar and wicked.” - -“Oh; but not all, Toppie. Some are very good, like Fénélon—though -Saint-Simon is unfair to him; and some are charming, like the Duchess de -Bourgogne. She was too fond of pleasure, perhaps; but she is so merry -and amusing that one can forgive her that.” - -“Very much too fond, I am afraid,” said Toppie, colouring above her -knitting. “I do not like her, Alix.” - -“If you feel the book unsuitable for our young friend, Toppie,” Mr. -Westmacott observed, “why should we not read ‘Corinne’? I remember -finding madame de Staël very interesting and any young girl could read -her.” - -“But there are wicked people in all history,” cried Alix, aghast at this -suggestion. “You all read Shakespeare, though he is full of wickedness. -It is the point of view. The point of view of Saint-Simon is not wicked. -He is ill-tempered, disagreeable, but upright; he means always to tell -the truth. And then he was so devout, Monsieur; he was such a devout -Christian.” - -This was wily of her, and Mr. Westmacott, easily reassured, agreed; -“Yes, yes, I see that.” - -When Giles came home for the holidays, Toppie and her father had gone -again to Bournemouth. “She might have waited a week longer, so that I -could see her,” said Giles sadly. It was still taken happily for granted -that Alix should sit with Giles in the mornings. There were fires -everywhere this Winter, but she was more than ever glad of the refuge. -Ruth had become a rather overwhelming presence. She had made new friends -at Somerville and spent the first fortnight of her holidays with them in -London, going to art-student dances in Chelsea and medical-student -dances in Bloomsbury, and returning to her home with what Alix felt to -be many a foolish flourish added to her sensible signature. She -addressed Alix as “dear old ass,” and her favourite exclamation was -“God!” - -“It is so unlike our _mon Dieu_,” Alix could not forbear writing to -Maman. “It is as if one saw a hen suddenly lay an ostrich egg—and so -proud of it. I think when English people like Ruth become emancipated, -they are very like hens laying ostrich eggs. There is such a strain; -and, when it is all over, it is not an interesting object.” - -Ruth had been meant by nature to be like Aunt Bella, though with much of -beauty added. She was tall and large and brightly fair. She had little -gaiety, but she gave an impression of massive cheerfulness; and it -knocked you down if you impeded it, and strode, almost gravely, on its -way. Alix was pleased to feel that Giles, too, found Ruth irritating. He -could be very sharp with her, especially when she patronized her mother. -But Ruth now, fortified by her new experience of life and in less awe of -a brother, was not to be quelled by sharpness, so that if Giles had not -withdrawn into gloomy silences there would often have been quarrels. - -“There’s no harm in her. She’s as good as gold. She’d go to the stake -for Mummy if it were necessary, cheerfully and as a matter of course; -only she’s so insufferably conceited,” Giles grumbled to Alix in the -study. “Why didn’t you tell her she knew nothing about it, when she was -chaffing you about French manners and customs just now? All she knows -about French manners are those of the professor’s family she stayed with -in Paris. Why didn’t you tell her to shut up?” - -“That would have been rude,” said Alix. - -“Well, she was rude.” - -“But that is no reason for me,” Alix slightly smiled, looking up at him. - -“By Jove, no!” Giles, with a rueful laugh, rubbed his hand through his -hair. “Ruth’s manners could never be a reason for yours, could they! I -say, you know, that’s a nasty one, Alix!” - -“I do not mean it to be nasty. And she did not mean to be rude,” said -Alix. “She meant only to be funny.” - -“That makes her stupid, then, as well as conceited,” said Giles. - -If she took refuge with Giles, it was curious and touching to Alix to -note that before Ruth’s assaults Mrs. Bradley more and more took refuge -with her. When Ruth, with a shout of laughter, crowed “Victorian!” at -her mother, Alix begged that the inferiority of this term should be -explained to her. “For in Maman’s salon,” she observed, “clever -people—I mean the ones your clever people quarrel over in the reviews -as to who should claim to have first read them—admire even George Eliot -and Ruskin, I assure you. Admire them greatly.” - -“Help! Help!” shrieked Ruth. She knew nothing of the clever people in -Maman’s salon. She had not advanced to the recognition of cleverness -beyond her reach; she had advanced only as far as scorn for -unfashionable tastes, and in herself, as Alix, musing on her, perceived, -she had none of the stuff from which new valuations are made. - -“And you know,” Mrs. Bradley, for the sake of historical accuracy put -forward—evading by the mere force of her impersonality any -altercation—“it wasn’t really so long ago when I was young, Ruth. I -didn’t live in the time of crinolines. I was reading my Dostoievsky in -French and my Hardy in English when I was your age, and I don’t seem to -see that you young people have got beyond them.” - -“Oh, Mummy darling, it’s not a question of what you read or don’t read!” -cried Ruth, affectionately ruffling her mother’s head. “It’s the colour -of your mind! It’s the pattern of your complexes!” - -“There’s some truth in that, you know,” Mrs. Bradley observed to Alix -when, after this sally, Ruth seized her hockey stick and strode away. - -Mrs. Bradley always saw whatever of truth there was to be seen in other -people’s positions. She felt no impatience or grievance against her -merciless daughter. She had not time for such reactions. Her own work -occupied all her time. And she hoped for her children that they, too, -would find work that would thus become the meaning of their lives. It -was wonderful in her, this detachment, Alix thought, yet she found fault -with it, and it was the only fault she found in Mrs. Bradley. She should -have felt herself more responsible for the uncouthness of her daughter; -she should have given less thought to the welfare of the London -children, and more to the manners of her own. “It would have been better -for them,” thought Alix, “if she could have become very angry with them. -How excellent for Ruth and Rosemary if they could have been well whipped -from time to time. And it is too late now.” - -Mrs. Bradley would have thought whipping irrational and cruel. “She is -too wise, too quiet,” thought Alix. “But then the saints were like that; -wise and quiet and incapable of anger.” - -Alix had never cared at all about the saints, and it was strange to feel -that this heretic lady, creedless and uncloistered, made them more real -and more lovable to her. - -“Do you not think so, too, Giles?” she said to her friend in the study. -“Do you not see what I mean? She is like a modern kind of saint; so -selfless and dedicated and laborious. She never thinks about being -happy.” - -“You make her happy, Alix. Did you know that?” said Giles.—“Yes, I see -perfectly what you mean. Yet Mummy never seems to me sad. Does she to -you?” - -“I do not know,” Alix reflected. “She did not begin so quiet, I am sure. -Just as the saints did not. At the bottom of her heart she wanted to be -loved more; much more;—isn’t that what all people want most, -Giles?—And then when she found that she was not to be she must have -felt very sad.” - -“But, I say, you know!”—Giles stared at her from his chair. “You do say -the most astonishing things! Not loved enough! Why don’t we all love -her!” - -“Oh, but it would have to be more than that. She would want far more -love than English children could ever give to their parents.” - -“English children! Surely you don’t think that the French love their -parents more than we do!” - -“But of course we do, Giles,” said Alix in candid surprise. “Our mothers -we do; for perhaps fathers do not count for so much with us, either.” - -“Oh, come, I can’t swallow that.” Giles smiling, yet disturbed, was -rubbing his hand over his hair. “You—even you—don’t love your mother -more than I do mine.” - -“I think I do, Giles. I think we are more a part of our mothers in -France. You stand more alone in England, in everything.” - -Giles in his disturbance of mind had got up and was looking out of the -window. “And what about my father, then?” he said. “What about his love -for her? That’s what we think of in England as counting most in a -woman’s life. He was devoted to her.” - -Alix felt a little shy of sharing with Giles her deepest intuition about -Mrs. Bradley’s selflessness. - -“I am afraid not enough, Giles. Did he really see her as you see her? I -am afraid he was not a part of herself, and that is what one expects in -England and that is why she must have been sad. And I think she loved -best always—if you do not mind my saying so—the ones who were most -part of herself—you and Captain Owen and Francis. One cannot help -loving most people who are most part of oneself.” - -And though she still kept her French scepticism about marriage, the -half-unconscious climax of a long process of change within Alix was -reached when she added in her own thought: “How sad to be married to -someone who is not part of yourself.” - - - CHAPTER IV - -It was in the last fortnight of the holidays that a letter, once more, -came from Lady Mary asking, as if only a few weeks had elapsed since the -last time of asking, if Alix could not now come and stay with them at -Cresswell Abbey. - -The letter was again addressed to Mrs. Bradley and again arrived at -breakfast-time so that she read it aloud to the assembled family. - -“You’ll have to go this time, Alix,” said Giles, with an air of fatherly -authority. - -“Where’s the ‘have’ about it, Giles?” Ruth inquired, helping herself to -mustard with her kedgeree. “She’ll go if she likes, I suppose; and not -otherwise. For my part I don’t see why she should be at the beck and -call of Lady Hamble, or whatever her name is. She’s forgotten Alix for -long enough.” - -“What’s to the point is that she’s remembered her for long enough,” said -Giles, “and that Alix has remembered her. Of course, you’re going, -Alix.” - -“Alix will be bored stiff among all those swells,” cried Rosemary; “and, -besides, she’ll miss the Eustaces’ dance. Do refuse, Alix.” - -“But I do not think they will bore me,” said Alix. “I should like to -go.” - -It was arranged that Giles was to motor her to Hampshire; the -cross-country journey was too difficult by train, and while the map was -brought and spread out over the jam-pots and butter-dishes and they all -made suggestions as to the best route, Alix had time to wonder why, -despite her assertion, her old eagerness about Cresswell Abbey and Lady -Mary was much faded. Was it that she had grown fonder of Heathside? Yes; -undoubtedly; but that was not the reason. It was not to lose Heathside -to pay Cresswell Abbey a visit. But, with a new, unwonted shyness, she -shrank from the thought of the environment that had, in Lady Mary -herself, so reminded her of Maman. Maman would want her to go. She would -want it more than Giles did; and did he not want it because he knew that -it would be Maman’s desire for her? It was almost to suspect them of -planning it for her and it affected her with almost a sense of grief to -see his dark head bent above Ruth’s golden one while, so earnestly, he -scanned the road that was to lead her away from them. Did he—with Maman -to help him—believe that it would lead to an English marriage for her? -The blood rose faintly in her cheeks as she sat there, silent. - -But her disquiet was even deeper than this. She had no longer her old -sense of security. It was Giles’s presence that lent her what security -she had and he would not be at Cresswell Abbey. - -She was very silent on the morning they set out for their long drive. It -was nearly mid-day, yet the hoar frost still made the woods thick and -white against the sky, and the twigs were like antlers in their mossy -branching outlines. When they passed into the open country the buffs and -cinnamons and mole-colours of the fields and uplands were all powdered -to paleness. The beauty of the day was like a promise, but Alix felt it -like a farewell. - -“You’ll be back in the fortnight at most, you know,” said Giles. He saw -that she was sad and said it to reassure her. - -“But of course I shall not stay for a fortnight, Giles,” she said. - -“Lady Mary didn’t fix any time; but I do hope you’ll stay for as long as -she asks you,” Giles returned. She made no reply. That, of course, was -what Maman would wish him to say to her. - -They found the way longer than they had computed, and Alix was very -hungry by the time they reached the little market-town where they were -to lunch. It was disappointing to find the mutton so tough, and the -untidy and decorated young person who waited on them brought the cabbage -and potatoes with such a languid mien that they seemed to be almost a -concession to special greed. - -“I think the cooks in your provincial inns have no pride in their -calling,” Alix observed, refraining from a very yellow custard pudding -while Giles doggedly attacked bread and cheese. “It is a pity; for pride -in one’s calling gives a zest to life, does it not?” - -“Good Lord, Alix! Don’t rub it in!” Giles exclaimed, for the mutton had -been very tough. - -It was already four o’clock when they entered the lodge gates of -Cresswell Abbey. The road through the park wound upwards and one saw the -ample, happy house with the dropping sun yellowing its windows as it -looked out over a southern aspect. Built of pale grey stone and thickly -lichened with rosettes of gold, it belonged to an England almost -intimate still in its associations. A Gainsborough lady, when it was but -newly built, might, Alix thought, have come strolling out on the -terrace, the white fur of her little silk jacket turned up about her -ears, and a white dog, half Spitz, half Pomeranian, trotting by her -side. There was nothing of the splendour or romance of antiquity about -it, and Alix, as she saw it, a vision of haughty Montarel hovering at -the back of her mind, was a little disappointed. But it was impossible -to think of English people living at Montarel. How different this -kind-eyed butler from Mélanie in her _savates_; how different the -firelit hall, filled with the scent of pot-pourri and burning logs, from -the gaunt cobwebby spaces of Montarel! A wide staircase turned to an -upper landing from the hall, and on the turn, with an ascending row of -Chinese paintings behind him, a young man in hunting-dress was standing, -looking down at them, as they were ushered in, with soft, bright, -interested eyes. A group of people, half shut in by a high Chinese -screen of red and gold, sat round the fire and from an open door came -the sound of a piano playing a reckless jazz tune. Alix felt her sadness -dispelled by a sweet stealing sense of excitement. - -And now Lady Mary was again before her, looking older than she had -remembered her—and that was perhaps because another woman, radiantly -young, sat knitting by the fire—but showing the remembered bright -softness, and she was drawing them both forward and saying to Giles: -“Oh, but of course you must stay—oh, not only to tea; for the night. -It’s so far. It’s so cold. It’s so late. Indeed, you must.—Jerry will -lend you everything.” - -Jerry came down the stairs. He had auburn hair and auburn eyes and thick -upturned auburn lashes. He was, of course, Lady Mary’s son, and Alix was -aware that during this little interval it had been at herself that he -had been looking. She saw herself standing there as he must see her. The -soft little grey travelling-hat came down over her eyebrows; the big, -soft collar of her coat went up about her ears; there was not much of -her face to be seen; but, for perhaps the first time in her young life, -she knew—and the knowledge, mingling with the warm scent of the -pot-pourri, the lurching, imbecile gaiety of the music, deepened her -sense of excitement—that she held herself beautifully, and that as far -as clothes were concerned she had no cause for disquiet. - -“I am dark and she is fair,” this was the thought that passed through -her mind as she felt herself observed not only by Jerry, but also by the -radiant lady at the fireside; “but I am even younger than she is, and, I -imagine, more unusual.” - -“Yes, _do_ stay,” said Jerry, looking now at Giles and smiling as if he -were specially glad to see him. - -Poor dear Giles! How gaunt and shabby and shy he looked among them all; -rather, thought Alix, like a rook softly entreated by a flock of doves. -They cooed about him; Lady Mary with her soft dark eyes, and Jerry, and -a kind elderly gentleman who had advanced from the hearth, the “Times” -held behind him, and who, apparently, was Lady Mary’s husband. Even the -butler seemed to be one of the flock, and he gently withdrew Giles’s -greatcoat and carried it away as if the question were settled before -Giles had had time, as she knew, to gather his wits together. - -“You _will_. That’s splendid,” said Jerry, though Giles had not said -that he would. “Let’s have tea at once, Mummy; they’ll want it as much -as I do, and I’ll change after.” - -Lady Mary, taking Alix by the hand, as though she might feel, as a -foreigner, strange in a strange country, led her upstairs to a bright -sweet room where rose-clotted chintzes were drawn back from the bed and -windows and flowers stood on the writing- and dressing-tables and -enticing bottles with little labels round their necks on the wash-hand -stand. - -“Debenham will get you everything. Ask her for anything you want,” said -Lady Mary, introducing the elderly maid who entered with hot water. “You -can find your way down? We’re having tea in the drawing-room, just out -of the hall. And then you must have a little rest. Some young people are -coming over after dinner to dance. Are you fond of dancing?” - -“Fonder than of anything, I think,” said Alix; and Lady Mary, smiling, -said “Good.” - -When she was left alone and had taken off her hat and washed, and combed -her hair, Alix stood before the glass and looked at herself attentively. -She looked well after the long drive. It had not been really cold, -though her lips were a little pale. She bit them to make the colour -come, and wondered, bending closer, whether she should powder her face. -She had never yet used the box of powder, _teinte Rachel_, in her -dressing-case, though Maman had told her that she might do so if she -thought it advisable. The radiant lady used liquid powder; Alix had seen -that at once, and her lips were reddened artificially. Alix decided that -she would leave herself alone. “It goes better with my hair; one colour -all over like that; and the right colour,” she reflected, while the -spicy elation ran still more warmly through her veins. Maman had chosen -with her, at a specially favourite little shop in the rue du Faubourg -Saint-Honoré, the jumper of palest blue and grey, patterned like a -fritillary; and the string of dull brown beads and the blue skirt and -the grey shoes and stockings all went perfectly with it. “I am _bien; -très bien_,” she thought; and as she went down the passage and crossed -the landing and looked down into the firelit hall with its flowers and -screens and great blazing logs, she felt herself so strangely Maman’s -child. It was as if she knew, for the first time in her life, an elation -that Maman had often felt. - -They were all in the drawing-room where tea was being laid, Jerry and -Lady Mary and Mr. Hamble, and two young girls and a young man and an -old-young man, who had evidently been dancing and who wished to seem -much younger than he was.—“I will avoid dancing with him,” thought -Alix. “He is too stout and he brushes his hair up over his head from -behind so that it shall not be seen how bald he is.”—And the radiant -lady was talking to Giles. Giles stood with her before the fire and -looked dreadfully cross, and that was because he did not like her. But -other people liked her; a great deal. Her soft locks, now smooth, now -clustering, were of the purest gold and her eyes of a marvellous blue, -and she, too, was undoubtedly _bien, très bien_, in her white silk -jumper and her white woollen skirt and string of pearls. But Giles did -not like her. And she did not like Giles, either, though she was -pretending to carry on the kindest of conversations with a dull young -man, and when Jerry came up to Alix herself the golden-haired lady, -smiling more sweetly than ever upon Giles, saw everything that passed -between them and was not pleased. She did not care a rap about Giles. -What she cared about was Jerry. - -It was characteristic of Alix that the more she saw and felt, the more -silent and aloof did she become. It might have been a fundamental racial -caution in her blood; the instinct for being sure, first, where you -were, and, second, sure of where you wished to be seen as being before -you made a movement; and as she felt the pressure of all these strange -new realizations—strangest of all about herself—she knew that she -possessed reserves of courteous convention more than adequate for any -contingencies that might arise at Cresswell Abbey. Quietly smiling at -Jerry, she took the place Lady Mary indicated to her beside her on the -sofa and saw that the golden-haired lady still watched her while -pretending not to. - -The two young girls were guests. They had very sweet voices that did not -mean much. One of them was pretty, and the stout gentleman with the hair -brushed over his baldness jested with her in a low voice, but, though he -tried so to please her, the pretty girl, while she ate a great many -cakes, looked at him with eyes that did not find him amusing. Alix felt -with her. - -“From Jack,” said the radiant lady, looking up from a letter; the butler -had just brought in the letters. - -“What news of Jack?” asked Mr. Hamble. The golden-haired lady was -married to his nephew and her name was Marigold. Jack, it seemed, was -rather enjoying his job at Singapore. He wrote a long letter, and Mrs. -Hamble’s marvellous eyes became very wistful while she read, but Alix -felt sure that if she had been reading alone in her own room they would -not have looked like that; hard and indifferent rather. - -“My dear, don’t be so silly,” said the other girl to the young man who -was short and robust with a tanned jolly face. He was a sailor, and Alix -liked his face and felt that with him she would like to dance. They all -knew each other very well and laughed and talked and she felt they saw -her as a very young school-girl, for Jerry was now talking to Giles -about Oxford, and no one paid any attention to her until Lady Mary began -to ask her about Normandy and then about Beauvais and Rouen and so on to -Chartres, on which the bald man, whose name was Mr. Fulham and who wrote -books, as if observing her for the first time, asked her if she knew his -friends the marquis and marquise de Tréville in Normandy and, when she -said she did not, turned to the pretty girl again. - -After tea she found herself alone for a little while with Giles. She -felt as if they met after long separation, so completely had the -morning’s sadness dissolved in the pervading sense of excitement. - -“I like it here very much, don’t you?” she said. - -“It’s a jolly place,” said Giles. “And they’re all so nice. I’m glad you -like it. I’m glad you’ll be happy here.” - -Giles no longer looked cross, but he looked thoughtful, and his eyes -turned on her once or twice in a way that made her wonder, with a vague -discomfort, whether he guessed at her excitement. - -“I wish you were staying here, too, Giles,” she said. But this was not -quite true. She would be sorry to see Giles go; even a little -frightened; yet if that sense of excitement were to environ her more -closely she would not care to have Giles observing it. - -“Oh, but I don’t belong here at all,” said Giles, stretching up his arms -and locking his hands behind his head, while his eyes still studied her. -“And you do.” - -“Why don’t you belong here?” she asked. But she knew. He was a rook -among the doves. - -“I haven’t done any of the things they do;—or very few of them.” - -“Neither have I.” - -“Oh, yes, you have; far more. Anyway, you’re fitted for them and I’m -not.” - -“Do you mean you look down upon them?” - -“Of course not. But one has only time for so much in one’s life and my -line is taken.” - -“Philosophy and the Banbury Road,” said Alix, rather sadly musing. - -“Yes; philosophy, though not necessarily the Banbury Road,” said Giles. -“And tutoring and being poor. You couldn’t combine those with dances and -hunting; even if you had the choice; which I haven’t.” - -“Lady Mary cares for the things you do, Giles. Books and music, and the -country. I believe they all care. I think you would be quite happy with -her and Mr. Hamble and Jerry.” - -“Oh, we’d manage for a week-end now and then, no doubt. He’s a nice boy -that Jerry,” Giles added, moving his arms now, putting his hands in his -pockets and looking with detachment at the foot crossed on his knee. -“Lucky we’re the same size, isn’t it? I shan’t look too much of an ass -in his evening things.” - -“He is very nice, I think,” said Alix. “I do not care much for Joan and -Patience Wagstaffe, they seem to me rather _nulle_. But the sailor is -nice, too, and Mr. Hamble is so kind. He told me that he would teach me -to play billiards. They seem to find that Mr. Fulham very clever, but I -would not have him however clever he was. I do not like him. He has a -sly face and eats too much. And is Mrs. Hamble nice, Giles?” Thus -circuitously Alix approached her object. “She is exceedingly pretty. You -had a long talk with her.” - -“Oh, no, I didn’t.” Giles laughed suddenly. “She wasn’t talking with -me—only at me; to see what she’d catch as a rebound.” - -After all, it was always delightful to get back to Giles. After all, no -one understood quite as well as Giles. - -“What was she trying to catch?” Alix asked. - -“Oh, just who we were, and what we were doing here, and why in the -dickens you weren’t just the quiet little French girl she’d expected. -The funny part of it was,” said Giles, smiling broadly as he thought of -it, “she didn’t know a bit that I saw what she was after. Silly ass; -thinking herself so gracefully concealed and all the time as gross and -as glaring as possible. She’s stupid all right,” said Giles. “Though I -daresay it makes one stupid to imagine one’s dealing with a negligible -noodle. You let her alone, Alix. She’s a cat.” - -This was very pleasant to Alix. - -“She has a false face,” she observed. “I shall certainly let her alone; -for she displeased me from the first.” - -Then Lady Mary came back and sat down and talked with them, of France -again, and of Oxford, and Professor Cockburn, and then Jerry, having -changed his hunting-clothes for homespun, came and carried Giles off to -billiards, but Lady Mary said she would keep Alix with her, and, when -the two young men were gone, said: “How dear he is, your Giles; such a -delightful solid mind,” so that Alix flushed with pleasure. She was glad -to have Giles appreciated and it made her fonder of Lady Mary that she -should appreciate him. - -Lady Mary then questioned her about Giles and his family and how she had -come to know them, and Alix, replying, felt herself move along the -surfaces prepared for her by Giles and Maman. She told Lady Mary about -Captain Owen and how great a friend he had been and of how he had wished -her to know his family. There was nothing else to tell. Lady Mary knew -just what Mrs. Bradley knew. - -She was glad to rest for a little while before dinner, lying in her room -on the sofa with a soft cushion under her head and the firelight softly -glowing on her closed eyelids, until it was time to dress. Debenham had -laid out on the bed the very dress she herself would have chosen; her -prettiest dress, of white and crystal; and the sense of elation and -excitement mounted in her with thick swift strokes, as of rising wings, -while, before the mirror, Debenham fastened it for her. Debenham thought -her beautiful. Her quiet, sagacious face, glancing at the reflected -figure, told Alix that she thought so; and Debenham had seen many pretty -young ladies. - -When she was left alone, she stood and looked at herself. Yes; was it -true. Beautiful that little head; beautiful the long, splendid throat, -the breast and arms so white. In the tilted mirror she looked like a -naiad hovering within the thin falling lines of a fountain. Tiny crystal -drops fell along her arms and flowed from breast to hem. She moved, and -liquid lines of crystal moved with her. Her shoes were of silver and a -fillet of twisted silver and crystal bound her dark hair. “_Dieu que je -suis belle!_” Alix murmured. She seemed to float on a sense of buoyant -power. She had never known such happiness. - -They all thought her beautiful. She saw that as she came among them. -Jerry was there—he was the first she saw, looking at her; and the young -sailor looked; and kind Mr. Hamble; Marigold Hamble in pink and diamonds -looked, too, very hard. - -“The lovely dress! Paris, of course,” said Lady Mary, smiling at her as -though she were grateful to her for placing an object so decorative in -her drawing-room. - -“Paris and Maman,” Alix smiled, and the memory of Maman rushed over her -almost with a smart of tears. She owed it all to Maman, this -transfiguration. She was not really so beautiful, by daylight. It was -Maman’s magic that enveloped her, and Maman was not here to see her in -it. It was cruel that a stranger, Lady Mary, should garner Maman’s -sheaves. - -She saw now that Giles’s large eyes were dwelling upon her from a -distance; but they were not like the other eyes. They kept their look of -thoughtfulness. He was not seeing her in the magic. He was only seeing -her as herself. It would always be only oneself that Giles would see. -From within her fountain of happiness she glimmered a little smile over -to him—for Jerry was beside her saying that he was to take her in to -dinner—and in Giles’s answering smile she read something touched and -gentle. She was glad that it should be so, for Giles might have looked -gloomily at her, seeing her so happy at being beautiful; but he was only -touched; and those gentle eyes of Giles’s seemed at once to quiet the -excitement and to reassure her, as though he said: “But of course you -must be happy, dear kid.” - -The long table in the dining-room, shining under the candles, was like a -lake of bright water all drifted over with floating knots of flowers. -Everything made her think of gliding, falling water to-night; everything -was beautiful. Jerry was beside her and he was used to beautiful people. -He saw them every day of his life. He was like André de Valenbois in -that. Giles’s very thoughts about André crossed her mind as she turned -her eyes on the charming face beside her. He, too, was a person removed -from the earthy, primitive aspects of life; he, too, had only had, -always, to choose what he would have and never to have what he did not -choose. And now—she felt it falling around her, cool and refreshing as -the sense of crystal drops—it was herself he chose rather than Mrs. -Hamble. He did not look at Mrs. Hamble. He talked and talked, trying to -find out about her all the things that interested him; her tastes, her -prejudices, the colour of her personality. He talked happily, eagerly, -with something of the ardour of a little boy playing at gardening; that -was the simile that came to Alix while she smiled quietly at him—a -little boy who gathers up armfuls of flowers and thistles, the lovely -and the commonplace together, and brings them for -admiration:—“_Beautiful_, isn’t it?” was what he said continually; and -he did not see that there were thistles. He was younger than André; much -younger. She was dimly glad of that, for something in the likeness she -had felt disquieted her. She liked him better than André, though he had -not André’s fine discrimination. His admirations lay along the paths of -fashion, and the fact that fashion prided itself on being a pioneer led -him into ardours for the new and the strange soon discarded for the -newer and the stranger. He had an air, Alix saw, of caring, immensely, -that you should sympathize with him about the latest painter, the latest -poet, the latest composer. He did not really care whether you -sympathized or not; but if you didn’t, you were negligible for his -purposes. She saw that he had already found Giles negligible; and she -wondered why he did not put her into the same category. Did he imagine -that she possessed and withheld even fresher appraisals? It was not so -and she did not pretend it, looking at him with her quiet smile and -softly shaking her head now and then. She had never thought of herself -as a person whose appraisals mattered; she had thought of herself as too -much of a child. But perhaps it was because Jerry found her beautiful -that he was indifferent to her indifference. - -After dinner they danced. Many young people arrived and the tall red -Chinese screens in the hall were put back. There was a piano and two -violins and one of the young men who played had such a gloomy face, like -a French or Italian face—like Jules’ face—that Alix wished she could -talk to him and ask him if he were a foreigner. But there was no time -for talk. She and Jerry found that their steps went beautifully -together. She danced with him; many times; and with other young men; and -Jerry helped her to evade Mr. Fulham who, seeing how many partners she -had, wished to be one of them. But with Jerry it was best of all, and -how much more important it was to have steps that chimed than to care -about the same books and pictures! It seemed to-night, among the -flowers, and lights, and music, the most important of all things; though -once or twice, when she found Giles’s eyes again, she knew that the -sense of ecstasy on which she floated must have the evanescence of a -mirage. Dear Giles. She made him dance with her and they laughed -together as they went slowly round the hall, for Giles did not dance -well. Afterwards she saw that he talked with Lady Mary and with Mr. -Hamble. He did not go into the mirage. He only looked on at it. - -When Alix fell asleep that night in the firelight, she dreamed that a -cool crystal stream flowed round her and that she floated on its silver -surfaces. Golden lights lay like a chain of little suns along its margin -and her hands, softly moving in the current, felt rosy petals pass -between their fingers. The throb of dance-music, sweet, reckless, -imbecile, beat in her blood, and in her ears the sound of Jerry’s voice -saying: “_Beautiful_, isn’t it?” And Giles’s eyes were there watching -her. In her dream she wanted to tell Giles that she had nothing to -conceal. She tried to tell him, but she felt the silver stream flowing -over her lips and making them dumb, though they smiled. If Giles looked -at her like that she might begin to blush. But even so she did not want -him gone. While he was there she was so safe. - - - CHAPTER V - -“And you will see that Blaise is happy until I come back, Giles?” said -Alix, as she stood beside the car next morning to say good-bye. “And you -will write to me?” - -“We haven’t time for many letters, you know,” Giles smiled reassuringly. -“I’ll see to Blaise.” - -“Give my love to them all,” said Alix. The car was beginning slowly to -slide away and she went beside it. She was not unhappy; not sad; it was -only that she was a little frightened to see Giles go. If one night had -changed so much in herself, what changes might not one week bring? She -almost felt she loved Ruth and Rosemary this morning. Whatever their -deficiencies they had not false faces. It was true that they could not, -even if they had wished to, have concealed themselves gracefully; but it -would never occur to them to wish to be concealed; gracefully or -otherwise. Neither were they insipid like the two Wagstaffe girls. If -Ruth and Rosemary were like roast mutton, the Wagstaffes, Alix -reflected, were like _fondants_. She stood gazing after Giles for a -moment as he disappeared among the beeches. - -Jerry and his mother stood on the step above her, having come out with -her to say good-bye. Lady Mary was looking at her, a little, she felt, -as Giles had looked at her last night; thoughtfully, with great kindness -in the thoughtfulness; seeing her as herself. - -“Now you’re going to let me teach you how to ride,” said Jerry. “Mummy -has a habit for you.” - -“An old one of mine. I don’t ride any longer,” said Lady Mary, putting -her hand on Alix’s shoulder as they went into the warm sweet house. “I -think it will fit you beautifully. You and I are rather of the same -build, aren’t we, Alix?” - -“Alix’s shoulders are broader than yours, Mummy,” said Jerry, “and I’m -afraid, darling, that her legs are a little longer. She’s rather like a -Jean Goujon nymph and you are just a lovely mortal size.” - -It was odd, Alix thought, to have a young man define the length of one’s -legs; but not _mal élevé_, as it would have been in France. Jerry -discussed the physical attributes of his friends as he would have -discussed their moral qualities. - -“The habit may be a trifle too short, it’s true,” said Lady Mary; “but -that makes no difference. The Jean Goujon nymph will be able to get into -it. We must dress Alix in the Gainsborough Blue Boy clothes one day, -Jerry, to show off her long legs. We must have a little fancy-dress ball -in the Easter holidays.” - -“Oh, but I’m afraid I cannot be here in the Easter holidays,” said Alix. -“You see, those are Giles’s holidays, too. I should miss him.” - -“You’ll be coming here off and on, I hope;—and Giles will, too, -perhaps,” smiled Lady Mary. “I can always send the car for you. Where’s -Marigold, Jerry? Not up yet?” - -“You know, she looks rather like the Blue Boy, doesn’t she?” said Jerry. -“Only his eyes aren’t blue, and he has a gentler face. Alix’s face is -rather _farouche_;—is that the word?—You frighten me a little, Alix, -with those cold blue eyes of yours.—Marigold’s still in bed. She sent -for me to see her just now. Writing letters,” said Jerry, “in a most -adorable little cap; a Watteau little cap; most frightfully becoming. -That was why she sent for me, of course, so that I should see her in it; -though the alleged motive was the Fairlies’ ball.” - -“Naughty Jerry,” smiled his mother. - -“Not a bit naughty. I told her I saw through her. I told her that the -cap was a brilliant success. Nothing _souterrain_ about me.—Eh, Alix? -Is that right?” They all called her Alix;—as if she had been ten years -old; or as if they had always known her. - -“I think you must try to talk a little French with Alix,” said Lady -Mary. “His accent is good, isn’t it? But his verbs and genders are -dreadful, and _souterrain_ isn’t right, my dear boy.” - -“Don’t you think Marigold quite extraordinarily beautiful?” Jerry -inquired. “Isn’t the colour of her hair and eyes a Hans Christian -Andersen fairy-tale colour?” - -“But she is much more like a Watteau than like a fairy-tale,” said Alix. - -“But Watteau people are fairy-tale people.—You mean she’s an artificial -fairy-tale.—Yes, I see what you mean.—And it’s really more Fragonard -than Watteau, too—‘A dainty rogue in porcelain,’ that’s what she is. Do -you read Meredith? I love him, though I know he is _démodé_ just now.” - -But Alix had not read Meredith. - -Half an hour later, when Jerry had lightly hoisted her to the saddle and -the groom had released the chestnut’s eager head, Alix felt as if, at -last, she had discovered her true vocation. This—yes, even more than -dancing—was what she had been made for. - -She did not feel that she had anything to learn. She felt no fear. Her -hands went easily where Jerry told her to put them; her knee and foot -found their security. Nothing this delicious creature could do, moving -with satin ease and steel strength beneath her, would take her unawares. -She understood him, and he, his gentle ears quivering at the sound of -her voice, understood her. “Yes; yes, I see,” she said, as Jerry gave -his explanations. “Yes, we will walk to the end so that I shall be quite -used to it and then canter on the turf. Yes; I understand; holding with -my knee.” - -It was not swimming, or dancing, or flying, but it combined the delights -of all three. One floated, buoyantly sustained; one embodied the beauty -of rhythmic movement; one glided at a height strange enough for a sense -of slight, delicious trembling. The earth was new, seen from this -height; one looked into the branches of the beeches at the level where -the chaffinches were perching and flitting. - -“You sit as if you were born to it,” Jerry told her, and she replied -that her father had been a great horseman. - -Then came the canter. It surprised her a little. For one surging moment, -cheeks hot, lips closed fast, she felt that she was coming off and then, -suddenly, that nothing could bring her off. Between that fast-held knee -and that supple foot, she was poised in safety. Her mind and body -adjusted themselves to the sense of mastered peril. - -“Splendid!” Jerry smiled at her when they drew rein at the end of the -long upland. - -Below them the country fell away in rippled planes of colour, like a -tapestry, russet, silver and blue. Alix seemed to see it threaded with -ladies riding unicorns and wearing high white hennins. Fragments of song -rang in her mind; the joyous melancholy of _Les Filles de la Rochelle_, -the blissful sadness of _L’Amour de moi_. Riding brought such memories -crowding to one’s mind. This was a better intoxication than the dancing -mirage. It went deeper. It set the bells of all the buried Atlantises of -the soul ringing. - -“What are you thinking about _now_!” she heard Jerry ask. She had almost -forgotten Jerry while she gazed and listened;—far away in France; in an -old, old France. But it was part of the better happiness to find Jerry -again and to feel herself again a child, with Jerry her comrade. Mrs. -Hamble was as remote as a lady on a unicorn. The woman’s happiness of -the night before, made up of power and conquest, faded before the -child’s mere joyousness. Jerry made her think of the chestnut horse she -rode, with his eager russet head. - -“Oh, I do so like riding, Jerry!” she exclaimed. - -“You’d soon be able to hunt, if you get on like this. How I wish I could -take you out hunting!” - -“I should not care to hunt,” said Alix. “This is what I like. Riding in -a beautiful country with everything happy around one.” - -“But everything is happy around you when you hunt,” said Jerry. “Hounds -and horses and people. One is part of an immense shaded joy. And one -never sees how beautiful a country is until one has ridden right across -it and known that at every wall one might break one’s neck.” - -“I like this better,” said Alix. “This is like riding with a flower in -one’s hand, and that would be to ride with a knife between one’s -teeth.—Though I understand the pleasure of the danger.—But the fox -would spoil it all for me. He would not be part of the immense joy.” - -“Oh, I assure you—he enjoys it, too, in his own sharp way. Imagine his -joy when he outwits us.” - -“A terrible joy,” said Alix. “There must always be terror in his blood. -No; I could not bear to feel that he was there, with his straining -heart, before us. I could never hunt. But I should like to ride for -ever.” - -When they got back they went to find Lady Mary in the morning-room. - -“Alix is a marvel, Mummy!” Jerry exclaimed. “She’s not afraid of -anything, and rides as if she’d been born in the saddle.” - -“I was afraid once,” said Alix. “When we started to canter.” - -Lady Mary sat at her writing-bureau, photographs and flowers ranged -about her, and smiling at them both she said: “You must come and tell me -all about it, Alix, when you’ve had your bath. Will you? I shall be -here.” - -“And I must do some reading,” said Jerry. “_Au revoir_, Alix. Billiards -after lunch, you know.” - -Lady Mary had finished her morning tasks when Alix returned and was -sitting near the fire with a little table before her on which she was -laying out tiny patience cards. Alix again thought of a lady in a hennin -as she saw her there in her long, grey, fur-bordered robe; a hennin -would have been so becoming to her. - -“Curl up in the big chair,” she said. “You must be tired, and you’ll -find yourself very stiff by to-morrow. Do you smoke? Not yet? Good. I’m -glad not. Joan and Patience both do already, and I’m sure it’s bad for -them. That’s all their life it seems to me; smoking and dancing. Have -you many girls in France like that? I haven’t stayed in France for so -many years.” - -“I should not be allowed to smoke; not until I married, I think,” said -Alix, leaning her head on the side of the big chair and watching her -hostess’s white hands place the little cards. “I don’t know about other -girls. But I do not think that they have as much liberty as in England. -I like liberty; but not for so many cigarettes.” - -She felt very much at home with Lady Mary, who continued to make her -think of Maman. - -“Liberty for the right things and not for the foolish things,” smiled -Lady Mary. “And it’s a pity to have liberty for foolish things even when -one marries. Tell me where you and Jerry went. Across the ridge and down -to Minching’s Pond? A wonderful place that is for birds in Spring—Three -Oaks Corner; yes; only the oaks went during the war. Did Jerry tell you? -Dreadful to see the empty places. And as far as the Mill. That was a -splendid round. Ah, I felt sure you’d like Darcy. Isn’t he a lamb of a -horse! Jerry wanted you to have Darcy.—I’m so glad you are here to play -with Jerry,” Lady Mary went on. “Marigold is such a flirt. She can’t -help it.” Lady Mary smiled at Alix and shuffled her cards. “She is a -born siren. And Jerry is too young for sirens.” - -Alix had again the sensation of being confided in despite her youth. It -was curious how quickly, if they liked you, they confided in you, these -strange English people. - -“You didn’t answer Jerry this morning about her looks,” Lady Mary was -going on. “It’s a thin little face, I feel, don’t you? And too -pink-and-white; too blue-and-gold. But perhaps that’s because I’m dark. -I suppose dark people, like you and me, Alix, usually suspect the -white-and-gold ones of being cats.” - -“I do not like her face,” said Alix. - -“Whereas Jerry admires her immensely; and he’s only a boy, only just -twenty, you know, and it’s rather tiresome. You will take his mind off -her.—Not that it has ever really worried me,” said Lady Mary; and Alix -knew that it really had. - -But Jerry and his flirtation was not Lady Mary’s object. Alix began to -see that her interest in herself was more disinterested than that. She -was making her way, through smoking, and riding, and Marigold, to other -topics. The topic she was really coming to was Giles, and she wanted to -find out just how fond Alix was of him, and just how far went her -commitments to him and to his family. - -Alix fancied, watching her, that she had a habit of playing patience -when she wanted to say special things to you and to keep them from -seeming special. - -“I don’t wonder at their taking you in as you say they have,” she -remarked, when Alix expressed her sense of gratitude to the Bradleys. -“Their brother, you know; what you and your mother had done for him. -Giles told me about that last night.—And then you are a nice young -person in yourself, Alix. One might like having you about.” - -“But it is not because I am nice that they have me,” Alix demurred. “And -even if they did not like me so much they would take me in.” - -“Because of him?” - -“Yes. Because he was so fond of me. And not even quite that. It is more -as if I had been a fox terrier he had left behind him. I mean it was -like that at the beginning. They would have taken it in and cared for it -always, even if it had not been a very nice one.” - -Lady Mary laughed. “Well, you _are_ a very nice one. I liked Giles’s -mother that day in Oxford. She is very earnest, isn’t she?” - -“Yes. And very good.” - -“But she hasn’t much sense of humour?” - -“She is so busy all the time,” said Alix. “When one is so very busy -taking care of people, there is not much time for humour. But she can be -quite playful; like a young girl.” - -“I can’t see her being playful,” said Lady Mary. “Just as I can’t see -her with her hair waved or her nose powdered. I don’t suppose she’s ever -powdered her nose, or rouged her lips, or had her hair waved, has she?” - -“It would not go with her type,” said Alix. “There is a natural ripple -in her hair, and her nose is of that pale dull sort that does not need -powder.” - -Lady Mary was laughing again. “She’s a dear, of course. I saw that. And -of course it isn’t her type. It isn’t his type either, is it; the pretty -surfaces of life. Though _he_ has humour,” said Lady Mary, clipping down -a card with soft deliberation and then shifting it. “Quite grim humour, -too, I felt, once or twice. And I like that.” - -“I know no one who has a better sense of humour than Giles,” said Alix. - -“He is modest, too,” said Lady Mary. “And most middle-class young men -are so overweeningly proud of their brains. We must all be proud of -something, I suppose. One rather wishes he was not going to be buried in -Oxford; but one feels, too, that it is his _métier_. He would not care a -scrap about getting on or making a name in the world, and it’s such a -happy life, that of the scholar. And if they don’t intend to marry, -there’s no reason why they _should_ strive and strain like worldly -people.” - -“But then they do marry,” Alix observed. - -“Oh. Yes; perhaps so. But it depends to whom. It would be the -unfortunate wife who would strive and strain in that case, wouldn’t it? -It must be a very dreary life. Marigold wouldn’t like it, would she?” -laughed Lady Mary. - -“But they wouldn’t like her,” said Alix. - -“It all depends on what you want, of course,” said Lady Mary, holding up -an undecided card. “If one wants earnestness and an unpowdered nose, -that is one thing; and if one wants hunting and dancing and diamonds, -like Marigold, that is another. I detest worldliness,” said Lady Mary, -“but I do like common-sense. Now your dear Giles, I could see that, has -any amount of common-sense and not a scrap of worldliness.” - -Alix listening, while Lady Mary thus mused, finding his place for Giles -rather as she found the place for the hovering card, recognized still -further resemblances to Maman. Lady Mary, too, could be sweetly devious. -She would feed you with spoonfuls of honey satisfied that you would -never taste the alien powder that was being administered. She was -talking to her now as to the clever child who could take no personal -interest in the question of marriage. But the experience was to Alix a -familiar one and the admonitory flavour at once detected. She was not to -take an interest, but Lady Mary was taking an interest for her. Lady -Mary was selecting her place for her very much as Maman would have done; -and, as with Maman, Alix often found a malicious pleasure in seeing -through her and pretending not to see, so now she pleased herself by -saying nothing to Lady Mary of Giles’s devotion to Toppie which would so -have set her mind at rest. “Giles is my greatest friend,” was all she -vouchsafed presently, and Lady Mary could make of it what she chose. - -There had been minor intimations gliding along beside the major one. If -Giles, in his chosen career, was not to be thought of as a husband, -Heathside and the Bradleys need not be thought of as essential to Alix’s -life in England. Not for a moment did Lady Mary intimate anything so -gross as that Alix should abandon her friends; she only made it clear -that, since she could now count on new ones, she was not dependent on -Heathside. They were very strange, these English people, Alix meditated, -her dark head leaning back in the chair, her blue eyes resting with -their Alpine aloofness on her hostess. How much, if they once liked you, -they took you for granted; and how very easily, so it seemed to Alix, -they did like you. Lady Mary resembled Giles in that; and Toppie and -Mrs. Bradley; and if they swallowed you down, asking no questions, was -it because they were so extraordinarily kind, or because they were so -sure of themselves and of their conditions that they could not conceive -of your doing them any harm? The difference—how often Alix had -meditated these differences—was that the French were so sure of -themselves and of their conditions that they couldn’t conceive of your -doing them any good. The English, certainly, were more kind. - -But were they kind enough to make themselves responsible for you? Giles -would. Alix had seen Giles make himself responsible. She believed that -Toppie would; and Mrs. Bradley. Even Ruth and Rosemary, if the test -came, would, she believed, shoulder her. But strangely, painfully—for -she, too, liked Lady Mary, though she did not at all take her for -granted—Alix could imagine this new friend, if consequences proved -troublesome or unpalatable, choosing, simply, as the easiest way out, to -forget all about her. She was dove-like, but she was capricious. Her -life was beautiful, and she enjoyed laying out other people’s lives in -harmony with its beauty, making a chiming pattern of you as she did with -her patience cards, because she liked to make patterns and because she -thought of herself as able to do what she liked. But it would be unwise -to give oneself to the Lady Marys or trust them as they invited you to -trust them. They, too, were far more implicated in the dust of human -conditions than they knew themselves to be. They did not really know -themselves, for they did not know the dust; and, where she herself was -concerned, Alix deeply suspected that consequences might prove dusty; -might prove troublesome and unpalatable. She felt herself to be older -than Lady Mary as she watched her and listened to her; she felt herself -wiser. Life required far more circumspection than Lady Mary imagined. If -Lady Mary was circumspect it was subconsciously, for candour was her -aim. But so one might mislead oneself and other people. And as all these -thoughts went through Alix’s mind, while Lady Mary laid out her pretty -cards, there floated across it a memory of the shrewd old face of a -priest to whom she had once gone for the yearly, the reluctant, -confession. If one was more circumspect than any English person, was it -because of the generations of Catholicism in one’s blood? One’s -confessor always took so many disagreeable things for granted, about -life and about human nature; and, on reflection, one usually found that -he had been right. - - - CHAPTER VI - -Under pressure from Giles, who wrote that of course she must stay on, -Alix’s visit to Cresswell Abbey lengthened itself over the whole -remaining fortnight of the holidays. She went to the Fairlies’ ball, -where she wore her white and crystal dress, and to another, where she -wore her pink with the wreath of rosebuds. She danced and danced. In the -mornings she rode with Jerry. - -How strange Heathside seemed to her when she at last returned to it, as -strange as when she had first come to it from France. Life at Cresswell -Abbey was so much more like life at Maman’s than anything at Heathside. -Always, at Maman’s, there was that same sense of mental grace; always -the people, the varying people, coming and going, who displayed it. The -people at Cresswell were not so graceful or so interested in mental -things; but, from the mere fact that there were so many of them and of -so many varieties, they reminded her of the life in Paris with Maman. -And besides the young men and the young girls who danced and played -together, there were pleasant, sagacious women, all so beautifully -dressed, and their political husbands. At Cresswell one had whom one -chose to amuse or instruct one; at Heathside one had to take what the -neighbourhood or the High School provided. - -Oddly enough, however, she found herself, on her return, liking not only -Rosemary, her daily companion, more than she had ever liked her, but the -High School girls, too. It was, she knew, because she had seen so much -of Marigold Hamble and because they were so different from Marigold. -Marigold had not attempted to molest her in any way; she had, indeed, -attempted to attach her; but Alix, in regard to Marigold, had never for -a moment relaxed her circumspection, though, in regard to Lady Mary, it -was impossible not often to relax it. She could match Marigold at empty -affability, but she could not display Marigold’s empty affectionateness, -and the more it was displayed, the more she disliked her. If she -disliked Marigold, Marigold hated her; she knew that unerringly with her -growing power of womanly divination. Marigold hated her because Jerry -liked her so much and because she never made an effort to attach him; -while Marigold made every effort compatible with graceful concealment. - -By the time she went away it was as if she had become almost as much a -part of the life at Cresswell as she was part of the life at Heathside. -Lady Mary was so fond of her and depended, strangely, Alix thought, on -her taste and judgment about so many things;—and that was like Maman, -too. And Mr. Hamble was fond of her, teaching her billiards and cracking -many cheerful jests with her at the expense of France. It was natural, -it was inevitable, that she should come back again, and for almost all -the winter week-ends she did come back. There was always a party for the -week-ends, and sometimes Jerry motored down from Oxford for the day, and -once he stayed the night for a dance, and Marigold, on this occasion, -adopted a new and surprising attitude towards Alix, behaving as if she -had never seen her before. She also gave scant attention to Jerry, and -Alix remarked that though Jerry did not really like Marigold he was -perturbed by her neglect; so perturbed that he even forgot to dance with -Alix and stood watching Marigold fox-trotting with another man, his -radiance all dimmed by resentful gloom. - -“Poor darling; isn’t he foolish?” Lady Mary commented to her young -friend, and Alix, in no need of partners, said calmly that he was, -telling herself that she did not in the least mind what Jerry did. But -she did mind. Since the moment that she had seen his eyes fixed upon her -from the stairs she had minded, not because she cared for Jerry, but -because she cared, intensely, that he should care for her. Was she, -then, another Marigold? She asked herself this question fiercely, lying -awake in her firelit room, her immature young heart strained by the -sense of contest between herself and the crafty woman. Why should she -mind Jerry’s gloom? What was Jerry to her? Nothing; nothing; the answer -came to her irrefutably from the depths of her heart where anger and -pride could not penetrate to blur the truth; Jerry was nothing more than -the charming comrade, unless Marigold was there to take him from her. -Her delight in Jerry, apart from their comradeship, was only her delight -in his delight. She could not understand, she could not see what it was -she wanted nor what was this fire that burned within her, but, feeling -hot tears rising in her eyes, she remembered what the old priest had -said about the wickedness of the human heart and knew again that he was -right. - -It was always a relief to get back to Rosemary. Rosemary had not a purr -in her composition, and that was a defect; but she had not a scratch -either. Even in the High School girls, whose virtues she had felt to be -so negative, she appreciated now the positive quality of straightness. - -When the Easter holidays came, Alix found that there was no reason why -she should not go to Cresswell for the fancy-dress ball. Giles was to be -away for a fortnight. She would not miss him in going. There were other -reasons for accepting with a mind at ease. Marigold was safely in the -Riviera and Jerry’s letter, telling her of the fact, was very naughty, -breathing as it did an evident relief. Jerry, too, was young and his -heart, too, had been strained by the sense of pointless contest. Eager -comradeship and an assurance of peace infused every line of his pretty -dashing pages. - -So Lady Mary’s car came for her and she went off, Rosemary teasing her -from the steps and declaring that they would all be on the lookout for -her picture in the “Daily Mail” dressed as the Blue Boy. Rosemary was a -dear, thought Alix, leaning out to smile and have a last glance at her. - -Then came ten days at Cresswell; days that altered all her life. - -She must at once tell Giles about it; that was the thought that filled -her mind as she sat with him in the study, on the April morning after -his return and hers. But there was so much to tell that she did not know -how she should begin, and what made it more difficult was that Giles was -very sad. - -Toppie was in Bournemouth with her father and it was evident from her -letters that Mr. Westmacott was dying. Although Giles had not seen her -for such a long time, it was natural that he should be thinking of -Toppie rather than of her, so that she said nothing, and it was Giles -himself who introduced her theme. - -“Why didn’t you stay on at Cresswell?” he asked her. “I saw Jerry in -Oxford just before I came down, and he evidently thought they were to -keep you for a month.” - -“Oh, but I never intended that,” said Alix. “I said I must be back here -for your time at home.” - -“That was awfully sweet of you, my dear child,” said Giles, who walked -about, looking very tall in his new grey tweeds. “I’m awfully glad to -find you here, of course; but you know what I feel about cake and -bread-and-butter, and I should like you to eat the full slice. How was -the Blue Boy costume? Jerry told me about that.” - -“It was very pretty. I looked well in it,” said Alix. “Our photographs -were all taken. You shall see how I looked, Giles.” - -“And you and Jerry rode a lot?” - -“Yes. We rode almost every morning. I love riding, Giles. Even more than -dancing.” - -“Yes. Of course you do,” said Giles rather absently. “Why shouldn’t you -love it? You like Jerry as much as ever, don’t you? You and he are great -pals?” - -Alix almost had to smile a little at this, it was so transparent of -Giles, though, a fortnight ago, she would, perhaps, not have seen how -transparent it was. It made it easier for her, however, and as she -answered:—“Yes. Great pals. Yes; I like him as much as ever,”—she -raised her eyes to his and saw that he continued to look at her as -though aware of approaching confidences. It would not be at all -difficult to make confidences to Giles. She felt him very, very much -older than herself and, if that were possible, even kinder than before. -How strange, the thought passed through her mind;—it was easier to tell -Giles than it would have been to tell Maman. The moment had come and, -keeping her eyes on her friend, she said: “He wants me to marry him.” - -She sat there on the sofa in her blue fritillary jumper and her dark -beads, her hands lightly clasped around one of the old leather cushions, -a little as she might have sat, in her early convent days, giving an -account of herself in the _parloir_—where the lives of the saints, -heavily gilded, lay symmetrically on the centre table—to the relative -who had come to pay her a weekly visit. Decorum was in her voice and -attitude; and though she knew a sense of trembling beneath her calm -words she was sustained by her assurance of suitability. It was suitable -that she should tell Giles of her offer of marriage. - -And he did not seem at all surprised. He turned to get his pipe and -filled and lighted it, first pressing down the tobacco with his finger -in the way she liked to watch, and all this was done very deliberately -before he spoke. Then he said—could anything be easier than to tell -things to Giles—“And what do you want, Alix?” - -He was very much older than she was, and very much older than Jerry. She -almost wished that Jerry were there with her to take counsel of Giles. -“You like him, too, Giles, do you not?” she said. - -“Well, _that_ hasn’t much to do with it, has it?” Giles returned, -looking down at her with his smile. “What’s to the point is that you -do.” - -“I should not care to like, very much, anyone you did not like,” said -Alix. “Jerry has faults. But we all have faults. I wish you knew him -better. Then you could judge.” - -Giles was looking at her with a sort of astonishment, at once tender and -amused. “But I’m not your father, Alix,” he said. - -“You are the only father I have ever known,” Alix replied, and, looking -down as she said this, she felt her eyes heavy with sudden tears. - -“Well, then, dear little Alix,”—Giles must have seen the tears for he -spoke very gently,—“since I’m to take a father’s place, may I ask you -what you said to this young man,—this young man, whatever his faults, -whom I thought eligible in every way. Highly eligible and altogether -suitable.” - -“I said I could not marry in England,” said Alix, and it was with -difficulty now that she restrained her tears, remembering her proud -words to Giles about an English marriage on the cliff-path last summer; -remembering Jerry, so bright and beautiful, and France, brighter and -more beautiful and with claims far deeper than any Jerry could put -forward. What meaning could life have for any Frenchwoman out of France? -Did not all one’s meaning come from her? - -“And what did Jerry say to that?” Giles was inquiring. - -“He said I was too young. He said he would wait. He said he could -perhaps live in France for part of the time. He did not speak very -reasonably.” - -“It seems to me that he spoke very reasonably, indeed. He can wait. And -you are very young. How old is it you are now, Alix?” - -“I shall be eighteen in July. Not young enough to change as much as he -expects,” said Alix. “No, he was not reasonable, for he contradicted -himself a great deal. I am afraid he did not mean what he said. I don’t -think that he means to wait. I don’t think that he really would live in -France. Afterwards, when we had talked a little more and he had felt -that I was not so young—he spoke very wildly.” - -“How wildly?” - -A faint flush rose in Alix’s cheeks. “He did not please me in the way he -behaved. It could not have happened like that with us.—Our way, I -think, is a better way.” - -“How did he behave?” Giles, after a moment, inquired. - -Alix’s flush was deepening. “He tried to embrace me. He tried to kiss -me.—As if to be embraced and kissed would decide everything.” - -In Giles’s gaze, bent upon her, she was aware of a growing wonder. “It -does decide everything, sometimes, you know,” he offered her, as if, for -the moment, it was all that he could find to say. - -“But not for people of character, Giles,” Alix returned. She did not -know from what deep tradition she spoke; but it was behind her, around -her, in her very blood. She spoke for the order that was not there to -protect her; for the sanctions that she lacked. Great events like -marriage were approached with a certain austerity. So much more than -oneself was involved. “It could only decide things for _les gens sans -mœurs_,” she said. “It displeased me very much that he should seem to -think of me as one.” - -“But he didn’t think of you as one. We’re all like that, in England,” -said Giles, gazing at her with his wonder. “We’re all _sans mœurs_ when -it comes to things like this. We think them so much more important than -_mœurs_.—At least”—he stopped; he reddened:—“A man in love wants to -find out, you see,” he finished. - -“To find out what?” - -“Why, if you care for him. If you’re in love with him.” - -“Can it not be found out without kissing?” - -“Well—if you don’t care enough for a man to kiss him—Oh, you’re right, -perfectly right, Alix, dear; for yourself you’re perfectly right. I’m -lost in admiration of your rightness. But didn’t his love touch you at -all?” - -Alix at this contemplated her friend in silence for some moments. It was -not the effort to be frank with Giles that held her thoughts; she found -no difficulty in being frank with Giles; it was the effort to read -herself. And, finding the truth slowly, she said: “Yes; it did touch me. -That was my difficulty. That has been my difficulty ever since, Giles; -for I cannot feel it right. He troubled me,” said Alix, and she added to -herself, in French, “_Il m’a beaucoup troublée_.” - -Giles then turned away from her, putting his hands in his pockets and -going to stare out of the window, as he had done on that long ago winter -day of their first great encounter when she had felt, without knowing -why it was, that he was thinking of her and not of Maman. She could not -see what it was this time, either, that so moved him. Perhaps to find -himself so trusted. Yet he must have taken that for granted. If she were -not to trust Giles, who on earth was there to trust? - -She sat, her hands clasped on her cushion, and looked into the gas-fire -which creaked and crackled softly. The little saucepan of water standing -on it sent up a thin haze of vapour and from the open window came the -loud singing of a chaffinch. Alix, as she listened to the chaffinch, -felt herself mastering with difficulty that sense of tears. She was not -happy. Not at all happy. There was something delicious in the thought of -Jerry and his love; but something that twisted, dislocated all her life. -How strange was life. How near it brought you to people; how far apart -it could carry you, with the mere speaking of a word. If she spoke the -word that Jerry had implored of her, would it not carry her far away -from Giles. Oh, there was a darker surmise. Would it not carry her far -away from Maman? Could Maman remain near if she were to marry Jerry? -Jerry promised, promised everything. He did not know himself at all. He -was very young. He was weak; and she, too, was young and weak, though to -Jerry she had shown only her strength. Yet she knew herself. She could -see her own weakness. “_Il m’a beaucoup troublée._” So much had Jerry -troubled her that she had known for a moment, his ardent eyes upon her, -the fear that she might forget Maman, France, Giles, what they might all -demand, expect of her, for the mere joy of feeling his arms go round -her. - -Giles turned to her at last. “Well, then, Alix, how did it end?” he -asked her, leaning against the window-sill and looking over at her with -folded arms. “What was decided in your way, since you wouldn’t let -anything be decided in his?” - -“What was decided,” said Alix, glad to take up her tale, “was that he -should tell his mother and father at once. He did not want that at all. -He said his parents had nothing to do with it. He said that until he had -my answer he would tell nobody. He said that they would think him too -young, and that he would not bear interference. It was all so wild and -foolish, Giles. Our way is so much better. But when I told him that -unless they knew his feeling for me I could not return to Cresswell, he -had to consent.” - -“Well. And what then? What did they say?” Giles inquired as she paused. - -“Mr. Hamble said nothing; I do not think he ever has much to say in the -_conseils de famille_. It was Lady Mary who came to me,” said Alix. - -“What did she say then? Had she expected it?” - -Alix lifted her eyes to her friend. “That is what I find so strange, -Giles. She had not expected it at all. Is that not a little _naïf_, do -you not think? On the one hand to give perfect freedom, and on the other -to imagine that nothing unforeseen shall happen. If one gives freedom, -one must expect the unforeseen, must one not?—She was very kind. She -said she had thought of me and Jerry as playmates, and that I was right -to say to him that we were far, far too young. She was, I saw, much -disturbed; but she was pleased with me, too, and kissed me and said I -had been a good, wise child—much too good, she said, for her foolish -Jerry. I saw that I surprised her. In all I had to say to her I -surprised her. I do not know why.” - -“What did you have to say to her?” - -“All my difficulties, Giles. The difficulties about France; how I could -not leave my country; and about Maman, how I must be near her always; -that it is like that with us; that we do not leave our mothers when we -marry. And I said that since I am a Catholic, the children, if I -married, would have to be Catholics, too. It all surprised her very -much. It pleased her, too, and reassured her; for though she is so fond -of me she would much rather her son did not marry a French girl and a -Catholic. And she is right in that.” - -“I don’t know that she’s right,” Giles muttered. “You must have -surprised her very much, indeed, Alix. It’s been left, then, as you -intended to have it left?” - -“Yes. For the present. I told Lady Mary that nothing could be done till -she and Maman had met and I wrote to Maman and told her of the offer of -marriage. I put only the difficulties before Maman. I am afraid Maman -will see the advantages rather than the difficulties.” - -“The difficulties being that you cannot give up France and cannot give -up your religion?” - -“Yes. And Lady Mary may have others quite of her own. Maman will have to -face them all. But I think she and Lady Mary will understand one -another.” - -“And for yourself, which do you feel the greater difficulty, Alix;—your -country or your religion? You never strike me as having any religion at -all, you know. You always seem to me, as I told you long ago, just a -little pagan.” - -“Ah, if it were for myself,” said Alix, “I could give up my religion -more easily than my country. Only my Church would not allow me to marry -a heretic unless I promised about the children. It is simply not allowed -with us, Giles.—Do you not know?” - -“But why not turn heretic yourself, and settle the children like that?” -Giles exclaimed, controlling, she saw, a strong inclination to laughter. - -But Alix knew that though she was not _dévote_ there were some things -deeper even than France, or were they not the deepest things in France? -They were there, to be taken or left, as one chose; but even if she left -them they were still there, part of her heritage; like a great landscape -on which one might not care to open one’s windows. And it was a heritage -of which one could not deprive others, whatever use one made of it -oneself. - -“That I could never do,” she said, shaking her head. “I could not go -against my Church. However much I cared, Giles, I could never be a -Protestant.” - - - CHAPTER VII - -It was only a few days after this interview that the news of Mr. -Westmacott’s death reached them. Toppie spent ten days in Bath with -friends before returning to the Rectory, and it was Mrs. Bradley who -went to her first. She said, when she came back, that Toppie wanted to -see Giles and hoped that he could come to her next morning. She wanted -very much to see him. Giles, when he had been given this message, went -away and shut himself into his study. - -“Well, do you expect she’s going to have him at last!” Ruth exclaimed. -“For my part I believe she is, and a good job, too. Giles may be able to -wake her up a bit. I find Toppie distinctly depressing myself.” - -“Poor old Giles,” said Rosemary, “it made him look most awfully queer. -It’ll be a shame if she doesn’t have him now, after the way he’s -waited.—If she doesn’t have him, where do you suppose she’ll live? -There’s that jolly cottage on the common empty. It would just do for -her; with an old aunt to live with her.” - -“If she doesn’t have him,” said Ruth sagaciously, “my own feeling is -that she’ll go away as far as possible. None of us, except perhaps -Mummy, have ever meant anything to her. She’s not got much heart, if you -ask my opinion. Or, at all events, only heart enough for one person.” - -“How did you find her?” Alix asked Mrs. Bradley when they were left -alone. “She will be too unhappy now, so soon after her father’s death, -to think of Giles. But for the future, is there hope did you feel?” - -“I really don’t know what to think, dear,” said Mrs. Bradley, taking off -her hat and putting up her hand, with a gesture so like Giles, to push -back her hair. “Toppie is rather strange. That is what I feel most. She -doesn’t seem unhappy. Not more unhappy than she’s always been, I mean. -She talked about Owen all the time. She said she had never felt him so -near. That doesn’t look very hopeful for Giles, does it?” - -“She might say that just because she was really turning a little towards -Giles. One might hope that it would work like that in her, perhaps,” -said Alix, though she had not indeed much hope. - -“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Bradley sadly. “But haven’t you felt for a long -time that something has come between Toppie and Giles? Since last Autumn -I’ve felt it. I believe, when she came back from Bournemouth, he asked -her, and that it displeased her and made her draw away.” - -“Yes, I believe, too, that it was like that,” said Alix. “I have felt -her changed.” - -“You know there’s something in what Ruth says,” Mrs. Bradley went on -after a moment. “I’ve always loved and admired Toppie and thought her a -lovely creature; but I confess to you, Alix—because you understand her -so well—that she has always seemed to me a little heartless. Or is that -too strong a word? I don’t know. Something is lacking. She would spend -herself for people and do everything for them; there is no selfishness -in her at all; but it’s as if she’d do the more because she felt the -less, and had to make up for it. It’s strange, Alix, selfish, -warm-hearted people may give much less pain than lovely people like -Toppie. Owen was selfish compared to Toppie; but I don’t think he ever -gave pain.” - -“He was like a pool, was he not?” said Alix, struggling with thoughts -Mrs. Bradley could not guess at; “a pool rippling and perhaps shallow, -but open to the sun; and Toppie is like a well, cold and deep and -narrow. And Giles is like the sea; deep and broad, too. How happy she -might still be if she could love Giles.” - -“Yes. Yes.” The tears rose to Mrs. Bradley’s eyes. “And all that he -thinks of is to live for her and all that she thinks of is that Owen is -near her. Isn’t it cruel?—I can’t believe that about darling Owen, you -know. I haven’t her faith, and that distresses her in me, too. She -doesn’t want to be with people who haven’t her faith. I feel that. She -doesn’t want anything that seems to come in any way between her and -him.” - -“And if she did not believe him so near, so specially near, she could -think of Giles as near,” said Alix, while a sense of unformulated fear, -often felt, never seen, seemed to press more closely upon her than ever -before. “It is Captain Owen who stands between them.” - -“I am afraid he will stand between them always, Alix,” said Mrs. -Bradley. - -Giles went off to the Rectory next morning. Ruth, Rosemary, and the boys -had planned a picnic with the Eustaces, but Alix said that she would -remain behind with Mrs. Bradley. By luncheon-time Giles had not returned -and, exchanging glances over the table, each knew that the other found -hope in the prolonged absence, for would Toppie keep Giles with her like -this unless all was going well? - -“You will see him when he comes back, Alix,” said Mrs. Bradley when, -after luncheon, she stepped into the car to drive off to the station. -She had an address to give in London that afternoon and would not be -back till late. - -“Ah, perhaps he will not want to see me,” said Alix. “I shall be very -discreet. I shall be there for him if he wants me; but not otherwise.” - -“I think Giles would always want to see you, whatever had happened to -him,” said Mrs. Bradley. - -Left alone, Alix went out to her favourite walk, the little path under -the garden wall, half obliterated by heather and grass, its bordering -gorse bushes all broken into soft clusters of gold set in prickles and -smelling of apricots. Bareheaded, her arms wrapped in her blue-and-grey -scarf, she walked, smelling the gorse, feeling the sunshine, listening -to a blackbird that fluted golden arabesques on the April air; while -above her head the leaning fruit-boughs were full of thick grey-green -buds. - -The sense of excitement that had been with her since the day of Jerry’s -declaration was immeasurably deepened this afternoon by her imaginative -sharing of Giles’s ordeal. Jerry and Giles were mingled in her thoughts, -and her mind recoiled from the striving of pain and hope and fear -brought to it by their united images. Perhaps it was because she thus -evaded her deep preoccupation, perhaps it was because she paced thus in -the sunlight, as he had paced, that her memory, suddenly liberated, took -a long flight backward to find Grand-père going along the terrace at -Montarel with his dragging step and sombre eye. - -It was so strange to think of Grand-père now. Since the day of her first -arrival in England he had hardly visited her thoughts. And with what a -new sadness she saw him again and felt once more his melancholy flow -into her. Was it because she had for so long forgotten him and gone so -far from him and Montarel that she felt thus suddenly the gloomy -pressure of his eyes? It was as if he watched her, her life involved in -lives so remote from his sympathy. It was not only the young yearning of -her heart towards Jerry’s yearning that seemed a betrayal of Grand-père; -this sharper yearning, not towards but over Giles, showed her as even -more removed and alien. Young love Grand-père might have understood; but -hardly this identification with an Englishman’s hopes and fears. She -doubted whether Grand-père had ever in his life spoken to an English -person. He had disliked the English. She recalled how, when she read her -history to him, he would interrupt her to speak bitterly about them. -“_Un peuple pratique; sans idéal_,” he had said. And he had said that -England had always schemed against France and made use of her grace and -generosity. How strange that was to remember now as she waited for Giles -and listened to the blackbird. They had not schemed against her; -France’s daughter; nor made use of her. Would it not be truer to say -that France, through her helpless person, had schemed against and made -use of them? - -Maman schemed. Maman, with all her grace, her generosity, was oh! so -practical. “And our people eat the blackbirds,” thought Alix while the -song, as she listened to it, brought Giles’s face vividly before her. -Jerry was like a goldfinch—golden flashes, summery sweetness, swift -eagerness, and gay inconsequent song. Giles was the blackbird; its -tenderness, its trust, its something of heaven and something of drollery -too; and the way it brought long-past things back;—again; again; -again;—brooding on the past with persistent fidelity. Faithful Giles; -he would never forget. And why did the thought of goldfinches merge into -this surreptitious aching? How strange it was that one should feel the -anxious pressure of a new thought before one saw the thought itself! -Goldfinches; Les Chardonnerets; André de Valenbois; she traced the -sequence. Jerry made her think of André; only he was not so finely -tempered; not so intelligent. But the thought of André was only a pain -and a perplexity; whereas Giles believed her to be in love with Jerry; -she had seen in his eyes that he believed her to be in love; and perhaps -she was; only it was round the problem of worth that this new ache was -centring. There must be so much worth on the one hand if, on the other, -it was France that might have to be sacrificed. And Jerry was like the -goldfinches. “Worth,” she thought, listening to the blackbird’s song. -The word was such an English word. She loved the blackbird’s song, best -of all, she said to herself, trying to turn away from the still -half-unseen trouble. - -Suddenly, behind her, she heard Giles’s voice speaking her name. - -He had come up from the birch-woods; he had not come from the Rectory. -He had been walking; his hair was ruffled with the wind; his shoes were -muddy; he had not eaten; he was very tired. Alix saw all this in flashes -as they approached each other, her mind catching at such straws. For it -was shipwreck that his face revealed to her; so pallid, so haggard, with -dark pinches in the eyelids under the eyes and strange, ageing furrows -of suffering running down from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth. -Could the shipwreck of all his hopes make Giles look like this? There -had been no hope to lose. - -He had spoken her name in a quite gentle voice, as if, indeed, he were -glad to find her there; as if she were a haven for what he could drag of -hull and spars up out of reach of the battering waves. He walked beside -her, and said: “Can we get to the study without being seen?” - -“They are all out,” said Alix. - -It was curious to feel, as she said it, as, silently, they made their -way into the house, that it was as if they had left him to her. Even his -mother had left Giles to her, and as they entered the study and she -heard, through the open window, the blackbird, far away, still singing, -she had the feeling of being in a dream. The past fell back into a -strange, flat tapestry, russet, silver, blue, where the figures of -Grand-père, Maman, and Jerry all went together. She and Giles stood -against that background in the study. - -He had walked in before her, to the window, and he stood looking out as -if he, too, were listening to the blackbird, and when he turned at last -and looked at her it was as if he asked her what he should do with -himself. She saw him as a little boy who needed a mother to take him to -her breast. And, like the little boy, he wanted his mother to ask him -what was the matter before he could speak. So Alix asked him. - -“What is the matter, Giles?” - -Her voice trembled as she spoke. That was why, perhaps, Giles collapsed. -He sank into the chair before the table and laid his head upon his arms -and burst out crying. - -Alix felt her heart stand still. “Captain Owen—Captain Owen has parted -them,” she thought. And the unseen fear that had that morning pressed so -near was there beside her now. It was a compulsion laid upon her; a -necessity that was not now to be escaped, though still she did not see -it clearly. She stood by Giles, gazing down at him, and her young face -was stern rather than pitiful. It was hardly of Giles that she was -thinking; or it was of his suffering rather than of him. It was because -of Giles’s suffering that the necessity was laid upon her. - -Even when, as if he felt her near in his darkness, he put out an arm and -drew her to him, for the comfort of her closeness, even while she -thought, “I am his mother now,” her face kept its sternness. - -He spoke at last. “She’s going to leave us, Alix.” - -“Going to leave us?” Alix wondered if Toppie were dying. - -“She’s going into a convent. She’s going to be a nun. It was all settled -at Bath. But she’s been meaning it for a long time.” - -“Yes. I knew,” Alix murmured. “She told me that on the first day.” - -“You knew?” In his astonishment Giles relinquished his clasp and fixed -his broken gaze upon her. - -“On that first day. When I went to see her. She told me that she could -understand the wish to be a nun. She told me that you had them in your -Church. If one were alone, she said, it might be the best life.” - -Giles now got up and moved, stumbling, towards the sofa, and, Alix -following him, they sat down. - -“It’s because of him,” said Giles. He leaned his arm on the end of the -sofa and kept his face covered. - -“Because of him,” Alix echoed, sitting straightly beside him and bending -all her strength to thought. - -“To be more near him. She says she feels she can be more near like -that,” Giles spoke dully. - -“But that is not a vocation,” said Alix after a moment. She was seeing -the face of the old great-aunt at Lyons behind the _grille_. Pale old -eyes; pale cold lips; a dead creature; yet—already the little child who -stood there before her for her blessing felt it—living by a mysterious -life unimaginable to those out in the great turmoil of the world. “You -go into a convent to renounce the world,” she said. “Not to keep it more -near.” - -“Ah,” said Giles, and he uttered a hard laugh, “she doesn’t count Owen -as the world. She counts him as heaven. He wasn’t worth it, you know, -Alix,” said Giles, with the hardness in his voice. “Owen wasn’t worth a -devotion like Toppie’s.” - -And, while the word “worth,” laden with its thick cluster of -associations, seemed to set a heavy bell ringing in her breast, Alix -answered: “No; he was not worth it.” - -They sat then for a long time silent. Once or twice Alix thought that -Giles was going to speak to her. She saw it all now; clearly at last; -and must he, too, not see? Must he not, in another moment, tell her of -the sudden resolve to which, at last, he found himself knit? But when -she turned her eyes—appalled, yet ready, upon him, he was not looking -at her; not thinking at all of what she thought; gazing merely at the -fireless grate, his mind fixed on the one figure that filled it. Toppie -a nun; Toppie blotted out from any life where he could see or hear her. -And suddenly he said: “She was so kind to me. She was so awfully sorry -for me. She’s never been so kind—It was almost—I could see what it -might have been—Oh, Alix, I’m so miserable!” groaned Giles, and again -he put his head down on his arms and broke into sobs. - -Alix looked over at him. No; it was her task; not his. Impossible for -him; inevitable for her. It was a debt to be paid. A debt of honour. -More than that. It was the crying out in her heart of intolerable grief. -She could not bear that Giles should suffer so. - -He hardly noticed it when she laid her hand on his head and said: “I -will come back in a little while.” He was broken. The waves were going -over him. - -She left him there. She left the house. At the garden-gate, looking -through the sunlight across the common, she stood still for a moment, -feeling that she paused, for the last time, in childhood, and that with -the next step she left it for ever behind her. It was she, now, who took -up life; who made it. Destiny went with her; she was no longer its -instrument, but its creator. And in this last moment how strange it was -to hear the blackbird still singing:—It would always remember; that was -what it seemed to be saying:—It would always remember. Even when she -had forgotten her childhood, the blackbird’s song would remember, for -her, how a child’s heart felt. - -Once outside upon the common she began to run. She was carrying Giles’s -heart in her hand and it was heavy to carry. From the tapestry she felt -Grand-père’s stern eyes following her; and Maman’s eyes. Intently, -intently Maman’s eyes watched her as she ran. She could not read their -look. And far away, as if he had forgotten her, Jerry rode into the blue -distance with ladies in hennins mounted on unicorns; figures faded to -the pattern of the background. Or was it she who had forgotten Jerry? - -When she reached the Rectory, she did not ring. She entered softly, -standing for a moment to regain her breath and listen. Footsteps were -moving in the drawing-room. The drawing-room door was ajar. She pushed -it open and entered. - - - CHAPTER VIII - -Toppie stood in the middle of the room with open packing-cases around -her. The sun came in and shone upon the walls and the room looked pale -and high and vacant. There were no flowers anywhere; all the little -intimate things were gone. Toppie stood alone among her doves. And -upstairs, in Toppie’s room, the doves brooded upon a little box where -Captain Owen’s letters lay. - -She was packing the books, carrying them from the shelves that filled -the spaces between the windows and laying them in the boxes; and as Alix -entered so softly, closing the door behind her, she stood still, holding -a book in her hand and looking up with what, for a moment, was only -surprise. - -A horrible blow of pity assailed Alix as she saw her. All in black; so -white; so wasted, she was like the _cierge_ unlighted. “But it is for -her sake, too,” Alix thought, seeing Toppie sinking, sinking away from -the world of sun and friendship into the silence and solitude of the -grave. “Better to suffer; better to suffer dreadfully, and come back to -us,” she thought. And the visions that had always accompanied her -thoughts still moved before her so that it was pain like fire she saw -lifted in her own hands towards the cold _cierge_; to light it into life -once more. - -Toppie stood holding her book and looking across at her, and, all -unbidden and unwelcome as she must feel her guest to be, the deep -fondness of her heart betrayed itself by a faint smile. - -“I have come to speak with you, Toppie,” said Alix. She could not smile -back. She could not go towards Toppie with outstretched arms. The sofa -where she and Toppie always sat together was on the other side of the -room. She felt that she could not stand and tell Toppie; her strength -might forsake her; she might find herself, when the moment came, turning -away and escaping. If she and Toppie were on the sofa it would be safer. -“I have seen Giles,” she said. “It is because of what Giles has told me -that I have come—May I sit down? Will you come beside me?” - -Toppie said not a word. She stood there, her smile vanished, holding the -book, and watched her as she crossed the room to the sofa and sank down -upon it. Then, after a moment, she laid down the book and followed her. - -“This is very wrong of you, Alix.” These were the words she found. Her -mind, Alix saw, fixed itself upon the time of her own former -intercession for Giles. Coldness gathered in her eyes. “Giles did not -send you, I am sure. You have no right to come.” - -Still, she had taken her place and was sitting there in her black, -waiting for what Alix had to say to her. - -“I know it must seem strange,” said Alix. “When you have had so much to -bear. But I had to come. No, Giles did not send me. He would not have -let me come if he had known. He does not think of himself. He thinks of -you—only—always. Giles would never lift a finger to save -himself—although his heart might be breaking.” - -“Alix—this is impossible.” Toppie was scanning her face with stern yet -startled eyes. “No one knows as well as I do what Giles would do for -me.—You are not yourself.—You seem to me to be hysterical.” - -“No; you do not know what he would do,” said Alix. She felt that her -heart had begun to knock with heavy thuds against her side and a shudder -passed through her as she sat there straightly, her hands pressed -together in her lap, her gaze fixed on Toppie; but she saw her way to -the end of what she had to say and she could say it. “You cannot know -it. No one knows but he and I—and my mother. He has spared you; and he -has spared someone else. But I must tell. Toppie, your lover was not -true to you. He did not love you as you love him. He did not understand -love as Giles understands it, or love you with a tenth of the love that -Giles has given.—Oh, Toppie—I am sorry”—Toppie had started to her -feet and was drawing away with a look of horror—“But you must know. You -must not shut yourself away from life because of someone who is not with -you at all.—It was my mother that Captain Owen loved. He was with us -three times in Paris and he kept it from you.” - -“You are mad! You do not know what you are saying. Go away. Go away at -once.” Toppie stood there as if she had been a snake—ghastly with -disgust and repudiation. - -“I am not mad. It is true. Giles knows. I lied to Mrs. Bradley when she -asked me why we had never seen Captain Owen again. When I saw that he -had hidden it, I lied. I did not understand why he had kept it from you -all and it was Giles who told me—that it was because he had betrayed -you by loving Maman most. Three times he was with us in Paris that -Spring before he died.” - -“Do you know what you are saying?” Toppie stared at her with dilated -eyes. “Do you understand what you are saying? Owen with you? Before he -died?—Why not? Why not?—He was your mother’s friend.” - -“It was friendship in Cannes. In Paris it was different. Giles made me -see why it was different. He would not have kept it from you if it had -been friendship.” - -“Giles? Giles made you see?” Toppie put her hands to her head as if her -skull cracked with the dreadful blows Alix dealt her, and, while a -deathly sickness crept over her, Alix went on relentlessly: “He had seen -them together in Paris. They did not see him, but he saw them walking in -the Bois. That was why, when I lied to his mother, he knew it was a lie. -Last Winter, Toppie; when I first came. And I was to help him in keeping -it from you always.” - -Toppie stood still, up there in the thin bright sunlight, her hands -pressed now before her face; and, with the growing sickness, Alix -suddenly seemed to see another figure beside her. It was as if Maman, -too, was standing there, in the bright sunlight, with that intent look; -dumb, like a figure in a nightmare; yet in her stillness conveying a -terrible reproach. “It was not Maman’s fault,” Alix muttered. “She -cannot help it if she is loved. She did not know that he had kept it -from you.” - -From behind Toppie’s hands now came a strange voice. It was as if it -spoke from the pressure of some iron vice screwed down upon it. - -“Your mother is a wicked woman. You do not know what you are saying; but -I know that it is true. Your mother took my lover from me. She is a -wicked woman and you are a miserable child.” - -Alix felt herself trembling now in every limb; but it was even more -before Maman that she trembled than before Toppie. “Is it wicked to be -loved? Is it wicked to be preferred?” - -“Yes. It is wicked,” said Toppie in the crushed and straining voice. -“There is no greater sin for a woman than such stolen love. Your mother -is an abandoned woman. She has lovers. No one is safe from her. I knew -that already!—Oh, God, I knew it!” Was Toppie speaking on to her, or, -in her agony, to herself? Alix, standing outside the torture-chamber, -heard the cries of the victim. But she, too, was bound upon a wheel. - -“You are not wicked. You had a lover. Captain Owen was your lover.” She -forced her trembling lips to speak. “Giles knows her. He knows that she -is not wicked. It is false what you say. You must not say such false -things of my mother.” - -“You do not understand,” Toppie moaned. She had fallen down upon a -chair, her face still hidden in her hands. “It is terrible to be so -ignorant as you are. You are too old to be so ignorant.—Yes, it is -true—all true. She took him from me. Oh, I know now—I know what Giles -was hiding from me!—Go away, Alix.—You drive me mad!—Go away, poor -unhappy child!” - -Alix had risen to her feet, but still she could not go. To fly, to -escape; to hide herself for ever; this was the cry of all her nature; -but there was something else. It was not only upon herself, upon Maman, -that she had brought this disaster. What had she done to Giles? - -“I will not stay.—Do not think that I will stay.—You say things of my -mother that are not to be forgiven.—It is only for Giles.—You will not -blame him? He has done nothing wrong. You will see him? He will explain -all that I have not understood.—It is for Giles.—Oh, Toppie—all is -not so lost when Giles, who loves you, is still there.” - -“Yes. It is lost. All, all lost,” Toppie murmured. Her voice had sunken -to ashes now. Her head hung forward upon her hands. Looking at her, for -the last time, Alix seemed, dizzily, to see her as a figure in a -long-past epoch, a black figure, with bent fair head, sitting in the -pale room with the doves about it. It was as if Toppie would sit on -there for ever. “Oh, Owen!” Alix heard her moan, as she went, -unsteadily, to the door. - - - CHAPTER IX - -“Oh, Maman!—What have I done to you!” It was her own voice now that -Alix heard. She was out again upon the common and she had been running. -But suddenly she was walking very slowly among the gorse bushes in the -bright sunlight, and she could hardly drag herself along. Her head ached -as if it would break in two; her limbs were of lead; and now that she -went so slowly she could no longer escape Maman. She saw her there, -moving beside her, with the intent look; silent; without a word of -blame. - -“What have I done to you!” Alix muttered. - -Maman went beside her, in her white dress, with the heelless shoes such -as she wore at Vaudettes, and bare-headed. It was not blame. Maman’s -look had passed beyond all thought of blame; it had passed even beyond -pity. Alix saw suddenly that what it meant was that she was waiting to -see what Alix would now say to her. - -“I must think. I must think,” Alix muttered to herself. But she did not -need to think. It was as if in a kaleidoscope, turned in her hands, -memories, till now unrelated, fell suddenly into a pattern. “_La belle -madame Vervier. Divorcée, vous savez._”—Grand-père’s eyes. Giles’s -silence, when they had met. That strange, deep blush that had dyed -Giles’s face when, in the study, they had spoken of Captain Owen’s -leaves in Paris; André de Valenbois. Maman’s lie to André about Toppie. -All the things she had read in poetry, in novels, of beautiful guilty -women who had lovers. And, creeping through her young heart like a slow -surreptitious flame—falling into place, curving with darts of ardent -colour into the pattern—most recent, most intimate intuitions of what a -woman’s love might mean. “Maman!” she moaned. She fell at Maman’s feet -in supplication. Yet, while she implored her forgiveness, she was -sheltering her, too. She was putting her arms around her to protect her -from the world’s cruel scrutiny. She was promising her—oh, with what a -passion of fidelity—that their love, the love of mother and child, was -unharmed, set apart, firmly fixed and sacred for ever. - -When she reached Heathside she heard that the little boys had returned. -They were shouting in the garden with the dogs, and Alix retraced her -steps, skirting the kitchen-garden wall, going softly in by the little -gate, creeping along the back passages past kitchen and scullery -unobserved. Here was Giles’s study. She turned the handle and went in. - -Giles was there, sitting at his desk and writing. He had a sick, dogged -look; but he had recovered his composure. He even, as he turned his head -and looked at her, tried to summon a smile of welcome and she knew that -he felt ashamed for having broken down before her. - -Alix shut the door and stood against it. “Giles, I have done a dreadful -thing,” she said. Only when she leaned against the door did she know -that she was almost fainting. She felt that all that she desired was -sleep. To tell Giles and then to fall into oblivion. Far away, in -France, she saw where she and Maman, in a sunny garden, walked hand in -hand. They both seemed very old. They were very sad. Yet they smiled at -each other. But this vision was far away. The black ordeal was before -her. “I have done a dreadful thing,” she repeated. “Perhaps you will not -forgive me.” - -Giles had risen to his feet and stood, over against the window, tall and -dark with his ruffled head. He was looking at her and his eyes were -frightened. - -“I have been to Toppie,” said Alix. “I have told her everything.” - -He did not find a word to say. - -“It was for your sake I did it, Giles,” said Alix in a dry, unappealing -voice. “I told her so that she might know it was you who loved her; not -he. Perhaps you will not forgive me.” - -Giles spoke. “You told her about Owen?” - -“About Owen. That he was Maman’s lover.” - -Giles put his hand up and pushed it through his hair. “You told her that -for my sake?” - -“Yes, Giles. So that she should not leave you to be nearer him.” - -“Did you know what you were saying, Alix?” said Giles, after another -moment; and after yet another moment Alix answered him. - -“Not when I told her. But afterwards. After what she said. She said that -Maman was a wicked woman. She said that Maman was a woman who had -lovers. She said that for a woman there is no greater sin. And now, I -think, I understand. Giles—Is it true?” - -“My darling little Alix,” said Giles in a strange, stern voice, “it is -true. But she’s not wicked. She’s wrong; but not wicked. She’s lovely, -and unfortunate, and wrong, and she needs your love more than ever.” - -As Giles spoke these words, Alix suddenly stumbled forward. She put out -her hands blindly—for as she heard him her tears rushed down from under -shut lids—and Giles’s arms received her. She was sobbing against his -breast. “Oh, Giles, thank you! Oh, Giles, do you forgive me?” - -“My darling child—my darling little Alix—I understand it all,” said -Giles. - - - - - PART IV - - - CHAPTER I - -Two faces were with Giles that night as he turned, sleepless, again and -again, on his pillow; Alix’s face, and Toppie’s face. Toppie was before -him as he had seen her on the Autumn evening in the birch-woods when she -had looked away from him with the wildness in her eyes and had said: -“It’s as if there might be anything. As if you might hide anything. -She’s changed you so much.” She was before him as she said: “It’s as if -she might have changed Owen—if he had ever come to know her as well as -you do.” - -It was he himself, in his stumbling confusion, his half truths and his -half loyalties, who had that evening set the deadly surmise before her. -She had not, he believed, since seeing it, drawn a breath at ease. She -would have been ready for what Alix had come to tell her. She would have -known, at the first word, that it was true. He saw her freeze to -stillness before the Medusa head. - -Yet, if Toppie’s face brought the groan of helpless pity to his lips -while he tossed and turned, an even deeper piercing came in the thought -of Alix. She stood there, against the study door, facing him; facing the -deed she had done; facing a truth worse than Toppie’s. Toppie saw -herself betrayed by what she had most loved. But Alix saw herself as a -betrayer. Her look was that of a creature at bay, with wolves at its -throat. - -Again, with a suffocating compassion, he saw her blind, outstretched -hands; he heard her gasping breath: “Giles—Is it true?” His arms -received her and he felt her sobs against his breast. - -She became, while his comprehension yearned over her, part of himself. -Something fiercely tender, something trembling and awe-struck dawned in -his heart as he held her. To understand Toppie was to see her sink away -from him. To understand Alix was to see her enter his very flesh and -blood. It was for him that she had dared the almost inconceivable act; -and, as he thus saw her offered up in sacrifice for him, Giles knew, -with all that had been destroyed, something beautiful had been given. It -was his justification for the act that he had, from the beginning, dared -for her. It was the answer to an old perplexity. He had seen the dear -little French girl as so securely secular, so serenely pagan; so hard. -His perplexity had centred round the word Holiness and he had feared -that she might be impervious to its meaning. But as quietness descended -slowly upon his troubled heart Giles saw, while a sense of radiance grew -about him, that it was Alix herself who showed him further meanings in -the word. - -He found on waking next morning that, with all the sense of calamity -that lay like a physical weight on his heart, the sense of beauty, of -something gained, still shone round him. He needed light, for his path -was dark with perplexity. Alix had left him yesterday to go to her room, -and to bed. In the few words that passed between him and his mother on -her return from London the child’s shattered state was sufficiently -explained by Toppie’s decision. Toppie’s decision, he felt, explained -his state, too. Mrs. Bradley heard of it with consternation. “A nun, -Giles! A convent!” she had gasped. Generations of candid Protestantism -spoke in the exclamation. Nuns and convents were, to Mrs. Bradley, -strange, alien, almost sinister anachronisms. Dim pictures from Fox’s -“Book of Martyrs” and the “Pilgrim’s Progress” floated across her mind -as she heard Giles. And tears rose to her eyes as she saw an end, not -only to all his hopes, but to every link that bound them to Toppie. -There was no need to explain anything further to his mother. - -He had to face at breakfast the dismay of Ruth and Rosemary. - -“Poor Alix! She’s bowled out completely.—Says she doesn’t want any -breakfast; but I’m going to take her up a tray,” said Rosemary. “No, not -kidneys, Jack; if you’re ill in bed you don’t want kidneys;—a boiled -egg’s the thing, and toast, and tea. She looks rotten; perfectly rotten. -She’s awfully fond of Toppie, you see.” - -“I suppose there’s no good whatever in my going over and seeing what I -can say to Toppie,” Ruth ventured to her brother when breakfast was -over. “If she’d only let herself be psycho-analysed by Miriam Stott it -would be sure to help. Miriam is extraordinary, you know. She’s a friend -of the Burnetts; she does it professionally. Toppie is just a case for -her.” - -“My dear Ruth,” said Giles, “I’m sure you mean well; but you are -sometimes an arrant ass.” - -“It’s all very well,” said Ruth to her sister when Giles had gone to -shut himself in his study; “ass or no ass, I’ve thought for some time -now that Toppie was quite liable to go off her chump. It’s sexual -repression coming out in religious mania; plain as day.” - -“Sexual repression!” Rosemary stared. “What an extraordinary thing to -say, Ruth! Toppie’s no more repressed than you or I.” - -“Yes, she is. Sensible people like you and me work it off, sublimate it, -in games and work and all sorts of healthy activities, whereas poor -foolish Toppie has always moped and brooded at home, never knowing what -she was or what she wanted. You’re old enough to read Freud now, -Rosemary, and the sooner you do the better. He will explain it all to -you.” Ruth’s universe was of the latest tabloid variety. - -Giles, meanwhile, in his study, sat and wondered what he should do next. -Until he had seen Alix again he did not know. How could he go to Toppie? -What was there to say to Toppie? He had answered all her questions on -the Autumn afternoon in the birch-woods. He had answered all her -questions about Owen, and he had answered all her questions about -himself. She had seen him on that afternoon place himself on the side of -madame Vervier. “She is the product of her mother,” he had said of Alix. -“Do you find fault with it?” He had showed himself as understanding -madame Vervier; as exculpating her. Toppie might come to forgive Owen, -caught in the horrible siren’s net; she would never, he believed, -forgive him. Unless she sent for him, how could he go to her? - -In the midst of these reflections he heard a motor drive up to the door -and, going to look out, saw with astonishment Lady Mary Hamble -descending from it. Lady Mary could only have come to see Alix and, -after she had disappeared, he stood wondering what Alix would find to -say to her. He had, while he had brooded on their disaster, almost -forgotten Alix’s love-story and it seemed now to have lost all its -potency. Jerry was too light, too boyish to face the resolutions that -would now be needed. “She’s too good for him,” Giles muttered to -himself, as he had muttered of the French order on the summer day at Les -Vaudettes, standing with bent head and hands in his pockets as if -listening for what next was to happen. Too good for him. Yet perhaps -Jerry would not fail. - -What was next to happen did not long delay, and the sight of his -mother’s face in the doorway warned him that it was something quite -unforeseen. - -“Oh, Giles, dear!—Will you come?” Rarely had he heard his mother’s -voice so shaken, and if her face had shown consternation last night it -was almost horror that it showed this morning. “Lady Mary is here,” she -said. “She came to see me. Oh, Giles—it is about poor little Alix. Lady -Mary has heard—terrible things about her mother.” - -So it had fallen. Better so, perhaps, thought Giles, as for a moment he -stared at his mother in a receptive silence before following her to the -drawing-room. - -Lady Mary was there, floating, to Giles’s sense, in an indefiniteness, -made up of lovely hesitancy, veils, and a touch of tears, that was yet -more definite than a steely armour. She came towards him at once with -outstretched hands, saying: “Dear Giles, perhaps you can help us.” - -“For it can’t be true, can it, Giles?” Mrs. Bradley urged in her shaken -voice. She was so much more worn than Lady Mary, yet she looked so much -younger and Giles read on her face a resentment, all unconscious, -against Lady Mary and her standards. “You know her, Giles, and can -explain. She’s unconventional, isn’t she, and unworldly, and might do -unusual things and be misjudged by worldly people;—but Alix’s mother -can’t be a bad woman.” - -So he found himself face to face once more with the bad woman. - -“I had to come and see if you could tell me more. I’m so fond of darling -little Alix.” Lady Mary had beautifully placed herself in a corner of -the sofa, her furs unfolded, her long veil cast back from the framing -velvet of her little hat. She was not thinking about looking -beautiful;—Giles did her justice;—but she was thinking, very intently, -about doing what she had to do as beautifully as possible, and that -intention seemed to dispose her hands across the sables of her muff, to -cross her silken ankles and tilt to a most appealing angle the pearls -that glimmered in her ears. “You see—Jerry— It’s all foolishness”—she -found her way. “He’s only a boy.—He falls in love with someone -different every six months.—He fancies himself in love with Alix -now—and I don’t wonder at it. She’s the most enchanting young girl I’ve -seen for years.—But Marigold Hamble, my husband’s niece, heard in -Paris, just the other day, such deplorable things. Deplorable.” Lady -Mary’s voice sank to the longest, saddest emphasis. “Marigold is a -wretched gossip, and worse.—She’s a _mauvaise langue_; I would not -trust her story. But she gave chapter and verse to such an extent that I -had to come to you—since you know madame Vervier.” - -“But gossip is always like that,” Mrs. Bradley persisted, a spot of -colour on each cheek. “Some people see evil in everything. And Giles -liked her. And everything Alix has told me of her is so lovely. And my -son, Owen, who is dead, was devotedly attached to her. It is because he -was so fond of her mother that Alix is with us now.” - -For a moment, after that, Lady Mary’s soft, bright eyes, from between -the veils and the pearls, remained fixed on Mrs. Bradley’s candid -countenance and Giles knew that his mother had revealed more of the -miserable truth to Lady Mary than she herself, he hoped, would ever -know. - -“You’re quite right, Mummy, darling. I do like her,” so he felt impelled -to sustain her, though he knew that such sustainment might only be for -her immediate bewilderment. “I do like her,” he repeated, turning his -eyes on Lady Mary and bidding her make what use she liked of the -information. And then he found the words he had used to Alix yesterday: -“She’s not bad. She’s unfortunate and wrong. But, it’s true:—I found -out while I was with her, that she is a woman who—” poor Giles paused, -while Lady Mary and his mother gazed at him—“who,” he finished, “has -lovers.” - -After this, it was Mrs. Bradley who first spoke. “Has lovers, Giles?” - -He could almost have smiled—but he was nearer weeping at his mother’s -voice. Steeped to the lips in the woes of the world as she was, -lovers—for anyone one knew—for anyone in one’s own walk of life—was -an idea almost as alien, and even more strange and sinister, than nuns -and convents. Poor little shop-girls and housemaids had lovers, though -usually known less romantically as the fathers of illegitimate babies; -she had spent much time and strength in dealing with such sad cases and -in pleading on committees that the man was most at fault. But even with -Ruth flourishing Freudian theories before her and the latest novels of -the newest young writers lying on her tables, Mrs. Bradley thought of -unhallowed relations between men and women as of dark, mysterious -deviations from the obvious standards of civilization. And now she heard -Giles say that Alix’s mother had lovers. - -“Has had them for years and years, dear Mrs. Bradley,” Lady Mary sadly -but firmly defined for her. “Ever since she left Alix’s father with, let -us trust, the first of them. With the monsieur Vervier, who, Marigold -heard, has never divorced her, and still lives. The last is an André de -Valenbois and Marigold met his people. It was from them she heard the -story, and from what Giles says I see it is all too true. She is a very -distinguished, very dignified _demi-mondaine_. Quite, quite notorious. -She’s as well known in Paris,” said Lady Mary with a sigh, relinquishing -madame Vervier’s corpse, as it were, to float down the tide of her -destiny, “as the Mona Lisa. The masses may not know about her, but -everybody else does.” - -“Not quite so bad as that, is it?” said Giles. He knew, while he -listened to Lady Mary, that it would be difficult to say why it was not -so bad; but the loyalty to madame Vervier that had so direfully betrayed -him to Toppie rose up in grief and anger against these suave -definitions. “Madame Vervier isn’t mercenary,” he said. “To be a -_demi-mondaine_ you must be mercenary. And I’m sure,” he added, while -his mother’s eyes, aghast, and Lady Mary’s eyes, imperturbably kind, -dwelt on him, and he knew that to the one he appeared ominously mature, -and to the other attractively boyish;—“I’m sure that Alix is -legitimate; if that’s any comfort to us.” - -“And why are you sure?” Lady Mary asked, Mrs. Bradley remaining -helplessly silent. - -“She confided in me,” said Giles, and it was more difficult to face Lady -Mary’s kindness than his mother’s dismay. “She was absolutely straight -with me. It was when we talked about Alix that she told me everything. -It was then I came to like her so much.” - -“But, Giles”—poor Mrs. Bradley now almost wept—“how can you say you -like these dreadful people? You made friends with monsieur de Valenbois, -too—how can you like them?” - -“But, dear Mrs. Bradley,” said Lady Mary with just the brush of a smile -across her lips, “one _does_ like them. Why not?” - -“Dissolute people? People with no sense of conduct or duty? I’ve never -met them. Giles has never, I am sure, met them before. I don’t -understand,” said Mrs. Bradley, and her drawing-room seemed to be saying -that it did not understand either;—the Watts’s “Love and Life” and -“Love and Death,” the bowls of primroses picked by Jack and Francis, the -crétonne covers, and the crayon drawing of Mrs. Bradley’s grandmother, a -dove-eyed lady with lace tied over her head and a cameo brooch. - -“I’ve met them,” said Lady Mary with sad equanimity. “I’ve cared very -much for several women who were, alas, in that sense, dissolute. Only -they were more fortunate than madame Vervier; or more discreet. They’ve -not been dissolute openly. So one hasn’t had to lose them.” - -“And one’s sons can marry their daughters,” said Giles. His mind was -occupied by no anger against Lady Mary; only by that grief on madame -Vervier’s account; and on Alix’s. Lady Mary he felt that he liked; much -as he liked—it was the strangest feeling—madame Vervier. Lady Mary, -too, was straight; she, too, was magnanimous; and, her eyes on his, she -was liking him, liking him even while, not yielding an inch, she -answered: “Exactly. One’s sons can marry their daughters. The difference -couldn’t be put more clearly.” And she went on, reminding him more and -more of madame Vervier, “Some things fit in and some things don’t. Women -who have kept their place, fit; women who have lost it, don’t. It’s very -harsh; it’s very hypocritical, you will say, Giles; but it is the only -way in which a civilized society can protect itself. It’s impossible to -judge each case on its own merits; so rules are made and the people who -transgress them pay the penalty. It isn’t really that they are put out; -they put themselves out. One pretends about them as long as they allow -one to go on pretending. And when it comes to the sons and -daughters;—young people don’t realize how horrid, how crippling, simple -awkwardness can be. How awkward, for instance, to have a mother-in-law -you couldn’t possibly, ever, invite to the house; how awkward to have -babies to whom you’ve given a _demi-mondaine_ for a grandmother. It -becomes too difficult. One wants to spare one’s children such -difficulty.” - -“And what does one want to spare Alix?” Giles asked. With all his -liking, with all her grace, her frankness, her resolve not to hurt, he -was feeling for Lady Mary the same repudiation that he had felt for the -ladies of the chalet—the people who connived and had no right to -reject. - -Lady Mary thought for a moment before saying: “Alix can marry someone -who doesn’t mind.” - -“But anyone good enough to marry Alix would have to mind,” said Giles. -“Wouldn’t you be the first to say that where she belongs is with the -people who do mind? What you really mean”—and Giles heard that his -voice became rather bitter as he went on—“is that the daughter of the -_demi-mondaine_ must stay in the _demi-monde_. I wouldn’t blame you if -you weren’t so fond of Alix for herself. I wouldn’t blame you if it were -a moral objection; but it isn’t. Those friends of yours are only in -because they’ve escaped being divorced. Your objection to Alix is -really, when you come to look at it, that her mother is -unfortunate.—Isn’t that so?” - -Yes, Lady Mary reminded him, vividly now, of madame Vervier. Her soft -gaze was fixed upon him with something of the same surprise, yet with -all of the same security, that madame Vervier’s had shown. Madame -Vervier, in Lady Mary’s place, would feel precisely as she did. And he -could see madame Vervier, after the little pause, bow her head as Lady -Mary bowed hers in saying: “I accept it all. That is my objection. Her -mother is too unfortunate. That is exactly what it comes to.” - -Mrs. Bradley, shut out from her son’s understanding and from Lady Mary’s -tolerance, looked from one to the other of them, a deepening flush on -her girlish cheeks. “But it’s worse, far worse than unfortunate,” she -said. “How could she have lived a life like that with a little daughter -to care for? It isn’t as if she had had only to leave a bad husband, -Giles. One could have understood that; one could have felt her right. -But to have lovers—Don’t say only unfortunate when it’s so much worse.” - -“I did say she was wrong, you know, Mummy.” Poor Giles rubbed his hand -through his hair. “She knows how wrong I think her. I told her. But the -point for us is to make up to Alix for her mother’s wrongness, isn’t -it?” - -“We must keep her here,” said Mrs. Bradley. “We must keep her away from -her mother’s life. It is too terrible to think of our darling little -Alix exposed to such depravity.” - -“Well, that’s what I felt, you see,” said Giles. - -Lady Mary was observing him. “You have been making up to Alix from the -first, haven’t you, Giles?” she said, and though the kindness of her -voice was unaltered there was in it a touch of dryness, too. “You’ve -been engaged from the first in rescuing her from the _demi-monde_. It -must have been a wonderful scene that between you and madame Vervier, -when you told her how wrong you thought her and promised her to do your -best to place Alix in another world than hers.” - -Giles, his hand still clutched in his hair, now stared at Lady Mary, -arrested. “It was you who sought Alix out, you know,” he reminded her -after a moment. “It wasn’t I who asked for anything for her. You took -your chances with Alix, just as we did. It was all on your own -responsibility.” - -“Dear Giles—I don’t blame you in the least for not telling me,” Lady -Mary assured him. - -But Giles would have none of such assurances. “I didn’t imagine you -could. I hadn’t told my own mother. If anyone can blame me, it’s she.” - -“And I’m sure she forgives you,” said Lady Mary. - -“But, of course, darling,” Mrs. Bradley, confused, murmured. “How could -you have done differently?” - -“And did you think, then,” Lady Mary, all mildness, continued, “that it -would never come out?” - -“I knew it would have to come out if Alix ever got married,” said Giles. -“In your case, I knew that you and madame Vervier were to meet. Alix had -seen to that.” - -“Yes,” Lady Mary meditated, her eyes on his. “Alix saw to it. Yes; you -knew you could count on Alix. We can all count on Alix. Alix was -perfect.” She had moved away from the theme of reproach, but it still -smarted in Giles and it was with a heavy gaze that he listened as she -went on, sweetly showing him that she, too, appreciated to the full -their little French girl. “She made everything clear. I never met such -clearness. It was wonderful to hear her on that day. Jerry had really, I -believe, touched her heart a little—poor little dear—but the last -thing she was thinking about was her own heart. She was thinking of all -sorts of strange claims and duties. The children, if she married, would -have to be Catholics, she told me! And she could not marry anyone who -asked her to give up France.” - -“I hope you recognize,” said Giles, his heavy gaze on her, “that she -would have been just as perfect if, not being French and not being a -Catholic, she’d accepted Jerry.” - -It was then as if, in the heavy eyes of the young man sitting there, -Lady Mary found herself arrested by an unfamiliar image of herself. She -had come to do exquisitely what had to be done; and to do it so -exquisitely that the element of forbearance in her attitude should be -barely, if at all, perceptible. She was, perhaps, doing it exquisitely; -but the mirror of dispassionate contemplation presented to her in -Giles’s gaze showed her, for perhaps the first time in her life, an -unbecoming distortion of her features. She might have been seen as -poised there, regretting that she had exposed herself to the revelation. -Then, feeling, no doubt, that no evasion was possible, she submitted to -seeing that while she could retain the grace of candour she must lose -the grace of disinterestedness, and answered: “She wouldn’t have been -nearly so perfect for my purposes.” - -Giles, at that, turned his eyes away. - -“You see, the truth is, my dear Giles,” said Lady Mary, and it was -perhaps not the least part of her discomfort to know that he was -uncomfortable for her, “dear little Alix needs someone better and braver -to deal with her situation than I can afford to be. Someone quite, quite -detached and devoted must fall in love with her; someone without a -worldly mother to shackle his impulses.—I’m sure he will turn -up,”—Lady Mary’s smile dwelt on him, but Giles did not meet it. “And as -far as I am concerned, my best security is Alix herself. I’m perfectly -aware of that.” - -“What is your difficulty, then?” Giles inquired, still averting his eyes -from Lady Mary. - -“Why, Jerry, of course,” she said, glad to escape to the wider theme. -“He won’t leave it where Alix made it so possible to leave it. He is -indignant with me and furious with Marigold. He says he won’t give up -Alix if her mother is a Messalina. I’m afraid he’s coming here to see -her.” - -“Aren’t you rather proud of him?” Giles inquired. - -“No, my dear Giles, I am not proud of him!” Lady Mary now gave herself -the relief of impatience, and Jerry was to bear the weight of her -discomposure. “He isn’t like Alix. He doesn’t see other people’s point -of view. He is thinking only of himself. It was just the same last year -when he wanted to marry a little dancer.” - -“He’s thinking of Alix as well as of himself. And you must own that he’s -improved in taste since last year,” said Giles. - -He looked at Lady Mary now, and her eyes searched his. “Does that mean -that you’re going to help Jerry?” - -Giles reflected. “It means, I suppose, that I’m going to help Alix. If -he’s really good enough for Alix—of course I’ll do my best for them.” - -He and Lady Mary gazed deeply at each other. She was clever. She was as -clever as madame Vervier. She saw that she had not concealed herself -from him and that he had recognized her intimations; first that, again -the old dog Tray, he should marry Alix himself, and then, that if he did -not marry her, he should at all events secure Jerry from the -unpropitious match by removing her. Yet, still, he liked Lady Mary. “Why -don’t you stand by them?” he suddenly suggested. - -At that, Lady Mary rose; mournful, but showing no reprobation. “I would -stand by them, of course, if it had to be. But I must try to prevent its -being. I must stand by my darling, that’s what it comes to, as you must -stand by yours. Jerry is my only child. I don’t want madame Vervier in -my family.” - -“You could count on her, too, you know,” said Giles. “She’d do -everything to make it easy, for Alix’s sake. You see, already she gives -her up to us.” - -“Ah—but only because of what she hopes you can do for her!” Lady Mary -exclaimed, and it was now, again, with the note of impatience. “No; the -only person I count upon is Alix herself. I don’t see Alix entering a -family that doesn’t want her. She will draw back when she feels that we -can’t come forward. She’ll send Jerry away—whatever her mother, or you, -or Jerry himself, may say—when she sees that he speaks for himself -alone. And Jerry, when he’s given a little time, will come to feel that -it’s all too difficult. After all, they’re only children. Little by -little he will forget her.” - -“And will you?” asked Giles. - -Lady Mary, with sweetest, softest emphasis, had pressed Mrs. Bradley’s -hand in farewell and now moved beside him to the door. She was -gracefully occupied in swathing and enfolding; she dropped her veil; she -drew her furs together; she avoided meeting again the mirror of his -eyes; and she said: “At my age one has learned to give up things. I must -give up my dear little Alix.” - -She made Giles think of a soft white hand, withdrawing itself, while -avoiding all danger of a rent, from a glove that has proved a misfit. - - - CHAPTER II - -When Giles got back to his study, he found Alix there, looking out of -the window. The sound of Lady Mary’s motor had hardly died away. He saw -that there was nothing now that could be concealed from Alix. - -“She had come to speak about my mother,” said Alix. - -It was strange to hear her say, “my mother,” and pitiful. Her voice was -strange; yet he knew, in seeing her, that he, too, whatever her -sufferings might be, must count upon Alix. It was Alix who would shield -them. - -“Yes. Marigold Hamble has just come back from Paris,” he said. The -gas-fire was alight this morning, burning rather low. He went to it and -turned it up so that there should be a brighter glow; and then, since -there was nothing he could say to Alix, he waited for what she would -find to say. She watched him while he bent to the fire. He felt her eyes -on him. Then, with a slow step, she came forward and sank down in her -corner of the sofa. - -Alix was very pale; her eyes were set in dark circles. Glancing at her, -Giles wondered with how much of strength she thus, after the shipwreck -of the day before, possessed herself before him. He guessed from her -attitude as she sat there, straightly, yet leaning a little against the -cushion, that it had only been by the determined exercise of her will -that she had forced herself to rise on hearing the motor arrive, and to -descend to meet whatever fresh disaster her presence among them might -have given birth to. She had parted from him the day before, broken, -speechless, disfigured with weeping; but now she showed him only calm. -Sorrow had not softened or disintegrated her. It had knitted her to a -new hardness, and what she found to say as she sat there looking into -the fire was: - -“So Mrs. Bradley knows now, too. Everybody knows about my mother.” - -“She doesn’t conceal anything, Alix, dear,” said Giles, dreadfully -troubled. “Everybody who meets her must come to know that her life -is—unconventional.” - -“Does Mrs. Bradley know that I know?” Alix asked. - -“Not yet,” said Giles. “I told her just now that I’d rather not talk -about it for a little while. She’s a good deal knocked up. But, if you -agree, all I need say to her, Alix, dear, is that I myself have -explained to you the grounds of Lady Mary’s objection. Toppie, I am -sure, will say nothing. Mummy need never know more than what she’s -learned from Lady Mary. She doesn’t know what Toppie knows.” - -Alix sat silent, looking into the fire. - -“We needn’t talk about any of that, you see, any more,” Giles took up -presently, having walked to the window and back again while he raged at -his helplessness. “Never forget what I said to you yesterday. That’s all -you need understand. I’ll make Mummy understand it, too. And as for you, -she only loves you the more because of your—your difficulties. What we -must talk about, you know, is Jerry. I’d really forgotten all about -him.” - -“Yes, I had, too.” Alix did not raise her eyes. “What is there to say of -him?” - -Giles, his hands in his pockets, gazed down at her. “He hasn’t forgotten -you.” - -“I hope he soon may learn to,” said Alix. - -“But, Alix, Jerry is sticking to you,” Giles protested. “Jerry is all -right. I’m very pleased about him. I thought it probable he wasn’t good -enough for you and now I find he is.” - -“I am quite sure he is good enough. That is not the question,” said -Alix. She sat there, leaning slightly against her cushion, her hands -folded in her lap, and looked into the fire. “I need not think of Jerry -now. I have only one person to think about, and that is my mother. I -must go back to her at once. To-morrow, Giles.” - -“But surely you’re not going to chuck Jerry!” cried Giles. - -For a moment, at this, Alix raised her eyes to his, and it was as if in -their dim surprise he read a reproach; the reproach of a serious race -who saw facts as they were. There was no humility or confusion in Alix. -She would not say to him that it was she who was not good enough for -Jerry; but certain facts were there and her glance told him that he did -not help her by pretending not to see them. - -“Dear Jerry,” was what she said and she then looked back at the fire. “I -am sorry if he is to be made sad. But it will not be for long. He will -get over it,” said Alix, and her voice was almost the voice of madame -Vervier and of Lady Mary. “He is so young. And he must come to see that -with objections on both sides what he hoped for is impossible.” - -Giles now came and sank down on the other end of the sofa. He had not -been pretending. He saw the facts quite as clearly as Alix could ask him -to do; but what it really came to was that his race, he believed with -all his heart, saw further and more important facts than the French did. - -“You know,” he said, while Alix continued to gaze at the fire, “I don’t -believe you are looking at it in the right way. You’re looking at it -as—as his mother does, as your mother would, from the point of view of -convention. Why impossible since you care for him?” - -“Because it would not be happy,” said Alix, who felt, evidently, no -uncertainty. “It would have been an unsuitable marriage before, when -mine were the only objections; it is much less suitable now. Such a -marriage would make his mother very unhappy. I do not believe it could -make my mother happy either. We do not think of marriage, we French -people, as you do. What you think wrong, we think right; convention, -suitability is right for us. We are not romantic in your English way.” - -“And can you really believe that your way is the right way, Alix?” Giles -inquired. “Can you imagine anything more unhappy than having to spend -your life with someone you don’t love? That’s what the _mariage de -convenance_ must often mean;—and, since one hasn’t found love in -marriage, looking for it afterwards outside.” - -Alix’s eyes, as Giles thus indicated the tragic unveiled figure that -stood between them, remained fixed upon the fire and she did not flush. -She only seemed to meditate, and, after a further pause, she said: “Even -marriages for love sometimes end like that. People’s hearts may change. -The heart is not always a guide. That is perhaps the great difference; -we do not believe that the heart is the guide; and you do. We believe -that since the heart can make such mistakes—both inside and outside of -marriage—we must depend on other things as well.” - -“On the suitable things, you mean,” said Giles. “But isn’t it better to -make mistakes for ourselves, and to abide by the consequences, than to -have other people make them for us? As for suitability, in all the -essentials you and Jerry are perfectly matched. It’s absurd to wreck his -happiness and yours because his mother finds disadvantages in your -mother’s position. Do look at it straight, Alix.” - -“But I do look at it straight, Giles,” said Alix. “And all that I can -see is that it would be impossible for me to marry Jerry.” - -After this a little silence fell between them. It was strange to feel, -sitting there in the familiar room, with Alix beside him, that the grief -that had brought them so near had also set them apart. Alix had never -been so near him as yesterday; she had never been so far as now. A cold -apprehension entered Giles’s heart as he felt it. If with her first step -into maturity she was so removed, how much might not the future remove -her? What claim, what charm could England have for Alix now? And as if -she answered his thoughts she said: “Will you help me to go back to -Maman to-morrow, Giles?” - -“But, my dear Alix,” cried Giles, rising and walking up and down the -room, “why go now? How would you explain your sudden return to her? -Surely you’re not going to deal her such a blow as to let her know what -has happened?” - -“I have thought of it all, Giles,” said Alix, “and Jerry will be my -explanation. She knows of Jerry’s offer of marriage, and what is more -natural than that I should return to her if his family object to me? I -shall tell Maman nothing; but I hope that she soon will feel that she -has nothing more to hide from me. When Maman knows that his family -object, she will be able, very soon, to guess why.” - -Giles had turned at the end of the room. “You need never say anything, -you mean?” - -“I need never say anything”—Alix looked back at him—“except that -Marigold Hamble went to Paris and that when she came back and had seen -Lady Mary they objected. Maman will guess.” - -“Well; and after that? What then? When she’s guessed,” Giles asked, -“what is gained?” - -“What is gained is that I shall have my right to be with her. I shall -have my right to help her. While she had things to hide I could not help -her; she would not let me. Now, if other things should fail her,” said -Alix, “she will know that I am there to be depended upon.” And with the -words it was as if he saw her go forward and take the tragic unveiled -figure by the hand. - -She must have felt some strain in his wide gaze, for, meeting it, she -turned away her eyes, adding: “It was Maman’s mistake ever to have sent -me here. I felt that long ago.” - -“And mine to have kept you, then.” Giles turned to look out of the -window, struggling with the sense of tears. His little Alix! To what did -she return? What was the destiny there before her in the jungle? “Do I -count for nothing in all this?” he asked. “I wanted you to stay in the -first place for your own sake. I want you to stay now for mine. Put -Jerry aside. Think of me for a moment. I’ve nobody but you. You’re the -only person in the world who knows what I’ve been through, and isn’t it -true that I’m the only person who understands your life? That’s a bond, -isn’t it? What shall we do without each other?” said Giles, and, -helplessly, his voice was a younger voice at that moment than Alix’s. He -was the lonely little boy begging not to be abandoned. - -Behind him Alix was silent for a moment; then she said, very gently: -“But even if I had not Maman to think of, Giles, we should not be -together; you will be in Oxford.” - -“And my idea is that you should come to Oxford next year and study at -Somerville. Even while you were here we’d see each other constantly. It -would be everything to know that you were near by.” - -“But it is impossible, dear Giles,” said Alix. It was the same word she -always found. - -He turned to her from the window. “Do you mean because of Toppie? My -mother? Toppie will be leaving us. My mother’s first thought was that we -must keep you always.” - -“She wishes to keep me in order to keep me from Maman.” - -“She doesn’t know your mother. I’ll make her understand. She wants to -keep you because she’s so fond of you.” - -“But that’s not enough now, Giles,” said Alix, looking across at him. -“You must see yourself that that cannot now be enough. Anyone who loves -me now must take in Maman too. It is Maman I must think of. And my place -is beside her. You will see it, too, dear Giles, when you have had time -to think. I must go to-morrow, and you must help me. Will you, Giles, -for I have no money?” - -He saw that he must yield. Such resolution could not be opposed. And -after all wasn’t it best to let her go? He would have struggled against -her longer had it not come to him that nothing would move further the -cause he had at heart, Jerry’s cause, and Alix’s, than her withdrawal. -Better, much better, were Lady Mary to see that Alix was removed; better -for Jerry that he should find something to endure and wait for and win -with difficulty. - -And, more than all the rest, he was sustained by that sense of secure -radiance that had come to him from Alix herself. Wherever she was, -whatever befell her, Alix would be safe. He could not have given way, he -could not have consented to see her go, if he had not felt sure of it. -So it ended as she had meant it to end. - -“Of course I’ll help you, dear,” he said. - - - CHAPTER III - -He saw Alix off next day. Her departure cast consternation through the -Bradley household. An unfortunate love affair, the fact that Alix did -not wish to marry Jerry Hamble, could not be made to bear the weight of -such a sudden mystery. - -“I always knew those Hambles would do her no good!” cried Rosemary. - -“The truth is, if you ask me,” said Ruth, “that she wants to go back to -France. She’s never really cared about being here at all.” - -But against this Jack and Francis protested hotly, asserting that Alix -liked nothing better than playing games with them. - -Poor Mrs. Bradley was dismayed. Giles could do nothing to make her -understand. “But she’s been happy here; I know she’s been happy,” she -said. “I see that you can’t explain to her why she should stay with us. -But, oh, Giles, she ought to stay till she is much, much older. We can -take her away. I can take her to Edinburgh, to stay with the Raeburns, -if she wants to avoid Mr. Hamble—I’ll do anything to keep her.” - -Giles could only reiterate: “Alix is very wise, Mummy. You must trust -her to know best. I think she suspects already that things aren’t happy -with her mother; and she wants to be near her.” - -His mother asked him not another question about madame Vervier. She made -no surmises about Owen’s friendship. Giles at moments wondered, with all -her ingenuousness, whether some dim suspicion had not entered her mind, -as it had entered Toppie’s, and he blessed her for her gift of silence. - -He thought for a moment that Alix was going to cry when she bade his -mother good-bye; tears were in Mrs. Bradley’s eyes. - -“Darling, whenever you want to come back to us—you will know;—we’ll -always be waiting, Alix, dear.” - -“Good-bye, old thing,” said Rosemary staunchly. - -“We’ll come to see you in France,” Ruth assured her, “at your Vaudettes -place; though I do hate shingle to bathe on.” - -“All of you must come, whenever you will,” Alix murmured, pale in her -little blue buttoned cape. Alix knew what they did not know, that they -would never be allowed to come. - -Then he saw the last of her. She stood leaning on the railing of the -steamer deck, Blaise in his basket beside her, and waved to him until -the blue mist of the April day dissolved her form, and as he saw her -disappear Giles felt a dreadful loneliness. Tame, flat, colourless did -life become to him. The sense of Alix’s presence had been in his mind -like the sense of Alpine flowers brought within one’s own garden -precincts, sweet, strange, yet intimate; like the sense of mountain -ranges on one’s horizon, aloof, mysterious, yet visible. “Beautiful, -darling creature,” he heard himself murmuring as he drove home through a -country that had lost all savour. The loss of Toppie from his life was -like a pervading, half-stupefied aching; but from the sharpness that the -loss of Alix brought he saw how little in comparison Toppie’s going -meant real loss. He had never possessed Toppie. The ache might now be -deeper, but it was still the same ache that the thought of Toppie had -always meant. - -He had not seen her. None of them had seen her again. And on the morning -of Alix’s departure they heard that she had returned to Bath. Another -three days passed before a letter came for him. It was short, yet it -brought him more comfort than he could have believed possible. - - “Dear Giles,” she wrote, “I think I begin to understand all that - you have tried to do for me. It was wrong of you; but I think I - understand. I have been wrong, too. Perhaps this came to show me - that one can love wrongly. I do not think I love him less now; - only differently. I know that he suffered before he died. When I - read his last letters now, I can see the suffering in them. I - send my love to everybody. - - “Always your friend, dear Giles, - - “TOPPIE.” - -And a postscript, written hurriedly, ran: “Keep poor, brave little Alix -with you.” - -Under the dry phrases he read the mastered anguish. But it was mastered. -That was the comfort that Toppie’s letter brought him. She had risen -already above her own sense of personal wreckage and could contemplate -its meaning. As her piercing intuition on the day among the birch-woods -had led her to the portals of the truth, so now it had led her to its -heart. She saw at last, truly, what Giles had done; she no longer -misunderstood him. Even, perhaps, she had begun, dimly, to understand -what manner of woman madame Vervier might be. Toppie was noble enough -for that. It would appease rather than lacerate her heart to believe -that the woman to whom Owen had given his heart was not ignoble. - -It was on the morning of Toppie’s letter that Jerry was ushered into -Giles’s study. - -Giles, as he rose to greet the bright apparition in his doorway, did not -know whether it was with more gloom or satisfaction that he saw it. He -was glad that Jerry was holding on, yet his presence there seemed to add -to his own sense of bereavement. He could do nothing more for Alix. She -had shown him that he could do nothing more. But though she had disowned -Jerry, it now remained to be seen if Jerry could do something. - -“Is she gone!” Jerry exclaimed. Giles’s face might have told it to him -and his charming eyes, so like his mother’s, went swiftly round the -room, partly as if they might still discover the missing Alix, and -partly in the unconscious appraisal of a new _milieu_. Like his mother, -Jerry would always see everything, wherever he might be. - -“Yes. She’s gone,” said Giles, giving a push to the sofa. Strange, -indeed, to have Alix’s suitor sitting in Alix’s own corner; Giles was -aware of a sense of relief as Jerry did not yet take it. “It seemed the -simplest thing for her to do.” - -For a moment, then, he seemed to detect, or suspect, a flavour of relief -in the discomfiture on Jerry’s face, but it was in immediate -self-exculpation that he said, as if Giles might call him to account: “I -couldn’t get here before; really I couldn’t. I’ve been away. I didn’t -know till yesterday that Mummy had stolen a march on me. Mummy couldn’t -hide from me—she didn’t try to—I’ll do her that justice—how -splendidly you’ve been standing up for us.—If she’s gone, do you mean -she knows?” - -“She knows, or has guessed enough,” said Giles. “I don’t really think -she’d have seen you if you’d got here before. It’s three days now since -she went. What she says, you see”—and Giles again indicated Alix’s -corner to Jerry—“is that there are now insuperable objections on both -sides, and that her place is with her mother. Do sit down.” - -But Jerry stood for a moment longer, gazing. “Yes, I see,” he then said. -“Yes. That’s just what she would say. But how disgusting that she should -have to say anything about it—poor little darling. Isn’t it a miserable -business,” he added, as he dropped on to the sofa and glanced with a -sort of gentle alarm at the gas-fire, rather as though he might, unless -he held himself in, shy at it. He was making Giles, too, think of a -nervous, charming horse. - -“Yes. It’s very miserable in some ways,” said Giles. He did not sit. He -stood, his hands in his pockets and leaned against the mantelpiece -looking down at his visitor. Very much like a charming horse was Jerry. -Giles could almost see him nibbling reconnoitringly at the edge of the -stained-oak mantelpiece or choosing suddenly to take a flying leap out -of the window. - -Jerry offered his cigarette-case as though it might help them. - -“It’s that confounded Marigold nosing out this story about Alix’s -mother,” he said, striking his match. “And it’s true, you say?” - -“Not exactly as she put it, I gather; but true enough. Since it is true -enough, it’s better, I suppose, that it came out as soon as possible,” -said Giles. - -“Oh—I’d rather it had never come out at all,” Jerry objected. “It makes -no difference to me. I don’t care a hang about ancestors and all that -sort of thing, and I expect we’ve plenty of rotters among our own. It’s -Mummy who takes it so hard. If only Alix had consented to marry me at -once, when I asked her, we’d have been all right. People always put up -with the _fait accompli_, don’t they, and Mummy’s so awfully fond of -Alix. Marigold might have come trotting with her little tale of woe, but -she’d have been too late. Well, she’s too late now, and I’ll show her -so—horrid little cat. I shall go over to Paris at once, and I don’t -suppose I shall meet with much opposition from madame Vervier.” - -“I think you’ll meet with a great deal from Alix,” said Giles, aware of -restlessness and inquiry beneath the brave parade of Jerry’s words. “I -don’t think you’ve a chance of marrying her against your mother’s -wishes. Your only chance is to bring your mother round. That will take -time. You’ll have to show your mother that you mean it.” - -Jerry eyed him for a moment. “Well, Alix is a French girl. She’s rubbing -it in enough that she’s French—and she’ll obey her mother. If her -mother tells her that she’s to marry me, I expect she will; and I’m -pretty sure I could get round madame Vervier. By the way, what sort of a -woman is she, really?” Jerry added, and boyishly, touchingly in Giles’s -eyes, he suddenly flushed. - -Giles was thinking how like wax in madame Vervier’s hands would Jerry -be. “She’s a charming woman,” he said. - -“Well, of course she’s that,” Jerry assented. “But I mean, is she a -lady, all that sort of thing?—Not that I care.” - -Giles reflected. “The only person I ever met who reminds me of her is -your mother.” - -“Mummy?” Jerry stared, indeed. - -“They’re not alike at all in what they’ve done; but they are very much -alike in what they are. You could count upon madame Vervier as you could -count upon your own mother. She’d always know what to do. If you and -Alix married, she’d never trouble you.” - -“You mean she’d give up Alix if it was for her happiness?” - -“Absolutely. What she wants most is Alix’s happiness. Your difficulty -wouldn’t be at any time with madame Vervier, but with Alix herself.” - -“She wouldn’t give her mother up, you mean?” - -“From what you know of her, do you think she would?” - -Jerry turned his eyes upon the fire and contemplated it. “She’s awfully -young,” he suggested. - -“Yes, but she won’t change, in that respect, in getting older. It would -be difficult. Alix’s feeling for her mother would make it all very -difficult. You’d have to face that, Jerry.” - -Jerry had never had to face anything that was difficult. Everything -about him seemed to be saying that as he sat there, his thoughtful -cigarette in his hand, his russet head poised meditatively. He saw Alix -as a bright object that he naturally wanted, and now it was shown to him -that, bright as she might be, darkness lay about her. It was evident to -Giles that he turned away from the thought of darkness as he said -presently: “Isn’t she absolutely the loveliest creature you ever -beheld?” - -“Do you know,” Giles confessed, surprised by the change of theme, but -willing to follow to the best of his ability, “I’ve never thought much -about Alix’s appearance. I don’t suppose one does when one has known -someone from a child. I suppose she is lovely. I like everything her -face means; and the more I know Alix the more it goes on meaning.” - -“She’s a Nike,” said Jerry, gazing at the fire. “She’s on the prow of a -Greek ship flying over the wine-dark sea. You’ve seen her dance—in that -white and crystal dress with the silver round her head—it’s like the -rhythm of Shelley’s Hymn of Pan. When I look at her dancing, I long to -dance with her; when I dance with her, I long to be looking at her. Odd, -isn’t it, how one never can get enough at once. She’s got the most -extraordinarily cold eyes, you know,” said Jerry, fully launched upon -his theme. “Even when one’s dancing with her and looks down into -them;—she’s so happy, she smiles up at you—and yet they are as cold, -as blue, as deep as mountain lakes.” - -“Yet she’s not cold,” said Giles. He was seeing Alix as Jerry spoke -about her eyes, not dancing, not smiling, but looking as she had looked -the other morning when she had said: “Now, if other things should fail -her, she will know at least I am there to be depended upon.” With the -words he had seen her go forward to take her mother by the hand. A -tenderness, passionate, enfolding, had thrilled beneath the quiet words. -How right had madame Vervier been in believing that she could count -always upon Alix.—And Jerry only saw her dancing. - -But he himself wanted Alix to dance. He wanted her to marry Jerry. He -believed that it might still be possible if Jerry could be good enough. -“If you hold on, you know,” he said—and Jerry could not think it -irrelevant—“I feel sure your mother will stand by you, and if she -stands by you, everything will fall into place and you and Alix can go -on dancing. So hold on. Deserve her. I’m standing by you already, as you -know.” He smiled down at Jerry, so young, so slight, but so charming and -so sound. If Jerry could get strength enough to hold on, he would waft -Alix far away. Philosophers could have little to do with dancing white -and silver Nikes. “Deserve her, you see,” he repeated. - -“Not go over to-morrow, you mean?” Jerry questioned, looking up at his -host, docile to any suggestion. “I’d so much rather have it settled -straight off. And I have a feeling that if I could get at Alix over -there, with her mother to help me, I should get it settled.” - -“I’m sure you wouldn’t. And nothing would unsettle your own mother so -much. You’ll gain everything with Alix, and with your mother, if you -show them that you can wait. Write to Alix, of course; write constantly. -Tell her all about it; your feelings, you know, and what you think about -her eyes.—You both care for the same things: riding; out of doors; -fancy-dress balls, and the ‘Hymn of Pan.’ What you’ve got to uphold, you -see, Jerry, what you’ve got to justify, is our English conception of -being in love. You must overbear convention; you must break down -parental scruples. You must show yourself so much in love to Alix that -you’ll convince her that romance is common-sense. You see, I want you to -win her, not only for yourself, but for England.” - -Jerry’s eyes were on him while he spoke and they dwelt for some moments -of bright contemplation as if for the first time he was looking at Giles -more carefully than he had looked at the gas-fire and the mantelpiece. -“You know, if I may say so, I do think you’re a very remarkable person,” -he observed. - -“Am I? Why?” Giles asked, smiling rather sadly. - -“Well”—Jerry continued to look at him, but he blushed again—“to care -so much about a girl you’re not in love with yourself. Doing everything -for her. I’ve heard a lot about you, you may be sure. Alix thinks more -of you than of anybody in the world.” - -Giles, too, was blushing now. “Does she?” he said. They were suddenly -two boys together, and as they spoke of love and of Alix their words, to -Giles, seemed to lift her far away out of childhood and to set her, a -woman, between them. - -“I’m most awfully fond of Alix,” he said. - -“I know. That’s what’s so remarkable,” said Jerry, shyly smiling. “To be -so fond, yet not to be in love.” - -“You see,” Giles found himself offering, really as if in a sort of -exculpation, “one may be in love with someone else; that would prevent, -wouldn’t it? And you can care immensely about someone without being in -love with them.” - -“Could one? When she’s Alix? I can’t imagine it,” Jerry a little -nervously smiled. “Unless, as you suggest, there’s someone else, and -then I shouldn’t have time to care so much for another girl.” - -Jerry’s ingenuous analysis certainly had its potency; Giles did not -quite know what to say to him. “Even if I had been, it wouldn’t have -done me any good,” he suggested. “Alix would never have thought of me.” - -“Well, you mustn’t ask _me_ to say that she would!” Jerry laughed out at -this. - -He got up as he spoke and went to the mantelpiece, picking up and -examining one of the horrid little china animals thereon. But he was not -seeing it. - -“England will get her in a much more satisfactory way, for Alix, than it -would if I were in the running,” said Giles. - -“And you really think it may get her; you really think I can manage it,” -Jerry murmured, still examining the china cow. Jerry, more than ever, -because he saw him as so remarkable, was depending upon him for -sustainment. It would have been a comparatively easy matter for him to -leap over the barriers and make off to the beloved. To wait, to hold on, -was a different matter, and Giles knew a little turn of fear as he saw -it. It was no good Jerry’s thinking that anyone else could hold on for -him. - -“You can’t manage it unless you can count on yourself,” he now informed -him. “There’s nobody else for you to count on. Alix is against you, and -your mother is against you. It won’t be an easy thing to marry Alix. -It’s not only as a dancing Nike you have to think of her. It’s as madame -Vervier’s daughter, too.” - -“And as a Catholic. And as French,” Jerry murmured, setting down the cow -to take up the cat. “You know she said—funny little darling—that the -children would have to be Catholics. Not that I’d care a rap.—Only, it -does somehow make everything more difficult.” - -“It certainly does. Alix has all her objections. Nothing could be more -difficult,” Giles rather heavily assured him. - -“And as the English lover it’s up to me to overcome them; show her that -I can carry her off in spite of them—in spite of herself—what? How -would you like it if your children had to be Catholics?” Jerry very -gloomily inquired. - -Giles did not have to reflect for long. “I should not like it at all. -It’s one of the things I’d put up with if I were in love with Alix and -she in love with me.” - -“Do you know, I almost wish you were,” Jerry now said, and he spoke from -a sudden cloud of darkness. - -Giles paused. “Does that mean that you’ve given her up?” he inquired. - -“No, I’ve not given her up.” Jerry looked down at the china cat. “I’m -going to try to live up to the part of the English lover. It’s only,” -said Jerry, “that I see the difficulties.” - - - CHAPTER IV - -Before Giles went back to Oxford a short letter came to Mrs. Bradley -from Toppie saying that she was going to stay on in Bath for the present -and that her determination to become a nun was unaltered. After that, -for many weeks, he heard nothing more of her, and it was not until the -end of June that he received a letter telling him that she was at -Headington, staying with an old friend of her mother’s before entering -her novitiate, and asking him to come and see her. The old friend lived -in a little house sunken among the high walls and deep leafage of a -garden, and the drawing-room, where Giles waited for Toppie, its long -windows opening on a little lawn, seemed part of the garden, it was so -full of flowers and sunlight. - -Giles stood at a window and looked out and listened to a garden-warbler -singing ceaselessly, like a running brook, among the branches. His heart -was full of presage, for he had not seen Toppie since the dreadful day -that had severed them from the past. Yet the song of the garden-warbler, -rippling incessantly over his fear, seemed to dissolve it into a happy -melancholy.—“The past is over, not forgotten, but over, over,”—the -song seemed to be saying. “This sweetness, this sunlight, this -tranquillity is the present. Believe in it, live in it, as I do. She is -not angry with you any longer. You have not failed.” - -And when Toppie entered, he saw that she was not angry and that he had -not failed. More than that; there was much more than that for him in -Toppie’s face; but he could not at first determine what it was. - -She was changed. So changed that it was almost as if he had forgotten -her and was seeing her for the first time again. Perhaps it was that -since last seeing her all his thoughts of her had been changed. Personal -hopes, personal longings, were gone, and seen without the aching glamour -that they had cast about her Toppie was at once less and more beautiful. -For never before had he recognized the defects and deficiencies of her -face. She was a pale, thin, freckled girl, slightly featured, with dry -lips and colourless eyes. Yet in this newly perceived earthliness there -was revealed to him the fulfillment, as it were, of that celestial -quality he had from the first divined in her. - -This was what Toppie was; this was the material that had been given her -to work upon; and it was as if he saw her, through the power of prayer, -lifting from cold and arid soil flowers and fruit to heaven. - -She looked at him sweetly and calmly giving him her hand, and saying: -“Dear Giles.” - -“I’m so glad.—I’ve so hoped you would see me,” Giles murmured. - -“Of course I was to see you. It only wanted a little time—to settle -things,” said Toppie. “Let us go into the garden. Isn’t it the dearest -garden?—I used to come here sometimes when I was a child.” - -“Is it all settled?” Giles asked, as they went out and walked along a -grass path to the shade of a lilac-tree. “I mean about the convent; -about your leaving us?” - -“It’s all settled.—But we don’t think of it like that, you know,” said -Toppie. “We think it’s to be much nearer you, really.—And then, of -course, I shall be able to see you all sometimes.” - -They sat down under the lilac-tree. It was in thick bloom and the -fragrance fell about them. - -Giles saw now what his greatest fear had been. And he knew that it was -groundless. Toppie would never ask him a question. The past was over; -not forgotten; but over. That was what her departure, her silence, had -won for them. She could not, at that past time, have kept herself from -pressing against the swords of every fullest realization. She could not -have kept herself from seeing, as balefully as he had seen them, the -figures of Owen and madame Vervier. She would never ask those questions -now. - -And presently it was of Owen himself that she was speaking. - -“I wanted to tell you what peace it has given me, Giles, to feel that he -did love me,” she said. The soft sweet flowers of the lilac were behind -her head, the shadowy green of its leaves. He seemed to see, as her eyes -dwelt on him, what Toppie would look like as a very old nun. Not so -different from now. Nuns had changeless faces. - -“He loved me,” she said. “But not as I loved him. When one accepts the -truth, Giles, it gives peace. And now I see that we are not meant to ask -for the same love back. It is enough to love; and I shall always love -him.” - -“He always loved you, Toppie,” Giles murmured. “He was swept away.” -After he had said these words he remembered that they were the words of -madame Vervier. - -“Yes,” Toppie accepted quietly. “Swept away. And he was alone; in a -strange country; in a time of dreadful strain. And she was so kind and -so lovely.—And she does not believe the things we believe—I have seen -it all, Giles. I have forgotten nothing of all that you tried to tell, -to explain to me on that day. Wrong, you said, not wicked. And Alix is -her child.—I have seen it all—and how he suffered. He has suffered, -Giles,” said Toppie, looking deeply at him. “But now, with him, too, -there is peace. I believe it. With all that has come between, we are not -separated, he and I.” - -Looking into Toppie’s eyes, Giles could not but believe it, too. - -They were silent for a little while. Then Toppie said: “And you, dear -Giles?” - -“I? Oh, I’m getting on quite nicely, Toppie, dear,” Giles smiled back at -her. “I shall take my First, I think.” - -“Yes. But I didn’t mean you only, you alone. I mean you and Alix. What -are you going to do with our dear little Alix?” - -“Ah, there’s a long story there,” said Giles. “Have you heard anything -about Jerry Hamble?” - -“Only what your mother wrote about some trouble that Alix felt it better -to be away from.—I knew it could not be only that. I knew what other -trouble there was.—Oh, Giles—I was so cruel to Alix.—I could not -think of what I said.—But tell me about Jerry.” - -Giles found, when he began to tell her about Jerry and Alix, that it was -not easy. There were still things that he must hide from Toppie. It was, -he knew, everything to her to believe that Owen had given his heart to a -woman not ignoble. But with all the celestial charity that had come to -her vision of life, how could she believe madame Vervier anything but -ignoble if she knew of Owen’s successor? “Lady Mary heard things about -her, you see,” he said. “She heard the things we know, Toppie. Madame -Vervier has made them easy to hear, and Lady Mary felt that since it was -so Alix wasn’t a possible person for her son to marry.” - -“But I thought she loved Alix,” Toppie said. She was not thinking of -madame Vervier and the things Lady Mary had heard. She was thinking of -Alix. - -Giles knew again the flavour of his old bitterness. “She doesn’t love -her enough. Perhaps one shouldn’t expect it.” - -“But one does expect it. And does he love her enough?” asked Toppie. - -Giles stopped to meditate. He had often to meditate over Jerry. “I see a -lot of him, you know,” he said presently. “He’s always coming to me. I -think he regards me as their tutelary deity. He shows me all her -letters—I think he’d be quite willing to show me his.—Yes, they write -to each other. Alix writes one letter to his four, Jerry complains, and -her letters are models of deportment. They might be read aloud to -anybody. Yes;—he loves her quite enough, if she’d have him now, against -his parents’ wishes. It’s waiting that’s so hard for Jerry. He needs to -do things on the crest of the wave, and Alix keeps him in the trough. He -gets absolutely no encouragement from Alix. Thus far and no farther, is -what all her letters really say.” - -“I can’t help feeling that he isn’t good enough for Alix, Giles,” said -Toppie. “He’s too young and light and gay.” - -Again Giles stopped to think. “I don’t say he’s good enough. But who is -good enough for Alix? She’s stuff in her for two, and lightness and -gaiety are in her blood as well as the things Jerry lacks. Jerry could -make her very happy. That’s what I’m quite sure of, Toppie. I want him -for her, and I shouldn’t want him unless I believed he could make her -happy.—For who is good enough, really, for our little Alix?” Giles -repeated. - -Toppie had listened to him, her eyes looking out over the garden. Now, -turning them on him with a smile, she said quite suddenly: “You are good -enough. You must marry Alix, Giles.” - -How strange it was. Madame Vervier had said almost those words only a -year ago and they had wakened not an echo in him. Now, as he heard them -spoken in Toppie’s confident voice a great confusion of fear, pain, -loneliness started up in Giles’s heart. It was as if he had been waiting -for Toppie to say them; as if he had felt that deep-toned bell hanging -in some sanctuary of his nature and known that Toppie would thus strike -upon it, sending the reverberations far into the past as well as into -the future. For a moment he could hardly think, he was so deafened by -the clamour, and then the first words that came were helpless words: -“She wouldn’t have me, Toppie, dear.” - -“Why not?” smiled Toppie. She had taken his avowal quite for granted. - -“If she loves anyone, it’s Jerry.” - -“They won’t marry,” said Toppie. “There are too many difficulties; and -he doesn’t love her enough.” - -“Yes, he does, if he’s helped. It’s someone like Jerry she needs; -someone young and gay, with things to offer her. I’ve nothing to offer -Alix.” - -“You have your love. No one will ever love Alix as you do.” Toppie’s -loving eyes scanned his face while her confident voice thus assured him. - -“But that’s no reason, for her.—She’ll have other people’s love. It’s -true, dear Toppie; of course. I see it’s true; and I suppose I’ve known -it for a long time. But Alix would never think of me like that. She -thinks of me as her brother. She thinks of me as her father, almost; as -someone kind and gruff and paternal. Alix is the fairy princess, and I’m -just the good old beast who carries her around on my back.” - -“Fairy princesses marry the good old beast and then he turns into a -fairy prince,” said Toppie. “You’re so much more of a fairy prince -already, Giles, than you imagine.” - -“But she has her full-fledged fairy prince waiting ready to fly off with -her. He may have his defects; but, all the same, he is the real thing. -He can give her the crystal dress and the prancing steed and the dancing -to flutes and cymbals.—Oh, you know perfectly well, Toppie, darling, -all the things I can never give her and that she loves with all her -heart. It’s queer, you know; I’ve wanted so to make Alix over into -something more English, and what I see is that she’s made me into -something more French. I’d have been indignant at the idea of fairy -princes two years ago; and at marriages with an object of advantage in -them;—but now I’ve been inoculated with a drop of the French realism. -Alix accepts the world and sees it as it is in a way that you and I, -Toppie, and people of our sort, never could. And she’s made me worldly -for her. I see the advantages for her, and I want her to have them. -She’s not a romantic English girl. She’d never believe in all for love -and the world well lost.” - -Toppie was considering him. “You say she’s made you more French. It’s -true that you understand things you never could have understood -before.—You know how horribly afraid your understanding made me -once.—But as I listen to you it seems to me that you are the most -English thing there is. What Frenchman would ever do what you have done, -or feel what you feel about Alix? Isn’t it an English way of feeling to -love like that, without a thought of self?—And Alix has shown us, shown -you and me, Giles, how she can love.” - -“I know, Toppie, dear, I know,” Giles murmured. “But with her it’s just -because she loves me selflessly that she’ll never love me differently.” - -“I believe she may. I believe she will. And what you must do,” said -Toppie, “is go over and see.” - -“With Jerry in the way? I couldn’t do that.” - -“Let him have his chance, then, first. Let him go to France and ask her. -I’m not afraid of Jerry. I feel as if I understood Alix better than you -do. May I tell you something, Giles? You must not think me foolish, but -things seem to come to me so strangely now.—I’ve always wanted this for -you. From the first time I saw Alix, it was what I wanted. And now, when -I shut my eyes and think of you and her, it is always together that I -see you . . . with my doves around you. That would be my wedding-present -to you, you know,” Toppie smiled at him and her smile had the colour of -light and came from far distances; “all my doves, to watch over you and -Alix and keep you safe together always.” - - - CHAPTER V - -Giles did not believe in what his dear Toppie had told him; did not -believe that the fairy princess could ever be for him; but the thought -of her words hovered round him as if her very doves sought the nest she -promised. It was impossible. He could not recall a glance or word of -Alix’s that made it seem possible; yet it hovered. The thought of Alix -accompanied his days. He had said that he had nothing to give her and it -was true that he had no fairy-prince gifts; but sculling quietly on the -Cherwell at evening, Giles, resting on his oars and watching his beloved -Oxford glide past, would remember how many things they had shared -together, simple, happy things, the gifts of life that were there for -everybody to share. She had liked Oxford, too, when she had last come. -He treasured every discerning phrase that his memory could recover. She -had said that it was kinder than anything in France; and the simile of -the humane old bishop, with his ring and robes and benignant face, came -back to him, and how one day, when they read “The Scholar Gipsy” -together, she had said: “It seems to me that learning is happier with -you than with us, Giles, and goes with happier things.—Some day you -will take me for all those walks your gipsy took.” - -Yes, he could see himself and Alix in Oxford together and walking in -Oxfordshire and Berkshire fields and lanes. More than that. There was -another figure that Toppie had not brought into her picture; but she -would have thought of it. It was the figure that stood between Alix and -all those other dreams he had woven round her and Jerry. Who but himself -could care for Alix’s mother and accept her into his life? Madame -Vervier, he knew, would never have come to Oxford. He need not, -disconcertingly, try to see her there. But there were the long holidays -when he and Alix might have gone to her. Who but he could have kept -Alix’s mother near her? “But it’s only dear Toppie’s dream,” thought -Giles, watching the towers glide by. “And there’s Jerry.” - -It was late one evening, at the end of Commemoration Week, that Jerry -burst into his rooms. Ruth and Rosemary and his mother had just left -him. Ruth and Rosemary were now old enough to join in any of the Oxford -festivities that he could offer them, and his mind was in a daze from -the mid-Summer excitement. It bubbled at the bottom of the glass like -froth after a long satisfying draught, for he knew that he had done well -in his exams and now only his viva lay before him;—so that the -wreathed, dancing heads of young girls, and the sun-browned heads of -youths on the river, glided past on a queer background of metaphysics. -He has seen Jerry dancing, and he had seen him on the river. Lady Mary -had waved to him from a barge in mild, unallusive affectionateness, and -for a moment they had spoken together in the crowd leaving the -Sheldonian.—“I think you could tell me that I might be proud of Jerry,” -was what she had said, and it was a very odd thing for Lady Mary to say. -It showed Giles that if to him Jerry showed his weakness, to his mother -he was showing his strength. - -It was neither strength nor weakness that Jerry showed him now. All that -Giles could read in his headlong face was immense perplexity, and he -cried at once on entering: “I’ve had a most amazing letter from Alix.” - -Giles pulled himself up in his chair and Jerry sat down on the edge of -the table beside him. It was a painful perplexity; humiliation; -bitterness; cogitation were mingled in it, and as Giles saw it fear rose -in his heart, though he asked, “Well?” with the voice of the friend and -counsellor. - -“I was going over in a fortnight,” said Jerry. “I wrote and told her so. -And I told Mummy, and Mummy has behaved splendidly. She’s in a frenzy -underneath, no doubt; but she shows nothing. I expect she relies on Alix -to back her up. Well, by Jove, she may! Alix does more than back her up. -Here’s her answer. Am I really dished, do you think?” cried Jerry, “or -is it just to put me off?” - -Giles read. Alix wrote in English as if to make herself more clear. - - “DEAR JERRY: You must not come. I have told you that I could not - marry you, but I blame myself because I spoke that time in the - Spring with some uncertainty. It is not only the objections now. - There is another reason that did not then exist. Please do not - question me; and please forgive me for any pain that I may cause - you, but it is someone else that I love. I did not know what - love was when you asked me. You must marry some girl of your own - race, dear Jerry, and be happy. I shall never leave France now. - - “Your friend, - “ALIX.” - -Giles read, and his heart stood still while brightly, balefully the -fox-seraph visage of André de Valenbois rose before him. Alix’s letter -was dated from Vaudettes-sur-Mer. - -Jerry was watching him. “Now isn’t that rather thick,” he said. - -But Giles, gazing at the letter, found no reply. - -“It must, of course, be some Frenchman,” said Jerry. “Can you imagine -who it is? Have you heard anything at all?” - -Giles shook his head. - -“Does her mother know any decent men?” Jerry inquired. - -Giles folding the letter tried to think. Were they decent men? Judged by -the world’s standards, André de Valenbois was as decent as Jerry -himself. The difference was that he would not be decent for Alix. “Yes,” -he said, then, slowly. “I suppose they are quite decent. Only Frenchmen -are different, you know.” - -He felt Jerry scanning his face. “You mean that no decent Frenchman -would think of marrying her?” - -At this Giles felt as if he clutched Alix back from a danger. She might -have betrayed herself to him; he could not bear to see her betrayed to -Jerry. “She may marry someone quite decent, you see, but not of her own -class. Some nice young artist, for instance, some _savant_. Her mother -knows all sorts of interesting people.” - -“But she doesn’t say anything about marrying,” Jerry persisted. “It -doesn’t somehow sound like getting married, does it? She’d tell his name -if it was that.” - -“Well, I don’t know. Not at once; not to you, so soon. It may be only -coming on between them. Nothing definite may yet have been said.” - -“I didn’t know French girls were allowed to have things come on,” said -Jerry. “I thought it was arranged for them.” - -“But we may have changed Alix about all that,” said Giles. - -Jerry at this was silent. He sat on the table and swung his leg. The -letter lay beside him where Giles had put it, and after a little while -he picked it up and read it over again. “Do you think she’s telling the -truth?” he then questioned. “Isn’t it still possible that it’s all her -pride? If Mummy could have written to say I was coming and that she gave -me her blessing—mightn’t it have been different?” - -Giles for a moment contemplated the hope. Then he rejected it. “It -sounds to me like the truth,” was all that he could find. It sounded to -him too horribly like the truth. Something dry and cold breathed through -Alix’s few words, and to his apprehension it was the dryness, the -coldness of her despair. For if Alix knew that she loved her mother’s -lover, what must not her despair be? Only one gleam of ugliest hope he -suddenly saw and clung to;—in that case would she not have snatched at -any refuge; would she not in that case have married Jerry on any terms, -if only in order to escape her jeopardy? - -Giles felt himself swinging in the void. How could one tell what was at -the bottom of Alix’s letter? Was it not even possible that, with all the -revelations that had overpowered her, she had not yet thought of her -mother as involved further than with Owen? Might she not think of the -truth, to which he had helplessly assented when she had asked him for -it, as applying only to the past? Might she not still have her -ignorances? Madame Vervier would have done all in her power to preserve -them. - -He was not thinking of himself or of Jerry. He was thinking only of -Alix, and his absorption was so deep and so bitter that he was not aware -how long Jerry, sitting there beside him, had been observing him, until, -looking up, he met his eyes. - -“It’s pretty sickening, isn’t it?” said Jerry. - -Giles did not quite know to which aspect of the disaster he referred, -but he assented. “Yes, it’s pretty sickening.” - -Then he saw that Jerry referred to his disaster. “I’m not an utterly -blind and complacent young donkey,” said Jerry, swinging his foot, while -his voice trembled a little. “You mind as much as I do; and you mind -more, because you really love her more. Whatever you may have been in -the Spring, you’re in love with Alix now, and I must say that I call it -a rotten shame.” - -“My dear boy!” Giles ejaculated, faintly smiling. - -“You’d have stood by and helped us. You’d have helped us to the end; I -see that,” said Jerry. “And you’d have been satisfied in feeling her -safe, in feeling that England had got her, even if you hadn’t. And now -you’ve lost even that.” - -“It looks like it, doesn’t it?” said Giles. There was really no use in -denying anything to Jerry; but at the same time this was the final -bitterness. He had never been so sure of wanting Jerry for Alix. - -“Perhaps there’s still some hope,” he said suddenly. “I’ll have to go -over, of course, as soon as I’ve had my viva, and see whether there’s -any hope.” - -“Do you mean for me or for you?” Jerry inquired. - -“I mean for you,” said Giles. - -“You’d make her happier than I should,” said Jerry, swinging his foot -and looking a little as if he might cry. “You’re much more the ideal -English lover than I am. Carry her off from him; for yourself.—It’s -only what I deserve.” - -“If there’s anyone in England that Alix could have fallen in love with, -it’s you. And it’s the person she can be in love with who can make her -happiest. That’s our English belief, isn’t it?” said Giles. “I am in -love with Alix, Jerry. It’s perfectly true. But it’s you I want her to -marry. And I’ve never felt so sure of it as now.” - -“I’m living up to your ideal, what? Well, I’d like to do that, you know. -I like you to think me worthy of her even if I’m not. I leave it in your -hands, then,” said Jerry, getting off the table and turning his head -away while he stared before him. “I’m such a silly rotter that I want -her a great deal more, now that I know she may really be in love with -someone else.” - -“Unless”—Giles had got up, too, and was gazing intently at his young -friend—“unless Jerry, after all, you went yourself.” - -“No; I leave it to you.” Jerry shook his head, moving to the door. “I -leave it to you and Alix.” - -“I don’t know; I don’t know,” Giles pondered. “It might be better. I -kept you back before. That may have been my grievous mistake. I don’t -believe in wooings by proxy.” - -“Well, I didn’t make much headway when I wooed in person,” Jerry -remarked. “No. Clear away the other fellow if you can. And then we’ll -see. After all”—Jerry had actually got outside now, but he put his head -around the door to utter these last words—“you’ve never asked her -yourself yet. She’s never seen you as a lover.” - - - CHAPTER VI - -Giles, as he leaned out of the train, almost expected to see the white -form of madame Vervier awaiting him on the platform as she had awaited -him and Alix last year. His heart then had been like a load in his side, -and how much heavier was the clogging weight upon it now; but, from the -fact that his sensations were so much the same, all the pageant of last -year’s arrival was summoned back into his memory with its climax in -Hélène Vervier’s uplifted gaze. But she was not there. On the sunny -platform it was Alix and André de Valenbois who stood side by side -looking towards the train, and Giles knew that it was sheer terror that -he felt as he saw them there together. Something in their stillness, -their silence, made part of it. Tall and white they stood, side by side, -and in their demeanour he read, with the sharp intuition of a first -impression, the curious quality of a constraint that expressed at once -familiarity and withdrawal. They stood so still because they did not -care to stroll up and down together, and they were silent because there -was nothing that they could say. Was it already as bad as that? Giles -asked himself, feeling the hot blood of the surmise beating up into his -neck and mounting to his face as he turned to pick up his bag and gather -his coat over his arm. - -If it was as bad as that, André, at all events, could assume his old air -of unclouded radiancy. His eyes knew no shadow; his voice no hesitancy. -Delicate, sweet, sharp, able to do what he liked, with himself and -others, he was ready for any encounter, and Giles even imagined, as he -stepped down before them, a touch of sullen anger running a darker vein -along the heat in his blood, that André looked upon his English friend -as offering little complexity or difficulty. With people so simple, so -guileless, so ridiculous—for would not André see him as rather -ridiculous?—nothing more was really needed than a light hand on the -rein and the easiest of eyes on the landscape. They would go just where -one wished and see as much or as little as one intended them to see. -“Not so simple as you think, perhaps, my friend,” Giles was saying to -himself. But to know that he might see things that André would not -suspect him of seeing did not exercise the sickness in his blood. At the -same time, underneath everything, he was astonished, in a side glance as -it were, to see that he was not hating him; was still feeling him -charming. - -“Here we all are, then, again. What a triumph over destiny!” was what -André was saying—and it was on him that Giles kept his eyes. He felt -that he must pull himself well together before looking at Alix.—“I -never expect happy things to repeat themselves.” - -“No more they do,” thought Giles. But he could play up. “Is it all the -same as last year?” - -“Exactly the same; but for the absence of Jules. Even your old friend -madame Dumont survives and is eagerly awaiting your arrival.” - -“Still there, is she?” said Giles. “I’m not surprised. Unhappy things, -at all events, repeat themselves.” - -“Oh,” laughed André, “your standard is too high.—I, more easily -contented, should count the old lady a very amusing piece of -bric-à-brac. We must have a furnished world, you know.—There is room -for all sorts of oddities.” - -“No room at all, for that sort, in my world,” Giles returned. - -They were walking, Alix between them, to the car outside and he could -glance at her. Rather than the constraint he had guessed at it was now -the cold dignity of complete self-mastery her profile showed him. He -knew that she had smiled at him—and had it not been with her old -sweetness?—when he had greeted her; but he felt, as they went thus -together, he, she, and André, that chasms lay between him and Alix. Seas -lay between them; race and tongue. Her voice came back to him as she had -said, last year when he had found her again, “But I am French.” Only it -was so much more now just that old difference. Her calm could not hide -from him how much more it was that lay between them. And what did it -hide from André? How was it possible, if deep instinct or the new -knowledge of her mother’s life had not armed her against him, that she -should not love him? Jerry was a boy beside him; beside the power of -André’s beautifully possessed, beautifully balanced experience, Jerry -would always seem a boy. He remembered, snatching still at hope, that -Alix had found such completeness _agaçant_; but then she might not -really like him even now. It might be some helpless hereditary strain -that had brought her, her young heart proudly pruned of its first happy -buddings, under the spell of the love that monsieur de Maubert had -defined on the distant Summer day; the love that burns itself out and -that may have nothing to do with liking. - -She had said no word as yet, but as they emerged into the sunny _place_ -she remarked that she had to buy a _baba-au-rhum_ for tea and asked -André to drive them across to the _pâtissier’s_. - -“Alix is sad,” André observed when she had disappeared into the little -shop, where cakes blandly masked in chocolate, cakes touched with -rosettes of pistachio, cakes crusted over their glitter with crisp nuts, -were placed enticingly on crystal stands in the window. “Her cat was run -over yesterday by a motor. The very ugly cat;—you know him well, of -course. It was an instantaneous death, but her mother says that she -takes it much to heart. _Elle a un gros chagrin_,” said André. - -“Poor Blaise dead.—Oh, I’m sorry,” said Giles. But he drew a dim -comfort from the news. There might be other and more childish reasons -for Alix’s aloofness. He knew how remote and stern she could look when -controlling tears. - -Now that Alix was grown up, now that she was so obviously a beautiful -young girl, he noted that André made no comments on her appearance, -though it was hardly likely that he would remark it less. It was -courageous of madame Vervier to have them there together; though, in -spite of the fear he had seen so plainly in her, it might well be that -the special fear had never occurred to her. Sitting there in the French -sunlight, Giles felt again his old sense of astonishment that such -computations should, so inevitably, on this soil, occur to him; that he -should feel himself, with whatever moral bitterness, accepting -situations that could hardly, in England, present themselves to his -imagination. He felt himself immersed in madame Vervier’s _milieu_; he -felt himself implicated, for was one not implicated when one still felt -all its members charming? But one could not pretend to understand the -French unless one recognized in such situations the workings of a drama -to them commonplace. That special terrible _roman-à-trois_ of mother, -lover, and daughter, might not arise among the _bien pensants_ of the -nation; but the _bien pensants_ themselves would accept it as a -commonplace. They all accepted love as a devastating natural force, -overriding, where no barriers of creed were there to withstand it, the -scruples and inhibitions of taste and principle. They all saw love, -unless it were the duly stamped and docketed love of the Church, as -_Vénus toute entière à sa proie attachée_. - -And with this moral difference there went the difference in -everything;—the sunlight and the shadows, the streets, the houses, and -the people. Sunlight and shadows were blue-and-gold, strong and deep, -and the forms they defined revealed, under their spell, a classic -harmony. The people passing, intent on business, or sitting in front of -the cafés, at ease in idleness, saw idleness and work as two quite -different things, not to be confused; each yielding its own savour, its -own satisfaction. The sense of savour, of satisfaction everywhere; of -life as its own justification. The very smell, warm, golden, balmy, -wafted towards him from the _pâtissier’s_ was such as no pastry-cook’s -shop in England could ever yield; a dank surmise of suet and strong tea -would there hang about it and none of the cakes would give one the same -confidence of tasting as good as they looked. Why was it, Giles -wondered, as Alix came out with her flat-bottomed, cone-shaped, snowy -little parcel, saying as she stepped in beside him: “It is in honour of -your arrival, Giles, the _baba_. Maman remembered that you liked them -last summer.”—For no girl in England would look like Alix. - -It was not only that she spoke and moved as they did not and that her -clothes were differently adjusted. These signs were only the expression -of a deeper divergence. Her face, still almost the face of a child, had, -notwithstanding, an almost alarming maturity. It was at once more -primitive and more civilized than English faces, but the primitiveness -was nothing shapeless or unpredictable; it was preserved and used; it -was, perhaps, only a deeper layer of civilization. Druidess or Roman -virgin, who could tell which underlay the something resistant, enduring, -in the structure of her head, sweet in glance as an Alpine flower, -remote and inaccessible as the mountain?—and, glancing at her as she -sat beside him, Giles could gauge something of the change in his own -feeling towards her by the fact that he was afraid of Alix. Not only -that; France had already done more to him; for it was as if he were -afraid of himself, too. As they sped out into the radiant landscape and -he felt the breeze blow strong and sweet from the sea, he was aware of -currents of strange feeling in the tide which bore him; bitter, dark, -delicious, and tumultuous. - -“I am dreadfully sorry about Blaise,” he said—“André was telling me.” - -“Yes,” said Alix, looking down at her parcel, “it is sad.” - -“The comfort is that he had a very happy life,” said Giles, feeling -foolish, for indeed he was not thinking of poor Blaise. - -“I never feel that a comfort,” said Alix. “I think it most sad of all; -that happiness should end.” - -To this Giles found no answer. - -“And have you taken your degree, Giles?” Alix inquired, with the air of -leaving an untimely subject. “Are you now a distinguished philosopher?” - -“Well, I’ve taken my First all right,” said Giles. “I’ve done pretty -well. Next term will see me settled in Oxford. But it will need a great -many years, I am afraid, to make me distinguished.” - -“And where will you live?” Alix inquired. “Still in the same rooms, high -up, looking at those rather sad grey stones?” - -“Oh, I shall be a Fellow of my College and have rather beautiful rooms; -quite a vast sitting-room looking on a beautiful garden. I’ll be rather -a swell. You’ll be surprised when you see.” - -“Oh, I am glad of that,” said Alix, smiling and passing by his allusion -to her return. “And there, in the beautiful rooms, you’ll teach -philosophy for the rest of your life?” - -“Well, I expect I shall. And write it, you know; and play cricket, and -sing in the Bach choir. Sometimes I’ll go up to London and see pictures -and a play; in the Summers I’ll walk round the Cornish coast or climb -Welsh mountains. It’s just the life that suits me.” - -“Yes. It will suit you admirably,” said Alix. - -André, white against the blue, drove in front of them and, turning his -head, smiling, he now observed: “Alix has been reading philosophy of -late. She must tell you. She has been reading Bergson.” - -“I find him interesting, but I’m afraid that I do not understand him,” -said Alix, and Giles saw that she slightly flushed as André thus -addressed them. - -“He’s far too difficult to begin on,” said Giles. “He’s not for the -beginning at all; he’s for the very end.” - -“But I thought that was just his point, that he started at the very -beginning,” said Alix—“with germs, or atoms, or small things like -that.” - -“Ah, those are the things one should end with,” Giles assured her, -“because, you see, they are the furthest away from us. The beginning is -an idea, and the end is an atom. You can’t understand an atom, that is, -until you understand an idea. If you’ll come to Oxford and let me teach -you, I’ll land you safely in Bergson after three years.” - -“No; I shall read no more philosophy,” said Alix. “I shall not go as far -as ideas or atoms in either direction. I shall stay in between. All the -nicest things are in between, I believe.” - -“Bravo! Bravo!” André smiled round at her, and Giles could not interpret -his smile. Alix did not reply. She turned her head and looked out over -the plains. - -Vaudettes-sur-Mer in its palisades of trees was before them now, painted -in delicate washes of colour against the sky. “It looks like the -beginning of a fairy-tale, doesn’t it,” said Giles and brought Alix’s -eyes to Vaudettes. - -“Yes, like the place children find on the front page,” she said. “And a -happy fairy-tale, isn’t it?” - -“But it can’t have the real fairy-tale pang and flavour to you,” said -Giles. “It’s a place I find, but can never keep. You wake up to it and I -wake up out of it. It’s my dream and your reality.” - -“But you can keep it, Giles, as much as the Cornish coast, or the Welsh -mountains,” smiled Alix, “as much as we keep it, really;—for it is our -fairy-tale, too.—You have only to come back and find us in it,” said -Alix, and, while she looked before her steadily, he almost thought he -saw a hint of tears in her eyes, as though what he said of her loved -Vaudettes touched her too deeply. Did she see in it the fairy-tale place -of childhood never to be regained? - -It was, as it had been last year at Les Chardonnerets, a blue and golden -day. The gulls were floating past on a level with the cliff-top and on -the verandah were monsieur de Maubert and madame Vervier. - -They had passed through the wind-bent thickets and seen the sunny flags -with their oleanders and smelt again the fairy-tale smell Giles so -passionately remembered. But—he knew it as he came out on to the stage, -as it were, of the drama—the fairy-tale was spoiled for ever. Madame -Vervier had been its centre; the wine-like sweetness of her smile, her -Circe security, had been its atmosphere. And now the magic was broken. -He could see nothing else as she came forward to greet them, so lovely, -lovelier than ever to his eyes, so kind and simple, welcoming back with -her wide, enveloping gaze the friend who knew so much. - -“We have watched your crossing,” said monsieur de Maubert, as the -greetings passed, “in imagination. It has been a sea of glass. A sea for -the Venus of Botticelli on her shell.—You rise before us in a guise -even more welcome than that of the amiable goddess.” - -Monsieur de Maubert also was changed, though Giles had no time just then -for more than a passing glance at the recognition. He spoke with a -certain heaviness; as though he came forward to lend a hand. - -“A kind young Englishman in tweeds is, I can assure him, far more -pleasing to me than any Venus ever painted by Botticelli,” smiled madame -Vervier. - -“Giles has become a great philosopher, Maman,” said Alix. She untied her -_baba_ at the table and placed it carefully on a plate in its little -pasteboard dish. - -“He always was a great philosopher,” smiled madame Vervier. “He is the -wisest young man, as well as the kindest, that I have ever known.” - -“Ah, but it is now a professional wisdom as well,” said Alix. - -Albertine, with a saturnine smile of welcome for Giles, brought out the -tea and madame Vervier took her place at the table. - -Everything in her loveliness was altered and, as he looked at her, with -surreptitious glances, aware, so strangely, that André was looking at -him, Giles suddenly felt that it made him think of the alteration in -Toppie’s face. She, like Toppie, had drunk tears night after night; she -had seen the truth and been shattered by it; and she, like Toppie, was -built up again. A drift of lilac went behind her head in his imagination -while the link so marvellously bound them together. For had she, too, -not relinquished? It was as Alix had said it would be. She had guessed -everything. Yet, though so wan, so careful, so oppressed, she was -serene. Her strength, her security, even, was still there, but -disenchanted, turned to other uses. - -“I feel it so strange that English people should be philosophers,” she -said. Giles saw that she intended them all to talk. - -“Do you think it too reasonable a pursuit for such an irrational people -as we are?” he asked. - -“Yes. Just that. You are a people who improvise as you go. To -philosophize would have been, I should imagine, against the genius of -your race.” - -“Oh, we’re not all of us, all the time, lurching along on mere instinct. -We do, some of us,” said Giles, “stop, now and then, and reflect.” - -“But lurching becomes you,” André at this put in. “You lurch, as a rule, -in the right direction—for yourselves. Look at your Empire,” he smiled, -taking a slice of _baba_, “all made up of lurches and success.” - -“We planned to have India, you will remember,” Alix, at this, suddenly -remarked. “We planned and even plotted it. It was only as they worked as -best they could against our plots that the English won it, not intending -to have an Indian Empire at all.—I always like that. That always seems -to me just. And history is so seldom just.” - -Giles felt that the eyes of her mother and compatriots were turned upon -her, as she made this statement, with a certain astonishment. “And I -think it is rather noble of those who do reflect,” Alix went on, calmly, -knowing evidently what she thought of the question in its national and -its personal applications; “for the others, those who lurch and make the -Empire, can pay so little attention to you. It is very disinterested.” - -“We practise philosophy for our own satisfaction, what?” Giles laughed, -though aware of ambiguous cross-currents. “I’m glad you find us noble.” - -“She is quite right, _mon ami_,” André said cordially. “You are a race -of adventurers. And it is as adventurous to reflect among a people -indifferent to thought as it is to set forth with a bundle on your back -and conquer a continent by chance. You are a people, in other words, who -do not need to see your goal.” - -“But you prefer your own rationality,” said Giles. - -“I prefer it; yes. I distrust instinct; perhaps because in our history, -as mademoiselle Alix has pointed out, we have so often been foiled by -it. I don’t see it as innocent, you know. I see it as crafty. As -craftier far than our open-eyed planning. And, apart from large -questions of national destiny, it is, I think, more comfortable to live -among a people all of whom reflect, if only a little, and all of whom -know where they want to get to. Our horizon is more restricted, but -because we see the frame we can fit our picture into it. Life with you, -over there across the Channel, for all your charm and force, is -essentially confused and haphazard. It goes through everything; from -your younger sons, flung out to swim or sink as best they can, to your -towns and your Shakespeare. You may, in one sense, beat us; but in -another we have, I think, the advantage. You take in more, but you don’t -know what to make of it. To make all that can be made of the time and -space at our disposal, that is our wisdom, _mon cher_ Giles, and can -there be a better one?” - -“And what is the time and space at our disposal?” Giles felt Alix’s eyes -upon them. He did not quite know what he was defending or against whom -he was defending it; but it felt to him as if he were upholding England, -and all he wanted Alix to gain from England, against all he feared for -her in France. - -“What we can make use of, what we can see and understand,” said André -promptly. “It’s because of our sobriety that we French are capable of -living a life beautiful in itself; a self-justifying life. We know how -to use life; we know how to shape it. The very workman, sitting at -midday in his café, makes a ritual of his meal of sheep’s trotters and -sour red wine. The _frotteur_ enjoys the polish he puts on the -_parquet_, and the _bonne_ enjoys her bed-making and dusting. We don’t -do things because of something else; we do them because we find them in -themselves enjoyable.” - -“Yes. It’s true.” Giles was thinking of the French sunlight; of monsieur -de Maubert’s philosophy; of the _pâtissier’s_. The difference went down -to the very roots of things. “We are discontented and clumsy and -romantic, compared to you; it’s our very religion to be discontented, -with ourselves and what we can see. We are rebels; that’s what it comes -to. Rebels are the people who refuse the seen for the unseen.” - -“And yet who pick up the seen, in their stride, as it were, and then -don’t know what to make of it.—It is that with which we reproach you. -You spoil one world in trying to reach the other.” - -“Ah, these are themes too profound for my tea-table,” madame Vervier -interposed, while Giles, meeting André’s eye, felt, suddenly, something -challenging, sword-like, beneath its blue smile. “We will not pass from -history to metaphysics, if you please. Are you tired, Giles? Will you -rest? I have some letters to write for the post. After that we might -have a little walk if you felt so inclined.” - -Giles said there was nothing he would like better. He would unpack and -rest a little and then join her. - -She was in the salon with mademoiselle Fontaine when he came down half -an hour later, and on the verandah monsieur de Maubert sat alone, -heavily, Giles still felt, in his sunny corner; not reading; looking out -at the sea. Giles was aware of feeling sorry for him; but he did not -want to talk to monsieur de Maubert. He went out quietly at the back of -the house, and wandered through the garden, finding himself suddenly, as -he came to the gate, bareheaded, his hands in his pockets, face to face -with old madame Dumont and madame Collet. They sat in a small wicker -pony-chaise drawn by a ruminant stout pony, and Giles inferred, since -there was only room for two that mademoiselle Fontaine had walked beside -the pony’s head, taking her parents out thus for a peaceful airing. They -waited at the gate for her. - -“_Ah. C’est monsieur Gilles_,” madame Collet simpered. “You remember -monsieur Gilles, Maman.” - -Madame Dumont was not much altered. The vulture-like poise of her head -was perhaps more sunken, and her raven eye less piercing; but a light -came to it as she saw him; an old resentment and a present glee. -“_Charmée, monsieur, charmée de vous revoir_,” she assured him, and as -her eye measured the morsel thus presented to its greed Giles seemed to -see the vulture roused and rustling its feathers. “You are just -arrived?” - -Giles told her that he was. - -“You find your friends again,” said madame Dumont, and there was a -quaking note of hurry in the majesty of her tones. “You will, however, -find them changed.—Ah, changes are sad; disastrous. She has had much to -bear. It tells; it tells upon her. You find madame Vervier aged? -Altered? Sadly altered?” - -“I see no alteration at all,” said Giles grimly, his eye turning on -madame Collet, who murmured a low word of protest to her mother. But -madame Dumont was not to be curbed. She leaned from the chaise and laid -her lean hand in its black silk mitt on Giles’s arm. “_Il l’a lachée_,” -she said in a harsh whisper. “_Il va se marier._” - -“Maman; Maman,” madame Collet urgently whispered, casting a helpless -glance at Giles. “You must not thus repeat gossip about our friend. -Monsieur Gilles will not know what to think of you. Do not heed her, -Monsieur.—She is so very old.” - -“What are these manners! To whom are you speaking! Old! I am old, -indeed, if I must thus accept impertinences from my daughter!” Madame -Dumont thundered, turning a terrible glance upon her child. - -“_Mais Maman, Maman, je ne veux pas vous offenser!_” Giles heard poor -little madame Collet plead as he hastily muttered an adieu and fled from -them. - -In the door he nearly collided with mademoiselle Blanche. If madame -Vervier was altered, mademoiselle Blanche was more so. Suddenly, looking -at her chalk-white mask, glittering there in the sunlight, Giles saw the -catastrophe that had befallen them all with a cruel sharpness that the -side-issues of a situation may sometimes display more cuttingly than its -centre. In mademoiselle Blanche’s face he read that any reversionary -hopes she might have cherished were withered. It was not to her that -André had turned. He would never turn to her. He had been sorry for -monsieur de Maubert, sitting in his patch of sunlight; and he was sorry -now for mademoiselle Blanche. She had a brilliant smile for him. Her -scarlet mouth made him feel sick. He promised her, did he not, to have -tea with them one day. Giles said he was afraid he had only a very -little time to spend at Les Chardonnerets this year. - -“You have come to take mademoiselle Alix from us again?” smiled -mademoiselle Blanche, the cold flame of her eye traversing him, so that -he saw again, in a direful flash of prescience, that in old age her eye -would be like her grandmother’s. “You once more carry off our lovely -little Persephone?” - -How mademoiselle Blanche desired that he would! The fear that circled -round Giles fastened a tentacle in his heart as he saw how mademoiselle -Blanche, all hopeless as she must be, feared Alix’s presence. - -“I’m afraid not; I’m afraid I shall have to leave her where she wants to -be—with her mother,” he said, feeling a slow red mount to his face as -he saw all the things in mademoiselle Blanche that she did not want him -to see. For one strange shuffling moment the pretences between them -fell, and mademoiselle Blanche looked hard at him, looked as one human -being may look at another, with deep inquiry and surmise. Then, -murmuring a hasty farewell, she fled, a white marionette, down the path -between the nasturtiums. - - - CHAPTER VII - -On the verandah Alix sat beside monsieur de Maubert reading “Bérénice,” -aloud to him. André was stretched near them in a deck-chair, his eyes -following the smoke of his cigarette, and madame Vervier emerged from -the salon, a little sheaf of letters in her hand. She laid them down on -a table and André said that he would presently post them. “Yes. You and -I would rather go by the cliff, Giles,” said madame Vervier. - -She wore a white dress, not the tennis dress; this was fashioned -differently, with floating panels and long loose sleeves. She was -bareheaded, a sunshade in her hand. - -“Alix reads to him every afternoon,” she said as they went towards the -cliff. She spoke of monsieur de Maubert, but her heart, Giles knew, must -be shaken by the interview with mademoiselle Blanche.—Mademoiselle -Blanche could only have come to measure her pangs, surreptitiously, -against madame Vervier’s. “His eyes trouble him of late, _le pauvre -cher_. He enjoys hearing Alix. He is very fond of her.” - -They walked along the little path beaten in the grass at the edge of the -cliff. The sea was the Botticelli sea and against the sky went a flock -of young goldfinches. - -“Our birds,” said madame Vervier, pointing to them, and he still heard -the breathlessness in her voice. What had she succeeded in concealing -from mademoiselle Blanche, and what had mademoiselle Blanche succeeded -in concealing from her? “See the pattern made by the triangles of gold -on their wings,” she said. - -“We call such a flock, a charm of goldfinches,” said Giles. “Isn’t it a -pretty name?” - -“A charm. A charm of goldfinches. And what a happy name. They look -that.” Madame Vervier’s eyes followed the flight of the bright birds. “I -wish one did not have to think of snares and cages when one sees them. -Our people are so cruel for birds. I wish such happy things might escape -the snare.” - -“A great many do. We shouldn’t be seeing that charm now unless a great -many escaped,” Giles tried to smile at her. - -“But it is the way of life, is it not, to snare and spoil happiness,” -said madame Vervier. - -They left the woods of Les Chardonnerets behind them. Before them was -the great curve of the cliff and the empty sky. - -“So, you see me punished,” said madame Vervier. - -Giles walked beside her and found no word to say. - -“Even you, stern moralist as you are,” madame Vervier pursued, “could -hardly have foreseen such a punishment.—To know that I have ruined my -child’s best chance of happiness; all that I could have hoped for -her.—To know that she is suffering because of me.” - -“No, I didn’t think it would come like that,” Giles murmured. - -“Ah, but it has come in the other way, too,” she said, looking round at -him in the pale shadow of her sunshade;—“though I have forestalled that -calamity, and a calamity forestalled is always endurable. André and I -are parted.” Madame Vervier continued to look at him steadily. “I have -told him that this Summer is the end. He still believes—or tries to -believe—that he loves me; but he consents. I knew that he would -consent.” - -Giles walked beside her filled with a confusion of pain and pity. Never -before had madame Vervier openly admitted her relation to André; -admitted it to Owen’s brother. “He doesn’t look like partings,” was all -he found, most helplessly, to say. - -“Partings, at his age, are the preludes to beginnings; and André has the -gift of looks. He is, perhaps, not quite at ease; but he has wisdom—our -French wisdom, Giles. His mother, already, is arranging a marriage for -him. As soon as our rupture is definitely known, he will be able to -settle himself in life;—_se ranger_,” said madame Vervier. “And he will -be glad to be settled; he will be glad to be married to a charming young -girl whom he has known since boyhood;—a young girl,” madame Vervier -continued in her steady voice, “whom your madame Marigold met when she -came to France last Spring.” - -“You know all about that, then?” Giles muttered. - -“How should I not know?” madame Vervier returned. - -He saw her maimed for life. Yes; it had, with André, gone as deep as -that. She had unflinchingly performed the surgical operation, severed -the limb and bound the arteries. He saw her bandaged, spotted with -blood, drained of joy; but tranquil; moving forward. - -“It was time,” she said as if to herself, looking before her. “When Alix -returned to me, when I saw what I had done to her, I knew that it was -time.” - -He could not think of one thing to say to her; not one word of comfort -or approbation. He would have liked to say that she would be happier; -but he did not believe that she would be. He would have liked to say -that she had behaved worthily; but the note of moral appraisal was -repellent to his imagination. And under everything went that bitter -memory of who André was, and whose successor. - -“But there were further reasons for André’s acquiescence,” said madame -Vervier suddenly. - -They had gone for a long way in silence. A light breeze met them, now -that they had rounded a headland, and the thin panels of madame -Vervier’s dress were blown backward as she went. Goddess-like as he had -always felt her, there was something disembodied, unearthly in her -aspect now. It was as if, gliding through sad Elysian fields, beautiful, -changeless, with gazing eyes, she contemplated the sorrows of the past. -Yet her voice, as she spoke again, was not the voice of an Elysian -spirit. He recognized as he heard it that a bitter humanity still beat -at the heart of her confidences and that her tranquillity was not the -shining of an inner peace, but a shield proudly worn. What she had to -tell him was the thing most difficult to tell; the thing that throbbed -and echoed in her, as the scar of the severed limb burns and remembers; -and all her voice was altered as she spoke of it. - -“There were further reasons,” she repeated, turning her face away from -him to the sea. “He knows that it is best to go, since to remain would -be to love Alix.” - -And through all his fear, Giles saw it now; he had clung to the hope -that it was an ugly dream. He measured, in a sense of physical sickness, -the difference between an ugly dream and reality as in madame Vervier’s -words his dread was made close and palpable. - -“But isn’t that impossible?” It was his English voice that asked the -question. His French understanding knew that it was possible. - -“Why so?” madame Vervier’s French voice returned. All the acquiescence -of her race spoke in it. “Alix is exquisite.” - -Alix’s face swam before Giles. “But she is your daughter.” - -“That would offend his taste. That does offend it. That is one of the -reasons, as I have said, for his consent to our parting. It is not a -reason, if he stayed, that could repress his heart.” - -“Couldn’t Alix be trusted to do that?” Giles asked after a moment. He -must ask it. He must approach, in order to know whether madame Vervier -saw it, too, the deepest fear of all. And with what a complex -thankfulness he heard in her reply that Alix’s secret was safe with him. -It did not exist for madame Vervier’s imagination even. A deep, strange -bitterness spoke in her voice as she said: “Her dislike of him is an -added attraction.” - -“Her dislike of him? Does she dislike him?” - -“Surely you have seen it. As if by instinct. Always. From the first. It -is an added attraction,” madame Vervier repeated; and with a little -laugh, more bitter than her voice, she said: “It is the first time in -his life that André has found himself disliked by a woman.” - -How strange, how tortuous, how self-contradictory was the human heart, -Giles thought, walking beside his unhappy friend. With all her -passionate maternal love he felt, thrilling in her tone, a resentment -against her child that she should be indifferent to the charm that had -so subjugated herself. Giles felt it cruel to ask the further question -that came to him, yet he wondered if she had not, often, asked it of -herself. “He consents to go, then, because he is hopeless?” - -She had, indeed, often asked it. He heard that in her voice as she -answered: “Oh—do not let us deprive him of all merit!” - -They had reached by now a further promontory of the cliff and looked -over a long stretch of the coast, pale blue sea, pale cliffs, a delicate -distant finger of the land running out, against the horizon, with a tiny -lighthouse upon it. A bench was set amidst the grass before this view -and madame Vervier sank down upon it as if exhausted. Giles sat on the -grass at her feet and for a little while they surveyed the azure scene -in silence. - -“And now,” said madame Vervier, and he heard that she gathered her -thoughts from dark broodings, “let us speak no more of me, but of -Alix.—Of Alix and Jerry. For you like this Jerry. It is because of him -that you have come.” - -“Yes. It’s because of him. I like him very much.” Giles looked down at -the grass. “I saw him before I left. All that he asks is to marry her at -once.” - -“Ah, he loves her, I know. He is an honourable young Englishman and he -loves her. That is what I have gone upon from the beginning. It is not -Jerry who is the difficulty. It is Alix.” - -“We must give her time, you see,” Giles murmured. “Her pride had such a -blow.” - -“Give her time! I would give her anything!” madame Vervier exclaimed. -“But I can do nothing with Alix.”—_Rien! rien! rien!_ she said in -French with a crescendo of grief and impatience almost comic to his ear -for all its pathos. “You have altered my Alix for me, you English, -Giles. You have given her a different heart. It is strange, strange to -me—and bitter—to feel how changed she is. She loves me. More than -ever. She has guessed everything, and she loves me more than ever; but -with a love almost maternal; a love terribly mature. I could not have -believed it possible in so short a time that a child should grow to -womanhood. She is docile, still; obedient; but she does not deceive -me;—it is only in the little things—the things that do not count. If, -in the great things, she would obey, nothing need be lost. There is now -only a _rangée_ mother to explain, to efface, to avoid.—How easy I -would make it for my Alix to avoid me if her happiness demanded -it!—But, no; she will not hear me. She is a stone to my supplications. -She denies that she has ever loved him. She takes her life into her own -hands and says that she will never marry, that she will stay with me -always and be happy so. I dash myself against a rock in Alix. More than -that;—she watches me; she suspects me—as if I were the daughter—_bon -Dieu_!—and she the mother!—I wrote to Jerry. I told him to come;—it -was but the other day.—I told him that it was best that they should -meet, and that I would help him. And Alix intercepted the letter. -Yes;—you may well stare. She confronted me with it and tore it in two -before my eyes. She told me she knew too well what I had said to Jerry -and that she had herself written and that all was over between them. -Cold! Stern!—I could hardly believe it was my little Alix.—She spoke -as if I had done her a great wrong.—As if I were the child and she the -mother,” madame Vervier repeated, a note of bewilderment mingling with -the grief of her tone; and, indeed, as she made him these ingenuous -confidences, Giles saw her as the child, the tricking child; all the -French rôles reversed and Alix sustained in hers by what England had -given her. No wonder madame Vervier was bewildered. - -“But that was very wrong of you,” he said, as he might have said to the -child. “You had no right to do that.” - -“No right! I, her mother, am to sit by with folded hands and watch her -ruin herself! Those are your English ideas. Those are the ideas that -Alix has made hers. She, too, said I had no right. As if a mother’s -right over her child’s life were not supreme!” - -“We don’t think it is, you see. Not when the child has reached Alix’s -age. You don’t want her to marry a man she does not love.” - -“Love! Why should she not love him, since she loves nobody else!” cried -madame Vervier, a deep exasperation thrilling in her voice. “And even if -she did not love him, she cares quite enough. He is an admirable -_parti_, this Jerry; I could not have chosen better had I been free to -choose; he is an admirable _parti_ and can give her all that I cannot -give; security, position, wealth. Such a marriage would atone for -everything that my darling has lacked. And love would come; why should -it not? It is, as you say, her pride only that stands in the way. Ah, if -she would only trust me!” madame Vervier’s voice for the first time -trembled, and looking up at her he saw tears in her eyes—“If she would -only trust me! I could arrange it all.” - -He could not put before her the old, romantic protests. They had ceased -to have validity for himself. All that madame Vervier said was true; -truer far than she could know. - -Better, far better, that Alix should marry Jerry, not loving him, than -be exposed to the perils of her life in France. She had loved him once; -why not again? She was a child. She could not know her own heart. Her -pride had had a dreadful blow; and she had come too near the fire; that -was all. She must trust them; it was true. She must trust him and her -mother. To this strange pass had France brought Giles. - -“I’ve come over to try to help you, you know,” he said. “I want it as -much, I believe, as you want it. About her pride—Lady Mary, I’m sure, -expects them to marry now.—She shall hear that.” - -“Ah, I felt that you had come to give me hope, Giles,” madame Vervier -breathed, and her hand, for a moment, rested on his shoulder. “You are -wonderful. You are _impayable_.—No one would believe in you.—If anyone -can help, it is you. Alix will listen to you when she will listen to no -one else.” - -“I believe she will. I’ll do my best,” Giles muttered. - -Yet, as he looked down at the grass, sitting there filially at madame -Vervier’s feet, he knew that his heart was torn in two and that he -longed to put his head down on her knees and tell her that no one in the -world would ever love Alix as he himself did. - - - CHAPTER VIII - -When Giles came down to breakfast next morning, Alix was already there, -setting a bowl of nasturtiums on the blue-and-white cloth. He had not -had a word with her last night when a sudden fall of rain had kept them -all in the drawing-room, and he seized his opportunity. - -“Will you have a long walk with me this morning, Alix?” he said. “A -really long one, you know. I want to go to Allongeville and see the -church again; and then, oh, a long way further. Along the cliffs for -ever so far.” - -She looked at her flowers, drawing a leaf forward here and there around -the edge of the bowl, and he saw that she was troubled. But she said: -“We will go to the church, at all events. Yes. I should like a walk very -much.” - -André entered as she spoke the words and she went on quietly, giving -Giles a suffocating sense of the imminence of peril from her very -readiness, her very calm: “Do you not think nasturtiums very charming -flowers, Giles? No one ever speaks of them;—yet they are charming. The -leaves; the colour. I like them, and yet I do not love them. Why is it? -There are no yellow flowers of Summer that one can love. The yellow of -Spring is so different.” - -“One doesn’t love any of the things of Summer as one does the things of -Spring,” André remarked, strolling to the window to look out, and, -clearly this morning, Giles divined what he had only surmised yesterday, -that his temper was not attuned to brightness; that there might even -lurk beneath its graceful surface a vindictive watchfulness. And when he -had spoken he turned, leaning against the window, and looked at Alix, -poised in her whiteness above the bowl of glowing flowers, looked at her -as Giles had never before seen him look; as if with resentment that she -should be so beautiful; as if with a challenge to her to deny his right -to find her so. - -“Oh, but that is not so,” said Alix. “One loves roses—especially white -roses;—and carnations; and jasmine; nothing in Spring is more lovely -than jasmine.” - -“I would give them all for a handful of primroses,” said André, his eyes -fixed on her. - -“Would you?” said Alix. - -It was nothing; it was everything. It revealed nothing, yet it might -conceal anything. - -“Yes: I would, mademoiselle Alix,” said André, laughing a little as he -stood, leaning, his arms folded, against the window. “Indeed, I would.” - -Giles, watching the confrontation, sick with dread and fury, knew -himself as much baffled as André. - -Alix showed nothing to him, too; or she showed everything. Just as one -chose to take it. “Here is our coffee,” she said. “And here is Maman.” - -Lovely in her white, the white rose, the jasmine, madame Vervier bent -her forehead to Alix’s kiss and something in the daughter’s eyes made -Giles think of a sword in the hand of an avenging, or protecting, angel. - -André bowed over his hostess’s hand. - -“Giles and I are to have a long walk, Maman,” said Alix, going to her -place. - -“You will be caught in the rain,” said André. “Have you noticed the sky? -It is threatening.” - -“But see the sunlight,” said madame Vervier, pouring out the coffee. “It -will be a beautiful morning of great clouds and sunlight. There is -nothing I love better.” - -“Then you will perhaps have a long drive with me, _chère_ madame,” said -André. - -“If Robert may come, too. I do not like to leave him behind.” - -How easy she made it for André to pretend that the relinquishment of the -_tête-à-tête_ was a favour he granted her with difficulty! - -“But certainly.—Since you ask it! Certainly he must come.—Does he -still suffer this morning with his head, do you know?” - -“I fear so. Albertine has taken him his breakfast to his room. That is a -bad sign. A drive will do him good.” - -“He will not like being rained on, you know,” André smiled. - -He was so glad that he was not to be alone with madame Vervier that he -dared thus embroider his feint of disappointment. - -“We can shelter him,” said madame Vervier. - -“While Giles converts mademoiselle Alix to the methods of the British -Empire,” said André, sitting with his back to the window where the -sunlight fell about him and buttering his roll with a curious light -crispness of touch, as if he were painting a picture. There was -something in the play of the long, fine hands with the bread that Giles -was never to forget; something cruel, controlled. He read in the young -Frenchman’s face the signs of an exasperation mastered with difficulty. - -“But the method of the British Empire is unconscious,” said madame -Vervier. “It seeks no converts.” - -“I am a little jealous of Giles, you know, mademoiselle Alix,” smiled -André, just raising his eyes to hers. “As a Frenchman, I am jealous of -his unconscious proselytizing. Once or twice yesterday I was afraid for -France. Do not forget, when you listen to him, that our French roots are -the most tenacious in the world. Perhaps that is why we do not found -empires. Sever us from our soil and we bleed to death—or else, a worse -destiny, wither. Do not forget that the unconscious is crafty.” - -Alix, opposite her mother, sat silent. Whether, in her mother’s -presence, she had lost her readiness Giles could not divine. But she -made no reply. - -“Alix has learned in England to be dispassionate,” said madame Vervier, -her lovely russet head a little bent downward. “She has learned to -combine love for another country with loyalty to her own. That is -something England has given her.” - -“Ah—but that’s impossible;—impossible, for our French hearts, you -know!” laughed André. “We are not dispassionate. To be dispassionate is -to be tepid, sleepy, indifferent;—to be withering, in fact. No, no, no, -if mademoiselle Alix transferred her love, it would be to transfer her -loyalty also. It is for that that I beg her to stand firm;—to remember -that England can never give her what France can give.” - -“_Encore du café, Maman, s’il vous plaît_,” said Alix. She passed her -cup to her mother. She did not look at André at all. Her voice, for all -its disconcerting matter-of-fact, conveyed no provocation. But, glancing -over at André, Giles saw that he suddenly blushed hotly, and then, as -she took Alix’s cup and poured out the milk and coffee, that a deep -colour mounted also to madame Vervier’s brow. - -Yes. It would probably rain, thought Giles. He waited for Alix on the -cliff. It was a sunny, yet tumultuous and menacing day. Great clouds -piled themselves along the horizon; the sails of the fishing boats were -bent sideways as they went, on a ruffled sea, before the wind. “Yes. -Rain is coming,” he muttered to himself, though he was not thinking of -the weather. They had all parted in silence at the breakfast-table. Even -madame Vervier had found no words. - -Suddenly André came down the steps of Les Chardonnerets. He had his -cigarette and an odd bright smile was on his lips; yet as he approached -he reminded Giles of the sails on the sea. André might still try to keep -up appearances; but the wind was blowing him. - -But he was not going to keep up appearances. “So,” he said, “to-day is a -day of destiny. You are not at all unconscious, are you, Giles? You have -come to plead the cause of your laggard young friend the Englishman?” - -Well, was the thought that went through Giles, let him have it, then. -“Why do you call him laggard?” he inquired, and he knew that the anger -that boiled up in his breast was so violent that he could have struck -André as he stood there. “Would you be eager to take into your family a -young girl placed as Alix is placed?” - -André became very pale, but his eyes lighted. His sail scooped the sea. - -“Will you plead my cause with her if I say that I would?” he asked. - -Giles stood there, still; rooted to the ground. André had not meant to -say that. Something in his own look had made him say it. It was the blow -returned. - -“You don’t think of marrying Alix?” said Giles in a low voice. - -“I do,” André replied. “I think of it; now. It is my way out. Why should -I retire when there is that way? Little as you could imagine it, I care -for her enough.” - -“Care for her enough?” - -“Yes, if you like to put it so. You see where I stand. Don’t keep up -pretences,” said André. “It’s come on slowly;—but it has me now and -there is no escape.—_Elle est dans mon sang._—My family would have to -submit;—and her mother’s consent I could gain;—to marriage.—Why do -you look at me with that face? She does not love your Jerry. And in -marrying me she would marry a man whose devotion to her mother would -never waver. Don’t imagine,” said André, eyeing his friend, “that my -devotion to Alix’s mother has wavered. It is altered; yes; that is -inevitable; we have no power over these changes. But she will always -remain for me the most generous, most admirable of women.” - -“You don’t see the hideousness of what you propose?” Giles felt his -foundations tottering beneath him. André’s aspect, bright and baleful, -seemed to tower above him like one of the darkly radiant clouds in the -sky. And it was a thunderbolt he had launched. - -“I deplore a marked awkwardness,” he said. “Especially since Alix, I -fear, has become aware of it. Your English plan of destroying the -innocence of young girls has grave disadvantages. You will own that. -But, in any case, hideousness is not a word I could connect with any -project of mine.” - -“She’ll never take you! Never!” Giles cried. He felt himself trembling -with the fury of his repudiation. “I can tell you that now. She would -feel it as I do. She would see it as hideous.” - -“You don’t know what she would see; nor do I,” said André. “She thinks -she hates me. You needn’t tell me that. But I am not ignorant in women’s -hearts. Hate may be the best of beginnings. The struggle may be a little -longer;—I like struggles, let me tell you; the longer they last the -sweeter is the surrender at the end.—And I have every reason to believe -that to begin with hate is often to end with a more complete surrender.” - -As André gave him this information Giles saw Alix emerge upon the -verandah of Les Chardonnerets. - -She could not hear their voices, but their confrontation she must -remark. - -Seeing Giles’s eyes fixed, André turned his head and looked for a -moment, also. Then he glanced back at Giles. “Plead your Jerry’s cause,” -he said. “_Je vous cède le pas._” He turned on his heel. “If you fail, I -shall plead mine.” - -Giles was aware, as Alix approached him, that he must seem to stare -stupidly. “I could gain her mother’s consent.” Of all the brazen words -that André had uttered, it was these that rang most brazenly in his ear. -Was it true? Was it possible? If Alix already loved him? Could he be -sure of his Alix were the hideous complicity of events thus to disclose -itself? He could have fallen at her feet, in tears, clasping her and -supplicating her not to be abased. - -But, as she approached him, silent, he muttered a trivial word and they -turned to walk along the cliff-path, while the clouds piled themselves -higher in the blue sky and the wind blew yet more strongly from the sea. - -Alix did not say a word. She held her soft hat at her side and the wind -blew back her hair. Over her white dress a long white woollen cloak was -knotted at her throat, and it, too, blew back from her as she walked. -She looked before her with the high, majestic look he had already noted -on her face in moments of great emotion. - -“Alix,” said Giles in a low voice. - -They had gone for a long way in silence. The sea now was green beneath -them. The sky was a wild grey and all the grass silver as the wind blew -it towards their feet. He did not know what he was going to say. He did -not look at her. But he saw that she turned her face towards him. A clue -then came. “Alix, do you remember, long ago, you promised me that you -would never tell me a lie?” he said. - -Not unclosing her lips she nodded. He had glanced at her and met her -eyes, but he could not read her look. - -“Well”—he heard that his voice trembled and he was suddenly afraid that -he should not get far without crying—“Jerry, before I left Oxford, -showed me a letter he had from you. It troubled him; badly; but he -couldn’t know how it troubled me. You said you could never marry him -because you now loved someone else. Was that true, Alix?” - -She turned away her head and looked before her; and again she did not -speak. - -“Please tell me. Was it true? Do you love someone else, Alix?” Giles -pleaded. - -She was terribly pale. Did she expect him not to have heard? Not to ask, -since he knew? “Please, Alix,” he repeated; and then, once more, she -bowed her head. - -“Well”—Giles did not know how he forced his voice along—“One more -question. Will you tell me this—Is it André de Valenbois?” - -“Oh, Giles!” said Alix. - -She stopped short there in the wind, turned to him. The wind blew her -hair across her face and mechanically she put up her hand and pushed it -back while she gazed at him. “Oh, Giles!” she repeated, putting back the -short tresses that whipped across her eyes and lips. “Can you ask me -that?” - -Her face was like a beacon set against the storm, high in the sky. In -its light he read all the monstrousness of what he had asked, and her -hand, still holding back her hair, seemed to clear it for him so that he -could receive the full illumination. - -As he read her look and saw the tears that suddenly welled up into her -eyes, Giles, with an overwhelming lift of the heart, felt himself -sobbing. “Forgive me! Forgive me, darling.—It was all that I could -think.” - -“Oh, poor Giles,” she said brokenly. - -They were walking on, quickly now. Somewhere, near by, Giles was -conscious of a great brightness approaching him. - -“I was horribly afraid. I could think of nobody else. And he loves -you;—you see that.” - -“I see it.—Yes.—You have suffered.” - -“And though it seemed to me that you hated him;—it might not have -prevented.” - -“Do not let us speak of it.—And she has suffered. You would think, -would you not, that I would hate him more for what he has made her -suffer.” Alix spoke with difficulty, in short breaths; and though the -wind blew her hair backward, now that they again were breasting it, she -still kept her hand up against her face, looking before her as she tried -to tell him her difficult thoughts.—“Yet it is not so. It is not so,” -she repeated. “I feel as if I understood it all.—It is so strange, -Giles, all that I have had to understand in these last months. I seem to -understand people like him and Maman.—They are helpless, Giles. They -are like that.” - -“Oh, my darling!” said Giles. - -They went on side by side. The rain had begun to fall in great drops. On -their tip of promontory they seemed poised between sky and sea, the -marshalled chaos—above, below. And the brightness was spreading in -Giles’s heart. - -“There is Allongeville,” said Alix. The town lay beneath them, half -obliterated with the rain. - -“Let us run,” said Giles. “We can go into a shop.” - -“Or into the church,” said Alix. - -He put out his hand for hers and they started to run. - -He could have sung with exultation. Not only André’s sinister shadow was -gone; but that tumult in himself. He was a boy again, and Alix, his -child, his darling, was beside him. They ran, with deep breaths, smiling -round at each other. The long wooded _allées_ of the town stretched -nearly to the cliff-top, and once beneath a steep, green tunnel there -was no need to go so fast, for they hardly felt the rain, so dense was -the roof of green; only heard it pattering heavily on the leaves above -their heads. But, still running, they reached the emptied _place_, its -cobblestones glistening with the wet, and as they passed Giles saw an -astonished face at the toy-shop door, where stout madame Bonnefoix stood -looking out between bunches of spades and buckets, string bags full of -brightly coloured balls and festoons of dolls in stiff muslin chemises. -The peaceful sculptured porch of the church was before them, and it -seemed to Giles that it had been waiting for them—for centuries. - -When they entered, they found the church, with its whitewashed walls and -innocently bedizened saints, light and smiling after the darkened day -outside. A smell of incense, flowers, and cobwebs was in the air. - -Alix paused to cross herself with holy water from the _bénitier_ carved -into the stone of a pillar and bent her knee before the High Altar as -they crossed the nave, while Giles held his Protestant head bashfully -high. - -They sat down on a bench far back in an aisle and smiled, tremulously, -at each other. They were so much more alone than on the cliff with the -rain and sea. No one was in the church; no one was in the _place_ -outside. It was very still, and the sound of the rain falling straightly -and steadily outside made the stillness more manifest. The wind had -already dropped. It was a summer rain, now, full of sweetness. - -“May we talk in church?” Giles whispered. He looked away from Alix at -the remembered statue of the Virgin, all white and blue, with pots of -pink hydrangeas at her feet. - -“I think we may,” Alix said. “We disturb no one.” - -“Your saints won’t mind, will they?” Giles could not keep the tremor -from his voice. “Such a good Catholic as you are, Alix!” - -“I think my saints are pleased,” Alix’s voice, too, trembled; though she -was not as shy as he was. - -“You know, Toppie has gone into her convent,” Giles said, gazing at the -Virgin, whose uplifted, blessing hands brought the image of Toppie so -vividly before him. It was as if Toppie herself stood there, smiling -down upon them. - -“Your mother wrote of it,” said Alix. - -“We met again in Oxford, only a little while ago,” said Giles. “She saw -something that everybody has been seeing; even Jerry saw it.—You know, -Alix, I love Toppie as much as ever; yet I’m so changed. It’s all so -different. Can you understand that?” - -“I never dreamed you could be different about Toppie,” Alix murmured -after a moment. - -“Was that why you thought I’d never guess, even if I saw your letter to -Jerry?” - -“I did not think you would ever guess.” - -“I didn’t. I never dreamed there was a chance for me; never dreamed -it.—That’s what I told them all;—that there wasn’t a chance.” - -Alix, too, had been gazing before her, sitting there beside him in her -wet white cloak; but as he said this she leaned forward and put her -hands up to her face. - -“Oh, darling, are you crying?” Giles’s arms were round her as he asked -it. “Have I been so stupid?—Is it really me you love?” - -“Ever since that day I came to you from Toppie.” - -She was crying; but it was in his arms and his cheek was against her -dear wet head. - -“Happy;—Happy;—Happy”—were the only words in Giles’s mind and they -went on and on like a song while he heard the rain falling sweetly and -the brightness was all about them. - -He listened to the rain for a long time, but when he spoke it was to -answer her last words.—“It’s been since then with me, too.” - -Alix’s head lay against his shoulder and he held both her hands in his -against his breast; and he was seeing the little French girl, the -strange, ominous little French girl, sitting in the Victoria -waiting-room with her straight black brows and her eyes calm over their -fear. He was seeing the lovely dancing head bound with crystal, aware of -him, looking for him even in her joy; he was seeing the Alix who had -come from Toppie. “We’ve always been so near, from the first, haven’t -we?” he said. - -“So near, Giles. That was what troubled me, though I did not understand, -when Jerry asked me to marry him.—You were so much nearer than Jerry.” - -“And who did you think I should believe it to be, darling, when I saw -the letter to Jerry?—Didn’t you know I’d have to ask you some time? Did -you really believe, when we were so near as that, you could hide it from -me?” - -“I thought I could. I had to stop Jerry from coming. I could have -pretended that there was someone you didn’t know.—Someone who might not -love me, but whom I should always love.” - -“You who promised never to tell me a lie!” - -“But for those things women must always lie, Giles.” - -She raised her head now to look at him. Her face was radiant yet grave. -“There will never be anything to hide any more;—never—never.—There is -nothing you do not understand. You understand all my life. You -understand Maman.—Giles, how happy this will make her.” - -“I hope it will. But I came to plead Jerry’s cause, you know. She thinks -I’m pleading it now.” - -“How happy it will make her that you did not have to plead it.” - -“Will it? I can’t help being afraid that she’ll be disappointed. She’d -have preferred the better match for you, darling little Alix.” - -“She will not think it better. It was all she had left to hope for, that -was all. It has wounded her pride horribly to have to hope for it—after -the bitter things it has meant for her and for me.” - -“But—if you could have cared.—Everything would have come right. Lady -Mary is so fond of you and she would have stood by. Darling, it isn’t -only loving;—no one knows that better than you do;—it’s living. Do you -face it all? To live in Oxford? To be the wife of a humdrum scholar? To -have no balls and no riding? To wear”—Giles found—“the wrong sort of -clothes and think about ordering breakfast. Darling, Jerry loves you, -you know, and the bitter things would all fade away. Such a different -life is there for you to take. I can’t help seeing, though we love each -other, that it’s the life you were meant for and that the life with me -in Oxford isn’t.” - -“Oh, no, Giles, you do not see that,” said Alix. She put her hand on his -shoulder, as if with its pressure to help him to think clearly. “You are -English and believe that more than anything it is right to marry the -person you love.” - -“But you are French, Alix. It’s the other belief that’s in your blood. -The belief in what’s suitable.” - -“Ah, but it is true what Maman says to me, when she reproaches me; I -have in some things become English. I think the thing most suitable of -all is to love one’s husband. To marry Jerry, loving you;—no, Giles; -you know that that would not be possible to me. And I do not love him at -all. He is not near me at all; while you are like a part of my -life.—No, listen to me, dear Giles.—This is not making love. It is -being French; it is being reasonable. Even the clothes and the -breakfasts;—oh, I know that they are important.—But I am used to being -poor and to knowing how to be right with very little money.—In clothes -and in breakfasts, Giles, I shall know how to be right.” - -Her eyes, resting on him, were the eyes of the English Alix, of the -woman who chooses, for herself, her life and the man she will share it -with; yet their look was a French look, too. The look of one who has no -illusions; who sees an order and accepts it; an order to live for and to -make one’s own. “And there will be the ideas and the atoms to watch, and -the Bach choir to sing in,” she finished; “and walks in the -country;—and then I shall be in France, for all the holidays, with -Maman, Giles.” - -She rose as she spoke, for the storm had passed. Sunlight was flooding -in through the high pale windows of the clerestory. The Virgin’s crown -glittered against her pillar. Slowly, hand in hand, Alix and Giles -walked down the nave. - -But there was something more he had to say to her, here, in her France, -in her church, beneath her Virgin’s blessing hands. This woman Alix had -made none of the conditions that the child Alix, bewildered, charmed, -afraid, had asked of her first lover. She asked no promises. She left -everything to him. It was his order she accepted. - -And before they turned aside to go, Giles paused and took both her hands -in his. It was at the feet of the dear, silly Virgin in her white and -blue and gold that he made his promise: “Darling, you shall lose -nothing, nothing that I can help. It will never be alone that you’ll -come for those holidays. If you take England for me, you must give me -all that you can of France.—Everything that is sacred to you, is sacred -to me, too.” - -When they opened the door the world was dazzling with sunlight and a -great white cloud towered up like an august and welcoming angel in the -sky, while across the _place_ the little Curé came hurrying, stout and -active with his rosy, peasant face and thick grey hair. He looked at -them kindly, if very shyly, murmuring a word of greeting to Alix as they -all met in the porch, and Giles, in deference to convention, dropped the -hand he held. But Alix, as she smiled at the Curé and smiled beyond him -at all the sunlit world she was entering, took Giles’s hand in hers -again, and said: “Monsieur le Curé, may I present to you my _fiancé_?” - - FINIS - - - - - TRANSCRIBER NOTES - - -Mis-spelled words and printer errors have been fixed. - -Inconsistency in hyphenation has been retained. - - - - - - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE FRENCH GIRL *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Little French Girl</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Anne Douglas Sedgwick</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: May 19, 2021 [eBook #65386]</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Al Haines, Alex White & the online Project Gutenberg team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net</div> - -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE FRENCH GIRL ***</div> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='figcenter'> -<img src='images/cover.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0000' style='width:80%;height:auto;'/> -</div> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line0' style='font-size:3em;'>The</p> -<p class='line0' style='font-size:3em;'>Little French Girl</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line0'>BY</p> -<p class='line0'><span style='font-size:x-large'>ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK</span></p> -<p class='line0'>(Mrs. Basil de Sélincourt)</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>Author of “Adrienne Toner,” “Christmas Roses, and Other Stories”</span></p> -<p class='line0'><span class='it'>“Tante,” etc.</span></p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line0'>Boston and New York</p> -<p class='line0'><span class='sc'>Houghton Mifflin Company</span></p> -<p class='line0'>The Riverside Press Cambridge</p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';small;' --> -<p class='line0' style='font-size:small;'>COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY ANNE DOUGLAS DE SÉLINCOURT</p> -<p class='line0' style='font-size:small;'>ALL RIGHTS RESERVED</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line0' style='font-size:small;'>SECOND IMPRESSION, AUGUST, 1924</p> -<p class='line0' style='font-size:small;'>THIRD IMPRESSION, SEPTEMBER, 1924</p> -<p class='line0' style='font-size:small;'>FOURTH IMPRESSION, SEPTEMBER, 1924</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line0' style='font-size:small;'>The Riverside Press</p> -<p class='line0' style='font-size:small;'>CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS</p> -<p class='line0' style='font-size:small;'>PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.</p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<p class='line0' style='text-align:center;margin-top:3em;margin-bottom:2em;font-size:2.5em;'>The Little French Girl</p> - -<div><h1 class='nobreak'>PART I</h1></div> - -<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>A clock struck eight, a loud yet distant clock. The -strokes, Alix thought, seemed to glide downwards -rather than to fall through the fog and tumult of the -station, and, counting them as they emerged, they -were so slow and heavy that they made her think of -tawny drones pushing their way forth from among -the thickets of hot thyme in the <span class='it'>jardin potager</span> at -Montarel. Sitting straightly in her corner of the -Victoria waiting-room, the little French girl fixed her -mind upon the picture thus evoked so that she should -not feel too sharply the alarming meaning of the hour, -and seemed again to watch the blunt, sagacious faces -of the drones as they paused in sulky deliberation on -the tip of a spray before launching themselves into -the sunlight. What could be more unlike Montarel -than this cold and paltry scene? What more unlike -that air, tranced with sunlight and silence, than this -dense atmosphere? Yet the heavy, gliding notes -brought back the drones so vividly that she found -herself again in the high-terraced garden under the -sun-baked old château. The magnolia-trees ate into -the crumbling walls and opened lemon-scented cups -beneath her as she leaned her arms on the hot stone -and looked across the visionary plains to the Alps on -the horizon, blue, impalpable, less substantial to the -sight than the clouds that sailed in grandiose snowy -fleets above them. Alix had always felt that it was -like taking great breaths to see the plains and like -spreading immense wings to see the mountains, and -something of invulnerable dignity, of inaccessible -remoteness in her demeanour as she sat there might -well have been derived from generations who had -lived and died in the presence of natural sublimities. -Her brows were contemplative, her lips proud. She -was evidently a foreigner, a creature nurtured in -climes golden yet austere and springing from an aromatic, -rocky soil. The pallor of her extreme fatigue -could not efface the sunny tones of her skin; her hair -was the blacker for its bronzed lights, and if her eyes -were blue, it was not the English blue of a water-side -forget-me-not, but the dense, impalpable blue of the -Alps seen across great distances.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Two women, pausing on their way out to look at -her, drew her mind back from Montarel. She knew -that she might look younger than her years. Her -bobbed hair was cut straight across her forehead and -her skirt displayed a childish length of leg. It was no -wonder that, seeing her there, alone, they should -speak of her with curiosity, perhaps with solicitude; -for there was kindness in their eyes. But she did not -like pity, and, drawing herself up more straightly, -wrapping her arms in the scarf that muffled her shoulders, -she fixed her eyes blankly above their heads -until they had passed on. They were kind women; -but very ugly. Like jugs. All the people that she had -seen since landing on this day of grey and purple -flesh-tones had made her think of the earthenware -jugs that old Marthe used to range along her upper -shelves in the little dark shop that stood on the turn -of the road leading down from the château to the -village. Their eyes were joyless yet untragic. Their -clothes expressed no enterprise. She did not think -that they could feel ecstasy, ever, or despair. Yet -they were the people of Captain Owen, and she could -not be really forgotten, for Captain Owen’s family -were to come for her. It was only some mistake; but -more than the strokes of the clock the women’s eyes -had made her feel how late it was, how young she -was, and how hungry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Maman’s <span class='it'>déjeuner</span>, the long buttered <span class='it'>petits pains</span> -with ham in them, she had eaten on the boat; and, -far away, seen across the leaden waters of the November -channel, was the bright <span class='it'>petit déjeuner</span>, in Paris -that morning, and Maman before the wood fire, her -beauty still clouded by sleep, sweet, sombre, and gay -as only she could be, her russet locks tossed back and -her white arms bare in the white woollen <span class='it'>peignoir</span>. -“They will, I know, be good to my darling,” Maman -had said, buttering her roll while Albertine brought -in the coffee, “and keep her warm and well-fed through -this hard winter.” Firmness and resource breathed -from Maman. She knew what she was doing and Alix -saw herself powerless in her hands. Yet she could read -her, too. Even though she could not always interpret -the words, she could always read Maman, and the -meaning, as it were, of the sentence would come to her -in a feeling rather than in an idea. She had felt that -morning that Maman’s heart was not at ease. It was -true that the Armistice had been signed but the other -day, that the war was hardly over, and that everything -would be more expensive than ever. It was true -that she was going to friends, though to unknown -friends; to the family of their dear Captain Owen, -killed in battle only nine months ago. He had so often -said that they must know his family, and it had been -his mother who had written so kindly to say that -Giles would meet her. But if all this were so natural, -why had she felt that touch of artifice in Maman’s -manner, that resource in her so many reasons? Perhaps -they did not really want her. And perhaps there -was some mistake and they did not expect her to-night. -If no one came, what was she to do? She had -only five shillings in her purse. The porter had placed -her little box and her dressing-case on the seat beside -her, and if no one came was she to sit on here all night, -in the waiting-room, this horrid feeling, half hunger, -half fear, gnawing at the pit of her stomach? “<span class='it'>Dieu, -que j’ai faim!</span>” she thought; and as she now leaned -back her head and closed her eyes, the sadness that -flowed into her carried her far back to Montarel again -and it was Grand-père that she saw, passing under the -pollarded lime-trees with his dragging footsteps and -looking down on the ground as he went, with no eyes -for the climbing vineyards, no eyes for the plains, the -river, the Alps; his short white beard and jutting nose -giving him still the air of a <span class='it'>commandant</span>, high on his -fortress; but so old, so ill, so poor and so despairing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The dappled shadows of the limes lay brightly blue -at his feet. His bleached hands were clasped behind -him on his stick. He wore a black silk skull-cap and a -white silk handkerchief was knotted around his neck. -It had always frightened her a little to see Grand-père, -and it frightened her now to remember him, the <span class='it'>commandant</span>, -defeated, broken; yet still with that sombre -fire smouldering in his eyes. “<span class='it'>Tout-à-fait une tête de -Port-Royal</span>,” she had heard someone say of him once; -and so a devout noble of the time of Louis Quatorze -might have looked. Only she did not see Grand-père -as appeased, withdrawn from the world and its illusions; -he brooded, rather, in bitterness upon them. -He minded everything so terribly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She remembered as if it were yesterday the dreadful -summer afternoon when the bell had clanged hoarsely -in the courtyard, and Mélanie, wiping her steaming -arms on her apron, had come clapping in her <span class='it'>savates</span> -across the paving-stones to let in the opulent gentleman -who had arrived in his motor to take away the -Clouets. That was the day that had revealed to her -what Grand-père’s poverty must be. He had sold the -Clouets at last; after selling so many things. The -great gaunt salles, the little panelled salons, the rows of -incommodious bedrooms, looking, from high up, over -the plains, all were empty; and the Clouets now were -to go.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With a child’s awed heart, half comprehending, -Alix had followed Mélanie and the stranger, up the -winding staircase in the turret—Mélanie took him by -that circuitous route so that Grand-père should catch -no glimpse of him; along the chill stone passages, to -the little room where she and Grand-père sat and read -in the evenings. The <span class='it'>lit de repos</span> stood there, draped -in its tattered brocades, dignified and irrelevant, for -no one ever thought of lying down on it; and Grand-père’s -old <span class='it'>bergère</span>, and her <span class='it'>tabouret</span> drawn up to the -table before her histories. And there, upon the sea-green -panelled walls, the silvery Clouets hung, Mouverays -among them; frigidly smiling in their ruffs.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mélanie, mute, grim, inscrutable, helped the gentleman -from Paris to take them down, one by one, and -wrap them up and carry them across the courtyard to -the waiting car: and Alix had watched it all, knowing -that a final disaster had fallen upon her house.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But poverty had not been the only reason for Grand-père’s -bitterness. Even when he sat to watch her and -Marie-Jeanne, his hands folded on his stick, quiet and -at peace in the evening air as it might have seemed, -she was aware of the bitterness brooding there, unappeased, -at the bottom of the deep, considering look -bent upon them. There had been no time to think -about it while she played with Marie-Jeanne. Marie-Jeanne -was the blacksmith’s daughter and there had -been many happy days with her at Montarel. Marie-Jeanne -had black eyes and her pig-tails were tied together -with red tape and plaited so tightly that they -surrounded her shrewd little face with a wiry circle. -They brought up a family of dolls in a corner of the -<span class='it'>jardin potager</span>; Alix was the father, for she had never -cared fosteringly for dolls, and Marie-Jeanne the -mother. They whipped their tops in the courtyard -where the tall blue lilies stood in the damp about the -well. The Renaissance wrought-iron windlass was all -rusted and broken; and the lilies had thrust their cord-like -roots through the cracked earthenware of their -great pots. Looking out of the door in the courtyard, -one might see the cheerful <span class='it'>matelassière</span> sitting in the -shade of the enormous horse-chestnut-tree on the -wayside grass. The heaped wool seemed to curdle and -foam about her like a turbulent yet cosy sea. She -combed it out on her loom and smiled and nodded at -Alix. “<span class='it'>Bonjour, la jolie petite demoiselle</span>,” she would -say. Mélanie grumbled at the <span class='it'>matelassière</span> and said -she was a thief; but she gave Alix a bowl of <span class='it'>café au -lait</span> to carry out to her when she remade their mattresses, -and Alix felt a pleasing sense of complicity in -lawlessness when the <span class='it'>matelassière</span>, bending her lips to -the steaming coffee, would close one eye at her in a -long wink. She seemed a very happy person.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The road led down to the village, stony, steep, and -golden with the vineyards on either hand. The little -houses were washed with pink and fawn and cream -and their roofs were the colour of the underside of an -old mushroom. Strings of onions hung from their -eaves, and milk cheeses in flat wicker baskets. After -the village came the river and the old stone bridge -that led across to the forest, tall and dark, marching -up the mountain and haunted by legends of ghosts and -knights and fairies. Mélanie, when she was in a good -humour, would tell of these, seated in the evening on -her own particular little terrace where she kept the -fowls and picked over the herbs that were to be dried -for <span class='it'>tisane</span>. But old Mère Gavrault was the best story-teller, -and Alix was sometimes allowed to go to the -forest with her and find <span class='it'>cêpes</span> and help her to gather -faggots for her winter store. Mère Gavrault told -stories of goblins and headless riders. They would -have been blood-curdling stories, had she not told -them with such an unmoved, smiling face. It was -difficult to think that Mère Gavrault would find anything -blood-curdling. She had lost so many children -and grandchildren and her husband had been drowned -in the river. She had lived through everything, and -only wanted faggots to keep her warm in winter. Her -face in its close, clean cap of coarse linen was hard and -brown and wrinkled. Yet she was only sixty-five years -old; the age of madame Gérardin, one of Maman’s -friends in Paris, whom Alix did not like. Clean, clean, -old Mère Gavrault, and she had lived through everything -and only wanted faggots; while madame Gérardin -wanted innumerable things—cigarettes all day, -for one of them; and if one were to wash her bright -countenance, what strange colours would stain the -water, what thick, pale sediments sink! Almost passionately -Alix felt her preference for Mère Gavrault, -who smelt of dew and smoke and who was as clean as -a stone or an apple. Madame Gérardin was as much -Paris as Mère Gavrault was Montarel. Yet Maman -was Paris, too, and there was nothing in the world -Alix loved as she did her mother. She had always -loved her, and longed for her, through all those mysterious -yearly separations that took her away from -her to set her down at distant Montarel. And Grand-père -must have known that she longed for her. Was it -not here that the deepest reason for the bitterness lay? -He had never spoken to her of her mother. Never; -never. Not once through all the years that she had -gone to him. They had not been unhappy, those days -of childhood with Marie-Jeanne at Montarel; even -without Maman they had known a childish gladness. -But it was as if, from the earliest age, she had had, as -it were, to be happy round the corner. One’s heart was -there, aching, if one looked at it; and one tiptoed away -cautiously and, at a safe distance, raced off to join -Marie-Jeanne. But at night, when she could no longer -hide from her heart, all the sadness of Grand-père’s -eyes would flow into her and she would lie, for hours, -awake, thinking of him and of Maman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was because of Maman that his footsteps had -dragged and his eyes had fixed themselves so obstinately -on the ground; perhaps it was because of her -that the Clouets had been sold;—Maman who was -his daughter-in-law and who did not bear his name. -“<span class='it'>La belle madame Vervier; divorcée, vous savez.</span>”—The -phrase came back to her, with its knife-like cut, as she -had first heard it whispered. It conjured up a vision -of harsh, cruel repudiation, of Maman driven forth -from Montarel, running out at the courtyard door, -down the steep road, like one of the hapless princesses -in the fairy-tales;—crying, flying, stumbling on the -stones. Grand-père and her father had driven her out. -So it must have been. Because of some fault; some -disastrous fault. Yet they had been cruel. Her father’s -portrait hung in the dining-room at Montarel. He was -in uniform; young, though grey-haired; with stern lips -and cold blue eyes; like Grand-père’s; like her own. She -was a Mouveray in every tint and feature; yet how unlike -them. For though, by chance currents, such other -aspects of the story as a child may apprehend came -drifting to her, the first picture of harsh repudiation -made a background to the later knowledge, and she -saw Maman as a delicate flower or fruit crushed and -broken between stony hands. Passionately she was -Maman’s child; passionately she repelled their harshness. -Yet her heart ached for Grand-père, and his -sadness flowed into her as she sat with closed eyes -thinking of him, of Marie-Jeanne, of Mère Gavrault -and Montarel; Grand-père dead and the château sold; -the solitary, sunny old château on the hill that she -would never see again.</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER II</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix opened her eyes. Someone was standing still -before her. Of all the footsteps that came and went, -these had stopped. For a moment, so deeply was she -sunk in the vision of the past, she stared bewildered at -the young man in khaki, forgetting where she was and -how she had come there. Then a jostling, irrelevant -crowd of recent memories pressed forward:—“They -will be glad to see my darling”; the grey Channel; the -faces like earthenware jugs. And, even before she had -identified him as monsieur Giles, a suffocating relief -rose in her at the sight of him, while, strangely, one -more memory seemed, on the threshold of the new -life, to offer itself with a special significance, a special -interpretation of what she was to find;—the memory -of Maman, herself, and Captain Owen standing together -in the Place de la Concorde and of Maman’s -voice saying to him, as they looked at the spot where -the guillotine had been, at Strasbourg, still in her -crêpe, and up the Champs Élysées, while splendid -clouds sailed in the blue above them:—“We are not -like you, <span class='it'>mon ami</span>. Tocsins, tumbrils, trumpets are -in our blood;—Saint Bartholomew; the Revolution; -Napoleon. Your history knows no rivers of blood and -no arcs of triumph.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was monsieur Giles, of course, and he was like -Captain Owen, only <span class='it'>en laid</span>. He was tall and young -and grave with round, solemn eyes, staring at her, and -a big mouth. And he was very good; she saw that at -once; and then she saw that he was deeply troubled. -“I’m so horribly sorry,” was what he said. But it was -more than embarrassment at the miscarriage of their -meeting and dismay at her plight, though the echo of -her own distressful state came to her from his face. -She, who from the earliest age seemed to have been -fashioned by life to read the signs of discomfort and -restraint in the faces of those about her, knew now -unerringly that this good young man, who had no -tocsins or tumbrils or trumpets in his blood, was -deeply troubled at seeing her. “I’m so horribly sorry,” -he repeated, and he seized her dressing-case, Maman’s -old discarded one with the tarnished monogram -“H. de M.,” from which the crest had fallen away. -“You’ve been here for hours,” he said. “Your -mother’s letter did not give the day. Her wire only -came this afternoon, late. We are a good way from -London and trains are bad.” He was not trying to -throw the blame on anybody. His voice accepted it -all for himself; but she knew that the mistake had -been Maman’s, Maman so forceful, so practical, yet -so careless, too. Maman had taken it for granted that -they lived quite near London; she had taken it for -granted that the wire would arrive in good time.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Have you had anything to eat?” monsieur Giles -almost shouted at her. “Where’s your box? Is this -all? I’m so horribly sorry.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, this is all. It has not been so long, really. -I have not eaten. I was afraid to go to the restaurant -lest I should miss you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her English was so good that she saw him at once -a little reassured. He had shouted like that partly -from embarrassment and partly because he thought -she might only understand if he talked loud. His face, -as he seized her box in his other hand, echoed her -smile as it had echoed her distress. It was a kind face. -It echoed people’s feelings easily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let me take the bag; you cannot carry all,” said -Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But he shoved himself sideways through the door -and then held it open while she passed out, commenting -as he did so, “But, I say, you’re not a child!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A year makes a great difference,” said Alix. “And -I was not really so young; already fifteen, when Captain -Owen first saw me, last October, in Cannes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Monsieur Giles said nothing to this, and she wondered -what Captain Owen had written of her and -Maman after that first meeting.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Now they were sitting opposite each other at a -little table that seemed to have a great many cruets -and salt-cellars upon it. It was a very bright and very -ugly room, and through the doors, opening and shutting -incessantly, came the muffled roar of incoming -trains; but after the waiting-room it was homelike. -She was safe with monsieur Giles. He was a person -who made you feel safe. Soup was put before them, -all substance and no savour, but she ate it eagerly, -and said that, yes, please, she would like fish.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And then the beef,” said Giles to the waiter, who -had a pallid face and looked, Alix thought, detached -and meditative as he was, like a <span class='it'>littérateur</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t advise the beef, Sir,” he said in a low, -impassive voice. “It’s specially tough to-day, Sir. -You’d do better with the mutton.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mutton, then, by all means!” said Giles, laughing. -“Rather nice, that, what?” he asked, smiling at Alix -across the table when the waiter was gone.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He showed beautiful white teeth when he smiled. -They were his only beauty; though she liked his -golden-green eyes, fig-coloured. His face was vehement, -almost violent in structure with a prominent -nose and so high a top to his head that it seemed to be -boiling over. Though he looked so kind, he looked also -as if he could get angry rather easily, with a steady, -reasonable anger, and the more she observed him the -less she found him like his brother. Captain Owen’s -lips, though broad, had been delicately curved, and -his nut-shaped eyes had always seemed to smile a -little lazily. Sweetness rather than strength had been -in his face and an air of taking everything lightly. -She had always felt of him that he would fight just as -if he were playing tennis; whereas when Giles fought, -she felt sure, he would clench his teeth and look fierce -and sick. And though he was younger than Captain -Owen, he was far more worn, strangely worn for one -so young; and he was not at all <span class='it'>homme du monde</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Captain Owen had always struck them as <span class='it'>homme -du monde</span>. But even Maman could not have been sure -about that, since she had so emphatically impressed -upon Alix that she was to define for her with exactitude -the social status of the Bradleys. Maman was -sure that they were not <span class='it'>noblesse</span>; but Alix was to tell -her whether they were <span class='it'>petite noblesse</span> or <span class='it'>haute bourgeoisie</span>, -or, <span class='it'>tout simplement, commerçants</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not that, I think,” said Maman thoughtfully; -“but with another race it is difficult to tell.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And since Captain Owen was so much our friend, -what interest can it have for us?” Alix had inquired, -with the dryness she could sometimes show towards -Maman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Maman had replied that it made no difference at all -as far as an individual, at large, as it were, unattached -and irresponsible in a foreign country, was concerned; -but that it did make a difference, all the difference, -when it came to the family itself and its <span class='it'>milieu</span>. “At -all events, they are rich, I am sure of that,” said -Maman; but Alix, as she ate her fish and looked across -at monsieur Giles, was not so sure. He was rather -shabby; even for an old uniform.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You know,” he said, “I’m not going to take you -to Sussex to-night. It’s too late and you’re too tired. -Don’t try to eat that nasty sauce; scrape it off and -leave it. I apologize for our sauces, Mademoiselle.—I’m -going to take you to my aunt’s. She’ll be able to -put us up and I’ll telephone to her now. Don’t run -away in disgust with us and our sauces, while I’m -gone.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was no danger of that. Even when he was -not there, Alix felt herself safe in the hands of monsieur -Giles, and the waiter when he brought the mutton -helped her very considerately, as though he recognized -her as young and tired and a foreigner, and -placed before her, almost with a paternal air, a dish -half of which was devoted to <span class='it'>pommes de terre à l’eau</span> -and half to a slab of dark green cabbage strangely -struck into squares.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve wired to Mummy, too,” said Giles, when he -came back, “and told her we’ll turn up to-morrow -morning; so that’s all right.” And now he asked her -questions. What did she read? Did she care for -pictures and music? How had she learned to speak -such admirable English?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix told him that she and Maman had often -spoken English together and that she had had English -governesses. “I always liked your books, too. That -made it easier. ‘Alice’ and the rabbit and ‘Pride and -Prejudice’ and ‘Dombey and Son.’ Have you read -those?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He said he had. “There are no books in France for -girls to read as far as I can make out,” he added; and -Alix, suspecting a hint of detraction, replied: “Our -<span class='it'>chefs d’œuvre</span> are for later in life. Perhaps great books -cannot be written for girls.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I question that!” said Giles, smiling at her. -“Great books should be written for everybody.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We can read Racine and Corneille and Lamartine,” -said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And Bossuet,” said Giles, grinning, “and ‘Les -Pensées de Pascal.’ Awfully jolly, isn’t it! Unfortunate -child;—or, rather, fortunate, since you <span class='it'>can</span> read us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix reflected, a little vexed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here’s another kind of sauce,” said Giles, as a -portion of apricot tart was placed before each of them -surrounded by a yellow glutinous substance. “I’ll -grant you your cooking if you’ll grant me the best -books for everybody.—Anyhow, I see you’re too tired -to argue. We’ll fight it out some other time.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But how did you come to appreciate our cooking -so well?” Alix asked. “It is made with flour, this -sauce, not properly cooked;—that is the trouble.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The trouble is that it’s the same sauce as the one -that went with the fish, only coloured to look different.—I -travelled in France when I was a boy, you see. -And I’m just back from nine months there. I was -in the East before that, for the first years of the -war.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“In France for nine months? Why did you not -come to see us?” Alix asked. She asked it without -stopping to think, for it was so strange that they -should not have seen Captain Owen’s brother.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I was at the front, and wanted all my leaves at -home,” said Giles, and he smiled very brightly at her. -He did not look at all embarrassed now; yet she had -a surmise. He stopped himself from showing embarrassment. -Surely he could have come? Had he not -wanted to come? And he was going on talking, while -he paid the bill, as if he felt she might be asking herself -that question: “My aunt lives in a part of London -called Chelsea. At the time ‘Pride and Prejudice’ was -written, it was all gardens there; it’s mostly flats now. -We’ve changed very much, in all sorts of ways from -the England of ‘Pride and Prejudice’; just as you have -from the France of Lamartine.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Everything was dimmed with fog as they drove -through the streets and she was suddenly very sleepy, -yet she kept on thinking, as she looked out, of those -nine months that monsieur Giles had been in France. -He must have been there, then, when Captain Owen -was killed. How strange that he had never come, and -that Captain Owen had never spoken of him. She was -too sleepy, however, to think of it very carefully and, -when they stopped at the brightly lighted door of a -large building, she stumbled in alighting so that Giles, -with a steadying “Hello, hello,” put a hand under her -elbow and guided her into a lift; and, still so sustained, -she was presented a moment later to a stout, rosy -lady with <span class='it'>pince-nez</span> and smooth grey hair who herself -opened the door of a white and green <span class='it'>appartement</span> -and said: “Poor child, she must be put to bed at -once.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>From Giles she passed to Aunt Bella, who smelt of -toilet vinegar and had a seal ring on her small glazed-looking -hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>After that Alix was only drowsily aware of a little -pink bedroom where a row of pink, blue and green -water-colours framed in gilt hung upon the walls. -Her head sank into a pillow and all the troubled -thoughts into sleep; but, just before she was quite -oblivious, a little tap came to the door; it opened -softly and a tall head, silhouetted on the lighted hall, -looked in, and Giles said, “Good-night, Alix.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was treating her as a child and it made her feel -very safe.</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER III</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>For many hours the little French girl slept on dreamlessly, -and when she woke it was as if an abyss of space -and time lay between her and yesterday morning. As -she gazed up at the dim ceiling, only the most recent -memories wove themselves softly into her returning -sense of identity: the yellow sauce that Giles had told -her to scrape off; his faded khaki necktie; Aunt Bella’s -small, glazed hands. Kindness, security, lay behind -these appearances, and an apprehension of pain -seemed at first substanceless and irrational. Then, -with a gathering effort, it shaped itself: France; -Maman; what was she doing and was she happy?—She -had not been really happy yesterday morning. -Why had monsieur Giles been so troubled when they -met? And why had he never come to see them in all -the nine months he had been in France?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was a tap at the door and an elderly maid -came in, neatly capped, bearing a brass hot-water-can, -which she stood in the basin. Then she drew the curtains -and turned up the electric light and placed by -the bedside a very amusing little tea-set on a tray. -It was Alix’s initiation into early-morning tea, and -for a moment, as she gazed at it, she feared it was to -be all her breakfast until the maid, withdrawing, said, -very distinctly, as though she might be deaf: “Breakfast -at nine, Miss; and the bathroom is opposite.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That was all right, then. Alix lifted the lid of the -little pot and sniffed at the tea and decided that the -afternoon was the only time at which she felt drawn -to it. And as for the two slices of bread and butter, -they were very thin, but she would rather save her -appetite. Meanwhile there was a real <span class='it'>brouillard de -Londres</span> pressing close against the window, so close -that one could see nothing—Alix had jumped up to -look—except the spectral top of a tree below the -window and, below the tree, a blurred street-lamp. -It was interesting, exciting, to get up like this as if it -were after dinner instead of before breakfast, for there -were lights in the hall and bathroom and one’s morning -face had such a curious look as one combed one’s -hair under an electric bulb. She forgot her waking -apprehensions as she dressed, and when she went into -the dining-room and found Giles there, the day seemed -to have started really well.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles was reading a newspaper, standing under the -light. The room was small and he looked very large -in it; so did a pink, frilled ham on the sideboard and -an engraving hanging over the mantelpiece of an old, -erect gentleman, <span class='it'>en favoris</span>, his hands on a book and -with a very high collar. When Aunt Bella came in a -moment later, they all seemed quite crowded between -the fog outside and the steam from the shining kettle -on the table, and it was rather, Alix thought, as though -they were floating in a little boat on a misty sea or -suspended—this was a more exciting comparison—high -in the air in an aeroplane.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was seated opposite the mantelpiece, Giles -under it, and, following her eyes, Aunt Bella said: -“That is our great Mr. Gladstone, Alix. You’ve -heard of Mr. Gladstone.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix had to confess that she had not.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, you’ll have heard of George Washington, -then,” said Aunt Bella. “There he is, behind you.” -And Alix turned round to look up at the austere face -in powdered hair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He was an American, was he not, and your -enemy?” she inquired.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He was the enemy of one of our foolish kings,” -said Aunt Bella, “but an Englishman, and one we are -all proud of. And that’s Cobden.” She completed her -educational round with the third large engraving that -hung near the window.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And now, perhaps,” said Giles, “you’ll like to -hear what they all did and why Aunt Bella has them -hanging here. By the time you do that you’ll have -quite a good idea of modern English history.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix for a moment was afraid that Aunt Bella might -really be going to instruct her, and she had not the -least wish to know anything about any of the respectable -gentlemen who presided over the breakfast-table.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Giles was going on, with his bantering smile. -“If you go to Aunt Bella, you’ll get a one-sided impression, -perhaps. She’s a great Liberal. We are all -Liberals in my family. What you’d call Republicans.—Aunt -Bella, you’re not asking this helpless French -child to drink tea for her breakfast!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Doesn’t she have tea?” Aunt Bella asked, and -though Alix insisted that she did not mind it at all, -there was much concerned conversation, and the -elderly maid was summoned and told to ask cook to -make some cocoa for the young lady.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You hate tea, I suppose,” said Giles, and Alix -replied that she liked it very much at five o’clock, and -Giles went on: “Whereas Aunt Bella likes it at all -hours of the day and night; and Indian tea, I’m -grieved to say; it’s the only rift within our lute, Aunt -Bella’s Indian tea;—since we do agree about Gladstone. -Now you’re a Royalist, I suppose, Alix?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But surely no rational person in France is a Royalist -any longer,” said Aunt Bella.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Grand-père did not love the Republic,” said Alix, -“but Maman admires Napoleon and the Revolution.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I sometimes think we shall get both a revolution -and a Napoleon in this country,” said Aunt Bella, -“at the rate things seem to be going.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There’ll never be a revolution in England,” said -Giles. “People who drink Indian tea could never -make a revolution, could they, Alix?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I do not think so,” Alix smiled. “Nor in a country -with such fogs.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s a good idea! Eh, Aunt Bella? People -must see each other clearly in order to hate each -other sufficiently.—What?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That is just it,” Alix nodded, laughing. “And you -are all so kind. Kinder, I am sure, than we are.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She and Giles understood each other. He treated -her like a child, yet they understood each other, -really, better than he and Aunt Bella, for she looked -a little cautious when Giles embarked on his sallies, -as if she did not quite know in what admission he -might not involve her unless she were careful. She -took things <span class='it'>au pied de la lettre</span>, Aunt Bella, as, after -all, an elderly lady would do who sat down to breakfast -every morning with such cold comfort on her -walls as Messieurs Gladstone, Cobden, and Washington. -A row of smiling Watteau engravings hung -round Maman’s little dining-room in the rue de Penthièvre. -Alix did not think that Gladstone, Cobden, -or Washington would look with an eye of approval -at <span class='it'>Le Départ pour Cythère</span> or the <span class='it'>Assemblée Galante</span>. -Though Washington might. She liked him far the -best of the three.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And does your grandfather really expect to get -the Bourbons back?” Aunt Bella inquired. “You -are a Roman, I suppose, my dear child.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A Roman?” Alix, for all her English, was perplexed. -“I have no Italian blood.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She means your church,” said Giles. “And -Catholics, in France, do really all want back a king, -don’t they?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am a Catholic,” said Alix, “and so, of course, -was Grand-père, and he certainly did not like the -Republic. We had a very unscrupulous, intriguing -mayor at Montarel and perhaps that was one reason. -But I do not think that Grand-père expected anything -any more or thought at all about kings.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A very strange people, the French,” Aunt Bella -remarked, as if the fact were so patent that one of -them, being present, could not object to its statement. -“A very strange people, indeed. And where do you -say your grandfather lives, my dear?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He is dead,” said Alix. “It was at Montarel he -lived; near the Alps.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You may have noticed the water-colours of -Avignon that I did some years ago, hanging in your -bedroom,” said Aunt Bella. “Parts of France are very -picturesque. But I prefer our scenery.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And now,” said Giles, looking at his watch, “we -must be thinking about our train. Are you packed up, -Alix?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tell your mother,” said Aunt Bella, “that I -expect her on Thursday for the two committees. -She’ll spend the night, of course.” And when Alix’s -box and bag had been brought and a taxi summoned, -Aunt Bella said to her very kindly, as they stood for -farewells in the hall: “You must come again and see -me, my dear, when you are in London. I could take -you to the National Gallery and Westminster Abbey, -and, if you care about Social Work, you might be -interested in my Infant Welfare Centre and Working -Girls’ Gymnasium.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is she an official, your aunt?” Alix inquired as -she and Giles drove off to the station.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“An unofficial official,” Giles explained. “She runs -more things than most officials. She sits on councils -and governs hospitals and makes speeches. There -can’t be a busier woman in London and she’s a splendid -old girl;—though I do enjoy pulling her leg.” -And then, since Alix was startled by this expression, -also new to her, he had again to explain.</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>The third-class carriage was not foul and wooden as -it would have been in France, and they had it to themselves; -but the cushions smelt of fog, and Alix thought -she had never seen anything so ugly as the view from -the window. It had been too dark to see the suburbs -of London the night before, on the way up from Newhaven; -but they lay all mean and low and toad-coloured -this morning, wet under the lifted fog, and for -as far as the eye could follow there was nothing to -be seen but squatting roofs and gaunt factory chimneys.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Bad, isn’t it?” said Giles. He sat opposite her, -looking out with his face so young and so worn. She -liked him so much and felt so safe with him, and yet -it frightened her a little to look at him, just—strange -association—as it had frightened her to look at Grand-père. -Only Giles was kinder, far, than Grand-père. -“But worse, do you think,” he went on, “than the -suburbs of Paris?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix did not quite like to say how much worse she -thought it; it did not seem polite. “There, at least, -one has the sky to look at,” she suggested. “It is -happier, I think.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’re not always in a fog, you know,” said Giles. -“And Aunt Bella is very keen on Smoke Abatement. -Perhaps we’ll look happier some day.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am very glad your family does not live in London,” -said Alix. She felt more shy of Giles this morning, -shut up with him in the intimacy of the chill, -smoky carriage, than she had last night in the station -dining-room. And it was as if she felt him more shy, -too. They were making talk a little.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Wouldn’t you have come, if we’d lived in London?” -he inquired.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Maman would have sent me just the same, I -think,” said Alix. “She wanted me to know England. -And your family, specially, of course. Captain Owen -always said I must know his family.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, yes. Of course,” said Giles. He got up then -and looked at the heat regulator and said it was cold, -did she mind? There seemed no heat. Then he sat -down again and fell into a silence, his arms folded, his -long legs stretched as best they could, before him, and -they both, again, looked out of the window.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>On it went, the dreadful city; but at last furtive -squares and triangles of green were stealing into it and -sparsely placed trees edged streets that adventured -forth, at random, it seemed, to end, almost with a stare -of forlorn astonishment, in fields ravaged of every -trace of beauty. But the green spread and widened -like a kindly tide, and though the brick and slate was -encrusted at intervals, like an eruption, upon the -land, there were copses and rises of meditative meadow -and the white sky was melting here and there to a -timid blue above little hamlets that seemed to have -a heart and to be breathing with a life of their own. -Beside a brook a girl was strolling with scarf and -stick, two joyous dogs racing ahead of her; a cock-pheasant -ran, startled, through a wood sprinkled -with gold and russet, and presently there was a -deeper echo of the blue overhead in the blue of quiet -hills on the horizon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This is better, isn’t it?” said Giles, bringing his -eyes to her at last. “Don’t you call this pretty?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Very pretty,” said Alix. And it was pretty, though -to her eyes it was also insignificant and confused, its -lack of design or purpose teasing her mind with its -contradiction of the instinct for order and shapeliness -that dwelt there. “Is it because of the season and -your mistiness that everything seems very near one? -The horizon is so near, and even the sky comes quite -close down.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Like nice, kind arms, I always think,” said Giles. -“No, even in the Lake Country, even in Scotland, we -don’t get your splendid distances; or very rarely.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But it is very pretty,” Alix repeated. “I like the -woods. Did you see the girl and the dogs a little while -ago? I imagine that your sisters look like that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Our dogs look like that. Ruth and Rosemary -aren’t quite so grown up. We have three dogs. Are -you fond of them?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, very fond; though I have never had a dog of -my own. Maman thinks them too much trouble for -a little <span class='it'>appartement</span> in Paris. But I had a cat at -Montarel. A yellow cat with blue eyes. Have you -ever seen one like that? He was so affectionate and -intelligent and remembered me perfectly from year -to year. He used to put his paws on my breast and -rub against my face. The thought of seeing him again -made it easier to bear leaving Maman when my half-year -at Montarel came round.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Your half-year at Montarel?” Giles asked the -question, but she saw that it was after a hesitation. -She wondered how much Captain Owen had told -them. She felt suddenly that she wanted to tell Giles -everything there was to tell.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I spent half the year with Grand-père at Montarel -and half with Maman in Paris. Did you not know?” -she said, looking him in the eyes. “My father and -mother were parted. They were divorced. But it -could not have been more Maman’s error since the -judge allowed her to have me for half the time. It is -arranged like that, you know, as fairer. And since my -father died when I was hardly more than a baby, it -was Grand-père who had me for that side of the family.—I -tell it to you as I imagine it to have been, for -Maman has never spoken to me of it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles was making it easy. He was looking at her -with no sign of discomfort, looking, indeed, as if he -knew it already. “Oh, yes,” he said. And then he -added: “And when your grandfather died? Was there -no one else on his side of the family? Don’t you go to -Montarel any more?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No one at all,” said Alix, shaking her head. “I -am the last of the Mouverays. That was why the -château was sold and why Maman has me now entirely. -But though it was sad to lose my grandfather, -I love my mother best of course.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hope you won’t miss her too much,” said Giles -after a moment and in a kind voice. “We’ll try to give -you a happy life, you know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am sure you will. But one must always miss -one’s mother and one’s country. And then I always -wonder if she is happy. Though I am only a child, -she depends on me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have the comfort of knowing that Paris is -only a few hours away,” said Giles, smiling.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, but Cannes isn’t. She is to be at Cannes this -winter.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, yes, I remember. She spends the winters at -Cannes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She enjoys her life there. She plays tennis beautifully -and has so many friends, as perhaps Captain -Owen told you. But I know that she misses me. I -have always been with her there before. I was with -her, you know, when Captain Owen met us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I should rather say I did know,” said Giles. “We -heard all about your kindness to him, you may be sure. -You may be sure we are a very grateful family.” -Giles spoke with heartiness, and though she felt something -a little forced in it there was nothing forced in -his evident kindness towards herself. They were talking -happily. As they had talked last night at dinner.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you may be sure we heard all about you,” -said Alix, smiling across at him. “All about Ruth and -Rosemary and Francis and Jack. What a large family -you are. It must be very happy being so many.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I say!” laughed Giles, “you have a good memory! -To get us in our order, too.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But how could I forget when he told us so much! -We saw all your photographs so often. Only one does -not get so clear an idea from photographs. I would not -have known you from yours. And there was Toppie. -After your mother, he talked most of all about Toppie. -I shall see her, too, shall I not?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was as if she had struck him. The violent red that -mounted to his face was echoed in Alix’s cheeks. It -was as if, with her innocent words, she had struck him, -and in the silence that followed them, while he gazed -at her, and she, helplessly, gazed back, she saw that -what had underlain the confusion of yesterday had -simply been suffering. She had laid it bare. She was -looking at it now.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He tried to master it; to conceal it; in a moment he -stammered: “Oh, he talked most about Toppie, did -he?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Was she not his betrothed?” asked Alix in a feeble -voice. She felt exhausted. He had struck her, too.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course she was,” said Giles, and his eyes now -lifted from her face and fixed themselves over her head -on Maman’s dressing-case.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And—is she not still living?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Toppie? Living?” His eyes came back to her. “I -should rather say so. You see,” he went on at once, -though Alix could not see the relevance, “she was so -horribly cut up by his death.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course,” Alix murmured. “I am so sorry. I -should not have spoken of him at all, when you have -lost him. I did not mean to be stupid; unfeeling.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, good Heavens! you’re not stupid! Not a bit -unfeeling!” cried Giles, and seeing her distress, his -eyes actually filled with tears. “It’s not Owen at all. -We often speak of him. It’s Toppie. And it’s I who -am such a dunderhead. You see, she’s all that’s left of -him. I mean, all that’s loveliest; most sacred. She -cared for him so much. She’s like something in a -shrine, to us all.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. Yes. I see. I understand,” said Alix; though, -still, she could not see. “I spoke lightly. I do not forgive -myself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But it’s nothing to do with you,” Giles almost -shouted as he had shouted at her last night. “I always -get like that when she’s talked about, with him. -You poor, dear child, it’s nothing on earth to do with -you. It’s absolutely my stupidity,” Giles assured her, -their suffusion giving his eyes a strange heaviness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It must be left at that. There was nothing for her to -say. He was suffering and he tried to conceal from her -how much; but she had seen it too plainly. All unwittingly -she had blundered, blundered horribly, in speaking -of Captain Owen and his betrothed, and a sense of -depression, dark, like the London fog, penetrating and -bitter like the London smoke, settled upon her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here’s the station! There’s Mummy!” cried Giles. -They had sat silent, and now he sprang up as if with -great gaiety. He was doing his best. He was trying to -make her forget; it was a little stupid of him if he -thought he could succeed, Alix felt; but she summoned -a responsive smile with which to greet Giles’s mother.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She recognized her at once as the train slid into the -little station. She stood there, tall and slender, wistful -and intent, with her spare grey skirt and black hat and -scarf, and hair straying about her ears, as shy, as -gentle as a girl. In her photograph, seen at Cannes, -it had seemed incredible that she should be Captain -Owen’s mother, and though her face showed as faded -and worn in the morning light, it was even more incredibly -young. She must be fifty, yet Maman, unflawed -and radiant in her thirty-seven summers, had -a greater maturity of aspect. “She is so innocent,” -thought Alix; not clearly seeing, yet deeply feeling the -meaning of the word.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was walking beside the train, smiling up at -them, her hand laid on the window of their carriage, -and Giles did not wait for it to stop before he sprang -out beside her and kissed her, doffing his cap. There -was no confusion, no trouble, in the eyes of Giles’s -mother; they had nothing to hide; this was the next -thought that came to Alix; they were only shy and -sweet and sad. She did not speak at first. She took -Alix by the hand and stood so holding her while Giles -got out the dressing-case, and then led her along beside -them, glancing down at her as they went; and -Alix saw that with all the memories her own presence -recalled, words were too difficult.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles was telling of the Victoria disaster. “I missed -that first train, Mummy. I didn’t get to Victoria till -nearly two hours after hers had come in. But she’s forgiven -us. She’s a most forgiving disposition,” said -Giles, “I’ve discovered that. She won’t resent any of -the wrongs we put upon her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Two hours! How dreadful! Oh, how dreadful!” -Mrs. Bradley was exclaiming, “What must you have -thought of us, Alix!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But it wasn’t your wrong, at all,” said Alix; “it -was Maman’s mistake. I think telegrams take very -long now from France to England.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There always <span class='it'>are</span> mistakes about meetings,” said -Mrs. Bradley. “Dreadful things always <span class='it'>do</span> seem to -happen.—Shall I drive, Giles, dear? or sit behind -with Alix so that we can talk? That will be best, -I think.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They drove over commons and along woodland -roads. The air was white and chill yet dimly transfused -with sunlight, and there was a smell of wet pine-trees -and wet withered heather. Alix’s spirits lifted a -little with the scent and swiftness, and they lifted still -further, seeming, like the sky, to show a rift of blue, -when in her gentle, slightly hoarse voice, Mrs. Bradley -said: “Is your mother well, dear? How did you leave -her?” This was the first inquiry about Maman she had -heard, the first interest she had seen displayed. Giles, -she remembered it now, had volunteered not a remark -or question.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She wrote so kindly,” said Mrs. Bradley. “She -understood, I know, how much we hoped to see you -here, how much pleasure it would give us. I wish she -could have come, too. Owen so often wrote about you -both, from Cannes. He said you made him think of -Jeanne d’Arc, and your mother of Madame Récamier.—I’m -glad you still do your hair like that,” said Mrs. -Bradley, smiling shyly, and Alix saw that she had forgotten -nothing and that all the links that Giles had -ignored were cherished by her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There were links, however, that she would not see. -That must be, Alix reflected, what she had felt as her -innocence. The pleasure that her coming might give -to the Bradleys had never been part of Maman’s motive. -She had taken it for granted, but it had not -counted. Maman had sent her because she had conceived -of the winter in England as an advantage for -her child and because—Alix saw further into these motives -than Maman intended her to do—it had not been -convenient to take her to Cannes. But there were few -of Maman’s motives, Alix felt, as she listened to the -gentle, hesitating voice, that Mrs. Bradley would divine. -Perhaps it was that that made Maman seem so -much the older. Yet Maman, too, might have blindnesses. -She would have been blind, for instance, in -saying of Mrs. Bradley—and Alix could hear her saying -it: “<span class='it'>Un peu bê-bête, n’est-ce pas, ma chérie?</span>” Mrs. -Bradley was simple, very simple; but she was not <span class='it'>bête</span>. -Alix felt that she understood Mrs. Bradley as Maman -would not understand her, and it was perhaps because -of this that Mrs. Bradley spoke presently about her -dead son, for to any one who did not understand her -she could not have spoken. She would never be <span class='it'>bête</span> -about things like that. She was longing to speak about -him, Alix saw; to ask questions, to reënforce her store -of precious memories by such fragments as the little -French girl could offer her. Alix told her of their walks -above the sea at Cannes, of the concerts he had so -loved, and of how much he had had to tell and teach -them of flowers and birds.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, yes, the birds; he loved them,” said Mrs. -Bradley, turning away her eyes that were full of tears. -She was like this November day, with its suffused sunlight, -and fresh, sad fragrance; there were no tocsins -or trumpets in her blood, either; yet all the same she -knew what suffering was as well as Maman. The -hoarseness of her voice had come, perhaps, in part -from crying; something scared, that one caught in -her glance at moments, had not been there, Alix felt -sure, before the war; before the news of her son’s -death had been brought to her. And as Alix thought -of Captain Owen’s death and of what his mother -must have felt, there rose in her memory a picture -of a Spring morning in Paris, the wild, wet day, -with shafts of sunlight slanting through the rain and -striking great spaces on the pavements to azure. She -had been standing at the window of their salon, looking -at the rain and sunlight, and at the flower-woman -on the corner opposite, her basket heaped with pink -and white tulips, and she had heard Maman, suddenly, -behind her, saying, as if she had forgotten that Alix -was there: “<span class='it'>Dieu!—Dieu!—Dieu!</span>” And, looking -round she had seen her with the letter in her lap and -had read the catastrophe in her white face and horror-filled -eyes. So many of their friends had fallen in the -war, but for none of them had Maman mourned as she -had for Captain Owen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The car turned, now, with careful swiftness, into an -entrance gate which opened against a well-clipped -hedge. A curve among the trees brought them to the -front of a large house, red brick below, gables above, -with beams and plaster. A great many gables, a -great many creepers, large windows open to the air. -A kind, capacious house, promising comfort; but how -ugly, thought Alix, as they alighted; “<span class='it'>Combien peu -intéressante.</span>” It was difficult to believe that from -its cosy portals Captain Owen and Giles had gone -forth to tragedy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Two girls, at the sound of the car, had burst out -upon the steps, and three dogs; an Irish terrier, a fox -terrier, and a West Highland terrier;—“I like him -best”—thought Alix of the last;—and they bounded -in the air while the girls shouted:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I say, Giles, you did serve us a turn last night! -Your wire never got here until this morning! We sat -up till eleven!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They wore knitted jumpers and had corn-coloured -hair and pink faces. They were delighted to see their -brother back after his misadventures; the dogs were -delighted to see him; only the dogs did not shout, -which was an advantage. Alix had never heard such a -noise.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And here is Alix,” said Mrs. Bradley, who had -stopped to take the appealing fox terrier in her arms; -the fox terrier was a lady, no longer young, and the uproar -affected her too much; Mrs. Bradley soothed and -reassured her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ruth and Rosemary, as though aware for the first -time of Alix’s presence, turned their attention to her -and cried “Hello” heartily, while they shook her by -the hand. They were like Aunt Bella in their rosiness, -robustness, their air of doing things all the time with -absorption and energy; and like Aunt Bella and the -house they were “<span class='it'>peu intéressantes</span>.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Did you have a good crossing? Are you a good -sailor?” asked Rosemary; while Ruth said: “Let me -carry up her bag.—Do you play hockey?—<span class='it'>Jouissez-vous -le hockey?</span>”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She speaks English better than you do,” said Giles, -pulling his sister’s rope of hair; “and your French is a -disgrace to your family.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They all went into a hall that had wide windows in -unexpected places and an important oak staircase -winding up from it, also in an unexpected place. Alix -was dimly aware of earnest, cheerful attempts at originality -in its design; but the originality did not go beyond -the windows and staircases, the high wainscotting -and oaken pillars. Everything else, from the -brasses of the big chimney-place to the florid crétonnes -on the window-seats, followed a bright household formula. -The brightness would have been a little oppressive -had it not lapsed to a benign shabbiness, and the -two good-tempered maids who followed with Alix’s -box belonged to it all, ornamental in their crisp -pink print dresses, yet a little dishevelled; their caps -perched far back on large protuberances of hair and -fashionable whiskers of curl coming forward on their -cheeks.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix felt all sorts of things about the hall and about -the crétonnes and about the maids as Ruth and Rosemary -and the dogs hustled her along. What it -amounted to she did not clearly know, except that -Giles did not really go with the hall, while his sisters -did, and that Mrs. Bradley did not like the caps -and the whiskers, but that she would always sacrifice -her own tastes—hardly aware that she had -them—to other people’s cheerfulness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, well, of course you play tennis,” Ruth was saying. -“Everybody plays tennis. But you must learn -hockey at once. It’s the great game at our school and -you’re nowhere unless you play it.—Down Bobby, -down! He’s made friends with you already.—The -mud will come off all right.—One can’t mind mud if -one has dogs, can one? Down, you silly duffer!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Never mind. Let him jump. I am fond of dogs,” -said Alix, patting the ardent head of the Irish terrier. -“What is the name of the little, low, white one? He is -quieter, but I think he likes me too.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“His name is Jock, and Mummy’s fox terrier is Amy. -Oh, they’ll all like you, all right; they’re as friendly as -possible—though Amy can be a bit peevish at moments; -Mummy spoils her.—Here’s your room,” said -Rosemary, ushering her in. “It’s a jolly room, isn’t it? -Mummy thought you’d like the one with the view best. -The other spare-room looks over the kitchen-garden. -It’s a jolly view, isn’t it? One doesn’t often get a view -like that. Put the box here, Edie.—Oh, the bathroom -is on the landing, that door, you see. We have our -baths in the morning and the water doesn’t run very -hot for more than two. So will you have yours at -night? Mummy does. Ruth and I like it best in the -morning, and Giles doesn’t mind if his is cold.—French -people don’t care about baths, anyway, do -they?—Lunch will be ready in twenty minutes. Can -you find your way down?” Rosemary added rapidly, -her eye on the staircase where Giles was descending, -“I want to speak to Giles.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, you don’t! It’s my place to tell him first!” -screamed Ruth.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s about the football, Giles!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, shut up!” shouted Giles affectionately. “What -a frightful row you’re making!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Alix at last heard them all hurtling down the -stairs together.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Jock, who was old and a little melancholy, remained -with her, seating himself on the hearth rug and surveying -her with kindly but disenchanted eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Dieu! Quel bruit!</span>” Alix addressed him. She felt -that Jock agreed with her about the noise and in -finding Ruth and Rosemary, as well as Bobby, too -turbulent. She listened at the door to be sure that they -were safely gone. Then she tiptoed softly down and -peeped in at the bathroom. It was large and untidy. -She, too, preferred her bath hot and in the morning. -Ruth and Rosemary were kind, but your preferences -would never stand in the way of theirs. No, never -would she find them interesting. But they did not ask -it of you, Alix reflected, going back to her room. All -they asked of you was to let them bathe at the time -that best pleased them, play hockey with them, and -admire their view. She went to look at the view. A -pleasant, heathery common dipping at its further edge -to a birch-wood. That was all. And another gabled -roof rose among pines on a near hillside. All comfort; -no beauty, thought Alix, and the sky came so closely -down that it made her feel suffocated. And as she -leaned looking out she thought of the roll of the -mighty Juras, and the plain, and the river shining -across it. How tame this was, a piping, perching little -bird beside an eagle of great flights and soarings. Why -had Maman sent her here? She could never be happy; -never, never, under this low sky, among these noisy -girls. And wave after wave there mounted in her an -old, well-remembered homesickness for Maman and a -new homesickness for France.</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER V</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>She was not to escape Ruth and Rosemary for long. -Already, at lunch, she felt that Giles, talking gravely -with his mother of treaties and leagues and such dull -matters, seemed to have relegated her to their category. -Over the dining-room mantelpiece hung a portrait -of the late Mr. Bradley; she knew it must be he -from his likeness to Aunt Bella and Ruth and Rosemary, -and Alix felt sure, as she looked up at his pink -and yellow, his tweeds and watch-chain and good, -shrewd eyes, that Mrs. Bradley’s sons must always -have interested her more than their father. But she -would never have known this, just as she did not know, -nor did they, that she was fonder of her boys than of -Ruth and Rosemary. “But I believe that in this country -everybody is fonder of sons,” thought Alix, marvelling -at the reappearance of the strange cabbage cut -into squares and recalling impressions of English literature -where, despite romantic surfaces, it was apparent -to the discerning eye that men always counted -for more than women.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Bradley carved. It was a well-roasted leg -of mutton, that made Alix think of the mutton in -“Alice.” The potatoes, too, were roasted and the -<span class='it'>entremets</span> a bread-and-butter pudding. Mr. Bradley -had been nourished on such meals. They would produce -Mr. Bradleys.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now we will show you everything,” said Ruth -when luncheon was over. The implication seemed to -be that a specially fortunate experience was in store -for her. A fond complacency breathed from both girls. -“And it is natural that one should love one’s home,” -thought Alix, the tolerance of her comprehension giving -her childish face a maturity beyond its years.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So she was led from the lawn to the shrubberies; -shown the summer-house where in summer they had -tea and the herbaceous border, neatly disposed for its -winter sleep. The kitchen-garden was displayed, and -at its far end they passed through a door to a little -path, bordered by gorse-bushes, that ran beneath the -garden-wall and then turned aside over the common. -It was a sheltered, solitary little path, the branches of -the garden fruit-trees hanging over it, and Alix felt -that it might often be a refuge for her. It was a -pretty path and had a character of its own. To Ruth -and Rosemary its meaning lay in leading somewhere -else, and they crossed the common and rambled in -the birch-wood, inciting each other to long jumps over -a sluggish little stream, half ditch, half brook, that -flowed through it, and encouraging the dogs with -loud cries to chase the scurrying rabbits on the further -hillside.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There’s the jolliest walk along the top,” said Ruth, -“among the junipers. But perhaps you are tired. -French girls aren’t much good at walking, are they?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I walk a good deal in the country,” said Alix, -“but I think I will unpack my box now.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Edie will have unpacked it for you,” said Ruth, -“so we’ll go on; only say if you are tired. You wear -sensible shoes, I must say. I thought all French girls -pinched their toes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So they continued to walk, talking as they went, -asking her for none of her information, only imparting -theirs, as if it must, self-evidently, have superior value. -Alix heard them with interest when they told of Giles -and of his scholastic feats at Oxford, feats interrupted -by his departure for the war, but now to be resumed. -Philosophy was Giles’s special branch, and they told -her that he was going to teach philosophy, at Oxford -probably, and write it some day.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Tiens!</span>” said Alix, relapsing, as was her wont when -surprised, into French. She knew nothing of philosophers -and the word only conjured up a picture of someone -aged and bearded who drank hemlock.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” said Ruth, accepting the ejaculation as a -tribute, “he’ll be a great man, all right, Giles.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Alix also learned that Ruth and Rosemary both -intended following professional careers and that their -father had come from the north and had built Heathside -and that their mother was a Londoner and that -her father had been the editor of an important London -paper. “What! Never heard of ‘The Liberal’!” -Ruth exclaimed. Ruth, as eldest, did most of the -talking, subjected to frequent interruptions from Rosemary. -“I should have thought even French people -would have heard of ‘The Liberal.’ Oh, yes, he was a -great swell, our grandfather.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix did not think she would have found him so. -France, she saw, mainly existed for Ruth and Rosemary -as a place where one’s brothers had gone to -fight and one’s friends to nurse.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And what is the pleasant house?” she inquired of -them, when, after their walk along the hilltop, they had -crossed the wood and emerged again upon the common.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It stood, with an air of serenity and detachment, -half a mile away, a tall house of pale, eighteenth-century -brick with a white door and white window-sills, -a formal garden before it and a neat hedge dividing it -from the road. One felt that the woods had grown up -around it and that it preserved a tranquil personality -of its own, unmoved by the haphazard accretions of a -century.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, that’s the Rectory; where Toppie lives,” said -Ruth. “You can see the church spire just above the -trees to the right. Pleasant, do you call it? I think it’s -rather dismal; so bare and square. It needs lots of -creepers and shrubberies to make it cheerful; but old -Mr. Westmacott doesn’t like them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Creepers would not be in the character of that -house, I feel,” said Alix; “and they would hide the -pretty colour of the brick. There are a few roses, too, -are there not?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes; a few. Toppie would have her roses. I hate -a house without creepers.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Shall I soon see Toppie, do you think?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, you’ll see her soon, all right,” said Ruth. -“She’ll be coming in to tea to-day, probably.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know she’s coming,” said Rosemary. “She -asked me yesterday if Alix would be here, and when I -told her we’d had the wire, she said she’d come. I -think she’s rather keen on seeing you, Alix. Owen -wrote a lot about you, you see.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They spoke without any emotion of Toppie. They -took her for granted. She was not, to them, a shrine. -But even before the scene in the train with Giles, Alix -had had a special feeling about Toppie herself, and as -she walked on with the chattering girls her mind went -back to the day at Cannes when Captain Owen had -first showed her and Maman Toppie’s photograph. -He carried the little leather case in his breast-pocket, -his mother’s picture on one side and hers on the other, -and Maman had said, as she took the case from him -and looked: “<span class='it'>Elle est tout-à-fait ravissante.</span>”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You don’t see very much of her in that,” said Captain -Owen, wagging his foot a little, and Alix guessed -that he was moved in speaking of his <span class='it'>fiancée</span>. “But it -does show something. Lovely the shape of her face, -isn’t it? She’s not exactly beautiful.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh! ‘exactly’! Who would care to be ‘exactly’ -beautiful!” said Maman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had told them that Miss Westmacott—Toppie’s -real name was Enid Westmacott—had come with her -father to live near them when she was only fifteen. -Mr. Westmacott was the Rector of their parish and -he had to explain to them—for Maman said that with -all her English she could never get it quite clear—what -rectors were and how they came to have daughters; -and when Maman said, as though rectors must -make up for having daughters by having devout ones, -“<span class='it'>Elle est très dévote?</span>” Captain Owen, with his charming -smile, rejoined, “Oh, much better than that!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Later on, when they were alone, Maman had remarked -to her: “She is pretty; but nothing more. -<span class='it'>Elle est nulle, cette Toppie; très, très nulle.</span>” But Alix -had not agreed. Often she did not agree with Maman. -The little photograph had not said much, but it had -said something definite. “She is like someone in a -tower.” So she tried to fix her feeling.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Even in a tower one may oneself be insignificant,” -said Maman, and to this Alix had replied: “Not if -one <span class='it'>is</span> the tower oneself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Toppie was there when they got in. A fire had -been lighted for tea in the drawing-room, a long -room with roses on the chairs and sofas and a high -wainscotting of dark woodwork, and above that blue -paper with old-fashioned crayon portraits and large -photographs from famous pictures. A tall grey figure -stood at the further end, and Alix knew at once that -it was Toppie who turned her head to look at her like -that. She was helping Mrs. Bradley arrange flowers, -Michaelmas daisies, oak leaves, and sprays of golden -larch. She held a large bronze vase and wore a grey -tweed skirt and a grey woollen jumper and grey shoes -strapping across the instep with a buckle. Her hair -was as fair as primroses and was ruffled up a little -above the black ribbon that bound it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This is Alix, Toppie, dear,” said Mrs. Bradley in -a gentle voice, and she came forward and passed her -arm in Toppie’s as if she knew that it must mean -something very special to her to see the little French -girl.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m so glad,” said Toppie. She gazed at Alix for a -long moment, as though forgetting that she held the -vase; then, looking round her, vague in her absorption, -she set it down on a table and held out her hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The water from the vase had spilled over it, and as -it closed on Alix’s it made her think of the hand of -a dryad, a naiad, or some chill, unearthly creature. -“Yes; in towers,” she thought, as Toppie’s eyes dwelt -on her. “And how much she loved him!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She saw then that Giles was there. He was stretched -out in a deep chair on one side of the fire, his hands -clasped behind his head, and he was watching Toppie; -her meeting with Toppie.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And how much Giles loves her!” came the further -thought, sharp with its sense of sudden elucidation. -If he sat there, in that rather mannerless fashion, not -helping with the water-cans, the baskets of flowers, -the scissors, it was because he loved her and wanted to -watch her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Toppie, still with her absorption, had picked up the -vase again and carried it to a far table.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There; that’s the best we can do with the garden -just now,” said Mrs. Bradley, smiling at her. “And -without you, Toppie, I’d never have made the effort. -Toppie thinks a room without flowers so sad. She -made me come out with her and pick all these. It’s -astonishing, really, what one can still find in a November -garden.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They look awfully nice,” said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, to tell you the truth,” said Ruth—Alix had -already noted of her that, on all occasions, she gave her -opinion without being asked—“they look to me rather -dingy and frost-bitten. Rather a waste of time, I -think, all this messing about to arrange flowers that -don’t exist!”—and Ruth laughed, pleased with her -own good sense, and went to seat herself on the arm of -Giles’s chair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She bores him; but he would not like to say it,” -thought Alix, seeing Giles’s kind but unwelcoming -look. She had a feeling of excitement, yet of oppression. -Toppie, she knew, was thinking of nothing but -her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The tea-table stood before the sofa on the other side -of the fire from Giles, and Mrs. Bradley sat down to -it and Toppie came beside her, and then, looking up -at Alix, laying her hand on the place still vacant, said -“Come here, Alix.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There’s room for me, too,” cried Rosemary, plunging -down between them. “My place is always near -the cake!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Toppie looked at her quite coldly and said: -“There’s not room for you, Rosemary. Somewhere -else, please. You make us all uncomfortable.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was very fair, with a skin that would have been -of a milky whiteness had it not been thickly freckled. -Her lips were small and pale, her chin long and narrow; -all her head, bound round with the black ribbon, was -singularly narrow, and that, perhaps, was why her -grey eyes seemed to look out from towers. “And how -she has suffered!” thought Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Nights; how many nights of sleepless suffering had -not Toppie known. The tears had run down as she -had lain in the long darknesses, remembering; always -remembering, seeing his face before her always. Tears; -vigils; remembrance;—all were in Toppie’s eyes. -“Oh, no, Maman; not <span class='it'>nulle</span>; anything but <span class='it'>nulle</span>,” -Alix thought, while, with a great wave of depression, -the meaning of the war, of all its lonely suffering, -swept over her. Was Captain Owen worth so much -suffering? His personality lived most for Alix in the -memory of his smile and his worth seemed to live -in that, too. He had been charming; and there was -worth in charm.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Tea was made and they were all talking of the things -they did and the people they did them with. Alix -heard of a Women’s Institute, of Boy Scouts and Girl -Guides, and a village Choral Society that Mrs. Bradley -conducted. Giles sang in it, and the girls and Jack -and Francis when they were at home. “And you must -sing with us, Alix,” said Mrs. Bradley, and they asked -her about her piano lessons and the singing at the -Lycée, and she had to confess that she had never heard -“The Messiah,” at which there was a shout of good-natured -protest from Ruth and Rosemary. “But -you’re not a musical nation, are you?” said Ruth; and -disposed of France as a musical nation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The talk made Alix think of the thick slices of bread-and-butter -that Ruth and Rosemary and Giles were -eating, it was so kindly and useful. Very different -from the talk to which she was accustomed in Maman’s -salon; and Maman’s salon itself was as different from -this as the talk. It was small, yet it was stately. She -and Maman had done their best for the “<span class='it'>petit trou</span>” -of an <span class='it'>appartement</span> in the rue de Penthièvre, and -Maman’s russet head, as she sat with her cigarette at -the tea-table, had melted and shone against the old -tapestry, grey and green and citron, and her lovely -face had seemed to belong to the Empire sconces and -the carnations in their tall crystal vases that made -light constellations on the mantelpiece. Maman’s -salon, though stately, was dense and rich and sweet, -and the talk that passed, soft and shining, was like -a beautiful, iridescent soap-bubble tossed so lightly -from one to the other; from monsieur de Villanelle, -with his pointed red beard and sad blue eyes and long -Flemish nose like a Memling saint; to mademoiselle -Blanche Fontaine; and from her to monsieur de Maubert, -with his Jovian head; and from him to monsieur -Jules, dark and gloomy, who sometimes let it drop in -his abstraction, unless Maman gave it a little puff that -carried it on to madame Gérardin, who received it -with shrill little outcries, prettily playing with it—Alix -had to own that she played prettily with talk—until -it was safely back in Maman’s hands again. And -then another was blown. How Maman smiled; how -she lifted gay yet sombre brows; how lovely they all -thought her. And though one might see talk so light -only as a soap-bubble, Alix dimly apprehended that -it was fertile, creative; that it spread, like a sweet -fragrance; that it floated like a winged seed on the -breeze, out from Maman’s salon to permeate, alter the -world. It made a difference to the world what monsieur -Villanelle thought about the last book and poem; -what monsieur Jules thought about the last painter, -mademoiselle Blanche about the last play, and monsieur -de Maubert about the latest feat of Léon Daudet -or Charles Maurras. And since, to all of them, it was -in Maman’s reception of their ideas that the final -verdict lay, Maman, to the world at large, made the -greatest difference of all.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ll see what a jolly life you’ll have here, my -dear kid,” Rosemary remarked to her; Rosemary, undismayed -by her rebuff, had worked through the -bread-and-butter and was now eating quantities of -cake. She was only six months older than Alix, but she -assumed protecting airs towards her. “Girls in France -have a beastly mewed-up time, haven’t they?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Have you been much in France?” Alix asked her. -She felt no call to combat Rosemary’s conceptions. -She was, indeed, completely indifferent to what they -might be. She asked her question from mere politeness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not much; but Ruth and I stayed with a French -family once. My word! they were quaint! They -thought the Bible improper reading for <span class='it'>jeunes filles</span> -and picked their teeth at the table and I don’t believe -they ever took a bath. They almost had apoplexy -when we said we had to have one every day; thought -it would be sure to give us <span class='it'>des rhumatismes</span>.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Many of us are quite clean,” Alix remarked, and at -this Giles laughed loudly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There’s one for you, you young savage,” he commented, -whereupon Rosemary bounded at him and -grappled with his hair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Help, Ruth! He’s choking me!” she screamed, -and Alix, with some astonishment, watched the uncouth -game that followed, Giles throwing off his sisters -alternately until they tumbled on the floor and -sat, dishevelled and delighted, getting their breath -and smoothing back their loosened hair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not quite so much noise, dears,” Mrs. Bradley remarked -once or twice, but she continued calmly to -converse with Toppie who glanced at the <span class='it'>mêlée</span>, Alix -thought, with a remote, repudiating eye, while she -said: “I find him a thoroughly bad boy. There’s -something fundamentally wrong with him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, poor little fellow!” Mrs. Bradley sighed. “His -home and heredity are great handicaps, aren’t they?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t see why they should be,” said Toppie. -“Mrs. Brown is a patient hard-working woman and, -though the father drinks, I don’t think he is dishonest. -Whereas Percy is a sneak and a liar. He does mean -things and then is too much of a coward to confess -them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was strange, thought Alix, listening, though not -in the least interested in Percy Brown’s heredity, that -with a face so sweet Toppie should have so cold a -voice. She would be sorry for Percy Brown, she felt -sure, if she were to see him confronting Toppie.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s very difficult to confess when one has done a -mean thing,” Mrs. Bradley mused—and Alix almost -had to laugh at hearing her, so impossible was it to -imagine Mrs. Bradley involved in such a dilemma. -“The cowardice and the meanness go together, don’t -they, and Percy is so young that they are not worse, -really, than weakness and timidity. He may outgrow -it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t think he will. I think he is fundamentally -bad,” said Toppie, but now with more sadness than -severity, and, turning to Alix she said: “Will you -come and have tea with me to-morrow? We could -have a little walk first, and then you could come back -to tea with me and my father.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But she’s going to school with us, Toppie! We -have to teach her hockey!” cried Ruth.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not to-morrow. She need not begin till Monday, -need you, Alix?” Alix thought not, and though Ruth -declared, “You can’t begin a day too soon for hockey,” -Alix and Toppie had decided the question between -them.</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tell me everything; everything you remember,” -said Toppie. She was striding along over the heather, -a grey woollen scarf tossed over her shoulder, a knitted -cap drawn down closely over her ears, and she made -Alix feel shy. She had seen that Toppie liked her and -she had foreseen that she would question her. But as -she felt the pressure of her longing she knew how little -she could satisfy it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think I remember him best of all as I first saw -him,” she said, searching her thoughts.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. As you first saw him. Tell me about it. How -did you first see him? He wrote to me, often, from -Cannes; so much about your mother; so much about -you. He said you were the dearest little girl. I understand -why he said it—if you don’t mind my saying -so.—But he couldn’t tell me what I most wanted to -know, could he? How he himself looked to you.—What -he said to you.—How he seemed.—You understand, -I know, though you are so young, how one -longs for everything that remains on earth of anyone -one loves. People’s memories; they are precious. You -understand that,” said Toppie. And Alix felt that -only by the pressure of her longing was she thus lifted -above her natural reticence. The very words she used -were not habitual to her; she would have been shy of -using such words ordinarily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes; I understand,” said Alix. “We saw him first -on the great road that runs above the sea. Maman -and I were going up and he was coming down, so that -we saw him tall against the sky; limping a little as he -came. He looked at us, and we looked at him;—it is -almost as if one recognized the people who are destined -to be our friends, is it not, Mademoiselle?—and when -we had passed, I looked back at him and he was looking -round at us. It had been a mutual impression. We -talked of it afterwards. We saw him against the sky -and he saw us against the sea; as if we had risen from -it, like people in a fairy-tale, he told us; and Maman -laughed and said that people didn’t rise from the sea -carrying parasols. I remember so well the expression -of his eyes”—Alix felt still shyer, but she forced herself -through the shyness—“gay and searching like a -dog’s; out-of-door eyes. He had field-glasses in his -hand. And that very evening, at the Casino, a friend -of Maman’s brought him and introduced him to her. -So it all began.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tall against the sky. Out-of-door eyes. Yes, I can -see him.—Don’t call me mademoiselle, Alix; call me -Toppie.—And with his bird-glasses. He would have -been watching birds. I see it all,” said Toppie, her -eyes before her. “And then?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then he came to see us every day. It was of birds -we talked on the first day that he and I and Maman -went for a walk. I knew them a little; not their names; -but their songs and their habits, from having been so -much in the country; whereas Maman is so much the -<span class='it'>parisienne</span> that she was very ignorant and she laughed -at us and said they were all much alike; small, grey -silhouettes in the leaves. And he used to say that I -was like a black-cap and she like a nightingale; though -we did not see those birds at Cannes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And then?” Toppie repeated as Alix paused.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He was still very lame,” said Alix, “so that he -could not play tennis, but he used to come with us and -watch Maman play; she is one of the finest players at -Cannes; did he tell you? It is beautiful to watch her; -she is perhaps at her best when playing tennis. And -he used to write his letters in the garden of our little -villa;—it was lent us, that Autumn, by friends; a -charming little place; he will have told you of it. -He must often have written you letters from the -garden. And he and Maman sat there and read. He -would read to her and she would correct his French, -and she would read to him so that his ear might become -accustomed to the correct accent. And sometimes -it was I who read while he held, I remember, a -skein of silk on his hands for Maman to wind to balls; -lemon-coloured silk for a little jacket she was knitting -me. She is so clever with her fingers.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, she was so good to him! I know!” Toppie exclaimed, -her eyes still fixed on the distance. “I don’t -know what he would have done with himself if it -hadn’t been for her kindness. He had been so frightfully -lonely there at Cannes. He found it such a dismal -place until you came; perhaps because it is supposed -to be so gay; and that, in war-time, must have -been dreadful. No shade, I remember he said; only -sun and shadows.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes; I remember that he found so much sun depressing, -and that seemed very strange to us, for we -so love the sun. But there was real shade in our garden -under the trees. The fuchsias, too, were in bloom -everywhere, I remember, and I associate them so -much with him; gay, delicate flowers.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Fuchsias?” said Toppie. “But that’s a soulless -flower. How strange that he should have been associated -with them in anyone’s mind.—Fuchsias”—she -seemed to be forcing herself to see them, too. -“They grow so much in the Riviera, of course. But I -always think of Owen with daffodils. Our woods are -full of them here in Spring. Fuchsias. Yes? What else? -You all laughed together? Your mother is so gay. He -was happy?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Very happy, I think. We all laughed a great -deal. Maman is not what one would call a gay person; -but she can make gaiety. He teased me a great -deal. I have never cared for dolls and he teased -me about them. He said a girl must be made to care -about dolls, and he bought dreadful little ones with -small feet in painted boots and hid them in my -napkin at dinner or even under my pillow, where I -found them at night. I used to fling them at him—rush -down to the salon where he and Maman sat, -and fling them at him.—For I was already fifteen, -and at that age one is not supposed to care about -dolls, in any case. We had great games, it was a -happy time, in spite of all the sadness. He was a -happy person.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Happy. Yes. A happy person,” Toppie repeated. -She turned her strange shining eyes on Alix. “He -is happy now. He is here, you know. We are not -parted. I feel him every day; always; near me. His -happiness shines round me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix was struck to dumbness. She felt afraid. Such -thoughts were so alien to her that she even wondered -if Toppie were quite sane.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Toppie went on. “You believe that, too, in your -church, don’t you?—that the dead are near us; not -far away; not shut into a hard golden heaven we -can’t reach; but quite near and caring.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We have purgatory. I do not understand all these -doctrines. But I am not <span class='it'>dévote</span>,” said Alix after a moment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Purgatory? That’s only a name. That’s only a -symbol, like the golden heaven. And those who have -died, giving their lives for us, will not have to pass -through such an intermediary state.—You are too -young. You have never lost anyone you loved.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No one except my poor grandfather. I always pray -for the repose of his soul. That is what we do in my -church. Is it different in yours? And if they are reposing, -how can they be near us?” Indeed, the thought -of Grand-père as near, in his new, unimaginable state, -was even more disquieting than Toppie herself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Toppie seemed to feel that she had drawn her young -companion beyond her depth. She was silent for a moment, -gathering back her thoughts from their search -for sympathy, and she asked, then: “Why do you say -your poor grandfather? Was he unhappy?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am afraid he was. Very unhappy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I am so sorry. You felt and shared it. I saw -in your face at once, dear little Alix, that you had -shared unhappiness.—You are so young; younger than -your age in one way; yet in another you are so grown -up; it is strange.” Toppie’s eyes mused on her for a -moment. “Why was he unhappy?” she added gently. -“Though, indeed, most people are.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He was ruined. He had lost everything,” said -Alix. “Montarel, where the Mouverays have always -lived, is sold now, and he knew before he died that -it would be so. And he had lost everyone he loved, -except me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Your mother is not his daughter, then?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No; my father was his son; his only child.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you and your mother were often with him?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Only I. He liked having me alone.” Alix did not -require consideration to find an answer. To Giles, in -the train, frankness had been possible; but it was -difficult to repeat such frankness. And Toppie, Alix -felt, was so different from Giles. She would not understand -Maman being divorced as he had. So she evaded -her question.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They had reached the Rectory now, and she was -glad not only that they had passed away from Grand-père -and his causes for unhappiness, but from Captain -Owen, too. She would have been sorry to have had to -answer questions about the Paris days when so much -of the brightness had dropped from him. Her memories -of Captain Owen in Paris were all tinged with -sadness; perhaps because the war was so much nearer -in Paris and Captain Owen’s return to it so imminent. -It was as if, in seeing him there with them for his short -leaves, they had seen death always beside him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hope you will be here when our roses are out,” -said Toppie, in the Rectory garden. “Father and I are -proud of our roses.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix counted on being back with Maman long before -the time of roses, but she said that she hoped so, -too, and as they passed a window she caught a glimpse -of a tall, bleached man sitting at a writing-table, very -erect, austere, and absorbed; like an old eighteenth-century -print of d’Alembert, Diderot, or some such -erudite wigged gentleman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes; it’s my father,” said Toppie. “You’ll see -him directly; at tea.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix stood still for a moment as they entered the -drawing-room. It had everything of charm that the -Bradleys’ drawing-room lacked, except the charm of -cheerfulness, for it was, though so serenely beautiful, -perhaps a little sad. The eighteenth-century panelling -was painted in dim green, and three tall windows at -one side looked out at the garden while, at the other, -was a beautiful fireplace. In the walls were deep niches -filled with rows of old china, and sedate chairs with -backs and seats embroidered in green and dove-colour -were ranged along the wall.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And look at my china roses,” said Toppie, pleased, -Alix saw, by her involuntary pause of pleasure. “Aren’t -they rather wonderful for November? Only smell how -sweet.” And Alix bent over the bowl filled with the -little deep pink roses.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was a sedate sofa to match the chairs, with -the tea-table placed as at the Bradleys’; but how different -was this tea. No thick bread-and-butter; no -loaves of cake. Only a plate of little dry biscuits, that -Alix liked, however, and another of bread-and-butter -cut to a wafer-like thinness. And instead of the affectionate -turmoil of Heathside was Toppie’s sweet, chill -voice and Mr. Westmacott’s silence. He drank his tea, -looking, with his crossed legs, which should have been -in buckled knee-breeches, more than ever like d’Alembert; -addressed a courteous question to Alix about her -journey and her mother’s health, and soon went away, -back to his writing-table; but not, Alix felt, to do -much of significance there. He had a tall head and a -meditative eye; but there was something of the sheep -in his appearance, too. If he had had the close curled -wig, that went with his type he would, Alix thought, -have looked very like a silent, dignified sheep that may, -in the meadow, as it looks at you, emit once or twice -a formal baa.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Toppie told her that her father was writing a book -on the Stoics. “He has, fortunately, a great deal of -time. It’s a tiny parish; just right for a scholar like my -father; more a scholar than a priest, I sometimes think. -He is rather shy with people and his life here suits him -perfectly.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are not Stoics the people who do not mind the -things other people mind?” Alix inquired.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They cared, perhaps, so much for some things that -other things did not hurt,” said Toppie, smiling. “I -don’t know much about them, myself, though; I’m not -at all learned. I’ve never been to school.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am glad you are not learned. One may go to -school and yet not be learned; as you can see from me,” -Alix smiled back. “But I can’t imagine what those -things can be that keep us from being hurt; can -you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Toppie looked at her meditatively for a moment. -“You said you were not <span class='it'>dévote</span>; but doesn’t your religion -tell you what things they are?” she asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Le bon Dieu</span>, do you mean?” Alix inquired doubtfully. -“<span class='it'>La Sainte Vierge?</span> One’s Guardian Angel?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. When you go to church, to confession, aren’t -you told?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We are told a great deal; but I am afraid I have -never paid much attention. I only go to confession -once a year. Maman insists on it. I do not like it,” -said Alix. “Had the Stoics a <span class='it'>bon Dieu</span> and a <span class='it'>Sainte -Vierge</span> to console them, then?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, no! no!—you very ignorant child!” Toppie -was perforce smiling again, though Alix saw that she -was distressed. “They lived very nobly without our -faith to help them.—In my church we do not have -your beautiful <span class='it'>Sainte Vierge</span> to look to, you know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know,” said Alix. “And I do not understand -why you should leave her out. I like her better than -<span class='it'>le bon Dieu</span>, I must confess. But then rectors could not -feel as we do about a <span class='it'>Sainte Vierge</span>, could they?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And why not?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Could one feel like that and be married?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, you funny child!” Toppie was really laughing, -and Alix, seeing how she amused her, laughed, too. -This was so much better than talking about the dead.—“You -mean a priest could not? We are quite different -about that, too. But I see what you mean”—Toppie’s -eyes dwelt on her—“and sometimes I think -that you are right. I think, perhaps”—Toppie was -grave now—“that the best life could be lived if one -were quite free; with no close human ties. One could -live better for God, and for humanity, then. And we -have nuns in our church, too, Alix.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, but it is dreadful to be a nun!” Alix exclaimed. -“I had an old great-aunt who was a nun. Grand-père’s -sister. I was always taken to see her in her convent in -Lyon. She came to a <span class='it'>grille</span> and blessed me through it. -She was like a sad old fish in an aquarium. One felt -that her flesh must be cold. It would be death to me, -such a life. And you? Can you really imagine it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perhaps not an order like that, that shuts one -quite away,” said Toppie; “but there are nursing and -teaching orders. Yes, I can imagine it. Not while I -have my father; but if I were alone.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, no! Do not imagine it!” Alix exclaimed, and -there rose before her the memory of Giles’s face as -he had watched Toppie yesterday evening. “Do not -even imagine it. It is too dreadful. I am sorry that in -your church you have nuns, too. That is foolish of -you, I think, when you need not have them. It is different -for priests. They have to administer the sacraments. -But for a woman it is dreadful. Far, far better -marry and be out in the world.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perhaps.” Toppie was smiling sadly at her, seeing -her, it was evident, as quite a child, yet touched by her -feeling. “But if all question of marrying is over, the -situation alters. You could not understand while you -are so young.—See, Alix, I want you to look at this.” -She moved forward a fire-screen, a square of satin on a -mahogany stand. “Are you interested in needlework? -French girls do it so beautifully, I know. My mother -embroidered this. She copied it from those old chairbacks. -Do look at them. Her grandmother did those.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The screen, on a background of pearly satin, had two -doves in a basket, entwined with laurel; and the chairs, -in a softer, sadder key, repeated them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They are beautiful,” said Alix. It seemed to her, -as she looked at the gentle doves, that the dead, in -Toppie’s drawing-room, joined pale hands around her -and whispered: “We are here.” But it was so sad. -The doves nestling side by side, so confident of love, -made her think of all the partings of the world.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My great-grandmother was married to a soldier,” -said Toppie, “and went out to India and died there -when my grandfather was born. She did all those -chairs while she was waiting for his birth. She was -only twenty-one. I often think of her; so young; stitching -her thoughts of home, her hopes for her baby—the -past and the future—into the embroidery. And -one feels how happy she must have been in her marriage -to have chosen that design. My poor great-grandfather -brought all her things back to England, -with his little boy.—That funny little water-colour -sketch is of him, in his frilled cap; with his ayah.—And -he grew up to be a soldier, too, and was killed, out -in India, fighting a frontier tribe. My mother was his -only child. I was fourteen when she died. How happy -you are to have your mother, Alix. She makes beautiful -things, too. I shan’t forget the little lemon silk -jacket.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix’s sense of sadness had deepened while Toppie -spoke. So different Toppie’s past; so different Toppie’s -mother, she felt sure: and the sense of sadness -was in the difference. An abyss seemed to lie between -her and Toppie, an abyss that Toppie did not see and -could not, perhaps, even imagine. She could not place -Toppie against any of the backgrounds familiar to her. -She could not see her in Maman’s salon, unless as one -of those dim evasive figures, the “Misses” of her childhood, -someone dressed differently, hovering diffidently -and helping with the tea and cakes. She could see Toppie -in Maman’s salon as her governess, but in no other -capacity. Toppie would not understand anything said -there, or would not care to understand. She would -draw away from the shining soap-bubble. She would -look with cold dismay at madame Gérardin and mademoiselle -Fontaine. It was sad to feel fond of someone -and to feel them fond of you, and yet to see that only -here, among her doves, could their worlds touch at all.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was growing dark, and Toppie said that she -would take her home, and, in the hall, lighted a -little lantern for the walk across the common. They -had gone halfway when they saw, in the distance, -another lantern advancing towards them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is Giles,” said Toppie, pausing. “He has come -for you. So I will go back. I have some letters to -finish for the post.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But come to meet him. He will, I am sure, be glad -of a word with you,” said Alix. She felt sure that it -had been in the hope of a word with Toppie rather than -to fetch herself that Giles had come.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, we have so many words; every day; all our -lives long,” said Toppie, and, though she continued to -advance, Alix felt a slight constraint in her voice. “He -is a dear, is he not, Giles?” she added, as if irrelevantly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, a dear!” said Alix. “I felt him that at once. -And so good; and so intelligent.”—“More intelligent -than Captain Owen; more good,” was in her mind. -But that made, she knew, no difference. People were -not loved for their intelligence, or their goodness, -either.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A great dear, Giles,” Toppie repeated, but with no -intention, evidently, of being urged by her young companion’s -warmth beyond her own sense of due commendation. -“Owen loved him devotedly. After his -mother it was Giles he loved best of all his family.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They were all three of the same <span class='it'>pâte</span>, were they -not.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Pâte?</span>” Toppie questioned. Her French was not -quite so good as Giles’s.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The paste, you know, of which earthenware or porcelain -is made.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I see. Yes. And Owen was porcelain; and Giles is -earthenware; and dear Mrs. Bradley is both together.” -Toppie mused on the simile with satisfaction.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But it did not satisfy Alix. “Some earthenware is -very rare and precious; tough and fine at once. And -it wears and wears.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But it never has the beauty,” said Toppie.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles was now within speaking distance, and by the -light of their lantern Alix saw that his eyes were fixed -upon Toppie with an indefinable expression; not alarm; -not inquiry; but a steady watchfulness that, to her perception, -controlled these feelings.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I was afraid you’d run away with our young guest -and came out to look for you,” he said. “It’s six -o’clock.” While Alix, feeling a soft touch on her glove, -looked down to see the earnest, illumined eyes of Jock.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I didn’t realize it was so late,” said Toppie, and to -Alix’s ear the tone of her voice was altered. Toppie, -for all her familiarity, would never, she felt, have talked -with any of the Bradleys as she had with her this afternoon. -“We’ve talked and talked; haven’t we, Alix. I -must fly!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come in for a little. Mother’s just back. She’d -love to see you,” said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, indeed, I can’t. Give her my love. I’ll drop -in upon her to-morrow afternoon, after my class.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, we’ll go back with you, then. It’s late for -you to be out alone.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“For me! On the common! How absurd you are, -Giles! Good-night.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good-night,” said Giles. He showed no grievance; -some shade, rather, seemed lifted from him, and in a -moment, as he and she walked on together, Alix divined -that his anxiety had been lest she had said anything to -hurt Toppie or revived memories that cut too deep. -It had not been so much to see Toppie as to watch over -her that he had come.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The lantern made a soft round of light into which -they advanced and the November air was pleasant. -“And what have you talked and talked about?” Giles -asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All sorts of things,” said Alix. She was glad to feel -that she could give him fuller relief. “Her great-grandmother’s -embroideries and the Stoics and <span class='it'>la -Sainte Vierge</span>.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>La Sainte Vierge!</span>” said Giles, and he laughed. Yes, -actually, he was speaking with her of the enshrined -Toppie and she had made him laugh. “What did you -have to say about <span class='it'>la Sainte Vierge</span>, pray?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well,” Alix paused. She saw that she had perhaps -taken a wrong turn, but it was best to go on as though -she did not think so. “It was of religion and <span class='it'>le Paradis</span>, -you see; and whether the dead are with us here. Do -you, too, think that they are, Giles?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The dead! With us here!—Oh. Yes, I see.” -Giles, after his exclamations of surprise, lapsed for a -moment into silence. “She must like you very much, -Alix, to talk to you about that,” he said presently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think she does like me. He liked me. It would -always be that for Toppie, wouldn’t it? And then I -can give her more about him. We talked of that, too. -Things she didn’t know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She felt Giles’s eyes turn down towards her. He contemplated -her as they walked forward. “What sort of -things?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How we met him. How he looked. What we -all did together. She loved hearing; but especially -that he was happy. And it is that she feels. That he -is with her now; and happy. Do you believe it, too?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles walked on beside her in the darkness that was -not yet quite dark, the light melted into it so softly -and went so far. Alix could see Bobby racing on ahead. -Jock went just before them, and Amy followed meekly, -her nose at Giles’s heels. It was easy to talk together -in the melting darkness, and she must have given Giles -a great deal to think about, for he said nothing for a -long time. Then, as if he brought his thoughts back to -her and her question with an effort, he said: “It doesn’t -follow, because we’re dead, that we’re happy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No; we are not happy in purgatory; and according -to the church we must all go to purgatory, unless we -have been great saints. She asked me about my religion. -And we have purgatory, you see.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hope you didn’t say anything about it that may -have troubled her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I said nothing at all that troubled her,” Alix -assured him. “She did not take purgatory at all -seriously.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you?” Giles was smiling a little. How much -relief she had given him!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am afraid not,” Alix owned. “I am afraid I -do not take heaven seriously either. But I did not -tell her that. It might have grieved her. It always -seems to me that we must go out like blown candles, -when we are dead. I do not like to think it; but it -seems so to me. Does it not to you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No; it doesn’t. You are a little pagan, Alix.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A pagan! Not at all! I am a Catholic. I go to confession -once a year.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles now laughed out. So much had she relieved -him that her unspiritual state roused only mirth in -him. “Doesn’t your confessor give you any penances?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. I have penances. I do them as I am told. The -<span class='it'>Chemin de la Croix</span>—all round the church.—It is -very tiring—dragging my <span class='it'>prie dieu</span>.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles went on laughing;—“Is it? By Jove! And -your first communion? Weren’t you prepared for -that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. But that was five years ago. I was only a -child then. I have altered my opinion of many things -since then.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>How much Giles found her still a child she heard in -his laughter as he asked on: “But what right have you -to say you aren’t a pagan? What right have you to -call yourself a Catholic?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have been baptized,” said Alix. “I have been -confirmed. I go to confession, and to Mass, at least at -Easter. Most certainly I am a Catholic. You might -as well say I was not French because I did not believe -in the Republic as to say I am not a Catholic because -I don’t believe in heaven. One is, or one is not. It is a -question of being born so.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I see. I see.” Giles was looking down at her, so -amused, yet also, she felt, touched by what she said. -They entered the little door in the garden-wall. -“There’s something to be said for that way of looking -at it,” he owned. “It puts it neatly. It explains all -sorts of things, in Catholicism and in France. You are -a wonderful people, Alix.”</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Of all her new experiences Alix most enjoyed “The -Messiah.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The village choir was a feeble enough little affair, its -energy concentrated in Giles’s disciplined, sustaining -baritone and the robust sopranos of Ruth, Rosemary, -and the postmistress. The tenors were almost non-existent, -and the altos, among whom Alix was placed at -once, terribly weak. But the doctor’s daughter, at the -piano, accompanied so accurately, Mrs. Bradley, gentle -and absorbed, with her wand, conducted so carefully, -that it was a pleasure to sing, and the grave exultant -music wove itself deeply into Alix’s impressions -of the new life. It made her think of Giles and of his -mother, and of Toppie, too. It seemed to go with them; -just as it seemed to go with the walk home by lantern-light, -and even with the cheerful family supper afterwards -where Giles boiled eggs over the fire, and Mrs. -Bradley made cocoa on a spirit-lamp.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The High School, to which she and Ruth and Rosemary -bicycled every day, was at once familiar and -alien. It was like the <span class='it'>Lycée</span>, in shape, as it were; but -not in texture. Hockey could not give it the flavour -that it lacked. The girls, all of them, were too much -like Ruth and Rosemary. They lived, she felt, in what -they did, not in what they thought. They had a sense -of fun, but no sense of irony, and with their sharp-cut -edges, their hardy colour, they seemed to repel any -suggestion of mystery, in life or in themselves. They -accepted her at once. They seemed to like her, just as -Ruth and Rosemary did. But she felt that anybody -else who could hold a hockey stick and tell the truth -would have done just as well.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With the Christmas holidays Jack and Francis came -home from school. Heathside seethed with noise, pets -and handicrafts. Giles, now demobilized, was preparing -for his return to Oxford after Christmas. He went -up and down to London a good deal and she had the -sensation of having lost him; of being relegated by him -to the family group. One day, however, he came into -the dining-room while she was trying to write a letter -on a corner of the table. It was only in the dining-room -that a fire was lighted in the mornings, and Jack and -Francis were carpentering at one end, while Ruth cut -out blouses in the middle. It was difficult to try to tell -Maman about “The Messiah” in such surroundings, -and though she liked Jack and Francis so much she -could not bring herself to like the white rat that ambled -heavily about among the tools and <span class='it'>crêpe de Chine</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I say, that’s not much of a place for letter-writing,” -Giles remarked. “Come to my study, Alix. I’m a favoured -person and have a gas-fire going all morning.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But she’s going out with us directly, to see our ferrets!” -shouted Jack and Francis. They were dear little -boys; Francis brown, like Giles, and Jack fair like his -sisters. Oddly, enough, with all their uproar, Alix felt -them gentler, more respectful of one’s identity, than -Ruth and Rosemary.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you want to see the ferrets, Alix?” Giles inquired. -“Are you fond of ferrets?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I do not like what I hear of them,” said Alix. “But -cats, too, do dreadful things; and one loves cats.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll defy anyone to love a ferret.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’re not going to let her see the rabbiting. She -says she doesn’t want to, though she misses a lot. It’s -far kinder than traps. Bobby kills them in a minute.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No; I do not want to see that. But will after lunch -do for ferrets? I would rather finish my letters now,” -Alix owned. And though she was sorry to disappoint -Jack and Francis, it was with a sense of escape that -she followed Giles out of the dining-room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The study was small, warm, and untidy. Under an -ugly mantelpiece of carved oak was a bright little gas-fire, -looking like incandescent dried apples, and on the -mantelpiece were ranged pipes, family photographs, -and quite a menagerie of small animal ornaments which -Alix guessed to be family presents. There was a small -metal bear on his hind legs holding spills in his arms, -a horrible china cow, yellow with red spots and a -place in her back for matches, and a foolish puppy in -black velvet with a red flannel tongue and one ear that -went up and one that went down. A very grubby and -irrelevant statuette of Venus de Milo stood among -them and Alix felt sorry for her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Behold my jewels!” said Giles with a grin. “Francis -gave me that monster when he was three; that’s -from Jack and that from Rosemary. The Venus is an -effort of Ruth’s; brought to me from Paris. Everything -you see there is either Christmas or birthdays.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are very faithful to your anniversaries,” said -Alix, smiling. “What a nice photograph of your -mother.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Isn’t it?” said Giles, pleased. “You like my -mother, don’t you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I like all your family,” said Alix politely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, of course, in a way, you’d like them all,” -said Giles. “But I am afraid they rather wear you out. -There are so many of them and they are so young and -vigorous. You must take refuge here when they dash -over you too much. I’ll do my reading, and you can -read or write or meditate, as you like. I shan’t speak -to you and you mustn’t speak to me. I’ve noticed you -are a kid who can keep still. We shall get on capitally.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So it was arranged, and as Alix took her place at the -little writing-table he pulled forward for her, she noticed -that there were many books along two sides of -the room and along the other a row of large framed -photographs of Greek and Sicilian temples that more -than atoned for the mantelpiece. When she did not -feel like reading or writing, she would look at those. -They made her think, in the sense of space and tranquillity -and splendour they gave her, of Montarel.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For the first mornings of her withdrawal there mingled -with her sense of security an apprehension of the -unsaid things that lay between her and Giles and that -might still have to be said; but this grew less with every -day. It became quite evident that Giles was going to -say nothing. Perhaps, indeed, she had imagined something -of the trouble and confusion she had felt in him -at their first meeting. Perhaps in some odd, twisted -way, it had all been because of Toppie; because the -sight of her brought back so vividly the memory of the -dead brother and of Toppie’s loss. Whatever it had -been, she did not think he would ever show it to her -again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She owed more than the peaceful mornings to him. -He seemed to restore Maman to her. Now, at last, she -could really tell Maman, with a mind composed, how -surprised Mrs. Bradley had been at hearing that she -wore a linen chemise next her skin and felt no need of -wool; how like a dignified sheep was Toppie’s father; -how strange the sense of growing strength the choruses -of “The Messiah” gave one, like a sort of calisthenic. -And how Mrs. Bradley had taken her up to London to -choose a delightful winter outfit; woollen jumpers, -ribbed stockings, and a winter coat and hat. Alix told -Maman all about this and about the fat, jovial old -lady with short grey hair with whom they had had tea -in Kensington, a friend of Mrs. Bradley’s father and a -public speaker. Some things, however, she did not tell -her. She gave no account of Toppie’s beliefs in regard -to Captain Owen, and, a lesser matter, yet significant, -she had never yet satisfied Maman as to the social -status of her new friends.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Perhaps it was because Giles sat there, his pipe between -his teeth, his feet propped up against the mantelpiece, -his hand, as he perused the tome upon his knees, -raised now and then to rub his hair on end, that it -seemed so irrelevant to write about such things. After -all what business was it of Maman’s? She had had no -further use for them than that they should warm and -feed her child during a hard winter; what difference -did their status make to her? It was true that she and -Maman had always shared impressions to the last -crumb of analysis, and it was with a slight sense of -<span class='it'>malice</span> that she thus withheld from her the crumb for -which she asked more than once. “Who are they? -What are they, <span class='it'>ma chérie</span>?” Maman, from Cannes, inquired. -“The <span class='it'>train de vie</span> you described seems that of -the true <span class='it'>confort anglais</span>; but, apparently, there is no -elegance. What are their <span class='it'>relations</span>? Do they go at all -<span class='it'>dans le monde</span>? Is there a <span class='it'>vie de château</span> in the neighbourhood? -I am interested in all you have to tell me -of these excellent people.” Naturally. But though -Alix might not have felt it unmeet, a month ago, to -tell Maman all this, she would have felt it unmeet now. -How funny Giles would have thought it if he had -known that she sat there informing Maman that his -family did not go <span class='it'>dans le monde</span> at all, in the sense that -Maman meant by <span class='it'>le monde</span>; and that they were decidedly -of the <span class='it'>bourgeoisie</span>. It was not that Maman was -wrong in wanting to know, or that Giles would have -been right in thinking that <span class='it'>le monde</span> didn’t matter. It -was simply that she did not care to write in that way -to Maman about him and his family.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Maman, meanwhile, was evidently enjoying many -<span class='it'>relations</span>; dancing, dining, playing tennis, entertaining -her friends. There were important names in her letters -and Alix sometimes meditated a little over them. -When she did not write or read, she meditated Giles’s -Greek temples and Maman’s <span class='it'>relations</span>. The important -names, in the world of art and letters—but that was -not the world Maman meant in asking about the Bradleys—were -male and female; in the world of fashion, -male only. It was the marquis and the prince; but -never the marquise and the princesse. Why? Alix wondered. -Did Maman find the wives of fashion dull? -But if one didn’t know them, too, could one be said to -be <span class='it'>dans le vrai grand monde</span>? She knew how Maman’s -gay, sombre eyes would meet the question (not that it -was one that Alix would ever dream of putting to her): -“<span class='it'>Je suis du monde qui me plaît, ma chérie.</span>” But Alix -was not quite sure that this was true. She was not sure -that Maman’s indifference was as securely grounded -as Giles’s. Perhaps real indifference only came from -reading so much Plato and Aristotle. Yet she herself, -who did not read Plato, was indifferent. It was only in -regard to Maman that she was not indifferent, and perhaps -it was true that it was only in regard to herself -that Maman was not. Poor, beloved, beautiful Maman; -and wronged; deeply wronged, Alix felt sure. Always, -when she thought of her, her heart expanded in -love and then contracted in anxiety. She saw her as a -wild, lovely creature caught in a trap and only escaping -maimed for life. She could not range as far and -as freely as the unmaimed creatures; dimly Alix saw -that, as the explanation of what was ambiguous in -her position. She had lost the full liberty hers by -birth and instinct. Yet, despite the limitations of -her misfortune, she had every right to her own -standards.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Judged by Maman’s standards Alix could not conceal -from herself that the Bradleys were very undistinguished. -Maman would have hated the bounteous, -graceless meals; Mrs. Bradley sitting at breakfast -among the noise and porridge and kippers, heaped -round with letters and circulars, reading an appeal for -crippled babies while she poured out the tea and coffee -and oftener than not slopping it into the saucer. “Oh, -I’m <span class='it'>so</span> sorry, dear,” she would exclaim; but Maman -would have commented, dryly, that a woman so much -occupied had better breakfast in bed and get through -her correspondence out of sight. Maman could be terribly -dry about disorder and gracelessness. Alix had -never forgotten the terse and accurate reproofs that -her own lapses in these respects had called down upon -her in her childhood. As for the uproarious children, -“<span class='it'>Ces marmots-là ne sonts pas appétissants</span>,” was what -Maman would have said of Ruth and Rosemary, taking -their ease during the holidays and padding from -sideboard to table in shabby bedroom slippers, while -Jack and Francis had already got their hands dirty. -Alix could not see Maman at that breakfast-table; but -then there was no need to try to. She would never have -come down at all to breakfast, and Alix could not really -think of anything later in the day that she would have -thought it worth while to come down to. A drive with -Giles in the car, perhaps. She would have liked Giles. -She would have liked him, perhaps, as much as she had -liked Captain Owen. But as for the rest of the family, -she would have found them only fit for the happy task -of warming, feeding, and clothing her child. “<span class='it'>Trop -honorée</span>,” Maman might even remark, in the mood of -mirthful impertinence she could display. Maman’s impertinencies -usually amused Alix; but she did not want -to see them evoked, ever, by the Bradleys. It hurt her -to think of it. Already she was too fond of them. -Maman must never come to Heathside.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Christmas was now close upon them, and the house, -like a mysterious boiling pot, bubbled with happy -secrets. Francis came to lunch unaware of the strip of -gold paper gummed to his nose; Ruth and Rosemary -sat hunched in corners working surreptitiously at belated -pieces of knitting. Giles went up to London with -his mother for a day’s shopping and came back in the -evening with parcels hanging from every finger, and -she and Toppie had a wonderful day there, for Mrs. -Bradley had given her pocket-money to spend on presents -and some had come from Maman, too, so that -there was a real meaning for her in the long indecisions -over crowded counters.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix usually went over to the Rectory to work at her -presents with Toppie. She was making a tea-cloth for -Mrs. Bradley and embroidering monograms, that elicited -Toppie’s admiration, on fine handkerchiefs for -Ruth and Rosemary; and she had found the right -books for the boys and a silver pencil for Giles. Toppie -had a beautiful cushion for his chair at Oxford, and -Toppie, too, had thought of Maman. Alix almost felt -the tears rise to her eyes when she showed her the little -frame of blue and silver she had embroidered enclosing -a snapshot of Alix herself, standing at the edge of the -wood with the dogs about her. She had not expected -anyone to think of Maman. Maman, she knew, would -not think of them. And then Christmas was different -in France.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Maman, all the same, remembered that it was -specially kept in England. It was on Christmas Day -itself, and not on the <span class='it'>Nouvel An</span> as Alix had expected, -that the long parcel, brought over by a friend of -Maman’s, arrived for her from Cannes. Already she -had had more presents than ever before in her life. A -toilet-set from Mrs. Bradley; a writing-case from -Giles; a scarf from Ruth, and a pair of stockings from -Rosemary; from Jack a neat penknife, and from Francis -a box of small brightly coloured handkerchiefs that -were obviously what a little boy would admire. All the -distributions took place at the breakfast-table, and -Maman’s parcel had not yet arrived when Alix unrolled -from its tissue-paper Toppie’s gift, and saw, in a tiny -box of faded leather, the beautiful little old brooch, an -emerald surrounded by pearls. It made her think at -once of the doves and the laurel wreath and of Toppie’s -great-grandmother; of the past, brooded upon; never -forgotten. She gazed at it in astonishment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I <span class='it'>say</span>!” Ruth exclaimed. They had all crowded -round her to look. “She used to wear that. It belonged -to some ancestress. She must be most awfully -fond of you to give it to you, Alix.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix met Giles’s eyes looking down at the brooch -over their heads. She felt that she had gained in value -for him from Toppie’s fondness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And it was after all this excitement that the post -brought Maman’s box and that the many wrappings -of tissue-paper disclosed the most exquisite of evening -dresses; white taffeta; crisp, supple, silvery; girdled -with small white roses and their green leaves. The little -card pinned to the breast said: “<span class='it'>A ma chérie lointaine</span>.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I never saw anything so lovely!” said Rosemary, -and Alix felt a wave of warmth for Rosemary go -through her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s too beautiful,” said Mrs. Bradley.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She made it herself, I am sure,” said Alix. “It is -wonderful how she makes these lovely things.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles was looking at her again. His look was different. -It was as if her pride in Maman touched him -as much as Toppie’s brooch had done.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s so much too pretty for anything you do here, -isn’t it, dear,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I think we must -have a little dance when Giles comes home for the -Easter holidays, so that you can wear it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, Mummy!” cried Ruth and Rosemary. Rosemary -had never yet been to a real dance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’ll have new dresses then, too,” said Ruth. -“Pink’s my colour, and blue’s Rosemary’s.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But can’t I wear pink, too? Toppie wears blue -in the evenings,” Rosemary objected.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, why shouldn’t you both wear blue? I don’t -like to see sisters dressed alike. Besides, will Toppie -come?” Ruth wondered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I believe she will, for Alix’s sake,” said Mrs. Bradley. -“This will be Alix’s dance.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Blue will be much more becoming to you, really, -Rosemary, with your golden hair,” Alix assured her -younger friend, who was looking a little sulky.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you must go and see if you can persuade Toppie -to say she’ll come, Alix,” said Mrs. Bradley.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix saw how much Mrs. Bradley hoped that Toppie -would consent, and Giles, his hands in his pockets, -walked away to the window and looked out. “And -how happy it would make Giles to see her in blue -again,” she thought.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They were all going for tea to the Rectory next day, -but though it was stormy Alix put on her raincoat and -made her way across the common that very afternoon. -So familiar was that path now, so familiar the old gardener, -in holiday attire to-day, touching his hat and -wishing her a happy Christmas, and then Toppie’s face -of welcome at the door, for, seeing her from above, -Toppie herself ran down to open to her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How sweet of you to come! There’s just time to -see you between services. Come in. Happy Christmas, -dear child!” said Toppie.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, Toppie—the emerald! Never have I had so -beautiful an ornament!” Alix exclaimed while Toppie -helped her strip off the streaming coat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And never have I seen a little box as beautiful -as yours,” said Toppie, leading her into the drawing-room. -Alix had made for Toppie a little satin box and -had carefully copied the doves in the laurel-wreathed -basket upon it. “It’s too beautifully done,” said Toppie. -“How did you manage from memory?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I drew the doves one day, quickly, when you went -out, and the colours are easy to carry in one’s head. I -am glad you like it. I am so fond of little boxes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So am I. I love them. I never can have too many -of them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The fire was lighted in the drawing-room, and in the -soft obscurity Toppie with her high golden head looked -like a tall white lighted <span class='it'>cierge</span>; a Christmas <span class='it'>cierge</span> in a -votive chapel of a great cathedral; for though so sweet, -so almost gay, the background to Toppie’s gaiety was -something dedicated and remote.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mine are not very exact. They are too big for the -basket,” said Alix, looking at the doves.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I like them the more for that. I love the way they -overflow,” said Toppie. “Alix, can you guess what I -have put in your box?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They were sitting on the sofa, side by side, and Toppie’s -eyes, sweet, austere, were on her. “His letters -from France. All the letters about you and your -mother.” Alix had not needed to be told. She had -guessed from Toppie’s look. “They just fit it,” said -Toppie. “As if it had been made for them.” And, -leaning forward, she kissed Alix lightly on the forehead. -It felt a little to Alix as though the Virgin in the -votive chapel had stooped down from her altar to kiss -one. It was sweet; and it was also a little frightening. -There was always something about Toppie that almost -frightened her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, Toppie,” she said presently. “I have come -about something very important. I had from Maman -this morning the very dress to go with your brooch; -green and white; the loveliest dress. And Mrs. Bradley -says they will have a dance at Easter so that I can -wear it. And what we all hope is that you will be there. -You will come, will you not, Toppie?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Toppie was looking at her with her cold sweet look -and it did not alter as she smiled and said: “Of course -I’ll come; and sit with Mrs. Bradley and look at you -all.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you would dance, Toppie? And wear pale -blue? It is your colour they say, and I have only seen -you in grey. You must be very lovely in blue.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Must I?” Toppie still smiled, and Alix had long -since divined her to be invulnerable to praise. She -wore her grey to-day; her Sunday grey; and her white -neck and throat, unfreckled, were so fair that, imagining -her in blue, Alix saw her as a birch-tree against the -pale spring sky. But with the cold yet loving look she -shook her head and said: “No; I won’t dance.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, Toppie—No? Do you mean never?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Never,” said Toppie.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You can say that? When you are so young?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It doesn’t need a promise, you know,” said Toppie. -“I don’t have to take a pledge. Some things are for -one time and some things for another. That time is -past. But I’ll come to the dance, of course, and love -seeing you all; and grey, really, has always been my -colour more than blue. I’ve always worn grey,” said -Toppie, smiling; and she went on, leaving that subject -very definitely disposed of: “Tell me what you have -all been doing since I saw you. Tying up parcels? -Your box was so prettily tied.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I like ribbons on <span class='it'>étrennes</span>. And green ribbon seems -to go with Christmas and snow and fir-trees.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ruth and Rosemary had old knotted string round -their parcels, poor dears, and brown paper,” Toppie -remarked. She always showed a certain kindly ruthlessness -in her allusions to the Bradley sisters and Alix -sometimes wondered what, if she had married their -brother, their relations with their gentle but inflexible -sister-in-law would have been. They admired Toppie; -they feared her, a very little, for they were not of a -nature to feel fear easily; but they did not love her. -Already, strange though that was, they were far fonder -of herself than of Toppie, and took her for granted as -part of the family pack.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It was a desperation at the end—for string! And -all the shops shut,” said Alix. “I bought my ribbon -long ago. I had such nice presents from Ruth and -Rosemary. Such patience it must take, to go down two -whole stockings.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good girls,” said Toppie. “And Giles gave you the -writing-case.” Her voice in speaking of Giles was so -much kinder than when he was there—to be kept -away. Alix always felt a little rise of indignation on -Giles’s account when she heard it. It was not as if -Giles ever tried to draw near.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes; a delightful writing-case. I keep finding new -wonderful flaps and pockets in it. Everything is remembered. -And a fountain pen, too. I have never -had one before. It makes one’s thoughts come so much -more easily if one does not have to dip in the middle -of them. I wrote to Maman with it this morning, when -they were all at church. It is very happy for me, being -there with Giles in his study.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He told me that you were one of the very few people -he could imagine having who wouldn’t disturb -him,” said Toppie. “He said you were the most peaceful -person.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Did he? I am so glad. I like so very much being -there— Toppie,” she found herself saying quite suddenly, -“Giles is the kindest person in the world.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Toppie looked at her. “Have you only just found -that out?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, I knew it the first time I saw him, I think. But -he is more than that,” said Alix, feeling the inadequacy -of the word. “He is good. Because he understands. -Some people are only good because they do not understand. -You know what I mean?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perfectly,” Toppie nodded, grave and gentle. -“You see things more clearly than most people, Alix. -That is one of the reasons I am so fond of you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t see them as clearly as Giles does. Giles -would see everything and never fail. It is his courage. -The more there was to see, the more there was to bear, -the more he would be standing there beside you.” It -was strange to her, as she spoke, to feel how deeply she -knew all this about Giles, though she had never before -formulated it to herself. And she added: “And never -would he ask for anything for himself, Toppie.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Toppie considered her, arrested, it was evident; perhaps -a little surprised. “Have you and Giles talked a -great deal? Dear Giles. All that you say is true.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No; we have talked very little.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Toppie continued to observe her. “You can’t talk -too much with him,” she said after a little silence. -“You can’t see too much of him. He’s a rock, Alix, -and you can build on him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You, too, can build on him, Toppie,” said Alix at -this. Something changed in Toppie’s look at that. It -was withdrawal rather than reproof that Alix felt as -Toppie said: “I have built on Giles for years. We have -known each other for a very long time, you see, Alix.”</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>It was only a few days after Christmas that a dreadful -thing happened to Alix; the most dreadful thing that -had ever happened to her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They were all in the drawing-room after dinner—all -except Francis and Jack who had gone to bed;—Ruth -writing, Rosemary altering a blouse and Giles -reading in his accustomed place. Alix sat beside Mrs. -Bradley on the sofa, turned sideways while she held a -skein of wool for her to wind, and she was never to forget -the look of that heather-coloured wool.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Alix,” said Mrs. Bradley suddenly, “how was it -that Owen didn’t see you when he went to Paris on -leave?—that one leave he had; in February last winter. -You must have been away, I think, for he said -nothing of you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix sat there, holding up the wool, and, even as she -faced Mrs. Bradley thus, steadying eyes and lips and -hands, she was aware, though she could only see him -as a blurred form, that Giles, suddenly, was watching -her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Captain Owen’s leave! His one leave! He had come -to Paris three times in that last winter, and the last -had been in April only a fortnight before his death. -And he had never told his family! Why had he not -told them? Why! Why! The clamour of her thoughts -seemed so to fill her ears that it was like sinking in the -sea. She had the sensation of drowning, yet of keeping -calm while she drowned, resourceful, even as she measured -her calamity, and she heard her own voice speaking -from far above her it seemed—while beneath Mrs. -Bradley’s eyes, beneath Giles’s, her thoughts raced -swiftly, swiftly;—“Yes; we should, of course, have -seen him, but we were away; we were away in the -country at that time.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“At Cannes, I suppose,” said Mrs. Bradley. “What -a pity for Owen. How lonely he must have been. He -hadn’t time to come home, you see; only the two days. -And he knew nobody in Paris except the old professor’s -family, where Ruth and Rosemary stayed before -the war.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No; we were not at Cannes; we had gone to the -sea in Normandy,” said Alix. It was in her tradition, -that an emergency should find one resourceful, yet, -had she had time for the reflection, her own swiftness -in resource might now have surprised herself. “Maman -has a little house on the coast that we sometimes go to, -but that she usually lets. We depend very much on -letting it every summer. We went that time in February -to put it in order for the spring. It could not be -helped; tenants were coming early,” said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What a pity,” Mrs. Bradley repeated sadly. “Or -if only he could have managed to go to you there.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You may be sure that we wired at once and suggested -it; but the time was too short,” said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Now she was able, since Mrs. Bradley said no more, -to come to the surface, alive and apparently uninjured, -but to her own consciousness floating like a helpless, -battered object. Something dreadful had happened to -her; she knew that; and to Maman; and to them all. -But she could not see it clearly. Only by degrees, as -Mrs. Bradley wound her last loops of wool and said, -“Thank you, dear,” and her hands could fold again in -her lap, did it come to her that the dreadful thing was -something that Captain Owen had done; and most of -all to Maman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had been with them; staying with them; three -times; the cherished friend; and he had never told his -family. She sat there, very still, and tried to think -why it could have been, and the picture that came to -her was of Captain Owen sitting on one side of the fire -in the little salon of the rue de Penthièvre; sitting as -Giles now sat; looking across at Maman who, her finger -in the pages of a half-closed book, returned his gaze -with a strange sadness. And from this picture, lifting -her eyes, she met Giles’s fixed upon her and saw that -Giles knew, too.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked back at him. All she could do was to -look. To pretend not to see that he knew, to look away -while she pretended, would only be to reveal more -glaringly to him her sense of their mutual misfortune. -Giles, too, knew that Captain Owen had been with -them in Paris; he would not have looked at her like -that if he had not known; with that dark and heavy -look.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I say!” groaned Rosemary, stretching herself -out in her chair with a wide yawn of fatigue, “why was -I such a fool as to take out this sleeve! It was well -enough long, and I’ll never get it in properly again.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I told you to cut it kimono shape; you’d have had -no trouble then,” said Ruth. “Where’s your house in -Normandy, Alix? We were in Houlegate, years ago, -when we were kids. I never thought of you in Normandy -somehow. Only in Cannes, among the orange-trees -you know, romantic child.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is at Vaudettes-sur-Mer,” said Alix. “I like -Normandy better than the Riviera.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I never heard of Vaudettes-sur-Mer,” said Ruth. -“Is it pretty? Has it got a sandy beach?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No; it is <span class='it'>galets</span>, not sand; not until the tide is low; -and Vaudettes is up on the cliff so that one has a -long climb down to get to it. But the village is very -pretty.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Most French seaside villas are such hideous gimcrack -things; worse than ours, I always think. Is your -house an old one?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes; quite old; quite unspoiled. There are no -modern villas yet at Vaudettes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles got up.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are you going to bed, dear?” Mrs. Bradley asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No; I’m going to read in my room.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do we make too much noise?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A little too much. Good-night everybody,” said -Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How tired Giles looks,” said Mrs. Bradley.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He’s grinding too hard at his work,” said Ruth.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix felt that it was not his work. Giles, too, had -had a blow; and he was angry with her; darkly, heavily -angry; why she could not tell. Only her heart swelled -with a suffocating sense of resentment and of tears.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She did not go to the study next morning. She had -thought and thought in the night, and she saw now -that if Giles knew something that she knew, he also -knew something she did not know. She was afraid of -Giles and his knowledge; afraid of what they might -have to say to each other. And she was angry with -him, too, for making her afraid. Pain, dark and mysterious, -pain that seemed to have come to her from his -eyes, pressed upon her. And it made her think of the -suffering that Grand-père’s eyes had conveyed; and of -Maman. What she feared was that he would speak to -her of Maman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She did not go; but Giles came to her. She was curled -up in her scarf on the sofa in the cold drawing-room, -and it made her think of the time that she had waited -at Victoria and Giles had been so late. He was not late -now; he was early; and he said at once, making no -pretence about it: “Come, please, I want to talk to -you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had felt herself angry with Giles, because of the -injustice of his anger towards herself; but as she faced -him in the study, the grey January morning outside -the window, the gas-fire creaking in its dismal mirth -in the grate, her anger went down. She felt pity -for him. He, too, had not slept; he, too, had had a -horrible night; and if he looked at her thus sternly it -was, she saw, more because he was suffering than because -he was angry. He stood before her, his hands -thrust deeply in his pockets, and what he said was: -“Look here, Alix, were you lying last night?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Astonishment almost bereft her of breath. Lying? -Could he have thought it possible that she was not -lying? Could he have thought it possible—turning it -over and over in his mind during the night—that she -did not know about Captain Owen’s leaves? It flashed -across her that, if she could find another lie, now, for -him, and say that she had not been lying, he might believe -her. He would have no knowledge with which to -contradict that lie. But, while she looked at him, feeling -her face getting whiter and whiter, what strangely -came to her was that she could not lie to Giles. It was -better to share whatever pain there was to be shared -with him than to be shut out, with her lie, in loneliness, -if in safety. So, keeping her eyes on him, in a steady -voice she said: “Yes. I was lying.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles at this contemplated her for a long time and it -seemed to be with deep thoughtfulness rather than -with any other feeling.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why?” he said at last.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How could I not?” asked Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How could you not?—You can invent such a -story, in every detail, and then come and ask me how -not? What in Heaven’s name do you mean?” said -Giles. “Have you no sense of truth?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Your mother did not know. Captain Owen never -told your mother.” Alix’s voice was trembling, for she -heard the emotion in his. “Would you have had me -say to her, after he had kept silence, that he had been -with us three times in Paris?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles’s expression altered. “Three times?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. Three. Not the once she thought. That time -in February was the first. He came twice afterwards. -You did not know?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No,” said Giles, “I didn’t know that. I thought it -was only the once.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He stopped. He stopped for a long time after saying -this and suddenly she saw the blood mounting to his -face. He became, slowly, crimson. He did not know -what to say. Oh, poor Giles, what was this horrible -perplexity that so darkened his good face when all that -he had to tell her, when it finally came, was so simple? -“I wasn’t in the same part of the front as he was. I -didn’t follow what he did. It was by chance that I saw -him in Paris, that time in February. I had a leave, too. -And I saw him there, walking in the Bois with your -mother.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles had seen Maman! Alix felt herself grow dim -with perplexity. She looked about her and sank down -on a chair before her little writing-table. “Did you -not speak to them?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, I didn’t speak to them.” Giles stood there, in -his helplessness, before her. “I thought they wanted -to be alone.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But Maman would so have wished to know you. -I do not see why you did not speak. Yes. I remember -that they went to the Bois. He was with us all the -time, you see. He stayed with us,” said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Poor Giles. How overwhelming was his plight! -Could shame for his brother’s inexplicable duplicity, -shame for his own strange silence, that day in the -Bois, account for such confusion? “Yes. I was -afraid you were lying,” was all he found to mutter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you knew. You knew, and yet you kept it -from your mother. It was for her sake that you kept it -from her. It was for her sake I lied. What else could I -do?” said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you often lie like that? I mean—the house on -the cliff;—the <span class='it'>galet</span> beach; the wire you sent him to -come to you in Normandy;—were they all invented?” -Giles ignored the question of his complicity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Some were invented and some not.” Alix tried to -steady her thoughts so that she might satisfy Giles as -to this point—so irrelevant a point it seemed to her. -“I do not think I could have invented it all so quickly. -We have the little house at Vaudettes. We often go -there. But of course we were not there then. I do not -think I often lie. Only when it is necessary; like this.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles’s eyes studied her. “And if you had spoken the -truth last night—the whole truth—as you know it—what -would you have said?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But what I have said to you, Giles. That he was -with us three times. That all his leaves were with us;—the -last a fortnight before he was killed. Was it not -better that I should lie to her than that she should -know her son had been disloyal to her—as well as to -my mother?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles, while she spoke, had put up his hand to rub -in perplexity through his hair; now it paused. “To -your mother?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Was it not a great wrong he did her, too?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How do you mean?” Giles’s voice was short and -sharp.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It came over her with a wave of old bitterness that -this was an aspect of the question he had too much -ignored. “Does my mother’s dignity not count? It -was as if he had something to hide in their friendship; -as if he were ashamed. That was to do her a great -wrong. He owed Maman so much. She had been home -to him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The memory of all that he owed Maman, the lonely -young soldier; fireside talks; happy walks; plays, pictures, -people; the lavishing of all she had to give;—the -best, was it not, that life had to show?—struck -too deeply at her, and suddenly she felt her eyes fill -with tears. For Giles, too, made part of the wrong to -Maman. His silence had had its complicity. It was as -if he, too, tacitly, had helped Captain Owen to hide -something of which he, too, was ashamed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know, I know,” Giles muttered. He saw her -tears and he was dreadfully troubled. “Of course she -was most awfully good to him.—I mean—I can’t -imagine why he said nothing—I can’t imagine why.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But wasn’t he lying now? He who had not spoken -to his brother and to Maman in the Bois? The sharp -tangle of her thoughts hurt her. She leaned her elbows -on the table and her forehead on her hands. “I don’t -understand,” she said, keeping herself from crying.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Poor little kid! Poor little kid!” broke as if irresistibly -from Giles. He was almost crying, too. He walked -up and down behind her. She felt that he would have -liked to kiss and comfort her as if she had been Ruth -or Rosemary. But, turning away at last, he dropped -into his chair before the fire and for a long time they -were both silent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Look here, Alix,” he said suddenly at last. He had, -it was evident, been thinking things out to quite new -conclusions. “I wasn’t quite straight with you just -now, and I want to be straight with you. I want you -to be straight with me. Will you promise me to? Will -you promise not to lie to me, ever?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ever? How can I tell?” said Alix from between -her hands. “It is sometimes necessary; if someone -one loves is concerned.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well,” Giles reflected on her proviso and, apparently, -accepted it, “I can know you’ll <span class='it'>want</span> to tell me -the truth, can’t I?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. Oh, yes, Giles.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good. I believe you’ll come to see it’s always better. -Even in a hateful puzzle like this, perhaps. Well, -then, I’ll begin. I wasn’t straight just now. I <span class='it'>can</span> -imagine why Owen didn’t tell us about those Paris -leaves. And I think it best you should be able to imagine -it, too. It was because of Toppie.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Toppie?” Alix echoed faintly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles’s back was turned to her as he sat before the -fire. She could not see his face as he went on: “Yes, -Toppie. They were engaged. They loved each other. -You’ve seen what Toppie feels about him now. He is -her past and he is her present; and her future, too. -There’s nobody in the world for her but him. Well. -That’s it. Can you imagine Toppie, while he was away -in France, seeing as much of another man as Owen saw -of your mother?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix sat staring at the back of Giles’s head. “She -was not alone; in a strange country. Why should he -not find a little peace and happiness with a friend?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I know. That seems all right. But why didn’t -he come home and see Toppie? He could have managed -to get one leave for England, instead of three for Paris; -almost certainly, if he’d wanted to. And put all that -aside. The worst thing of all, the thing that would -shatter Toppie’s life if she could know it, is that he -kept quiet about the last two leaves, and never wrote -to any of us that he’d been with you and your mother -for the first. What would Toppie feel if she could -know that? I ask you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You mean,” said Alix, pressing her forehead on her -hands and staring, now, down at the table, “that he -cared most for Maman?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Doesn’t it look like it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She tried to think. “He would have come back to -Toppie after the war. It was perhaps because of the -war. He did not know, those times he came to us, that -it was the end.” The new, strange shapes of things -Giles had set before her were mingling irrefutably -with all her memories, and the memory of last night -returned to her. Captain Owen and Maman on either -side of the fire. Captain Owen’s dwelling eyes. How -much he had cared for Maman! Oh, how much! And, -trying to answer her own thoughts, she went on: -“Maman did not care most for him. I do not think so. -She cared very much. His death was a great blow. -But so many people care for Maman. He could have -come back to Toppie; Maman would not have kept -him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When she had said this, it was as if the silence between -her and Giles was altered in its quality. He -said nothing for so long a time that the echoes of her -own words began to sing in her head like brazen bells. -They were true words. Yet they did not ring true. -Long before Giles spoke, she wished she had not said -them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you think,” he said, “that Toppie would have -cared to marry a man who hadn’t been kept from marrying -her?” How dreadful was Giles’s voice. Dark -and heavy, as his eyes had been last night.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No; no, Giles. I do not mean that. I am sorry. -Not that. It was of Maman I was thinking. You -think of Toppie and I think of Maman; the ones we -love most. No; I see that she would not have married -him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You <span class='it'>do</span> see, Alix. That’s all I wanted. You see -why he didn’t tell us. And that’s all we need say about -it. He was my brother, and I was awfully fond of him. -But he was very wrong. He did a great wrong. And -you have lied for our sakes, and we’ve profited by it; -if it is profit. All I pray is that you’ll never feel you -have to lie, for anyone’s sake, again. There. That’s -over. We’ll get to work. Have you everything you -want?” Giles got up and took his pipe from the mantelpiece -and his tobacco-pouch from his pocket. “And -don’t let me ever see you afraid to come in here in the -morning. It made me feel quite queer to find you -crouched away in the cold as if I’d been an ogre.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I thought you were angry with me, Giles; and I -thought I was angry with you. It makes me angry, -always, at once, if I think people are displeased with -me unfairly. I am like that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Jolly well it may have made you angry. Of course -I was fairly sick about your lying; and the house on the -cliff; and the wire to Owen; on the top of everything -else.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And even the house might have been a lie, you -know,” said Alix, looking up at him. “If it had needed -to be invented, and if I could have invented it in time.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m afraid it could. Yes; that’s what I thought. -And it made me feel sick. But you’ve promised me -about lies, haven’t you; and you must promise me, besides, -that if you’re ever angry you’ll come and tell me -so. To work, then,” said Giles, and he dropped into -his chair and took up Bergson.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix did not take up her pen. She sat above her -paper, but she knew that the last thing she could think -of doing that morning was to write to Maman. She -might be able to read the book about birds, by Hudson, -that Giles had given her, and she drew it towards -her and opened it; but soon found she could not read. -Her heart seemed to be trembling and her blood trembling. -All her mind was shaken; and the picture that -flashed, disappeared, and flashed again, was always -that memory of Captain Owen’s eyes as he gazed -across at Maman from his place before the fire. It was -not Maman’s fault. How could she have averted, how -could she have avoided such a devotion? A sense of -intolerable grief broke down her silence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Giles,” she said suddenly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What?” He put down his book at once. He, -too, was not really reading. Perhaps his heart was -trembling, too.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“May I say one thing more?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All right.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is Maman, Giles. It is what you think of her. -Perhaps I am always angry with you, because of what -you think of her. Let me say it now, then. He cared -for her most. But if you knew her you would understand; -you would not blame her; perhaps you would -not blame him so much.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles had turned in his chair and was looking at her -over his shoulder, in deep astonishment. “I’ve never -said a word against your mother, Alix,” he said in a -low voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is worse than words, Giles. I am not so stupid. -You put her out. You will not look at her. But if you -could see her you would understand. Maman never -asks for anything. Why should she? She only gives.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have seen her, you know,” said Giles. In sudden, -intense uneasiness, distress, even, he got up and walked -away to the window and stood there, his back to her, -looking out.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Did that explain nothing?” said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She is very beautiful,” said Giles. “I never saw -anyone so beautiful.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, more, much more than that. How could he -help caring for her? How can one govern one’s love for -people? I do not mean that he was right. But he had -always known Toppie, had he not? While Maman was -something quite strange to him. And one thinks most, -perhaps, of what is strange. Oh, I do not forget Toppie. -But it would not have been to keep him true to -Toppie, if she had sent him away.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She is very beautiful,” Giles repeated, almost -dully; as if that were all he could find to say.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, Giles, if you could only know her!” said Alix. -It was possible to speak like this to him now. And his -back was turned to her and that made it easier. She -leaned her forehead on her hands and looked down at -the table while she went on: “Let me tell you what -Maman makes me think of always. A mountain torrent. -We have them in the mountains near Montarel. -So swift, and dark, and clear, with such deep pools -among the rocks; and such great leaps. Oh, more than -beautiful! I saw an eagle once when I was kneeling by -a pool. As I looked down into the water, it was as if I -looked down into the sky and there was an eagle, -wheeling in the blue—far, far below me. It gave me -the strangest feeling; like Maman sometimes. And her -lovely, small things; like the little pinks and campanulas -that grow along the banks; so sweet and tiny; and -little <span class='it'>mésanges</span> with bright blue heads, hanging upside -down in the birches. There is no one like her. Everyone -else is still and dull beside her. Who could help -loving her? Toppie would love her, I am sure. You -would love her, too, Giles, if you knew her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had turned, while she spoke, and was looking at -her and, lifting her head, she met his eyes and saw how -deeply she had touched him. Deeply touched, deeply -troubled, Giles looked across at her; but she saw that -he was thinking of her and not of Maman. It was as if -he were so sorry for her, and so fond of her, that he -hardly knew what to say. And what he did say at last -was: “You are rather like a mountain torrent yourself; -eagles and campanulas and all!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I? Oh, no.” She was glad that Giles should think -that of her, but it was of Maman she wanted him to -think. “I am one of the still ones; one of the dull ones, -beside Maman. And I never have great shattering -leaps.” She looked away from Giles as she saw further -into her simile, saw things she wanted him—oh! so -wanted him—to see and understand. “Let me tell -you, Giles. When one loves her, that is what one fears -for her—those great leaps down from the rocks. So -splendid; so bright and splendid; but so dangerous. -There is danger for her always. When one loves her, -that is what one fears.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He said nothing. He stood there, leaning back -against the window. Never in her life had she so spoken -to anybody. For no one but this young Englishman, -so lately a stranger, could she have found such -words. They rose up from her heart unbidden, and the -impulse beneath them was the deepest impulse of her -life. More than the child’s love for its mother. There -was in it a maternal love, watchful and succouring, for -a creature cherished and in peril.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had not looked back at Giles, and he came presently -to her table and stood above her, moving the -objects upon it here and there, as if he could not find -the words to use. And at last he said: “You are right -to love your mother. Never think I don’t understand -that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perhaps we both love in the same way, Giles,” -said Alix, still not looking at him. “You think of Toppie—and -I think of Maman—perhaps in the same -way.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles stood very still. Then he said gently: “Perhaps -we do. I feel Toppie in danger; in dreadful danger -of being hurt; if that’s what you mean.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, that is what I mean. And I can help you with -Toppie. I can help you to keep the things that would -hurt her from her. And perhaps, some day, if the time -came, you would help me with Maman.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles had ceased to move the inkstand and candle-sticks. -He put his hands in his pockets. “What do you -think of as her danger, Alix?” he brought out.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix had to think; it was not a new wonder; but she -seemed to feel it newly, now that Giles was there to -help her with it. “Perhaps you see it, Giles,” she suggested. -“Is it something in her nature? Is it because -she left my father? Perhaps you see the danger I can -only fear. You give me that feeling sometimes. I am -so much younger than you. There are things I do not -understand.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. I see. Yes.” Giles stood there. “You trust -me with it all, then.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I trust you with everything, Giles.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You help me, and I’ll help you if ever I get the -chance. I’ll not forget, Alix.” He put out his hand as -he said these words and Alix felt that their clasp was on -a pact. Yet, as he turned from her and went back to -his chair, she had still the feeling that it was of her, not -of Maman, that he was thinking. It was as if he saw -<span class='it'>her</span> in danger.</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>It was evident to Alix, thinking and thinking of it in -the day and night that followed her talk with Giles, -that the best way of helping him was not to be there at -all. The greater the distance between her and Maman’s -life and Toppie’s life, the safer would Toppie be. She -should never, oh, never, have come at all, and Maman -would never have let her could she have known that -Captain Owen had kept that inculpating silence. But -she could not tell Maman of that now. If Toppie must -not be hurt, neither must Maman. It would hurt her, -terribly, even if she, like Giles, saw at once the reason -for it. But she wrote to Maman the next morning, sitting -there behind Giles, and begged that she might -come home.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had been long enough in England, she said. It -was not that she was unhappy; they were all too kind -for that. But it was not her life. She was a sea-fish—Alix -found the simile, feeling that it would be helpful -with Maman—and they were river-fishes, and she -was not comfortable in their water. <span class='it'>Je vous supplie, -Maman chérie, laissez-moi revenir.</span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>Eight days passed before Maman’s answer arrived. -It was decisive. She could not think of having Alix -back till Spring. It was everything to her to know that -her darling was benefiting by all the advantages of -Heathside. Even had there not been the wretched -question of money, she would have chosen to have her -there and Alix must not fret; how far less trying it was -for her to be at Heathside with such good friends than -if, like so many <span class='it'>jeunes filles de son âge</span>, she had been in -a convent. As for herself, she was starting in a few days -with friends for a little trip to Italy and would not be -back in Paris till April or May. Maman was evidently -preoccupied, yet determined. There was nothing for it -but to submit.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A few days after this, Alix and Giles and Mrs. Bradley -motored to Oxford. She did not enjoy the drive. -It was sad to be losing Giles. She did not know how -she would find Heathside without him. The cold, grey -day matched her mood, and as they entered the mean, -modern streets of Oxford, at dusk, she thought that -she had never seen so <span class='it'>triste</span> a town and wondered that -it could harbour beauty and antiquity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles’s rooms, however, were amusing. They belonged -to another world. One went through old courtyards -where the stone was peeling in great flakes from -the walls, up narrow stone staircases, winding and -winding, with names on the doors one passed, and -found oneself at last, high up, overlooking a quadrangle -of green, in a solid, pleasant room which might -have been waiting for Giles during the years of his absence, -so expressive of his personality were the blazing -fire, the deep chairs, even the blue-and-white tea-cups -that waited on the central table.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The books and pictures were to go up next day; but -even so the room was cheerful, and a wise, middle-aged -man, whom Alix at first, in some bewilderment, took to -be a professor lending himself to friendly offices, perhaps -in some English ritual of self-effacement, brought -in an excellent tea.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He’s what we call a scout,” Giles, smiling, explained -to her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not a Boy Scout!” Alix exclaimed. It was very -confusing, and Giles had to explain it further.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She and Mrs. Bradley slept that night at lodgings in -the town and Alix made her first acquaintance with the -English lodging-house bed. There was no <span class='it'>sommier</span> and -the mattress seemed to be filled with potatoes. One -wound oneself among the lumps and contrived at last -to sleep.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They helped Giles with his books and pictures next -morning, and in the afternoon he said he must show her -Oxford while his mother shopped. It was raining. -Giles had on a raincoat turned up about his ears, and -so had she. She had never seen so many bicycles, and -from under a dripping umbrella, after one had dodged -them, she found the Gothic quadrangles and deep -emerald gardens, the meditative swans gliding, at -Worcester, on the water, and the mist-washed vistas of -the High, all <span class='it'>triste</span>. She was depressed at the thought -of leaving Giles behind in such a damp, crumbling -place where it was, indeed, natural to think of philosophers -drinking hemlock, and where only in the refuge -of one’s own room with the wise scout to take care of -one, might one find a sense of warmth and cheerfulness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You can’t very well imagine how jolly all this is on -a fine day,” said Giles: “when the sun comes out, you -know, and the distances are blue, and the stone golden, -and the gardens full of flowers.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was sad, too, Alix felt, though he tried to speak -cheerfully and the day was unbecoming to him as to -everything else. He looked a gaunt, uncouth student, -his nose projecting under his cap and his eyes making -Alix think, in their meditative melancholy, of the -swans. He would, of course, be missing Toppie.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All the women wear velour hats of the same shape,” -she observed as they made their way along the High. -“All turn up behind and down in front. Now I would -turn mine down behind and up in front—with a very -slight curve to the side; the line is better. And for <span class='it'>costumes -tailleurs</span> it is so needful that the skirt should hang -evenly.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is it?” said Giles with a gloomy grin. “I’m showing -you the architecture, not the clothes of Oxford.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are they all the wives of philosophers?” Alix inquired, -and the question indubitably interested her -more than the architecture.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A good many of them are, no doubt,” laughed -Giles. “Do you wonder if my wife will look like that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix had a sudden vision of Toppie in the rainy High -Street. Yes, even dear Toppie would sink, she felt, -into the fatal sameness, embody the type. She could -see her, slender, in her wet grey tweed, speeding on a -bicycle in just such a velour hat. They, too, were perhaps -Toppies if one could have a careful look at them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you intend to live in Oxford, Giles?” she inquired.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’d like to.—Here is Magdalen and the tower. -Let’s cross the bridge so that you can see the tower.—It’s -where I want to live.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They crossed the bridge and he told her about the -tower and the May morning ceremony.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It must be very charming, very gay,” said Alix. -“And would you care to marry soon?” The question, -she knew, was academic, merely. There could be no -hope of marriage for Giles as long as Toppie thought -only of Captain Owen. But they could both pretend.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I couldn’t marry soon.” Giles was still laughing, -though evidently a little disconcerted by her lack of -appreciation. “I’ve no money.” He led her off to -Christ Church meadows.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“None at all, Giles?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, only enough to have a very dowdy wife. -To buy her a better hat and a smarter <span class='it'>costume tailleur</span> -I’d need a great deal more.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But Captain Owen was to marry.” Alix ventured -it. It was all so remote.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles felt it so. He elucidated the financial differences -of the family. “We’ve all got a little. He went -into the city, into stock-broking, and was making a -very good thing of it. He could very well afford to -marry.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And do you not care for stock-broking?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No; I care for philosophy. Unlucky for my wife, -isn’t it, Alix?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I do not know. Perhaps not if she had taste. One -can do so much with very little money if one has taste. -But would they know—the others—if she had to live -in Oxford, that her hats and dresses were different?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh—I expect women always know that—even -the wives of philosophers!” laughed Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In spite of her æsthetic deficiencies, she felt that she -kept up his spirits.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For tea they went to a professor friend—a real professor -this time—who had known Mrs. Bradley’s -father. Everybody seemed to have known Mrs. Bradley’s -father. He lived in the Banbury Road with two -unmarried daughters, and was old but robust and -bearded and jovial, and he kept a hand on Giles’s -shoulder for a long time and promised Mrs. Bradley -good things of him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles stood and smiled and promised nothing. She -had an impression of his strength and self-knowledge.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Monsieur le professeur’s daughters were middle-aged -ladies with lean red faces and grey hair strained -tightly back above their ears and clothes of which all -that could be said was that they were warm and clean. -So tall, so spare they were, the pair of them, so rigid -and with such ingenuous eyes, that they made Alix -think of the elongated figures on the western portals of -Chartres; only the Misses Cockburn were not beautiful -in their strangeness and had none of the exquisite -<span class='it'>chinoiserie</span> of aspect upon which Maman and monsieur -Villanelle had discoursed on that summer afternoon -when they had visited the great cathedral. How it all -rushed over her as she sat at the little table Miss Jennifer -had placed for her near the window! She saw -them all three, Maman in white under her white sunshade, -in the hot French sunlight before the sublime -object. Up into the blue it went, august, almost terrifying, -so beautiful that it made one want to cry. And -as they had wandered in and out, into the vast, illuminated -darkness where the rose windows hung like -apparitions, out into the fretted portals with the sunlight -washing up their steps, Maman had told her of a -Queen Alix who had borne a part in its history. Her -heart contracted as she remembered it all. Maman -might have been one of those queens. She so belonged -to Chartres. When Chartres was in one’s blood, what -could one feel for Oxford?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had time for these comparisons. The Misses -Cockburn were kind, but they paid no attention to her -beyond carefully feeding her; as if, she reflected, she -had been a pet dog led in by Mrs. Bradley. People in -England, she had already surmised, did not feel an obligation -to entertain, further than by feeding, other -people’s friends.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She sat and ate her scone and drank her tea and -looked out at a laburnum-tree and a hawthorn-tree, all -leafless and dripping on the background of ornamental -red brick opposite. All the houses were of red brick -and all so singularly alike in spite of their adventurous -excrescences. “<span class='it'>Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose</span>,” -thought Alix, as she watched the tea-time lights come -out in the bow-windows with Gothic points over them, -and felt that they held learned, innocent people who -would not be disconcerted by anything that happened -in the universe. She had never seen a place that -seemed to her quite so safe as the Banbury Road. And -yet such safety made part of the <span class='it'>tristesse</span>. Dieu! how -<span class='it'>triste</span> it was! How dreadful it would be to be caught -and imprisoned there.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Miss Grace came to draw the curtain and asked Alix -if she were warm and Alix said she was. Giles seemed -quite at home, seemed, indeed, part of it, lifting the -scones from the little brass stand before the fire, talking -about municipal elections to Miss Jennifer and -about the Bach Choir to Miss Grace. With Giles as the -link of identity between them, she saw that Heathside -was part of the Banbury Road, too. Even Giles seemed -far away as the sense of alienation grew within her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then as she sat there, alone, apart, the throb of a -big motor came up to the gate, and a moment afterwards -a lady was among them who, by her presence, -dispelled the sense of loneliness. It might have been -into Maman’s salon that she came, so vivid was Alix’s -sense of knowing what she would do and say and of -liking both beforehand. All furs and pearls and softness, -and such sweet smiles, she was one of the people -who could see and blow and catch the soap-bubbles, -the beautiful, impalpable things of human intercourse, -and while she talked to monsieur le professeur, she cast -mild, bright glances at Giles, at Mrs. Bradley, at herself. -Alix saw that it was at herself that she looked -most, and presently, when the lady and Mrs. Bradley -talked, Mrs. Bradley called her to them, and holding -her hand, scanning her face, the lady said she knew -her name. “It’s there behind me; where I don’t quite -know;—in an old letter; a volume of <span class='it'>mémoires</span>; an -ancestor of mine, I feel it must have been, who knew a -Mouveray in Paris before the Revolution. Yes, that -was it. It comes back to me. A comte Henri de Mouveray.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix remembered, too. “He was guillotined at Lyon. -He was a great-uncle of Grand-père’s.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And where is Grand-père?” asked Lady Mary -Hamble, for such was her name. “Do you live with -him?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix told her that she had lived with him; but that -he was dead. “I live with my mother in Paris,” she -said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When Lady Mary was gone, Alix felt herself -scanned by Miss Grace and Miss Jennifer as if from -a spaniel she had altered to a monkey; not more interesting, -but more curious. Monsieur le professeur -still didn’t see her at all. He brushed aside Lady -Mary and went on talking about Relativity to Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes; was it not strange?” said Alix, as, in Giles’s -rooms again, Mrs. Bradley commented on the romantic -encounter. “There was his portrait at Montarel, -that Henri de Mouveray. So grave yet so gay a face, -blue-eyed, and with dark hair.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Like you, Alix,” said Mrs. Bradley, and Alix remembered -that he was like her; very.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And to think that someone so near you was guillotined -at Lyon,” Mrs. Bradley mused. “He could have -known your grandfather.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. If he had not been guillotined, if he had lived -long enough, he could have.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t you think Lady Mary very lovely, Giles?” -said Mrs. Bradley. “She must be as old as I am, I suppose; -yet how lovely.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She’s not nearly as lovely as you are,” said Giles, -poking the fire.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Bradley laughed at the absurdity. “That’s -loyal—but not accurate, my dear.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She’s very pretty, and she’s never had a doubt. -She’s always felt that she was lovely and that everyone -thought her lovely, and I suppose that preserves -the complexion,” said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But if everyone thinks one so, is it not likely that -one is lovely?” Alix inquired. “And if one is so, why -should one not think so oneself?” She considered that -Giles was captious.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No one is as right in every way as she thinks herself,” -said Giles. “No one can be so smooth without -being artificial. She’s awfully nice, I’m sure; but for -beauty, give me Mummy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It would not be polite to contradict him, but Alix, -too, thought Giles absurd.</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER X</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>She and Mrs. Bradley motored home together next -day. It had stopped raining and the air had the unexpected -softness that mid-winter in England can mitigatingly -display. Alix had never yet seen so much of -Mrs. Bradley as on this drive. She was the most occupied -person; she was always immersed in occupations; -and to have her beside one, with nothing to occupy -her except driving the car, was to see her with a -new completeness. Mrs. Bradley was only not intimate -because absorbed in affairs remote from her own interests. -She was not even intimate with her own children, -for Alix could not remember ever having heard her -talk with them about herself. She tenderly took them -for granted and took for granted—too much, Alix -considered—their capacity for directing their own -lives once the main lines were laid out for them. But -to-day, with its sense of interlude, no papers to read, -no committees to attend, it was as if without becoming -intimate she became confiding. It touched Alix to -hear her. It touched her because she felt that Mrs. -Bradley must so often need to confide and would not -know it. She talked to her about Giles. “I know he’ll -do well. I know he will be useful. Giles will always -pull his weight wherever he is,” she said, and the conception -of life as a boat where one’s meaning consisted -in pulling one’s weight was a very new one to Alix. -When his mother so spoke, she saw Giles sitting, half -stripped, in the chilly English air, grey water beneath, -grey sky above, bent to the oars among comrades and -ready for the word of command. That was what his -mother desired for him; that strenuous, rigorous life. -Maman did not think of life like that. She wanted no -rigours for her child. She didn’t care a bit about her -being useful. Other people were to be of use to her and -she was to enjoy herself. That was Maman’s idea.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ve seen, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Bradley, her -gentle eyes fixed before her as she drove, “how fond -he is of Toppie. It’s always been so. He’s never -thought of anybody else. Even before she and Owen -fell in love with each other. I’ve sometimes wondered—I’ve -sometimes wished—” Mrs. Bradley’s voice -dropped to a musing uncertainty.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Giles was much younger than Captain Owen, was -he not?” said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not so much younger. He is a year older than Toppie. -Twenty-five. But it wasn’t that. She would, I’m -afraid, never have thought of him, with Owen there. -Perhaps she had always been too sure of him and taken -him too much for granted, while with Owen, until he -did, at last, fall in love with her, she was never sure. -He was fond of several people, you see, before he was -fond of Toppie. I’m afraid she suffered, poor darling. -And that’s what one feels,” Mrs. Bradley mused on, -while Alix knew a growing discomfort in hearing her. -“Owen could have been happy with so many girls; it -wasn’t, with him, the one great thing only; whereas -with Giles it was.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And perhaps if she had married him,” said Alix, -her thoughts held by that sense of something painful, -twisted, difficult to see plainly, “she would have suffered -even more. If he continued to be fond of other -people.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, but that couldn’t have been after they were -married!” Mrs. Bradley exclaimed, and with a shock -of surprise in her voice, while her eyes, almost scared -by the suggestion, turned to scan the meditative face -of the little French girl beside her. “That couldn’t -have been after he loved her at last; after they were -engaged. Oh, no; Owen would have been faithful, always.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But all men are not faithful, are they?” Alix commented, -keeping her eyes before her and her voice -quiet and impersonal. She felt that she would like to -know what Mrs. Bradley thought on this subject. Had -not Giles’s horror been somewhat misplaced? “So -many wives, I mean, from what one hears, have unfaithful -husbands.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Bradley continued to scan her and with even -more alarm.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I hope you don’t hear of such dreadful things, -dear child. No good husband is unfaithful.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is it so very dreadful? Can one govern one’s heart? -I see that it is different for a wife,” said Alix. “She is -at home and has the children. But a man—out in the -world—May he not form many attachments without -so much blame?—I do not understand these things, -but I cannot see why it is so dreadful.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are too young, dear, to understand them. Yet -even you, I am sure, can imagine how terrible it would -be to know that your husband, whom you loved and -trusted, loved other people.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It might be very sad.” Alix considered the remote -contingency. “I see that it might make me sad—if I -loved him very much. But I should have the children, -the <span class='it'>foyer</span>. And then he might still love me most, while -loving others, too. Do you not find that possible, here -in England? In France, I am sure, we do not feel it so -strange a thought.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We feel it strange; very strange and dreadful,” -said Mrs. Bradley with as much vehemence as she ever -displayed on any subject. “And you will, too, I am -sure, darling, when you are older and understand what -it means to trust someone with your life.—No, no; -such a thing would have been impossible with Owen -and Toppie. All that I meant was that his love was -different in quality from Giles’s. Giles’s nature, in -some ways, is deeper than dear Owen’s was.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, yes. Deeper. One feels that at once,” Alix murmured, -while the thought, seen at last clearly, pierced -her through that Giles was held from his happiness by -an illusion since Toppie might not have cared for Captain -Owen had she known how much he cared for -Maman. “Perhaps in time she will come to see what -Giles is and love him. Do you not think so?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s what I hope for more than anything, Alix,” -said Mrs. Bradley. “Giles has had such a sad life. You -wouldn’t think it, perhaps. He doesn’t show it, unless -one knows him very well. Even as a little boy I always -felt him rather frustrated and sad. He adored -Owen, who didn’t pay much attention to him; and -he adored Toppie who never gave him a hope. And -then the war came and ended his youth and he saw -worse things than Owen saw. He saw the worst -things. His best friends were killed beside him. He -went through everything. They all had to face the -problem of it, the boys like Giles. It was never such -a problem to men like Owen. They accepted it and -didn’t try to understand. Giles hasn’t been embittered, -as some of our young men have; but there is -such a weight of grief on his heart. I feel it always. I -so long for some happiness to come to him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was all true. Alix had seen it in Giles’s face. Under -his vehemence, his gaiety, he carried dark memories in -his heart; and there were darknesses his mother did not -know of. Perhaps it helped him to be less lonely that -she should know of them and that they should be her -darknesses, too. It gave Alix courage to bear the -weight of perplexity and fear, during the winter, to feel -that she shared the weight with Giles. She missed him -so much at Heathside; yet he was there, too, in her -sense that she was helping him with Toppie, that she, -too, was shielding Toppie from hurt.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He wrote to her, and though he did not ask her for -news of Toppie, she knew that was what he wanted -and gave him every detail when she answered. Toppie -went away to Bath at the end of February, but until -then Alix sent Giles her bulletins. She and Toppie -often walked together; they read together, too; and -she often made Toppie laugh with her stories about -the people at Montarel, the funny things they did and -said. Giles was told of all this, and about the Greater -Spotted Woodpecker that she and Toppie saw in the -birch-woods, tapping with stealthy fierceness at a tree-trunk, -beautiful in his Chinese white and black and -vermilion; and about Jock who always came with them -on their walks and had really adopted her as his most -authentic mistress. She had not much to say about -the High School and Ruth and Rosemary. But then it -was Toppie Giles wanted to hear of.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Spring came at last, the early flowers, the returning -birds, Toppie back from Bath and the Easter holidays -hovering on a near horizon. And one day at tea-time -Mrs. Bradley handed her a letter she had just received -from Lady Mary Hamble, a letter in its unexpectedness -and sweetness that was like the Spring. Could -Mrs. Bradley lend Alix to them for a week-end, Lady -Mary asked. There were to be young people in the -house and a little dance and they would all enjoy -having her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At first, in her pleasure, strangely compounded of a -sense of relief, escape, and the soft breath of a familiar -balm wafted towards her, Alix did not notice the dates. -Then, after Mrs. Bradley had said, “How delightful; -of course you must go, dear,” she saw that the Monday -of Lady Mary’s dance was the Monday of Mrs. Bradley’s; -the dance to which Toppie had promised to come; -the dance for which Giles would be back; the dance to -show her white taffeta dress; <span class='it'>her</span> dance; the invitations -all out and all accepted. “But our dance is on that -Monday,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It can’t be helped,” said Mrs. Bradley. “We’ll -have to give another smaller one some day later on. I -don’t think you ought to miss the much prettier dance -at Lady Mary’s. You have us always, you see, dear.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But Giles.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Giles doesn’t really count at a dance,” smiled Mrs. -Bradley. “And he will be at home all the holidays. -You won’t be missing Giles.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Toppie was with them, and she smiled, too, looking -at Alix and said: “You’re right not to go. Giles will be -coming home that very Saturday. You couldn’t miss -his coming home even if you did miss the dance.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But she really mustn’t miss the week-end at Cresswell -Abbey,” said Mrs. Bradley. “It’s such a lovely -place, I’ve always heard. And she’ll be back on Tuesday.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They’ll ask her another time,” said Toppie. “People -would ask Alix another time,” and she smiled on at -her young friend, well pleased with her, Alix saw.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course they’ll ask her, Mummy!” cried Ruth -who, with Rosemary, had sat transfixed with indignation -while the invitation was thus discussed. “And it -makes no difference if they don’t. Who are the Hambles, -anyway! What does Alix care about them? She -doesn’t know them and doesn’t want to. I’ve seen -your Lady Mary’s picture in the ‘Daily Mirror’—drooping -around with bare shoulders and a plume and -pretending not to know she’s being snapped. I hate -such empty-headed creatures, and Alix would be bored -stiff by them. Of course she can’t go! Of course she -must be here for our dance!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix was quite sure that she would not be bored by -Lady Mary; but she was also sure that she could not -go. No one at Heathside would appreciate the white -taffeta as Lady Mary would. There would be no one -at the Heathside dance she would like as much, she -felt sure of it, as those young people at Cresswell Abbey—no -one, that is, except Giles; and he, as his -mother had said, truly she felt sure, did not count at -dances; but all the same she could not go, and Ruth -and Rosemary might think, if they pleased, that it was -for their reasons.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She did not tell Giles in her next letter about the -visit to Cresswell Abbey; but when he came home, -Ruth told him, the first thing, at tea-time, all assembled -as they were in the drawing-room, Toppie and -herself in their accustomed places on the sofa beside -Mrs. Bradley, and Ruth sitting on the arm of her -brother’s chair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Only think of it, Giles! Mummy actually thought -she ought to go, because Cresswell Abbey is such a -lovely place! The day of our dance, mind you! Toppie’s -cousins here and all!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles seemed taken aback. “The week-end? She’d -have been going to-day,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And missed your coming home, Giles! As if she -<span class='it'>could</span>!” cried Rosemary.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And Amy expecting her puppies any day now,” -said Jack. “I thought they’d have come this morning. -She’d want to see them as soon as they were born, -wouldn’t you, Alix?—only we must be very careful -not to look at them too often. Amy’s awfully nervous -when she has her pups.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mummy,” said Giles, eyeing his contented sisters, -“you ought to have made her go. Alix is over here to -see England, all she can of it. And she really doesn’t -see so very much of it with us, you know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I did my best, dear,” said Mrs. Bradley, pouring -out her tea. “She quite refused. And Toppie aided -and abetted her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. I aided and abetted her, Giles,” said Toppie, -and she smiled now at him with more sweetness than -Alix had ever yet seen on her face for Giles. “She can -go another time to Lady Mary’s.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, one never knows about that,” Giles murmured. -But now he was thinking more about Toppie’s smile -than about Alix’s frustrated visit.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Didn’t you want to go to Cresswell Abbey?” he -asked Alix next morning in the study, and with the -question the time of their separation collapsed and, his -eyes on hers, she felt him near and familiar once more, -concerned, as always, for her welfare.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That was it. He understood that it might have given -her so much pleasure and Ruth and Rosemary didn’t -understand that at all. And he wanted her to have -gone because he wanted her to have pleasure. He was -like Maman in that.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She confessed. “Yes, I did. But not so much that I -could miss you and our dance. The dance was planned -for me, Giles.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles rubbed his hand through his hair.—His -mother should have corrected him of that trick, though -Alix rather liked to see him do it; it left his hair very -much on end.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s decent of you; awfully decent of you. But you -wanted to go, of course, you dear little kid. And I’d -like to think you were to get a wider look at England -than you get with us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think she will ask me again, Giles. Your mother -wrote and explained it to her and she wrote back and -said it must be for another time. I think she likes -me,” said Alix. “And I like her, too. Though Ruth -and Rosemary find her empty-headed. Perhaps it is -empty-headed people that I do like,” Alix smiled. -“Perhaps I am empty-headed myself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I saw you took to each other. I saw you belonged -with each other,” Giles mused. “I’m awfully sorry -you didn’t go.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Would you rather I were staying with her than -here with you, Giles?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No; I’d rather you were staying here. But I’d like -you to have a slice of cake now and then after all the -thick bread-and-butter. Now you, of course, would -like to have the cake all the time,” and Giles smiled at -her, summoning her to confess to her frivolity. But -when he asked her like that, there in the study, with -the gas-fire and the untidy heaped books and the Greek -temples and the foolish animals on the mantelpiece, -Alix did not feel so sure. She liked Lady Mary. She -loved the balm she wafted. She felt sure that no one -here would appreciate her white taffeta; they would -think Ruth’s pink silk ninon with the embroidered -edges just as pretty. But there would not, she felt -even surer, be any one at Cresswell Abbey who would -understand as Giles did.</p> - -<div><h1>PART II</h1></div> - -<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>C’est la France</span>,” said Alix. She leaned beside him on -the railing of the Channel steamer and looked through -the blue of the July day to where the town thinly -shaped itself, like a line of grey-white shells floating -between sea and sky. Her phrase was spoken in a tone -of quiet statement, unstressed by any emotion, yet -Giles, while they watched the shore together, felt its -echoes stretching back revealingly into the past and -out towards the future.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That was really what had been at the bottom of her -heart during all her time with them; France. And if -she had talked about it so little that must merely have -been, he reflected, because she cared about it so much. -Of course she loved her own country; he could not expect -or wish anything else; but had she, he wondered, -any more love for England now than when she had -first come among them? And he felt, when he asked -himself the question, a little rueful and a little vexed. -She was not a shallow child; that he knew; it was because -she was not shallow that he minded her imperviousness -to all that meant so much to them. -With the imperviousness went an oddly mature security, -as of a creature formed and fixed and not to be -altered by circumstance; and it was when he thought -of this security that Giles felt a little angry; for, after -all, what had France given her, poor kid?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles did not think of his family, in particular, as -benefactors to the little French girl. That side of her -indebtedness was not one to engage his attention. It -was England as a whole that he had hoped would by -this time have crept about her heart; England with its -gentle days of Spring, its balmy days of Summer; all -the happy family life they had just come from; tennis, -dogs, strawberries on the lawn, and long bicycle rides -over the hills; England’s sweetness and fidelity embodied -in his mother; its holiness in Toppie.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The starlike image of Toppie rose before the young -man’s mind and with it his deepest doubt of the little -French girl beside him. He had come from pity for the -child’s unconscious plight, pity for the cruelty of her -position there among them—a little creature so proud -that it would have been to her a burning humiliation -could she have guessed how her mother had dealt with -her and them in foisting her upon them—he had come, -from this initial pity, to feel affection, then an odd, perplexed -respect, and finally a profound, a tender solicitude. -It was upon her future in France, with her -mother, that it centred; but that was the outward aspect -of the inner fear; for when he thought of Toppie -and of holiness the question he had also to ask himself -was whether Alix was impervious to holiness, too?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles felt that he would be better able to face that -question, and with it the whole problem of the child’s -future, when he had seen “Maman.” That was why he -was here. That was why he had said “yes,” on the -morning, a fortnight ago, when Maman’s letter at last -had come summoning Alix home. Since their interview, -long ago in the Winter, he and Alix had never -spoken of their mutual secret, that dreadful one-sided -secret that Giles visualized as an unexploded bomb lying -there between them and liable at a touch to go off -and scatter the family happiness to fragments. The -interview had ended in a pact. She was to help him; -she had, poor little creature, helped him; he still felt -stung with shame to think how much; to think how he -had profited, how they all had profited, by her falsehoods. -And he was bound to help her. He knew, when -Maman’s letter came, all that lay behind the appeal as -she said: “Oh, Giles, could you not come with me? -and stay if only for a little while; so that at last you -and Maman may meet?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She felt that it would help if he were to know Maman. -And it might well be that he could only effectually -help Alix if he faced at last the baleful woman who -had brought the hidden disaster to their lives. It was -better that he should know, in regard to Alix’s future, -what they were “up against.” It had not been of -Maman he was thinking when he assented; it had been, -as on that day last Winter, of Alix herself. And that -was why he was here, on his way to Normandy and the -village on the cliff, and it was Dieppe that was showing -now, along its wharves, façades of sunlit houses.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t you think, Giles,” said Alix, “that the air in -France is very different? Like golden wine?—There -was a wine made at a little mountain village near -Montarel—Vernay-les-Vouvières it is called—and -the wine after it. I wish you could see that village. So -high and steep it is, the road climbs for miles before you -reach it; and higher still, above the village, is an old, -old statue of <span class='it'>la Sainte Vierge</span>, looking down over the -vineyards and blessing them. When one stands beside -her one sees over all the crests of the mountain-ranges; -like blue rolling waves. We used to drink Vernay-les-Vouvières -at Grand-père’s. It was very cheap, for it -could not travel; it lost its bouquet at once if it travelled. -And it was a delicious wine; so pale, so light, -so delicate. One felt like singing when one drank it. -I think the air of France makes one feel like that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Bradley’s household, though not pledged to -teetotal principles, eschewed all alcoholic drink, and -Giles, as he listened, seeing the Virgin, the vineyards, -the ingenuous piety, the pagan gaiety that Alix’s -words conjured up, wondered what her impressions of -their unenlivened meals must have been.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wish I could see Vernay-les-Vouvières,” he said. -“A beautiful country yours must be, so near the Alps.—We -have sunny days in England, you know. It’s a -French superstition to think that English people go -staggering about in a fog all the year round. You -ought to have got over that,” he added. “Our weather -is as good as the weather in Northern France; every -bit.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But different, Giles. As good; but not so happy. -Never like wine, I think. Always there is something -soft and sleepy in the air. After the air of France it is -like milk.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Milk is a very excellent thing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. Excellent. As a food. But it does not make -one want to sing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>To this Giles said nothing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“For a French town Dieppe is not so specially beautiful,” -Alix took up presently; for she and Giles knew -each other so well that a disagreement could be allowed -to fall between them disregarded. “I do not think that -for a French town it has special beauty; yet, seen -like this, with the harbours, and the wharves, and -houses—all so golden, do you not think it is very -lovely?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles had just been thinking so. “Yes. Quite lovely,” -he admitted. “For a French town it’s rather rambling -and shambling, too, and I like that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, but it keeps its dignity all the same,” said Alix. -“It has gone where it meant to go and when it got there -it stood up well.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We have dignified towns,” said Giles. “Edinburgh; -you must see Edinburgh one day, Alix; and Bath; and -Ludlow. Of course, as to ramble, London is a bad -offender; but London is beautiful all the same.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Beautiful, do you think, Giles? Beautiful you -mean, then, as one might find the face of a dear, funny -old great-grandmother beautiful, for what it means; -but not for what it looks; I think it a very ugly town,” -said Alix in her tone of happy statement—for Alix -was very happy to-day. “It is like an old great-grand-mother -over a tea-pot; and Paris is like a goddess -with a wreath.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I like old great-grandmothers much better than -goddesses,” said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>All the same he understood. She was initiating these -comparisons—and it was so uncharacteristic of her to -make comparisons—not from any desire to disparage, -but from the deep, joyous excitement, the love and -pride that could not be repressed and that she could -not overtly have expressed without expressing emotion -as well. She thrilled with it, he knew, leaning beside -him, her profile, forcible, intent, golden against -the sea. It looked golden like that because the sun fell -on it and the sea was blue; but he had always thought -Alix’s skin a queer colour and never knew whether he -liked or disliked it. Sometimes it was grey, like pussy-willows: -and sometimes it was green, making one think -of olive-trees or the patina on an old bronze; and sometimes, -as to-day, it was pure gold; and always it seemed -to be the final expression of significant structure rather -than a decorative bloom, and to go with her blue eyes -and black hair whichever tint it took. But, as he told -himself, he was a sentimental Englishman and liked -girls to be the colour of apple-blossoms.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix had fallen to silence now, and he was keeping -his mind rather consciously on their friendly altercation, -and even on Alix’s profile, because he did not wish -to reflect on what lay before him. He had not an idea -of what he was to say to Alix’s mother, or to do with -her; and it was no good thinking about it until he saw -her; saw her again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Saw her again! How the phrase brought back the -unforgettable pang and misery. How the unforgettable -image floated in his memory, vivid yet unseizable; irrelevant -as it were and not to be woven to any secure -conclusion. It had been the stillest day, that Spring -day in the Bois. The purpling grey of branches, above, -behind the wandering pair, had melted to shroud-like -distances and they had emerged before his astonished -eyes like the spectral creatures of a clairvoyant vision; -silent, and with linked arms. He had gazed at them, -and as he gazed his impulse to go forward and greet his -brother was checked ere it was formed. Owen here in -Paris: Owen with madame Vervier—he had known -at once that it was she; Owen to look like that. Rooted -among the thinly scattered saplings of the wood he had -remained, gazing until they passed away and the white -distance received them into its folds as it had given -them up—ominous disappearance of the brother he -was never to see again. Rooted he stood, and heard -the wild, monotonous phrase of a missel-thrush ring -forth suddenly from overhead and felt his mind slowly -take possession of the icy grief that crept upon it. -Owen’s face had given him all the truth; its rapture; -its terrible stilled restlessness. And though she was -so quiet, walking there, her head bent down a little, her -eyes fixed before her, Giles had felt, for all the innocence -of his chaste boyhood, that she was so quiet because -she possessed him so completely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>How clearly he could see her still, with her brooding -brightness, her soft gloom. He could not see her as -baleful; he could not see her as guilty; he only saw her -walking there secure in power and loveliness. And this -was the irrelevance, the tormenting discrepancy; for -she was the woman who had taken Owen from Toppie; -she was the woman who, after her lover’s death, had -placidly made use of what assets he had left her; his -family; and its trust in him and her. And she was the -more baleful to him from the fact that, though he remembered -her so vividly and knew such portentous -things about her, herself he did not know at all.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was one thing about her, however, that he -could and ought to know at once, and the thought of it -worked its way up into his mind while he and Alix -leaned there. They had never again spoken of their secret, -but, before he met her mother he ought to know -whether Alix had told her what he knew of Owen’s -stays with them in Paris. Before he saw madame Vervier -he ought to know what she knew about him; and -suddenly, his eyes fixed upon the wharves and houses -of Dieppe, he said: “You think she’ll feel it all right -that I’m come?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wrote to her that you were coming,” said Alix. -Her mind had perhaps been following some train of -thought not far removed from his, for she spoke as if -they were continuing a theme rather than taking it up. -“She will be delighted.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Will she? Look here, Alix”—Giles gazed down -over the railing at the sea—“she couldn’t be delighted, -I take it, if she knew that I had a grievance -about my brother on her account.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had spoken very abruptly, yet he had, he felt, -put it well. In the little pause that followed his words, -he was pleased with himself for having found any so -colourless and unprovocative.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What we know of your brother,” said Alix after her -pause, “would not give her a grievance against you; -only against him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Against him?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Did he not deceive her, too?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Deceive her? Oh, I see. You think he didn’t tell -her that he’d kept us in the dark?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He could not have told her, Giles; if that is really -what you are asking me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles, a little confused, retraced his steps. “What -I’m really asking you is whether <span class='it'>you’ve</span> told her. I want -to know where I stand with her. Haven’t you felt that -she ought to be told?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Again Alix was silent, and for a longer time. Then -she said: “It has been my great perplexity. She does -not know. Of course she does not know. But I wrote -to her at once, that time last Winter, and begged that -I might come home; and when I found she could not -have me, I thought it best to say nothing then. Perhaps -I was wrong. Perhaps you will blame me, Giles. -But I thought it best to wait. It will give her such pain -when she knows.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It would never have given her so much pain Giles, -with a sudden glow of indignation, felt, as it had already -given her daughter. What Alix had suffered in -wrestling with her problem was in her voice. “Blame -you? I? You poor kid!” he exclaimed. And he added: -“After all, his silence meant devotion to herself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you think so?” said Alix. “I am afraid she will -not feel it so. I am afraid she will feel that it meant -cowardice and lack of loyalty;—as it does to me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles was now aware of an uncomfortable astonishment. -He had to remember that Alix was nearly seventeen. -A woman could not have spoken with a more secure -assurance of putting him in his place; and if, by -the same token, she put Owen in his place, was she not, -from her own point of view, her woman’s dignity veiled -only by her child’s ignorance, justified in doing so? For -if Owen had really kept madame Vervier in the dark -she might have a right to resentment. The two culprits -should have had no secrets from one another.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I see,” he repeated, lamely, as he felt. “And you -would not like to spoil her memory of him?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We kept it from your mother and from Toppie -because it would spoil their memory of him,” said -Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know; but you’ll own, won’t you, that it would be -a far worse spoiling for them?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. For them it would be worse. But why should -anyone feel pain now, when it is all over? Why should -anything be spoiled?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s only,” said Giles, going carefully, “that it -seems unfair to your mother to let me come and keep -her in ignorance of what I know. It’s for you to judge, -Alix; but since you love your mother so much, I rather -wonder that you can bear to keep such a secret from -her. And, quite apart from me, oughtn’t she to know -just what she does send you back to?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Send me back to?” Alix echoed, and her eyes met -his strangely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. Before you come back in the Autumn, don’t -you think she ought to know?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you really imagine, Giles, that if Maman knew, -she would send me back?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well”—he felt that he flushed. He had not foreseen -this emergency—“since I know, and since I want -you back;—why not she?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you count Maman’s pride for nothing, Giles?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Vervier’s pride had never for a moment engaged -his attention, and did not now. His attention -was fully engaged by Alix’s pride, facing him with a -look of granite.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t really see why she should take it so hardly,” -he said after a moment; but he was horribly uncomfortable, -for he was not speaking with frankness to his -young friend. “Your relation to us has, really, nothing -to do with her relation to Owen. It’s a new thing; and -that’s an old one; and as you say, it’s all over.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But she could not have me there on false pretences, -Giles,” said Alix. The pride had dropped now. It was -as if with sudden sadness she saw too well the reasons -for his misunderstanding. “I could not be there on -false pretences. You have a right to think it of me -since I have never told her. But it is all over now; the -new as well as the old. I need never tell her. For I -am at home again and I shall never go back to Heathside.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Never come back to Heathside!” Actually for the -moment Maman, Owen, Toppie, all the grief and perplexity -that hung about these figures, were swept from -Giles’s mind by his deep discomfiture. “But this is -only your holiday. Your mother’s letter said so.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She thinks it is only my holiday. But I am older -now. I shall see to it that I do not return to England.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ass that he had been not to realize the <span class='it'>impasse</span> to -which their talk was leading them! Too obviously, -from Alix’s side, this was an inevitable decision. And -Giles saw that from his side it should have been so, too. -With Alix safely back in France, there would be no -more danger of pain for his mother and wreckage for -Toppie; Owen’s memory might sleep in untarnished -peace.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Alix herself had come to count for far too much. -It was as if he saw her walking away into a dark forest -where dreadful creatures prowled. Ever since that day -in his study, she had counted for too much. She was -too fine, too brave, too loyal a little creature to be given -up to her fate. He had felt that day that he would fight -her fate for her, and he felt now that the moment had -come for the first grapple. But the worst of the problem -was that in fighting Alix’s fate he must fight her. -He could not tell her the fact that would have turned -her pride to dust and ashes. He could not tell her that -her mother had sent her to them on pretences so false -that the minor falsity she repudiated paled beside -them. Horribly handicapped as he was for the contest, -he seized his bull by the horns: “Look here, my dear -child,” he declared, speaking with all the elder brother -authority he could summon up, “you said to me that -day when we talked that you were going to trust me. -Well, I ask you to trust me now. I want you back. We -all want you back. Let that suffice. No; wait a moment. -I know what you are going to say;—if Toppie -knew would she want you? I’ll take the responsibility -of answering for Toppie. She is so fond of you that I -know she would. Isn’t that enough, really? Can’t we -leave it at that? And you’re quite right not to tell your -mother. Let the whole thing rest for ever.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her eyes were on his while he spoke to her and she -listened to him gently; but her face still kept the invulnerable -look strange in one so young. “You are kind, -dear Giles,” she said. “I do trust you. But you can’t -answer for Toppie. You can’t answer for anybody. -And I have not only myself to think of. I have -Maman. I <span class='it'>can</span> answer for Maman in this matter. She -would not let me come.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are you so sure of that?” broke from Giles. And -now, pushed to it, he ventured far; he ventured very -far, indeed. “After all she must have known that he -kept a great deal from us. After all she must have -known that he cared more for her than he did for Toppie; -that he had been faithless to Toppie because of -her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Poor little Alix. It was not fair. She paled in hearing -him. And for a long moment she stood silent beside -him, looking down at the sea. “May he not have -kept that from her, too?” was what she found at last -to say.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you think that possible?” Giles asked; but he -was sorry now, seeing the deep trouble on her face, that -he had spoken.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perhaps it would not have been possible,” she said -slowly. “But things may be known and yet remain unspoken, -Giles.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He could not question her further. He could not ask -madame Vervier’s young daughter if she really believed -that those things had been unspoken between -his brother and her mother. There had been an element -of desecration in going even so far as he had gone. -And he had gained nothing by it, for after the little -pause that fell between them, Alix added, in no spirit -of retaliation as he saw, but as though she put up a -final barrier against his persistence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And even if they were not there, Giles; even if all -the difficult things we know of were not there, I should -still not come back to Heathside. I do not care, ever, -to leave France again. I could not, again, leave -Maman.”</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER II</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>The train moved slowly, almost ruminatingly, along -the golden landscape, a little local train stopping at -every station. The crops were still uncut and their vast -undulations were broken only by lines of lonely, poplared -road, or marshalled woods venturing out, here -and there, upon the plains. Empty and rather sad, for -all the splendour of the gold beneath, the blue above, -it looked to Giles; but that might have been, he knew, -because of its associations for him with scenes of the -war; and he was feeling a little sick, too, apprehensions -of the approaching future seizing him as he and -Alix sat silent in the second-class carriage, where both -the windows were tightly shut. Alix had widely opened -hers on entering, but at the first station a lady had got -in—little shopping people of the local <span class='it'>bourgeoisie</span> the -passengers were, more estranged from fashion, Giles -thought, than their equivalent English types—and, -wrapping a scarf at once about her neck, she had complained -of the effect of the <span class='it'>courant d’air</span> upon her -<span class='it'>névralgie</span>. Without comment, Alix at once closed her -window. No doubt she knew her compatriots and recognized -the futility of discussion on this theme; but -Giles reflected that Ruth and Rosemary would not so -have submitted. They would have entered into altercation -with the lady in the scarf and found pleasure in -demonstrating her folly to her even if they did not succeed -in keeping the window open. But to Alix altercation -had no charms. Even when the lady, still mysteriously -aggrieved in her furthest corner, murmured resentfully -on about <span class='it'>les anglais qui viennent nous déranger</span>, -Alix glanced meditatively at her for a moment and -then resumed her survey of the landscape, indifferent -to the misapprehension; and since Giles could not repress -a smile, the lady, who still held up her scarf in -retrospective protest, kept indignant eyes upon him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, you know, you <span class='it'>are</span> a worse-tempered people -than we are. She’s still nursing her wrongs,” Giles -murmured, and Alix, glancing at the lady of the -<span class='it'>névralgie</span>, answered, “She is negligible.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Two men sat further on; one young, with high, ardent, -excited eyes, like a collie’s, in a thin head; the -other obese and red with white hair <span class='it'>en brosse</span> and a -purple nip of ribbon in his button-hole. They leaned -across the carriage towards each other and talked without -cessation, rapping each other on the chest to a constant -refrain of: “<span class='it'>Puis—il me dit;—Et—je lui dis.</span>” -Passionately swift and even vindictive in utterance as -they were, their personal geniality remained unimpaired.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A little boy on his mother’s lap ate chocolates, -smearing his cheeks and palms. Clambering down, -he was permitted, unchecked, to lurch towards Alix, -staying himself on the knees he passed, and when he -reached her he stretched forth his hand with assurance -for the box of apricots she held. “<span class='it'>Est-il mignon!</span>” exclaimed -the fond mother. But Alix did not even turn -her eyes from the landscape. The disconcerted child -stood gazing at her, too much astonished even to weep, -and Giles, taking pity on him, offered the tick of his -watch and jingled his bunch of keys in an attempt to -distract his attention. But the little boy gave him no -heed, and after a prolonged stare at Alix he made his -way back to his mother; his first encounter, Giles imagined, -with an unresponsive universe.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I say, you are really rather hard-hearted,” he remarked. -Here was another difference, for neither Ruth -nor Rosemary could have remained so impervious to -even such a repulsive little boy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Alix said: “I cannot look at a dirty face like -that. If his mother had cleaned his face, I would have -given him one.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, since he’s gone back to her, and you needn’t -look at him, may I give him one?” said Giles; and, as -Alix smiling, assented, Giles handed an apricot to the -little boy, who took it without thanks and ate it, staring -solemnly at Alix the while.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A thin blue crescent of sea cut into the fields on the -right. In the distance, on a rise of country, a pale pink -château stood with wings of sculptured woodland on -either side, a long green lawn in front.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It cannot be far now,” said Alix. The lady with -the scarf, the mother with the little boy, the stout marketing -lady, had all left them by now and she could -open her window and stand by it to look out. “Vaudettes -is four miles from the station. Maman will come -to meet us, with monsieur de Maubert.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who is monsieur de Maubert?” asked Giles. He -had never heard the name before. But then he had -never heard any names connected with Maman. How -could he, since he never spoke of her?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He is an old friend of ours; a very old friend,” said -Alix. “I do not remember the time when we did not -know monsieur de Maubert.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You like him?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, very much. <span class='it'>C’est un homme fort distingué</span>,” -said Alix, relapsing into French, with the effect, to -Giles, of not sparing more than convention for their -conversation. Her thoughts were fixed in anticipation. -He could almost see her palpitate in her stillness with -it. She might have been kinder to the little boy had -she not been so unaware of everything but the approaching -figure of Maman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How distinguished?” Giles, however, persisted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I am so ignorant, Giles. Wise things do not -interest me, you know.” Alix smiled slightly down at -him over her shoulder. “He has excavated cities; Persian; -Mongolian;—<span class='it'>que sais-je</span>. He writes on antiquities. -He has a beautiful <span class='it'>appartement</span> in Paris with -collections of gems and bronzes. He is at once <span class='it'>savant</span> -and <span class='it'>homme du monde</span>.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And will he be the only guest except me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, that I do not know. There are three <span class='it'>chambres -d’invités</span> at Les Chardonnerets. But I have not heard -that there is, as yet, anyone else.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Chardonnerets? That means?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It means goldfinches. That was a bird we always -knew, even”—Alix paused—“even before your -brother told us more of birds. Flocks come in Autumn -to the thistles on the cliffs outside our gate. When they -all fly together one sees the squares of gold on their -wings—it makes a pattern on the sky, like a chain of -golden coins; monsieur de Maubert’s strange old -square coins. And their little twitter is like the chink -of thin gold. We love them, Maman and I, and there -is a tall ash-tree in the garden where they often perch in -summer. You will see them, Giles. You will like Les -Chardonnerets, I think.—Oh, now—I recognize now—I -know those woods. We find daffodils in them, in -Spring, among the faggots. You have not in England, -have you, Giles, our great woods with all the ranged -faggots that the woodmen pile so carefully in winter. -And in Spring, at the edge of the wood, one sees around -one the great plain, champagne-coloured. The next -station will be ours,” said Alix.</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER III</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>He could hardly find again the face of the February -day in the Bois. It was her form, her poise that gave -her to one now, and Giles’s first impression of the -white, sunlit figure waiting on the platform was of a -Greek Victory, splendid, strong, exultant. Her face, -under the falling lines of a white hat, was almost dissolved -in a transparent shadow; only its grave, fixed -smile, like a pearl in golden wine, remained, as it were, -shaped and palpable.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had seen her as the <span class='it'>Parisienne</span>; the creature of -elegance and artifice; but he found her almost primitive, -set here in the sea-breezes, and so much more robust -than he had remembered; if anything so delicate -could so be called. Freshness and force breathed from -her, and the classic analogies she brought to his mind -were emphasized by her straightly falling dress—a -tennis-dress, perhaps, for her arms were bare—tying -at the breast with tassels and at the waist with a -loosely knotted sash.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Ma chérie! Ma petite chérie!</span>” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The train had come to a standstill and it was as if -Alix had flown into her arms. She had been as silent as -a spectre on that spectral day when he had first seen -her. Her voice now startled him, as the missel-thrush’s -voice had done. Tears were in it and tears were in her -eyes as she clasped her child. And then, again, as they -stood embraced, it was of something Greek they made -Giles think; some beautiful relief on the pediment of a -sunlit temple; garlands above them and happy maidens -in procession on either side carrying baskets of -fruit and chanting the reunion of mother and child. -Ceres and Persephone it might be. Happy little Persephone, -escaped at last from the kingdom of Dis.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles stood by, holding Alix’s dressing-case, and felt -himself a modern tourist gazing at the masterpiece. -Just as little difference, he saw it suddenly and clearly, -any knowledge of his would make to madame Vervier. -She was lifted, how or why he did not know, far above -the dusty impressions of the throng, impervious to -their comments, whether of blame or admiration. -Even when in another moment her lovely eyes turned -on him and, holding Alix against her with one arm, she -stretched out a welcoming hand to him and said “<span class='it'>Soyez -le bien-venu, monsieur Giles.</span> My little girl has had only -good things to tell me of you”—even then he could -not feel that he had gained in significance. So a queen -might have received the young equerry who had safely -restored to her the princess royal. They had been good -to her child, the dusty throng. That was the importance -they had in madame Vervier’s eyes; that, and no -more.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Struggling with many thoughts Giles followed -mother and daughter. The ghost of Owen walked beside -him, and did it whisper: “You see: how could I -have helped myself?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Two other young men were also following madame -Vervier and Alix. “<span class='it'>Vous jouez le tennis, monsieur?</span>” -said one of them, the elegant one, in a gentle voice. He -was a charming white-clad person, tall and slender, -with eyes intensely blue, black hair brushed back from -a starry forehead; and a face like a fox for <span class='it'>finesse</span> and -<span class='it'>flair</span> and like a seraph’s for sweetness. Perhaps he had -perceived the something gagged and struggling in -Giles’s demeanour and had wanted at once to make him -feel that, unimportant as any young man must be to a -goddess, he might count on having significance for a -new friend. Giles said that he did play, and he and -the charming person exchanged smiles. They might, -somehow, have fought in the same trenches, side by -side, Giles felt. There was at once a link between them. -The other young man, who must, Giles thought, be an -artist, was dressed in brown velveteen and blue linen -and had a dark, square, suffering head.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The <span class='it'>place</span> outside the station was white and glaring, -and the noises that came from the café across it were -glaring, too. Giles reflected, with a certain satisfaction, -that Alix need, at all events, feel no pride in this -typical scene, and it was disconcerting to have his companion, -as they made their way to the little waiting car, -indicate with a wave of the hand the dusty green trees, -the dusty white houses, the untidy green shutters, and -the brittle lights on glasses and brasses in the restaurant -and say: “This is the subject that our friend here -has just been painting. You shall see it. A little masterpiece -of light and colour.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Of course, Giles growled inwardly as he doubled himself -up on the <span class='it'>strapontin</span> at right angles to Alix and her -mother—the two young men in front—of course, -the fact that a beautiful picture might be elicited from -the stimuli of the <span class='it'>place</span> did not make the <span class='it'>place</span> itself -more beautiful. And yet the memory of it, framed in -this new conception of its uses, grew vexatiously in his -mind as they left it far behind, eliminating the weary -traveller’s impressions of noise, dust, and disorder, and -growing to a pattern of white and green and grey -wreathed harmoniously about a tawny ellipse. Yes, -one could make something æsthetic out of it, ugly -though it was for practical purposes; even inartistic he -could see that—hang it!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The road counted off its sections in tall poplars. -They passed behind madame Vervier’s head, and, -though Giles was so aware of her, he looked at the -poplars and the fields beyond them rather than at her. -She and Alix talked in French together and Alix’s voice -was revealed to him as like her mother’s when she -spoke her native tongue; musical; rhythmical; dipping; -poising, and then rising to a final lift, like a swallow’s -flight. Their hands were clasped. Their eyes were on -each other.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He could look at Alix after all, and from the poplars -he shifted his eyes to her. He had never seen the child -with that face before. Tender, radiant, and with something -of pride so deep that it hovered on the brink of -tears. Her glance met his and was tender for him, too, -as though with Owen’s ghost it said: “You see: how is -it possible not to love her?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But was she as beautiful as all that? Giles gathered -himself away from the admission. Was she even beautiful -at all? He would have to look at her carefully if -he were to say, and he stayed himself on the conviction -that if it came to structure and line she could not be -compared to Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was not what she looked like; it was what she -meant that he was so aware of now. He had never before -found himself in the company of a woman who -seemed so to typify the <span class='it'>femme du monde</span>, and if she -were no longer of it, that fact was merely accidental. -With every glance, gesture, rise and fall of voice, it was -there that she belonged. He did not think that he liked -the <span class='it'>femme du monde</span>, so apt, he felt, at showing you -no more than what she intended to show you of her -real purpose, so sure that for every occasion she would -know what to do far better than you could even understand. -And yet, more than the <span class='it'>femme du monde</span> she -made him think of the mountain torrent—Alix had -been right—in its strength, its splendour, and its -danger, too. And he knew that he did not like dangerous -women.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had expected to find her gay, and, in spite of the -memory, brooding, almost sombre, of the spectral -spring day, to feel in her something of artifice and allurement. -But if artifice there were, it was nothing -added or adventitious; and of allurement there was -none. She stood in her place, a goddess, and watched -her worshippers, and when her human smile came, -modelling her cheek to a sudden childlike candour, it -had the oddity of an unexpected weakness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was to Alix alone that she talked; she had no word -for him. Yet once or twice, as they drove, Giles was -aware of being observed. All unimportant as he was, -he felt her dark eyes turned on him, resting upon him, -in meditation rather than in surmise. It was—he had -noted this already—a curiously widely opened eye. -Its rounded darkness gave to her contemplative gaze -a fixed, abstracted quality. When you found her observing -you, she did not look away; so that presently -you wondered whether she was seeing you at all; -whether the soft, wide gaze had not travelled to spaces -far beyond you, including but forgetting you.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They had left the poplared road behind them and -were among great fields, stretching on one hand to -the horizon and on the other to the cliff-edge. A line -of docile cows, tethered side by side, ate their way into -a strip of wine-coloured clover; meadow pipits mounted -from the turf and filled the salt, sweet air with myriads -of falling silver bells; in the distance the tall palisades -of a wood rose against the sky and it looked like an island -floating on the level sunlight of the plain. The -glimmer of white houses among the grey boles revealed, -as they approached, an embowered village on -the cliff and Giles needed to make no mental reconstruction -of beauty here. He felt the authentic essence -fill his breath as he gazed at the picture, never to be -forgotten, he knew, of the vast blue sky, the vast sunlit -plain, the tall trees green and silver, threaded -with white cottages. His eyes were full of his delight.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You know our villages?” said madame Vervier. It -was the first phrase she had addressed him since they -started.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Only a few. Further north; and usually ruined -ones,” said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Only the tragic ones,” said madame Vervier. -“Here we were untouched by the war, and our villages, -too, are more beautiful than further north. In this -part of Normandy they are often surrounded by these -great ramparts of trees. It gives much character, much -charm, does it not?”—and she smiled at him. She -had noted his delight, and Alix was smiling at him, too.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve seen French pictures like it,” said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes; some of the early Corots give one the grey and -green and white.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah—it is too stately for a Corot.” The young -man in white flashed a smile round at her as he drove. -“Corot would see its intimacy, its charm, rather than -its gravity. That great design against the sky;—no; -we must find somebody else.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Vervier smiled back, sure of her point. -“He would not look at the sky, my early Corot; he -would look at the little white houses nestling in the -trees; he would look at the curve of the white road with -the whitewashed wall. That girl in the faded blue, -with the brown hoop of bread upon her arm, he would -put her in. Oh, yes; it is a Corot; an early Corot, -André. I see the happy gentle touches of his brush.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Elle a raison</span>,” said the young man with the dark -square head, and André, driving with his easy skill, -waved a hand of contented concession.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When they had passed within the precincts, the little -town opened clearly to the sunlight and they were -at once in the <span class='it'>place</span> that circled round a large pond -where patient men in large straw hats sat fishing. -Houses, stately in their modesty, looked over rows of -pollarded fruit-trees and high walls tiled in red. Built of -pale old brick and flint, with high-pitched roofs above -dormer windows, they seemed to speak of a delicious -leisure that was, in itself, an occupation. People who -lived in such houses, Giles thought, would never be -idle; yet all their industry would have the savour of an -art. How darkly lustrous the windows shone; how unremittingly -were those bright gardens tended. He saw, -as they passed an open gate, a stout old man in a white -linen coat tying muslin bags over the pears that ripened -on the wall. Under a <span class='it'>charmille</span> a woman sat stemming -currants. A family group in front of a shop were -already taking the afternoon repose, the father with -his newspaper, the wife and daughters with their sewing. -Along the broad white street a peasant girl, her -bare head as neat as a nut, clattered in sabots, carrying -a great earthenware jar, and a small white woolly -dog, of a breed unknown to Giles, barked languidly -from his doorstep as they passed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>From the <span class='it'>place</span> the little town rayed out into leafy -lanes and, as they entered one of them, a sunny round -of sky and cliff-edge at the other end, framed in foliage, -showed Giles that they were at their journey’s end. -High hedges and thickets of wind-swept trees protected -the little house, brick, flint, and tiles, from the gales -that must, in stormy seasons, beat upon it from the -sea. Flowers grew gaily, though untidily, beside the -narrow flagged path that led from the wicket-gate to -the back door. They crossed a band of cobblestones -where oleanders grew in tubs, and, as they entered, -passed a kitchen gleaming with ranged coppers. Giles -as he followed madame Vervier and Alix, had the sensation -of stepping into a fairy-tale. The Three Bears -and Goldilocks might have welcomed one to such a -bright, dark little house among its sunny thickets; its -very smell was a fairy-tale smell; beeswax, seashells, -and coarse clean linen. Such a smell as a child, once -meeting it, would never in a long life forget. A tall -clock tick-tocked on the stair; there was a great Normandy -<span class='it'>armoire</span>, softly gleaming, old and worn, at a -turning of a passage; madame Vervier’s white figure -went on before, and as she bent her head to lift a latch -he saw her russet hair twisted up from the nape of her -neck; and that, again, was like a picture he had seen. -And then they were suddenly out upon a broad verandah, -broad and wide, washed with sunlight and opening -only on the blue. Sea-gulls floated by, high above -the sea, at the cliff’s edge, on a level with the eyes. -Vines fluttered, translucent, against the sunlight; the -scent of the honeysuckle came balmily; the sea was -sprinkled with white and russet sails.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A stately personage was reading in the shade. He -was dressed in white; he had thick hair and a grey -divided beard. Lifting his tortoiseshell eye-glasses -from the bridge of his nose, he rose to greet them, and -Giles found himself penetrated by the deep gaze of -Jovian grey eyes set under a Jovian forehead; penetrated -by the gaze and appraised, for the first time in -his life, by standards mysteriously remote. This must -be monsieur de Maubert, and Giles had never seen anyone -like him, except once, perhaps, at Oxford, when a -distinguished Frenchman had received a degree. Only -the distinguished Frenchman, black, shrill, and restless, -had so much less looked the part than did monsieur -de Maubert. It was not exactly sustaining to say -to himself that, hang it, monsieur de Maubert, after -all, had probably never seen anyone like him; the advantage, -he felt, must seem only to be his. But, under -all his boyish perturbation, Giles knew that he was appraising -monsieur de Maubert, too. Monsieur de Maubert -was a magnificent person—magnificent, although -his legs were short;—and he was a pagan. It was -rather magnificent to be a pagan and Giles knew just -how well he thought of the creed; but there were all -sorts of things that monsieur de Maubert—he felt -sure of it—could never see, and the difference between -them was that, while Giles knew that he often -groped in mystery, monsieur de Maubert would remain -unaware that there could be anything significant -unknown to him. Life, to him, was bathed in <span class='it'>la -lumière antique</span>, and anything not so bathed was inessential. -All sorts of things that Giles had only wondered -about or surmised were suddenly made clear to -him as he looked at madame Vervier’s other guest.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Monsieur de Maubert turned from Giles to put his -hand on Alix’s shoulder. He observed her in silence -for a moment with a most benignant smile, and then -remarked: “<span class='it'>Te voilà presque une grande personne, ma -chère enfant</span>,” and, stooping his head, he kissed her -hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now you will want to see your room,” said Madame -Vervier.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had taken off her hat, and Giles for the first time -saw her bareheaded. She stood there, looking at them, -a little preoccupied, her hat hanging against her dress -as she held it, and the sun flickered in upon her high-wreathed -russet hair. Cut across her forehead and half -tossed back, it seemed as simply, as cursorily done as -that of a little girl who, for the first time, sweeps up -her tresses. She was looking at them all; at monsieur -de Maubert, at Alix, as he kissed her hand, and at -Giles; but Giles felt, as he turned to her, that it was -upon himself that the wide, abstracted gaze was dwelling. -Monsieur de Maubert had appraised him; it was -probable that madame Vervier had appraised him, too.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“After you have had your tea,” she said, “you will -perhaps like to rest. Or would you care to come with -us to Allongeville, where we are to play tennis?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles said that he would write some letters after tea. -He did not see his friend in white, who had apparently -gone away with the car. And the dark young artist, -too, had disappeared.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With Alix’s arm passed in hers, madame Vervier led -him up a narrow staircase where the smell of beeswax, -seashells, and linen seemed to cluster yet more thickly, -and along a passage carpeted in matting where the sea-breeze, -blowing in from windows at each end, made a -singing noise. “Is Giles to have the <span class='it'>chambre rose</span>, -Maman?” said Alix, and she exclaimed, as her mother, -smiling, said, “Yes,” “Oh, I am so glad! I hoped for -that!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was at the end of the passage, and when one entered -one had before one in the windows nothing but -sea and sky. Grey woodwork framed panels of <span class='it'>voile de -Gênes</span>, rose, white, russet, and sepia. The little Louis -Quinze bed was of grey painted wood, stately under its -pink and russet embroideries. A bowl of rose-coloured -carnations filled the air with spicy fragrance, -and there was a tiny <span class='it'>cabinet de toilette</span> with an ancient -set of rose-and-white china. Giles had never found -himself installed in such a lovely room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes; this is your room,” said madame Vervier, as -if she replied to a question. “You will be happy here, -I think.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles could only murmur that he would.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We are very primitive,” said madame Vervier. -“There are no bells. If you want Albertine, you must -go to the stair and call down for her. She will hear and -come.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, she will not always come,” Alix demurred; -whereat madame Vervier smiled and said that in that -case he must call Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then they left him, and he could go to the window, -turning away instinctively from the room and all it -meant of madame Vervier, and stare at the sea, and, -with a rising sense of dismay and fierceness in his heart, -ask himself what he did there in the Circe sweetness. -He was there because of Alix, of course; but how far -away Alix had become. The process of removal seemed -to have begun as they had leaned on the railing of the -deck and seen Dieppe emerge over the water. In her -declaration to him, when their talk so disastrously -ended, she had drawn still further away; and now he -saw her almost as a stranger, in a strange land. A foreigner; -French; the daughter, only, of madame Vervier; -no longer his little Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When she knocked at his door, twenty minutes later, -and told him that tea was ready, he felt that it was -with a dull gaze that he met her. She had asked him to -come because of something he could do to help her, but -now her radiant demeanour seemed to demonstrate -that she had brought him so that he might be enchanted. -Madame Vervier was not a person in any -need of help. There was nothing she asked less of you. -Circe, Circe; that was the word in his mind. Only -Circe, he supposed, allured; enticed; while madame -Vervier only gazed at you with those wide, intent, indifferent -eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you like Les Chardonnerets?” said Alix, standing -in the door and smiling at him. She had changed -her travelling dress for a white one, a straight white -one made of a thin woollen stuff, like her mother’s; and -her mother must have had it in readiness for her, for he -had never seen her wear it before. Nor had he ever -seen her look so happy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I suppose,” he said, with his hands in his pockets, -standing in the middle of the lovely room, “you feel -England has ceased to exist; and a good job, too.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But not at all, Giles,” said Alix, and there was a -touch of gay malice in her smile. “How could I feel -that when you are here?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Will cease to exist, as far as you are concerned, -once I’m gone,” Giles amended.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“France has never existed for you at all,” Alix -remarked, though her smile did not become less -kind.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I beg your pardon, young woman, it existed for me -from the moment I set eyes on you,” said Giles gloomily, -“to say nothing of the year I fought over here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix then did a very unexpected thing. She advanced -into the centre of the room and clasped her -hands around his arm and looked into his face. “Do -not be heavy with me, Giles,” she said, “when I am so -happy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked down at her fondly and sadly. “I suppose -it’s because I see you happy, for the first time, -that I feel heavy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But why, Giles? Why? Must not a child be happy -at finding herself again with her mother; in her own -country? Would you not be happy in such a case? -Were you not happy when you returned to your home -and to your mother after the war?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s not quite the same,” Giles objected. “After -all, you’ve not been in daily peril of your life. Of course -you’re happy. But try not to show me, too plainly, -how little we all mean to you. Try not to show me how -quickly you’ll forget all about us when I’m gone.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I should never forget you, Giles, even if I never -saw you again!” said Alix, holding his arm and looking -into his face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Vervier, as they stood thus, passed along -the corridor and paused and looked in at them; looked, -Giles felt, with surprise. Alix smiled round at her. -“He thinks I do not care for England any longer, -Maman, or for him, because I am so happy to be back -in France with you,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Vervier, after her pause, advanced slowly -into the room, and her smile did not conceal from Giles -her covert examination of himself. It was a smile deep -and soft; superficially acquiescent; but concealing -much. Vigilance was in it, and the sense, perhaps, of a -special need for vigilance; the recognition, too, perhaps, -of something unforeseen that England had already -done to her child. Such untroubled intimacy between -young man and maiden was not, Giles divined, -in the traditions to which madame Vervier was accustomed. -Yet her smile suggested no reproof and -seemed to acquiesce serenely in Alix’s demonstration -of alien habits.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She moved to them, and passed her arm in Alix’s, so -that they stood, all three, linked together, and, smiling -on, she remarked: “You must not give your good -friend cause for such fancies, darling.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She spoke in English and her English was almost as -perfect as Alix’s. The <span class='it'>r</span> of “darling,” just rolled, like -the almost imperceptible ripple on the smooth surface -of a shell, made the word at once more playful and -more caressing. And she went on, looking from one to -the other: “You must not seem to forget him in finding -me. Our kind allies must have no cause, at any -time, for suspecting that we French have not faithful -hearts.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I have just told him, Maman, that I should -never forget him,” said Alix as they moved towards -the door. “And there can be no question of that, Giles, -for you will come often and often to Les Chardonnerets, -will you not?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles did not answer this question. It was unexpected, -and its sweetness was unexpected. His mind, -however, was occupied with the discomfort that came -to him at seeing himself made to appear so personally -involved in regrets for Alix’s removal. It was -not himself, first and foremost, he had been thinking -of at all when he felt those regrets; it was of England; -of his mother and Toppie; of the noisy, untidy, -but devoted family life; of the birch-wood at evening -where he had taught Alix the song of the willow-warbler; -of his beautiful Oxford and “The Messiah” on -Winter evenings. These were the things he wanted -Alix to remember, and it could not console him to -know that she expected to see him again when he felt -sure that she would see his England disappear from -her life without one pang.</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>A table had been laid in a corner of the verandah, and -a stout woman, bareheaded and in <span class='it'>savates</span>, was carrying -out tea and coffee.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Vervier rearranged the tray, setting the -tongs on the sugar, the strainer on a cup, placing the -plate of <span class='it'>madeleines</span> here, the <span class='it'>brioches</span> there; all mildly, -with no savour of criticism for Albertine’s haphazard -methods. In England such a ministrant at the tea-table -would have been felt as a flaw on the prevailing -perfection; yet Albertine, Giles divined, was also the -cook; and a bevy of trim, capped English maids could -hardly have evolved the lustre of cleanliness that -reigned throughout the lovely little house. It was difficult -to think of madame Vervier as poor; and more -difficult to think of her doing things for herself. Yet all -the loveliness had, he felt, been gathered together with -something of the same mild dexterity that now brought -order and comeliness to the tea-table. Madame Vervier -was the sort of person who would pick up lovely -things for a song; the Louis Quinze bedstead, the <span class='it'>voile -de Gênes</span>, the tall cream-white <span class='it'>cafetière</span>, like one he had -seen in a picture by—Chardin, wasn’t it?—and the -teapot with a delicate spray of grey flowers, just -touched with gilt, on its side—had all, he could imagine, -been brought to her nest by the unerring instinct -that leads the bird to select the white feather or the -lichen. Alix had said, he remembered, that part of -their revenue was derived from the rent of the fairy-tale -house; he was sure that it was an investment -that paid well. And she had probably herself made the -dresses she and Alix wore. She could be extravagant if -the money were there; if it were not, she was careful. -One felt in her the essential freedom from material -bondage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Monsieur de Maubert was still in his shady corner -with the <span class='it'>Nouvelle Revue Française</span> on his knee. The -young artist had reappeared and was sitting on the -steps, his chin on his hands, looking out at the sea. -Madame Vervier took her place at the tea-table, monsieur -de Maubert drew his chair beside her, and Giles’s -friend strolled up from the cliff-path accompanied by -yet another noticeable personage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This was a youngish woman, though younger in form -than in face, bareheaded and wearing a very short -white skirt and a flame-coloured silk jacket. It was almost -like seeing a tongue of electric fire, brilliant, supple, -cold, run in among them, so different was she from -the sunlight which seemed so completely madame Vervier’s -element. It did not surprise Giles to gather, -presently, that mademoiselle Blanche Fontaine was an -actress, and a distinguished one. She was charming; he -had seen that at once; but he had seen as soon that it -was a charm with which he had nothing at all to do; -the sort of charm one expected to pay ten-and-six for -the sight and sound of and to feel, while it operated -upon you, safely barred away from by a row of footlights. -A presence so brilliant could not be said to cast -a chill, but for Giles it certainly cast a discomfort. -Who was she? What did she mean? Where had she -come from, this young woman so lean, so white, so -sickly-looking, yet so tough? Her smile, as she bit into -her <span class='it'>madeleine</span>, brought a long dimple that was almost -a wrinkle into her cheek and her long, pale eyes scintillated -under darkened lashes. He realized how noticeably -independent of artificial aids to significance was -madame Vervier from noting how frankly mademoiselle -Fontaine had made use of them. She might even, -by nature, he surmised, be a swarthy woman; but art -had transformed her to a dazzling whiteness and her -crinkled hair, that might be really black, repeated the -lustrous flame of her jacket. Something in the fervour -of her thin, gay lip, in the vigour of her thin, -questing nose, even suggested to Giles a Semitic strain; -but upon the racial edifice she had laid a pattern of -strange, chiming colour that seemed in its vehemence -and oddity to alter the very contour of her face. She -had made of herself what she would; what she was, -was unfathomable by any plummet in Giles’s possession.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They were all talking and laughing, all except Alix, -who sat silent beside her mother, and the young artist -with the dark, suffering head. He drank coffee; three -cups of it, and black. Monsieur de Maubert’s sonorous -tones were lifted by a note of drollery.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He has lost himself in the clouds of mysticism.” -They were talking of the book of a friend. “To stumble -among rocks is less disconcerting than to stumble -among clouds. <span class='it'>Il erre—il erre</span>— One sees him wandering -away into the fog of his own imaginations.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Did you enjoy yourself in England, mademoiselle -Alix?” mademoiselle Fontaine asked. “Did you make -good studies there?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. I went to a Lycée with the sisters of monsieur -Bradley,” said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked more of a child, seen in this setting, than -Giles had ever seen her look. Her silence was childlike; -and her attitude, leaning slightly against her mother, -her chair placed a little behind her. Yet, at the same -time, Giles had never felt her manner more mature. -She was familiar with mademoiselle Fontaine. She -knew her of old. Yet what a sense of distance there -was between them. Giles could not tell whether it was -kept there, so unerringly, more by her manner or by -mademoiselle Fontaine’s. They knew their place; both -of them. Giles suddenly perceived that people in England -did not know their places with anything like the -same accuracy as people in France. Mademoiselle -Fontaine was the distinguished actress. Alix was the -<span class='it'>toute jeune fille</span>; under her mother’s wing. They might -meet for years and never advance by a hair’s-breadth -to greater intimacy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah. Yes. You were with the family of monsieur.” -The dimple came for Giles. The brilliant eyes circled -round him; pierced him; cogitated; deduced; summed -him up probably, Giles felt—(so much more shrewd -was he than mademoiselle Fontaine could guess, for all -her brilliancy)—as “<span class='it'>Jeune homme respectable et tant -soit peu lourd</span>.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You must bring monsieur to tea with Grand’mère, -Maman, and me, one day mademoiselle Alix,” she said. -It was surprising to find that mademoiselle Fontaine -was so immersed in family ties. “I have <span class='it'>un petit -‘foaks’</span>.” So she pronounced the French term for fox -terrier. “<span class='it'>Tout-à-fait charmant.</span> He will delight you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There is a charming ‘fox’ in the family of monsieur,” -said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Some admirable work is being done in England,” -said Giles’s friend, whose name, he now gathered, was -monsieur le vicomte de Valenbois. “Your school of -Bloomsbury. They are remarkable writers. They have -invented a new method; oh, deep, crafty; though it -seems to blow as easily as a flower. But then a flower -has always its roots; its soil.—Tchekov, do you think? -Dostoievsky?—They are much inspired, one feels, for -all their sincerity, by the Russians. Or is it truly indigenous? -Do the pavements of Bloomsbury really -grow it quite spontaneously? That delicious Bloomsbury,” -monsieur de Valenbois mused, his happy eyes -on Giles, “of the Museum, the squares where Thackeray -walks, the smell of fogs and jam.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles was much bewildered. He did not remember -ever having heard of a school of Bloomsbury.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Monsieur de Valenbois enlightened him and went on, -putting Giles’s best foot forward for him, since it was -evident that he did not know how to put it forward for -himself. “And then your extraordinary Joyce. Ireland -is his soil, indubitably, and no alien pollen has -visited him. What a talent! Solitary; morose; erudite. -He will found a school here among <span class='it'>nos jeunes</span>. That is -already evident. You have writers to be proud of. -It is true we have our Proust to put beside them. You -admire our Proust?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m sorry to say I don’t know him; or the morose -Irishman either,” said Giles, with a genial grin for his -own discomfiture.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur Giles is a philosopher,” Alix now suddenly -and surprisingly contributed. Though so withdrawn -she had been listening, watching, and it was -evident that she had a different conception of Giles’s -best foot. “He is going to found a school, too. At -Oxford.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I say! Draw it mild!” cried Giles, casting a glance -of delighted amusement at his young friend.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But is it not true, Giles, that the old philosopher, -with the beard, thinks that you will found a school?” -said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m afraid he only hopes I’ll follow his,” said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Philosophy is, indeed, a magnificent subject,” -smiled monsieur de Valenbois, all gentle respect. “To -follow a school adequately is often to find that one has -founded a new one.—Does our Bergson interest you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles said that he did, very much, and found that -Alix had succeeded in putting his best foot forward, for -they now all talked about philosophy. Monsieur de -Maubert, he gathered, was a disciple of Croce’s; monsieur -de Valenbois had read William James and the -Pragmatists; and madame Vervier had attended Bergson’s -pre-war lectures at the Sorbonne. She found the -<span class='it'>élan vital</span> in too much of a hurry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We gallop, we gallop,” she remarked;—“but if I -may not see my goal, let me linger by the way.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“As for me,” cried mademoiselle Fontaine, “give -me <span class='it'>le bon vieux Papa de bon Dieu</span> of my childhood! -With him, at all events, one knows what to expect -and where one is.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The young artist had made no attempt to join the -conversation and, now that he had finished his coffee, -he got up, taking an easel, a camp-stool, and a box of -paints, and went away out on to the cliffs. His morose -profile passed along against the frieze of floating sea-gulls -and madame Vervier, sadly shaking her head, -said that Jules was in one of his <span class='it'>humeurs noires</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Pauvre cher</span>!” sighed monsieur de Valenbois.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It seemed that the young artist had an adored wife -who was in a madhouse.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I saw her before leaving Paris,” said madame Vervier. -“She is quite gentle. She allowed me to hold her -hand.—But lost; altogether lost; she was like a tame -bird that has strayed from its cage and cannot find -its way in the forest. There it sits, on a branch, and -stares into the darkness. It is pitiful.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A silence fell for a while after that, and Giles heard -in it the echoes of the compassionate voice beating -softly against each heart.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He will do great things,” said monsieur de Maubert -presently. It was as if he turned away from the gloomy -fact and displayed for their comfort the golden coin it -had minted. “It is an authentic genius.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. If we can keep him alive to give it to us,” said -madame Vervier.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If anyone can keep him alive it is you, Hélène,” -said monsieur de Maubert.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Charming people they were, and compassionate and -wise, thought Giles, sitting there among them in the -pellucid shadow while the gulls floated past in the -golden light. Strains of Gluck’s “Orpheus” floated -with the gulls through his mind. The thought of the -young painter’s wife, lost in the shades, suggested that -music, perhaps. But it was an Elysian scene.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When they were dispersed, all driving in monsieur de -Valenbois’ car to Allongeville for tennis, all except -monsieur de Maubert who withdrew to his room—to -sleep, Giles imagined—Giles himself did not write -letters. He wandered along the cliff-path and saw the -lovely shore curving, far away, in azure bays beneath -the gold-white cliffs. He looked at the scene and was -not consciously absorbed in thought; but a process of -testing, of reëstablishing, went on within him as if he -felt about his roots to see that they were firm. He -would have need of firmness, and the figure of Toppie -went with him as an exorcising presence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was late when the party returned and assembled -for a supper of <span class='it'>consommé</span>, chicken salad and a cream -for which Albertine, saturnine yet complacent, was -warmly praised. Alix looked drugged with happiness -and fatigue and madame Vervier soon sent her to -bed. Mademoiselle Blanche Fontaine, in the drawing-room -with madame Vervier and monsieur de -Maubert, read aloud the manuscript of a new play; -the young artist went away to his hotel on the <span class='it'>place</span>, -and monsieur de Valenbois sat for a little while with -Giles on the steps of the verandah to look at the -fading dyes of the sunset and to talk of Scriabin, -Stravinsky, and the Russian ballet. Giles had to own -that he did not care much about the Russian ballet. -He was always having to own things to monsieur de -Valenbois who showed the happiest interest in his -lapses, giving utterance, now and then, to a gentle long-drawn -“<span class='it'>Tiens!</span>” Giles himself was very tired, however, -and felt that he could not adequately defend his -theories which rested upon an objection to the use of -the body as a means of primitive expressionism. He -soon said good-night and went up to his wonderful little -room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>After he had gone to bed he lay for a long time -awake, a fold of the coarse cool linen that smelt of orris -root against his cheek. He heard mademoiselle Fontaine -go away to her own villa, escorted by the other -three. Then, when they returned, the <span class='it'>Sacre du Printemps</span> -came softly humming up the stairs, showing him -that monsieur de Valenbois was also going to bed. -After that the only voices left below were those of monsieur -de Maubert and his hostess, sitting in quiet converse -on the verandah.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They talked meditatively with pauses of appreciation -for the beauty of the night, and madame Vervier -must once have risen to advance and look out into -the starry vastness, for Giles heard her say “<span class='it'>Tiens;—qu’elle -est grande, notre étoile, ce soir!</span>”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was late before the final words were vaguely -wafted up to him: “<span class='it'>Bonsoir, mon ami.</span>” “<span class='it'>Bonne nuit, -ma chère Hélène.</span>”</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER V</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>He had not imagined madame Vervier coming down to -breakfast; but she was up long before it. Giles, looking -from his window at seven, was astonished to see her -form, wrapped in a white bath-robe, advancing leisurely -from the cliff that she had, evidently, just ascended -after a morning swim. She was alone. It was so early -that she had awakened no one to share with her the -delicate sting of the morning waves. Giles indeed imagined, -watching her, that these early hours were set -apart by her for solitude; that no one ever shared them -with her. She walked, her russet head bent down, a -little as she had walked in the Bois; meditating, it -seemed. He heard her afterwards on the verandah, in -the salon below, moving quietly to and fro. Her calm -voice directed Albertine. “<span class='it'>Ne réveillez pas mademoiselle. -Elle est si fatiguée</span>,” he heard.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A little while later, Albertine’s voice broke out far -away, at the garden gate, in vehement yet not unfriendly -altercation with the baker’s lady; and then, -stealing deliciously into his sleepy senses, mingling -with the fragrance of the carnations by his bedside, -the aroma of roasting coffee-beans delicately tinctured -the air. Albertine came in with a jug of steaming water -and it was time to get up.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When he went down at half-past eight, monsieur de -Valenbois was singing in the drawing-room with -madame Vervier at the piano; the song was “<span class='it'>D’Une -Prison</span>,” and he sang well.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Albertine was laying breakfast on the verandah, -and Giles stood leaning against a pillar listening to -the song. At its end madame Vervier soberly commended -the singer, yet turned a leaf, here and there, -to suggest an alteration. “<span class='it'>Qu’as-tu fait de ta jeunesse?</span>” -monsieur de Valenbois sang again, with a new poignancy; -and yet again. “<span class='it'>Bien; très bien</span>,” said madame -Vervier’s quiet voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then monsieur de Maubert appeared, and they came -out to greet him and Giles. Monsieur de Maubert wore -a small white woollen shawl over his shoulders and -madame Vervier asked him with solicitude whether he -would rather have breakfasted in the <span class='it'>salle-à-manger</span>, as -usual. It had seemed so deliciously mild a morning -that she had told Albertine to lay the table here.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Monsieur de Maubert said he delighted in the -plan. He would merely take precautions against a -<span class='it'>courant d’air</span>; and to ensure him further from this -calamity his chair was placed in a corner behind the -table, Giles aiding in his disposal and amused by the -idea of Jove sheltering from a <span class='it'>courant d’air</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, breakfast here! <span class='it'>Quel bonheur!</span>” cried Alix, -emerging. She made Giles think of a swallow as she -skimmed out, her feet in their heelless <span class='it'>espadrilles</span> -hardly seeming to touch the ground. André de Valenbois -also, he saw, noted her swiftness, her light, direct -movement; noted, too, no doubt, her clear face, stern -in its carven structure, yet sweet in smile and glance. -Alix was really growing up; she was already a person -to be noted by a young man with an eye for beauty in -all its manifestations, and Giles, while monsieur de -Valenbois’ eyes rested almost musingly upon her, -knew a fraternal, nay, almost a paternal, stir of anxious -surmise. Would that be a solution? He did not feel -the need of a solution for Alix’s problem to be so pressing -as he had on the steamer yesterday. It was difficult -in this radiant <span class='it'>milieu</span> to believe her so in need of -rescue. However heinous madame Vervier’s fault, she -could not, without manifest priggishness, be seen as a -mother unfit to care for a daughter. But problem or no -problem, it would be a comfort to know Alix settled, -and during coffee and rolls he began to see, very -plainly, that this settlement must almost certainly -have presented itself to madame Vervier. If André de -Valenbois were here on these terms of happy intimacy, -when her child arrived, had she not seen to it that he -was here? Could she have chosen better? If Alix was -charming, so was he; he was, indeed, Giles considered, -having not thought much of Alix as in the category, -more obviously charming than she was; a veritable -prince of the fairy-tale in face, form, and demeanour, -and if Alix was not already affected by his presence -that could only be because she was still so much a -child. He was not a young man to leave a maiden’s -fancy unaffected.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A penny for your thoughts, monsieur Giles,” -monsieur de Valenbois’ voice broke in, disconcertingly, -upon his meditations. That he had allowed them to -become absorbing was evident to him from the smiles -that met his eyes as he raised them. He felt himself -foolishly blushing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Giles never talks much at breakfast,” Alix commented.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t get much chance to, at home, do I?” said -Giles, grateful for her intervention.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You shall have every chance here,” said madame -Vervier. “We rarely have a young English philosopher -among us. We must profit by the occasion.” Her -smile was very kind.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know what monsieur Giles was thinking of,” -said monsieur de Valenbois.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, no, you don’t,” Giles laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wager you!” monsieur de Valenbois challenged -him, tilting back his chair, his brilliantly blue eyes on -his friend. “Do you defy me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Absolutely,” said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, own to my perspicacity when I tell you, then, -that you were thinking about mademoiselle Alix. You -were reassembling your arguments against the Russian -ballet and reflecting that the best of them would be -that it is idle to go to art for something we can find -more perfectly displayed in nature.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles stared at him. It was near enough to cause him -to stare.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well?” smiled monsieur de Valenbois.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How did you know I was thinking about Alix?” -Giles demanded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How did I know?—Because I was!” laughed -monsieur de Valenbois. “And the same thoughts.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Vervier was looking at them both, and -again, Giles imagined, with her veiled vigilance. “The -Russian ballet?” she questioned. “What has Alix to -do with the Russian ballet?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Forgive my execrable taste, <span class='it'>chère madame</span>!” exclaimed -monsieur de Valenbois, “in making mademoiselle -Alix the subject of these divinations! But did you -remark the way in which she bounded out of the house -just now? It was a remarkable bound,” smiled monsieur -de Valenbois. “It started the same strain of -thought in me and in monsieur Giles, you see. We were -discussing the Russian ballet last night.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I wasn’t thinking about the Russian ballet,” -Giles rather helplessly protested, and he felt madame -Vervier not quite pleased. “That’s what I should have -thought, no doubt, if it had come to my mind. But it -didn’t.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah; but the essential you will not deny,” said monsieur -de Valenbois, and Giles, feeling his blushes mount -again, wondered just how far the essential had indeed -been divined.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix was gazing first at him, then at monsieur de -Valenbois and then at her mother; and her mother’s -eyes, while they caressed and approved her silence, put -her aside into the retirement suitable to a <span class='it'>jeune fille</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur Giles has disowned the essential,” she -remarked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you like him, Giles?” Alix questioned when, -after breakfast, she moved off with her friend to the -cliff-path.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles really felt a little abashed before her calm; felt -that he deserved, rather than monsieur de Valenbois, -madame Vervier’s implicit reproof.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur de Valenbois?” he questioned. “Very -much. Don’t you? I think him charming.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Charming,” Alix reflected.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Have you known him for a long time?” Giles inquired.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A long time? I?” Alix’s eyes came back to him -surprised. “I never saw him before.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Really. He’s a new friend of your mother’s, then.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. They met at Cannes last winter,” said Alix. -“Charming. He is that, I suppose; but I think it a little -<span class='it'>agaçant</span> for anyone to look so sure of happiness.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sure of happiness? You think he looks that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. As if, always, he had had everything he -wanted. That is a little <span class='it'>agaçant</span>, I think. Though of -course it is not his fault.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It may be only a part of his intelligence, his general -tact and taste, to look it,” Giles suggested. “He would -always be thinking about his responsibilities towards -his surroundings. If he wasn’t happy, nobody would -know it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But would that not be for his own sake rather than -for theirs? He would feel it a disadvantage to look unhappy,” -said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But he’s so kind,” said Giles. “He seems to me, -now that I come to think of it, even more kind than -he is charming. He’s been most awfully kind to me -already.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And why should he not be?” Alix inquired. She -took off her hat and the morning breeze blew back her -hair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, I’m a rather unprepossessing young foreigner. -I shouldn’t have known how to be kind to him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He is quicker on the surface than you are, Giles; -but you are quite as quick beneath it, and deeper far, -I feel sure,” said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hang it!” said Giles, laughing, “how do you manage -to think these things at your age?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am of an age, it appears, to have monsieur de -Valenbois discuss my appearance in my presence,” -said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh—but just because you are so young,” Giles, -already alarmed for the good fortune of his romance, -protested.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, but if I were as young as you mean, I should -not be worth discussing,” Alix returned.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles glanced at her from the tail of his eye. How -young, how old, indeed, was Alix. His sense of a suffering -only biding its time to spring upon her came -strongly to him as he scanned surreptitiously the high -young face that seemed to soar beside him, the vast -background lending an added haughtiness to its delicate -projections. How French, how French she was; -how much a foreigner with all her familiarity; so much -so that he could not, even now, foresee what she would -feel, what love, what suffer. “And monsieur Jules;—I’ve -never heard anyone call him anything but -Jules.—And mademoiselle Fontaine? Give me your -impressions of all these people,” he said. “They are so -strange and new to me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Poor Jules. I am fond of him. Very. I have known -him for many years,” said Alix. “Ever since Maman -admired a picture of his and bought it and then found -him, starving, with his little wife. Maman has been -their good angel always. Success is coming to him now; -now when it is too late. And mademoiselle Fontaine is -an old <span class='it'>habituée</span> of Maman’s salon. I have not seen her -in the country before. She has taken this little villa for -the summer to be near Maman. She does not seem to -belong to the country. We will go one day to have tea -with her and her mother and old grandmother and see -the little ‘fox,’ ” Alix added. “Her grandmother knew -Chopin. She will tell you so at once; and George Sand. -She was an actress, too. I do not think that I care -much for actresses.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And was mademoiselle Fontaine’s mother an -actress?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, not at all. Her mother is quite different. <span class='it'>Une -bonne petite bourgeoise tout simplement</span>; quite insignificant -and creeping. They both adore the grandmother. -You must see them,” Alix repeated, a slight amusement -on her lips, as if she spoke of quaint animals she -had to display to her friend.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He and Alix and monsieur de Valenbois bathed before -luncheon. Bathing at Les Chardonnerets was a -rather arduous affair. One undressed in one’s room -and ran out over the cliff-top in <span class='it'>espadrilles</span> and bath-robe. -The long iron staircase down the face of the cliff -was almost as steep as a fire-escape in places, and at -the bottom there was shingle to traverse and then, if -the tide was low, as on this morning, a stretch of wet -sand. Giles was an excellent swimmer and so was monsieur -de Valenbois. Alix, not yet proficient, though her -stroke was good, swam between them out to sea, and -Giles, as he and the young Frenchman smiled at each -other over her dark head, felt a growing assurance for -his romance. André de Valenbois, he saw, found Alix -a charming young creature, and what could be a better -beginning than that? She rested, when they turned to -come back, holding first Giles by the shoulders and -then monsieur de Valenbois.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Vervier was sitting on the grass, high -against the sky. She watched them from under a -white sunshade, monsieur de Maubert, under a green-lined -one, extended beside her. “Now let me swim -again and show her how much progress I have made,” -said Alix, and she bravely pointed her hands through -the waves, Giles and André beside her, exhorting, directing, -commending. Giles felt that madame Vervier, -on her height, watched it all complacently. Complacently, -yet with that vigilance, too. Alix was given the -full liberty of the <span class='it'>jeune fille moderne</span>; but he had already -noted that however far and free her roamings her -mother was always aware of when, how, and with -whom they took place.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It so befell that Giles made the acquaintance of -mademoiselle Fontaine’s family that very day. Madame -Vervier and monsieur de Valenbois went off for -a long motor drive and it was arranged with mademoiselle -Fontaine, who appeared soon after the swim, -that Giles and Alix were to drink tea with her and Maman -and Grand’mère at their cottage. Monsieur de -Maubert was spending the afternoon with friends in -the country.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The smallest, most smiling little house it was, that -of mademoiselle Fontaine’s family. It stood behind a -pink-and-grey wall in a tiny garden and when they -entered the gate at four o’clock they were welcomed by -the fox terrier, and found old madame Dumont, crumpled -up in black draperies and under a black parasol -all lace and fringes, sitting out in the sun on the flagged -path with a row of white and purple petunias leading -up to her. Mademoiselle Fontaine stood behind her -chair and gently but forcibly shouted their names to -her, and mademoiselle Fontaine’s mother, who did not -bear her name, but was plain madame Collet, emerged -from the house with a tray of tea and coffee. She was -a stout, pale little woman with a high, old-fashioned -bosom and prominent, old-fashioned hips and an old-fashioned -fringe across her faded forehead. Careful, -cautious, grave and happy, she seemed as one who -moved among precious objects to whose well-being and -security she knew herself essential. “Is that as you -wish it, Blanche?” Giles heard her whisper to her -daughter; and to her mother, “You are warm enough, -Maman?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As for Grand’mère, Giles, in spite of Alix’s intimations, -was hardly prepared for such a fearsome old -lady. Very fearsome he found her, peering shrewdly -up at him through the fringes of her parasol with the -beady eye of an old raven under a dark-blue beetling -eyebrow. She was powdered and dyed, and an erection -of black lace ornamented her ample indigo wig -and fell in lappets on either side of her long Semitic -cheeks. Her smile was histrionic and her voice hoarse -as if with years of use for public purposes. Now and -then she emitted a loud gong-like laugh, and Giles -could somehow imagine her, so full of vitality did she -still seem, standing in classic draperies on a vast stage -and bellowing forth passages from Victor Hugo. She -talked almost immediately of Chopin and mademoiselle -Fontaine stood leaning on the back of her chair listening -to her as if she felt the rôle of listener, for herself -as well as for them, a privilege. Giles could not but -admire what, he supposed, was the effect of the French -tradition of family life. It was difficult to associate an -intelligence as versatile as mademoiselle Fontaine’s -with this derelict antiquity, and even more difficult to -think of her as the daughter of the homespun little person -who poured out their tea and coffee. But mademoiselle -Fontaine showed no sign, apologetic or explanatory, -of finding anything amiss with either of them, -and if her manner towards madame Collet was often -curt and authoritative, an affection that could show -itself at moments in quite a pretty playfulness evidently -underlay it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“See what a naughty little mother I have, monsieur -Bradley,” she exclaimed. “She pretends always to forget -that I do not like my afternoon coffee made with -chicory. In the morning, yes; I admit it; later in the -day, no. Ah, Maman! no excuses!! <span class='it'>Je vous connais.</span> -Economy is the motive!—She has never escaped the -fear that unless one saves all one’s <span class='it'>sous</span> one may die in -indigence.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Chicory, Blanche? What do you say of chicory?” -the old lady inquired, leaning an ear towards her -grandchild. “<span class='it'>Mais c’est très sain, la chicorée. Ca rafraichit -le sang.</span>—If you drink chicory every day in -your coffee”—and now it was an eye she turned, -half closed in sagacious admonition, on the startled -Giles—“you will not need to purge yourself, my -young man.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Fi donc, Grand’mère!</span> We do not talk of <span class='it'>l’hygiène</span> -now!” laughed mademoiselle Fontaine.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, it is a thing never to forget,” said madame -Dumont. “If Chopin had not neglected his health, -how many more works of genius he would have given -to the world.—He was my master, did I tell you, -monsieur Gillet?”—mademoiselle Fontaine had not -succeeded in conveying Giles’s name to her in a retainable -form. “I had great talent for the piano. It was -said to me, when I chose the theatre as a career, that -it was one I chose and one I threw away.—You have -heard of George Sand in England?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles said that they heard of her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Femme exécrable!</span>” madame Dumont exclaimed. -“<span class='it'>Femme sans cœur!</span> How many lives did she not -destroy!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, but I am always on the side of the woman, -when it comes to <span class='it'>les affaires de cœur</span>,” said mademoiselle -Fontaine, with a smile at Giles. “We are so often -the losers that I feel a certain satisfaction when a -woman, even if ruthlessly, redresses the balance. And -with all its romanticism, what a great talent it was, -that of the good George! Do not say too much ill of -her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good! You can call a woman good who tricks -one lover under the nose of the other! Do you forget -Pagello and Alfred de Musset!” cried madame -Dumont. “As for Musset; let it pass; he was not -one to be pitied.—But Chopin! A man as simple as -a child. <span class='it'>Non. C’était un monstre!</span>” madame Dumont -declared.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I will leave you to tell monsieur Giles what -you think of George Sand while I ask mademoiselle -Alix to come upstairs with me and see a new dress that -has come from Paris,” said mademoiselle Blanche, -thus further demonstrating her intelligence to Giles, -for indeed madame Dumont’s reminiscences had begun -to make him uneasy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix had picked up the friendly “fox” and was giving -scant attention; but once her impeding presence -was removed, madame Dumont’s recitals took on a -disconcerting raciness and when, presently, madame -Collet gathered together the tea-things and carried -away the tray, the old lady, as if she had bided her -time, lurched towards Giles, with a terrible leering -smile, to whisper: “<span class='it'>Elle est belle, n’est-ce pas, madame -Vervier?</span>”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Très belle</span>,” said Giles, drawing away a little.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Sa fille ne sera jamais aussi belle</span>,” whispered madame -Dumont. “She need not fear her. What fate -more pitiful for a beautiful woman than to find a rival -in her daughter!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nothing of that sort could ever happen between -Alix and her mother,” said Giles angrily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nothing of that sort. <span class='it'>Précisément.</span> You, a young -man, and I, an old woman, see eye to eye when it -comes to such a comparison,” madame Dumont disconcertingly -concurred. “<span class='it'>La petite</span> Alix is not of a type -to seduce. She has distinction; an air of race; <span class='it'>mais -elle n’est pas séduisante!—Tandis que la mère!</span>”—and -madame Dumont, with eye and hand uplifted, -took Heaven to witness of her appreciation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s not what I mean at all. You quite misunderstand -me,” said Giles, more angrily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Vous dites, monsieur?</span>” said madame Dumont, fixing -a very shrewd, sharp eye upon him as if she suddenly -discerned new aspects of an obvious case. “It is -the daughter you admire?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Collet reappeared and Giles maintained a -hostile silence. To attempt to enlighten madame Dumont -would be futile.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is time for your <span class='it'>repos</span>, Maman,” said madame -Collet. “She is so old, so very old, monsieur,” she -added, casting a glance of proud possessorship upon -Giles. “Only by constant care do we keep her with us. -And now it is time for the little afternoon nap.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The old lady, muttering something about chicory -and <span class='it'>hygiène</span>, signified her readiness to withdraw and -Giles assisted her daughter in hoisting her upon her -feet. But for all her decrepitude she was still not lacking -in female sensitiveness and had time, it was evident, -to make her reflections upon something unflattering in -the attitude of the young Englishman, for, before she -disappeared into the house, she bade him farewell with -an extreme and sudden haughtiness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix soon came down after that and they went away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well?” smiled Alix. “And did you appreciate the -celebrated madame Dumont?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her smile hurt Giles. Its unconsciousness of what -madame Dumont really meant; her ignorance of what -such old harpies thought and said of her mother. -“Horrible old creature!” he could not repress.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Horrible?” Alix was evidently surprised. “That is -very severe.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I want to be severe. I think she is quite horrible.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is always horrible to be so old. But she is not -stupid, Giles. She has been a great actress; at least, -almost great. Monsieur de Maubert saw her act years -ago, and says that it was good. And sometimes she -will still repeat one of her famous scenes—as Phèdre -or Athalie—to make one’s blood run chill.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She makes my blood run chill without any acting,” -said Giles.</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>C’est la belle madame Vervier</span>,” said a contemplative -voice behind him, and Giles, glancing round, as he sat -in the thatched chalet overlooking the tennis courts, -saw that it was the lady in grey who spoke.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had played tennis all the morning with Alix, -André de Valenbois and another young man, a friend -of André’s, who had motored over from a neighboring -château, and now that they had come back after tea, -and, with madame Vervier added to their number, -made a quartette without him, he watched them from -the chalet, with a book. The small old houses and -large new villas of Allongeville climbed a valley that -rose in a wooded amphitheatre about the little watering-place -and the tennis grounds lay just outside it, -pleasantly disposed, the highroad with its poplars on -one hand and on the other a hillside of tall grasses and -wild flowers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles that afternoon had strolled back into the town -to look at the church and buy some tobacco. He liked -the church, with its austere, benignant Gothic and -whitewashed cool interior, clumsy wooden beams -meeting in fishes’ heads above his head and clumsy old -wooden figures of saints standing against the pillars. -Saint Martin was there with his cloak and the beggar; -Saint Roch and his dog and a little round-faced Virgin -Mary at the knee of Saint Anne. It was a homely, intimate -church and a sense of peace fell upon the perplexed -heart of Giles as he wandered about it. He -wished, or almost wished, that he could kneel with as -simple a faith as the washerwoman who set down her -basket of snowy clothes in the aisle and said her rosary -before the bright modern statue of the Virgin. -The mere sense of haven expressed in the attitude of -a sleeping old fisher-woman, with bare legs and hair -like tangled seaweed, was enviable. Giles would have -found comfort in placing a taper to burn on Toppie’s -behalf before the gold-crowned Virgin and he would -have liked to doze beside the fisher-woman and feel -that he had a right to do so. And although he did -not belong there, the church seemed to accept his -presence with a special placidity and kindliness as -though it saw in him merely a strayed sheep. It was -the true fold, it seemed to say, and it could afford to -await, for centuries if need be, the return of all such -wanderers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>From the church he crossed the <span class='it'>place</span>, paved with -cobbles and bright with awninged shops, and entered -a leafy path that led up to the cliff-top. A bench was -placed in a grassy recess where one could sit and look -out at the sea, and it was while he rested there that -Giles saw the lady in grey emerge from a white house -further up the cliff-side; a tall, sad, slender, beautifully -dressed woman of middle-years, whose face, turned on -him as she passed, made him think, with its inscrutable -calm and mild dignity, of the face of a Japanese lady. -As much as the Japanese lady, Giles felt, she belonged -to an order, and the meaning of life for her would be -in the fulfilling its requirements.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was glad to see her reappear after he had established -himself in the doorway of the chalet. A friend -was with her, a stout, dark, sagacious person, and -theirs were evidently the young people who played in -a further court.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles rose when they entered and inquired whether -his smoke incommoded them, and the lady in grey, -seeing again the stranger of the cliff-seat, smiled kindly -and said: “<span class='it'>Mais pas du tout, monsieur.</span>” She was -charming with her slanting eyes and delicate, faded -face. She carried still further, though, as it were to a -different conclusion, the impression that madame Vervier -had so strongly made upon him, of always knowing -what she meant to do and of saying what she meant -to say. Even her manner of bowing her head and -smiling as she replied to him had a technique. That -was the only word for it. They had a technique for -everything, these French people, Giles more and more -clearly saw it, and not only the Samurai-like ladies, -but the peasants, the shop-keepers, the maids and -waiters. If you presented them with a new situation, -they passed the novelty by and gave you the old -answer.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The friends looked about them. The stout lady had -a long piece of <span class='it'>broderie anglaise</span>, fastened, for more -facility, to a strip of glazed green leather. The lady in -grey had silk and a fine steel crochet needle. Giles -could just see her long white hands from where he sat, -with rings of black enamel set with pearls, and the -long earrings on either side of her long white face were -also of pearl and enamel.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They observed the play of the four courts. Madame -Vervier and her party played in the nearest, and what -more natural than that the lady in grey should make -her quiet comment. But though there was no disparagement -in her voice, Giles felt a slight discomfort in -hearing her. Had she not noted him as a foreigner and -seen him as unattached, she would not, he knew, so -have alluded to his hostess.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Tiens!</span>” said the stout dark lady, and she laid -down her embroidery to look at Alix’s mother.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Vervier playing tennis became an Artemis -for speed, strength, lightness. She flashed there in the -sunlight before them, her russet locks bound with -white, her beautiful arms bare in the white tennis -dress, her slender white-shod feet exquisite in their -unerring improvisation. Her uplifted face, though so -intent, had a curious look of indolent power.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And the tall child, is she the daughter?” the dark -lady inquired.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I believe so. Yes. The daughter. She bears the -name of Mouveray,” said the lady in grey.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mouveray. <span class='it'>Précisément.</span> Her husband divorced -her?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Or she him. I do not remember. I do not know -where the fault lay.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And this is the husband’s child?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, that, <span class='it'>ma chère</span>, is more than I can tell you,” -said the lady of the earrings with a touch of melancholy -humour. “But she, also, is beautiful. I find her -more beautiful than the mother.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But with less charm,” said the stout lady, evidently -of madame Dumont’s opinion, and she had even -something of madame Dumont’s expression in pronouncing -it. “<span class='it'>La mère est toute-à-fait séduisante. C’est -une femme exquise.</span>”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But the child has more distinction,” said the lady -of the earrings.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is a head that would tell well on the stage,” the -stout lady suggested. “And speaking of the theatre I -saw mademoiselle Blanche Fontaine bathing here the -other day. She is very well in the water.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. She is staying near madame Vervier at Les -Vaudettes. She is a friend. The child is perhaps destined -for the theatre.—I can hardly imagine mademoiselle -Fontaine in the water,” and the lady of the -earrings smiled. “I can hardly see her off the stage.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, she is very well in the water,” the stout lady -again asserted. “<span class='it'>Elle est fausse maigre.</span> And she swims -as well as she acts. What a talent it is?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A little shrill, a little metallic, perhaps,” said the -lady of the earrings; but the stout lady was quite secure -of her admiration and said that she considered mademoiselle -Fontaine the foremost of their young actresses.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A little silence followed, and Giles, who had contemplated -withdrawal, settled himself again to his -book when the talk, as the friends resumed it, turned -on their families. The stout lady spoke of her Jacques -at the Ecole Polytechnique; of <span class='it'>le petit</span> Charlot and his -love for music. The lady of the earrings spoke of Andrée, -who would soon be old enough to marry, and of -Grand-père, left up at the white house on the cliff with -Yvonne to entertain him. <span class='it'>Ma tante</span> arrived to-morrow -to open Les Mouettes and was bringing a <span class='it'>religieuse</span>, an -admirable woman, who was to take charge of Grand-père. -“<span class='it'>Quel homme surprenant</span>,” said the stout lady, -and the lady in grey said that he was, indeed, wonderful. -“Eighty-two, and interesting himself still in all -our lives. I was discussing Andrée’s marriage with him -yesterday. We are fortunate, indeed, in having kept -him so long with us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles, as he half listened, gained a further impression, -after his impression of the Dumont <span class='it'>milieu</span>, different, -yet vividly the same in its one essential, of the -solidly, complicatedly built structure of French family -life; its dependencies; its responsibilities; its ramifications. -They all meant each other. They all lived with -and for each other, and the longer they lived the more -important they became, thus inversing the natural -course of family life in England. Andrée, old enough to -marry, was a very insignificant person compared to -Grand-père.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And who is the young man with madame Vervier?” -asked the stout lady, who had evidently just -arrived at Allongeville, since she thus plied her friend -with queries. “The little one is René Claussel, I know.—But -the tall one? He is as handsome as madame -Vervier herself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That is André de Valenbois. My uncle named him -to me yesterday. <span class='it'>Charmant garçon, n’est-ce pas?</span>”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“André de Valenbois! But is he not to marry Babette -de Cévrieux’s daughter? Surely I have heard -something of a marriage in contemplation there.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah. That is a sad story. It was, indeed, arranged; -the preliminaries, that is to say, in progress; the young -people brought together; two very pretty little fortunes -and a happily matched young pair. But it is -owing, precisely, to madame Vervier that all has come -to a standstill, as you can imagine from seeing him -with her. He is the present lover. They were in Italy -together last winter.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But surely I heard of monsieur de Maubert as the -present lover.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah—no; that is ancient history. My uncle, who -knows monsieur de Maubert, believes that the relation, -for years, has been platonic. There have been many -names since he was favoured. He is with her now, and -it may, of course, be that he is an <span class='it'>amant complaisant</span>, -though it does not seem probable. André de Valenbois, -at all events, is the lover of the moment, and from what -I see and hear poor Babette will have to be patient if -she still thinks of him for Rose-Marie. A vulgar love -would have been less devastating in a young man’s -life.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles now got up. Thrusting his book into his pocket -he stood for a moment staring out at the tennis players. -He could not pass them without speaking to them -and thus reducing to painful confusion his unconscious -informants. Yet he must get away. After a moment -of hot uncertainty, he turned sharply round the chalet -and began, behind it, to climb the hillside.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Well?—in what way was it a surprise? He almost -challenged his sick dismay with the question as he -went knee-deep through the daisies and scabious. Had -not the horrible old woman’s intimations of the day before -prepared him for it? Had he really cherished the -belief that madame Vervier, after her first disaster, -might have known no other love than Owen? But the -sickness answered for him. He had cherished just -these beliefs, and if madame Dumont had left his illusions -unimpaired while the ladies of the chalet destroyed -them, that was because the first was an old -harpy while the latter were women of madame Vervier’s -own world; of what had been her world. The -truth, now, was not to be evaded. Alix’s mother was a -light woman; an immoral woman; only not of the <span class='it'>demi-monde</span> -because, he might still believe it, she was not -mercenary. His heart was cold with repudiation as he -climbed. Owen was belittled by what he had learned; -Toppie was more basely wronged; Alix’s poor, proud -little face sank beneath the waters. What spar of pride -would be left for Alix to cling to when she knew? What -would she feel?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But what did those women feel? Suddenly, the -racial difference more sharply revealed to him than -ever, he was aware that the cold repudiation was for -them, too. It was the colder because of their kindness. -They were safe in the citadel of their order. They were -kind because they were safe. Because they were safe -they accepted the jungle as having its own and its -different code. They strolled peacefully along the city -walls and looked down at the bright, prowling, supple -creature without the city, and commented on its skill -and beauty. One might almost say that the jungle itself -was part of the order, since the <span class='it'>demi-mondaine</span> was -taken as much for granted as the <span class='it'>femme du monde</span>. The -bright creature was seen as dangerous, no doubt, to -adventurers such as André de Valenbois; but Giles surmised -that the danger was not great. Inconvenient -was the apter word; inconvenient to the plans of the -<span class='it'>mères de famille</span>. Young men who belonged to the -citadel had, as it were, the freedom of the jungle; that -was where it came into the order; for their pleasure. -They issued forth to adventure; but they came back, -they always came back—to Babette’s daughter—in -the end. Cruel; abominable, such tolerance, such connivance, -combined with such repudiation. For it was -there that Giles’s austere young eyes saw the evil manifest, -while the conception of a social structure more -complicated and more rigid than any England could -ever produce grew upon his vision. For nothing was -worse than cruelty, and what was more cruel than to -repudiate after you had connived?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And where did Alix, child of the citadel, but habitant -of the jungle, come into the picture? His mind -turned to her as he had left her, leaping in the sunlight, -her head thrown back, her arm uplifted; straight, -white, unaware.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He felt himself looking steadily at Alix, eliminating -her companion from his field of vision. He could not -look at André de Valenbois yet. He could never look -at him and at Alix, together, again. The memory of -his romance for them gave him almost a qualm of terror. -André as an individual was hideously eliminated -from any such romance; but, as a type, Giles could feel -between him and madame Vervier’s daughter no disparity -or inappropriateness; none if he were a man with -a spark of generosity or insight. But, as he looked at -Alix and her future, Giles saw that for young men of -the French citadel generosity and insight were sentiments -strictly appointed and conditioned. They did -not enter into the choice of a wife. How could they, -since the choice was made as much by Grand-père at -eighty-two, by all the family, as by the young man -himself. There was in her own country no future for -Alix at all; that was what he saw quite plainly as he -turned down from the hillside a mile beyond Allongeville -and marched across the road and made his way up -the opposite rise of meadow towards Les Vaudettes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was striding along the upland now, among the -fields of golden grain. The sea-breeze blowing on his -face seemed to speak of Alix, and his thoughts, almost -with a sense of tears, dwelt on her, on what he divined -of the child’s nature; so young, yet so mature; so sensitive, -yet so hard; and above all so passionately loyal. -What would she feel when she knew the truth?—He -came back to the first question. They must all have an -order, a code, these strange French people. They none -of them stood alone. The individual was implicated -through every fibre in the group to which he belonged. -Would Alix, when she knew, accept the jungle and its -code? What else was there for her to do? Giles was -asking himself this fundamental question by the time -he reached Les Chardonnerets and was finding the -only answer to it. There was nothing that Alix could -do. But he could do something. He and his mother -and all of them. Keep her. Away from the jungle; and -away from the citadel, too. “Damn it!” Giles heard -himself remarking as he marched towards the verandah. -“It thinks itself too good for her and she’s too -good for it. She shall belong to us. It’s the only way -out,” said Giles.</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>He had mounted the steps, head bent, hands thrust -deeply into his pockets, and had actually cast himself -into a garden-chair before he saw that he was not -alone. Over there in the corner near the little table -where the reviews and newspapers were laid, and the -fluttering vines tempered the sunlight, sat monsieur de -Maubert, a book upon his knee and his eyeglasses on -his nose. He was looking above them, across at Giles, -and the young man was terribly disconcerted in seeing -him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I beg your pardon,” he muttered; “I didn’t know -anybody was here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have only just returned,” said monsieur de Maubert -in his Olympian tones, “and there is no occasion -for apology. You were coming fast and you were thinking -deep. You seem disturbed, Monsieur. Has anything -occurred to incommode you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles had pulled his chair around a little so that he -faced monsieur de Maubert and as he heard the suave -question he suddenly determined to answer it. Whatever -monsieur de Maubert’s past relation to madame -Vervier, he felt assured from what he had observed -that his present one was based on a disinterested devotion. -If he must try to persuade madame Vervier to -give Alix up to them, it would assuredly be as well to -gain monsieur de Maubert’s sympathy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“To tell you the truth, I am incommoded,” he said. -“I’ve had a very nasty shock. Is that right? <span class='it'>Un mauvais -coup?</span>—Well, you understand, I’m sure. We’re -so fond of Alix, all of us, my mother and brothers and -sisters; she almost seems to belong to us; and I’ve just -been hearing two women talking at the tennis about -her, and her mother; and about her future. Nice -women. And they seemed to think there wasn’t any -future for her except the theatre.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well?” monsieur de Maubert removed his glasses -as if for a more unimpeded observation of his companion. -“And what is amiss with the theatre? You did -not, evidently, suppose that they narrowed the opportunities -of a young girl such as Alix to that career only; -but it will suffice for the argument. What is amiss with -it? It may be a great career for a woman of talent. Our -friend mademoiselle Fontaine, for example, has made -for herself a distinguished name.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles felt that his face was hot, but he went doggedly -on: “I know. I’m not belittling it. But, from the way -they spoke, I infer it’s not what it is with us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A playground for pretty amateurs? A display of -dressmakers’ <span class='it'>mannequins</span>? No; it is not. We are a -more serious people than you when it comes to art.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles was not to be abashed. “With us it is one -honourable alternative among others. It’s a career -any young girl can follow, except among old-fashioned, -prejudiced people. And I mean young girls of -good character; of good standing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What you mean, I think,” said monsieur de Maubert, -“is that with us it is not seen as a suitable career -for a <span class='it'>jeune fille du monde</span>. Alix is not a <span class='it'>jeune fille du -monde</span>.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No; I don’t mean only that,” said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Or perhaps that it is not with us a career <span class='it'>pour une -vierge</span>,” monsieur de Maubert further defined. “There -you are right. I do not easily imagine a great actress -who is not also a woman of experience. That is all that -it comes to, is it not?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles wondered for a moment if this, indeed, was all -that it came to for him. He had not thought of it in -those terms, and it gave him an added chill to find that -monsieur de Maubert did. “What it comes to for me,” -he said, “is that I don’t think it a suitable career for -Alix;—precisely because of what you say; and what’s -more, I don’t believe her mother does, either.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At this monsieur de Maubert was silent for some -moments, and in the silence Giles felt anew that, ambiguous, -even sinister as he might be, his sympathy -could be counted upon where any interest of madame -Vervier’s was in question. If he reflected thus carefully, -it was, Giles felt, because from Alix they had passed to -madame Vervier.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are right. Her mother is with you,” he said at -last, surprisingly. “It is because she is with you that -she sent the child last winter. She sees the difficulties -that you see. She would prefer, to any artistic career -in France, that Alix should marry in England. Marriage -is what she intends for her. She would, I am sure, -be glad to talk of any possibilities for Alix with you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hope she’ll let me have a talk with her; I’m glad -of what you tell me,” Giles muttered, though bewildered -by monsieur de Maubert’s calm assumptions.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And he was going on as calmly: “For myself, I do -not know that I am in agreement with her. Where her -child is concerned, she shows, at times, for a woman so -gifted and so sagacious, a certain conventionality of -outlook. She who, for herself, has chosen the path of -freedom, should have more courage for her child.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Isn’t it something of a criticism of the path of freedom -that she doesn’t choose it for her child?” Giles -felt himself impelled to comment. “Aren’t all mothers -conventional when it comes to their daughters? Isn’t -convention, in that sense, only another name for -safety?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah; you are a shrewd young man,” said monsieur -de Maubert with a smile. “Perhaps it is. Personally I -feel that for our little friend the free life of the artist -would be a happier one than the life of the English -country lady. That life, for a vivid, vigorous nature -such as hers, would be, I should imagine, <span class='it'>bornée</span>; <span class='it'>fade</span>.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t see why it should,” said Giles. “But I -wasn’t thinking of country ladies, or of marriage at all. -We don’t think of marriage like that. I thought of -Alix making her living in England. I thought of a life -where she would have love and respect about her and -be useful and happy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I do not think that such a prospect would at all -attract her mother,” monsieur de Maubert remarked. -“I do not see what more advantage it offers than a -similar life in France. Do you consider, then, that madame -Vervier has not love and respect about her and is -not useful and happy?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles at this, struck to silence, sat staring at monsieur -de Maubert.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have doubtless,” monsieur de Maubert continued—and -Giles saw that it was not through any inadvertence -that he had thus placed the situation of -madame Vervier squarely between them; without any -embarrassment, without any hesitation, he calmly selected -the theme—“you have doubtless heard those -women speaking of our hostess as if they did not respect -her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not quite that,” Giles muttered. “They spoke -merely as if she didn’t count with them at all.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And do you imagine,” monsieur de Maubert inquired, -“that they count with her?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In spite of his confusion Giles could answer this question -immediately. “They count with her for Alix,” he -said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“For Alix?” monsieur de Maubert mildly, yet perhaps -not quite ingenuously, questioned.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ve owned to it yourself,” said Giles. “It’s -their life she’d want for Alix. The safe life. The respected -life. She’d rather that Alix should marry one -of their sons than be the most wonderful of actresses.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It may be so. Gifted and sagacious people have -their weaknesses. You speak again of respect,” said -monsieur de Maubert. “All those who are honoured -with her friendship respect madame Vervier. You -speak of marriage. What wife can hope for adoration? -Madame Vervier is adored as well as respected.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I should have said that a wife could hope for adoration—and -for fidelity as well,” Giles returned.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Very rarely,” monsieur de Maubert smiled. “And -I do not imagine that our hostess—of whom I speak -thus openly because I see that between us there is -nothing to conceal—has ever had to fear infidelity. -She is in the fortunate position of a woman free to -choose. She gives happiness when and to whom she -wishes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles sat battling with a confusion of thoughts. He -had not meant to discuss madame Vervier with anybody. -It was horrible to him that he and monsieur de -Maubert should thus be discussing her. But without -implying her present it was impossible to discuss Alix’s -future. “I don’t call it fortunate,” he said. “I don’t -call it happiness.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You do not call it happiness to love and to be -loved?” monsieur de Maubert inquired. “You have, -perhaps, mystic consolations, monsieur Giles; but to -the majority of our poor humanity this will always -remain the one authentic happiness of life.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We have different ideas,” said Giles. “I don’t see -love like that. When you speak of her giving happiness, -you mean, I suppose, that she has had a great -many lovers. That is what those women said. I think -that a tragic life, you see; and the more tragic, the -more lovely the woman is who leads it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A great many?” monsieur de Maubert weighed it. -“Hardly that. She is a serious, not a frivolous woman; -and beauty accompanies her always.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You see, we have different ideas,” Giles heavily -repeated, looking down and tugging at the wicker of -his chair. “A love that can be repeated over and over, -I don’t call love.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Bonté divine!</span>” monsieur de Maubert laughed suddenly -among the vines. “A fountain cannot throw itself -into the air repeatedly and remain itself? Spring -cannot return to us again and again? It is with our -hearts as with nature; a renewal; a discovery of fresh -beauty. And since we are all different, with each new -love there is the discovery of new beauty.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Love to me means nothing—worse than nothing—unless -it means dedication; permanence; unity,” -said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, but then it ceases to be love,” said monsieur de -Maubert, “and becomes duty, affection, the joys and -cares of the <span class='it'>foyer</span>; what the wives—if they are fortunate—may -count on. A young man like you is surely -aware of the difference between love the passion, and -love the affection. We feel the latter for our wives and -mothers; we feel something very different for our mistresses.—You -will agree to that, I think.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve never had a mistress,” said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Tiens!</span>” It was an exclamation of blended amusement, -astonishment and most courteous respect for a -strange idiosyncrasy, and Giles saw monsieur de Maubert -in his dappled sunlight opening large eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What I’d like to ask you, if I may,” said Giles, “is -what you feel for mistress number one when mistress -number two has deposed her; and what you feel for -number two when you are devoting yourself to number -three. You can’t feel passion for them all, at the same -time, I suppose. The present lady preoccupies you. -What of the others, then? Have they ceased to arouse -any solicitude or interest?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“From the fact that they are gone, far less,” monsieur -de Maubert owned, shifting himself now in his -chair the better to contemplate his companion. “One -may think of them with gratitude or regret; with pain -or indifference. One may have been abandoned, or one -may have found oneself ceasing to desire. A man of -honour will do all in his power for the woman who has -been dear to him; who may still be dear. Affection and -trust may still be there, though passion has burned -itself away.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That must fill your time,” Giles muttered, “pretty -considerably.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, it might”—if monsieur de Maubert felt the -dryness of the young man’s tone he did not stoop to -any retaliation; he was all kindliness—“but charming -women are rarely in need of consolation. Is not the -fact you will not face, my idealistic young friend, the -fact, simply, that passion, the flame, does burn out? -That is a law of life. You will not alter it with all your -ascetic moralities. And shall we turn from the flame, -its ardour and beauty, because it cannot burn for ever? -That would be an anchorite’s error. Let us burn with -it and rejoice, until it sinks. Unfortunately, the time -of renewal passes,” monsieur de Maubert sighed. -“Spring goes, and Summer goes, and even of Autumn -there is little left. Winter approaches and one grows -old.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles sat silent looking out to sea. The things he -held to be of infinite value were invisible to monsieur -de Maubert. The things monsieur de Maubert held to -be of value were clearly visible to him. He saw the -beauty of flame and fountain and the old paganism in -his human heart echoed to the thought of love the passion. -But he saw something else, that underlay them -all, not contradicting, as monsieur de Maubert imagined, -but completing them. What that something was -it would be useless to describe. If one had come to life -asking only of each moment what it gave and never -what it meant, one became blinded to the meaning.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Sadness fell between them sitting there, and presently -monsieur de Maubert said, showing that he felt -it, “Well, the sun is setting; I will go in. You are -sorry for me and I am sorry for you.—Do we terminate -our discussion in a mutual sympathy?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had risen from his chair with a rather porpoise-like -roll of his stout white body and stood, complete, -assured, benevolent, looking down at Giles; and Giles -wondered, looking up at him, whether the price one -paid for such completeness was just that blindness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I suppose there is sympathy,” he vaguely murmured. -“I’m afraid it’s true, though. I think you -quite as wrong as you think me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, when you are as old as I am,” said monsieur de -Maubert, unperturbed, “you will think differently. -You will by then, assuredly, intelligent as you are, -have learned to make a better use of your time. You -will have learned to round out your life by a richer experience.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles, too, had risen, and he could almost have -laughed as he listened; it struck him as so comic, with -its sadness, that the traditional rôles of youth and age -should be thus reversed. “You will have learned,” -monsieur de Maubert was going on, “to accept the full -gamut of our human nature. There remains nothing, -nothing, for the anchorite in his desert—let me assure -you of it—but the handful of sand his dying hand -clutches at. He has had, you will say, his mirage with -which to console himself. That is a sorry consolation -at the end. Accept reality, my young friend. Accept -the full gamut. Neglect none of the strings of your -violin. It is broken all too soon. And what more sad -than to have stopped your ears against its sweetest -melody?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What, indeed?” said Giles. There was hardly -irony in his voice. It was contemplative rather. And -smiling at monsieur de Maubert as they stood there in -the sunset, he added: “We want different things.” -That simile of the unheard melody summed it up.</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>It was strange to meet them all again that evening, so -unchanged to their own consciousness, so changed to -his. Strange to find them still so charming and so to -shrink from their charm. They came laughing up the -steps of the verandah where he still sat, and he wondered -if they felt in his voice and look, as he greeted -them, any difference.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, it was an excellent set,” André de Valenbois -said, laying down his racquet and seating himself next -to Giles. “Where did you disappear to, <span class='it'>mon ami</span>? We -looked, and you were in the chalet, and when we looked -again, you were gone.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I felt I’d like a walk. I went up the hill behind the -chalet,” said Giles. “The country is lovely up there.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Vervier’s eyes were on him, hardly cogitative -in their gaze, yet perhaps conjecturing something. -She, doubtless, knew the names of the ladies of -the chalet as well as they knew hers. She might infer -the reasons for his flight. At all events, saying nothing, -only maintaining her cool dim smile, she crossed the -verandah and went into the house.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The evening meal at Les Chardonnerets was irregular -in its hour and informal in its habit. Monsieur de -Maubert and André de Valenbois only changed their -flannels for light afternoon clothes, and Jules, when he -came, did not change at all. Giles maintained his custom -of evening dress, but he waited for some time alone -in the drawing-room that evening, and even after -André had joined him, exquisite in pale blues and -greys, another five minutes passed before madame -Vervier and Alix appeared.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Vervier wore a dark silk dress, purple or -red or russet—Giles in the waning light could not define -the tint—fastening at the breast with a great old -clasp of wrought gold. A fringed Empire scarf, purple, -silver, and rose, fell about her beautiful bare arms; -a high Empire comb was in her hair, and with her -dark gaze she made Giles think of a lady drawn by -Ingres.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She moved across to the window, her arm around -Alix, and said, standing there and looking out: “<span class='it'>La -belle soirée!</span>” It was a citron and ash sky above a -golden sea.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Maman, you will sing this evening,” said Alix. -“Giles has not heard you sing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur de Valenbois is the singer. I have no -voice,” said madame Vervier.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“One needs no voice to sing the songs I mean,” -said Alix. “Do you know our old songs of France, -Giles?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked round at him over her shoulder, palely -shining in the white taffeta, and Giles, with a sinking -and sickening as of an unimaginable yet palpable -apprehension, saw that André de Valenbois’ appreciative -eyes were upon her; upon her, rather than upon -her lovely mother.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you know the one beginning, ‘<span class='it'>L’Amour de -moi</span>’ ” asked Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles said he did not.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, it is the very dawn of loveliness, that song,” -said André, and in the words Giles felt the expression -of a perhaps subconscious train of thought. “It is so -young. It is all dew and candour. You must hear it, -monsieur Giles.” The young Frenchman wandered -about the room, his hands in his pockets. “Of the time -of your Chaucer,” he went on. “Our countries then -had much the same heart. It was the time when our -great cathedrals rose and miracles were as plentiful as -turtle-doves.” He paused before the mantelpiece and -took up one of the photographs set there. “This is of -you, mademoiselle Alix?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Vervier had turned from the window, and, -still holding Alix, she approached him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes; it is of me. It was taken in England,” said -Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles had not noticed the photograph, but he noticed -a change in Alix’s voice. He, too, drew near, and -saw the little snap-shot of Alix with the dogs at the -edge of the birch-wood. But it was in a frame delicately -embroidered in blue and silver, and he asked -in all innocence, “Where did the pretty frame come -from, Alix?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Toppie made it,” said Alix. The alteration in her -voice was now evident. He now knew why, and fell to -instant silence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Toppie? What is Toppie?” André de Valenbois -asked, laughing a little and looking at Alix over her -photograph. “That is a name I have never heard before.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is <span class='it'>le petit nom</span> of mademoiselle Enid Westmacott,” -said madame Vervier, in tones sad and gentle. -“She was the <span class='it'>fiancée</span> of monsieur Giles’s brother, our -friend, killed in battle, of whom you have often heard -me speak. Mademoiselle Toppie”—how strangely -the childish syllables fell from her untroubled lips—“made -the little frame for me as a Christmas gift. Had -you not seen it, monsieur Giles? It is exquisite. I was -infinitely touched by her thought of me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah. It is, indeed, exquisite,” André murmured, -while Giles found no words. “One feels that only an -exquisite person could have made it.—Yes, certainly -I have heard you speak of monsieur Giles’s brother, -<span class='it'>chère madame</span>. But I did not know that he was betrothed.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He spoke in a respectful tone, holding the frame, -but for all his resource and grace of bearing, filled, -Giles suddenly felt, with a conflict of thoughts. Did he -know of Owen? Did he accept his place, in the succession? -Was he jealous in retrospect; or, like monsieur -de Maubert, in retrospect <span class='it'>complaisant</span>? And that there -was something to be kept up—or was it for him, -Giles, that she kept it up?—was manifest to him from -the deliberate adequacy with which madame Vervier -advanced to meet the occasion, while Alix, her eyes -turned away from them all, fixed her gaze upon the sky.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She is, indeed, exquisite. I can say it, monsieur -Giles, although I have never met her. It is not only -from Alix’s letters that I know her. Before that. Your -brother talked of her always. She was always in his -thoughts. One could not know him well, or care for -him as we did, without coming to know and care for -his beautiful Toppie. It was a great devotion,” said -madame Vervier, and her voice, in its sadness, sweetness, -and decorum, seemed to lay a votive offering before -Toppie and her bereavement. “I have never -known a greater.” But as she thus offered her wreath -and bowed her head, Giles saw a deep colour rise slowly -in Alix’s averted face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And here is monsieur de Maubert,” said madame -Vervier, turning to greet the latest entry. “Jules -evidently is belated in some distant village. We will -wait no longer, I think. Albertine’s soup will be -spoiled.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Have you not a picture of this lovely mademoiselle -Toppie?” Giles heard André say to Alix as they moved -to the dining-room, madame Vervier leading the way -on monsieur de Maubert’s arm.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, I have no picture of her,” said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You know her well?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Very well. She lives near Mr. Bradley’s family.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If madame Vervier’s voice showed full adequacy, so -did her child’s. Alix’s adequacy, her grave courtesy, -untinged by withdrawal, yet setting a barrier, filled -Giles’s thoughts during the meal. She, too, knew just -what she wanted to say and just how to say it; yet how -much deeper, he felt sure, was her perturbation than -madame Vervier’s. She had seen her mother, before -the eyes of her English friend, involve herself in a web -of implicit falsehood. How false was madame Vervier’s -web Alix could not know; but she had known -enough to feel ashamed before him; not, Giles knew, -because Maman lied; but because she had need of lies. -She herself had also lied. Giles, on their journey, had -seen Toppie’s photograph in her dressing-case. She -had lied because she wished to remove Toppie, as well -as herself, from even an indirect intimacy with André -de Valenbois. It was as though some deep instinct -warned her against him. And though Giles again -deplored her readiness, he could not feel that he regretted -it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She sat opposite him, all silvery in the soft candle-light, -her young downcast face set in its narrow frame -of hair, and he knew that grief and fear were in her -heart. Madame Vervier talked much, for her, and her -gaze, turned once or twice on her child, seemed, as was -its wont, to include her and to carry her on to further -depths of contemplation. But even madame Vervier -could not guess what was in Alix’s heart.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>After supper they all went out on the verandah. The -vines fluttered against a moonlit sky and moonlight -washed in upon them like a silvery tide. Mademoiselle -Blanche, wrapped in swansdown, came gliding in, and -Jules, with a pipe, emerged from the shadows and sat -in his accustomed place on the steps. Giles felt that it -soothed the lacerated heart of the young artist to be -with madame Vervier. Like a wounded wild animal, -he drew near the hand he trusted. She was capable of -compassion; of great gentleness; of most disinterested -friendship. An enigma to Giles, there she sat, and her -soft, meditative alto joined in the old songs they all -sang together, while Alix, behind her in the shadow, -leaned her head, as if weary, upon her shoulder and -listened. But more than weariness was expressed in -the child’s attitude. Giles, listening to the dove-like -tenderness of “<span class='it'>L’Amour de moi</span>,” divined it all. Alix -sought comfort from the pressure of new apprehensions, -new intuitions, new complexities; and more than -for herself, it was for Maman that she thus drew near. -The very love, tender, devout, brooding, of the song, -was in the gesture with which she laid her head beside -her mother’s and looked out across her breast into -the unknown future.</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Vervier did not come down to breakfast -next morning. Giles had heard a murmur of voices -in the room next his till late into the night and he -saw from Alix’s eyes that she had slept little. They -breakfasted as usual in the little dining-room which -overlooked the garden at the back of the house and -might have been dark, with its old polished panelling, -had not the sunlight at this hour so flooded it. A linen -cloth of blue-and-white squares was on the table, and -a bowl of marigolds, that seemed to bring the sunlight -clotted and palpable among them, in the middle. -Above the marigolds, Alix, in Maman’s place, poured -out their coffee, heavy-eyed but still adequate.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Monsieur de Maubert and André argued about politics -with an impersonal vehemence that recalled to -Giles, in its transposed key, the altercation of the -friendly men in the train. He gathered, however, that -they were both agreed on the necessity of a strong man -for France and on many lopped heads. The French -had not changed so much since the Revolution after -all. Whatever the party, the solution seemed the same. -Mademoiselle Fontaine, rushing in with a wonderful -pink sunbonnet on her head, vividly contributed her -own brand of violence, and then announced that it was -the very morning for <span class='it'>la pêche aux équilles</span>. The tide was -low; the sun shone; the breeze blew; and she had promised -Maman and Grand’mère a marvellous <span class='it'>friture</span> for -their <span class='it'>déjeuner</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles had not yet seen this mildest sport. Armed -with spades, bare-legged and shod in <span class='it'>espadrilles</span>, they -made their way to the beach and, following the receding -waves, dug vigorously for the evasive prey, half -fish, half eel. He found himself laughing with them as -they climbed rocks and raced to fresh stretches of wet, -shining sand. He had never known anything more disquieting -than the mingling of aversion and liking he -felt for them. He and André and mademoiselle Blanche -sat on a rock to rest while, at some distance, near the -edge of the waves, Alix dug alone, and, as he listened to -them and watched her, Giles realized that Alix had -been with rather than of them. She had smiled, also, -she had even laughed; but there was a disquiet in her -deeper even than his own, and if she dug there so intently -it was because she found relief in the childish -toil.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What a sky!” said André, looking up at the rippled -blue and silver. “It is like music, is it not? Music of a -celestial purity. Are you fond of César Franck, monsieur -Giles?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It filled Giles with gloom to hear André speak of -celestial purity. It was not that he felt the charming -young Frenchman to be impure. What separated -them was their conception of life. André’s, like -monsieur de Maubert’s, like madame Vervier’s, was -a pagan philosophy and his was a Christian. He did -not believe that they could understand César Franck.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah! He is not for me!” cried mademoiselle Blanche, -appropriately, her chin in her hand as she looked out -with brilliant, intelligent eyes at the far horizon. It -was strange to see her sitting there, her face whetted -by artificial emotion, dyed and touched and rearranged -to suit a fashion, among things as primitive as -rocks and cliffs and sky. “It is a music without breathing; -without blood; the music of a trance. The waves -do not break, the clouds do not sail, the birds are silent; -one is fixed in an eternity. I do not like eternity.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, mademoiselle,” said André, “monsieur Giles -here, who is a Platonist, will tell you that only when -we reach eternity do we find life.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>André’s fox-seraph face was artificial, too, though so -differently. Everything he had experienced had been -a selection. He had had, all his life through, only to -stretch forth his beautiful hand and take from the -heaped and splendid <span class='it'>corbeille</span> offered him by destiny -what fruit, curious or lovely, most tempted him. And -his grace, his gift, lay in the fact that he was tempted -only by what was curious or lovely. There was nothing -of sloth or sensuality in his being. Tempered like steel, -he mastered every lesser taste by one finer, and Giles -saw him like one of the gravely joyous youths of the -Parthenon frieze riding life, as if it were a perfectly -broken steed. How exquisite a being must madame -Vervier be to have attached him! Such was the -thought that passed through Giles’s mind, revealing to -him, as it did so, how far he had advanced in the understanding -of pagandom. And a stranger thought followed -it. Unwilling as he was to admit it, it was yet -indisputable that Owen had gained a value in his eyes -from having been chosen by such a being; from having -been André de Valenbois’s predecessor. Whatever -Owen had lost—and Giles knew that the loss was beyond -computation—that he had certainly gained. -Meanwhile, on the subject of eternity and César -Franck, he maintained a silence which, he hoped, -might not seem too morose.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When they returned to Les Chardonnerets with -their <span class='it'>pêche</span>, madame Vervier sat on the verandah embroidering. -Monsieur de Maubert was beside her, and -Giles felt sure, from the moment he set eyes upon them, -that monsieur de Maubert had by now fully repeated -to her the conversation of yesterday. Giles’s impressions -and discoveries and beliefs were known to her; -and, no doubt, the fact that he had never had a mistress. -She and monsieur de Maubert had talked him -over and over and up and down, but what they had -made of him he could not even imagine.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her eyes met his with the bland serenity of a statue’s. -“Have you had a good <span class='it'>pêche</span>?” she asked Alix. -She took her by the hand and drew her to her side -and looked down into the bucket. “Admirable! Albertine -will be overjoyed. <span class='it'>Dieu, que tu as chaud, ma -chèrie!</span>”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is the climb up the cliff, Maman,” Alix bent her -head obediently while her mother passed a handkerchief -over her neck and brows.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Monsieur de Maubert had got up and gone inside -and mademoiselle Blanche had parted from them at -the cliff-top.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I will sit here in the shade with you and rest, <span class='it'>chère -madame</span>,” said André, casting himself into monsieur de -Maubert’s vacated garden chair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you, <span class='it'>ma petite</span>,” said madame Vervier, still -holding her child by the hand, “may, if you wish, and -if monsieur Giles will accompany you, bathe now. You -will have time before lunch.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I should like that very much. But I do not need -anyone. It is quite safe,” said Alix, with a curious lassitude -in her tone.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, indeed, you may not go alone,” smiled madame -Vervier.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I should love a swim,” said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So, presently, he and Alix were on the beach again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But when they came to the rock where, with safety, -the bathing-robes might be deposited, Alix, instead of -doffing hers, sat down and said: “Shall we talk a -little?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do let us talk,” said Giles, and a great wave of relief -went through him. At all events, Alix would not -keep things from him. He sat down beside her. Only -the sea and sky were before them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I had to tell Maman last night, Giles,” said Alix. -She looked straight before her, wrapped to her chin in -the white folds of her robe, and he felt that she had to -keep herself by sheer self-mastery from reddening before -him now, as she had last night when she had heard -Maman talk of Toppie.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah. Yes,” said Giles as quietly as he was able. “I -thought perhaps you’d feel it best.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix, her dark brows slightly knotted, looked before -her. “And I think she sent me here with you so that I -should tell you,” she went on. “Tell you, I mean, that -she believed what she said last night about Captain -Owen and Toppie. That Toppie was first with him. -Not until I told her of his silence to you all did she see—what -you and I saw, Giles;—that he cared most -for her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles sat, struck to an icy caution. Yes; he saw it in -a flash; that was how she would put it to Alix. He -could find no word. But Alix expected none. Carefully -she continued her tale. “It made her very sad when I -told her of his silence. It made her cry. But she was -not angry with me for having kept it from her. She -understood.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And was she angry with him?” Giles asked after a -moment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix at that turned her eyes upon him and he read in -them a deep perplexity. “I do not know,” she said. -“She did not say. I do not think she was angry with -him either. She is a person who understands everything. -But I do not think she would have been so unhappy -if it had not hurt her very much. Why else -should she cry?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Why, indeed? Was it for her unveiling before himself? -How difficult to think it after the blank gaze of -those dark eyes. Was it not, rather, in fear and grief at -seeing her child entangled, at last, in her vicissitudes? -However it might be, there was a new burden on her -heart and, inevitably, Alix now must bear part of its -weight with her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, I’m glad it’s all out,” Giles murmured. “It -makes everything simpler, doesn’t it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Does it?” said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When she asked that, he was aware that part of his -thought had been that it made it simpler in regard to -Alix herself and what he hoped to do for her. But was -he really so sure of this? Would madame Vervier be -more willing to let them have Alix now that she saw all -her vicissitudes disclosed to him?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hope she’ll have a talk with me,” he said. “One -can’t talk, really, if things aren’t clear.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She is going to talk with you, Giles,” said Alix. She -still spoke with her lassitude. It was as if Maman had -stretched her too far. “I do not know when. She is -occupied, as you see, with her other friends. But she -will talk with you. You please her. Very much.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, do I?” Giles murmured. If it hadn’t been his -dear little Alix he could hardly have kept the irony -from his voice. “I hope it will be soon,” he said. “I -hadn’t intended my visit to last over the week, you -know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think it will be soon,” said Alix. “But I cannot -say for Maman. Shall we swim now, Giles?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When they all met again at lunch, over the marigolds, -it seemed to Giles that madame Vervier looked -at him with a new kindliness. She seemed to take it for -granted that from his little interview with Alix there -must have come a gain for their relation. She asked -him if he was coming this afternoon to tennis, and -when he said no, that he had work to do, she went on, -smiling at him: “You will be abandoned, then, for we -all have our tea at Allongeville. But perhaps you will -take refuge with madame Dumont and her daughter.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix had told tales. That was evident. Giles summoned -an answering smile with which to own that -nothing could be further from his wishes than to have -tea with mesdames Dumont and Collet.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You do not care for our ancient neighbor?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not at all,” said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, in her day, <span class='it'>la pauvre vieille</span>, she had her qualities,” -said monsieur de Maubert.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Blanche told me that Grand’mère found you <span class='it'>un -jeune homme très sévère</span>,” said madame Vervier, her -eyes still resting on him as if with a mild amusement. -“She is not accustomed to young men such as you. I -do not think she has ever met such a one. It is a heavy -intelligence”—she now addressed monsieur de Maubert. -“It must always, I imagine, have been a heavy -talent. One wonders where Blanche found her delicious -gift.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A grandfather, a father, might account for that,” -said monsieur de Maubert.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A father might. A grandfather has only madame -Collet to his credit,” smiled madame Vervier.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Her talent is too sharp. Like herself,” said André.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But the parts she prefers need the keen edge,” said -madame Vervier.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Every part needs a soul, and she has none; <span class='it'>elle n’a -pas d’âme</span>,” said André.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Vervier defended her friend.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“With so much intelligence she needs less soul than -other people.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Pardon, <span class='it'>chère madame</span>. With so much intelligence -one needs more. It is that one feels in her. The sheath -is too thin. The blade comes through.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Vous êtes méchant</span>,” said madame Vervier, and -there was in her voice none of the inciting gaiety usual -to the reproach; she spoke gravely, looking down at the -cloth and slightly moving her spoon and fork upon it, -and Giles suddenly divined that poor mademoiselle -Blanche was in love with André.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Mais non! Mais non!</span> I think her charming,” -laughed André. “But I can understand that madame -Dumont is her grandmother.”</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER X</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>It was not until next day, after luncheon, that the -time came, and Giles—as madame Vervier said to -him, “I find it too hot for tennis to-day. Will you stay -behind and talk with me, monsieur Giles?”—felt -sure that it all had been planned, intended from the -first. If she had thus delayed, it was in order that he -should come to know her better and feel more at home -with her. It was also in order that she should take his -measure and see more surely what she was going to do -with him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Monsieur de Maubert, also, was going to Allongeville; -André’s motor waited at the gate. He and -madame Vervier were to have the afternoon to themselves, -and as they all parted on the verandah, Giles -saw that Alix cast a long look at him.—Poor little -Alix! How little she could guess at what he hoped -for from this interview! If madame Vervier had her -intentions, he had his. And though he believed they -would not clash, his heart was beating quickly as he -followed her to the drawing-room. So many things, -lay between him and madame Vervier and her glance, -her voice, seemed to tell him that none of them were to -be evaded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The drawing-room was fresh and pale; so pale in its -citrons, whites, and dim jade-greens, that the sunlight -outside, shining against the transparent reed blinds, -looked tawny in its fierce, prowling splendour. The sea -was there, sparkling in its immensity across the lower -half of the long windows, and the sky of another blue -was across the upper half and the vines and honeysuckle -that garlanded the verandah outside hardly -stirred in the brilliant air. There were bowls of sweet-smelling -small white roses from the garden, and madame -Vervier was in white, the thin woollen dress with -the sash at her waist and tassels at her breast that left -bare her lovely arms and neck. Her russet hair was all -tossed back to-day and there was something ingenuous -in the shape of her forehead thus uncovered; something -candid and childlike. In her hand, as she sat before -Giles, she held a stone, a flat, smooth stone, pinkish-grey, -that she had perhaps picked up on the beach in -one of her walks at dawn. She held it, weighing it -slightly from time to time and from time to time putting -it against her lips or cheek, as if to enjoy its coolness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles had never in his life seen anything so beautiful. -He knew that she was not beautiful if computed or examined -by standards of exactitude; that her eyes were -small, her nose a little flattened, her mouth clumsily -drawn; but power so emanated from her gaze, magic -so pervaded her lips and brows, sweetness lay with -such a bloom of light upon her, that every imperfection -was dissolved in the unity that made a sort of music in -his mind. She was like an embodiment of music—and -what was that urgent, searching rhythm, that evocation -of flowers and dew and night? The melody of -Brahms’s “Sapphische Ode” surged into his mind and -with it a deep, an almost overpowering sadness. With -the song he remembered everything; everything was -evoked. The Spring day in the Bois; Owen’s face of -love; and Toppie, far away, betrayed and forgotten, -fixed in her trance of fidelity. To see madame Vervier, -to remember Toppie, was almost to feel that he himself -was Owen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You know, then,” said madame Vervier. Her arm -lay along the table beside her. She looked across at him -and held the stone in her upturned palm.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That was the way she began; those the very first -words she said after she had led him in, after their long -silence, when they found themselves alone together. -The throb of André’s car had long since faded down -the lane. The house was still; and Giles felt that his -heart was trembling.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. I’ve known from the beginning,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Alix told me,” said madame Vervier. “You saw us -one day in the Bois.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And she tells me that you feel him to have been -unfaithful to his betrothed.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” Giles repeated. He was amazed yet not -overwhelmed by her direct approach. He kept his -eyes upon her. “Unfaithful.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was a weight in the word that madame Vervier -would not feel, for André was now entangled with -his thought of Owen. It was hardly eighteen months -ago; and André had succeeded Owen. But all unaware, -as she might well be, of his further knowledge, -her next words answered, by implication, the charge. -If she admitted contemporaneity in love, why not succession? -“There,” she said, “you were mistaken. We -were lovers, it is true; but he knew that it was not to -last. He knew that if not death, then life must part us. -In his heart he was not unfaithful. He would have -gone back to her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you mean with a lie?” asked Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“With a lie? Yes; I imagine it would have been with -a lie,” madame Vervier did not hesitate. “But the essential -would be there. He had not ceased to love -her.—It was not his fault. He was swept away,” she -said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Had she looked like that when she had swept Owen -away? Was it an easy, an everyday thing to her, to see -men swept away? He tried to beat down the visions -that assailed him, but again and again, on the rising -surge of the “Sapphische Ode,” they returned. Owen -sitting before her, as he now sat, in the pale, fresh, -shaded room; Owen rising suddenly to take her in his -arms.—There would be no surprise to her in that.—She -would have seen it coming. “You mean that it -was your fault, then?” Giles muttered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No. I do not mean that,” madame Vervier answered, -and as, in speaking, she weighed her stone -lightly up and down, her eyes on his, he felt that it was -his heart rather than her own guilt she weighed so in -her hand.—How often she had weighed men’s hearts! -How conversant with their trembling must she be! -“No; that is not what I meant.—He moored his boat -at the edge of a torrent. That was all. He was swept -away,” madame Vervier repeated.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That was what Alix said of you,” Giles muttered -again. He felt as if madame Vervier must see the -throbbing of his heart.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What Alix said of me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That you were like a mountain-torrent. She wanted -me to understand you. She thought I might be of -help to you some day. She thought of you, poor child, -as in some kind of danger; beautiful and in danger.—How -can you say it wasn’t your fault?” Giles demanded, -and, with the thought of Alix and what she -hoped from him, he felt that he struggled to keep his -footing. “If you carried him away, it was your fault.—I -believe that’s what you live for; to carry men -away,” he heard himself unbelievably uttering, and it -seemed to him, as the sombre magic of her eyes dwelt -on him that it was for Owen he was speaking, and for -all the others; since now he understood them all.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Vervier, after he had said these last words, -contemplated him in silence. For a long time she -said nothing, and Giles, in the silence, felt that their -confrontation was altered in its quality. When she -spoke at last, it was not in anger. It was, rather, with -a strange mildness. “I do not overflow my banks, -ever,” she said. “You must not launch your boat upon -me; that is all.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If he had found himself understanding them all—all -those others—was it possible that she saw him -merely as one of them? Was she warning him? Had -she seen his need of warning? Giles felt his face growing -hot.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You must not launch your boat upon me,” madame -Vervier repeated, observing him with grave but -faintly ironic kindliness. “If I am a torrent, if I am -dangerous, to myself and others, my nature is there as -it was given to me. I may not alter it. The blame lies -with those who are unwary.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That may be true,” Giles muttered. “I have nothing -to do with you, of course. I don’t understand -you. But I do understand my brother. His weakness -doesn’t excuse him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are severe. You have never felt a great passion, -that is evident,” madame Vervier observed. “The -feeling he had for me was so different from the feeling -he had for Toppie that infidelity was hardly in question.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hardly in question? Don’t you see that it shut -him away from her for ever?” Giles’s voice was -dark with grief. “Don’t you see that a man who -chooses one kind of love turns his back on the other?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not if he is strong enough,” madame Vervier, with -her mildness, returned. “Your brother, I think, gained -in strength from our friendship. We pay, it is true, for -most things in life. It is painful to have a secret from -the heart nearest ours; yet one need not regret one’s -secret. I believe that Owen would have been strong -enough not to regret. Strong enough”—madame -Vervier, while she dropped the quiet phrases kept her -faint smile—“not to grow to hate me because he -could not tell Toppie how much he had loved me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Was it true? Giles wondered, sitting there before -her, his head bent down while he stared up at her from -under his brows, frowning and intent. Could Owen, -ever, have been as strong as that? And would it have -been strength? No; madame Vervier might have -armed him against remorse; but she did not know -Toppie. Toppie’s radiance would have fallen back, -dimmed, startled, from the presence of the thing hidden -yet operative in her life and Owen’s. A canker -would have eaten; bitterness and darkness would have -spread. Either her radiance would have withdrawn -from him, or, beating too strongly at his defences, it -would have discovered all. Dismay, devastation would -have broken in upon them, and if Toppie could still -have forgiven it would have been with a sick and altered -heart. But he could not talk to madame Vervier -about Toppie. The strange thing was, as he saw Toppie’s -radiance, that he felt himself safe from the torrent, -and that he began to understand madame Vervier.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You think of yourself as very strong,” he said suddenly, -and in their long silence he could see that something -of her security left her; it was as if she felt -the approach of an unexpected adversary. “You think -you can do as you like with life. You’re not afraid of -life; and that’s rather splendid of you—if I may say -so. But it’s never occurred to you to be afraid of yourself. -And the time might come, you know, when you’d -be carried away, too.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Carried away?” madame Vervier repeated. Her -voice was altered. She was unprepared. And in her -momentary confusion it was with haughtiness that she -spoke.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, carried away,” Giles repeated, understanding -madame Vervier more than ever and that the haughtiness -was a shield. “And if you were, you’d be helpless, -as he was; as all the others are;—and you’d find, I believe, -that you couldn’t go back quietly to the things -you’d jeopardized.—I mean, they’d have changed; -they’d have been spoiled. You made Owen suffer; I’m -sure of it. You gave him more suffering than happiness. -He lost Toppie through you, and he knew he’d lost -her. He couldn’t have lived with Toppie on a lie. The -payment may be more than our own suffering; it may -be other people’s. That’s what you don’t seem to see.—And -as for doing as you like, with yourself and other -people, it doesn’t work, the kind of life you lead. I’m -sure it doesn’t work. It will spoil you, too. More and -more you’ll be battered and bruised;—it’s horrible to -think of;—and at last wrecked. Or else so petrified -and hardened that nothing can really come to you any -more. That’s the way it would happen with anyone -like you.” Giles had looked away from her in speaking, -but now he lifted his eyes to hers again. “I feel -sure of it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Vervier sat there, her arm lying on the -table, her hand holding the stone, and looked fixedly -upon him. He had thought of nothing definite, of -nothing imminent in speaking. He had been able to -speak only because the thought of Toppie had come to -him so overmasteringly, arming him with such repudiation -of madame Vervier’s philosophy. But now, -as she sat silent for so long, he saw suddenly what the -fear was that, like a Medusa head, he had held up before -her. She was older than André de Valenbois; she -loved him passionately; and she was not sure of him. -It was in her eyes, in her silence, as she faced him, that -Giles read the fear; definite; imminent. And he was -horribly sorry for her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are a strange young man,” she said at last. -The haughtiness was gone. There was no resentment -in her voice. She only spoke carefully, as though she -felt her way in a world changed to ice. “How can -you think you know me well enough to say these -things?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know you well enough. It’s because we are -so near. Through Alix. Through my brother. You’ve -made such a difference in my life. Everything is -changed for me because of you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It need not be as you say,” said madame Vervier, -and after her long pause it was as if the strength he had -called in question came creeping back into her frozen -veins. “Not as you say;—if one has wisdom. One -may suffer;—do you imagine that I have not already -suffered?—but one need not be wrecked. And I have -great wisdom.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t want you to be wrecked.—You know -that,” Giles muttered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. I know it. I see it. You are not an avenging -angel,” said madame Vervier, and she was able once -more to summon the faint, ironic smile. “You are -really, under all the denunciation, so full of kindness. -That is what makes you so unexpected.—So very -strange.—But do not fear for me too much. I shall -know when youth is over. I shall know when the laurels -are cut and winter has come to the woods. I shall -be able to furl my sails before the night comes on; and -if one furls one’s sails in time, monsieur Giles, one is -never wrecked. And there will be, I trust, a little harbour -for me somewhere. Alix’s children to love. And -my memories. I shall be in old age a much happier -woman than most. Most old women”—madame -Vervier smiled on, her eyes on his—“have only to remember -how they were loved by nobody at all.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>What was there to say to her? Giles, as he considered -her, felt a dim smart of tears rising to his eyes. -She had done with him as Alix had hoped she would. -He saw her as lovely; as menaced. He wished that he -could protect her. “I hope it will be with you like -that,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perhaps it will,” said madame Vervier. “You -have seen me and my life a little too logically, too -rigidly, my kind monsieur Giles. I did not choose it so. -It chose me, rather.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah,” Giles exclaimed, “that’s what I feel in you. -That’s my excuse for what I’ve said to you. Why can’t -you turn back even now? You are so much too good -for it. You’re good enough,” Giles declared, with a -sense of further illumination, “for anything.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Vervier, again arrested, considered him. -Then, gently, sadly, with a compassionate sincerity, -she shook her head. “One never turns back at my age. -One’s path has grown too closely about one. Other -paths are all blocked out. And I was perhaps destined -for it. For some women the life of home, the still, deep -stream suffices. Children may fill their hearts and -stifle the personal longings; but for others these compensations -are not enough. They must have love. -They must have a lover. And in France husbands -are seldom lovers. So, if one is a mountain-torrent, -one leaps over the precipice. Do you see? That is my -history.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s different with us,” Giles murmured. “We have -different hopes for marriage. You didn’t give yourself -time. If you turn your back on a thing, you can’t find -out its reality.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The mountain-torrent, at twenty-three,” said -madame Vervier, “is not a philosopher. No; I did not -see what I was leaping to, but I saw plainly what I left. -And I do not say that I regret. All that I do say is that -I wish no leaps for Alix. Let us now speak of Alix. You -have done your duty by me and read me my lesson, -and it is all because you want to speak of Alix. I am -well aware that you have not come to France in order -to understand or grow fond of her mother—kind -though you are.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No; it was for you—only for you.” Giles did not -know how to put it. “Because of what I see in you. -As to Alix, you want for her what I want.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Safety. Yes,” said madame Vervier. “The deep, -quiet stream.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She’s that already,” said Giles. “Alix isn’t the -mountain-torrent.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, we none of us know what we are till we come -to the precipice,” said madame Vervier. “But I am -glad you feel that of my Alix. I trust your reading. -I could almost believe, at moments, watching you with -her, that you understand her better than I do. There -is in Alix an austerity that sometimes disconcerts me. -Yours is a nature nearer hers than mine. I have -thought of it deeply in these last days, monsieur Giles, -and I have made up my mind. Will you marry her?” -said madame Vervier, laying down the stone.</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>“There are many things to consider,” madame Vervier -pursued, simply and tranquilly, while Giles sat -transfixed. “I should have to think of many things.—Your -position; your prospects; they are not, I -gather, brilliant. But one of the gravest disadvantages -of a position like mine is that it narrows my field -of choice; terribly narrows it. Family and position -count for everything here in France. It is not one little -individual choosing another little individual; we are -more serious than you in that. It is one family choosing -another. It is two <span class='it'>foyers</span> coming together to found -a third. I have spoiled all this for Alix.” Madame -Vervier took up her stone again, again weighing it in -her hand, and now it was as if she weighed the sense of -her culpability towards her child. “I have spoiled it. -Money would have helped me to atone; but not only -was I not <span class='it'>philosophe</span> at twenty-three; I was also credulous; -ignorant; reckless. The man for whom I left my -husband was poor and had great schemes. I gave him -all I had. He sucked me dry. <span class='it'>C’était un bien méchant -homme</span>,” madame Vervier remarked in a tone of surpassing -detachment, “and what would have been my -fate I cannot tell had not the admirable friend who -rescued me from his clutches left me, on dying, a small -annuity. That is all I dispose of. And with what I -have been able to set aside for Alix year by year, I have -amassed only the tiniest <span class='it'>dot</span>; hardly enough to clothe -her.—I go into all this very summarily for the -moment, though I owe you every detail. You shall -have them later on. You shall hear of the old aunts -who brought me up and who were, also, inveigled by -monsieur Vervier. Even my family did not save -me since I was so unfortunate as to marry him after -the divorce. It is a long story. But for the present it -is enough that you should see why, aside from my own -position, there is for Alix no possibility of a suitable -marriage in France. Whereas in England all is different.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, it’s different in England,” Giles muttered, -since she paused as if for his assent. He was still too -transfixed by the sudden theme to dispose of his own -thoughts. He felt as if madame Vervier, with her calm, -her deliberation, her fluency, were casting, loop by -loop, a silken net about him. And he, the dismayed -and astonished fish, looked here and there through the -meshes for a means of escape that would not too violently -tear the web.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Quite different,” said madame Vervier with confidence. -“That is why I sent her to England. That is -why I make you my proposal now. In blood Alix is -much your superior; your fortune, I know is small; -your position obscure. But I like you monsieur Giles;—I -like you very much. Oh, I have studied you since -you came among us! And,” madame Vervier added, -smiling with a kind of indulgence upon him, “you like -Alix very much. I have seen that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So she gathered up the last strand and considered -her captive before drawing him definitely on shore.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And poor little Alix? Where does she come in?” -broke from Giles. After his long mute immobility these -were the first words that came to him. “Is she to be -considered in the matter?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Poor little Alix? Why poor?” madame Vervier -questioned kindly. “It would not with you be brilliant; -but it would be safe. You will be tender and -faithful always. You have not to assure me of that. -And you would, I am convinced, do all that is in your -power to do in order that she may be well placed in the -world.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And aren’t her feelings to count at all in this disposal -of her? She’d never have me,” Giles declared -with a sort of indignant mirth. “I’m the last person in -the world she’d ever think of.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You underrate your attractions,” said madame -Vervier, still more indulgently. “Alix is very fond of -you. And she is still a child; singularly still a child. -We may for a year or two put the question of Alix’s -feelings aside. At her age one has no feelings. It lies -with you, and with me, to see that when the time comes -they are the right ones. She is devoted to you”—madame -Vervier enlarged her assurance. “That is unquestionable.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I care for somebody else!” Giles heard himself -almost shouting. It was unbelievable that he should -have to say to madame Vervier what he had never -explicitly said to himself; unbelievable that he must -set the sacred figure of Toppie between them. But -she was actually drawing him on shore and there was -nothing for it but to break through.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Somebody else?” madame Vervier repeated. Giles -had grown pale with the shock of his own avowal, yet, -all the same, he was aware of a side glance at the comedy -of her discomfiture. It was as if all the strands -dropped from her hands.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” he nodded; “I love somebody else.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She might be discomfited, but she retained her resourcefulness. -“Somebody I know of?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” Giles doggedly repeated. “Somebody you -know of.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was then madame Vervier, after their little pause, -who supplied, with a strange softness, the evident -name.—“Toppie.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, Toppie.” Giles turned his head away and -fixed his eyes on the blue outside.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And madame Vervier sat silent. Very gently she laid -down her stone—Giles was never to forget the look -of that smooth, pinkish-grey stone—and folded her -hands in her lap. She rested her eyes upon the young -man—though his head was turned away from her -Giles knew that she was looking at him;—and the -silence, in the pale room, with the brilliant day beating -from without upon it, grew long. It grew so long that -Giles had time to draw his mind from his own confusion -and to wonder what was in hers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then, when she spoke, her voice was so new to him, -so unexpected, that it was as if a new chapter in his -knowledge of her opened gently before his eyes. Uncertainty, -hesitation was in it; something almost shy; -a lovely sweetness. It was revealed to him that for all -her goddess-like invulnerability she might have known -a qualm of pity for Toppie; it was revealed to him that -a romantic girl still lived in her heart, rapt in the wonder -of a love-story. “But then—does not that make -it all right?” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How do you mean, right?” Giles asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If you love Toppie?—Will you not marry her? -Will you not both be happy?—In your beautiful -English way of happiness—for ever after?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was smiling at him from her cloud of shyness, -seeming to feel the secret disclosed to her too beautiful -and delicate for her to venture near its nest; and the -childlike quality he had seen in her forehead irradiated -all her features, while in sincerest, most ingenuous joy -she forgot her own hopes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You see,” said Giles—and he spoke gently to that -child—“Toppie would never have me. She’ll never -love anyone but Owen.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Owen’s name did not for a moment stay her. “Never? -Oh, no. You are young enough to believe in that word; -and so is she. I am old and wise in that. You may -trust me when I tell you that it is a word too large for -our slight human nature. So many eternities”—madame -Vervier smiled at him—“I have seen melt away.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She’d never have me,” Giles repeated.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You think that no one will have you. It is not so.—Have -you tried?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No.” Giles shook his head. “I don’t think I want -to try, really—I don’t think I want her different.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Dieu!</span>” madame Vervier now breathed. “You will -embrace a celibate life?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know. Perhaps I shall. I never thought -about it,” poor Giles muttered. “I’ve never thought -about Toppie in that way. I’ve always loved her—ever -since I was a boy—knowing that she could only -be for somebody else.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But then”—madame Vervier in a slight bewilderment -groped her way among these unfamiliar shapes—“if -you have never thought about her in that way—perhaps -you will be able to think about Alix. She, -too, cares so much for your Toppie. Toppie would become -your patron-saint. Together you would worship -at her shrine.—Does it interfere with what I had -planned for you and Alix?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m afraid it does. I’m afraid it absolutely interferes.” -Giles, his face suffused with red, sat looking -down, struggling with difficulty to master a sense of -tears. “It’s impossible, you know; quite impossible. -Dear little Alix. All I ask, you must see that, is to take -care of her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have blundered,” said madame Vervier. “Forgive -me. We will speak of it no more.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you’ve spoken of it beautifully. I’m glad to -have you know,” said Giles, and the strange sense that -this was so made part of his amazement.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We will speak quite differently, then, of Alix,” -said madame Vervier. “We will talk of her, not as -your future wife, but as your little friend. Even so she -is fortunate. And I!—how fortunate I am—for I -know that I can count upon you absolutely. You will -help me as no one else can help me. If not you, then -another English husband. Who is this Lady Mary of -whom Alix has written to me? She has sons?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was like being borne on the wings of a great aeroplane -from continent to continent;—one nearly as -strange as the other. Giles really felt inclined to gasp -and ask for mercy. He could not go so fast or rise -so far without a sense of giddiness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Lady Mary Hamble? Sons? I’m sure I don’t -know,” he said, staring at the pilot.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You do not know her? You have no <span class='it'>relations</span> with -her?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve seen her only once in my life. Alix, as far as -I remember, has seen her only once. Last winter. She’s -a nice woman. That’s all I know about her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. It was last winter. But she asked Alix to go -to them. It was very foolish of her not to have gone. -If I had been there it would not have happened so. -Alix wrote of her with much liking. I gathered from -the impression Alix had of her that it would be a good -<span class='it'>milieu</span>.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, excellent I should say. Much better than ours, -of course.” Giles was able to recover something of his -own broad smile, the farce of it, to his seeing, breaking -through too strongly. “You’re quite right about us. -We’re not brilliant at all.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So I had inferred.” Madame Vervier considered -him with kind and lucid eyes. “She is a <span class='it'>femme du -monde</span>.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Very much so, I imagine. I don’t know any <span class='it'>femmes -du monde</span>, except you,” said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, my claim to the rôle would be disputed,” madame -Vervier remarked. “She will, I think, have sons. -Since it is a position, there will be a son to inherit it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, yes. There certainly might be,” said the -laughing Giles. He leaned back, clasping his ankle with -his hands, and took open possession of his mirth.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Vervier, all indulgence, showed her awareness -of its grounds. “It is strange to you, almost horrifying, -that I should have such computations; is it -not?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, I don’t know. Plenty of English mothers -have them, of course. Only they’re not so frank about -them. All the same, you know, you mustn’t count upon -us. We couldn’t do much in that line. My mother, for -instance, would never think of such a thing, and if -Alix came back to us she’d be like one of my sisters; -trained, if you like, to a profession. Marriage would -only be by chance; for her, as for them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Dieu!</span> You are a strange people!” said madame -Vervier. “To leave to chance what is of the most vital -importance in a woman’s life! No; you are not serious. -You live <span class='it'>dans le brouillard</span>. Life must be less difficult -a thing with you since it is possible to face it so lightly. -I should not, it is evident, care to leave Alix among you -unless it were in the hope of marriage. I could myself -have her trained to a profession. If I gave her up again, -it would be because I hoped for something better. I -am not <span class='it'>féministe</span>. I think a professional life deplorable -for a woman. A necessity in many cases, no doubt; but -a deplorable necessity. An artist’s life is happier; but I -hope that my Alix may find the happiest life; the life -of a woman married well. So, if she returns to England, -it is for the sake of the chances, and you, I believe, will -help to make them for her. To begin with, you will see -that she accepts Lady Mary Hamble’s next invitation.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Confound her impudence!” Giles was saying to -himself, but he was saying it tenderly. He was enjoying -her impudence; it was part of the comedy that, for -all her pitiful, her tragic aspects, she offered him. “I -see that I am to be counted upon as a sort of <span class='it'>père de -famille</span> for Alix,” he observed, and though genial his -tone was certainly ironic.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Précisément</span>,” smiled madame Vervier. “You will -not, I know, be a dog in the manger and grudge to -others what you do not want for yourself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, but that’s a very different thing from asking -Old Dog Tray to go trotting about to find her a husband,” -Giles objected. “I don’t see myself as a matchmaker, -you know; I can’t promise to do anything at -all in that line for Alix.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You were not asked to be Old Dog Tray. You -were asked to be <span class='it'>le Prince Charmant</span>,” madame Vervier -returned, a hint of the caustic in her kindness. -“And I do not now ask you to trot. I ask you only, if -an occasion offers, to see that she does not miss it. She -has not the heredity of the English girl. She will not -know how to make, or take, occasions for herself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think you are being rather nasty about the English -girl,” Giles now commented. He and madame -Vervier were on strangely intimate terms and could -deal out friendly irony to one another. “The English -young man counts for something after all. What we -hope for, we romantic English, is that he will make the -occasion.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, no. Not nasty; not at all nasty. I admire -them, your English girls; I admire their enterprise,” -smiled madame Vervier. “Young men do not know -how to make occasions, and since the English mother -feels it beneath her dignity to make them, it is left for -the girl to combine the rôle of mother and daughter. It -is a difference of <span class='it'>mœurs</span>, that is all, and I wish Alix to -have the advantage of your <span class='it'>mœurs</span> while keeping the -immunities of her own. The question that now remains -is: Does she return to you? She does not expect -to. You will have gathered that she feels very keenly -your brother’s silence in regard to his visits to us in -Paris.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Again it was a case of her surpassing detachment. -She went to the heart of the matter as if it had been, -merely, a question of his brother. Yet the strange -thing was that, though so detached, she did not affect -one as callous.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. She feels it very keenly,” said Giles. “She -can’t, of course, understand the grounds of his shrinking. -She was sure that when you knew you would feel -as she did and would not think of letting her come -back.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For madame Vervier had not known. He was sure of -that now. She might be detached, and even callous; -but she was not brazen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>La pauvre chérie!</span>” the mother ejaculated and it -was on a sudden note of profound tenderness. “She -is sensitive to such a point, and it is obvious that, had I -imagined such a predicament for her, I could not have -sent her among you. We must not blame him. He -could not have foreseen what was to come.” She mused -now, compassionately, upon the grounds of Owen’s -shrinking. “But how much wiser had he written quite -openly and naturally of his leaves to Paris. The tone -should have been kept to the tone of Cannes. Ah, it is -indeed a pity that he showed so little resource!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t suppose Owen was in a state of mind to feel -resourceful,” said Giles sombrely. When madame Vervier -spoke like this, chasms opened between them. But -were there not just such chasms between him and -Alix? “I think I like him the better for it,” said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah—and I do not love him the less!” madame -Vervier returned with an effect of quickness, though -she spoke quietly. “I do not love him the less. I do not -even blame him. And it is this leniency of mine that -has given Alix her first perplexity in regard to my conduct.—Or -is it her first? Who knows what goes on in -those innocent but astute young hearts!—Ah, monsieur -Giles, that, you would like to tell me, will be the -worst punishment of all;—when Alix knows.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t want you to be punished,” said Giles sombrely. -“I don’t want to tell you anything.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is so sure to come that it needs no telling. That -is perhaps what is in your mind.—Or, no; it is only -that you are kind, strangely kind to me,” said madame -Vervier, rising as she spoke and moving, with her light, -majestic step to the window. She pulled up the blind, -for the sun no longer beat into the room, and stood -looking out for a moment without speaking, her back -turned to him; then she said: “Alix, too, is kind. I do -not fear for our relation, hers and mine. When she is of -an age to hear the truth, she shall hear it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She loves you very deeply,” said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She loves me very deeply,” madame Vervier repeated. -“I have no fear.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles, too, had risen, and moved to the mantelpiece -where the picture of Alix in its blue-and-silver frame -stood. He looked at it in silence for some moments.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And how will you persuade her to come back?” he -said at last.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You want her back?” madame Vervier asked from -the window.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course I want her back,” said Giles. He spoke -quietly, almost casually; yet it was strange to feel the -weight of his own decision. He pledged himself to -something with his words. They implicated him in the -situation from which he removed Alix. It was only for -himself that he had a right to speak and in accepting -Alix he accepted the cloud that hung about her; he -brought it back among them; and he knew that the -responsibility was heavy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then she shall go to you,” said madame Vervier. -“I shall not be able to persuade her. I shall attempt no -persuasion. She will obey me. That is all. She will -wonder at me for sending her. She will feel that it -should too much offend my pride to send her back on -false pretences”—how they understood each other, -mother and child—“but she will go. Our French -children learn to obey. It is the first article in their -creed.—And since the pretences are not too false for -your taste, monsieur Giles, they are not too false for -mine.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They are too false for my taste,” said Giles. He -was implicated, but madame Vervier must see just how -and where. “It’s Alix I’m thinking of. I sacrifice my -taste to her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I,” said madame Vervier, “sacrifice my -pride.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She stood there looking out, white against the blue, -and her voice, for all its calm, was sombre. “I am not -ungrateful,” she added. “Do not think me ungrateful. -I see what you do for my child.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I see what <span class='it'>you</span> do for her,” said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes;—but I am a mother!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It must be all the harder,” said Giles. “You consent -to see yourself belittled in her eyes. And you consent -to live without her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Vervier stood silent at that for a long moment. -Something of the grave ardour in the young -Englishman’s voice may well have touched her to a -deeper vision of herself, and of him. It was as if arrested -that she stood contemplating the novel homage -laid at her feet. For, after her pause, she turned suddenly, -and fixed her dark gaze upon him. He was never -to forget her as she stood there, against the great sea -and sky; never to forget, as the last of all the varying -impressions of the afternoon, his sense of a greatness, -a magnanimity, like the sky’s, arching above her -earthly errors. It remained with him even though the -last words she spoke were so sad, as if, instead of the -splendour he divined in her, she held out to him a handful -of dust. “Do not think too well of me,” she said. -“I like you too much. With you there can be no -pretence. Do not think too well. It is best for Alix; -but it is best for me, too, that she should not be near -my life.”</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>The tennis-players returned at tea-time, bringing monsieur -Claussel with them. He was a young man with -shy, soft, prominent dark eyes and the smallest dot of -a dark moustache on either side of a nervous upper lip, -and, when tennis was not in progress to absorb his attention, -it was excessively directed to the social exigencies -of the occasion. Giles imagined, as he watched him -spring from his chair to offer it, stand back to let a lady -pass, bow with heels together, and tentatively resume -his seat only again to leave it, that he was perhaps less -at home in the jungle than André, and felt, in his introduction -to it, a doubled need for every amenity. It was -his first appearance at the Chardonnerets tea-table, -and in his presence, the presence of mademoiselle Fontaine, -her mother and grandmother, madame Vervier -may have felt a convenience. If she found it at all -difficult to face Alix and André and Giles after the -interview from which she had just come, her guests, -and monsieur Claussel in particular, gave her an excuse -for looking at them rather than at her intimates. -And Giles felt sure that she avoided her daughter’s -eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They were on her, those remote blue eyes of Alix’s, -with no insistence, no appeal. They dwelt in a wide -contemplativeness that recalled to him madame Vervier’s -own, were it not that proud patience rather than -security lay behind it; and Giles had the fancy, as he -looked at her, that, in the gaze of Alix, the Mouverays, -beneath the threshold of the child’s consciousness, -were judging Hélène Vervier. Whatever the verdict, -Alix’s tenderness for her mother would not waver; but -he watched the Mouverays imparting to her need a -further reënforcement of pride and courage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Tea was prolonged. Madame Dumont, in a great -crested bonnet, sat enthroned, receiving cakes and -homage. She was rather silent, rather, in her black -draperies, the sunken old raven, its feathers ruffled -high. Yet Giles caught more than once the piercing -glint of an avid eye, turning in conjectures that he -could too well imagine upon madame Vervier and -André; upon himself and Alix; and once, in the glance -of mademoiselle Blanche, he seemed to see a stealthy -hereditary surmise, and Alix rather than madame -Vervier was its object.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Monsieur Jules was persuaded to bring out his canvases -and range them for monsieur Claussel’s admiration. -The painful, vivid patterns and colours still distressed -Giles, but, his eyes already acclimatized to -their strangeness, began to exercise a charm. “<span class='it'>Quel -horreur!</span>” madame Dumont cried, but was fondly -checked by mademoiselle Blanche, who murmured to -her, smiling over her head at Giles: “We are no longer -in the days of Bouguereau and Meissonnier, Grand’mère!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She confided to him, as they stood side by side, that -monsieur Claussel was a devout admirer of modern art -and that his admiration, since he was the heir to a -<span class='it'>fortune princière—faite dans les pâtes</span>—might be of -much significance to poor Jules. “She arranged it all, -you may be sure,” said mademoiselle Blanche, casting -a fond glance upon their hostess. “It is always she who -thinks of such opportunities for her friends.—What -a heart, what a mind it is!—Whatever her own perplexities -and anxieties—and I can assure you that her -life does not lack them—she never fails in resource -and kindness when it is a question of her friends’ interests.—She -is looking pale—very weary, is it not -so?—You take mademoiselle Alix back to England -with you?” And since Giles, disconcerted, remained -silent, mademoiselle Blanche added: “She is ready always -to sacrifice herself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Mais oui, c’est très bizarre</span>,” little madame Collet -murmured, craning her neck to see the pictures, while -Giles wondered over mademoiselle Blanche.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>André, meanwhile, smiling in a happy confidence, -pointed out planes and stresses to the heir of <span class='it'>les pâtes</span>, -who stood with his little shoulders screwed up, his elbows -in his hands, rapt away from shyness and self-consciousness -by his sincere delight. Monsieur Jules -remained morose; but it was evident that he had found -a munificent patron.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And when they were all gone and an evening of -dusky rose began, after the hot day, to drop softly -from the sky, madame Vervier said to André that -she must take the air. She would go with him for -a little turn in his car.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was not yet ready for a meeting with her child. -If she was to think things over and decide how she -should put them to Alix, she must get away to do it. -Giles understood; but how could Alix understand such -necessities? He guessed at the grief and perplexity -that must strive within her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And now, indefatigable as you are, <span class='it'>ma chère enfant</span>,” -said monsieur de Maubert when he and Giles -and Alix were left alone, “framed of steel and india-rubber -as I sometimes feel you to be when I watch -your day, you will doubtless wish to go for a walk with -monsieur Giles. Do not hesitate to leave me. I shall, -I think, have a siesta here with my head in the shade -and my feet in the sunset; even in the details of life, -monsieur Giles, I am, you see, the Epicurean.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles knew, then, that madame Vervier’s intentions, -in regard to himself and Alix, had been imparted to -monsieur de Maubert who thus took occasion for furthering -them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Alix said: “No; the walk is not to be with Giles. -I have promised Annette Laboulie to catch shrimps -with her on the beach till supper-time.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And who,” monsieur de Maubert, kindly, yet with -a certain austerity inquired, “is Annette Laboulie?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She came with my shoes her father had mended, -the other afternoon. Do you remember? A dark, thin -girl. She has not enough to eat.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You mean the sad young ragamuffin with the untidy -hair? Not enough to eat? That must be seen to.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She is a ragamuffin; and untidy; I reproach her for -that. But she is clean. And she is a clever girl in all -sorts of ways. There are eight children, and Annette -is a mother to them all. We are great friends. I used -to play with her when I was little and Maman and I -first came here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur Giles, you are not flattered by this preference!” -smiled monsieur de Maubert.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And they don’t even invite me to join them!” -laughed Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But he understood. After the longing to know what -Maman had said to Giles must come the longing to -know what Giles now felt about Maman; but Alix -wanted none of his impressions until those of Maman -had been vouchsafed to her. As if by some deep instinct -she knew that her destiny had been in question -that afternoon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But do come with us, Giles,” she now said, and he -replied that he really had letters he ought to write. -“Letters home. You see my time here is up.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Up? Indeed? Why up?” monsieur de Maubert inquired -very kindly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, I’ve stayed already longer than I intended -and they all expect me back in time to start next Monday -on a walking tour around the coast of Cornwall.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Next Monday? But that means that you will leave -us the day after to-morrow. You will miss our Sunday -excursion to Caudebec.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m afraid I must.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix was looking at him; wondering, he knew, -whether his resolve was sudden.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>After he had written his letter to his mother, he -went out into the village to post it, and coming back -by the cliff he was able to see that even if Annette had -been an improvisation the drama of the shrimping was -being carried out. The two girls were pushing their -nets before them on the sands, bare-legged, in the shallow -water. Their voices, bell-like, came to him through -the evening air. Alix laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her faculty for fraternizing with the people seemed -to him a charming gift. Neither Ruth nor Rosemary -would have known what to do with Annette in tête-à-tête. -They could have dealt with her coöperatively; in -the Girl Guides or one of Aunt Bella’s clubs; but not -as an individual. And Toppie, full of still solicitude, -would have dealt with her as a soul. The difference -was that Alix was not dealing with her at all. She was -enjoying Annette as much as Annette was enjoying -her. They were simply two girls engaged in a pastime -delightful to them both; and Giles surmised that such -easy intercourse was perhaps only possible in a country -where caste was a thing so impassable that intimacy -lent itself to no misinterpretation. Caste in France, -he was coming more and more to see, centred itself on -the question of marriage. In a country where the romance -of the <span class='it'>mésalliance</span>, so dear to English hearts, -was nearly unknown, there was little likelihood of -its disintegration. How little do those know France, -thought Giles, who imagine her republican at heart!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Vervier did not return from her drive till -supper time, and after supper, during which she talked -cheerfully, if with a certain languor, she established -herself in the drawing-room with monsieur de Maubert. -There was no moon to-night and the light -streamed out over the verandah from the drawing-room -window. Giles, from his place on the steps, -could see that madame Vervier, beside the lamp, had -her embroidery and that she spoke to monsieur de -Maubert in low tones.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix brought out a saucer of milk for a stray kitten -that she and Annette had found. “I shall take it to -Paris with me,” she said, stroking the back of the little -creature, while it drank, half choked with purrs and -lapping.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is not a pretty kitten, mademoiselle Alix,” said -André, who sat beside Giles smoking.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No; it is not pretty; except as all kittens are pretty—the -delicate little paws; the beautiful movements. -In time it will look better; with brushing and good -food,” said Alix. “And it has a charming little coral -nose to match the coral beads under its feet.—Only -hear it purr, Giles! Have you ever noticed the softness -of a kitten’s feet?—they are like raspberries to -hold in one’s hand.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>André watched her meditatively.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is time for your bed, <span class='it'>mon enfant</span>.” Madame -Vervier’s voice came from the drawing-room. “I will -visit you before you sleep.—Ah, <span class='it'>mais non</span>! You must -not have the kitten with you. You would be devoured -by fleas. It will be quite happy shut into the kitchen.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But it is so young, Maman; so lonely. It must so -miss its mother.” Alix stood supplicating, the kitten -held to her cheek. “I do not mind the fleas.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Vervier was melted; or it was, perhaps, an -evening on which she was inclined to indulgence. -“Very well. If you do not mind the fleas! While it -misses its mother, then. Too soon, alas, it will be a -mother itself!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No; for it is a male cat, Maman,” said Alix with -austere realism. “You need fear nothing on that -score. There will be no more kittens to trouble you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>A la bonne heure!</span>” laughed madame Vervier.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But she returns to you, after her holiday with us -here, the charming young creature,” André, when Alix -had carried away her kitten, observed to Giles. It was -remarkable, the sense they all gave Giles, that Alix was -permanently his responsibility, and André’s voice had -almost the geniality of family affection. If not he, -then another English husband. Alix’s future had been, -by those most concerned with it—by himself and by -her mother—definitely agreed upon; that was the -fact to which André’s voice and smile bore witness; -and madame Vervier was certainly imparting the -same news to monsieur de Maubert as she now sat embroidering -beside him in her Ingres dress and scarf.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix herself, meanwhile, remained in ignorance of -her destiny.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Rather a shame she shouldn’t know it yet,” said -Giles. “She thinks she’s going back to Paris, you -see.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Shame? Oh, no,” said André in gentle surprise. -“It is much better that she should have her holiday -unspoiled. We are to say nothing of it to her—as madame -Vervier will tell you.—It would grieve her too -much to hear it now. By degrees, as the time draws -near, her mother will prepare her mind and bring her -to see the wisdom of the decision.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That, of course, would be André’s point of view. He -took it for granted that <span class='it'>jeunes filles</span> should be kept in -ignorance of their destiny until such time as their elders -thought fit to enlighten them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles was aware of a confused anger that seemed to -involve himself as well as André and madame Vervier. -“Since she and her mother are so devoted, it’s a pity, -I think, to hoodwink her,” he said. “I hope her mother -will tell her what she’s decided on at once. I shall advise -her to tell her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At this point, suddenly, a voice dropped to them -through the darkness. “I am sorry. My room is above -you. I can hear all that you say.” Alix’s voice. Thrilling -with bitterness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The young men sat mute, eyeing each other.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Dieu! Quelle gaffe ai-je commise!</span>” whispered -André, and—“How much has she heard?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“As little as she could, you may be sure,” Giles -muttered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>André found his resource. “<span class='it'>Très bien! Très bien</span>, -mademoiselle Alix,” he called. “But this is a case -where <span class='it'>une écouteuse</span> would hear only good of herself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix made no reply. The windows of her room, -Giles now remembered, opened beside his, on the roof -of the verandah. She must have heard all if she had -stood near them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This is very unfortunate,” André murmured. “I -have been stupid; very stupid. I must at once make -my confession.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. You’d better,” said Giles grimly. “It wouldn’t -do for her mother to go up now and pretend she’d -made no plans at all.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh—our hostess would be able to meet even that -contingency,” said André with, perhaps, the slightest -flavour of irony. “A daughter, with us, knows too well -that she may trust her mother to do the best for her -happiness.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But, as Giles remained sitting on, hearing in the -drawing-room the low murmur of consultation and -André’s repeated “<span class='it'>Je suis désolé</span>,” it became disastrously -clear to him that, more than Maman’s intended -accommodations of the truth, Alix would resent -André’s admission to Maman’s confidence. How, indeed, -could she interpret that?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The murmur in the drawing-room ceased, madame -Vervier rose and went upstairs, and, before André -could rejoin him, Giles had taken refuge in his own -room. He could not face André; he could not face -monsieur de Maubert, or madame Vervier herself, -again that evening. None of them, not even madame -Vervier, could see as he saw the disaster that had befallen -his poor little friend. He leaned at his window -feeling hot and sick, but even here, though the windows -of Alix’s room had been closed, the voices of -mother and daughter came to him through the flimsy -barrier of the wall. He could not hear the words, but -in their sharp passionate rhythm he discerned what the -words must be. “Why to him, Maman! What are -his rights! He was a stranger to us when I left you!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But madame Vervier would, indeed, never lack resource. -Unready as she must feel herself to face this -further predicament, Giles heard the muffled murmur -of her voice, rising, falling, expostulating; urgent, -tender, invulnerable. She would find answers to everything. -Or was it that there were some questions her -child would not ask of her? When, at last, she ceased, -there was no reply. He heard that Alix was crying.</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Next day, his last at Les Chardonnerets, dawned -high, blue, beautiful, and looking out at sunrise Giles -saw his wonderful hostess, as he had seen her on his -first morning, walking back to the house across the -grassy cliffs, wrapped in her bathing-robe. She came -slowly. Her tread had not the buoyancy of the first -day. Her head was bent; she meditated gravely. But -she made him think of a goddess who had sought inspiration -and sustainment from immersion in her own -elements of sunlight and sea-water. Power breathed -from her as she moved, and Giles, looking out at her, -was filled with a deep yet beautiful sadness. It was -like looking at a goddess. Madame Vervier seemed -separated from him by thousands of years. She might -have been a figure of myth and legend walking there, -the outlines of her ruffled hair all haloed by the sunlight, -her white arm crossed upon her breast.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When breakfast brought them all again face to face, -Giles marvelled at Alix. If madame Vervier was ready, -she was not less so. Pale, with darkened eyelids, there -were certain appearances that she need not be expected -to keep up. Monsieur de Maubert and André de -Valenbois would understand that it had been a shock -to her to learn that her mother was again to send her -from her. But beyond the evidences of this shock they -were to see nothing. Of the greater shock she had received, -not a shadow showed itself in her glance or -voice. She was grave and quiet only; she showed the -calm resignation of the <span class='it'>jeune fille sérieuse</span> who bows to -the decisions of her elders. She smiled at her mother; -she held her kitten to lap milk. And Giles was sorry -for his invulnerable goddess, for, if it was hard that she -should have to shoulder the burden of André under -Alix’s eyes, when she already had more than enough to -carry in Owen, it must be for her the bitterest of alleviations -that Alix should do all in her power to make -the burden light. Madame Vervier must feel, as he -felt, that such resource, such understanding in Alix -could only rise from the child’s intuition of how sharp -was her mother’s need. She stood beside her mother. -She helped her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Maman is going to take charge of my kitten while -I am away,” she said calmly to André.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If Alix could help her mother, Giles could help her. -This was an opportunity. “But why shouldn’t you -bring your kitten to England, Alix?” he said. “There’s -no quarantine for cats. You could carry it easily in a -basket.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>From the quick, upward glance that Alix cast at him -above the kitten’s lapping head, he saw that its fate, -in spite of Maman’s assurances, had indeed preoccupied -her. “Oh, may I, Giles?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course you may. <span class='it'>Rather!</span>”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Your mother will not mind?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Can you imagine Mummy minding another animal -at Heathside? Why, she’s lived and breathed and had -her being, always, in a swarm of dogs, cats, and guinea-pigs. -You don’t forget, I’m sure, those white rats all -over the place last winter. She never said a word even -when she found them in her bed.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I remember. Yes. She is so kind. I should be very -glad to have my kitten.” Alix stroked the kitten’s -back. She looked down at it, and for a moment Giles -was afraid that she might be on the verge of tears.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And if mademoiselle Alix will permit me,” said -André, wishing to do his bit, but, for once, blundering -sadly, “I will present her, in place of this very ugly -little cat, with the most beautiful <span class='it'>chat</span> Angora that can -be found in Paris. A superb white Angora, mademoiselle -Alix; with blue eyes like those of a saint in a -missal.—<span class='it'>Cela vous sourit?</span>” André’s own eyes were as -blue and as bright as those of any saint in any missal.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not at all, thank you,” said Alix. “This ugly little -cat is the only one I want.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles wondered, as the day went on, whether Alix -was going to let him see nothing more than she showed -the others. There must be for her a sense of bitter -humiliation in Maman’s failure to fulfill her proud assurances. -And it would be like Alix to keep silent if she -were humiliated. But how near him she felt herself to -be was shown to him when, after tea, following the -others along the cliff-path, she said: “So I am to go -back to you, Giles.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She ignored the morning interlude. She dismissed it -as the piece of acting it had been. She faced the whole -subject for the first time, with him, her friend.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. So your mother told me. I hope you’re not -too sorry; for I’m so awfully glad,” said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Vervier, with monsieur de Maubert beside -her, and André de Valenbois with mademoiselle Fontaine, -went on before them. They were taking Giles, -on his last evening, to see a little château that lay in -its woods near the coast, in the opposite direction -from Allongeville. Giles knew that madame Vervier -had arranged that he and Alix should go together -and that she trusted him to uphold her cause as best -he could. “It was what I wanted, you know,” he -added.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix, as she heard him, fixed her eyes upon her -mother’s form, rounding a green projection of the path, -her white sunshade upon her shoulder. “It was most -of all what Maman wanted, was it not, Giles?” she observed, -with a faint, curious smile.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not at all,” said Giles. “You know how much I -wanted it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You will hardly make me believe,” said Alix, her -lips keeping their smile, “that it was you who persuaded -Maman rather than she you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There was no question of persuasion. How could -there have been? When we were both agreed from the -first.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wish I could understand what it was that made -you agree so strongly,” said Alix after a slight silence. -“Maman says that it is for my good to finish my -studies in England, among such friends. That does not -seem to me a sufficient reason. I could finish my -studies in my own country; and I have good friends -here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She thinks, and so do I,” said Giles, “that we are -the best friends you have. Isn’t that a sufficient reason?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It seems to me a reason for not taking advantage -of such friends,” said Alix, startling him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But that is what good friends ask,” he said. “To -be taken advantage of.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You speak for yourself, Giles. There are others besides -you. You have no right to speak for them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had his back against the wall, and Giles knew it. -The worst of it was that she knew it, too.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can answer for them. I told you I could. I told -you that Toppie was so fond of you that she’d feel as I -do.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>To this, after a moment’s silence, Alix only said in a -voice suddenly grown sombre, “I do not blame you, -Giles.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hope you don’t blame your mother,” said -Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There before them went madame Vervier, her white, -heelless feet hardly seeming, in their beautiful tread, to -touch the grass she passed over. They had no glimpse -of her face. She left them in their privacy, feeling so -secure that their privacy, since it was in his hands, -could only be for her benefit. How deeply madame -Vervier had read his heart yesterday! How clearly she -had seen that all that he asked was to show her beauty -to her child and to help her, always, in hiding from -Alix the pitiful handful of dust that, in her truth to him, -she had displayed! “I hope you don’t blame her,” he -repeated, for Alix had made no reply, and, glancing -at her now, and seeing her eyes bent down, he guessed -that at his question they had filled with tears.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It would be strange, wouldn’t it, Alix,” he said -gently, “if it were I who had to defend your mother to -you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Very strange, Giles,” said Alix in a low voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s all for love of you,” said Giles; and in spite of -the handful of dust he knew that this was the fundamental -truth about madame Vervier—“because of -what she thinks best for you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But may one never be a judge of that oneself?” -said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not if you are a young French girl; no; you may -not,” said Giles, after a moment’s reflection. “Isn’t -that just the great difference between you and us? We -think for ourselves; but you, if you are a girl, may only -think for yourself when you are married.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I like England better in that,” said Alix. “One -should have a voice.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perhaps your mother feels that you’ll learn to have -a right to a voice by being in England.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I do not think so,” said Alix. “I do not think she -believes in having a voice. That is another great difference. -You believe that one learns to have a voice by -being given freedom.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You can’t be free here, Alix; I see that for myself,” -Giles said, looking at her and wondering how far her -thought could follow. Already in such unexpected -places it ran ahead of his own.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She raised her eyes to his. “You mean it is not safe, -in France, for a girl to be free?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m afraid not. Not yet.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And what is our danger? Can you tell me that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles found an answer that he had only recently -seen for himself: “The danger of growing up; in the -wrong way; and too soon.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And Maman thinks that I run that danger by remaining -with her? Why am I, then, different from -other French girls whose mothers keep them with -them? Why is she different from other French -mothers? You need not tell me that she loves me. I -see how it breaks her heart.” Alix’s voice trembled -suddenly. “It breaks her heart to have to send me -away. And why should it be so?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She mastered the tears that had risen while she -spoke, and her eyes held his. It was the strangest -thing in his experience of Alix to feel himself seeking -the right word in which to justify her mother to her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She has special difficulties,” he said slowly. “You -see some of them already. You remember what you -said to me long ago about her beauty and bravery, and -her danger. It was all true. I’ve seen it now myself. -And you wanted me to help her. You felt sure that -if I knew her I’d want to help her. Well, I do. You -must trust us both. For what I have to tell you now -is that I can best help her by showing you how you -can.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix’s eyes, widened by the unshed tears, gazed at -him. “I help her by not being with her?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, by not being another difficulty, and the -greatest of all.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And for how long must I be removed?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Until you are old enough to be free.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Until I marry?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Marry, or get the freedom of the English girl; the -right to choose whether you’ll marry or not.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But how can I marry if I am in England. Is it -to have me marry there that Maman removes me? -Because,” said Alix—and her voice, tearless now, -dropped to an iron note—“that will never be.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Poor madame Vervier and her hopes! Giles continued -to play her hand as best he could. “You -wouldn’t be made to marry in England against your -will. You might meet someone you cared for enough. -How can you tell?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Cared for enough! To leave Maman! To leave -France!” Alix held her head high and stared before -her, facing this confirmation of her fears. And suddenly, -her last words echoing too unbearably in her -heart, he saw her lips tremble; part; and the tears, at -last, helplessly ran down her cheeks.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh—my dear little Alix—don’t grieve like that,” -Giles implored. “Of course you won’t leave them;—unless -you come to feel that you care so much for -someone that you can.—And it would never be -really to leave. And while you’re over there, can’t we -count a little for you? Can’t I count? You know how -much I care for you. I’ll do my best to make you -happy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix shook her head. “It is not that,” she uttered -brokenly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is it, then? You shan’t be married against -your will.” Giles tried to smile at her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is not that,” Alix repeated. “Already you are -too good to me. You are unbelievably good to me.—It -is Maman.” Alix put her hand up to her eyes and -hid her tears from him as she walked. “It is Maman.—How -can she bear to let me go?—How can I bear -to be parted from her; far away; hardly seeing her; -until I am old?”</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER XIV</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then she is coming back. I am so glad. I was afraid, -from things she said, once or twice, about herself, about -her life in France with her mother, that she might not -be coming,” said Toppie.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She and Giles sat up on the ridge where the junipers -grew. The pine-woods were behind them; below were -the birches in their autumnal dress of bronze and gold; -and brooding over all a sky of dusty rose. It was the -evening of the hottest September day and the breeze -hardly stirred the spices of the pines.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles was only just back from his Cornish trip and -Toppie and her father had been in Bournemouth when -he had returned from France, so that this was their -first meeting. Mr. Westmacott was not well and the -sea had done him no good. Toppie was worn with -nursing him. Giles had never seen her look so white.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>From something deep and watchful in her eyes the -feeling came to him that her father was even more ill -than they had guessed and that she was schooling herself -to the thought of losing him. With her father gone, -Toppie’s last close link with earth would be severed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But she had not spoken of herself or of her anxieties -this afternoon. They had climbed the hill slowly, -stopping to look back at the sky, and Toppie had -found this favourite spot among the junipers and had -sunk down, taking off her Panama hat, battered like a -boy’s, and holding it with both hands clasped around -her knees as she sat in the deep heather. She wore her -usual grey, again an almost boyish formula; the thin -silk jumper rolled back from the throat, the thin -pleated skirt falling to her ankle. Her pale hair was -ruffled up over the black silk ribbon that bound it. -As she sat there while he lay beside her on his arm, -Giles had never felt Toppie so near him. It was more -sad than sweet to feel her so. It gave him the feeling -he would have had if she were going away on a long -journey and could be so near because she was to be so -far. And she talked to him of his time in France and -of Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. She’s coming back all right,” Giles said. “I -am glad you are glad; for I am. It’s as if the child belonged -to us, isn’t it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is quite strange, Giles, how much I feel that,” -said Toppie, turning her eyes upon him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They were such lovely eyes, those of Toppie’s. Giles -had always felt them, since he had first, a boy of fifteen, -seen her, the loveliest eyes in the world. Not large; -not vividly marked; her brows and lashes only a shade -darker than her hair; they conveyed the impression of -light rather than colour and of radiance rather than of -warmth. It was as if they looked at you from the -zenith on a cloudless, cold Spring day. And the words -that had always gone with them, in Giles’s mind, from -the time that he had first seen Toppie, in church, in -Advent, with pale, wintry sunlight streaming in over -her, had been: “Dayspring from on high.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had stood there, in the Rectory pew, all alone, -tall and slender in her grey, with a little high tight -fur collar up to her chin and a little round fur cap -coming over her golden hair and down to her ears, and -she had, while the Psalms were being sung, turned her -eyes on the Bradley family in the pew across the nave; -looking at Owen; at Owen first—Giles felt it even -then; Owen, his nut-brown head held high while he -happily chanted out the responses in his sweet, accurate -tenor. And then her eyes had met Giles’s solemn -gaze. And those had been the words that had come -to him; full of the Christmas beauty; full almost to -tears, for the boy standing there, of radiant promise -and of heavenly love.—“Whereby the dayspring -from on high hath visited us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So he had seen her first. So he had always thought of -Toppie’s eyes. They showered light and loveliness -upon you; and it came from far away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Quite strange,” she was saying now, thinking of -him because she was thinking of Alix, just as she had -always, in the past, thought of him because she was -thinking of Owen. “From the first moment I saw her I -felt that she belonged. Perhaps it was because of what -Owen had written. He was so fond of her. She was -the dearest little girl he had ever seen. Even then I used -to think that some day, if the war left us to each other, -we would have Alix come and stay with us often. And -then the moment I saw her I felt that I loved her.—Giles, -you were very bad about letters while you were -in France. Never one to me; and hardly anything to -your mother about madame Vervier. Only that she -was charming and had a charming house. You told us -more about monsieur de Maubert—was that the -name?—and the young man who ought to have worn -a ruff and fought with Henry of Navarre. I liked so -much what you said about him. I felt as if he ought to -have known Owen. As if they would have been friends. -But of course what we most wanted to hear was about -Alix’s mother. Tell me everything now; everything -you thought.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Everything. Well, that’s rather difficult, you -know.” Giles turned over on his elbow and looked -down at the heather, pulling his hat over his eyes. -“She’s very different from Alix.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is she? I’d always imagined her so much the -same.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Almost as different as it is possible for a mother -to be from her child,” said Giles, while he thought -intently. How it had pleased, how it had lightened -his heart to hear what Toppie had just been saying -of Alix and her return to them; and how dismayed -he knew himself to be by this further stretch of her -interest.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“As different as that?” Toppie questioned, and -with the faintest flavour of distress in the question. -“Owen always wrote as if she were lovely, too.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, as far as that goes she’s lovelier, I suppose. -Where Alix is like a crystal she is like a flower. And -they both have that dignity and security, you know. -Alix is such a dignified little creature, isn’t she?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. Beautifully dignified; beautifully secure. I -always feel of Alix that she would be safe, always and -everywhere. Yes; those are just the words for Alix.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And it’s not exactly righteousness, is it?” Giles -went on, finding more words since Toppie liked these -ones. “It’s integrity. Like a little noble Roman girl.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Integrity. Yes.” Toppie mused on Alix. But then, -alas, she came back to Alix’s mother. “The same in -loveliness; the same in dignity and security.—In -what ways different, then, Giles?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He knew that there was hardly anything he could -say of madame Vervier that it would not be unwise to -say. He watched an ant, disturbed by his change of -posture, thread its anxious way amongst the tufts of -heather and felt that he was like the ant. He, too, must -go forward and find the path that promised most -safety. “Well, she’s more impulsive, I feel; more selfish; -less fastidious.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Toppie, for a moment, reflected in silence. He saw -her dimly, sitting there beside him, a grey silhouette -against the sky. “Less fastidious?” she then said, and -it was as if he had presented her with an object that -she turned reluctantly, and with surprise, in her hands: -“How strange. Owen gave me no impression of that. -He gave me the impression of someone quite finished, -quite exquisite; in every way. How do you mean less -fastidious?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I don’t exactly know,” said Giles, and he -feared it was uneasily. “Merely in the sense, perhaps, -that she’d put up with all sorts of queer people, for the -sake of not being bored, that Alix wouldn’t care to -have. She is exquisite; very exquisite.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You did like her, didn’t you, Giles? Very, very -much?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, hardly very, very,” he qualified, pausing -with wary antennæ, as it were. “She’s not my sort, -really. That’s all that it comes to.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He could not see Toppie’s features, but he felt her -more intent, and in her next words he saw that he had -seemed to call Owen’s taste in question—as well as -madame Vervier’s. “Wasn’t that only because you -didn’t see enough of her? She was so much Owen’s -sort.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It doesn’t follow she’d be mine, would it? Owen -and I were really very different, weren’t we, Toppie, -dear?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes; very different. But you always liked the -same people. It surprises me—so much—that you -shouldn’t like Alix’s mother.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I didn’t say that, Toppie! ‘Liking’ isn’t the -word. She is charming. She is too charming; that’s -what it comes to.” Giles felt himself go forward to -a new outlet. “Too much the woman of fashion; -too sophisticated and highly flavoured for anyone so -simple as I am. You know I am much simpler than -Owen. He was a man of the world, and I, however -long I live, will never be a man of the world. If one’s -just the shambling, shabby, scholastic type one will -never feel at home with brilliant, resourceful people. -It’s as if”—Giles found the simile with satisfaction—“I -liked rice pudding while Owen could appreciate -caviare. Madame Vervier is caviare, as far as I am -concerned.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He glanced up at Toppie to see how she accepted the -metaphor; but if she smiled it was with reserve. “You -like me, Giles. I’m not caviare; but I’m not, I hope, -rice pudding either.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, you don’t come into such categories,” Giles -smiled back. “If one could find a fruit that tasted of -frost and sunlight, a fruit one could pick only at daybreak—golden, -and chill and sweet—that would be -you, Toppie. A sort of apple of the Hesperides—that -one must sail and sail for ever and a day to find.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Something that came into his voice made him stop -suddenly. And Toppie, too, was silent for a moment. -When she spoke it was carefully, as if guiding their -steps away from a menace to their quiet.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s a charming compliment, Giles,” she said. -“I sometimes think, shambling and shabby though -you call yourself, that you are a poet as well as a philosopher. -But I’m sorry, you know, to feel madame Vervier -lose by what I gain. Owen always wrote of her as -someone he so wanted me to know. I can’t believe he’d -have wanted me to know anyone who was worldly and -luxurious and meretricious. I can’t help feeling that -you must be unjust.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Meretricious, luxurious, worldly? Was that the picture -he had, all unwittingly, drawn for Toppie? The -blood came to Giles’s face. It was to be displayed to -his own eyes as disloyal. He saw madame Vervier’s -figure standing against the great arch of the sky; he -saw her rising up from the sea at dawn; he smelt the -beeswax and seashells and cool, clean linen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I don’t mean that at all,” he stammered. “I -don’t think of her as any of those things. Nothing -could be further from my mind.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If she’s like the things rich people eat in restaurants; -if she’s selfish; if she’s unfastidious and resourceful—” -Toppie’s voice built up before him the shape of -madame Vervier as she had seen him draw it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You mustn’t press mere metaphor so far, Toppie. -I said she was like a flower, too. She is as out-of-door a -creature as Alix herself. She belongs more to the cliffs -and the country than to restaurants.—That’s really -the most vivid impression I have of her”—he was -striving to atone to madame Vervier for the false picture -he had put before Toppie; yet trying at the same -time for truth to Toppie. “As I used to see her at -sunrise; coming up from the sea after a morning swim. -Like poetry and music personified, she used to look, -walking against the dawn.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Toppie’s eyes were on him. It was curious how cold -her eyes could be. It was as if, though Toppie herself -were not judging you, the height, the light that her -eyes conveyed revealed you to her as creeping and -dingy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t understand you,” she said. She spoke gently, -as if to mitigate the coldness that fell from her -gaze.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But what is it you don’t understand, Toppie!” -Giles exclaimed, and he heard that it was with irrepressible -fretfulness. He felt it so unfair that he should be -displayed to Toppie as creeping and dingy when all -that he was trying for was to shield her from any hurt. -Yet that there was another reason for his fretfulness, -he knew. His loyalty to madame Vervier had betrayed -him to too much ardour. Ardour had been in his voice. -And Toppie must have heard it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That you should say such different things of -Owen’s friend,” Toppie replied at once. “You contradict -yourself. It’s as if you were hiding something -from me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Poor Giles. His hat-brim was drawn down, but that -could not conceal from Toppie the helpless red that -surged up over his face and neck as he heard these -words. He felt it rise, the burning, dark confusion, -while, with sudden fear and sickness of heart, he groped -for an answer. And her blow had been so sudden and -unlooked for that the only answer that came was as -helpless as his blush, “I’m sure I don’t know what -you mean. What could there be to hide?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But there was no escape for him in Toppie’s gaze. -Giles, his eyes fixed on the heather, felt it dwell upon -him, and when, at last, she looked away, it was as if -she had seen the falsity between them. And all that -she said, in accents of snow, was: “I’m sure I don’t -know. Perhaps you will tell me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Toppie, this is absurd, you know,” Giles muttered, -staring down. “You put me in a ridiculous position. -It upsets one, naturally, to be cross-questioned as if -one were a shifty witness in the witness-box. People -are complicated and contradictory creatures. One -can’t draw a consistent picture of them. On one side -of her nature madame Vervier may be weak and erring -and on the other she may be like a goddess. How do I -know? I’ve hardly seen her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then Toppie made an astonishing statement. -Turning her eyes from him, looking before her at the -dull rose sky, coldly, though gently, and with a poise -of tone that showed how deeply she was feeling, she -said: “If you have fallen in love with her, Giles, why -should you not say so? Why should you try to hide it -as though you were ashamed? She is a widow, is she -not? There is no reason, is there, why you should not -love her?—It hurts me that you should speak like -that—keeping things back; twisting your real feelings -lest I should see them.—You speak of her as though -you were ashamed of loving her.”</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER XV</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles, while Toppie spoke, had started up, resting on -his hand and staring at her with eyes aghast and stupefied. -What folly, what madness was this? How -could Toppie find it in her heart to speak like this; to -him—to him of all people?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yet, in another moment, while he stared at her, -memory had answered him. A vein of piercing intuition -underlay Toppie’s blunder. It was only a half -blunder. His misery of confusion had been for Owen, -because of Owen’s secret that he had to hide. And she -had seen it as for himself. But it was true that he had, -if only for a moment, been in love with madame Vervier. -He had, for a moment, partaken of the experience -that swept men away. The figure of madame Vervier -was haloed for him by fiery, dewy associations, and the -pang of his sense of disloyalty to her would not have -been so deep had he not known in her presence that -poignant, perilous revelation of beauty. He saw all -this while, silently, he stared at Toppie, and he saw -that she could never, never understand or admit his -half truth. It was a weakness even to think of its -avowal.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How can you say anything so monstrous to me, -Toppie,” he questioned, and it was sternly, “when you -know I’ve never loved anyone but you?” This, indeed, -was a whole truth that it behoved Toppie not to -traduce.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But his sternness did not deflect her. “There are -different kinds of love. I know you love me. I know -you’ve had, always, a boyish, idealizing devotion for -me. I will always be grateful to you for your devotion. -But you are not in love with me. You’ve never known -what it was to be in love till you met madame Vervier. -Oh! Giles—you must see what I see so plainly! Perhaps -you really think that I could be hurt and jealous -in feeling myself no longer first. That is so wrong of -you. It would lift a burden from me if I could see you -married. I should be so glad, so glad of your happiness.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good Heavens, Toppie!” Giles had started to his -feet and stood above her, crimson with grief and dismay. -“This is the most extraordinary nonsense! Happiness! -With another woman! With Alix’s mother! -She’s old enough to be mine if it comes to that; and -as to marrying me—she’d as soon think of marrying a -Chinaman. People haven’t these romantic ideas about -marrying in France, I can assure you. Marry me!” -Giles suddenly found himself forced by the thought -to a loud laugh. “Besides,” he added, “why should -you think that monsieur Vervier is dead? Why should -you think that madame Vervier is a widow?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He felt in the silence that followed these last unguarded -words that Toppie looked at him strangely -and, as he heard them echo—what, indeed, did he -know about monsieur Vervier, damn him! He had, -actually, never considered monsieur Vervier except as -a discarded, dangling phantom of the past—as he -heard the words that disinterred monsieur Vervier and -set him there between him and Toppie, he felt that the -bewildered ant had, indeed, stumbled on a luckless -path.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Owen always wrote of her as though she were a -widow,” said Toppie, going slowly. She was not bewildered. -She looked carefully, if with shrinking, at -the figure he had placed before her in his foolish -haste. “But you know so much more about her than -Owen ever knew.—In those few days you saw and -learned things he never saw. Perhaps you do know -about monsieur Vervier. Perhaps you know that he -isn’t dead; that she isn’t free. If that is so—doesn’t -it explain even more?—Oh, Giles—I am afraid”—She -stopped. She looked away. He saw the blood -rising in her cheek as she checked the speech that must -give him too much offence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I suppose what you mean,” said Giles gloomily, -thrusting his hands into his pockets as he looked down -at her, “is that I do know she isn’t free, and that, -therefore, being in love with her, my love is a guilty -passion. Something of that sort, what? Well, if you -won’t take my word for it, there’s no more for me to -say, is there?” Resentment had come into his voice. -“We’d better be going.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I accuse you of nothing, Giles,” said Toppie, still -dyed with her blush; “only I am sure that I am right -in feeling that something has happened. I am sorry, -but I can’t help feeling it. From the moment you -spoke of madame Vervier I heard that your voice was -changed;—so strained and strange; so full of reluctance. -You wanted to say all against her that you -could find to say. You wanted to guard yourself -against your own feeling. But what came through, -from the beginning, was that you found her—beautiful; -mysterious; compelling.” Toppie found the words, -a strange tremor in her voice. “What came through -was that she was a goddess.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles stood motionless, gazing down at her. He was -seeing, suddenly, straight into Toppie’s heart; straight -into the heart of their situation. How futile were his -denials, when he could deny only for himself—and -not for the other. The vein of piercing intuition in -Toppie had led her to the portals of the truth. The -name she saw inscribed there was the wrong name; -that was all. Change Giles to Owen, and the truth was -in her grasp. She knew that madame Vervier was -beautiful, mysterious, compelling. She knew that both -he and Owen had felt her a goddess. A chill of fear -crept about Giles’s heart.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come; we’d better be going,” he repeated. He -heard that his voice was harsh. He would discuss no -further and he held out his hand to her. Toppie took -it and rose to her feet.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She meant to be kind to him. She meant to be his -friend;—Giles said it to himself as, silently, they -went down the hill together. But in spite of all his -compassionate understanding of her, his fear for her, -what came over him, in wave after wave of grief and -resentment, was that she was cold and hard. He had -made her suffer because of what she had felt as false in -him; but it was now, as it had always been, of Owen -that she was thinking. He had cast, thank Heaven, no -shadow on Owen; but perplexity, mystery, pain had -come into her vision of Owen’s friend.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Owen never said she was a widow; but I’m sure he -believed her to be one.—Forgive me, Giles, but have -you heard what makes you think she may not be? -What do you know of monsieur Vervier? Alix has -never spoken of him. It is so strange; for if he were -alive he would be with them, would he not?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>C’était un bien méchant homme.</span>” These words, in -madame Vervier’s tones of surpassing detachment, -came back to Giles. “Alix probably never saw him. -Her mother spoke of him. She said he was a bad -man.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She spoke of him to you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, to me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And she didn’t say whether he were alive or dead?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No. We weren’t talking about him. We were talking -about Alix and her future. Alix will have hardly -any <span class='it'>dot</span>, it seems, because monsieur Vervier made away -with all her mother’s money. They are parted.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Did she leave him, or did he leave her?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She left him,” said Giles after a moment and he -felt his voice harden towards Toppie. “Continue your -cross-examination, pray.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you know so much, so surprisingly much, -Giles. How can I help asking? How can I help feeling -interest in Alix’s mother, in Owen’s friend? It isn’t -cross-examination. It is unkind of you to say that. -Horribly unkind.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t mean to be unkind. It’s you who are unkind, -I think. Ask any questions you like.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How long after her first husband’s death did she -marry monsieur Vervier? May I ask that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Certainly you may,” said Giles. His bitterness -carried him so far. Then he paused, aghast. He had -known that to Toppie Alix could never have spoken -of her mother’s misfortune as frankly as she had to -him. He had forgotten the first misfortune. He was -aghast; but while he made his pause he determined -that there should be no half-measure here. Toppie -should not again accuse him of double-dealing. -“Didn’t Alix ever tell you that her mother was divorced?” -he demanded, and he heard how hard and -dry was his voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For a moment Toppie said nothing. Then she spoke, -softly, as if in all sincerity she could not believe what -she heard. Disastrous, indeed, was the time for such a -hearing. “What did you say, Giles?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Alix told me, the day I brought her here last winter, -that her father and mother had been divorced. If she -didn’t tell you, that was, no doubt, because she took it -for granted that I would.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And again came Toppie’s dire silence. “And why -didn’t you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why should I? It was none of our affair.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Isn’t Alix our affair?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Certainly she is. And she has nothing to do with -monsieur Vervier.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She has something to do with her mother.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.” Giles’ voice grew harder, dryer. “What she -has to do with her mother we see. She is the product of -her mother. Do you find fault with it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They had reached the road that wound among the -birch-woods and dusk had fallen in it. The sky, paled to -a faint apricot tint, shone dimly between the trees. -Toppie stood still on the wayside grass and looked -at him. Ineffaceably, in this instant of strange, unbelievable -alienation (for had he not, in his last words, -challenged Toppie with madame Vervier’s standards -as set against her own?), Toppie’s image was stamped -upon his mind; as ineffaceably as on that first time he -had seen her. And now all her light was withdrawn. -It was the end, as that had been the beginning. Pale, -wraith-like in the dusk, she fixed her eyes upon him -and they were dark with their repudiation. “Alix is -not the product of her mother. Alix is good and her -mother may be bad. You know better than I do what -you think of her mother. It’s you I find fault with, -Giles. Your words don’t tell me what you think.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve kept nothing from you,” said Giles. It was a -lie. He knew it, and he saw that Toppie knew it. He -attempted an amendation of his statement. “Everything -you’ve asked I’ve answered.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Have you? I will ask this, then. Did she leave her -husband with monsieur Vervier? Did her husband -divorce her because of monsieur Vervier? Was she unfaithful -to her husband?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There were faults on both sides, I believe. Alix -wouldn’t have been given for half the time to her -mother if there hadn’t been faults on both sides.” -Giles forced himself to speak steadily. “She was very -young. People don’t judge these things so hardly -nowadays.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Toppie, her eyes on his, put aside the palliation. -“Did she leave monsieur Vervier with another man? -Was she unfaithful to monsieur Vervier, too? Is she a -woman who has had lovers?” said Toppie, and the -word was strange on her lips.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles stood there, stricken. He was so aware of -horrible danger, pressing in upon him and Toppie from -every side, that he could hardly command his thoughts -to an order. All that came was a helpless literalness. -There was no refuge from Toppie’s eyes; for her, or for -himself. “Yes,” he said, “I’m afraid she is. That’s the -trouble, you see.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Toppie then looked away from him. She looked -round her, standing so still, with no gesture of amazement -or distress. But there was a sudden wildness in -her eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Toppie, dear Toppie,” Giles pleaded. “She is not -a bad woman. Wrong; but not bad. You can’t judge -of these things. I’m not defending her.—It’s only -that, seeing her, seeing all the beauty she has made in -her life, I cannot feel about her mistakes as I should -have thought I would. That’s why you felt me strained -in speaking of her. It was a shock to me. And I didn’t -want you to know. Put it away now, Toppie, I do beg -of you. It has nothing, nothing to do with us. She’s -a very beautiful, a very unfortunate woman, and it’s -only by chance that we’ve stumbled upon these unhappy -things in her past.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Oh, the fatal background to his words! He knew -how false they were, spoken to Toppie, for all that -there was of truth in them for himself. “Let’s go -home,” he urged, “and not talk about it any -more.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Toppie stood, her eyes fixed as if in careful scrutiny -upon the distance. She had raised her hand, as he -spoke, and pressed her fingers, bent, against her lips. -He saw that she kept herself with a great effort from -breaking into tears.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s not that,” she uttered with difficulty. “It’s -you.” And now she moved away. “I’m going home -from here. I would rather be alone, please.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The road led over the common to Heathside; there -was a short cut through the woods to the Rectory.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, Toppie—I do implore you.” Poor Giles -with his rough head and great round eyes stood and -pleaded. “What have I done? What have you against -me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s everything, everything,” Toppie murmured. -“It’s all I’ve felt in you this afternoon. I’ve stumbled—from -one hidden thing to another.—It gives me -dreadful thoughts. It’s as if”—she stopped again, -her eyes still fixed on the distance—“as if there might -be anything. She’s changed you so much.” And, her -eyes coming to him at last, she spoke on, helpless in the -urgency of her half-seen fear:—“It’s as if she might -have changed Owen;—if he had ever come to know -her as well as you have.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Suddenly, at this climax, Giles found himself prepared. -“What if she had?” he demanded, and it was -like riding, with a great thrust, to the top of the -breaker that threatened to engulf them. “What if she -had made him judge things more kindly? No doubt -she would have changed him. He would have felt her -beauty, too. But she wouldn’t have changed him towards -you, Toppie; any more than she has me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then Toppie drew back. Seeing suddenly where she -stood, seeing her fear as a disloyalty, she drew away. -She looked at Giles and he saw the door, as it were, -mercifully or terribly close against him and Toppie, -demanding no further lies, shut herself away. “Perhaps -you are right,” she said slowly, and each word -came with an effort, for they were, doubtless, the only -false words Toppie had ever uttered. “Perhaps I am -too ignorant of the world. I do not judge your friend. -But if I knew her, I could not think her beautiful. I -could not think a wicked woman beautiful. We must -be different in that.—I’ll go home now. I’d rather be -alone. Good-bye.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She moved away into the wood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles, standing where she left him, had the sensation -of feeling his heart break. “Toppie,” he said in a -choking voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She stopped and looked round at him. Her grey -form among the birches was almost invisible, but he -saw the thin oval of her face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Toppie.”—Only this—He could hardly speak. -He was not thinking. Only that stifling pressure in his -heart seemed to break its way out into words—“I do -so love you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He saw that he touched her. If not his words, then -his face of anguish. For the first time that day, if only -for a moment, her thought was given to him alone and -he felt rather than saw pity in her eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Giles—I’m so sorry,” she murmured.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I do so love you,” he repeated, gazing at her. But, -even as he gazed, the worst of the anguish was to know -that something in his love was changed for ever.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Dear Giles,” Toppie murmured again. “Forgive -me.” And again she repeated, and the phrase was like -a fall of snow: “I’m so sorry.”</p> - -<div><h1>PART III</h1></div> - -<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>What had happened to Giles?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was waiting for her on the Victoria platform and -his patient gaze and poise told her that her train was -late;—but fatigue did not account for what Alix saw -at once as she stood at the door of her carriage and -found his face. Her dear Giles. Her good Giles. What -had happened to him?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix was aware that a great deal had happened to -herself since she had last seen Giles, only two months -ago. It was not only her lengthened skirts and her -turned-in locks that gave her her new sense of maturity. -Perhaps one only began really to be grown up when -one began to know why one was unhappy. A child -suffers in ignorance of the cause of its suffering and it -can forget more easily because of that merciful vagueness. -Unhappiness is only a cloud to put away or pass -out of. But grown-up unhappiness was four solid walls -of fact enclosing one.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Groping round and round her prison and finding -always that solid facts were there resisting all attempts -at forgetfulness, Alix, though she still could not see -just what they were, sometimes asked herself if that -was because she was still too young to understand, or -because Maman, so deftly, so tenderly, with as much -compassion as compunction, passed a bandage round -her eyes and kept her blindfolded? She could not tell; -but she knew that another mark of her own maturity -was her understanding of Maman, her new capacity -for helping her; and more than in any other way she -helped her by never lifting a hand to push away the -bandage and by never asking a question that Maman -might find it difficult to answer.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had known intuitively, in the past, that some -questions must not be asked; questions about her -father; about monsieur Vervier; about divorce. But -now there were more pressing questions, and the first -and foremost of them was the question of André de -Valenbois.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was there; in their lives. She had left him behind -her in Paris; no longer their guest, but as much as at -Les Chardonnerets the presiding presence. He was a -great friend. So Maman had said to her, strangely -pale, on that night when at Les Chardonnerets she had -heard Giles and André de Valenbois talk of her return -to England. Maman had great friends. And great -friends made one suffer—Maman had not said that -but Alix had seen it—and many things in life must be -sacrificed to them. It was not that they were more -loved than a child—oh, she was sure not!—though -that was a surmise that had pierced her through; it -was simply that one could not be sure of keeping them -always; as one was sure of keeping one’s child; and because -one was not sure, one suffered. It was something -from which one could not free oneself. It was something -that made one helpless.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So Alix knew herself changed; a grave, meditative -person; garnering in her silence and her submissiveness -a power to meet all the emergencies that must lie -in her path since, so obviously, they lay in Maman’s.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hello, Alix,” said Giles. His eyes had found her -and he was there below her, taking from her the basket -she had lifted off the seat; and she said, “Hello, Giles,” -though it seemed to her always such an odd phrase to -meet upon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is this the kitten?” said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. This is Blaise. You expected him? I wrote -to Mrs. Bradley.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Expected him! Rather! They’re wanting to see -him almost as much as to see you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That is well, then,” Alix smiled. “You haven’t -been ill, Giles?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ill! Rather not! I’m as right as rain,” said Giles; -and he added, hastily she felt: “But I say, you’re -quite different. What is it? Your clothes? Your hair?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Maman thought I was getting too old for short -hair. It is taken back from my forehead, too. It makes -me very <span class='it'>digne</span>, I assure you. And my skirts are nearly -as long, you see, as anybody’s skirts.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix wore a dark blue dress and a dark blue cape, -buttoned with little buttons on her breast and showing -a satin lining of striped grey and blue. Her shoes -and stockings were grey, and her loose, long gloves, -and her soft little hat curving down over her brows -with the big bow knotted at the side. Maman had -made her, though so sober, very <span class='it'>chic</span>, and Giles was -taking it all in; as far as he could; and that, she feared, -with tender irony, was not very far.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles, as they moved along the platform, pursued the -topic of her appearance, feeling it evidently opportune. -He did not wish to speak about his own. “It’s that you -look so tremendously foreign;—the way you walk; -the way your things are put on; the way your hat -comes down like that. Even the way you speak English -is as French as possible, for anyone who speaks it -perfectly; and I’d never noticed that before.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When you first met me,” said Alix, putting the -obvious explanation with mild competence before him, -“what chiefly engaged your attention was that I spoke -English at all. Now you notice that though I speak it -so well I speak with my French accent. I am French, -Giles.” She slightly smiled round at him, for she need -not emphasize it. He as well as she would remember -their last talk on the cliff-path. “I am a foreigner.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I suppose you are,” said Giles, and it was gravely, -almost gloomily that he said so.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Was the walking tour a success?” Alix asked him, -while they waited at the customs, Alix’s box, this time, -being larger than the last and subjected to the vicissitudes -of a separate transit. “You did not overtire -yourself? You look a little tired, you know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do I really? I haven’t been sleeping very well; it’s -been so hot. Cornwall was a great success. I want -you to see Cornwall some day.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It has been hot in Paris, too. But I always love -Paris at this season, the stones all baked with sun, the -trees all bronze. We have been dining in the Bois almost -every night, at a little restaurant under the trees. -It has been delicious. And the drive back down the -avenue du Bois.—<span class='it'>Calme-toi, mon chéri</span>,” she addressed -the kitten who was wailing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Poor little chap. He hasn’t liked the journey. Is -he prettier?” asked Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He is uglier,” said Alix. “It is <span class='it'>l’âge ingrat</span>, you -know. No longer kitten, and yet not cat. Like me. It -is only the basket that troubles him. I had him out for -most of the day, in my arms, and he was quiet and -good.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It reassures me to see you still so fond of kittens,” -Giles smiled at her. “It makes me feel you are still -something of one yourself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I shall always be fond of kittens,” said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They were again to spend the night with Aunt Bella -and in the taxi Alix opened the basket and displayed -her pet. Very ugly indeed; gaunt in structure, though -fully fed, of a most undistinguished white and brindle, -with a nose already over-long and ears over-large; but -as it nestled into Alix’s neck with loud choking purrs -Giles owned that it was a nice little beast.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And so full of love; and so intelligent, Giles,” said -Alix, pleased by his commendation. “More loving, -more intelligent, these common little cats are, than -<span class='it'>chats de race</span>, I always think.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>London, dusty and drowsy on this Autumn evening, -seemed to yawn and smile and had, Alix thought, a -welcoming air. It was a kind city. She even saw -beauty in it, and commented on the Royal Hospital as -they drove through Chelsea. “How well it goes in the -thick, soft air—that period, that colour.” She had -never liked London so much, although she came to it -with an unwillingness so much greater than the unwillingness -of last year, and it seemed to her, leaning -back in the taxi beside Giles, her kitten against her -cheek, that the dropped aitches, the little green-grocer’s -shops, the strolling lovers, and the river gliding -silvery-grey behind its trees, all went together in the -impression of ease and kindliness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In Aunt Bella’s flat all the windows were widely -opened to the freshness, and Aunt Bella received not -only her, but Blaise, quite as a matter of course. This -matter-of-courseness, Alix had begun to feel, was a -distinctive English trait. Once they knew you, they -accepted you; you and your kittens. They had no -surmises about you. You were simply there. Was it, -Alix wondered, while she changed her dress in her little -pink room—Blaise cautiously reconnoitring from -piece to piece of the furniture—was it that Aunt -Bella saw her benevolently as an <span class='it'>œuvre de guerre</span>, or -sentimentally as a legacy from the dead nephew? As -she reflected on her own presence, so intimately among -them, Alix felt that if Maman’s motives were mysterious -to her from their complexity, Aunt Bella’s would -be mysterious from their simplicity. And it was all -like London again; like the cosy little shops with the -carrots and cabbages heaped before their windows, the -muffling air and unadventurous river. There was peace -in such simplicity, peace in being among people who -had nothing to hide and who would hardly be able to -imagine that you might have.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She felt at dinner that Aunt Bella looked at her, in -her altered way of dressing, a little as Miss Grace and -Jennifer had looked when Lady Mary talked to her -about Henri de Mouveray. Aunt Bella, no doubt, -found the little dress that Maman had so cleverly contrived -out of two Empire scarves, curious rather than -interesting. Charming in colour, dull blue shot with -silver, it was a marvel of convenience as well as so -pretty. One turn and it fell into place, leaving arms -and shoulders bare, knotting low about the hips and -falling in long silvery fringes to the ankle. Seen in -Aunt Bella’s flat it had undoubtedly a very Parisian -air, and perhaps Aunt Bella felt it too Parisian, for she -began to question Alix about France’s foreign policy -with some severity. Alix gathered that in Aunt Bella’s -eyes her country was behaving badly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But we want the Germans to suffer,” she said. “If -they are not made to suffer sufficiently, they will make -us suffer again and perhaps destroy us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But that is being revengeful, my dear child. And -so short-sighted, too. You don’t change people’s hearts -by making them suffer. You harm yourself as well as -them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I do not think we want to change their hearts.” -Alix, all unversed in these large subjects as she was, -felt herself impelled to make the answer so obvious to -every French mind. “I do not think we care about -their hearts. When a bad man is guillotined, it is sufficient -that his head should be gone. His heart does not -concern us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles at this laughed loudly and Aunt Bella’s eye-glassed -gaze turned to glitter reprobation at him. -“She doesn’t know what she’s saying, Giles. She is too -young to have followed or understood the lamentable -policy of her country. You really shouldn’t encourage -her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But it seems to me she has been following. She’s -made the only honest answer. Have you heard people -talking about it a good deal, Alix?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She did not mind his mirth or Aunt Bella’s reprobation. -She did not care at all what they thought about -France. How could one expect even English friends -really to understand? “I have heard people talk at -Maman’s,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Blaise was on a chair beside her eating an excellent -dinner, and Giles, still laughing, said: “Do you know -what he looks like? A Boche baby. There was one -born in a village we occupied after the Germans had -been there for two years. It was the funniest, jolliest -little fellow; but awfully ugly; with a face just like -that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But it was half French, I imagine,” said Alix dryly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Certainly half French, I regret to say. But he -looked all German. And I’m sure that if you’d had to -take care of him you’d have been as kind to him as you -are to your kitten.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I do not care for babies,” Alix objected.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’d have been kind to him all the same. You -wouldn’t have wanted to see his head cut off.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I do not want to see anyone’s head cut off; but if it -were a choice between a Boche and a French baby, I -should choose the French one to live. That is all we -ask of our allies,” Alix added, looking over at Giles -with kindly determination; “to help us to live;—as -we have helped them;—even at the expense of the -Germans.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Aunt Bella, now, changed the subject. “How is -Mr. Westmacott, Giles?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No better, I’m afraid.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Have they a trained nurse yet?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He won’t have one. He won’t admit he’s so bad.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It must be very taxing for Enid.” (Aunt Bella always -called Toppie by her real name.) “How does she -bear it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She looks very worn,” said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I’m afraid she won’t be at all well off when he -dies,” said Aunt Bella, as though she placed Toppie’s -approaching bereavement and subsequent impoverishment -in the same category. “She won’t be able to go -on living in the way she does now. And she has been -trained to no profession. I have always so blamed Mr. -Westmacott for keeping her with him and giving her -no education.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Toppie is educated, I think,” said Giles, dryly, -but his dryness did not conceal from Alix the distress -Aunt Bella’s surmises caused him. How much more -capable Aunt Bella was, Alix reflected, of sympathizing -with large vague masses of humanity than with one -human being.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not educated at all from the modern point of -view,” she returned decisively. “Quite incapable of -making her own living. A very dear, good girl, but a -useless girl, and there is no room in the world nowadays -for useless people.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There’s room for Toppie,” said Giles coldly; and -then, perhaps, Aunt Bella remembered that he had a -special feeling about Toppie, for she desisted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I didn’t know Toppie’s father was so ill,” Alix said -to Giles when he and she were for a little while alone -in the drawing-room, Aunt Bella engaged on the telephone -in the hall. “I had only one letter from her, -from Bournemouth, and it did not lead me to think he -was so seriously ill.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m afraid he is. She didn’t realize it then, perhaps. -I’m afraid it’s only a question of time now,” said Giles, -sunk in a deep chair and watching her while she pretended -to play with Blaise. Was it grief, anxiety -about Toppie, that had wrought the change in him? -It had to do with Toppie she felt sure; but had it to do -with her as well? Aunt Bella still issued directions on -the telephone and Alix felt suddenly that she must ask -him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Giles,” she said, not looking up from Blaise, who -made soft onslaughts at her hand, “does Toppie -know?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Know?” His echo had the strangest reverberations.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“About Captain Owen is what I mean;—that he -cared so much for Maman.” She looked down at -Blaise and moved her knotted handkerchief before his -nose; and she felt the colour rising in her face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Perhaps it was because he felt her confusion and -shared it that he had to pause before replying. “Of -course she doesn’t know,” he then said very gently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you will not forget what you promised me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What did I promise you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That if she did know she would still want me back.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And again there was a silence. How carefully Giles -was considering his answer was made apparent by the -length of the silence; but what he said finally, more -gently than ever, seemed clear. “I’m more sure of that -than ever, Alix. You see, she’s so fond of you.”</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER II</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>If Toppie, too, was changed, she was not changed to -her. That was the first thing that Alix felt when she -saw her again; next day;—for a note had been waiting -for her at Heathside asking her to come to the -Rectory.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was a hot, still day and a bee was droning lazily -about the Rectory drawing-room, flying out into the -sunlight and in again to the bowl of mignonette that -stood on a table near the window; and the bee made -the day more still. It had been strange to find herself -thinking of Racine as she waited for Toppie. Nothing -so trivial and intimate as a bee could be imagined in -any play of Racine’s; yet its soft drone had accompanied -her sense of a pause, of an ominous interlude, -like the pause before a scene where the heroine was to -enter with some quiet, conclusive word. It was, perhaps, -because of this association of ideas that Toppie, -when she entered, had looked to her like the Racine -heroine, like a creature delicate and austere, dimly -conscious of an impending doom. There was fear in -Toppie’s face as it found her there. Alix saw its white -gleam mastered, resolutely veiled, while, at the same -moment, the full security of Giles’s assurance was -brought warmly home to her by Toppie’s encircling -arms, by a new note of emotion in her voice as she said, -kissing her, “Dear, dear child.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Toppie was changed; but it could not be because of -her. It was her father’s illness that had changed her -and Giles had spoken the whole truth; but all the same, -involuntarily, she found herself saying, while Toppie’s -arms were still around her: “Are you glad to have me -back?” And she heard that her voice trembled in -speaking.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Whatever the fear had been, Toppie had mastered -it. She held her by the shoulders and looked at -her, smiling, and said: “So glad, dear little Alix, that -I feel we ought to keep you always.” Then she held -her off and looked her up and down, still smiling, and -added: “But it isn’t a child any longer. It’s an almost -grown-up young person.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was strange to feel herself, all reassured as she -was, wanting dreadfully to cry; but Alix, too, was an -adept at mastering emotion, and she said, taking off -her hat so that Toppie should see all the changes: “Do -you like my hair?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I like it very much.” Toppie kept her hand, turning -her round. “I like seeing your forehead, such a -gentle, thoughtful forehead. I like that big black bow -at your neck.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That is a <span class='it'>jeune fille</span> bow—a bow of transition,” -smiled Alix. “It is to be there while the hair grows -long enough to make a knot.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I like it all,” said Toppie.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They sat down on the sofa side by side, Toppie still -holding her hand, and then she said: “Toppie, I had -not realized from your letter that your father was -so ill.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Toppie looked at her in silence for a moment and, -slowly, her eyes filled with tears. “He is going to leave -me, Alix,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was her father, then. Alix could not but feel the -deep, selfish relief. “Oh, you must hope,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I do try to hope. I try to live on hope. But I am -afraid he is going to leave me,” Toppie repeated. “He -is not much changed,” she went on, for Alix found -nothing to say. “You will not see much change in him, -I am sure. I will take you up to him presently. He -likes to follow what goes on. In a way he follows more -than he has ever done. It is a sort of clinging, I think. -And he is quite cut off from his own work. I read to -him a great deal. Perhaps you will come sometimes -and read to him in French. He likes that, you know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I like it, too. You must let me come often. It is -curious, Toppie, but when Giles is away my English -life is really here with you; not that I am not very fond -of them all at Heathside.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is it?” Toppie looked at her very intently. “I am -glad of that. Glad that I can mean home to you.—Dear -little Alix.—But you <span class='it'>are</span> fond of them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Especially of Mrs. Bradley. Only she is there so -little. One hardly sees her. I am fond of Ruth and -Rosemary, too. But I would rather be with you.” -Alix smiled a little.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And it will be Rosemary only this winter, since -Ruth is going to Oxford. I am glad she is to be there. -Giles will like having her near him.” Toppie spoke -calmly the name of Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you think so?” said Alix. “Do you think she -means much to Giles?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He is devoted to all his family. It will certainly -be a pleasure to him to have her,” said Toppie, and -Alix now thought she detected in her voice a strange -detachment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He is fond of them to do things for them; not to be -with them—I mean his sisters. He is so unlike his -sisters; and most of all unlike Ruth. Ruth is so stupid -beside Giles.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She is a very good girl; very courageous and honest,” -said Toppie. “I think I see Ruth’s good points -more than I used to. I think, Alix, the older one grows, -the more one cares for those sterling qualities. Black -would always be black to Ruth, and white, white. -That has value, the highest value, in a person’s character, -you know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Something in Toppie’s tone now dimly offended -Alix. “But you could not really compare Ruth and -Giles, Toppie. Giles is all that she is and so much more -besides. He sees the greys and all the delicate in-between -shades, too. Nothing is really black or white, -and that is what is so stupid in Ruth; she sees things -so.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It sometimes seems to me that they are nothing -else,” said Toppie very calmly. “And Ruth has, I -think, because of that downrightness in her, more -strength of character than Giles. He would so much -more easily be mistaken;—misled.” Toppie paused -before finding these words. “He has what would be -called the artistic temperament, I suppose; and that is -the penalty one pays for having it; a certain weakness; -a certain yielding. I feel that Giles would yield where -Ruth would stand up like granite;—and I like the -granite thing in people.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix sat in indignant astonishment. “I have never -known anyone so true as Giles,” she said slowly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I did not say that he was not true,” Toppie returned, -with a touch of severity. “I said that he would -be more easily misled than Ruth. I said that he was -weaker than Ruth.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They sat for a few strange moments silent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But it is as if you were changed to Giles,” Alix -cried suddenly. She could not repress the cry. “What -is it, Toppie? What has he done to displease you? You -are unkind to him. You speak as if you did not care for -him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A deep blush rose in Toppie’s face; but it was not the -blush of surprise or confusion. Alix saw a competent -sternness in the eyes bent upon her. “You must not -say things like that,” Toppie said slowly, considering -every word. “There are things you do not understand. -I shall always care for Giles. I have not changed to -him. No,” she repeated as if to herself, “I have not -changed to Giles.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They sat there, still hand in hand. Alix felt that she -wished to fling Toppie’s hand aside. In answer to her -sternness she had felt an instant anger rise within her. -That Toppie should reprove, rebuff her, was itself an -affront she bore with difficulty—and bore only because -she feared to damage Giles’s cause by rejoinder; -but her anger passed the personal wrong by and -fastened itself, strangely, inevitably, on the figure of -Captain Owen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was Toppie herself, in the picture she had drawn -of Giles, who had set him so vividly before her. Captain -Owen, not Giles, was the person who would blur -black into grey; Captain Owen was the person who, -in comparison with honest Ruth, lacked something. -Giles was everything that his brother had not been, -and yet it was Captain Owen who had betrayed Toppie—she -found the word and it sank with a cold weight -on her heart;—it was Captain Owen, now, she felt -sure of it, who parted Giles and Toppie. She sat, her -eyes fixed proudly before her; her lips hard.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Alix,” Toppie said in a gentle voice, “if so much -has changed in my life—you mustn’t change.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It feels to me as if it were you who were changed, -Toppie,” said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You must forgive me, then,” said Toppie with her -firm gentleness. “I am not quite myself, perhaps. I -am rather on edge. I know I seemed to speak harshly. -You see, dear Alix, you are still, really, a child—one -cares for you so much that one forgets it. But there -are things you cannot understand.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perhaps I understand some things better than you -do, Toppie,” Alix returned, still not looking at her -friend.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At that, for a moment, Toppie sat quite silent. -“Perhaps you do,” she then said. “Some things, perhaps -you do. But I feel sure that you do not understand -the things I am speaking of.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>After that they tried to talk as if nothing had happened. -Toppie’s manner had an atoning sweetness. -Once or twice, in the way she spoke, the way she looked -at her, it was as if, Alix felt, one of Toppie’s doves had -spread its brooding wings over her, protectingly, tenderly. -She knew that she had not forgiven Toppie; and -yet she was the fonder of her because she had not forgiven -her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was taken up to see Mr. Westmacott, who sat -at an open window, a reading-table before him with -books upon it. Sitting there, as formally courteous -as ever, with his tall pale head and eyes still clearly -blue, he did not look so ill. It was more in his voice -as he questioned her about her journey that she felt -change. His voice had become dry and brittle, like a -glacial wind fluttering the leaves of an old abandoned -volume that no one would ever read again. He would -soon die; Alix felt sure of that as she heard him. He -would die, and Toppie would leave the Rectory and -wander forth desolate, among her doves. Why, oh, -why, would she not see and understand Giles? Why -would she not marry him? “Oh, if I could see her -married to Giles,” she thought, when she had said -good-bye to Toppie and was out again upon the common. -“If I could only help Giles so that he should -marry her, it would have been worth while that I -should have come to England!” And that there was -mistake, misunderstanding between Giles and Toppie, -she was now sure.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had gone halfway across the dried heather, -when, as on the evening of her first visit to the Rectory, -she saw Giles approaching her, Jock at his heels, and -she knew now, as she had then only felt instinctively, -that he had been waiting for her and that he was -afraid of something. Of the same thing; yet of more.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Jock saw her and raced ahead to jump against her -knees. He was still her special pet among the dogs and -had received Blaise kindly. Alix stooped to caress his -head while she watched Giles approach her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, how did you find Toppie?” he asked simply, -as they met.—Giles not true! Giles easily misled! -Alix felt herself suddenly blushing with anger as the -thought of Toppie’s strange delusion returned to her. -Giles drew her arm within his and they went across -the common towards the birch-wood. It gave her -a deep feeling of consolation that he should thus seek -refuge with the one person who could understand him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I find her changed, Giles,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“In what way changed?” said Giles quickly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And as quickly Alix answered: “Not at all to me, -Giles.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You see how desperately ill her father is, don’t -you?” said Giles. “She’s quite worn out with nursing -him, you know. In what way do you feel her changed?” -he repeated, looking down into her face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix was pondering. She was not a person who believed -in black and white. She believed in the greys -and the in-between shades. She did not mean to tell -Giles how she thought Toppie changed. What she found -to say was: “If Toppie were happier she would not be -so hard.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hard?” She was looking at the ground, but she -heard in Giles’s voice how the word startled him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you not think Toppie hard?” she asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If she is,” said Giles after a moment, “it’s because -of what you say—that she is unhappy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And because she is too sure,” said Alix. They had -entered the birch-wood and their footsteps rustled in -the fallen golden leaves. They went forward, aimlessly, -not thinking of where they went, Alix intent on her -reading of Toppie, Giles listening. “Too sure of what -she loves and believes in. She has had to be too sure, -because she is so unhappy.—Is that it, Giles? And -the things she loves and believes in are not the things -she sees. Perhaps that makes us hard—if we can only -think of the things we love and never see or touch them—makes -us hard, I mean, to the things we have with -us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles was, she knew, keeping his eyes on her as she -put together these suggestions, and as he meditated -for a little pause, her thoughts, in the silence, while she -watched the golden leaves, took a long flight to France -and she found herself suddenly wondering if perhaps -Maman and André de Valenbois were wandering under -the autumnal trees in the Bois—as Giles had seen -Maman and Captain Owen wander under the Spring -trees. And with the thought came such a pang of fear -and grief.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re right, I think,” Giles said. “And I see -no help for it. She’ll grow more and more away -from the things she has with her and shut herself more -and more into her solitude—where she is safe with -the things she can’t see.—What can we do about it, -Alix?” said Giles gently, a little as if he spoke to a -child from whose ingenuous wisdom he sought an -oracle.—“Who can help Toppie in any way in which -she’d accept help?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Suddenly it was very easy, there in the twilight -woods, to be courageous. She was so near Giles. It was -as if her heart beat in his side. “No one can do anything -for her but you, Giles. You must marry her and -make her happy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, my dear little Alix,” he said, smiling bitterly, -not even pausing to assess her daring, just as she herself -had not needed to pause. “There’s no hope for me. -No one can help her less than I.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you mean there never was hope;—or is none -now?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There never was, perhaps;—but there’s less now. -Her heart is full of Owen.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yet if he had not been there, it would have been -you she would have loved.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who can tell? Perhaps.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And is it because of him that there’s less hope, -even, now?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Put it like that if you choose,” said Giles. “Yes. -Because of him.”</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER III</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>The old life flowed round her again, outwardly the -same, inwardly so altered. She had been, she saw it, -like nothing but a glass of <span class='it'>eau sucrée</span> when she had first -come to Heathside;—or if that was a simile too insipid -for even her youngest consciousness, like <span class='it'>eau sucrée</span> -with a squeeze of lemon in it. Now the wine of new -perceptions, new emotions, tinged her deeply, and because -she was enriched she saw a richer world about her. -English history, from being a mere flat picture, dull at -best compared to the splendid pageantry of France, -began to take on depth and distance in her eyes. It -was English history she saw now when she went up to -Oxford with Giles and Ruth, and English history was -English character; whereas event, in French history, -played so much more potent a part. Wandering in -and out with Giles, the beauty of the town, with its -significance, stole upon her mind and senses. Meditative, -benign, and so humane, it seemed to smile at you -like an old ecclesiastic with kindly eyes for youth. As one -sat in a sun-steeped garden or dim, carved chapel, one -felt its quiet like that of a tree, full of life and growth, -so that, though it was old, it was also young; the sap -moved on to fresh leaves while the calm old trunk endured. -Time had been distilled and preserved in it -without a break or cleavage and its very light, she felt, -in this autumnal weather, had that colour of time, as -though it came through ancient glass. The quadrangles -were brimmed with time and it brooded on the lawns -of Saint John’s where the Michaelmas daisies growing -against the grey stone walls made her think of the -ring on the benignant hand of the bishop. “One would -grow wise by being here even if one only sat still, like -this, and looked at it,” she said to Giles. “I only wish -one did!” said Giles. But he felt what she felt and was -pleased with her for, at last, understanding his Oxford.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She began to wish for wisdom. Back at Heathside -she bicycled to the High School every morning with -Rosemary, through the birch-wood, past the red-brick -villas of the town—villas upon which time had laid no -kindly hand—and all the ugliness that had so fretted -her fell into an insignificant background, since, for the -first time, the day had its object. Knowledge, of course, -was quite different from wisdom. The happy life depended -on eyes to see the hands that blessed and the -smile on the face of time; but it was knowledge that -opened one’s eyes and she found in its acquisition a -zest and an enfranchisement. It was in order that she -might see that smile in France that she worked so hard. -The sooner was she equipped, the sooner could she return -to France and Maman. Already she outdistanced -Rosemary, and she had a touch of kindly malice at seeing -her friend of the chaffing complacencies and cheerful -bullying left behind.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Rosemary was not ungenerous. She showed her -chagrin and her admiration, openly. “It’s not even as -if it were your own language,” she grumbled. “And -you don’t seem to take half the trouble over it that I -do.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perhaps it is because you are in your own country -and I out of mine,” Alix suggested.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now what on earth do you mean by that?” Rosemary -inquired.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have nothing else to do but think about my -studies,” said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Rosemary stared. “You’ve got the same things to -think about that I have. Surely you are at home by -now. All the girls like you and you’re never left out of -anything.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is not anything like that. Everybody is as kind -as possible,” said Alix. She could not, she knew, make -Rosemary understand. Rosemary, fundamentally, -could not take foreign countries seriously—could not -believe that anyone lucky enough to be in England -should have all their energies bent on leaving it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And what do you girls intend to do with yourselves?” -Mrs. Bradley asked them one day at the -firelit tea-table. She had, as usual, a pile of papers beside -her and laid down her fountain pen to pour out the -tea. “Alix is doing so well that she can really begin to -think of choosing a career and it’s not too soon to turn -things in that direction.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Even dear Mrs. Bradley took it for granted that she -might be quite satisfied to make a career out of her -own country.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hope I shall marry when I go back to Maman,” -said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now isn’t she altogether too priceless, Mummy!” -cried Rosemary. “One would have thought that with -all the time you’ve been in England, Alix, you’d have -got over those French ideas about marriage.—I suppose -you’ll actually say that you’d let your mother -choose a husband for you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But who would choose one so well?” said Alix. Yet -it was not true; it was not true that she still believed -this of Maman. England had already changed her so -much. But she did not intend that Rosemary should -guess it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who would? Why, you yourself!” cried Rosemary. -“What can your mother know about it? Aren’t you an -individual with your own tastes and feelings? And -do you seriously think marriage the only career for a -woman?—Do you really think getting married the -whole meaning of life?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is a sad thing to be a <span class='it'>vieille fille</span>, I think,” said -Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sad? Why sad? You don’t call Aunt Bella sad, do -you? And there’re thousands and thousands more like -her. All of ’em as jolly as possible; the unmarried -people nowadays. Jollier than the married ones, I -think;—and no wonder.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“In their hearts, you may be sure, they wish they -did not have to be quite so jolly,” Alix demurred. -“They must feel it sad when they reflect that they -have only other people’s children to care for—and -those not the most interesting. And it must be sad to -be alone at one’s <span class='it'>foyer</span>.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“One may have one’s own children and yet have to -take care of the others, too, you know, Alix,” Mrs. -Bradley smiled, finishing her tea and taking up a packet -of case papers. “All these are other people’s children.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“One needn’t care for one’s own, or for other people’s -unless one wants to,” Rosemary commented. “People -specialize nowadays and know that some women are -maternal and some aren’t. I’m sure I’m not. I couldn’t -be bothered with children, or with a husband either—It’s -as good as a play to hear you talk, you know, -Alix—all your quaint French ideas. What can one -hope of a nation that still has them!—Cradles, -hearthstones, hubby’s socks to mend;—that’s what -really appeals to you, I suppose.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What appeals to me is to be established,” said Alix. -“I do not care for babies; but they are a part of marriage, -and no doubt one would come to like them when -one had them. As for the socks—I should hope to -marry well enough to have a maid to do that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Rosemary’s eyes rounded. “You mean you’d marry -for money?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix smiled: “You are so <span class='it'>réaliste</span> in some ways, -Rosemary, and so romantic in others.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hope, dear, you’d never think of marrying for -money,” Mrs. Bradley put in. “Money is a very minor -consideration in marriage.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Romantic! I romantic!—It’s merely a question -of one’s own dignity!” cried Rosemary; while Alix said: -“There would have to be character and taste and position -as well;—but don’t you think, <span class='it'>chère Madame</span>, -that it is well to marry suitably?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Suitably? Yes, of course.” Mrs. Bradley was -gently bewildered. “But the most suitable thing of all -is to marry someone one loves.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix, in silence, wondered.</p> - -<hr class='tbk'/> - -<p class='pindent'>Mr. Westmacott seemed a little better now. She -went to the Rectory twice a week and read aloud in -French to him and Toppie. He seemed to enjoy it and -followed if she read very slowly and distinctly. Toppie -sat, her fair head bent over her knitting. She was knitting -endless little vests for the poor babies of one of -Mrs. Bradley’s charities. Alix wondered sometimes -what was to become of all those babies. Were they -passed on from Mrs. Bradley to more Mrs. Bradleys, -until, at last, in one of the hospitals administered by -the Aunt Bellas, they closed their eyes? Would some -be good citizens and some mere beasts of burden, and -some, perhaps, thieves and scoundrels? All were to -begin with those little snowy woollen vests, and all -were to end in coffins. It made her feel strange to think -of it. But when she expressed something of these -thoughts to Toppie one day, Toppie looked at her very -gravely, and said: “They are all to end in heaven, Alix. -We are all of us only that; souls setting out on our -journey.” But Alix found it so difficult to think of -some people as souls.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The babies’ vests were a strange accompaniment to -Saint-Simon’s “Mémoires.” She found these on Giles’s -shelves and asked Toppie if they would do. She had so -often heard André de Valenbois and monsieur de Maubert -and Maman quote Saint-Simon. Neither Toppie -nor her father had read him and were quite contented -with her choice, and she skipped about and found the -people who most interested her. The French was -strange, but it seemed to say more than modern French. -The strangeness, she saw, was not apparent to Toppie -and her father, nor was the acid irony nor the often unconscious -humour. Toppie and her father rarely found -anything to laugh at. Mr. Westmacott’s chief preoccupation -was to follow the relationships of the characters -and to place them correctly against the background -of contemporaneous history, and for this purpose -there were many interruptions while Toppie went -to fetch the encyclopædia. Alix saw that Toppie sometimes -listened with a vague distress. Saint-Simon and -the people he wrote of were as alien to her understanding—to -say nothing of her sympathies—as the -Chinese. To Alix, for all the travesty of their tails -and crests, they were clearly recognizable types. She -saw the court of Louis Quatorze as a great golden -aviary where splendid creatures, plumed, absurd, -and beautiful, paced and preened and surreptitiously -pecked at each other beneath the proud gaze of the -monstrous bird of paradise on the throne. There was -something sinister about them, there behind their bars; -but something familiar and lovable too. Toppie only -saw them as the denizens of a rather disagreeable -fairy-tale, though at some moments of the recital, -obscure to Alix, she saw that Toppie’s eyes rested -upon her in a cogitativeness that seemed aware of too -much reality. “They are all odious people, Alix,” she -said to her one day. “Odious; vindictive; vulgar and -wicked.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh; but not all, Toppie. Some are very good, like -Fénélon—though Saint-Simon is unfair to him; and -some are charming, like the Duchess de Bourgogne. -She was too fond of pleasure, perhaps; but she is so -merry and amusing that one can forgive her that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Very much too fond, I am afraid,” said Toppie, -colouring above her knitting. “I do not like her, -Alix.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If you feel the book unsuitable for our young -friend, Toppie,” Mr. Westmacott observed, “why -should we not read ‘Corinne’? I remember finding -madame de Staël very interesting and any young girl -could read her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But there are wicked people in all history,” cried -Alix, aghast at this suggestion. “You all read Shakespeare, -though he is full of wickedness. It is the point -of view. The point of view of Saint-Simon is not -wicked. He is ill-tempered, disagreeable, but upright; -he means always to tell the truth. And then he was so -devout, Monsieur; he was such a devout Christian.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This was wily of her, and Mr. Westmacott, easily -reassured, agreed; “Yes, yes, I see that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When Giles came home for the holidays, Toppie and -her father had gone again to Bournemouth. “She -might have waited a week longer, so that I could see -her,” said Giles sadly. It was still taken happily for -granted that Alix should sit with Giles in the mornings. -There were fires everywhere this Winter, but she was -more than ever glad of the refuge. Ruth had become -a rather overwhelming presence. She had made new -friends at Somerville and spent the first fortnight of -her holidays with them in London, going to art-student -dances in Chelsea and medical-student dances in -Bloomsbury, and returning to her home with what -Alix felt to be many a foolish flourish added to her -sensible signature. She addressed Alix as “dear old -ass,” and her favourite exclamation was “God!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is so unlike our <span class='it'>mon Dieu</span>,” Alix could not forbear -writing to Maman. “It is as if one saw a hen suddenly -lay an ostrich egg—and so proud of it. I think -when English people like Ruth become emancipated, -they are very like hens laying ostrich eggs. There is -such a strain; and, when it is all over, it is not an interesting -object.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ruth had been meant by nature to be like Aunt -Bella, though with much of beauty added. She was -tall and large and brightly fair. She had little gaiety, -but she gave an impression of massive cheerfulness; -and it knocked you down if you impeded it, and -strode, almost gravely, on its way. Alix was pleased to -feel that Giles, too, found Ruth irritating. He could -be very sharp with her, especially when she patronized -her mother. But Ruth now, fortified by her new experience -of life and in less awe of a brother, was not to -be quelled by sharpness, so that if Giles had not withdrawn -into gloomy silences there would often have -been quarrels.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There’s no harm in her. She’s as good as gold. -She’d go to the stake for Mummy if it were necessary, -cheerfully and as a matter of course; only she’s so insufferably -conceited,” Giles grumbled to Alix in the -study. “Why didn’t you tell her she knew nothing -about it, when she was chaffing you about French -manners and customs just now? All she knows about -French manners are those of the professor’s family she -stayed with in Paris. Why didn’t you tell her to shut -up?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That would have been rude,” said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, she was rude.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But that is no reason for me,” Alix slightly smiled, -looking up at him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“By Jove, no!” Giles, with a rueful laugh, rubbed -his hand through his hair. “Ruth’s manners could -never be a reason for yours, could they! I say, you -know, that’s a nasty one, Alix!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I do not mean it to be nasty. And she did not -mean to be rude,” said Alix. “She meant only to be -funny.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That makes her stupid, then, as well as conceited,” -said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If she took refuge with Giles, it was curious and -touching to Alix to note that before Ruth’s assaults -Mrs. Bradley more and more took refuge with her. -When Ruth, with a shout of laughter, crowed “Victorian!” -at her mother, Alix begged that the inferiority -of this term should be explained to her. “For -in Maman’s salon,” she observed, “clever people—I -mean the ones your clever people quarrel over in the -reviews as to who should claim to have first read them—admire -even George Eliot and Ruskin, I assure you. -Admire them greatly.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Help! Help!” shrieked Ruth. She knew nothing -of the clever people in Maman’s salon. She had not -advanced to the recognition of cleverness beyond her -reach; she had advanced only as far as scorn for unfashionable -tastes, and in herself, as Alix, musing on -her, perceived, she had none of the stuff from which -new valuations are made.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you know,” Mrs. Bradley, for the sake of historical -accuracy put forward—evading by the mere -force of her impersonality any altercation—“it wasn’t -really so long ago when I was young, Ruth. I didn’t -live in the time of crinolines. I was reading my Dostoievsky -in French and my Hardy in English when I -was your age, and I don’t seem to see that you young -people have got beyond them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, Mummy darling, it’s not a question of what -you read or don’t read!” cried Ruth, affectionately -ruffling her mother’s head. “It’s the colour of your -mind! It’s the pattern of your complexes!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There’s some truth in that, you know,” Mrs. -Bradley observed to Alix when, after this sally, Ruth -seized her hockey stick and strode away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Bradley always saw whatever of truth there -was to be seen in other people’s positions. She felt no -impatience or grievance against her merciless daughter. -She had not time for such reactions. Her own work -occupied all her time. And she hoped for her children -that they, too, would find work that would thus become -the meaning of their lives. It was wonderful in -her, this detachment, Alix thought, yet she found fault -with it, and it was the only fault she found in Mrs. -Bradley. She should have felt herself more responsible -for the uncouthness of her daughter; she should have -given less thought to the welfare of the London children, -and more to the manners of her own. “It would -have been better for them,” thought Alix, “if she -could have become very angry with them. How excellent -for Ruth and Rosemary if they could have been -well whipped from time to time. And it is too late -now.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Bradley would have thought whipping irrational -and cruel. “She is too wise, too quiet,” thought Alix. -“But then the saints were like that; wise and quiet and -incapable of anger.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix had never cared at all about the saints, and it -was strange to feel that this heretic lady, creedless and -uncloistered, made them more real and more lovable to -her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you not think so, too, Giles?” she said to her -friend in the study. “Do you not see what I mean? -She is like a modern kind of saint; so selfless and dedicated -and laborious. She never thinks about being -happy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You make her happy, Alix. Did you know that?” -said Giles.—“Yes, I see perfectly what you mean. -Yet Mummy never seems to me sad. Does she to -you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I do not know,” Alix reflected. “She did not begin -so quiet, I am sure. Just as the saints did not. At the -bottom of her heart she wanted to be loved more; much -more;—isn’t that what all people want most, Giles?—And -then when she found that she was not to be she -must have felt very sad.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, I say, you know!”—Giles stared at her from -his chair. “You do say the most astonishing things! -Not loved enough! Why don’t we all love her!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, but it would have to be more than that. She -would want far more love than English children could -ever give to their parents.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“English children! Surely you don’t think that the -French love their parents more than we do!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But of course we do, Giles,” said Alix in candid surprise. -“Our mothers we do; for perhaps fathers do not -count for so much with us, either.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, come, I can’t swallow that.” Giles smiling, -yet disturbed, was rubbing his hand over his hair. -“You—even you—don’t love your mother more -than I do mine.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think I do, Giles. I think we are more a part of -our mothers in France. You stand more alone in England, -in everything.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles in his disturbance of mind had got up and was -looking out of the window. “And what about my -father, then?” he said. “What about his love for her? -That’s what we think of in England as counting most -in a woman’s life. He was devoted to her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix felt a little shy of sharing with Giles her deepest -intuition about Mrs. Bradley’s selflessness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am afraid not enough, Giles. Did he really see -her as you see her? I am afraid he was not a part of -herself, and that is what one expects in England and -that is why she must have been sad. And I think she -loved best always—if you do not mind my saying so—the -ones who were most part of herself—you and -Captain Owen and Francis. One cannot help loving -most people who are most part of oneself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And though she still kept her French scepticism -about marriage, the half-unconscious climax of a long -process of change within Alix was reached when she -added in her own thought: “How sad to be married to -someone who is not part of yourself.”</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>It was in the last fortnight of the holidays that a letter, -once more, came from Lady Mary asking, as if only -a few weeks had elapsed since the last time of asking, -if Alix could not now come and stay with them at -Cresswell Abbey.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The letter was again addressed to Mrs. Bradley and -again arrived at breakfast-time so that she read it -aloud to the assembled family.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ll have to go this time, Alix,” said Giles, with -an air of fatherly authority.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where’s the ‘have’ about it, Giles?” Ruth inquired, -helping herself to mustard with her kedgeree. -“She’ll go if she likes, I suppose; and not otherwise. -For my part I don’t see why she should be at the beck -and call of Lady Hamble, or whatever her name is. -She’s forgotten Alix for long enough.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s to the point is that she’s remembered her -for long enough,” said Giles, “and that Alix has remembered -her. Of course, you’re going, Alix.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Alix will be bored stiff among all those swells,” -cried Rosemary; “and, besides, she’ll miss the Eustaces’ -dance. Do refuse, Alix.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I do not think they will bore me,” said Alix. -“I should like to go.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was arranged that Giles was to motor her to -Hampshire; the cross-country journey was too difficult -by train, and while the map was brought and -spread out over the jam-pots and butter-dishes and -they all made suggestions as to the best route, Alix -had time to wonder why, despite her assertion, her old -eagerness about Cresswell Abbey and Lady Mary was -much faded. Was it that she had grown fonder of -Heathside? Yes; undoubtedly; but that was not the -reason. It was not to lose Heathside to pay Cresswell -Abbey a visit. But, with a new, unwonted shyness, -she shrank from the thought of the environment that -had, in Lady Mary herself, so reminded her of Maman. -Maman would want her to go. She would want it -more than Giles did; and did he not want it because he -knew that it would be Maman’s desire for her? It was -almost to suspect them of planning it for her and it -affected her with almost a sense of grief to see his dark -head bent above Ruth’s golden one while, so earnestly, -he scanned the road that was to lead her away from -them. Did he—with Maman to help him—believe -that it would lead to an English marriage for her? The -blood rose faintly in her cheeks as she sat there, silent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But her disquiet was even deeper than this. She had -no longer her old sense of security. It was Giles’s -presence that lent her what security she had and he -would not be at Cresswell Abbey.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was very silent on the morning they set out for -their long drive. It was nearly mid-day, yet the hoar -frost still made the woods thick and white against the -sky, and the twigs were like antlers in their mossy -branching outlines. When they passed into the open -country the buffs and cinnamons and mole-colours of -the fields and uplands were all powdered to paleness. -The beauty of the day was like a promise, but Alix -felt it like a farewell.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ll be back in the fortnight at most, you know,” -said Giles. He saw that she was sad and said it to reassure -her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But of course I shall not stay for a fortnight, Giles,” -she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Lady Mary didn’t fix any time; but I do hope you’ll -stay for as long as she asks you,” Giles returned. She -made no reply. That, of course, was what Maman -would wish him to say to her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They found the way longer than they had computed, -and Alix was very hungry by the time they reached -the little market-town where they were to lunch. It -was disappointing to find the mutton so tough, and the -untidy and decorated young person who waited on -them brought the cabbage and potatoes with such a -languid mien that they seemed to be almost a concession -to special greed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think the cooks in your provincial inns have no -pride in their calling,” Alix observed, refraining from a -very yellow custard pudding while Giles doggedly attacked -bread and cheese. “It is a pity; for pride in -one’s calling gives a zest to life, does it not?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good Lord, Alix! Don’t rub it in!” Giles exclaimed, -for the mutton had been very tough.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was already four o’clock when they entered the -lodge gates of Cresswell Abbey. The road through the -park wound upwards and one saw the ample, happy -house with the dropping sun yellowing its windows as -it looked out over a southern aspect. Built of pale grey -stone and thickly lichened with rosettes of gold, it -belonged to an England almost intimate still in its associations. -A Gainsborough lady, when it was but newly -built, might, Alix thought, have come strolling out -on the terrace, the white fur of her little silk jacket -turned up about her ears, and a white dog, half -Spitz, half Pomeranian, trotting by her side. There -was nothing of the splendour or romance of antiquity -about it, and Alix, as she saw it, a vision of haughty -Montarel hovering at the back of her mind, was a little -disappointed. But it was impossible to think of English -people living at Montarel. How different this -kind-eyed butler from Mélanie in her <span class='it'>savates</span>; how -different the firelit hall, filled with the scent of pot-pourri -and burning logs, from the gaunt cobwebby -spaces of Montarel! A wide staircase turned to an -upper landing from the hall, and on the turn, with -an ascending row of Chinese paintings behind him, -a young man in hunting-dress was standing, looking -down at them, as they were ushered in, with soft, -bright, interested eyes. A group of people, half shut -in by a high Chinese screen of red and gold, sat round -the fire and from an open door came the sound of a -piano playing a reckless jazz tune. Alix felt her sadness -dispelled by a sweet stealing sense of excitement.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And now Lady Mary was again before her, looking -older than she had remembered her—and that was -perhaps because another woman, radiantly young, sat -knitting by the fire—but showing the remembered -bright softness, and she was drawing them both forward -and saying to Giles: “Oh, but of course you -must stay—oh, not only to tea; for the night. It’s so -far. It’s so cold. It’s so late. Indeed, you must.—Jerry -will lend you everything.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Jerry came down the stairs. He had auburn hair and -auburn eyes and thick upturned auburn lashes. He -was, of course, Lady Mary’s son, and Alix was aware -that during this little interval it had been at herself -that he had been looking. She saw herself standing -there as he must see her. The soft little grey travelling-hat -came down over her eyebrows; the big, soft -collar of her coat went up about her ears; there was not -much of her face to be seen; but, for perhaps the first -time in her young life, she knew—and the knowledge, -mingling with the warm scent of the pot-pourri, the -lurching, imbecile gaiety of the music, deepened her -sense of excitement—that she held herself beautifully, -and that as far as clothes were concerned she had no -cause for disquiet.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am dark and she is fair,” this was the thought -that passed through her mind as she felt herself observed -not only by Jerry, but also by the radiant lady -at the fireside; “but I am even younger than she is, -and, I imagine, more unusual.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, <span class='it'>do</span> stay,” said Jerry, looking now at Giles and -smiling as if he were specially glad to see him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Poor dear Giles! How gaunt and shabby and shy he -looked among them all; rather, thought Alix, like a -rook softly entreated by a flock of doves. They cooed -about him; Lady Mary with her soft dark eyes, and -Jerry, and a kind elderly gentleman who had advanced -from the hearth, the “Times” held behind him, and -who, apparently, was Lady Mary’s husband. Even -the butler seemed to be one of the flock, and he -gently withdrew Giles’s greatcoat and carried it away -as if the question were settled before Giles had had -time, as she knew, to gather his wits together.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You <span class='it'>will</span>. That’s splendid,” said Jerry, though -Giles had not said that he would. “Let’s have tea at -once, Mummy; they’ll want it as much as I do, and -I’ll change after.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lady Mary, taking Alix by the hand, as though she -might feel, as a foreigner, strange in a strange country, -led her upstairs to a bright sweet room where rose-clotted -chintzes were drawn back from the bed and -windows and flowers stood on the writing- and dressing-tables -and enticing bottles with little labels round -their necks on the wash-hand stand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Debenham will get you everything. Ask her for -anything you want,” said Lady Mary, introducing the -elderly maid who entered with hot water. “You can -find your way down? We’re having tea in the drawing-room, -just out of the hall. And then you must have -a little rest. Some young people are coming over after -dinner to dance. Are you fond of dancing?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Fonder than of anything, I think,” said Alix; and -Lady Mary, smiling, said “Good.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When she was left alone and had taken off her hat -and washed, and combed her hair, Alix stood before the -glass and looked at herself attentively. She looked -well after the long drive. It had not been really cold, -though her lips were a little pale. She bit them to -make the colour come, and wondered, bending closer, -whether she should powder her face. She had never yet -used the box of powder, <span class='it'>teinte Rachel</span>, in her dressing-case, -though Maman had told her that she might -do so if she thought it advisable. The radiant lady -used liquid powder; Alix had seen that at once, and her -lips were reddened artificially. Alix decided that she -would leave herself alone. “It goes better with my -hair; one colour all over like that; and the right colour,” -she reflected, while the spicy elation ran still more -warmly through her veins. Maman had chosen with -her, at a specially favourite little shop in the rue du -Faubourg Saint-Honoré, the jumper of palest blue and -grey, patterned like a fritillary; and the string of dull -brown beads and the blue skirt and the grey shoes and -stockings all went perfectly with it. “I am <span class='it'>bien; très -bien</span>,” she thought; and as she went down the passage -and crossed the landing and looked down into the firelit -hall with its flowers and screens and great blazing -logs, she felt herself so strangely Maman’s child. It -was as if she knew, for the first time in her life, an elation -that Maman had often felt.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They were all in the drawing-room where tea was -being laid, Jerry and Lady Mary and Mr. Hamble, -and two young girls and a young man and an old-young -man, who had evidently been dancing and who -wished to seem much younger than he was.—“I will -avoid dancing with him,” thought Alix. “He is too -stout and he brushes his hair up over his head from behind -so that it shall not be seen how bald he is.”—And -the radiant lady was talking to Giles. Giles stood -with her before the fire and looked dreadfully cross, -and that was because he did not like her. But other -people liked her; a great deal. Her soft locks, now -smooth, now clustering, were of the purest gold and -her eyes of a marvellous blue, and she, too, was undoubtedly -<span class='it'>bien, très bien</span>, in her white silk jumper and -her white woollen skirt and string of pearls. But Giles -did not like her. And she did not like Giles, either, -though she was pretending to carry on the kindest of -conversations with a dull young man, and when Jerry -came up to Alix herself the golden-haired lady, smiling -more sweetly than ever upon Giles, saw everything -that passed between them and was not pleased. She -did not care a rap about Giles. What she cared about -was Jerry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was characteristic of Alix that the more she saw -and felt, the more silent and aloof did she become. It -might have been a fundamental racial caution in her -blood; the instinct for being sure, first, where you were, -and, second, sure of where you wished to be seen as -being before you made a movement; and as she felt the -pressure of all these strange new realizations—strangest -of all about herself—she knew that she possessed -reserves of courteous convention more than adequate -for any contingencies that might arise at Cresswell -Abbey. Quietly smiling at Jerry, she took the place -Lady Mary indicated to her beside her on the sofa and -saw that the golden-haired lady still watched her while -pretending not to.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The two young girls were guests. They had very -sweet voices that did not mean much. One of them -was pretty, and the stout gentleman with the hair -brushed over his baldness jested with her in a low -voice, but, though he tried so to please her, the pretty -girl, while she ate a great many cakes, looked at him -with eyes that did not find him amusing. Alix felt -with her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“From Jack,” said the radiant lady, looking up from -a letter; the butler had just brought in the letters.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What news of Jack?” asked Mr. Hamble. The -golden-haired lady was married to his nephew and her -name was Marigold. Jack, it seemed, was rather enjoying -his job at Singapore. He wrote a long letter, -and Mrs. Hamble’s marvellous eyes became very wistful -while she read, but Alix felt sure that if she had been -reading alone in her own room they would not have -looked like that; hard and indifferent rather.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dear, don’t be so silly,” said the other girl to -the young man who was short and robust with a tanned -jolly face. He was a sailor, and Alix liked his face and -felt that with him she would like to dance. They all -knew each other very well and laughed and talked and -she felt they saw her as a very young school-girl, for -Jerry was now talking to Giles about Oxford, and no -one paid any attention to her until Lady Mary began -to ask her about Normandy and then about Beauvais -and Rouen and so on to Chartres, on which the bald -man, whose name was Mr. Fulham and who wrote -books, as if observing her for the first time, asked her -if she knew his friends the marquis and marquise de -Tréville in Normandy and, when she said she did not, -turned to the pretty girl again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>After tea she found herself alone for a little while -with Giles. She felt as if they met after long separation, -so completely had the morning’s sadness dissolved in -the pervading sense of excitement.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I like it here very much, don’t you?” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s a jolly place,” said Giles. “And they’re all so -nice. I’m glad you like it. I’m glad you’ll be happy -here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles no longer looked cross, but he looked thoughtful, -and his eyes turned on her once or twice in a -way that made her wonder, with a vague discomfort, -whether he guessed at her excitement.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wish you were staying here, too, Giles,” she said. -But this was not quite true. She would be sorry to see -Giles go; even a little frightened; yet if that sense of -excitement were to environ her more closely she would -not care to have Giles observing it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, but I don’t belong here at all,” said Giles, -stretching up his arms and locking his hands behind -his head, while his eyes still studied her. “And you do.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why don’t you belong here?” she asked. But she -knew. He was a rook among the doves.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I haven’t done any of the things they do;—or -very few of them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Neither have I.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, yes, you have; far more. Anyway, you’re fitted -for them and I’m not.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you mean you look down upon them?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course not. But one has only time for so much -in one’s life and my line is taken.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Philosophy and the Banbury Road,” said Alix, -rather sadly musing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes; philosophy, though not necessarily the Banbury -Road,” said Giles. “And tutoring and being poor. -You couldn’t combine those with dances and hunting; -even if you had the choice; which I haven’t.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Lady Mary cares for the things you do, Giles. -Books and music, and the country. I believe they all -care. I think you would be quite happy with her and -Mr. Hamble and Jerry.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, we’d manage for a week-end now and then, no -doubt. He’s a nice boy that Jerry,” Giles added, moving -his arms now, putting his hands in his pockets and -looking with detachment at the foot crossed on his -knee. “Lucky we’re the same size, isn’t it? I shan’t -look too much of an ass in his evening things.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He is very nice, I think,” said Alix. “I do not care -much for Joan and Patience Wagstaffe, they seem to -me rather <span class='it'>nulle</span>. But the sailor is nice, too, and Mr. -Hamble is so kind. He told me that he would teach me -to play billiards. They seem to find that Mr. Fulham -very clever, but I would not have him however clever -he was. I do not like him. He has a sly face and eats -too much. And is Mrs. Hamble nice, Giles?” Thus -circuitously Alix approached her object. “She is exceedingly -pretty. You had a long talk with her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, no, I didn’t.” Giles laughed suddenly. “She -wasn’t talking with me—only at me; to see what she’d -catch as a rebound.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>After all, it was always delightful to get back to -Giles. After all, no one understood quite as well as -Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What was she trying to catch?” Alix asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, just who we were, and what we were doing -here, and why in the dickens you weren’t just the quiet -little French girl she’d expected. The funny part of it -was,” said Giles, smiling broadly as he thought of it, -“she didn’t know a bit that I saw what she was after. -Silly ass; thinking herself so gracefully concealed and -all the time as gross and as glaring as possible. She’s -stupid all right,” said Giles. “Though I daresay it -makes one stupid to imagine one’s dealing with a negligible -noodle. You let her alone, Alix. She’s a cat.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This was very pleasant to Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She has a false face,” she observed. “I shall certainly -let her alone; for she displeased me from the -first.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then Lady Mary came back and sat down and -talked with them, of France again, and of Oxford, and -Professor Cockburn, and then Jerry, having changed -his hunting-clothes for homespun, came and carried -Giles off to billiards, but Lady Mary said she would -keep Alix with her, and, when the two young men were -gone, said: “How dear he is, your Giles; such a delightful -solid mind,” so that Alix flushed with pleasure. She -was glad to have Giles appreciated and it made her -fonder of Lady Mary that she should appreciate him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lady Mary then questioned her about Giles and his -family and how she had come to know them, and Alix, -replying, felt herself move along the surfaces prepared -for her by Giles and Maman. She told Lady Mary -about Captain Owen and how great a friend he had -been and of how he had wished her to know his family. -There was nothing else to tell. Lady Mary knew just -what Mrs. Bradley knew.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was glad to rest for a little while before dinner, -lying in her room on the sofa with a soft cushion -under her head and the firelight softly glowing on her -closed eyelids, until it was time to dress. Debenham -had laid out on the bed the very dress she herself -would have chosen; her prettiest dress, of white and -crystal; and the sense of elation and excitement -mounted in her with thick swift strokes, as of rising -wings, while, before the mirror, Debenham fastened -it for her. Debenham thought her beautiful. Her -quiet, sagacious face, glancing at the reflected figure, -told Alix that she thought so; and Debenham had -seen many pretty young ladies.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When she was left alone, she stood and looked at -herself. Yes; was it true. Beautiful that little head; -beautiful the long, splendid throat, the breast and -arms so white. In the tilted mirror she looked like a -naiad hovering within the thin falling lines of a fountain. -Tiny crystal drops fell along her arms and flowed -from breast to hem. She moved, and liquid lines of -crystal moved with her. Her shoes were of silver and a -fillet of twisted silver and crystal bound her dark hair. -“<span class='it'>Dieu que je suis belle!</span>” Alix murmured. She seemed -to float on a sense of buoyant power. She had never -known such happiness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They all thought her beautiful. She saw that as she -came among them. Jerry was there—he was the first -she saw, looking at her; and the young sailor looked; -and kind Mr. Hamble; Marigold Hamble in pink and -diamonds looked, too, very hard.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The lovely dress! Paris, of course,” said Lady -Mary, smiling at her as though she were grateful to her -for placing an object so decorative in her drawing-room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Paris and Maman,” Alix smiled, and the memory -of Maman rushed over her almost with a smart of -tears. She owed it all to Maman, this transfiguration. -She was not really so beautiful, by daylight. It was -Maman’s magic that enveloped her, and Maman was -not here to see her in it. It was cruel that a stranger, -Lady Mary, should garner Maman’s sheaves.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She saw now that Giles’s large eyes were dwelling -upon her from a distance; but they were not like the -other eyes. They kept their look of thoughtfulness. -He was not seeing her in the magic. He was only seeing -her as herself. It would always be only oneself that -Giles would see. From within her fountain of happiness -she glimmered a little smile over to him—for -Jerry was beside her saying that he was to take her in -to dinner—and in Giles’s answering smile she read -something touched and gentle. She was glad that it -should be so, for Giles might have looked gloomily at -her, seeing her so happy at being beautiful; but he was -only touched; and those gentle eyes of Giles’s seemed -at once to quiet the excitement and to reassure her, as -though he said: “But of course you must be happy, -dear kid.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The long table in the dining-room, shining under the -candles, was like a lake of bright water all drifted over -with floating knots of flowers. Everything made her -think of gliding, falling water to-night; everything was -beautiful. Jerry was beside her and he was used to -beautiful people. He saw them every day of his life. -He was like André de Valenbois in that. Giles’s very -thoughts about André crossed her mind as she turned -her eyes on the charming face beside her. He, too, was -a person removed from the earthy, primitive aspects -of life; he, too, had only had, always, to choose what -he would have and never to have what he did not -choose. And now—she felt it falling around her, cool -and refreshing as the sense of crystal drops—it was -herself he chose rather than Mrs. Hamble. He did not -look at Mrs. Hamble. He talked and talked, trying to -find out about her all the things that interested him; -her tastes, her prejudices, the colour of her personality. -He talked happily, eagerly, with something of the -ardour of a little boy playing at gardening; that was -the simile that came to Alix while she smiled quietly -at him—a little boy who gathers up armfuls of flowers -and thistles, the lovely and the commonplace together, -and brings them for admiration:—“<span class='it'>Beautiful</span>, -isn’t it?” was what he said continually; and he did not -see that there were thistles. He was younger than -André; much younger. She was dimly glad of that, for -something in the likeness she had felt disquieted her. -She liked him better than André, though he had not -André’s fine discrimination. His admirations lay -along the paths of fashion, and the fact that fashion -prided itself on being a pioneer led him into ardours -for the new and the strange soon discarded for the -newer and the stranger. He had an air, Alix saw, -of caring, immensely, that you should sympathize -with him about the latest painter, the latest poet, -the latest composer. He did not really care whether -you sympathized or not; but if you didn’t, you -were negligible for his purposes. She saw that he had -already found Giles negligible; and she wondered -why he did not put her into the same category. Did he -imagine that she possessed and withheld even fresher -appraisals? It was not so and she did not pretend it, -looking at him with her quiet smile and softly shaking -her head now and then. She had never thought of -herself as a person whose appraisals mattered; she had -thought of herself as too much of a child. But perhaps -it was because Jerry found her beautiful that he was -indifferent to her indifference.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>After dinner they danced. Many young people arrived -and the tall red Chinese screens in the hall were -put back. There was a piano and two violins and one -of the young men who played had such a gloomy face, -like a French or Italian face—like Jules’ face—that -Alix wished she could talk to him and ask him if he -were a foreigner. But there was no time for talk. She -and Jerry found that their steps went beautifully together. -She danced with him; many times; and with -other young men; and Jerry helped her to evade Mr. -Fulham who, seeing how many partners she had, -wished to be one of them. But with Jerry it was best -of all, and how much more important it was to have -steps that chimed than to care about the same books -and pictures! It seemed to-night, among the flowers, -and lights, and music, the most important of all things; -though once or twice, when she found Giles’s eyes -again, she knew that the sense of ecstasy on which she -floated must have the evanescence of a mirage. Dear -Giles. She made him dance with her and they laughed -together as they went slowly round the hall, for Giles -did not dance well. Afterwards she saw that he talked -with Lady Mary and with Mr. Hamble. He did not -go into the mirage. He only looked on at it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When Alix fell asleep that night in the firelight, she -dreamed that a cool crystal stream flowed round her -and that she floated on its silver surfaces. Golden -lights lay like a chain of little suns along its margin -and her hands, softly moving in the current, felt rosy -petals pass between their fingers. The throb of dance-music, -sweet, reckless, imbecile, beat in her blood, and -in her ears the sound of Jerry’s voice saying: “<span class='it'>Beautiful</span>, -isn’t it?” And Giles’s eyes were there watching -her. In her dream she wanted to tell Giles that she had -nothing to conceal. She tried to tell him, but she felt -the silver stream flowing over her lips and making -them dumb, though they smiled. If Giles looked at -her like that she might begin to blush. But even so -she did not want him gone. While he was there she -was so safe.</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER V</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you will see that Blaise is happy until I come -back, Giles?” said Alix, as she stood beside the car next -morning to say good-bye. “And you will write to me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We haven’t time for many letters, you know,” -Giles smiled reassuringly. “I’ll see to Blaise.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Give my love to them all,” said Alix. The car was -beginning slowly to slide away and she went beside it. -She was not unhappy; not sad; it was only that she was -a little frightened to see Giles go. If one night had -changed so much in herself, what changes might not -one week bring? She almost felt she loved Ruth and -Rosemary this morning. Whatever their deficiencies -they had not false faces. It was true that they could -not, even if they had wished to, have concealed themselves -gracefully; but it would never occur to them to -wish to be concealed; gracefully or otherwise. Neither -were they insipid like the two Wagstaffe girls. If Ruth -and Rosemary were like roast mutton, the Wagstaffes, -Alix reflected, were like <span class='it'>fondants</span>. She stood gazing -after Giles for a moment as he disappeared among the -beeches.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Jerry and his mother stood on the step above her, -having come out with her to say good-bye. Lady Mary -was looking at her, a little, she felt, as Giles had looked -at her last night; thoughtfully, with great kindness in -the thoughtfulness; seeing her as herself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now you’re going to let me teach you how to ride,” -said Jerry. “Mummy has a habit for you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“An old one of mine. I don’t ride any longer,” said -Lady Mary, putting her hand on Alix’s shoulder as -they went into the warm sweet house. “I think it will -fit you beautifully. You and I are rather of the same -build, aren’t we, Alix?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Alix’s shoulders are broader than yours, Mummy,” -said Jerry, “and I’m afraid, darling, that her legs are a -little longer. She’s rather like a Jean Goujon nymph -and you are just a lovely mortal size.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was odd, Alix thought, to have a young man define -the length of one’s legs; but not <span class='it'>mal élevé</span>, as it would -have been in France. Jerry discussed the physical attributes -of his friends as he would have discussed -their moral qualities.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The habit may be a trifle too short, it’s true,” said -Lady Mary; “but that makes no difference. The Jean -Goujon nymph will be able to get into it. We must -dress Alix in the Gainsborough Blue Boy clothes one -day, Jerry, to show off her long legs. We must have a -little fancy-dress ball in the Easter holidays.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, but I’m afraid I cannot be here in the Easter -holidays,” said Alix. “You see, those are Giles’s holidays, -too. I should miss him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ll be coming here off and on, I hope;—and -Giles will, too, perhaps,” smiled Lady Mary. “I can -always send the car for you. Where’s Marigold, Jerry? -Not up yet?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You know, she looks rather like the Blue Boy, -doesn’t she?” said Jerry. “Only his eyes aren’t blue, -and he has a gentler face. Alix’s face is rather <span class='it'>farouche</span>;—is -that the word?—You frighten me a little, Alix, -with those cold blue eyes of yours.—Marigold’s still in -bed. She sent for me to see her just now. Writing letters,” -said Jerry, “in a most adorable little cap; a -Watteau little cap; most frightfully becoming. That -was why she sent for me, of course, so that I should see -her in it; though the alleged motive was the Fairlies’ -ball.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Naughty Jerry,” smiled his mother.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not a bit naughty. I told her I saw through her. I -told her that the cap was a brilliant success. Nothing -<span class='it'>souterrain</span> about me.—Eh, Alix? Is that right?” They -all called her Alix;—as if she had been ten years old; -or as if they had always known her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think you must try to talk a little French with -Alix,” said Lady Mary. “His accent is good, isn’t it? -But his verbs and genders are dreadful, and <span class='it'>souterrain</span> -isn’t right, my dear boy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t you think Marigold quite extraordinarily -beautiful?” Jerry inquired. “Isn’t the colour of her -hair and eyes a Hans Christian Andersen fairy-tale -colour?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But she is much more like a Watteau than like a -fairy-tale,” said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But Watteau people are fairy-tale people.—You -mean she’s an artificial fairy-tale.—Yes, I see what -you mean.—And it’s really more Fragonard than -Watteau, too—‘A dainty rogue in porcelain,’ that’s -what she is. Do you read Meredith? I love him, though -I know he is <span class='it'>démodé</span> just now.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Alix had not read Meredith.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Half an hour later, when Jerry had lightly hoisted -her to the saddle and the groom had released the -chestnut’s eager head, Alix felt as if, at last, she had -discovered her true vocation. This—yes, even more -than dancing—was what she had been made for.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She did not feel that she had anything to learn. She -felt no fear. Her hands went easily where Jerry told -her to put them; her knee and foot found their security. -Nothing this delicious creature could do, moving with -satin ease and steel strength beneath her, would take -her unawares. She understood him, and he, his gentle -ears quivering at the sound of her voice, understood -her. “Yes; yes, I see,” she said, as Jerry gave his explanations. -“Yes, we will walk to the end so that I -shall be quite used to it and then canter on the turf. -Yes; I understand; holding with my knee.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was not swimming, or dancing, or flying, but it -combined the delights of all three. One floated, buoyantly -sustained; one embodied the beauty of rhythmic -movement; one glided at a height strange enough for a -sense of slight, delicious trembling. The earth was new, -seen from this height; one looked into the branches of -the beeches at the level where the chaffinches were -perching and flitting.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You sit as if you were born to it,” Jerry told her, -and she replied that her father had been a great horseman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then came the canter. It surprised her a little. For -one surging moment, cheeks hot, lips closed fast, she -felt that she was coming off and then, suddenly, that -nothing could bring her off. Between that fast-held -knee and that supple foot, she was poised in safety. -Her mind and body adjusted themselves to the sense of -mastered peril.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Splendid!” Jerry smiled at her when they drew -rein at the end of the long upland.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Below them the country fell away in rippled planes -of colour, like a tapestry, russet, silver and blue. Alix -seemed to see it threaded with ladies riding unicorns -and wearing high white hennins. Fragments of song -rang in her mind; the joyous melancholy of <span class='it'>Les Filles -de la Rochelle</span>, the blissful sadness of <span class='it'>L’Amour de moi</span>. -Riding brought such memories crowding to one’s mind. -This was a better intoxication than the dancing mirage. -It went deeper. It set the bells of all the buried Atlantises -of the soul ringing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What are you thinking about <span class='it'>now</span>!” she heard -Jerry ask. She had almost forgotten Jerry while she -gazed and listened;—far away in France; in an old, old -France. But it was part of the better happiness to find -Jerry again and to feel herself again a child, with Jerry -her comrade. Mrs. Hamble was as remote as a lady on -a unicorn. The woman’s happiness of the night before, -made up of power and conquest, faded before the -child’s mere joyousness. Jerry made her think of the -chestnut horse she rode, with his eager russet head.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I do so like riding, Jerry!” she exclaimed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’d soon be able to hunt, if you get on like this. -How I wish I could take you out hunting!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I should not care to hunt,” said Alix. “This is -what I like. Riding in a beautiful country with everything -happy around one.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But everything is happy around you when you -hunt,” said Jerry. “Hounds and horses and people. -One is part of an immense shaded joy. And one never -sees how beautiful a country is until one has ridden -right across it and known that at every wall one might -break one’s neck.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I like this better,” said Alix. “This is like riding -with a flower in one’s hand, and that would be to ride -with a knife between one’s teeth.—Though I understand -the pleasure of the danger.—But the fox -would spoil it all for me. He would not be part of the -immense joy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I assure you—he enjoys it, too, in his own -sharp way. Imagine his joy when he outwits us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A terrible joy,” said Alix. “There must always be -terror in his blood. No; I could not bear to feel that he -was there, with his straining heart, before us. I could -never hunt. But I should like to ride for ever.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When they got back they went to find Lady Mary -in the morning-room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Alix is a marvel, Mummy!” Jerry exclaimed. -“She’s not afraid of anything, and rides as if she’d -been born in the saddle.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I was afraid once,” said Alix. “When we started -to canter.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lady Mary sat at her writing-bureau, photographs -and flowers ranged about her, and smiling at them -both she said: “You must come and tell me all about -it, Alix, when you’ve had your bath. Will you? I shall -be here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I must do some reading,” said Jerry. “<span class='it'>Au -revoir</span>, Alix. Billiards after lunch, you know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lady Mary had finished her morning tasks when -Alix returned and was sitting near the fire with a little -table before her on which she was laying out tiny -patience cards. Alix again thought of a lady in a hennin -as she saw her there in her long, grey, fur-bordered -robe; a hennin would have been so becoming to her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Curl up in the big chair,” she said. “You must be -tired, and you’ll find yourself very stiff by to-morrow. -Do you smoke? Not yet? Good. I’m glad not. Joan -and Patience both do already, and I’m sure it’s bad -for them. That’s all their life it seems to me; smoking -and dancing. Have you many girls in France like that? -I haven’t stayed in France for so many years.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I should not be allowed to smoke; not until I married, -I think,” said Alix, leaning her head on the side -of the big chair and watching her hostess’s white hands -place the little cards. “I don’t know about other girls. -But I do not think that they have as much liberty as -in England. I like liberty; but not for so many cigarettes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She felt very much at home with Lady Mary, who -continued to make her think of Maman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Liberty for the right things and not for the foolish -things,” smiled Lady Mary. “And it’s a pity to have -liberty for foolish things even when one marries. Tell -me where you and Jerry went. Across the ridge and -down to Minching’s Pond? A wonderful place that is -for birds in Spring—Three Oaks Corner; yes; only -the oaks went during the war. Did Jerry tell you? -Dreadful to see the empty places. And as far as the -Mill. That was a splendid round. Ah, I felt sure you’d -like Darcy. Isn’t he a lamb of a horse! Jerry wanted -you to have Darcy.—I’m so glad you are here to -play with Jerry,” Lady Mary went on. “Marigold is -such a flirt. She can’t help it.” Lady Mary smiled at -Alix and shuffled her cards. “She is a born siren. And -Jerry is too young for sirens.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix had again the sensation of being confided in -despite her youth. It was curious how quickly, if they -liked you, they confided in you, these strange English -people.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You didn’t answer Jerry this morning about her -looks,” Lady Mary was going on. “It’s a thin little -face, I feel, don’t you? And too pink-and-white; too -blue-and-gold. But perhaps that’s because I’m dark. -I suppose dark people, like you and me, Alix, usually -suspect the white-and-gold ones of being cats.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I do not like her face,” said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Whereas Jerry admires her immensely; and he’s -only a boy, only just twenty, you know, and it’s rather -tiresome. You will take his mind off her.—Not that -it has ever really worried me,” said Lady Mary; and -Alix knew that it really had.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Jerry and his flirtation was not Lady Mary’s -object. Alix began to see that her interest in herself -was more disinterested than that. She was making her -way, through smoking, and riding, and Marigold, to -other topics. The topic she was really coming to was -Giles, and she wanted to find out just how fond Alix -was of him, and just how far went her commitments to -him and to his family.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix fancied, watching her, that she had a habit of -playing patience when she wanted to say special things -to you and to keep them from seeming special.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t wonder at their taking you in as you say -they have,” she remarked, when Alix expressed her -sense of gratitude to the Bradleys. “Their brother, -you know; what you and your mother had done for -him. Giles told me about that last night.—And then -you are a nice young person in yourself, Alix. One -might like having you about.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But it is not because I am nice that they have me,” -Alix demurred. “And even if they did not like me so -much they would take me in.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Because of him?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. Because he was so fond of me. And not even -quite that. It is more as if I had been a fox terrier he -had left behind him. I mean it was like that at the -beginning. They would have taken it in and cared for -it always, even if it had not been a very nice one.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lady Mary laughed. “Well, you <span class='it'>are</span> a very nice one. -I liked Giles’s mother that day in Oxford. She is very -earnest, isn’t she?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. And very good.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But she hasn’t much sense of humour?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She is so busy all the time,” said Alix. “When one -is so very busy taking care of people, there is not much -time for humour. But she can be quite playful; like a -young girl.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can’t see her being playful,” said Lady Mary. -“Just as I can’t see her with her hair waved or her nose -powdered. I don’t suppose she’s ever powdered her -nose, or rouged her lips, or had her hair waved, has -she?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It would not go with her type,” said Alix. “There -is a natural ripple in her hair, and her nose is of that -pale dull sort that does not need powder.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lady Mary was laughing again. “She’s a dear, of -course. I saw that. And of course it isn’t her type. It -isn’t his type either, is it; the pretty surfaces of life. -Though <span class='it'>he</span> has humour,” said Lady Mary, clipping -down a card with soft deliberation and then shifting it. -“Quite grim humour, too, I felt, once or twice. And -I like that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know no one who has a better sense of humour -than Giles,” said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He is modest, too,” said Lady Mary. “And most -middle-class young men are so overweeningly proud of -their brains. We must all be proud of something, I -suppose. One rather wishes he was not going to be -buried in Oxford; but one feels, too, that it is his -<span class='it'>métier</span>. He would not care a scrap about getting on or -making a name in the world, and it’s such a happy -life, that of the scholar. And if they don’t intend to -marry, there’s no reason why they <span class='it'>should</span> strive and -strain like worldly people.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But then they do marry,” Alix observed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh. Yes; perhaps so. But it depends to whom. It -would be the unfortunate wife who would strive and -strain in that case, wouldn’t it? It must be a very -dreary life. Marigold wouldn’t like it, would she?” -laughed Lady Mary.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But they wouldn’t like her,” said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It all depends on what you want, of course,” said -Lady Mary, holding up an undecided card. “If one -wants earnestness and an unpowdered nose, that is one -thing; and if one wants hunting and dancing and diamonds, -like Marigold, that is another. I detest worldliness,” -said Lady Mary, “but I do like common-sense. -Now your dear Giles, I could see that, has any amount -of common-sense and not a scrap of worldliness.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix listening, while Lady Mary thus mused, finding -his place for Giles rather as she found the place for the -hovering card, recognized still further resemblances to -Maman. Lady Mary, too, could be sweetly devious. -She would feed you with spoonfuls of honey satisfied -that you would never taste the alien powder that was -being administered. She was talking to her now as to -the clever child who could take no personal interest in -the question of marriage. But the experience was to -Alix a familiar one and the admonitory flavour at once -detected. She was not to take an interest, but Lady -Mary was taking an interest for her. Lady Mary was -selecting her place for her very much as Maman would -have done; and, as with Maman, Alix often found a -malicious pleasure in seeing through her and pretending -not to see, so now she pleased herself by saying -nothing to Lady Mary of Giles’s devotion to Toppie -which would so have set her mind at rest. “Giles is my -greatest friend,” was all she vouchsafed presently, and -Lady Mary could make of it what she chose.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There had been minor intimations gliding along beside -the major one. If Giles, in his chosen career, was -not to be thought of as a husband, Heathside and the -Bradleys need not be thought of as essential to Alix’s -life in England. Not for a moment did Lady Mary -intimate anything so gross as that Alix should abandon -her friends; she only made it clear that, since she -could now count on new ones, she was not dependent -on Heathside. They were very strange, these English -people, Alix meditated, her dark head leaning back in -the chair, her blue eyes resting with their Alpine aloofness -on her hostess. How much, if they once liked you, -they took you for granted; and how very easily, so it -seemed to Alix, they did like you. Lady Mary resembled -Giles in that; and Toppie and Mrs. Bradley; -and if they swallowed you down, asking no questions, -was it because they were so extraordinarily kind, or -because they were so sure of themselves and of their -conditions that they could not conceive of your doing -them any harm? The difference—how often Alix had -meditated these differences—was that the French -were so sure of themselves and of their conditions that -they couldn’t conceive of your doing them any good. -The English, certainly, were more kind.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But were they kind enough to make themselves -responsible for you? Giles would. Alix had seen Giles -make himself responsible. She believed that Toppie -would; and Mrs. Bradley. Even Ruth and Rosemary, -if the test came, would, she believed, shoulder her. -But strangely, painfully—for she, too, liked Lady -Mary, though she did not at all take her for granted—Alix -could imagine this new friend, if consequences -proved troublesome or unpalatable, choosing, simply, -as the easiest way out, to forget all about her. She was -dove-like, but she was capricious. Her life was beautiful, -and she enjoyed laying out other people’s lives in -harmony with its beauty, making a chiming pattern of -you as she did with her patience cards, because she -liked to make patterns and because she thought of -herself as able to do what she liked. But it would be -unwise to give oneself to the Lady Marys or trust them -as they invited you to trust them. They, too, were far -more implicated in the dust of human conditions than -they knew themselves to be. They did not really know -themselves, for they did not know the dust; and, where -she herself was concerned, Alix deeply suspected that -consequences might prove dusty; might prove troublesome -and unpalatable. She felt herself to be older than -Lady Mary as she watched her and listened to her; she -felt herself wiser. Life required far more circumspection -than Lady Mary imagined. If Lady Mary was -circumspect it was subconsciously, for candour was her -aim. But so one might mislead oneself and other -people. And as all these thoughts went through Alix’s -mind, while Lady Mary laid out her pretty cards, there -floated across it a memory of the shrewd old face of a -priest to whom she had once gone for the yearly, the -reluctant, confession. If one was more circumspect -than any English person, was it because of the generations -of Catholicism in one’s blood? One’s confessor -always took so many disagreeable things for granted, -about life and about human nature; and, on reflection, -one usually found that he had been right.</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Under pressure from Giles, who wrote that of course -she must stay on, Alix’s visit to Cresswell Abbey -lengthened itself over the whole remaining fortnight of -the holidays. She went to the Fairlies’ ball, where she -wore her white and crystal dress, and to another, where -she wore her pink with the wreath of rosebuds. She -danced and danced. In the mornings she rode with -Jerry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>How strange Heathside seemed to her when she at -last returned to it, as strange as when she had first -come to it from France. Life at Cresswell Abbey was -so much more like life at Maman’s than anything at -Heathside. Always, at Maman’s, there was that same -sense of mental grace; always the people, the varying -people, coming and going, who displayed it. The -people at Cresswell were not so graceful or so interested -in mental things; but, from the mere fact that there -were so many of them and of so many varieties, they -reminded her of the life in Paris with Maman. And -besides the young men and the young girls who danced -and played together, there were pleasant, sagacious -women, all so beautifully dressed, and their political -husbands. At Cresswell one had whom one chose to -amuse or instruct one; at Heathside one had to take -what the neighbourhood or the High School provided.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Oddly enough, however, she found herself, on her -return, liking not only Rosemary, her daily companion, -more than she had ever liked her, but the High School -girls, too. It was, she knew, because she had seen so -much of Marigold Hamble and because they were so -different from Marigold. Marigold had not attempted -to molest her in any way; she had, indeed, attempted -to attach her; but Alix, in regard to Marigold, had -never for a moment relaxed her circumspection, though, -in regard to Lady Mary, it was impossible not often to -relax it. She could match Marigold at empty affability, -but she could not display Marigold’s empty affectionateness, -and the more it was displayed, the more she -disliked her. If she disliked Marigold, Marigold hated -her; she knew that unerringly with her growing power -of womanly divination. Marigold hated her because -Jerry liked her so much and because she never made -an effort to attach him; while Marigold made every -effort compatible with graceful concealment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>By the time she went away it was as if she had become -almost as much a part of the life at Cresswell as -she was part of the life at Heathside. Lady Mary was -so fond of her and depended, strangely, Alix thought, -on her taste and judgment about so many things;—and -that was like Maman, too. And Mr. Hamble was -fond of her, teaching her billiards and cracking many -cheerful jests with her at the expense of France. It was -natural, it was inevitable, that she should come back -again, and for almost all the winter week-ends she did -come back. There was always a party for the week-ends, -and sometimes Jerry motored down from Oxford -for the day, and once he stayed the night for a dance, -and Marigold, on this occasion, adopted a new and -surprising attitude towards Alix, behaving as if she had -never seen her before. She also gave scant attention to -Jerry, and Alix remarked that though Jerry did not -really like Marigold he was perturbed by her neglect; -so perturbed that he even forgot to dance with Alix -and stood watching Marigold fox-trotting with another -man, his radiance all dimmed by resentful gloom.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Poor darling; isn’t he foolish?” Lady Mary commented -to her young friend, and Alix, in no need of -partners, said calmly that he was, telling herself that -she did not in the least mind what Jerry did. But she -did mind. Since the moment that she had seen his -eyes fixed upon her from the stairs she had minded, -not because she cared for Jerry, but because she cared, -intensely, that he should care for her. Was she, then, -another Marigold? She asked herself this question -fiercely, lying awake in her firelit room, her immature -young heart strained by the sense of contest between -herself and the crafty woman. Why should she mind -Jerry’s gloom? What was Jerry to her? Nothing; -nothing; the answer came to her irrefutably from the -depths of her heart where anger and pride could not -penetrate to blur the truth; Jerry was nothing more -than the charming comrade, unless Marigold was there -to take him from her. Her delight in Jerry, apart from -their comradeship, was only her delight in his delight. -She could not understand, she could not see what it -was she wanted nor what was this fire that burned -within her, but, feeling hot tears rising in her eyes, she -remembered what the old priest had said about the -wickedness of the human heart and knew again that -he was right.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was always a relief to get back to Rosemary. -Rosemary had not a purr in her composition, and that -was a defect; but she had not a scratch either. Even -in the High School girls, whose virtues she had felt -to be so negative, she appreciated now the positive -quality of straightness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When the Easter holidays came, Alix found that -there was no reason why she should not go to Cresswell -for the fancy-dress ball. Giles was to be away for -a fortnight. She would not miss him in going. There -were other reasons for accepting with a mind at ease. -Marigold was safely in the Riviera and Jerry’s letter, -telling her of the fact, was very naughty, breathing as -it did an evident relief. Jerry, too, was young and his -heart, too, had been strained by the sense of pointless -contest. Eager comradeship and an assurance of peace -infused every line of his pretty dashing pages.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So Lady Mary’s car came for her and she went off, -Rosemary teasing her from the steps and declaring -that they would all be on the lookout for her picture -in the “Daily Mail” dressed as the Blue Boy. Rosemary -was a dear, thought Alix, leaning out to smile -and have a last glance at her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then came ten days at Cresswell; days that altered -all her life.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She must at once tell Giles about it; that was the -thought that filled her mind as she sat with him in -the study, on the April morning after his return -and hers. But there was so much to tell that she did -not know how she should begin, and what made it -more difficult was that Giles was very sad.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Toppie was in Bournemouth with her father and it -was evident from her letters that Mr. Westmacott was -dying. Although Giles had not seen her for such a long -time, it was natural that he should be thinking of -Toppie rather than of her, so that she said nothing, -and it was Giles himself who introduced her theme.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why didn’t you stay on at Cresswell?” he asked -her. “I saw Jerry in Oxford just before I came down, -and he evidently thought they were to keep you for a -month.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, but I never intended that,” said Alix. “I -said I must be back here for your time at home.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That was awfully sweet of you, my dear child,” -said Giles, who walked about, looking very tall in his -new grey tweeds. “I’m awfully glad to find you here, -of course; but you know what I feel about cake and -bread-and-butter, and I should like you to eat the full -slice. How was the Blue Boy costume? Jerry told me -about that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It was very pretty. I looked well in it,” said Alix. -“Our photographs were all taken. You shall see how -I looked, Giles.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you and Jerry rode a lot?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. We rode almost every morning. I love riding, -Giles. Even more than dancing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. Of course you do,” said Giles rather absently. -“Why shouldn’t you love it? You like Jerry as much -as ever, don’t you? You and he are great pals?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix almost had to smile a little at this, it was so -transparent of Giles, though, a fortnight ago, she -would, perhaps, not have seen how transparent it was. -It made it easier for her, however, and as she answered:—“Yes. -Great pals. Yes; I like him as much as ever,”—she -raised her eyes to his and saw that he continued -to look at her as though aware of approaching confidences. -It would not be at all difficult to make confidences -to Giles. She felt him very, very much older -than herself and, if that were possible, even kinder -than before. How strange, the thought passed through -her mind;—it was easier to tell Giles than it would -have been to tell Maman. The moment had come and, -keeping her eyes on her friend, she said: “He wants -me to marry him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She sat there on the sofa in her blue fritillary jumper -and her dark beads, her hands lightly clasped around -one of the old leather cushions, a little as she might -have sat, in her early convent days, giving an account -of herself in the <span class='it'>parloir</span>—where the lives of the saints, -heavily gilded, lay symmetrically on the centre table—to -the relative who had come to pay her a weekly -visit. Decorum was in her voice and attitude; and -though she knew a sense of trembling beneath her -calm words she was sustained by her assurance of -suitability. It was suitable that she should tell Giles of -her offer of marriage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And he did not seem at all surprised. He turned to -get his pipe and filled and lighted it, first pressing down -the tobacco with his finger in the way she liked to -watch, and all this was done very deliberately before -he spoke. Then he said—could anything be easier -than to tell things to Giles—“And what do you want, -Alix?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was very much older than she was, and very -much older than Jerry. She almost wished that Jerry -were there with her to take counsel of Giles. “You -like him, too, Giles, do you not?” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, <span class='it'>that</span> hasn’t much to do with it, has it?” Giles -returned, looking down at her with his smile. “What’s -to the point is that you do.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I should not care to like, very much, anyone you -did not like,” said Alix. “Jerry has faults. But we all -have faults. I wish you knew him better. Then you -could judge.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles was looking at her with a sort of astonishment, -at once tender and amused. “But I’m not your father, -Alix,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are the only father I have ever known,” Alix -replied, and, looking down as she said this, she felt her -eyes heavy with sudden tears.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, then, dear little Alix,”—Giles must have -seen the tears for he spoke very gently,—“since I’m -to take a father’s place, may I ask you what you said -to this young man,—this young man, whatever his -faults, whom I thought eligible in every way. Highly -eligible and altogether suitable.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I said I could not marry in England,” said Alix, -and it was with difficulty now that she restrained her -tears, remembering her proud words to Giles about an -English marriage on the cliff-path last summer; remembering -Jerry, so bright and beautiful, and France, -brighter and more beautiful and with claims far deeper -than any Jerry could put forward. What meaning -could life have for any Frenchwoman out of France? -Did not all one’s meaning come from her?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And what did Jerry say to that?” Giles was inquiring.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He said I was too young. He said he would wait. -He said he could perhaps live in France for part of the -time. He did not speak very reasonably.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It seems to me that he spoke very reasonably, indeed. -He can wait. And you are very young. How old -is it you are now, Alix?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shall be eighteen in July. Not young enough to -change as much as he expects,” said Alix. “No, he was -not reasonable, for he contradicted himself a great -deal. I am afraid he did not mean what he said. I -don’t think that he means to wait. I don’t think that -he really would live in France. Afterwards, when we -had talked a little more and he had felt that I was not -so young—he spoke very wildly.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How wildly?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A faint flush rose in Alix’s cheeks. “He did not -please me in the way he behaved. It could not have -happened like that with us.—Our way, I think, is a -better way.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How did he behave?” Giles, after a moment, inquired.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix’s flush was deepening. “He tried to embrace -me. He tried to kiss me.—As if to be embraced and -kissed would decide everything.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In Giles’s gaze, bent upon her, she was aware of a -growing wonder. “It does decide everything, sometimes, -you know,” he offered her, as if, for the moment, -it was all that he could find to say.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But not for people of character, Giles,” Alix returned. -She did not know from what deep tradition -she spoke; but it was behind her, around her, in her -very blood. She spoke for the order that was not there -to protect her; for the sanctions that she lacked. Great -events like marriage were approached with a certain -austerity. So much more than oneself was involved. -“It could only decide things for <span class='it'>les gens sans mœurs</span>,” -she said. “It displeased me very much that he should -seem to think of me as one.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But he didn’t think of you as one. We’re all like -that, in England,” said Giles, gazing at her with his -wonder. “We’re all <span class='it'>sans mœurs</span> when it comes to -things like this. We think them so much more important -than <span class='it'>mœurs</span>.—At least”—he stopped; he -reddened:—“A man in love wants to find out, you -see,” he finished.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“To find out what?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, if you care for him. If you’re in love with -him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Can it not be found out without kissing?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well—if you don’t care enough for a man to kiss -him—Oh, you’re right, perfectly right, Alix, dear; -for yourself you’re perfectly right. I’m lost in admiration -of your rightness. But didn’t his love touch you -at all?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix at this contemplated her friend in silence for -some moments. It was not the effort to be frank with -Giles that held her thoughts; she found no difficulty in -being frank with Giles; it was the effort to read herself. -And, finding the truth slowly, she said: “Yes; it -did touch me. That was my difficulty. That has been -my difficulty ever since, Giles; for I cannot feel it right. -He troubled me,” said Alix, and she added to herself, -in French, “<span class='it'>Il m’a beaucoup troublée</span>.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles then turned away from her, putting his hands -in his pockets and going to stare out of the window, as -he had done on that long ago winter day of their first -great encounter when she had felt, without knowing -why it was, that he was thinking of her and not of -Maman. She could not see what it was this time, -either, that so moved him. Perhaps to find himself so -trusted. Yet he must have taken that for granted. If -she were not to trust Giles, who on earth was there to -trust?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She sat, her hands clasped on her cushion, and looked -into the gas-fire which creaked and crackled softly. -The little saucepan of water standing on it sent up a -thin haze of vapour and from the open window came -the loud singing of a chaffinch. Alix, as she listened to -the chaffinch, felt herself mastering with difficulty that -sense of tears. She was not happy. Not at all happy. -There was something delicious in the thought of Jerry -and his love; but something that twisted, dislocated -all her life. How strange was life. How near it brought -you to people; how far apart it could carry you, with -the mere speaking of a word. If she spoke the word -that Jerry had implored of her, would it not carry her -far away from Giles. Oh, there was a darker surmise. -Would it not carry her far away from Maman? Could -Maman remain near if she were to marry Jerry? Jerry -promised, promised everything. He did not know himself -at all. He was very young. He was weak; and she, -too, was young and weak, though to Jerry she had -shown only her strength. Yet she knew herself. She -could see her own weakness. “<span class='it'>Il m’a beaucoup troublée.</span>” -So much had Jerry troubled her that she had known -for a moment, his ardent eyes upon her, the fear that -she might forget Maman, France, Giles, what they -might all demand, expect of her, for the mere joy of -feeling his arms go round her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles turned to her at last. “Well, then, Alix, how -did it end?” he asked her, leaning against the window-sill -and looking over at her with folded arms. “What -was decided in your way, since you wouldn’t let anything -be decided in his?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What was decided,” said Alix, glad to take up her -tale, “was that he should tell his mother and father at -once. He did not want that at all. He said his parents -had nothing to do with it. He said that until he had my -answer he would tell nobody. He said that they would -think him too young, and that he would not bear interference. -It was all so wild and foolish, Giles. Our way -is so much better. But when I told him that unless -they knew his feeling for me I could not return to -Cresswell, he had to consent.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well. And what then? What did they say?” Giles -inquired as she paused.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mr. Hamble said nothing; I do not think he ever -has much to say in the <span class='it'>conseils de famille</span>. It was Lady -Mary who came to me,” said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What did she say then? Had she expected it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix lifted her eyes to her friend. “That is what I -find so strange, Giles. She had not expected it at all. -Is that not a little <span class='it'>naïf</span>, do you not think? On the one -hand to give perfect freedom, and on the other to -imagine that nothing unforeseen shall happen. If one -gives freedom, one must expect the unforeseen, must -one not?—She was very kind. She said she had -thought of me and Jerry as playmates, and that I was -right to say to him that we were far, far too young. -She was, I saw, much disturbed; but she was pleased -with me, too, and kissed me and said I had been a good, -wise child—much too good, she said, for her foolish -Jerry. I saw that I surprised her. In all I had to say -to her I surprised her. I do not know why.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What did you have to say to her?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All my difficulties, Giles. The difficulties about -France; how I could not leave my country; and about -Maman, how I must be near her always; that it is like -that with us; that we do not leave our mothers when -we marry. And I said that since I am a Catholic, the -children, if I married, would have to be Catholics, too. -It all surprised her very much. It pleased her, too, and -reassured her; for though she is so fond of me she would -much rather her son did not marry a French girl and a -Catholic. And she is right in that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know that she’s right,” Giles muttered. -“You must have surprised her very much, indeed, Alix. -It’s been left, then, as you intended to have it left?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. For the present. I told Lady Mary that -nothing could be done till she and Maman had met -and I wrote to Maman and told her of the offer of marriage. -I put only the difficulties before Maman. I am -afraid Maman will see the advantages rather than the -difficulties.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The difficulties being that you cannot give up -France and cannot give up your religion?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. And Lady Mary may have others quite of her -own. Maman will have to face them all. But I think -she and Lady Mary will understand one another.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And for yourself, which do you feel the greater -difficulty, Alix;—your country or your religion? You -never strike me as having any religion at all, you know. -You always seem to me, as I told you long ago, just a -little pagan.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, if it were for myself,” said Alix, “I could give -up my religion more easily than my country. Only my -Church would not allow me to marry a heretic unless I -promised about the children. It is simply not allowed -with us, Giles.—Do you not know?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But why not turn heretic yourself, and settle the -children like that?” Giles exclaimed, controlling, she -saw, a strong inclination to laughter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Alix knew that though she was not <span class='it'>dévote</span> there -were some things deeper even than France, or were -they not the deepest things in France? They were -there, to be taken or left, as one chose; but even if she -left them they were still there, part of her heritage; -like a great landscape on which one might not care to -open one’s windows. And it was a heritage of which -one could not deprive others, whatever use one made -of it oneself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That I could never do,” she said, shaking her head. -“I could not go against my Church. However much I -cared, Giles, I could never be a Protestant.”</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>It was only a few days after this interview that the -news of Mr. Westmacott’s death reached them. Toppie -spent ten days in Bath with friends before returning -to the Rectory, and it was Mrs. Bradley who went -to her first. She said, when she came back, that Toppie -wanted to see Giles and hoped that he could come to -her next morning. She wanted very much to see him. -Giles, when he had been given this message, went away -and shut himself into his study.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, do you expect she’s going to have him at -last!” Ruth exclaimed. “For my part I believe she is, -and a good job, too. Giles may be able to wake her up -a bit. I find Toppie distinctly depressing myself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Poor old Giles,” said Rosemary, “it made him -look most awfully queer. It’ll be a shame if she doesn’t -have him now, after the way he’s waited.—If she -doesn’t have him, where do you suppose she’ll live? -There’s that jolly cottage on the common empty. It -would just do for her; with an old aunt to live with -her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If she doesn’t have him,” said Ruth sagaciously, -“my own feeling is that she’ll go away as far as possible. -None of us, except perhaps Mummy, have ever meant -anything to her. She’s not got much heart, if you ask -my opinion. Or, at all events, only heart enough for -one person.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How did you find her?” Alix asked Mrs. Bradley -when they were left alone. “She will be too unhappy -now, so soon after her father’s death, to think of Giles. -But for the future, is there hope did you feel?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I really don’t know what to think, dear,” said Mrs. -Bradley, taking off her hat and putting up her hand, -with a gesture so like Giles, to push back her hair. -“Toppie is rather strange. That is what I feel most. -She doesn’t seem unhappy. Not more unhappy than -she’s always been, I mean. She talked about Owen all -the time. She said she had never felt him so near. -That doesn’t look very hopeful for Giles, does it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She might say that just because she was really -turning a little towards Giles. One might hope that -it would work like that in her, perhaps,” said Alix, -though she had not indeed much hope.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Bradley sadly. “But haven’t -you felt for a long time that something has come between -Toppie and Giles? Since last Autumn I’ve felt -it. I believe, when she came back from Bournemouth, -he asked her, and that it displeased her and made her -draw away.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I believe, too, that it was like that,” said Alix. -“I have felt her changed.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You know there’s something in what Ruth says,” -Mrs. Bradley went on after a moment. “I’ve always -loved and admired Toppie and thought her a lovely -creature; but I confess to you, Alix—because you -understand her so well—that she has always seemed -to me a little heartless. Or is that too strong a word? -I don’t know. Something is lacking. She would spend -herself for people and do everything for them; there is -no selfishness in her at all; but it’s as if she’d do the -more because she felt the less, and had to make up for -it. It’s strange, Alix, selfish, warm-hearted people may -give much less pain than lovely people like Toppie. -Owen was selfish compared to Toppie; but I don’t -think he ever gave pain.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He was like a pool, was he not?” said Alix, struggling -with thoughts Mrs. Bradley could not guess at; -“a pool rippling and perhaps shallow, but open to the -sun; and Toppie is like a well, cold and deep and narrow. -And Giles is like the sea; deep and broad, too. -How happy she might still be if she could love Giles.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. Yes.” The tears rose to Mrs. Bradley’s eyes. -“And all that he thinks of is to live for her and all that -she thinks of is that Owen is near her. Isn’t it cruel?—I -can’t believe that about darling Owen, you know. I -haven’t her faith, and that distresses her in me, too. -She doesn’t want to be with people who haven’t her -faith. I feel that. She doesn’t want anything that -seems to come in any way between her and him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And if she did not believe him so near, so specially -near, she could think of Giles as near,” said Alix, while -a sense of unformulated fear, often felt, never seen, -seemed to press more closely upon her than ever before. -“It is Captain Owen who stands between them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am afraid he will stand between them always, -Alix,” said Mrs. Bradley.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles went off to the Rectory next morning. Ruth, -Rosemary, and the boys had planned a picnic with the -Eustaces, but Alix said that she would remain behind -with Mrs. Bradley. By luncheon-time Giles had not -returned and, exchanging glances over the table, each -knew that the other found hope in the prolonged absence, -for would Toppie keep Giles with her like this -unless all was going well?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You will see him when he comes back, Alix,” said -Mrs. Bradley when, after luncheon, she stepped into -the car to drive off to the station. She had an address -to give in London that afternoon and would not be -back till late.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, perhaps he will not want to see me,” said Alix. -“I shall be very discreet. I shall be there for him if he -wants me; but not otherwise.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think Giles would always want to see you, whatever -had happened to him,” said Mrs. Bradley.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Left alone, Alix went out to her favourite walk, the -little path under the garden wall, half obliterated by -heather and grass, its bordering gorse bushes all broken -into soft clusters of gold set in prickles and smelling of -apricots. Bareheaded, her arms wrapped in her blue-and-grey -scarf, she walked, smelling the gorse, feeling -the sunshine, listening to a blackbird that fluted golden -arabesques on the April air; while above her head the -leaning fruit-boughs were full of thick grey-green buds.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The sense of excitement that had been with her -since the day of Jerry’s declaration was immeasurably -deepened this afternoon by her imaginative sharing of -Giles’s ordeal. Jerry and Giles were mingled in her -thoughts, and her mind recoiled from the striving of -pain and hope and fear brought to it by their united -images. Perhaps it was because she thus evaded her -deep preoccupation, perhaps it was because she paced -thus in the sunlight, as he had paced, that her memory, -suddenly liberated, took a long flight backward to find -Grand-père going along the terrace at Montarel with -his dragging step and sombre eye.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was so strange to think of Grand-père now. Since -the day of her first arrival in England he had hardly -visited her thoughts. And with what a new sadness -she saw him again and felt once more his melancholy -flow into her. Was it because she had for so long forgotten -him and gone so far from him and Montarel -that she felt thus suddenly the gloomy pressure of his -eyes? It was as if he watched her, her life involved in -lives so remote from his sympathy. It was not only -the young yearning of her heart towards Jerry’s yearning -that seemed a betrayal of Grand-père; this sharper -yearning, not towards but over Giles, showed her as -even more removed and alien. Young love Grand-père -might have understood; but hardly this identification -with an Englishman’s hopes and fears. She doubted -whether Grand-père had ever in his life spoken to an -English person. He had disliked the English. She recalled -how, when she read her history to him, he would -interrupt her to speak bitterly about them. “<span class='it'>Un -peuple pratique; sans idéal</span>,” he had said. And he had -said that England had always schemed against France -and made use of her grace and generosity. How -strange that was to remember now as she waited for -Giles and listened to the blackbird. They had not -schemed against her; France’s daughter; nor made use -of her. Would it not be truer to say that France, -through her helpless person, had schemed against and -made use of them?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Maman schemed. Maman, with all her grace, her -generosity, was oh! so practical. “And our people eat -the blackbirds,” thought Alix while the song, as she -listened to it, brought Giles’s face vividly before her. -Jerry was like a goldfinch—golden flashes, summery -sweetness, swift eagerness, and gay inconsequent song. -Giles was the blackbird; its tenderness, its trust, its -something of heaven and something of drollery too; -and the way it brought long-past things back;—again; -again; again;—brooding on the past with persistent -fidelity. Faithful Giles; he would never forget. -And why did the thought of goldfinches merge into -this surreptitious aching? How strange it was that one -should feel the anxious pressure of a new thought -before one saw the thought itself! Goldfinches; Les -Chardonnerets; André de Valenbois; she traced the -sequence. Jerry made her think of André; only he was -not so finely tempered; not so intelligent. But the -thought of André was only a pain and a perplexity; -whereas Giles believed her to be in love with Jerry; she -had seen in his eyes that he believed her to be in love; -and perhaps she was; only it was round the problem of -worth that this new ache was centring. There must be -so much worth on the one hand if, on the other, it was -France that might have to be sacrificed. And Jerry -was like the goldfinches. “Worth,” she thought, listening -to the blackbird’s song. The word was such an -English word. She loved the blackbird’s song, best of -all, she said to herself, trying to turn away from the -still half-unseen trouble.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Suddenly, behind her, she heard Giles’s voice speaking -her name.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had come up from the birch-woods; he had not -come from the Rectory. He had been walking; his -hair was ruffled with the wind; his shoes were muddy; -he had not eaten; he was very tired. Alix saw all this -in flashes as they approached each other, her mind -catching at such straws. For it was shipwreck that his -face revealed to her; so pallid, so haggard, with dark -pinches in the eyelids under the eyes and strange, ageing -furrows of suffering running down from his nostrils -to the corners of his mouth. Could the shipwreck of -all his hopes make Giles look like this? There had been -no hope to lose.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had spoken her name in a quite gentle voice, as if, -indeed, he were glad to find her there; as if she were a -haven for what he could drag of hull and spars up out -of reach of the battering waves. He walked beside her, -and said: “Can we get to the study without being -seen?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They are all out,” said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was curious to feel, as she said it, as, silently, they -made their way into the house, that it was as if they -had left him to her. Even his mother had left Giles -to her, and as they entered the study and she heard, -through the open window, the blackbird, far away, -still singing, she had the feeling of being in a dream. -The past fell back into a strange, flat tapestry, russet, -silver, blue, where the figures of Grand-père, Maman, -and Jerry all went together. She and Giles stood -against that background in the study.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had walked in before her, to the window, and he -stood looking out as if he, too, were listening to the -blackbird, and when he turned at last and looked -at her it was as if he asked her what he should do -with himself. She saw him as a little boy who -needed a mother to take him to her breast. And, like -the little boy, he wanted his mother to ask him what -was the matter before he could speak. So Alix -asked him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is the matter, Giles?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her voice trembled as she spoke. That was why, -perhaps, Giles collapsed. He sank into the chair before -the table and laid his head upon his arms and burst out -crying.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix felt her heart stand still. “Captain Owen—Captain -Owen has parted them,” she thought. And -the unseen fear that had that morning pressed so near -was there beside her now. It was a compulsion laid -upon her; a necessity that was not now to be escaped, -though still she did not see it clearly. She stood by -Giles, gazing down at him, and her young face was -stern rather than pitiful. It was hardly of Giles that -she was thinking; or it was of his suffering rather than -of him. It was because of Giles’s suffering that the -necessity was laid upon her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Even when, as if he felt her near in his darkness, he -put out an arm and drew her to him, for the comfort -of her closeness, even while she thought, “I am his -mother now,” her face kept its sternness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He spoke at last. “She’s going to leave us, Alix.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Going to leave us?” Alix wondered if Toppie were -dying.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She’s going into a convent. She’s going to be a -nun. It was all settled at Bath. But she’s been meaning -it for a long time.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. I knew,” Alix murmured. “She told me that -on the first day.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You knew?” In his astonishment Giles relinquished -his clasp and fixed his broken gaze upon her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“On that first day. When I went to see her. She -told me that she could understand the wish to be a nun. -She told me that you had them in your Church. If -one were alone, she said, it might be the best life.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles now got up and moved, stumbling, towards the -sofa, and, Alix following him, they sat down.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s because of him,” said Giles. He leaned his arm -on the end of the sofa and kept his face covered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Because of him,” Alix echoed, sitting straightly beside -him and bending all her strength to thought.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“To be more near him. She says she feels she can be -more near like that,” Giles spoke dully.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But that is not a vocation,” said Alix after a moment. -She was seeing the face of the old great-aunt at -Lyons behind the <span class='it'>grille</span>. Pale old eyes; pale cold lips; -a dead creature; yet—already the little child who -stood there before her for her blessing felt it—living -by a mysterious life unimaginable to those out in the -great turmoil of the world. “You go into a convent to -renounce the world,” she said. “Not to keep it more -near.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah,” said Giles, and he uttered a hard laugh, “she -doesn’t count Owen as the world. She counts him as -heaven. He wasn’t worth it, you know, Alix,” said -Giles, with the hardness in his voice. “Owen wasn’t -worth a devotion like Toppie’s.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And, while the word “worth,” laden with its thick -cluster of associations, seemed to set a heavy bell ringing -in her breast, Alix answered: “No; he was not -worth it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They sat then for a long time silent. Once or twice -Alix thought that Giles was going to speak to her. She -saw it all now; clearly at last; and must he, too, not -see? Must he not, in another moment, tell her of the -sudden resolve to which, at last, he found himself knit? -But when she turned her eyes—appalled, yet ready, -upon him, he was not looking at her; not thinking at -all of what she thought; gazing merely at the fireless -grate, his mind fixed on the one figure that filled it. -Toppie a nun; Toppie blotted out from any life where -he could see or hear her. And suddenly he said: “She -was so kind to me. She was so awfully sorry for me. -She’s never been so kind—It was almost—I could -see what it might have been—Oh, Alix, I’m so miserable!” -groaned Giles, and again he put his head down -on his arms and broke into sobs.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix looked over at him. No; it was her task; not his. -Impossible for him; inevitable for her. It was a debt -to be paid. A debt of honour. More than that. It was -the crying out in her heart of intolerable grief. She -could not bear that Giles should suffer so.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He hardly noticed it when she laid her hand on his -head and said: “I will come back in a little while.” He -was broken. The waves were going over him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She left him there. She left the house. At the garden-gate, -looking through the sunlight across the common, -she stood still for a moment, feeling that she -paused, for the last time, in childhood, and that with -the next step she left it for ever behind her. It was she, -now, who took up life; who made it. Destiny went -with her; she was no longer its instrument, but its -creator. And in this last moment how strange it was to -hear the blackbird still singing:—It would always remember; -that was what it seemed to be saying:—It -would always remember. Even when she had forgotten -her childhood, the blackbird’s song would remember, -for her, how a child’s heart felt.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Once outside upon the common she began to run. -She was carrying Giles’s heart in her hand and it was -heavy to carry. From the tapestry she felt Grand-père’s -stern eyes following her; and Maman’s eyes. -Intently, intently Maman’s eyes watched her as she -ran. She could not read their look. And far away, as if -he had forgotten her, Jerry rode into the blue distance -with ladies in hennins mounted on unicorns; figures -faded to the pattern of the background. Or was it she -who had forgotten Jerry?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When she reached the Rectory, she did not ring. -She entered softly, standing for a moment to regain -her breath and listen. Footsteps were moving in the -drawing-room. The drawing-room door was ajar. She -pushed it open and entered.</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Toppie stood in the middle of the room with open -packing-cases around her. The sun came in and shone -upon the walls and the room looked pale and high and -vacant. There were no flowers anywhere; all the little -intimate things were gone. Toppie stood alone among -her doves. And upstairs, in Toppie’s room, the doves -brooded upon a little box where Captain Owen’s letters -lay.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was packing the books, carrying them from the -shelves that filled the spaces between the windows and -laying them in the boxes; and as Alix entered so softly, -closing the door behind her, she stood still, holding a -book in her hand and looking up with what, for a moment, -was only surprise.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A horrible blow of pity assailed Alix as she saw her. -All in black; so white; so wasted, she was like the <span class='it'>cierge</span> -unlighted. “But it is for her sake, too,” Alix thought, -seeing Toppie sinking, sinking away from the world of -sun and friendship into the silence and solitude of the -grave. “Better to suffer; better to suffer dreadfully, -and come back to us,” she thought. And the visions -that had always accompanied her thoughts still moved -before her so that it was pain like fire she saw lifted in -her own hands towards the cold <span class='it'>cierge</span>; to light it into -life once more.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Toppie stood holding her book and looking across -at her, and, all unbidden and unwelcome as she must -feel her guest to be, the deep fondness of her heart betrayed -itself by a faint smile.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have come to speak with you, Toppie,” said Alix. -She could not smile back. She could not go towards -Toppie with outstretched arms. The sofa where she -and Toppie always sat together was on the other side -of the room. She felt that she could not stand and tell -Toppie; her strength might forsake her; she might find -herself, when the moment came, turning away and -escaping. If she and Toppie were on the sofa it -would be safer. “I have seen Giles,” she said. “It is -because of what Giles has told me that I have come—May -I sit down? Will you come beside me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Toppie said not a word. She stood there, her smile -vanished, holding the book, and watched her as she -crossed the room to the sofa and sank down upon it. -Then, after a moment, she laid down the book and followed -her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This is very wrong of you, Alix.” These were the -words she found. Her mind, Alix saw, fixed itself upon -the time of her own former intercession for Giles. -Coldness gathered in her eyes. “Giles did not send -you, I am sure. You have no right to come.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Still, she had taken her place and was sitting there -in her black, waiting for what Alix had to say to her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know it must seem strange,” said Alix. “When -you have had so much to bear. But I had to come. -No, Giles did not send me. He would not have let me -come if he had known. He does not think of himself. -He thinks of you—only—always. Giles would never -lift a finger to save himself—although his heart might -be breaking.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Alix—this is impossible.” Toppie was scanning -her face with stern yet startled eyes. “No one knows -as well as I do what Giles would do for me.—You are -not yourself.—You seem to me to be hysterical.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No; you do not know what he would do,” said Alix. -She felt that her heart had begun to knock with heavy -thuds against her side and a shudder passed through -her as she sat there straightly, her hands pressed together -in her lap, her gaze fixed on Toppie; but she saw -her way to the end of what she had to say and she -could say it. “You cannot know it. No one knows but -he and I—and my mother. He has spared you; and -he has spared someone else. But I must tell. Toppie, -your lover was not true to you. He did not love you as -you love him. He did not understand love as Giles -understands it, or love you with a tenth of the love -that Giles has given.—Oh, Toppie—I am sorry”—Toppie -had started to her feet and was drawing -away with a look of horror—“But you must know. -You must not shut yourself away from life because -of someone who is not with you at all.—It was my -mother that Captain Owen loved. He was with us -three times in Paris and he kept it from you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are mad! You do not know what you are saying. -Go away. Go away at once.” Toppie stood there -as if she had been a snake—ghastly with disgust and -repudiation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am not mad. It is true. Giles knows. I lied to -Mrs. Bradley when she asked me why we had never -seen Captain Owen again. When I saw that he had -hidden it, I lied. I did not understand why he had -kept it from you all and it was Giles who told me—that -it was because he had betrayed you by loving -Maman most. Three times he was with us in Paris -that Spring before he died.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you know what you are saying?” Toppie stared -at her with dilated eyes. “Do you understand what -you are saying? Owen with you? Before he died?—Why -not? Why not?—He was your mother’s friend.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It was friendship in Cannes. In Paris it was different. -Giles made me see why it was different. He -would not have kept it from you if it had been friendship.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Giles? Giles made you see?” Toppie put her hands -to her head as if her skull cracked with the dreadful -blows Alix dealt her, and, while a deathly sickness -crept over her, Alix went on relentlessly: “He had -seen them together in Paris. They did not see him, but -he saw them walking in the Bois. That was why, when -I lied to his mother, he knew it was a lie. Last Winter, -Toppie; when I first came. And I was to help him in -keeping it from you always.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Toppie stood still, up there in the thin bright sunlight, -her hands pressed now before her face; and, with -the growing sickness, Alix suddenly seemed to see -another figure beside her. It was as if Maman, too, -was standing there, in the bright sunlight, with that -intent look; dumb, like a figure in a nightmare; yet in -her stillness conveying a terrible reproach. “It was -not Maman’s fault,” Alix muttered. “She cannot help -it if she is loved. She did not know that he had kept it -from you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>From behind Toppie’s hands now came a strange -voice. It was as if it spoke from the pressure of some -iron vice screwed down upon it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Your mother is a wicked woman. You do not know -what you are saying; but I know that it is true. Your -mother took my lover from me. She is a wicked woman -and you are a miserable child.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix felt herself trembling now in every limb; but it -was even more before Maman that she trembled than -before Toppie. “Is it wicked to be loved? Is it wicked -to be preferred?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. It is wicked,” said Toppie in the crushed and -straining voice. “There is no greater sin for a woman -than such stolen love. Your mother is an abandoned -woman. She has lovers. No one is safe from her. I -knew that already!—Oh, God, I knew it!” Was -Toppie speaking on to her, or, in her agony, to herself? -Alix, standing outside the torture-chamber, heard the -cries of the victim. But she, too, was bound upon a -wheel.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are not wicked. You had a lover. Captain -Owen was your lover.” She forced her trembling lips -to speak. “Giles knows her. He knows that she is not -wicked. It is false what you say. You must not say -such false things of my mother.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You do not understand,” Toppie moaned. She had -fallen down upon a chair, her face still hidden in her -hands. “It is terrible to be so ignorant as you are. You -are too old to be so ignorant.—Yes, it is true—all -true. She took him from me. Oh, I know now—I -know what Giles was hiding from me!—Go away, -Alix.—You drive me mad!—Go away, poor unhappy -child!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix had risen to her feet, but still she could not go. -To fly, to escape; to hide herself for ever; this was the -cry of all her nature; but there was something else. -It was not only upon herself, upon Maman, that she -had brought this disaster. What had she done to -Giles?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I will not stay.—Do not think that I will stay.—You -say things of my mother that are not to be forgiven.—It -is only for Giles.—You will not blame -him? He has done nothing wrong. You will see him? -He will explain all that I have not understood.—It -is for Giles.—Oh, Toppie—all is not so lost when -Giles, who loves you, is still there.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. It is lost. All, all lost,” Toppie murmured. -Her voice had sunken to ashes now. Her head hung -forward upon her hands. Looking at her, for the last -time, Alix seemed, dizzily, to see her as a figure in -a long-past epoch, a black figure, with bent fair head, -sitting in the pale room with the doves about it. It was -as if Toppie would sit on there for ever. “Oh, Owen!” -Alix heard her moan, as she went, unsteadily, to the -door.</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, Maman!—What have I done to you!” It was -her own voice now that Alix heard. She was out again -upon the common and she had been running. But suddenly -she was walking very slowly among the gorse -bushes in the bright sunlight, and she could hardly drag -herself along. Her head ached as if it would break in -two; her limbs were of lead; and now that she went so -slowly she could no longer escape Maman. She saw -her there, moving beside her, with the intent look; -silent; without a word of blame.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What have I done to you!” Alix muttered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Maman went beside her, in her white dress, with the -heelless shoes such as she wore at Vaudettes, and bare-headed. -It was not blame. Maman’s look had passed -beyond all thought of blame; it had passed even beyond -pity. Alix saw suddenly that what it meant was -that she was waiting to see what Alix would now say to -her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I must think. I must think,” Alix muttered to herself. -But she did not need to think. It was as if in a -kaleidoscope, turned in her hands, memories, till now -unrelated, fell suddenly into a pattern. “<span class='it'>La belle -madame Vervier. Divorcée, vous savez.</span>”—Grand-père’s -eyes. Giles’s silence, when they had met. That strange, -deep blush that had dyed Giles’s face when, in the -study, they had spoken of Captain Owen’s leaves in -Paris; André de Valenbois. Maman’s lie to André -about Toppie. All the things she had read in poetry, -in novels, of beautiful guilty women who had lovers. -And, creeping through her young heart like a slow -surreptitious flame—falling into place, curving with -darts of ardent colour into the pattern—most recent, -most intimate intuitions of what a woman’s love might -mean. “Maman!” she moaned. She fell at Maman’s -feet in supplication. Yet, while she implored her forgiveness, -she was sheltering her, too. She was putting -her arms around her to protect her from the world’s -cruel scrutiny. She was promising her—oh, with -what a passion of fidelity—that their love, the love -of mother and child, was unharmed, set apart, firmly -fixed and sacred for ever.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When she reached Heathside she heard that the little -boys had returned. They were shouting in the garden -with the dogs, and Alix retraced her steps, skirting the -kitchen-garden wall, going softly in by the little gate, -creeping along the back passages past kitchen and -scullery unobserved. Here was Giles’s study. She -turned the handle and went in.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles was there, sitting at his desk and writing. He -had a sick, dogged look; but he had recovered his composure. -He even, as he turned his head and looked at -her, tried to summon a smile of welcome and she knew -that he felt ashamed for having broken down before -her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix shut the door and stood against it. “Giles, I -have done a dreadful thing,” she said. Only when she -leaned against the door did she know that she was almost -fainting. She felt that all that she desired was -sleep. To tell Giles and then to fall into oblivion. Far -away, in France, she saw where she and Maman, in a -sunny garden, walked hand in hand. They both seemed -very old. They were very sad. Yet they smiled at each -other. But this vision was far away. The black ordeal -was before her. “I have done a dreadful thing,” she -repeated. “Perhaps you will not forgive me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles had risen to his feet and stood, over against -the window, tall and dark with his ruffled head. He -was looking at her and his eyes were frightened.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have been to Toppie,” said Alix. “I have told her -everything.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He did not find a word to say.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It was for your sake I did it, Giles,” said Alix in a -dry, unappealing voice. “I told her so that she might -know it was you who loved her; not he. Perhaps you -will not forgive me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles spoke. “You told her about Owen?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“About Owen. That he was Maman’s lover.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles put his hand up and pushed it through his hair. -“You told her that for my sake?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, Giles. So that she should not leave you to be -nearer him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Did you know what you were saying, Alix?” said -Giles, after another moment; and after yet another -moment Alix answered him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not when I told her. But afterwards. After what -she said. She said that Maman was a wicked woman. -She said that Maman was a woman who had lovers. -She said that for a woman there is no greater sin. And -now, I think, I understand. Giles—Is it true?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My darling little Alix,” said Giles in a strange, -stern voice, “it is true. But she’s not wicked. She’s -wrong; but not wicked. She’s lovely, and unfortunate, -and wrong, and she needs your love more than ever.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As Giles spoke these words, Alix suddenly stumbled -forward. She put out her hands blindly—for as she -heard him her tears rushed down from under shut lids—and -Giles’s arms received her. She was sobbing -against his breast. “Oh, Giles, thank you! Oh, Giles, -do you forgive me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My darling child—my darling little Alix—I -understand it all,” said Giles.</p> - -<div><h1>PART IV</h1></div> - -<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Two faces were with Giles that night as he turned, -sleepless, again and again, on his pillow; Alix’s face, -and Toppie’s face. Toppie was before him as he had -seen her on the Autumn evening in the birch-woods -when she had looked away from him with the wildness -in her eyes and had said: “It’s as if there might be -anything. As if you might hide anything. She’s -changed you so much.” She was before him as she -said: “It’s as if she might have changed Owen—if -he had ever come to know her as well as you do.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was he himself, in his stumbling confusion, his -half truths and his half loyalties, who had that evening -set the deadly surmise before her. She had not, he believed, -since seeing it, drawn a breath at ease. She -would have been ready for what Alix had come to tell -her. She would have known, at the first word, that it -was true. He saw her freeze to stillness before the -Medusa head.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yet, if Toppie’s face brought the groan of helpless -pity to his lips while he tossed and turned, an even -deeper piercing came in the thought of Alix. She stood -there, against the study door, facing him; facing the -deed she had done; facing a truth worse than Toppie’s. -Toppie saw herself betrayed by what she had most -loved. But Alix saw herself as a betrayer. Her look -was that of a creature at bay, with wolves at its throat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Again, with a suffocating compassion, he saw her -blind, outstretched hands; he heard her gasping breath: -“Giles—Is it true?” His arms received her and he -felt her sobs against his breast.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She became, while his comprehension yearned over -her, part of himself. Something fiercely tender, something -trembling and awe-struck dawned in his heart as -he held her. To understand Toppie was to see her sink -away from him. To understand Alix was to see her -enter his very flesh and blood. It was for him that she -had dared the almost inconceivable act; and, as he -thus saw her offered up in sacrifice for him, Giles knew, -with all that had been destroyed, something beautiful -had been given. It was his justification for the act that -he had, from the beginning, dared for her. It was the -answer to an old perplexity. He had seen the dear little -French girl as so securely secular, so serenely pagan; -so hard. His perplexity had centred round the word -Holiness and he had feared that she might be impervious -to its meaning. But as quietness descended -slowly upon his troubled heart Giles saw, while a -sense of radiance grew about him, that it was Alix -herself who showed him further meanings in the -word.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He found on waking next morning that, with all the -sense of calamity that lay like a physical weight on his -heart, the sense of beauty, of something gained, still -shone round him. He needed light, for his path was -dark with perplexity. Alix had left him yesterday to -go to her room, and to bed. In the few words that -passed between him and his mother on her return from -London the child’s shattered state was sufficiently -explained by Toppie’s decision. Toppie’s decision, he -felt, explained his state, too. Mrs. Bradley heard of it -with consternation. “A nun, Giles! A convent!” she -had gasped. Generations of candid Protestantism -spoke in the exclamation. Nuns and convents were, -to Mrs. Bradley, strange, alien, almost sinister anachronisms. -Dim pictures from Fox’s “Book of Martyrs” -and the “Pilgrim’s Progress” floated across her mind -as she heard Giles. And tears rose to her eyes as she -saw an end, not only to all his hopes, but to every link -that bound them to Toppie. There was no need to explain -anything further to his mother.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had to face at breakfast the dismay of Ruth and -Rosemary.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Poor Alix! She’s bowled out completely.—Says -she doesn’t want any breakfast; but I’m going to take -her up a tray,” said Rosemary. “No, not kidneys, -Jack; if you’re ill in bed you don’t want kidneys;—a -boiled egg’s the thing, and toast, and tea. She looks -rotten; perfectly rotten. She’s awfully fond of Toppie, -you see.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I suppose there’s no good whatever in my going -over and seeing what I can say to Toppie,” Ruth ventured -to her brother when breakfast was over. “If -she’d only let herself be psycho-analysed by Miriam -Stott it would be sure to help. Miriam is extraordinary, -you know. She’s a friend of the Burnetts; she does it -professionally. Toppie is just a case for her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dear Ruth,” said Giles, “I’m sure you mean -well; but you are sometimes an arrant ass.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s all very well,” said Ruth to her sister when -Giles had gone to shut himself in his study; “ass or no -ass, I’ve thought for some time now that Toppie was -quite liable to go off her chump. It’s sexual repression -coming out in religious mania; plain as day.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sexual repression!” Rosemary stared. “What an -extraordinary thing to say, Ruth! Toppie’s no more -repressed than you or I.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, she is. Sensible people like you and me work -it off, sublimate it, in games and work and all sorts of -healthy activities, whereas poor foolish Toppie has always -moped and brooded at home, never knowing -what she was or what she wanted. You’re old enough -to read Freud now, Rosemary, and the sooner you do -the better. He will explain it all to you.” Ruth’s universe -was of the latest tabloid variety.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles, meanwhile, in his study, sat and wondered -what he should do next. Until he had seen Alix again -he did not know. How could he go to Toppie? What -was there to say to Toppie? He had answered all her -questions on the Autumn afternoon in the birch-woods. -He had answered all her questions about Owen, and he -had answered all her questions about himself. She had -seen him on that afternoon place himself on the side of -madame Vervier. “She is the product of her mother,” -he had said of Alix. “Do you find fault with it?” He -had showed himself as understanding madame Vervier; -as exculpating her. Toppie might come to forgive -Owen, caught in the horrible siren’s net; she would -never, he believed, forgive him. Unless she sent for -him, how could he go to her?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the midst of these reflections he heard a motor -drive up to the door and, going to look out, saw with -astonishment Lady Mary Hamble descending from it. -Lady Mary could only have come to see Alix and, after -she had disappeared, he stood wondering what Alix -would find to say to her. He had, while he had brooded -on their disaster, almost forgotten Alix’s love-story -and it seemed now to have lost all its potency. Jerry -was too light, too boyish to face the resolutions that -would now be needed. “She’s too good for him,” Giles -muttered to himself, as he had muttered of the French -order on the summer day at Les Vaudettes, standing -with bent head and hands in his pockets as if listening -for what next was to happen. Too good for him. Yet -perhaps Jerry would not fail.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>What was next to happen did not long delay, and the -sight of his mother’s face in the doorway warned him -that it was something quite unforeseen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, Giles, dear!—Will you come?” Rarely had -he heard his mother’s voice so shaken, and if her face -had shown consternation last night it was almost horror -that it showed this morning. “Lady Mary is here,” -she said. “She came to see me. Oh, Giles—it is about -poor little Alix. Lady Mary has heard—terrible -things about her mother.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So it had fallen. Better so, perhaps, thought Giles, -as for a moment he stared at his mother in a receptive -silence before following her to the drawing-room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lady Mary was there, floating, to Giles’s sense, in an -indefiniteness, made up of lovely hesitancy, veils, and -a touch of tears, that was yet more definite than a -steely armour. She came towards him at once with -outstretched hands, saying: “Dear Giles, perhaps you -can help us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“For it can’t be true, can it, Giles?” Mrs. Bradley -urged in her shaken voice. She was so much more worn -than Lady Mary, yet she looked so much younger and -Giles read on her face a resentment, all unconscious, -against Lady Mary and her standards. “You know -her, Giles, and can explain. She’s unconventional, -isn’t she, and unworldly, and might do unusual things -and be misjudged by worldly people;—but Alix’s -mother can’t be a bad woman.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So he found himself face to face once more with the -bad woman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I had to come and see if you could tell me more. -I’m so fond of darling little Alix.” Lady Mary had -beautifully placed herself in a corner of the sofa, her -furs unfolded, her long veil cast back from the framing -velvet of her little hat. She was not thinking about -looking beautiful;—Giles did her justice;—but she -was thinking, very intently, about doing what she had -to do as beautifully as possible, and that intention -seemed to dispose her hands across the sables of her -muff, to cross her silken ankles and tilt to a most -appealing angle the pearls that glimmered in her -ears. “You see—Jerry— It’s all foolishness”—she -found her way. “He’s only a boy.—He falls in -love with someone different every six months.—He -fancies himself in love with Alix now—and I don’t -wonder at it. She’s the most enchanting young girl -I’ve seen for years.—But Marigold Hamble, my -husband’s niece, heard in Paris, just the other day, -such deplorable things. Deplorable.” Lady Mary’s -voice sank to the longest, saddest emphasis. “Marigold -is a wretched gossip, and worse.—She’s a <span class='it'>mauvaise -langue</span>; I would not trust her story. But she -gave chapter and verse to such an extent that I had to -come to you—since you know madame Vervier.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But gossip is always like that,” Mrs. Bradley persisted, -a spot of colour on each cheek. “Some people -see evil in everything. And Giles liked her. And everything -Alix has told me of her is so lovely. And my -son, Owen, who is dead, was devotedly attached to -her. It is because he was so fond of her mother that -Alix is with us now.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For a moment, after that, Lady Mary’s soft, bright -eyes, from between the veils and the pearls, remained -fixed on Mrs. Bradley’s candid countenance and Giles -knew that his mother had revealed more of the miserable -truth to Lady Mary than she herself, he hoped, -would ever know.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re quite right, Mummy, darling. I do like -her,” so he felt impelled to sustain her, though he knew -that such sustainment might only be for her immediate -bewilderment. “I do like her,” he repeated, turning -his eyes on Lady Mary and bidding her make what -use she liked of the information. And then he found -the words he had used to Alix yesterday: “She’s not -bad. She’s unfortunate and wrong. But, it’s true:—I -found out while I was with her, that she is a woman -who—” poor Giles paused, while Lady Mary and -his mother gazed at him—“who,” he finished, “has -lovers.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>After this, it was Mrs. Bradley who first spoke. -“Has lovers, Giles?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He could almost have smiled—but he was nearer -weeping at his mother’s voice. Steeped to the lips in -the woes of the world as she was, lovers—for anyone -one knew—for anyone in one’s own walk of life—was -an idea almost as alien, and even more strange -and sinister, than nuns and convents. Poor little shop-girls -and housemaids had lovers, though usually known -less romantically as the fathers of illegitimate babies; -she had spent much time and strength in dealing with -such sad cases and in pleading on committees that the -man was most at fault. But even with Ruth flourishing -Freudian theories before her and the latest novels -of the newest young writers lying on her tables, Mrs. -Bradley thought of unhallowed relations between men -and women as of dark, mysterious deviations from the -obvious standards of civilization. And now she heard -Giles say that Alix’s mother had lovers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Has had them for years and years, dear Mrs. -Bradley,” Lady Mary sadly but firmly defined for her. -“Ever since she left Alix’s father with, let us trust, the -first of them. With the monsieur Vervier, who, Marigold -heard, has never divorced her, and still lives. The -last is an André de Valenbois and Marigold met his -people. It was from them she heard the story, and -from what Giles says I see it is all too true. She is -a very distinguished, very dignified <span class='it'>demi-mondaine</span>. -Quite, quite notorious. She’s as well known in Paris,” -said Lady Mary with a sigh, relinquishing madame -Vervier’s corpse, as it were, to float down the tide of -her destiny, “as the Mona Lisa. The masses may not -know about her, but everybody else does.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not quite so bad as that, is it?” said Giles. He -knew, while he listened to Lady Mary, that it would be -difficult to say why it was not so bad; but the loyalty -to madame Vervier that had so direfully betrayed him -to Toppie rose up in grief and anger against these -suave definitions. “Madame Vervier isn’t mercenary,” -he said. “To be a <span class='it'>demi-mondaine</span> you must be mercenary. -And I’m sure,” he added, while his mother’s -eyes, aghast, and Lady Mary’s eyes, imperturbably -kind, dwelt on him, and he knew that to the one he -appeared ominously mature, and to the other attractively -boyish;—“I’m sure that Alix is legitimate; if -that’s any comfort to us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And why are you sure?” Lady Mary asked, Mrs. -Bradley remaining helplessly silent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She confided in me,” said Giles, and it was more -difficult to face Lady Mary’s kindness than his -mother’s dismay. “She was absolutely straight with -me. It was when we talked about Alix that she told me -everything. It was then I came to like her so much.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, Giles”—poor Mrs. Bradley now almost -wept—“how can you say you like these dreadful -people? You made friends with monsieur de Valenbois, -too—how can you like them?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, dear Mrs. Bradley,” said Lady Mary with -just the brush of a smile across her lips, “one <span class='it'>does</span> like -them. Why not?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Dissolute people? People with no sense of conduct -or duty? I’ve never met them. Giles has never, I am -sure, met them before. I don’t understand,” said Mrs. -Bradley, and her drawing-room seemed to be saying -that it did not understand either;—the Watts’s -“Love and Life” and “Love and Death,” the bowls of -primroses picked by Jack and Francis, the crétonne -covers, and the crayon drawing of Mrs. Bradley’s -grandmother, a dove-eyed lady with lace tied over her -head and a cameo brooch.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve met them,” said Lady Mary with sad equanimity. -“I’ve cared very much for several women who -were, alas, in that sense, dissolute. Only they were -more fortunate than madame Vervier; or more discreet. -They’ve not been dissolute openly. So one -hasn’t had to lose them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And one’s sons can marry their daughters,” said -Giles. His mind was occupied by no anger against -Lady Mary; only by that grief on madame Vervier’s -account; and on Alix’s. Lady Mary he felt that he -liked; much as he liked—it was the strangest feeling—madame -Vervier. Lady Mary, too, was straight; -she, too, was magnanimous; and, her eyes on his, she -was liking him, liking him even while, not yielding an -inch, she answered: “Exactly. One’s sons can marry -their daughters. The difference couldn’t be put more -clearly.” And she went on, reminding him more and -more of madame Vervier, “Some things fit in and -some things don’t. Women who have kept their place, -fit; women who have lost it, don’t. It’s very harsh; it’s -very hypocritical, you will say, Giles; but it is the only -way in which a civilized society can protect itself. It’s -impossible to judge each case on its own merits; so -rules are made and the people who transgress them pay -the penalty. It isn’t really that they are put out; they -put themselves out. One pretends about them as long -as they allow one to go on pretending. And when it -comes to the sons and daughters;—young people -don’t realize how horrid, how crippling, simple awkwardness -can be. How awkward, for instance, to have -a mother-in-law you couldn’t possibly, ever, invite to -the house; how awkward to have babies to whom -you’ve given a <span class='it'>demi-mondaine</span> for a grandmother. It -becomes too difficult. One wants to spare one’s children -such difficulty.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And what does one want to spare Alix?” Giles -asked. With all his liking, with all her grace, her frankness, -her resolve not to hurt, he was feeling for Lady -Mary the same repudiation that he had felt for the -ladies of the chalet—the people who connived and -had no right to reject.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lady Mary thought for a moment before saying: -“Alix can marry someone who doesn’t mind.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But anyone good enough to marry Alix would have -to mind,” said Giles. “Wouldn’t you be the first to say -that where she belongs is with the people who do mind? -What you really mean”—and Giles heard that his -voice became rather bitter as he went on—“is that -the daughter of the <span class='it'>demi-mondaine</span> must stay in the -<span class='it'>demi-monde</span>. I wouldn’t blame you if you weren’t so -fond of Alix for herself. I wouldn’t blame you if it -were a moral objection; but it isn’t. Those friends of -yours are only in because they’ve escaped being divorced. -Your objection to Alix is really, when you -come to look at it, that her mother is unfortunate.—Isn’t -that so?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yes, Lady Mary reminded him, vividly now, of -madame Vervier. Her soft gaze was fixed upon him -with something of the same surprise, yet with all of -the same security, that madame Vervier’s had shown. -Madame Vervier, in Lady Mary’s place, would feel -precisely as she did. And he could see madame Vervier, -after the little pause, bow her head as Lady Mary -bowed hers in saying: “I accept it all. That is my -objection. Her mother is too unfortunate. That is exactly -what it comes to.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Bradley, shut out from her son’s understanding -and from Lady Mary’s tolerance, looked from one -to the other of them, a deepening flush on her girlish -cheeks. “But it’s worse, far worse than unfortunate,” -she said. “How could she have lived a life like that -with a little daughter to care for? It isn’t as if she had -had only to leave a bad husband, Giles. One could -have understood that; one could have felt her right. -But to have lovers—Don’t say only unfortunate -when it’s so much worse.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I did say she was wrong, you know, Mummy.” -Poor Giles rubbed his hand through his hair. “She -knows how wrong I think her. I told her. But the -point for us is to make up to Alix for her mother’s -wrongness, isn’t it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We must keep her here,” said Mrs. Bradley. “We -must keep her away from her mother’s life. It is too -terrible to think of our darling little Alix exposed to -such depravity.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, that’s what I felt, you see,” said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lady Mary was observing him. “You have been -making up to Alix from the first, haven’t you, Giles?” -she said, and though the kindness of her voice was unaltered -there was in it a touch of dryness, too. “You’ve -been engaged from the first in rescuing her from the -<span class='it'>demi-monde</span>. It must have been a wonderful scene that -between you and madame Vervier, when you told her -how wrong you thought her and promised her to do -your best to place Alix in another world than hers.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles, his hand still clutched in his hair, now stared -at Lady Mary, arrested. “It was you who sought Alix -out, you know,” he reminded her after a moment. “It -wasn’t I who asked for anything for her. You took -your chances with Alix, just as we did. It was all on -your own responsibility.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Dear Giles—I don’t blame you in the least for not -telling me,” Lady Mary assured him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Giles would have none of such assurances. “I -didn’t imagine you could. I hadn’t told my own -mother. If anyone can blame me, it’s she.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I’m sure she forgives you,” said Lady Mary.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, of course, darling,” Mrs. Bradley, confused, -murmured. “How could you have done differently?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And did you think, then,” Lady Mary, all mildness, -continued, “that it would never come out?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I knew it would have to come out if Alix ever got -married,” said Giles. “In your case, I knew that you -and madame Vervier were to meet. Alix had seen to -that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” Lady Mary meditated, her eyes on his. -“Alix saw to it. Yes; you knew you could count on -Alix. We can all count on Alix. Alix was perfect.” -She had moved away from the theme of reproach, but -it still smarted in Giles and it was with a heavy gaze -that he listened as she went on, sweetly showing him -that she, too, appreciated to the full their little French -girl. “She made everything clear. I never met such -clearness. It was wonderful to hear her on that day. -Jerry had really, I believe, touched her heart a little—poor -little dear—but the last thing she was thinking -about was her own heart. She was thinking of all -sorts of strange claims and duties. The children, if she -married, would have to be Catholics, she told me! And -she could not marry anyone who asked her to give up -France.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hope you recognize,” said Giles, his heavy gaze -on her, “that she would have been just as perfect if, -not being French and not being a Catholic, she’d accepted -Jerry.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was then as if, in the heavy eyes of the young man -sitting there, Lady Mary found herself arrested by an -unfamiliar image of herself. She had come to do exquisitely -what had to be done; and to do it so exquisitely -that the element of forbearance in her attitude -should be barely, if at all, perceptible. She was, perhaps, -doing it exquisitely; but the mirror of dispassionate -contemplation presented to her in Giles’s gaze -showed her, for perhaps the first time in her life, an -unbecoming distortion of her features. She might have -been seen as poised there, regretting that she had -exposed herself to the revelation. Then, feeling, no -doubt, that no evasion was possible, she submitted -to seeing that while she could retain the grace of -candour she must lose the grace of disinterestedness, -and answered: “She wouldn’t have been nearly so perfect -for my purposes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles, at that, turned his eyes away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You see, the truth is, my dear Giles,” said Lady -Mary, and it was perhaps not the least part of her discomfort -to know that he was uncomfortable for her, -“dear little Alix needs someone better and braver to -deal with her situation than I can afford to be. Someone -quite, quite detached and devoted must fall in love -with her; someone without a worldly mother to shackle -his impulses.—I’m sure he will turn up,”—Lady -Mary’s smile dwelt on him, but Giles did not meet it. -“And as far as I am concerned, my best security is -Alix herself. I’m perfectly aware of that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is your difficulty, then?” Giles inquired, -still averting his eyes from Lady Mary.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, Jerry, of course,” she said, glad to escape to -the wider theme. “He won’t leave it where Alix made -it so possible to leave it. He is indignant with me and -furious with Marigold. He says he won’t give up Alix -if her mother is a Messalina. I’m afraid he’s coming -here to see her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Aren’t you rather proud of him?” Giles inquired.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, my dear Giles, I am not proud of him!” Lady -Mary now gave herself the relief of impatience, and -Jerry was to bear the weight of her discomposure. “He -isn’t like Alix. He doesn’t see other people’s point of -view. He is thinking only of himself. It was just the -same last year when he wanted to marry a little -dancer.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He’s thinking of Alix as well as of himself. And -you must own that he’s improved in taste since last -year,” said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked at Lady Mary now, and her eyes searched -his. “Does that mean that you’re going to help Jerry?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles reflected. “It means, I suppose, that I’m going -to help Alix. If he’s really good enough for Alix—of -course I’ll do my best for them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He and Lady Mary gazed deeply at each other. She -was clever. She was as clever as madame Vervier. She -saw that she had not concealed herself from him and -that he had recognized her intimations; first that, again -the old dog Tray, he should marry Alix himself, and -then, that if he did not marry her, he should at all -events secure Jerry from the unpropitious match by -removing her. Yet, still, he liked Lady Mary. “Why -don’t you stand by them?” he suddenly suggested.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At that, Lady Mary rose; mournful, but showing no -reprobation. “I would stand by them, of course, if it -had to be. But I must try to prevent its being. I must -stand by my darling, that’s what it comes to, as you -must stand by yours. Jerry is my only child. I don’t -want madame Vervier in my family.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You could count on her, too, you know,” said Giles. -“She’d do everything to make it easy, for Alix’s sake. -You see, already she gives her up to us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah—but only because of what she hopes you can -do for her!” Lady Mary exclaimed, and it was now, -again, with the note of impatience. “No; the only -person I count upon is Alix herself. I don’t see Alix -entering a family that doesn’t want her. She will draw -back when she feels that we can’t come forward. She’ll -send Jerry away—whatever her mother, or you, or -Jerry himself, may say—when she sees that he speaks -for himself alone. And Jerry, when he’s given a little -time, will come to feel that it’s all too difficult. After -all, they’re only children. Little by little he will forget -her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And will you?” asked Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lady Mary, with sweetest, softest emphasis, had -pressed Mrs. Bradley’s hand in farewell and now moved -beside him to the door. She was gracefully occupied in -swathing and enfolding; she dropped her veil; she drew -her furs together; she avoided meeting again the mirror -of his eyes; and she said: “At my age one has learned -to give up things. I must give up my dear little Alix.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She made Giles think of a soft white hand, withdrawing -itself, while avoiding all danger of a rent, -from a glove that has proved a misfit.</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER II</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>When Giles got back to his study, he found Alix there, -looking out of the window. The sound of Lady Mary’s -motor had hardly died away. He saw that there was -nothing now that could be concealed from Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She had come to speak about my mother,” said -Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was strange to hear her say, “my mother,” and -pitiful. Her voice was strange; yet he knew, in seeing -her, that he, too, whatever her sufferings might be, -must count upon Alix. It was Alix who would shield -them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. Marigold Hamble has just come back from -Paris,” he said. The gas-fire was alight this morning, -burning rather low. He went to it and turned it up so -that there should be a brighter glow; and then, since -there was nothing he could say to Alix, he waited for -what she would find to say. She watched him while he -bent to the fire. He felt her eyes on him. Then, with a -slow step, she came forward and sank down in her corner -of the sofa.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix was very pale; her eyes were set in dark circles. -Glancing at her, Giles wondered with how much of -strength she thus, after the shipwreck of the day before, -possessed herself before him. He guessed from -her attitude as she sat there, straightly, yet leaning a -little against the cushion, that it had only been by the -determined exercise of her will that she had forced herself -to rise on hearing the motor arrive, and to descend -to meet whatever fresh disaster her presence among -them might have given birth to. She had parted from -him the day before, broken, speechless, disfigured with -weeping; but now she showed him only calm. Sorrow -had not softened or disintegrated her. It had knitted -her to a new hardness, and what she found to say as -she sat there looking into the fire was:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So Mrs. Bradley knows now, too. Everybody -knows about my mother.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She doesn’t conceal anything, Alix, dear,” said -Giles, dreadfully troubled. “Everybody who meets her -must come to know that her life is—unconventional.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Does Mrs. Bradley know that I know?” Alix -asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not yet,” said Giles. “I told her just now that I’d -rather not talk about it for a little while. She’s a good -deal knocked up. But, if you agree, all I need say to -her, Alix, dear, is that I myself have explained to you -the grounds of Lady Mary’s objection. Toppie, I am -sure, will say nothing. Mummy need never know more -than what she’s learned from Lady Mary. She doesn’t -know what Toppie knows.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix sat silent, looking into the fire.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We needn’t talk about any of that, you see, any -more,” Giles took up presently, having walked to the -window and back again while he raged at his helplessness. -“Never forget what I said to you yesterday. -That’s all you need understand. I’ll make Mummy -understand it, too. And as for you, she only loves you -the more because of your—your difficulties. What -we must talk about, you know, is Jerry. I’d really forgotten -all about him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I had, too.” Alix did not raise her eyes. -“What is there to say of him?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles, his hands in his pockets, gazed down at her. -“He hasn’t forgotten you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hope he soon may learn to,” said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, Alix, Jerry is sticking to you,” Giles protested. -“Jerry is all right. I’m very pleased about -him. I thought it probable he wasn’t good enough for -you and now I find he is.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am quite sure he is good enough. That is not the -question,” said Alix. She sat there, leaning slightly -against her cushion, her hands folded in her lap, and -looked into the fire. “I need not think of Jerry now. -I have only one person to think about, and that is my -mother. I must go back to her at once. To-morrow, -Giles.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But surely you’re not going to chuck Jerry!” cried -Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For a moment, at this, Alix raised her eyes to his, -and it was as if in their dim surprise he read a reproach; -the reproach of a serious race who saw facts as they -were. There was no humility or confusion in Alix. She -would not say to him that it was she who was not good -enough for Jerry; but certain facts were there and her -glance told him that he did not help her by pretending -not to see them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Dear Jerry,” was what she said and she then looked -back at the fire. “I am sorry if he is to be made sad. -But it will not be for long. He will get over it,” said -Alix, and her voice was almost the voice of madame -Vervier and of Lady Mary. “He is so young. And he -must come to see that with objections on both sides -what he hoped for is impossible.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles now came and sank down on the other end of -the sofa. He had not been pretending. He saw the -facts quite as clearly as Alix could ask him to do; but -what it really came to was that his race, he believed -with all his heart, saw further and more important -facts than the French did.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You know,” he said, while Alix continued to gaze -at the fire, “I don’t believe you are looking at it in the -right way. You’re looking at it as—as his mother -does, as your mother would, from the point of view of -convention. Why impossible since you care for him?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Because it would not be happy,” said Alix, who -felt, evidently, no uncertainty. “It would have been -an unsuitable marriage before, when mine were the -only objections; it is much less suitable now. Such a -marriage would make his mother very unhappy. I do -not believe it could make my mother happy either. We -do not think of marriage, we French people, as you do. -What you think wrong, we think right; convention, -suitability is right for us. We are not romantic in your -English way.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And can you really believe that your way is the -right way, Alix?” Giles inquired. “Can you imagine -anything more unhappy than having to spend your -life with someone you don’t love? That’s what the -<span class='it'>mariage de convenance</span> must often mean;—and, since -one hasn’t found love in marriage, looking for it afterwards -outside.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix’s eyes, as Giles thus indicated the tragic unveiled -figure that stood between them, remained fixed -upon the fire and she did not flush. She only seemed to -meditate, and, after a further pause, she said: “Even -marriages for love sometimes end like that. People’s -hearts may change. The heart is not always a guide. -That is perhaps the great difference; we do not believe -that the heart is the guide; and you do. We believe -that since the heart can make such mistakes—both -inside and outside of marriage—we must depend on -other things as well.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“On the suitable things, you mean,” said Giles. -“But isn’t it better to make mistakes for ourselves, -and to abide by the consequences, than to have other -people make them for us? As for suitability, in all the -essentials you and Jerry are perfectly matched. It’s -absurd to wreck his happiness and yours because his -mother finds disadvantages in your mother’s position. -Do look at it straight, Alix.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I do look at it straight, Giles,” said Alix. “And -all that I can see is that it would be impossible for me -to marry Jerry.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>After this a little silence fell between them. It was -strange to feel, sitting there in the familiar room, with -Alix beside him, that the grief that had brought them -so near had also set them apart. Alix had never been -so near him as yesterday; she had never been so far as -now. A cold apprehension entered Giles’s heart as he -felt it. If with her first step into maturity she was so -removed, how much might not the future remove her? -What claim, what charm could England have for Alix -now? And as if she answered his thoughts she said: -“Will you help me to go back to Maman to-morrow, -Giles?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, my dear Alix,” cried Giles, rising and walking -up and down the room, “why go now? How would -you explain your sudden return to her? Surely you’re -not going to deal her such a blow as to let her know -what has happened?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have thought of it all, Giles,” said Alix, “and -Jerry will be my explanation. She knows of Jerry’s -offer of marriage, and what is more natural than that I -should return to her if his family object to me? I shall -tell Maman nothing; but I hope that she soon will feel -that she has nothing more to hide from me. When -Maman knows that his family object, she will be able, -very soon, to guess why.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles had turned at the end of the room. “You need -never say anything, you mean?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I need never say anything”—Alix looked back -at him—“except that Marigold Hamble went to -Paris and that when she came back and had seen Lady -Mary they objected. Maman will guess.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well; and after that? What then? When she’s -guessed,” Giles asked, “what is gained?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is gained is that I shall have my right to be -with her. I shall have my right to help her. While she -had things to hide I could not help her; she would not -let me. Now, if other things should fail her,” said Alix, -“she will know that I am there to be depended upon.” -And with the words it was as if he saw her go forward -and take the tragic unveiled figure by the hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She must have felt some strain in his wide gaze, for, -meeting it, she turned away her eyes, adding: “It was -Maman’s mistake ever to have sent me here. I felt -that long ago.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And mine to have kept you, then.” Giles turned to -look out of the window, struggling with the sense of -tears. His little Alix! To what did she return? What -was the destiny there before her in the jungle? “Do I -count for nothing in all this?” he asked. “I wanted -you to stay in the first place for your own sake. I want -you to stay now for mine. Put Jerry aside. Think of -me for a moment. I’ve nobody but you. You’re the -only person in the world who knows what I’ve been -through, and isn’t it true that I’m the only person who -understands your life? That’s a bond, isn’t it? What -shall we do without each other?” said Giles, and, helplessly, -his voice was a younger voice at that moment -than Alix’s. He was the lonely little boy begging not to -be abandoned.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Behind him Alix was silent for a moment; then she -said, very gently: “But even if I had not Maman to -think of, Giles, we should not be together; you will be -in Oxford.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And my idea is that you should come to Oxford -next year and study at Somerville. Even while you -were here we’d see each other constantly. It would be -everything to know that you were near by.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But it is impossible, dear Giles,” said Alix. It was -the same word she always found.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He turned to her from the window. “Do you mean -because of Toppie? My mother? Toppie will be leaving -us. My mother’s first thought was that we must -keep you always.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She wishes to keep me in order to keep me from -Maman.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She doesn’t know your mother. I’ll make her understand. -She wants to keep you because she’s so -fond of you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But that’s not enough now, Giles,” said Alix, looking -across at him. “You must see yourself that that -cannot now be enough. Anyone who loves me now -must take in Maman too. It is Maman I must think -of. And my place is beside her. You will see it, too, -dear Giles, when you have had time to think. I must -go to-morrow, and you must help me. Will you, Giles, -for I have no money?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He saw that he must yield. Such resolution could -not be opposed. And after all wasn’t it best to let -her go? He would have struggled against her longer -had it not come to him that nothing would move -further the cause he had at heart, Jerry’s cause, and -Alix’s, than her withdrawal. Better, much better, were -Lady Mary to see that Alix was removed; better for -Jerry that he should find something to endure and -wait for and win with difficulty.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And, more than all the rest, he was sustained by that -sense of secure radiance that had come to him from -Alix herself. Wherever she was, whatever befell her, -Alix would be safe. He could not have given way, he -could not have consented to see her go, if he had not -felt sure of it. So it ended as she had meant it to end.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course I’ll help you, dear,” he said.</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER III</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>He saw Alix off next day. Her departure cast consternation -through the Bradley household. An unfortunate -love affair, the fact that Alix did not wish to -marry Jerry Hamble, could not be made to bear the -weight of such a sudden mystery.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I always knew those Hambles would do her no -good!” cried Rosemary.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The truth is, if you ask me,” said Ruth, “that she -wants to go back to France. She’s never really cared -about being here at all.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But against this Jack and Francis protested hotly, -asserting that Alix liked nothing better than playing -games with them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Poor Mrs. Bradley was dismayed. Giles could do -nothing to make her understand. “But she’s been -happy here; I know she’s been happy,” she said. “I -see that you can’t explain to her why she should stay -with us. But, oh, Giles, she ought to stay till she is -much, much older. We can take her away. I can take -her to Edinburgh, to stay with the Raeburns, if she -wants to avoid Mr. Hamble—I’ll do anything to keep -her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles could only reiterate: “Alix is very wise, -Mummy. You must trust her to know best. I think -she suspects already that things aren’t happy with her -mother; and she wants to be near her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His mother asked him not another question about -madame Vervier. She made no surmises about Owen’s -friendship. Giles at moments wondered, with all her -ingenuousness, whether some dim suspicion had not -entered her mind, as it had entered Toppie’s, and he -blessed her for her gift of silence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He thought for a moment that Alix was going to cry -when she bade his mother good-bye; tears were in Mrs. -Bradley’s eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Darling, whenever you want to come back to us—you -will know;—we’ll always be waiting, Alix, -dear.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good-bye, old thing,” said Rosemary staunchly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’ll come to see you in France,” Ruth assured -her, “at your Vaudettes place; though I do hate -shingle to bathe on.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All of you must come, whenever you will,” Alix -murmured, pale in her little blue buttoned cape. Alix -knew what they did not know, that they would never -be allowed to come.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then he saw the last of her. She stood leaning on -the railing of the steamer deck, Blaise in his basket beside -her, and waved to him until the blue mist of the -April day dissolved her form, and as he saw her disappear -Giles felt a dreadful loneliness. Tame, flat, colourless -did life become to him. The sense of Alix’s -presence had been in his mind like the sense of Alpine -flowers brought within one’s own garden precincts, -sweet, strange, yet intimate; like the sense of mountain -ranges on one’s horizon, aloof, mysterious, yet visible. -“Beautiful, darling creature,” he heard himself murmuring -as he drove home through a country that had -lost all savour. The loss of Toppie from his life was -like a pervading, half-stupefied aching; but from the -sharpness that the loss of Alix brought he saw how little -in comparison Toppie’s going meant real loss. He -had never possessed Toppie. The ache might now be -deeper, but it was still the same ache that the thought -of Toppie had always meant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had not seen her. None of them had seen her -again. And on the morning of Alix’s departure they -heard that she had returned to Bath. Another three -days passed before a letter came for him. It was short, -yet it brought him more comfort than he could have -believed possible.</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p class='pindent'>“Dear Giles,” she wrote, “I think I begin to understand -all that you have tried to do for me. It was -wrong of you; but I think I understand. I have been -wrong, too. Perhaps this came to show me that one -can love wrongly. I do not think I love him less now; -only differently. I know that he suffered before he -died. When I read his last letters now, I can see the -suffering in them. I send my love to everybody.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Always your friend, dear Giles,</p> - -<p class='line0' style='text-align:right;margin-right:1em;'>“<span class='sc'>Toppie</span>.”</p> - -</div> - -<p class='noindent'>And a postscript, written hurriedly, ran: “Keep poor, -brave little Alix with you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Under the dry phrases he read the mastered anguish. -But it was mastered. That was the comfort that Toppie’s -letter brought him. She had risen already above -her own sense of personal wreckage and could contemplate -its meaning. As her piercing intuition on -the day among the birch-woods had led her to the -portals of the truth, so now it had led her to its heart. -She saw at last, truly, what Giles had done; she no -longer misunderstood him. Even, perhaps, she had -begun, dimly, to understand what manner of woman -madame Vervier might be. Toppie was noble enough -for that. It would appease rather than lacerate her -heart to believe that the woman to whom Owen had -given his heart was not ignoble.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was on the morning of Toppie’s letter that Jerry -was ushered into Giles’s study.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles, as he rose to greet the bright apparition in his -doorway, did not know whether it was with more -gloom or satisfaction that he saw it. He was glad that -Jerry was holding on, yet his presence there seemed to -add to his own sense of bereavement. He could do nothing -more for Alix. She had shown him that he could -do nothing more. But though she had disowned Jerry, -it now remained to be seen if Jerry could do something.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is she gone!” Jerry exclaimed. Giles’s face might -have told it to him and his charming eyes, so like his -mother’s, went swiftly round the room, partly as if -they might still discover the missing Alix, and partly -in the unconscious appraisal of a new <span class='it'>milieu</span>. Like his -mother, Jerry would always see everything, wherever -he might be.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. She’s gone,” said Giles, giving a push to the -sofa. Strange, indeed, to have Alix’s suitor sitting in -Alix’s own corner; Giles was aware of a sense of relief -as Jerry did not yet take it. “It seemed the simplest -thing for her to do.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For a moment, then, he seemed to detect, or suspect, -a flavour of relief in the discomfiture on Jerry’s face, -but it was in immediate self-exculpation that he said, -as if Giles might call him to account: “I couldn’t get -here before; really I couldn’t. I’ve been away. I didn’t -know till yesterday that Mummy had stolen a march -on me. Mummy couldn’t hide from me—she didn’t -try to—I’ll do her that justice—how splendidly -you’ve been standing up for us.—If she’s gone, do -you mean she knows?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She knows, or has guessed enough,” said Giles. “I -don’t really think she’d have seen you if you’d got here -before. It’s three days now since she went. What she -says, you see”—and Giles again indicated Alix’s corner -to Jerry—“is that there are now insuperable objections -on both sides, and that her place is with her -mother. Do sit down.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Jerry stood for a moment longer, gazing. “Yes, -I see,” he then said. “Yes. That’s just what she -would say. But how disgusting that she should have -to say anything about it—poor little darling. Isn’t it -a miserable business,” he added, as he dropped on to -the sofa and glanced with a sort of gentle alarm at the -gas-fire, rather as though he might, unless he held himself -in, shy at it. He was making Giles, too, think of a -nervous, charming horse.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. It’s very miserable in some ways,” said Giles. -He did not sit. He stood, his hands in his pockets and -leaned against the mantelpiece looking down at his -visitor. Very much like a charming horse was Jerry. -Giles could almost see him nibbling reconnoitringly at -the edge of the stained-oak mantelpiece or choosing -suddenly to take a flying leap out of the window.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Jerry offered his cigarette-case as though it might -help them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s that confounded Marigold nosing out this -story about Alix’s mother,” he said, striking his match. -“And it’s true, you say?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not exactly as she put it, I gather; but true enough. -Since it is true enough, it’s better, I suppose, that it -came out as soon as possible,” said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh—I’d rather it had never come out at all,” -Jerry objected. “It makes no difference to me. I don’t -care a hang about ancestors and all that sort of thing, -and I expect we’ve plenty of rotters among our own. -It’s Mummy who takes it so hard. If only Alix had -consented to marry me at once, when I asked her, we’d -have been all right. People always put up with the -<span class='it'>fait accompli</span>, don’t they, and Mummy’s so awfully -fond of Alix. Marigold might have come trotting with -her little tale of woe, but she’d have been too late. -Well, she’s too late now, and I’ll show her so—horrid -little cat. I shall go over to Paris at once, and I don’t -suppose I shall meet with much opposition from madame -Vervier.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think you’ll meet with a great deal from Alix,” said -Giles, aware of restlessness and inquiry beneath the -brave parade of Jerry’s words. “I don’t think you’ve -a chance of marrying her against your mother’s wishes. -Your only chance is to bring your mother round. That -will take time. You’ll have to show your mother that -you mean it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Jerry eyed him for a moment. “Well, Alix is a -French girl. She’s rubbing it in enough that she’s -French—and she’ll obey her mother. If her mother -tells her that she’s to marry me, I expect she will; and -I’m pretty sure I could get round madame Vervier. By -the way, what sort of a woman is she, really?” Jerry -added, and boyishly, touchingly in Giles’s eyes, he suddenly -flushed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles was thinking how like wax in madame Vervier’s -hands would Jerry be. “She’s a charming -woman,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, of course she’s that,” Jerry assented. “But -I mean, is she a lady, all that sort of thing?—Not -that I care.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles reflected. “The only person I ever met who -reminds me of her is your mother.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mummy?” Jerry stared, indeed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They’re not alike at all in what they’ve done; but -they are very much alike in what they are. You could -count upon madame Vervier as you could count upon -your own mother. She’d always know what to do. If -you and Alix married, she’d never trouble you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You mean she’d give up Alix if it was for her happiness?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Absolutely. What she wants most is Alix’s happiness. -Your difficulty wouldn’t be at any time with -madame Vervier, but with Alix herself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She wouldn’t give her mother up, you mean?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“From what you know of her, do you think she -would?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Jerry turned his eyes upon the fire and contemplated -it. “She’s awfully young,” he suggested.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, but she won’t change, in that respect, in getting -older. It would be difficult. Alix’s feeling for her -mother would make it all very difficult. You’d have to -face that, Jerry.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Jerry had never had to face anything that was difficult. -Everything about him seemed to be saying that -as he sat there, his thoughtful cigarette in his hand, his -russet head poised meditatively. He saw Alix as a -bright object that he naturally wanted, and now it was -shown to him that, bright as she might be, darkness -lay about her. It was evident to Giles that he turned -away from the thought of darkness as he said presently: -“Isn’t she absolutely the loveliest creature -you ever beheld?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you know,” Giles confessed, surprised by the -change of theme, but willing to follow to the best of his -ability, “I’ve never thought much about Alix’s appearance. -I don’t suppose one does when one has -known someone from a child. I suppose she is lovely. -I like everything her face means; and the more I know -Alix the more it goes on meaning.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She’s a Nike,” said Jerry, gazing at the fire. “She’s -on the prow of a Greek ship flying over the wine-dark -sea. You’ve seen her dance—in that white and crystal -dress with the silver round her head—it’s like the -rhythm of Shelley’s Hymn of Pan. When I look at her -dancing, I long to dance with her; when I dance with -her, I long to be looking at her. Odd, isn’t it, how one -never can get enough at once. She’s got the most extraordinarily -cold eyes, you know,” said Jerry, fully -launched upon his theme. “Even when one’s dancing -with her and looks down into them;—she’s so happy, -she smiles up at you—and yet they are as cold, as -blue, as deep as mountain lakes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yet she’s not cold,” said Giles. He was seeing Alix -as Jerry spoke about her eyes, not dancing, not smiling, -but looking as she had looked the other morning -when she had said: “Now, if other things should fail -her, she will know at least I am there to be depended -upon.” With the words he had seen her go forward to -take her mother by the hand. A tenderness, passionate, -enfolding, had thrilled beneath the quiet words. How -right had madame Vervier been in believing that she -could count always upon Alix.—And Jerry only saw -her dancing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But he himself wanted Alix to dance. He wanted her -to marry Jerry. He believed that it might still be possible -if Jerry could be good enough. “If you hold on, -you know,” he said—and Jerry could not think it -irrelevant—“I feel sure your mother will stand by -you, and if she stands by you, everything will fall into -place and you and Alix can go on dancing. So hold -on. Deserve her. I’m standing by you already, as -you know.” He smiled down at Jerry, so young, so -slight, but so charming and so sound. If Jerry could -get strength enough to hold on, he would waft Alix far -away. Philosophers could have little to do with dancing -white and silver Nikes. “Deserve her, you see,” -he repeated.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not go over to-morrow, you mean?” Jerry questioned, -looking up at his host, docile to any suggestion. -“I’d so much rather have it settled straight off. And -I have a feeling that if I could get at Alix over there, -with her mother to help me, I should get it settled.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m sure you wouldn’t. And nothing would unsettle -your own mother so much. You’ll gain everything -with Alix, and with your mother, if you show -them that you can wait. Write to Alix, of course; -write constantly. Tell her all about it; your feelings, -you know, and what you think about her eyes.—You -both care for the same things: riding; out of doors; -fancy-dress balls, and the ‘Hymn of Pan.’ What -you’ve got to uphold, you see, Jerry, what you’ve got -to justify, is our English conception of being in love. -You must overbear convention; you must break down -parental scruples. You must show yourself so much in -love to Alix that you’ll convince her that romance is -common-sense. You see, I want you to win her, not -only for yourself, but for England.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Jerry’s eyes were on him while he spoke and they -dwelt for some moments of bright contemplation as if -for the first time he was looking at Giles more carefully -than he had looked at the gas-fire and the mantelpiece. -“You know, if I may say so, I do think you’re a very -remarkable person,” he observed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Am I? Why?” Giles asked, smiling rather sadly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well”—Jerry continued to look at him, but he -blushed again—“to care so much about a girl you’re -not in love with yourself. Doing everything for her. -I’ve heard a lot about you, you may be sure. Alix -thinks more of you than of anybody in the world.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles, too, was blushing now. “Does she?” he said. -They were suddenly two boys together, and as they -spoke of love and of Alix their words, to Giles, seemed -to lift her far away out of childhood and to set her, a -woman, between them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m most awfully fond of Alix,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know. That’s what’s so remarkable,” said Jerry, -shyly smiling. “To be so fond, yet not to be in love.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You see,” Giles found himself offering, really as if -in a sort of exculpation, “one may be in love with -someone else; that would prevent, wouldn’t it? And -you can care immensely about someone without being -in love with them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Could one? When she’s Alix? I can’t imagine it,” -Jerry a little nervously smiled. “Unless, as you suggest, -there’s someone else, and then I shouldn’t have -time to care so much for another girl.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Jerry’s ingenuous analysis certainly had its potency; -Giles did not quite know what to say to him. “Even -if I had been, it wouldn’t have done me any good,” -he suggested. “Alix would never have thought of me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, you mustn’t ask <span class='it'>me</span> to say that she would!” -Jerry laughed out at this.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He got up as he spoke and went to the mantelpiece, -picking up and examining one of the horrid little china -animals thereon. But he was not seeing it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“England will get her in a much more satisfactory -way, for Alix, than it would if I were in the running,” -said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you really think it may get her; you really -think I can manage it,” Jerry murmured, still examining -the china cow. Jerry, more than ever, because he -saw him as so remarkable, was depending upon him -for sustainment. It would have been a comparatively -easy matter for him to leap over the barriers and make -off to the beloved. To wait, to hold on, was a different -matter, and Giles knew a little turn of fear as he saw it. -It was no good Jerry’s thinking that anyone else could -hold on for him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You can’t manage it unless you can count on yourself,” -he now informed him. “There’s nobody else for -you to count on. Alix is against you, and your mother -is against you. It won’t be an easy thing to marry -Alix. It’s not only as a dancing Nike you have to -think of her. It’s as madame Vervier’s daughter, too.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And as a Catholic. And as French,” Jerry murmured, -setting down the cow to take up the cat. “You -know she said—funny little darling—that the children -would have to be Catholics. Not that I’d care a -rap.—Only, it does somehow make everything more -difficult.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It certainly does. Alix has all her objections. -Nothing could be more difficult,” Giles rather heavily -assured him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And as the English lover it’s up to me to overcome -them; show her that I can carry her off in spite of -them—in spite of herself—what? How would you -like it if your children had to be Catholics?” Jerry -very gloomily inquired.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles did not have to reflect for long. “I should not -like it at all. It’s one of the things I’d put up with if I -were in love with Alix and she in love with me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you know, I almost wish you were,” Jerry now -said, and he spoke from a sudden cloud of darkness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles paused. “Does that mean that you’ve given -her up?” he inquired.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, I’ve not given her up.” Jerry looked down at -the china cat. “I’m going to try to live up to the part -of the English lover. It’s only,” said Jerry, “that I see -the difficulties.”</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Before Giles went back to Oxford a short letter came -to Mrs. Bradley from Toppie saying that she was going -to stay on in Bath for the present and that her determination -to become a nun was unaltered. After that, -for many weeks, he heard nothing more of her, and it -was not until the end of June that he received a letter -telling him that she was at Headington, staying with -an old friend of her mother’s before entering her novitiate, -and asking him to come and see her. The old -friend lived in a little house sunken among the high -walls and deep leafage of a garden, and the drawing-room, -where Giles waited for Toppie, its long windows -opening on a little lawn, seemed part of the garden, it -was so full of flowers and sunlight.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles stood at a window and looked out and listened -to a garden-warbler singing ceaselessly, like a running -brook, among the branches. His heart was full of -presage, for he had not seen Toppie since the dreadful -day that had severed them from the past. Yet the -song of the garden-warbler, rippling incessantly over -his fear, seemed to dissolve it into a happy melancholy.—“The -past is over, not forgotten, but over, over,”—the -song seemed to be saying. “This sweetness, -this sunlight, this tranquillity is the present. Believe in -it, live in it, as I do. She is not angry with you any -longer. You have not failed.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And when Toppie entered, he saw that she was not -angry and that he had not failed. More than that; -there was much more than that for him in Toppie’s -face; but he could not at first determine what it was.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was changed. So changed that it was almost as -if he had forgotten her and was seeing her for the first -time again. Perhaps it was that since last seeing her -all his thoughts of her had been changed. Personal -hopes, personal longings, were gone, and seen without -the aching glamour that they had cast about her Toppie -was at once less and more beautiful. For never before -had he recognized the defects and deficiencies of -her face. She was a pale, thin, freckled girl, slightly -featured, with dry lips and colourless eyes. Yet in -this newly perceived earthliness there was revealed to -him the fulfillment, as it were, of that celestial quality -he had from the first divined in her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This was what Toppie was; this was the material -that had been given her to work upon; and it was as if -he saw her, through the power of prayer, lifting from -cold and arid soil flowers and fruit to heaven.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked at him sweetly and calmly giving him -her hand, and saying: “Dear Giles.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m so glad.—I’ve so hoped you would see me,” -Giles murmured.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course I was to see you. It only wanted a little -time—to settle things,” said Toppie. “Let us go into -the garden. Isn’t it the dearest garden?—I used to -come here sometimes when I was a child.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is it all settled?” Giles asked, as they went out and -walked along a grass path to the shade of a lilac-tree. -“I mean about the convent; about your leaving us?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s all settled.—But we don’t think of it like -that, you know,” said Toppie. “We think it’s to be -much nearer you, really.—And then, of course, I -shall be able to see you all sometimes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They sat down under the lilac-tree. It was in thick -bloom and the fragrance fell about them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles saw now what his greatest fear had been. And -he knew that it was groundless. Toppie would never -ask him a question. The past was over; not forgotten; -but over. That was what her departure, her silence, -had won for them. She could not, at that past time, -have kept herself from pressing against the swords of -every fullest realization. She could not have kept herself -from seeing, as balefully as he had seen them, the -figures of Owen and madame Vervier. She would never -ask those questions now.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And presently it was of Owen himself that she was -speaking.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wanted to tell you what peace it has given me, -Giles, to feel that he did love me,” she said. The soft -sweet flowers of the lilac were behind her head, the -shadowy green of its leaves. He seemed to see, as -her eyes dwelt on him, what Toppie would look like as -a very old nun. Not so different from now. Nuns had -changeless faces.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He loved me,” she said. “But not as I loved him. -When one accepts the truth, Giles, it gives peace. And -now I see that we are not meant to ask for the same -love back. It is enough to love; and I shall always love -him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He always loved you, Toppie,” Giles murmured. -“He was swept away.” After he had said these words -he remembered that they were the words of madame -Vervier.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” Toppie accepted quietly. “Swept away. -And he was alone; in a strange country; in a time of -dreadful strain. And she was so kind and so lovely.—And -she does not believe the things we believe—I -have seen it all, Giles. I have forgotten nothing of all -that you tried to tell, to explain to me on that day. -Wrong, you said, not wicked. And Alix is her child.—I -have seen it all—and how he suffered. He has -suffered, Giles,” said Toppie, looking deeply at him. -“But now, with him, too, there is peace. I believe it. -With all that has come between, we are not separated, -he and I.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Looking into Toppie’s eyes, Giles could not but believe -it, too.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They were silent for a little while. Then Toppie -said: “And you, dear Giles?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I? Oh, I’m getting on quite nicely, Toppie, dear,” -Giles smiled back at her. “I shall take my First, I -think.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. But I didn’t mean you only, you alone. I -mean you and Alix. What are you going to do with our -dear little Alix?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, there’s a long story there,” said Giles. “Have -you heard anything about Jerry Hamble?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Only what your mother wrote about some trouble -that Alix felt it better to be away from.—I knew it -could not be only that. I knew what other trouble -there was.—Oh, Giles—I was so cruel to Alix.—I -could not think of what I said.—But tell me about -Jerry.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles found, when he began to tell her about Jerry -and Alix, that it was not easy. There were still things -that he must hide from Toppie. It was, he knew, -everything to her to believe that Owen had given his -heart to a woman not ignoble. But with all the celestial -charity that had come to her vision of life, how -could she believe madame Vervier anything but ignoble -if she knew of Owen’s successor? “Lady Mary -heard things about her, you see,” he said. “She heard -the things we know, Toppie. Madame Vervier has -made them easy to hear, and Lady Mary felt that -since it was so Alix wasn’t a possible person for her son -to marry.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I thought she loved Alix,” Toppie said. She -was not thinking of madame Vervier and the things -Lady Mary had heard. She was thinking of Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles knew again the flavour of his old bitterness. -“She doesn’t love her enough. Perhaps one shouldn’t -expect it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But one does expect it. And does he love her -enough?” asked Toppie.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles stopped to meditate. He had often to meditate -over Jerry. “I see a lot of him, you know,” he said -presently. “He’s always coming to me. I think he regards -me as their tutelary deity. He shows me all her -letters—I think he’d be quite willing to show me his.—Yes, -they write to each other. Alix writes one letter -to his four, Jerry complains, and her letters are models -of deportment. They might be read aloud to anybody. -Yes;—he loves her quite enough, if she’d have him -now, against his parents’ wishes. It’s waiting that’s so -hard for Jerry. He needs to do things on the crest of -the wave, and Alix keeps him in the trough. He gets -absolutely no encouragement from Alix. Thus far and -no farther, is what all her letters really say.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can’t help feeling that he isn’t good enough for -Alix, Giles,” said Toppie. “He’s too young and light -and gay.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Again Giles stopped to think. “I don’t say he’s good -enough. But who is good enough for Alix? She’s stuff -in her for two, and lightness and gaiety are in her blood -as well as the things Jerry lacks. Jerry could make her -very happy. That’s what I’m quite sure of, Toppie. -I want him for her, and I shouldn’t want him unless I -believed he could make her happy.—For who is good -enough, really, for our little Alix?” Giles repeated.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Toppie had listened to him, her eyes looking out -over the garden. Now, turning them on him with a -smile, she said quite suddenly: “You are good enough. -You must marry Alix, Giles.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>How strange it was. Madame Vervier had said almost -those words only a year ago and they had wakened -not an echo in him. Now, as he heard them spoken in -Toppie’s confident voice a great confusion of fear, pain, -loneliness started up in Giles’s heart. It was as if he -had been waiting for Toppie to say them; as if he had -felt that deep-toned bell hanging in some sanctuary of -his nature and known that Toppie would thus strike -upon it, sending the reverberations far into the past -as well as into the future. For a moment he could -hardly think, he was so deafened by the clamour, and -then the first words that came were helpless words: -“She wouldn’t have me, Toppie, dear.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why not?” smiled Toppie. She had taken his -avowal quite for granted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If she loves anyone, it’s Jerry.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They won’t marry,” said Toppie. “There are too -many difficulties; and he doesn’t love her enough.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, he does, if he’s helped. It’s someone like -Jerry she needs; someone young and gay, with things -to offer her. I’ve nothing to offer Alix.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have your love. No one will ever love Alix as -you do.” Toppie’s loving eyes scanned his face while -her confident voice thus assured him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But that’s no reason, for her.—She’ll have other -people’s love. It’s true, dear Toppie; of course. I -see it’s true; and I suppose I’ve known it for a long -time. But Alix would never think of me like that. She -thinks of me as her brother. She thinks of me as her -father, almost; as someone kind and gruff and paternal. -Alix is the fairy princess, and I’m just the good old -beast who carries her around on my back.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Fairy princesses marry the good old beast and then -he turns into a fairy prince,” said Toppie. “You’re so -much more of a fairy prince already, Giles, than you -imagine.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But she has her full-fledged fairy prince waiting -ready to fly off with her. He may have his defects; but, -all the same, he is the real thing. He can give her the -crystal dress and the prancing steed and the dancing -to flutes and cymbals.—Oh, you know perfectly well, -Toppie, darling, all the things I can never give her and -that she loves with all her heart. It’s queer, you know; -I’ve wanted so to make Alix over into something more -English, and what I see is that she’s made me into -something more French. I’d have been indignant at -the idea of fairy princes two years ago; and at marriages -with an object of advantage in them;—but -now I’ve been inoculated with a drop of the French -realism. Alix accepts the world and sees it as it is in a -way that you and I, Toppie, and people of our sort, -never could. And she’s made me worldly for her. I see -the advantages for her, and I want her to have them. -She’s not a romantic English girl. She’d never believe -in all for love and the world well lost.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Toppie was considering him. “You say she’s made -you more French. It’s true that you understand things -you never could have understood before.—You -know how horribly afraid your understanding made -me once.—But as I listen to you it seems to me that -you are the most English thing there is. What Frenchman -would ever do what you have done, or feel what -you feel about Alix? Isn’t it an English way of feeling -to love like that, without a thought of self?—And -Alix has shown us, shown you and me, Giles, how she -can love.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know, Toppie, dear, I know,” Giles murmured. -“But with her it’s just because she loves me selflessly -that she’ll never love me differently.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I believe she may. I believe she will. And what -you must do,” said Toppie, “is go over and see.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“With Jerry in the way? I couldn’t do that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let him have his chance, then, first. Let him go to -France and ask her. I’m not afraid of Jerry. I feel as -if I understood Alix better than you do. May I tell you -something, Giles? You must not think me foolish, but -things seem to come to me so strangely now.—I’ve -always wanted this for you. From the first time I saw -Alix, it was what I wanted. And now, when I shut my -eyes and think of you and her, it is always together that -I see you . . . with my doves around you. That would -be my wedding-present to you, you know,” Toppie -smiled at him and her smile had the colour of light and -came from far distances; “all my doves, to watch over -you and Alix and keep you safe together always.”</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER V</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles did not believe in what his dear Toppie had told -him; did not believe that the fairy princess could ever -be for him; but the thought of her words hovered round -him as if her very doves sought the nest she promised. -It was impossible. He could not recall a glance or -word of Alix’s that made it seem possible; yet it -hovered. The thought of Alix accompanied his days. -He had said that he had nothing to give her and it was -true that he had no fairy-prince gifts; but sculling -quietly on the Cherwell at evening, Giles, resting on -his oars and watching his beloved Oxford glide past, -would remember how many things they had shared together, -simple, happy things, the gifts of life that were -there for everybody to share. She had liked Oxford, -too, when she had last come. He treasured every discerning -phrase that his memory could recover. She -had said that it was kinder than anything in France; -and the simile of the humane old bishop, with his ring -and robes and benignant face, came back to him, and -how one day, when they read “The Scholar Gipsy” -together, she had said: “It seems to me that learning -is happier with you than with us, Giles, and goes with -happier things.—Some day you will take me for all -those walks your gipsy took.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yes, he could see himself and Alix in Oxford together -and walking in Oxfordshire and Berkshire fields -and lanes. More than that. There was another figure -that Toppie had not brought into her picture; but she -would have thought of it. It was the figure that stood -between Alix and all those other dreams he had woven -round her and Jerry. Who but himself could care for -Alix’s mother and accept her into his life? Madame -Vervier, he knew, would never have come to Oxford. -He need not, disconcertingly, try to see her there. But -there were the long holidays when he and Alix might -have gone to her. Who but he could have kept Alix’s -mother near her? “But it’s only dear Toppie’s dream,” -thought Giles, watching the towers glide by. “And -there’s Jerry.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was late one evening, at the end of Commemoration -Week, that Jerry burst into his rooms. Ruth and -Rosemary and his mother had just left him. Ruth and -Rosemary were now old enough to join in any of the -Oxford festivities that he could offer them, and his -mind was in a daze from the mid-Summer excitement. -It bubbled at the bottom of the glass like froth after -a long satisfying draught, for he knew that he had done -well in his exams and now only his viva lay before him;—so -that the wreathed, dancing heads of young girls, -and the sun-browned heads of youths on the river, -glided past on a queer background of metaphysics. He -has seen Jerry dancing, and he had seen him on the -river. Lady Mary had waved to him from a barge in -mild, unallusive affectionateness, and for a moment -they had spoken together in the crowd leaving the -Sheldonian.—“I think you could tell me that I -might be proud of Jerry,” was what she had said, and -it was a very odd thing for Lady Mary to say. It -showed Giles that if to him Jerry showed his weakness, -to his mother he was showing his strength.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was neither strength nor weakness that Jerry -showed him now. All that Giles could read in his headlong -face was immense perplexity, and he cried at once -on entering: “I’ve had a most amazing letter from -Alix.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles pulled himself up in his chair and Jerry sat -down on the edge of the table beside him. It was a -painful perplexity; humiliation; bitterness; cogitation -were mingled in it, and as Giles saw it fear rose in his -heart, though he asked, “Well?” with the voice of the -friend and counsellor.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I was going over in a fortnight,” said Jerry. “I -wrote and told her so. And I told Mummy, and -Mummy has behaved splendidly. She’s in a frenzy -underneath, no doubt; but she shows nothing. I expect -she relies on Alix to back her up. Well, by Jove, she -may! Alix does more than back her up. Here’s her -answer. Am I really dished, do you think?” cried -Jerry, “or is it just to put me off?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles read. Alix wrote in English as if to make herself -more clear.</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='sc'>Dear Jerry</span>: You must not come. I have told you -that I could not marry you, but I blame myself because -I spoke that time in the Spring with some uncertainty. -It is not only the objections now. There is another -reason that did not then exist. Please do not question -me; and please forgive me for any pain that I may -cause you, but it is someone else that I love. I did not -know what love was when you asked me. You must -marry some girl of your own race, dear Jerry, and be -happy. I shall never leave France now.</p> - -<p class='line0' style='text-align:right;margin-right:4em;'>“Your friend,</p> -<p class='line0' style='text-align:right;margin-right:1em;'>“<span class='sc'>Alix</span>.”</p> - -</div> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles read, and his heart stood still while brightly, -balefully the fox-seraph visage of André de Valenbois -rose before him. Alix’s letter was dated from Vaudettes-sur-Mer.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Jerry was watching him. “Now isn’t that rather -thick,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Giles, gazing at the letter, found no reply.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It must, of course, be some Frenchman,” said -Jerry. “Can you imagine who it is? Have you heard -anything at all?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles shook his head.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Does her mother know any decent men?” Jerry -inquired.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles folding the letter tried to think. Were they -decent men? Judged by the world’s standards, André -de Valenbois was as decent as Jerry himself. The difference -was that he would not be decent for Alix. -“Yes,” he said, then, slowly. “I suppose they are quite -decent. Only Frenchmen are different, you know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He felt Jerry scanning his face. “You mean that no -decent Frenchman would think of marrying her?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At this Giles felt as if he clutched Alix back from a -danger. She might have betrayed herself to him; he -could not bear to see her betrayed to Jerry. “She may -marry someone quite decent, you see, but not of her -own class. Some nice young artist, for instance, some -<span class='it'>savant</span>. Her mother knows all sorts of interesting -people.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But she doesn’t say anything about marrying,” -Jerry persisted. “It doesn’t somehow sound like getting -married, does it? She’d tell his name if it was -that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, I don’t know. Not at once; not to you, so -soon. It may be only coming on between them. Nothing -definite may yet have been said.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I didn’t know French girls were allowed to have -things come on,” said Jerry. “I thought it was arranged -for them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But we may have changed Alix about all that,” -said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Jerry at this was silent. He sat on the table and -swung his leg. The letter lay beside him where Giles -had put it, and after a little while he picked it up and -read it over again. “Do you think she’s telling the -truth?” he then questioned. “Isn’t it still possible -that it’s all her pride? If Mummy could have written -to say I was coming and that she gave me her blessing—mightn’t -it have been different?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles for a moment contemplated the hope. Then -he rejected it. “It sounds to me like the truth,” was -all that he could find. It sounded to him too horribly -like the truth. Something dry and cold breathed -through Alix’s few words, and to his apprehension it -was the dryness, the coldness of her despair. For if -Alix knew that she loved her mother’s lover, what -must not her despair be? Only one gleam of ugliest -hope he suddenly saw and clung to;—in that case -would she not have snatched at any refuge; would she -not in that case have married Jerry on any terms, if -only in order to escape her jeopardy?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles felt himself swinging in the void. How could -one tell what was at the bottom of Alix’s letter? Was -it not even possible that, with all the revelations that -had overpowered her, she had not yet thought of her -mother as involved further than with Owen? Might -she not think of the truth, to which he had helplessly -assented when she had asked him for it, as applying -only to the past? Might she not still have her ignorances? -Madame Vervier would have done all in her -power to preserve them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was not thinking of himself or of Jerry. He was -thinking only of Alix, and his absorption was so deep -and so bitter that he was not aware how long Jerry, -sitting there beside him, had been observing him, until, -looking up, he met his eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s pretty sickening, isn’t it?” said Jerry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles did not quite know to which aspect of the disaster -he referred, but he assented. “Yes, it’s pretty -sickening.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then he saw that Jerry referred to his disaster. “I’m -not an utterly blind and complacent young donkey,” -said Jerry, swinging his foot, while his voice trembled -a little. “You mind as much as I do; and you mind -more, because you really love her more. Whatever you -may have been in the Spring, you’re in love with Alix -now, and I must say that I call it a rotten shame.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dear boy!” Giles ejaculated, faintly smiling.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’d have stood by and helped us. You’d have -helped us to the end; I see that,” said Jerry. “And -you’d have been satisfied in feeling her safe, in feeling -that England had got her, even if you hadn’t. And now -you’ve lost even that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It looks like it, doesn’t it?” said Giles. There was -really no use in denying anything to Jerry; but at the -same time this was the final bitterness. He had never -been so sure of wanting Jerry for Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perhaps there’s still some hope,” he said suddenly. -“I’ll have to go over, of course, as soon as I’ve had my -viva, and see whether there’s any hope.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you mean for me or for you?” Jerry inquired.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I mean for you,” said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’d make her happier than I should,” said Jerry, -swinging his foot and looking a little as if he might cry. -“You’re much more the ideal English lover than I am. -Carry her off from him; for yourself.—It’s only what -I deserve.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If there’s anyone in England that Alix could have -fallen in love with, it’s you. And it’s the person she can -be in love with who can make her happiest. That’s our -English belief, isn’t it?” said Giles. “I am in love with -Alix, Jerry. It’s perfectly true. But it’s you I want -her to marry. And I’ve never felt so sure of it as -now.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m living up to your ideal, what? Well, I’d like to -do that, you know. I like you to think me worthy of -her even if I’m not. I leave it in your hands, then,” -said Jerry, getting off the table and turning his head -away while he stared before him. “I’m such a silly -rotter that I want her a great deal more, now that I -know she may really be in love with someone else.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Unless”—Giles had got up, too, and was gazing -intently at his young friend—“unless Jerry, after all, -you went yourself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No; I leave it to you.” Jerry shook his head, moving -to the door. “I leave it to you and Alix.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know; I don’t know,” Giles pondered. “It -might be better. I kept you back before. That may -have been my grievous mistake. I don’t believe in -wooings by proxy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, I didn’t make much headway when I wooed -in person,” Jerry remarked. “No. Clear away the -other fellow if you can. And then we’ll see. After all”—Jerry -had actually got outside now, but he put his -head around the door to utter these last words—“you’ve -never asked her yourself yet. She’s never -seen you as a lover.”</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles, as he leaned out of the train, almost expected -to see the white form of madame Vervier awaiting him -on the platform as she had awaited him and Alix last -year. His heart then had been like a load in his side, -and how much heavier was the clogging weight upon it -now; but, from the fact that his sensations were so -much the same, all the pageant of last year’s arrival -was summoned back into his memory with its climax -in Hélène Vervier’s uplifted gaze. But she was not -there. On the sunny platform it was Alix and André de -Valenbois who stood side by side looking towards the -train, and Giles knew that it was sheer terror that he -felt as he saw them there together. Something in their -stillness, their silence, made part of it. Tall and white -they stood, side by side, and in their demeanour he read, -with the sharp intuition of a first impression, the curious -quality of a constraint that expressed at once familiarity -and withdrawal. They stood so still because they -did not care to stroll up and down together, and they -were silent because there was nothing that they could -say. Was it already as bad as that? Giles asked himself, -feeling the hot blood of the surmise beating up into his -neck and mounting to his face as he turned to pick up -his bag and gather his coat over his arm.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If it was as bad as that, André, at all events, could -assume his old air of unclouded radiancy. His eyes -knew no shadow; his voice no hesitancy. Delicate, -sweet, sharp, able to do what he liked, with himself and -others, he was ready for any encounter, and Giles even -imagined, as he stepped down before them, a touch of -sullen anger running a darker vein along the heat in his -blood, that André looked upon his English friend as -offering little complexity or difficulty. With people -so simple, so guileless, so ridiculous—for would not -André see him as rather ridiculous?—nothing more -was really needed than a light hand on the rein and the -easiest of eyes on the landscape. They would go just -where one wished and see as much or as little as one -intended them to see. “Not so simple as you think, -perhaps, my friend,” Giles was saying to himself. But -to know that he might see things that André would not -suspect him of seeing did not exercise the sickness in -his blood. At the same time, underneath everything, he -was astonished, in a side glance as it were, to see that -he was not hating him; was still feeling him charming.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here we all are, then, again. What a triumph over -destiny!” was what André was saying—and it was on -him that Giles kept his eyes. He felt that he must -pull himself well together before looking at Alix.—“I -never expect happy things to repeat themselves.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No more they do,” thought Giles. But he could -play up. “Is it all the same as last year?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Exactly the same; but for the absence of Jules. -Even your old friend madame Dumont survives and is -eagerly awaiting your arrival.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Still there, is she?” said Giles. “I’m not surprised. -Unhappy things, at all events, repeat themselves.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh,” laughed André, “your standard is too high.—I, -more easily contented, should count the old lady -a very amusing piece of bric-à-brac. We must have a -furnished world, you know.—There is room for all -sorts of oddities.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No room at all, for that sort, in my world,” Giles -returned.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They were walking, Alix between them, to the car -outside and he could glance at her. Rather than the -constraint he had guessed at it was now the cold dignity -of complete self-mastery her profile showed him. -He knew that she had smiled at him—and had it not -been with her old sweetness?—when he had greeted -her; but he felt, as they went thus together, he, she, -and André, that chasms lay between him and Alix. -Seas lay between them; race and tongue. Her voice -came back to him as she had said, last year when he -had found her again, “But I am French.” Only it was -so much more now just that old difference. Her calm -could not hide from him how much more it was that -lay between them. And what did it hide from André? -How was it possible, if deep instinct or the new knowledge -of her mother’s life had not armed her against -him, that she should not love him? Jerry was a boy -beside him; beside the power of André’s beautifully -possessed, beautifully balanced experience, Jerry -would always seem a boy. He remembered, snatching -still at hope, that Alix had found such completeness -<span class='it'>agaçant</span>; but then she might not really like him even -now. It might be some helpless hereditary strain that -had brought her, her young heart proudly pruned of -its first happy buddings, under the spell of the love -that monsieur de Maubert had defined on the distant -Summer day; the love that burns itself out and that -may have nothing to do with liking.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had said no word as yet, but as they emerged -into the sunny <span class='it'>place</span> she remarked that she had to buy -a <span class='it'>baba-au-rhum</span> for tea and asked André to drive them -across to the <span class='it'>pâtissier’s</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Alix is sad,” André observed when she had disappeared -into the little shop, where cakes blandly masked -in chocolate, cakes touched with rosettes of pistachio, -cakes crusted over their glitter with crisp nuts, were -placed enticingly on crystal stands in the window. -“Her cat was run over yesterday by a motor. The very -ugly cat;—you know him well, of course. It was an instantaneous -death, but her mother says that she takes -it much to heart. <span class='it'>Elle a un gros chagrin</span>,” said André.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Poor Blaise dead.—Oh, I’m sorry,” said Giles. -But he drew a dim comfort from the news. There might -be other and more childish reasons for Alix’s aloofness. -He knew how remote and stern she could look when -controlling tears.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Now that Alix was grown up, now that she was so -obviously a beautiful young girl, he noted that André -made no comments on her appearance, though it was -hardly likely that he would remark it less. It was -courageous of madame Vervier to have them there together; -though, in spite of the fear he had seen so -plainly in her, it might well be that the special fear had -never occurred to her. Sitting there in the French sunlight, -Giles felt again his old sense of astonishment -that such computations should, so inevitably, on this -soil, occur to him; that he should feel himself, with -whatever moral bitterness, accepting situations that -could hardly, in England, present themselves to his -imagination. He felt himself immersed in madame -Vervier’s <span class='it'>milieu</span>; he felt himself implicated, for was one -not implicated when one still felt all its members -charming? But one could not pretend to understand -the French unless one recognized in such situations the -workings of a drama to them commonplace. That -special terrible <span class='it'>roman-à-trois</span> of mother, lover, and -daughter, might not arise among the <span class='it'>bien pensants</span> of -the nation; but the <span class='it'>bien pensants</span> themselves would accept -it as a commonplace. They all accepted love as a -devastating natural force, overriding, where no barriers -of creed were there to withstand it, the scruples and -inhibitions of taste and principle. They all saw love, -unless it were the duly stamped and docketed love of -the Church, as <span class='it'>Vénus toute entière à sa proie attachée</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And with this moral difference there went the difference -in everything;—the sunlight and the shadows, -the streets, the houses, and the people. Sunlight and -shadows were blue-and-gold, strong and deep, and the -forms they defined revealed, under their spell, a classic -harmony. The people passing, intent on business, or -sitting in front of the cafés, at ease in idleness, saw -idleness and work as two quite different things, not to -be confused; each yielding its own savour, its own -satisfaction. The sense of savour, of satisfaction everywhere; -of life as its own justification. The very smell, -warm, golden, balmy, wafted towards him from the -<span class='it'>pâtissier’s</span> was such as no pastry-cook’s shop in England -could ever yield; a dank surmise of suet and strong -tea would there hang about it and none of the cakes -would give one the same confidence of tasting as good -as they looked. Why was it, Giles wondered, as Alix -came out with her flat-bottomed, cone-shaped, snowy -little parcel, saying as she stepped in beside him: “It -is in honour of your arrival, Giles, the <span class='it'>baba</span>. Maman -remembered that you liked them last summer.”—For -no girl in England would look like Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was not only that she spoke and moved as they -did not and that her clothes were differently adjusted. -These signs were only the expression of a deeper divergence. -Her face, still almost the face of a child, had, -notwithstanding, an almost alarming maturity. It was -at once more primitive and more civilized than English -faces, but the primitiveness was nothing shapeless or -unpredictable; it was preserved and used; it was, perhaps, -only a deeper layer of civilization. Druidess or -Roman virgin, who could tell which underlay the -something resistant, enduring, in the structure of her -head, sweet in glance as an Alpine flower, remote and -inaccessible as the mountain?—and, glancing at her -as she sat beside him, Giles could gauge something of -the change in his own feeling towards her by the fact -that he was afraid of Alix. Not only that; France had -already done more to him; for it was as if he were afraid -of himself, too. As they sped out into the radiant landscape -and he felt the breeze blow strong and sweet from -the sea, he was aware of currents of strange feeling in -the tide which bore him; bitter, dark, delicious, and -tumultuous.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am dreadfully sorry about Blaise,” he said—“André -was telling me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” said Alix, looking down at her parcel, “it is -sad.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The comfort is that he had a very happy life,” said -Giles, feeling foolish, for indeed he was not thinking of -poor Blaise.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I never feel that a comfort,” said Alix. “I think -it most sad of all; that happiness should end.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>To this Giles found no answer.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And have you taken your degree, Giles?” Alix inquired, -with the air of leaving an untimely subject. -“Are you now a distinguished philosopher?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, I’ve taken my First all right,” said Giles. -“I’ve done pretty well. Next term will see me settled -in Oxford. But it will need a great many years, I am -afraid, to make me distinguished.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And where will you live?” Alix inquired. “Still in -the same rooms, high up, looking at those rather sad -grey stones?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I shall be a Fellow of my College and have -rather beautiful rooms; quite a vast sitting-room looking -on a beautiful garden. I’ll be rather a swell. You’ll -be surprised when you see.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I am glad of that,” said Alix, smiling and passing -by his allusion to her return. “And there, in the -beautiful rooms, you’ll teach philosophy for the rest of -your life?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, I expect I shall. And write it, you know; and -play cricket, and sing in the Bach choir. Sometimes -I’ll go up to London and see pictures and a play; in the -Summers I’ll walk round the Cornish coast or climb -Welsh mountains. It’s just the life that suits me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. It will suit you admirably,” said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>André, white against the blue, drove in front of them -and, turning his head, smiling, he now observed: “Alix -has been reading philosophy of late. She must tell you. -She has been reading Bergson.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I find him interesting, but I’m afraid that I do not -understand him,” said Alix, and Giles saw that she -slightly flushed as André thus addressed them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He’s far too difficult to begin on,” said Giles. -“He’s not for the beginning at all; he’s for the very -end.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I thought that was just his point, that he -started at the very beginning,” said Alix—“with -germs, or atoms, or small things like that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, those are the things one should end with,” -Giles assured her, “because, you see, they are the furthest -away from us. The beginning is an idea, and the -end is an atom. You can’t understand an atom, that is, -until you understand an idea. If you’ll come to Oxford -and let me teach you, I’ll land you safely in Bergson -after three years.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No; I shall read no more philosophy,” said Alix. -“I shall not go as far as ideas or atoms in either direction. -I shall stay in between. All the nicest things are -in between, I believe.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Bravo! Bravo!” André smiled round at her, and -Giles could not interpret his smile. Alix did not reply. -She turned her head and looked out over the plains.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Vaudettes-sur-Mer in its palisades of trees was before -them now, painted in delicate washes of colour -against the sky. “It looks like the beginning of a fairy-tale, -doesn’t it,” said Giles and brought Alix’s eyes to -Vaudettes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, like the place children find on the front page,” -she said. “And a happy fairy-tale, isn’t it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But it can’t have the real fairy-tale pang and -flavour to you,” said Giles. “It’s a place I find, but -can never keep. You wake up to it and I wake up out -of it. It’s my dream and your reality.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you can keep it, Giles, as much as the Cornish -coast, or the Welsh mountains,” smiled Alix, “as much -as we keep it, really;—for it is our fairy-tale, too.—You -have only to come back and find us in it,” said -Alix, and, while she looked before her steadily, he almost -thought he saw a hint of tears in her eyes, as -though what he said of her loved Vaudettes touched -her too deeply. Did she see in it the fairy-tale place of -childhood never to be regained?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was, as it had been last year at Les Chardonnerets, -a blue and golden day. The gulls were floating -past on a level with the cliff-top and on the verandah -were monsieur de Maubert and madame Vervier.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They had passed through the wind-bent thickets and -seen the sunny flags with their oleanders and smelt -again the fairy-tale smell Giles so passionately remembered. -But—he knew it as he came out on to the -stage, as it were, of the drama—the fairy-tale was -spoiled for ever. Madame Vervier had been its centre; -the wine-like sweetness of her smile, her Circe security, -had been its atmosphere. And now the magic was -broken. He could see nothing else as she came forward -to greet them, so lovely, lovelier than ever to his -eyes, so kind and simple, welcoming back with her -wide, enveloping gaze the friend who knew so much.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We have watched your crossing,” said monsieur de -Maubert, as the greetings passed, “in imagination. It -has been a sea of glass. A sea for the Venus of Botticelli -on her shell.—You rise before us in a guise even -more welcome than that of the amiable goddess.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Monsieur de Maubert also was changed, though -Giles had no time just then for more than a passing -glance at the recognition. He spoke with a certain -heaviness; as though he came forward to lend a hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A kind young Englishman in tweeds is, I can assure -him, far more pleasing to me than any Venus ever -painted by Botticelli,” smiled madame Vervier.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Giles has become a great philosopher, Maman,” -said Alix. She untied her <span class='it'>baba</span> at the table and placed -it carefully on a plate in its little pasteboard dish.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He always was a great philosopher,” smiled madame -Vervier. “He is the wisest young man, as well as -the kindest, that I have ever known.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, but it is now a professional wisdom as well,” -said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Albertine, with a saturnine smile of welcome for -Giles, brought out the tea and madame Vervier took -her place at the table.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Everything in her loveliness was altered and, as he -looked at her, with surreptitious glances, aware, so -strangely, that André was looking at him, Giles suddenly -felt that it made him think of the alteration in -Toppie’s face. She, like Toppie, had drunk tears night -after night; she had seen the truth and been shattered -by it; and she, like Toppie, was built up again. A -drift of lilac went behind her head in his imagination -while the link so marvellously bound them together. -For had she, too, not relinquished? It was as Alix had -said it would be. She had guessed everything. Yet, -though so wan, so careful, so oppressed, she was serene. -Her strength, her security, even, was still there, but -disenchanted, turned to other uses.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I feel it so strange that English people should be -philosophers,” she said. Giles saw that she intended -them all to talk.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you think it too reasonable a pursuit for such -an irrational people as we are?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. Just that. You are a people who improvise -as you go. To philosophize would have been, I should -imagine, against the genius of your race.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, we’re not all of us, all the time, lurching along -on mere instinct. We do, some of us,” said Giles, -“stop, now and then, and reflect.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But lurching becomes you,” André at this put in. -“You lurch, as a rule, in the right direction—for -yourselves. Look at your Empire,” he smiled, taking -a slice of <span class='it'>baba</span>, “all made up of lurches and success.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We planned to have India, you will remember,” -Alix, at this, suddenly remarked. “We planned and -even plotted it. It was only as they worked as best -they could against our plots that the English won it, -not intending to have an Indian Empire at all.—I always -like that. That always seems to me just. And -history is so seldom just.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles felt that the eyes of her mother and compatriots -were turned upon her, as she made this statement, -with a certain astonishment. “And I think it is -rather noble of those who do reflect,” Alix went on, -calmly, knowing evidently what she thought of the -question in its national and its personal applications; -“for the others, those who lurch and make the Empire, -can pay so little attention to you. It is very disinterested.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We practise philosophy for our own satisfaction, -what?” Giles laughed, though aware of ambiguous -cross-currents. “I’m glad you find us noble.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She is quite right, <span class='it'>mon ami</span>,” André said cordially. -“You are a race of adventurers. And it is as adventurous -to reflect among a people indifferent to thought -as it is to set forth with a bundle on your back and conquer -a continent by chance. You are a people, in other -words, who do not need to see your goal.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you prefer your own rationality,” said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I prefer it; yes. I distrust instinct; perhaps because -in our history, as mademoiselle Alix has pointed -out, we have so often been foiled by it. I don’t see it as -innocent, you know. I see it as crafty. As craftier far -than our open-eyed planning. And, apart from large -questions of national destiny, it is, I think, more comfortable -to live among a people all of whom reflect, if -only a little, and all of whom know where they want to -get to. Our horizon is more restricted, but because we -see the frame we can fit our picture into it. Life with -you, over there across the Channel, for all your charm -and force, is essentially confused and haphazard. It -goes through everything; from your younger sons, -flung out to swim or sink as best they can, to your -towns and your Shakespeare. You may, in one sense, -beat us; but in another we have, I think, the advantage. -You take in more, but you don’t know what to make -of it. To make all that can be made of the time and -space at our disposal, that is our wisdom, <span class='it'>mon cher</span> -Giles, and can there be a better one?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And what is the time and space at our disposal?” -Giles felt Alix’s eyes upon them. He did not quite -know what he was defending or against whom he was -defending it; but it felt to him as if he were upholding -England, and all he wanted Alix to gain from England, -against all he feared for her in France.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What we can make use of, what we can see and -understand,” said André promptly. “It’s because of -our sobriety that we French are capable of living a life -beautiful in itself; a self-justifying life. We know how -to use life; we know how to shape it. The very workman, -sitting at midday in his café, makes a ritual of his -meal of sheep’s trotters and sour red wine. The <span class='it'>frotteur</span> -enjoys the polish he puts on the <span class='it'>parquet</span>, and the -<span class='it'>bonne</span> enjoys her bed-making and dusting. We don’t -do things because of something else; we do them because -we find them in themselves enjoyable.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. It’s true.” Giles was thinking of the French -sunlight; of monsieur de Maubert’s philosophy; of the -<span class='it'>pâtissier’s</span>. The difference went down to the very -roots of things. “We are discontented and clumsy and -romantic, compared to you; it’s our very religion to -be discontented, with ourselves and what we can see. -We are rebels; that’s what it comes to. Rebels are the -people who refuse the seen for the unseen.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And yet who pick up the seen, in their stride, as it -were, and then don’t know what to make of it.—It -is that with which we reproach you. You spoil one -world in trying to reach the other.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, these are themes too profound for my tea-table,” -madame Vervier interposed, while Giles, meeting -André’s eye, felt, suddenly, something challenging, -sword-like, beneath its blue smile. “We will not pass -from history to metaphysics, if you please. Are you -tired, Giles? Will you rest? I have some letters to -write for the post. After that we might have a little -walk if you felt so inclined.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles said there was nothing he would like better. -He would unpack and rest a little and then join her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was in the salon with mademoiselle Fontaine -when he came down half an hour later, and on the verandah -monsieur de Maubert sat alone, heavily, Giles -still felt, in his sunny corner; not reading; looking out -at the sea. Giles was aware of feeling sorry for him; -but he did not want to talk to monsieur de Maubert. -He went out quietly at the back of the house, and wandered -through the garden, finding himself suddenly, as -he came to the gate, bareheaded, his hands in his pockets, -face to face with old madame Dumont and madame -Collet. They sat in a small wicker pony-chaise -drawn by a ruminant stout pony, and Giles inferred, -since there was only room for two that mademoiselle -Fontaine had walked beside the pony’s head, taking -her parents out thus for a peaceful airing. They waited -at the gate for her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Ah. C’est monsieur Gilles</span>,” madame Collet simpered. -“You remember monsieur Gilles, Maman.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Dumont was not much altered. The vulture-like -poise of her head was perhaps more sunken, -and her raven eye less piercing; but a light came to it -as she saw him; an old resentment and a present -glee. “<span class='it'>Charmée, monsieur, charmée de vous revoir</span>,” -she assured him, and as her eye measured the morsel -thus presented to its greed Giles seemed to see the -vulture roused and rustling its feathers. “You are just -arrived?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles told her that he was.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You find your friends again,” said madame Dumont, -and there was a quaking note of hurry in the -majesty of her tones. “You will, however, find them -changed.—Ah, changes are sad; disastrous. She has -had much to bear. It tells; it tells upon her. You find -madame Vervier aged? Altered? Sadly altered?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I see no alteration at all,” said Giles grimly, his -eye turning on madame Collet, who murmured a low -word of protest to her mother. But madame Dumont -was not to be curbed. She leaned from the chaise and -laid her lean hand in its black silk mitt on Giles’s arm. -“<span class='it'>Il l’a lachée</span>,” she said in a harsh whisper. “<span class='it'>Il va se -marier.</span>”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Maman; Maman,” madame Collet urgently whispered, -casting a helpless glance at Giles. “You must -not thus repeat gossip about our friend. Monsieur -Gilles will not know what to think of you. Do not heed -her, Monsieur.—She is so very old.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What are these manners! To whom are you speaking! -Old! I am old, indeed, if I must thus accept impertinences -from my daughter!” Madame Dumont -thundered, turning a terrible glance upon her child.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Mais Maman, Maman, je ne veux pas vous offenser!</span>” -Giles heard poor little madame Collet plead -as he hastily muttered an adieu and fled from them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the door he nearly collided with mademoiselle -Blanche. If madame Vervier was altered, mademoiselle -Blanche was more so. Suddenly, looking at her -chalk-white mask, glittering there in the sunlight, -Giles saw the catastrophe that had befallen them all -with a cruel sharpness that the side-issues of a situation -may sometimes display more cuttingly than its -centre. In mademoiselle Blanche’s face he read that -any reversionary hopes she might have cherished were -withered. It was not to her that André had turned. -He would never turn to her. He had been sorry for -monsieur de Maubert, sitting in his patch of sunlight; -and he was sorry now for mademoiselle Blanche. She -had a brilliant smile for him. Her scarlet mouth made -him feel sick. He promised her, did he not, to have tea -with them one day. Giles said he was afraid he had -only a very little time to spend at Les Chardonnerets -this year.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have come to take mademoiselle Alix from us -again?” smiled mademoiselle Blanche, the cold flame -of her eye traversing him, so that he saw again, in a -direful flash of prescience, that in old age her eye would -be like her grandmother’s. “You once more carry off -our lovely little Persephone?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>How mademoiselle Blanche desired that he would! -The fear that circled round Giles fastened a tentacle in -his heart as he saw how mademoiselle Blanche, all -hopeless as she must be, feared Alix’s presence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m afraid not; I’m afraid I shall have to leave her -where she wants to be—with her mother,” he said, -feeling a slow red mount to his face as he saw all the -things in mademoiselle Blanche that she did not want -him to see. For one strange shuffling moment the pretences -between them fell, and mademoiselle Blanche -looked hard at him, looked as one human being may -look at another, with deep inquiry and surmise. Then, -murmuring a hasty farewell, she fled, a white marionette, -down the path between the nasturtiums.</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>On the verandah Alix sat beside monsieur de Maubert -reading “Bérénice,” aloud to him. André was -stretched near them in a deck-chair, his eyes following -the smoke of his cigarette, and madame Vervier -emerged from the salon, a little sheaf of letters in her -hand. She laid them down on a table and André said -that he would presently post them. “Yes. You and -I would rather go by the cliff, Giles,” said madame -Vervier.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She wore a white dress, not the tennis dress; this was -fashioned differently, with floating panels and long -loose sleeves. She was bareheaded, a sunshade in her -hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Alix reads to him every afternoon,” she said as -they went towards the cliff. She spoke of monsieur de -Maubert, but her heart, Giles knew, must be shaken -by the interview with mademoiselle Blanche.—Mademoiselle -Blanche could only have come to measure -her pangs, surreptitiously, against madame Vervier’s. -“His eyes trouble him of late, <span class='it'>le pauvre cher</span>. He enjoys -hearing Alix. He is very fond of her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They walked along the little path beaten in the -grass at the edge of the cliff. The sea was the Botticelli -sea and against the sky went a flock of young goldfinches.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Our birds,” said madame Vervier, pointing to them, -and he still heard the breathlessness in her voice. -What had she succeeded in concealing from mademoiselle -Blanche, and what had mademoiselle Blanche -succeeded in concealing from her? “See the pattern -made by the triangles of gold on their wings,” -she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We call such a flock, a charm of goldfinches,” said -Giles. “Isn’t it a pretty name?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A charm. A charm of goldfinches. And what a -happy name. They look that.” Madame Vervier’s -eyes followed the flight of the bright birds. “I wish -one did not have to think of snares and cages when one -sees them. Our people are so cruel for birds. I wish -such happy things might escape the snare.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A great many do. We shouldn’t be seeing that -charm now unless a great many escaped,” Giles tried -to smile at her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But it is the way of life, is it not, to snare and spoil -happiness,” said madame Vervier.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They left the woods of Les Chardonnerets behind -them. Before them was the great curve of the cliff and -the empty sky.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So, you see me punished,” said madame Vervier.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles walked beside her and found no word to say.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Even you, stern moralist as you are,” madame -Vervier pursued, “could hardly have foreseen such -a punishment.—To know that I have ruined my -child’s best chance of happiness; all that I could have -hoped for her.—To know that she is suffering because -of me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, I didn’t think it would come like that,” Giles -murmured.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, but it has come in the other way, too,” she -said, looking round at him in the pale shadow of her -sunshade;—“though I have forestalled that calamity, -and a calamity forestalled is always endurable. André -and I are parted.” Madame Vervier continued to look -at him steadily. “I have told him that this Summer is -the end. He still believes—or tries to believe—that -he loves me; but he consents. I knew that he would -consent.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles walked beside her filled with a confusion of -pain and pity. Never before had madame Vervier -openly admitted her relation to André; admitted it to -Owen’s brother. “He doesn’t look like partings,” was -all he found, most helplessly, to say.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Partings, at his age, are the preludes to beginnings; -and André has the gift of looks. He is, perhaps, not -quite at ease; but he has wisdom—our French wisdom, -Giles. His mother, already, is arranging a marriage -for him. As soon as our rupture is definitely -known, he will be able to settle himself in life;—<span class='it'>se -ranger</span>,” said madame Vervier. “And he will be glad -to be settled; he will be glad to be married to a charming -young girl whom he has known since boyhood;—a -young girl,” madame Vervier continued in her steady -voice, “whom your madame Marigold met when she -came to France last Spring.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You know all about that, then?” Giles muttered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How should I not know?” madame Vervier returned.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He saw her maimed for life. Yes; it had, with André, -gone as deep as that. She had unflinchingly performed -the surgical operation, severed the limb and bound the -arteries. He saw her bandaged, spotted with blood, -drained of joy; but tranquil; moving forward.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It was time,” she said as if to herself, looking before -her. “When Alix returned to me, when I saw -what I had done to her, I knew that it was time.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He could not think of one thing to say to her; not one -word of comfort or approbation. He would have liked -to say that she would be happier; but he did not believe -that she would be. He would have liked to say that -she had behaved worthily; but the note of moral appraisal -was repellent to his imagination. And under -everything went that bitter memory of who André was, -and whose successor.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But there were further reasons for André’s acquiescence,” -said madame Vervier suddenly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They had gone for a long way in silence. A light -breeze met them, now that they had rounded a headland, -and the thin panels of madame Vervier’s dress -were blown backward as she went. Goddess-like as he -had always felt her, there was something disembodied, -unearthly in her aspect now. It was as if, gliding -through sad Elysian fields, beautiful, changeless, with -gazing eyes, she contemplated the sorrows of the past. -Yet her voice, as she spoke again, was not the voice of -an Elysian spirit. He recognized as he heard it that a -bitter humanity still beat at the heart of her confidences -and that her tranquillity was not the shining of -an inner peace, but a shield proudly worn. What she -had to tell him was the thing most difficult to tell; the -thing that throbbed and echoed in her, as the scar of -the severed limb burns and remembers; and all her -voice was altered as she spoke of it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There were further reasons,” she repeated, turning -her face away from him to the sea. “He knows -that it is best to go, since to remain would be to love -Alix.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And through all his fear, Giles saw it now; he had -clung to the hope that it was an ugly dream. He -measured, in a sense of physical sickness, the difference -between an ugly dream and reality as in madame Vervier’s -words his dread was made close and palpable.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But isn’t that impossible?” It was his English -voice that asked the question. His French understanding -knew that it was possible.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why so?” madame Vervier’s French voice returned. -All the acquiescence of her race spoke in it. -“Alix is exquisite.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix’s face swam before Giles. “But she is your -daughter.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That would offend his taste. That does offend it. -That is one of the reasons, as I have said, for his consent -to our parting. It is not a reason, if he stayed, that -could repress his heart.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Couldn’t Alix be trusted to do that?” Giles asked -after a moment. He must ask it. He must approach, -in order to know whether madame Vervier saw it, too, -the deepest fear of all. And with what a complex -thankfulness he heard in her reply that Alix’s secret -was safe with him. It did not exist for madame Vervier’s -imagination even. A deep, strange bitterness -spoke in her voice as she said: “Her dislike of him is -an added attraction.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Her dislike of him? Does she dislike him?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Surely you have seen it. As if by instinct. Always. -From the first. It is an added attraction,” madame -Vervier repeated; and with a little laugh, more bitter -than her voice, she said: “It is the first time in his life -that André has found himself disliked by a woman.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>How strange, how tortuous, how self-contradictory -was the human heart, Giles thought, walking beside -his unhappy friend. With all her passionate maternal -love he felt, thrilling in her tone, a resentment -against her child that she should be indifferent to the -charm that had so subjugated herself. Giles felt it -cruel to ask the further question that came to him, yet -he wondered if she had not, often, asked it of herself. -“He consents to go, then, because he is hopeless?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had, indeed, often asked it. He heard that in -her voice as she answered: “Oh—do not let us deprive -him of all merit!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They had reached by now a further promontory of -the cliff and looked over a long stretch of the coast, -pale blue sea, pale cliffs, a delicate distant finger of the -land running out, against the horizon, with a tiny -lighthouse upon it. A bench was set amidst the grass -before this view and madame Vervier sank down upon -it as if exhausted. Giles sat on the grass at her feet -and for a little while they surveyed the azure scene in -silence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And now,” said madame Vervier, and he heard -that she gathered her thoughts from dark broodings, -“let us speak no more of me, but of Alix.—Of Alix -and Jerry. For you like this Jerry. It is because of him -that you have come.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. It’s because of him. I like him very much.” -Giles looked down at the grass. “I saw him before I -left. All that he asks is to marry her at once.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, he loves her, I know. He is an honourable -young Englishman and he loves her. That is what I -have gone upon from the beginning. It is not Jerry -who is the difficulty. It is Alix.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We must give her time, you see,” Giles murmured. -“Her pride had such a blow.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Give her time! I would give her anything!” madame -Vervier exclaimed. “But I can do nothing with -Alix.”—<span class='it'>Rien! rien! rien!</span> she said in French with a -crescendo of grief and impatience almost comic to his -ear for all its pathos. “You have altered my Alix for -me, you English, Giles. You have given her a different -heart. It is strange, strange to me—and bitter—to -feel how changed she is. She loves me. More than ever. -She has guessed everything, and she loves me more -than ever; but with a love almost maternal; a love -terribly mature. I could not have believed it possible -in so short a time that a child should grow to womanhood. -She is docile, still; obedient; but she does not -deceive me;—it is only in the little things—the -things that do not count. If, in the great things, she -would obey, nothing need be lost. There is now only -a <span class='it'>rangée</span> mother to explain, to efface, to avoid.—How -easy I would make it for my Alix to avoid me if her -happiness demanded it!—But, no; she will not hear -me. She is a stone to my supplications. She denies -that she has ever loved him. She takes her life into her -own hands and says that she will never marry, that she -will stay with me always and be happy so. I dash myself -against a rock in Alix. More than that;—she -watches me; she suspects me—as if I were the daughter—<span class='it'>bon -Dieu</span>!—and she the mother!—I wrote to -Jerry. I told him to come;—it was but the other day.—I -told him that it was best that they should meet, -and that I would help him. And Alix intercepted the -letter. Yes;—you may well stare. She confronted me -with it and tore it in two before my eyes. She told me -she knew too well what I had said to Jerry and that she -had herself written and that all was over between them. -Cold! Stern!—I could hardly believe it was my little -Alix.—She spoke as if I had done her a great wrong.—As -if I were the child and she the mother,” madame -Vervier repeated, a note of bewilderment mingling with -the grief of her tone; and, indeed, as she made him -these ingenuous confidences, Giles saw her as the child, -the tricking child; all the French rôles reversed and -Alix sustained in hers by what England had given her. -No wonder madame Vervier was bewildered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But that was very wrong of you,” he said, as he -might have said to the child. “You had no right to do -that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No right! I, her mother, am to sit by with folded -hands and watch her ruin herself! Those are your -English ideas. Those are the ideas that Alix has made -hers. She, too, said I had no right. As if a mother’s -right over her child’s life were not supreme!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We don’t think it is, you see. Not when the child -has reached Alix’s age. You don’t want her to marry -a man she does not love.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Love! Why should she not love him, since she -loves nobody else!” cried madame Vervier, a deep exasperation -thrilling in her voice. “And even if she did -not love him, she cares quite enough. He is an admirable -<span class='it'>parti</span>, this Jerry; I could not have chosen better -had I been free to choose; he is an admirable <span class='it'>parti</span> and -can give her all that I cannot give; security, position, -wealth. Such a marriage would atone for everything -that my darling has lacked. And love would come; -why should it not? It is, as you say, her pride only -that stands in the way. Ah, if she would only trust me!” -madame Vervier’s voice for the first time trembled, -and looking up at her he saw tears in her eyes—“If -she would only trust me! I could arrange it all.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He could not put before her the old, romantic protests. -They had ceased to have validity for himself. -All that madame Vervier said was true; truer far than -she could know.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Better, far better, that Alix should marry Jerry, not -loving him, than be exposed to the perils of her life in -France. She had loved him once; why not again? She -was a child. She could not know her own heart. Her -pride had had a dreadful blow; and she had come too -near the fire; that was all. She must trust them; it was -true. She must trust him and her mother. To this -strange pass had France brought Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve come over to try to help you, you know,” he -said. “I want it as much, I believe, as you want it. -About her pride—Lady Mary, I’m sure, expects them -to marry now.—She shall hear that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, I felt that you had come to give me hope, -Giles,” madame Vervier breathed, and her hand, for a -moment, rested on his shoulder. “You are wonderful. -You are <span class='it'>impayable</span>.—No one would believe in you.—If -anyone can help, it is you. Alix will listen to you -when she will listen to no one else.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I believe she will. I’ll do my best,” Giles muttered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yet, as he looked down at the grass, sitting there -filially at madame Vervier’s feet, he knew that his -heart was torn in two and that he longed to put his -head down on her knees and tell her that no one in the -world would ever love Alix as he himself did.</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2> - -<p class='pindent'>When Giles came down to breakfast next morning, -Alix was already there, setting a bowl of nasturtiums -on the blue-and-white cloth. He had not had a word -with her last night when a sudden fall of rain had kept -them all in the drawing-room, and he seized his opportunity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Will you have a long walk with me this morning, -Alix?” he said. “A really long one, you know. I want -to go to Allongeville and see the church again; and -then, oh, a long way further. Along the cliffs for ever -so far.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked at her flowers, drawing a leaf forward -here and there around the edge of the bowl, and he saw -that she was troubled. But she said: “We will go to -the church, at all events. Yes. I should like a walk -very much.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>André entered as she spoke the words and she went -on quietly, giving Giles a suffocating sense of the imminence -of peril from her very readiness, her very calm: -“Do you not think nasturtiums very charming flowers, -Giles? No one ever speaks of them;—yet they are -charming. The leaves; the colour. I like them, and -yet I do not love them. Why is it? There are no yellow -flowers of Summer that one can love. The yellow -of Spring is so different.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“One doesn’t love any of the things of Summer as -one does the things of Spring,” André remarked, -strolling to the window to look out, and, clearly this -morning, Giles divined what he had only surmised -yesterday, that his temper was not attuned to brightness; -that there might even lurk beneath its graceful -surface a vindictive watchfulness. And when he had -spoken he turned, leaning against the window, and -looked at Alix, poised in her whiteness above the bowl -of glowing flowers, looked at her as Giles had never -before seen him look; as if with resentment that she -should be so beautiful; as if with a challenge to her to -deny his right to find her so.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, but that is not so,” said Alix. “One loves -roses—especially white roses;—and carnations; and -jasmine; nothing in Spring is more lovely than jasmine.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I would give them all for a handful of primroses,” -said André, his eyes fixed on her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Would you?” said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was nothing; it was everything. It revealed -nothing, yet it might conceal anything.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes: I would, mademoiselle Alix,” said André, -laughing a little as he stood, leaning, his arms folded, -against the window. “Indeed, I would.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles, watching the confrontation, sick with dread -and fury, knew himself as much baffled as André.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix showed nothing to him, too; or she showed -everything. Just as one chose to take it. “Here is our -coffee,” she said. “And here is Maman.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lovely in her white, the white rose, the jasmine, -madame Vervier bent her forehead to Alix’s kiss and -something in the daughter’s eyes made Giles think of a -sword in the hand of an avenging, or protecting, angel.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>André bowed over his hostess’s hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Giles and I are to have a long walk, Maman,” said -Alix, going to her place.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You will be caught in the rain,” said André. “Have -you noticed the sky? It is threatening.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But see the sunlight,” said madame Vervier, pouring -out the coffee. “It will be a beautiful morning -of great clouds and sunlight. There is nothing I love -better.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then you will perhaps have a long drive with me, -<span class='it'>chère</span> madame,” said André.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If Robert may come, too. I do not like to leave -him behind.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>How easy she made it for André to pretend that the -relinquishment of the <span class='it'>tête-à-tête</span> was a favour he granted -her with difficulty!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But certainly.—Since you ask it! Certainly he -must come.—Does he still suffer this morning with -his head, do you know?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I fear so. Albertine has taken him his breakfast to -his room. That is a bad sign. A drive will do him -good.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He will not like being rained on, you know,” André -smiled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was so glad that he was not to be alone with madame -Vervier that he dared thus embroider his feint of -disappointment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We can shelter him,” said madame Vervier.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“While Giles converts mademoiselle Alix to the -methods of the British Empire,” said André, sitting -with his back to the window where the sunlight fell -about him and buttering his roll with a curious light -crispness of touch, as if he were painting a picture. -There was something in the play of the long, fine hands -with the bread that Giles was never to forget; something -cruel, controlled. He read in the young Frenchman’s -face the signs of an exasperation mastered with -difficulty.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But the method of the British Empire is unconscious,” -said madame Vervier. “It seeks no -converts.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am a little jealous of Giles, you know, mademoiselle -Alix,” smiled André, just raising his eyes to -hers. “As a Frenchman, I am jealous of his unconscious -proselytizing. Once or twice yesterday I was -afraid for France. Do not forget, when you listen to -him, that our French roots are the most tenacious in -the world. Perhaps that is why we do not found empires. -Sever us from our soil and we bleed to death—or -else, a worse destiny, wither. Do not forget that -the unconscious is crafty.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix, opposite her mother, sat silent. Whether, in -her mother’s presence, she had lost her readiness Giles -could not divine. But she made no reply.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Alix has learned in England to be dispassionate,” -said madame Vervier, her lovely russet head a little -bent downward. “She has learned to combine love for -another country with loyalty to her own. That is -something England has given her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah—but that’s impossible;—impossible, for our -French hearts, you know!” laughed André. “We are -not dispassionate. To be dispassionate is to be tepid, -sleepy, indifferent;—to be withering, in fact. No, no, -no, if mademoiselle Alix transferred her love, it would -be to transfer her loyalty also. It is for that that I beg -her to stand firm;—to remember that England can -never give her what France can give.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Encore du café, Maman, s’il vous plaît</span>,” said Alix. -She passed her cup to her mother. She did not look at -André at all. Her voice, for all its disconcerting matter-of-fact, -conveyed no provocation. But, glancing over -at André, Giles saw that he suddenly blushed hotly, -and then, as she took Alix’s cup and poured out the -milk and coffee, that a deep colour mounted also to -madame Vervier’s brow.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yes. It would probably rain, thought Giles. He -waited for Alix on the cliff. It was a sunny, yet tumultuous -and menacing day. Great clouds piled themselves -along the horizon; the sails of the fishing boats -were bent sideways as they went, on a ruffled sea, before -the wind. “Yes. Rain is coming,” he muttered to -himself, though he was not thinking of the weather. -They had all parted in silence at the breakfast-table. -Even madame Vervier had found no words.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Suddenly André came down the steps of Les Chardonnerets. -He had his cigarette and an odd bright -smile was on his lips; yet as he approached he reminded -Giles of the sails on the sea. André might still -try to keep up appearances; but the wind was blowing -him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But he was not going to keep up appearances. “So,” -he said, “to-day is a day of destiny. You are not at all -unconscious, are you, Giles? You have come to plead -the cause of your laggard young friend the Englishman?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Well, was the thought that went through Giles, let -him have it, then. “Why do you call him laggard?” he -inquired, and he knew that the anger that boiled up -in his breast was so violent that he could have struck -André as he stood there. “Would you be eager to take -into your family a young girl placed as Alix is placed?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>André became very pale, but his eyes lighted. His -sail scooped the sea.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Will you plead my cause with her if I say that I -would?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles stood there, still; rooted to the ground. André -had not meant to say that. Something in his own look -had made him say it. It was the blow returned.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You don’t think of marrying Alix?” said Giles in a -low voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I do,” André replied. “I think of it; now. It is my -way out. Why should I retire when there is that way? -Little as you could imagine it, I care for her enough.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Care for her enough?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, if you like to put it so. You see where I stand. -Don’t keep up pretences,” said André. “It’s come on -slowly;—but it has me now and there is no escape.—<span class='it'>Elle -est dans mon sang.</span>—My family would have to -submit;—and her mother’s consent I could gain;—to -marriage.—Why do you look at me with that face? -She does not love your Jerry. And in marrying me she -would marry a man whose devotion to her mother -would never waver. Don’t imagine,” said André, eyeing -his friend, “that my devotion to Alix’s mother has -wavered. It is altered; yes; that is inevitable; we have -no power over these changes. But she will always remain -for me the most generous, most admirable of -women.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You don’t see the hideousness of what you propose?” -Giles felt his foundations tottering beneath -him. André’s aspect, bright and baleful, seemed to -tower above him like one of the darkly radiant clouds -in the sky. And it was a thunderbolt he had launched.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I deplore a marked awkwardness,” he said. “Especially -since Alix, I fear, has become aware of it. -Your English plan of destroying the innocence of -young girls has grave disadvantages. You will own -that. But, in any case, hideousness is not a word I -could connect with any project of mine.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She’ll never take you! Never!” Giles cried. He -felt himself trembling with the fury of his repudiation. -“I can tell you that now. She would feel it as I do. -She would see it as hideous.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You don’t know what she would see; nor do I,” -said André. “She thinks she hates me. You needn’t -tell me that. But I am not ignorant in women’s hearts. -Hate may be the best of beginnings. The struggle may -be a little longer;—I like struggles, let me tell you; -the longer they last the sweeter is the surrender at the -end.—And I have every reason to believe that to begin -with hate is often to end with a more complete -surrender.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As André gave him this information Giles saw Alix -emerge upon the verandah of Les Chardonnerets.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She could not hear their voices, but their confrontation -she must remark.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Seeing Giles’s eyes fixed, André turned his head and -looked for a moment, also. Then he glanced back at -Giles. “Plead your Jerry’s cause,” he said. “<span class='it'>Je vous -cède le pas.</span>” He turned on his heel. “If you fail, I -shall plead mine.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Giles was aware, as Alix approached him, that he -must seem to stare stupidly. “I could gain her -mother’s consent.” Of all the brazen words that -André had uttered, it was these that rang most brazenly -in his ear. Was it true? Was it possible? If Alix -already loved him? Could he be sure of his Alix were -the hideous complicity of events thus to disclose itself? -He could have fallen at her feet, in tears, clasping her -and supplicating her not to be abased.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But, as she approached him, silent, he muttered a -trivial word and they turned to walk along the cliff-path, -while the clouds piled themselves higher in the blue sky -and the wind blew yet more strongly from the sea.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix did not say a word. She held her soft hat at -her side and the wind blew back her hair. Over her -white dress a long white woollen cloak was knotted at -her throat, and it, too, blew back from her as she -walked. She looked before her with the high, majestic -look he had already noted on her face in moments -of great emotion.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Alix,” said Giles in a low voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They had gone for a long way in silence. The sea -now was green beneath them. The sky was a wild grey -and all the grass silver as the wind blew it towards their -feet. He did not know what he was going to say. He -did not look at her. But he saw that she turned her -face towards him. A clue then came. “Alix, do you -remember, long ago, you promised me that you would -never tell me a lie?” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Not unclosing her lips she nodded. He had glanced -at her and met her eyes, but he could not read her look.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well”—he heard that his voice trembled and he -was suddenly afraid that he should not get far without -crying—“Jerry, before I left Oxford, showed me a -letter he had from you. It troubled him; badly; but he -couldn’t know how it troubled me. You said you could -never marry him because you now loved someone else. -Was that true, Alix?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She turned away her head and looked before her; and -again she did not speak.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Please tell me. Was it true? Do you love someone -else, Alix?” Giles pleaded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was terribly pale. Did she expect him not to -have heard? Not to ask, since he knew? “Please, -Alix,” he repeated; and then, once more, she bowed -her head.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well”—Giles did not know how he forced his -voice along—“One more question. Will you tell me -this—Is it André de Valenbois?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, Giles!” said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She stopped short there in the wind, turned to him. -The wind blew her hair across her face and mechanically -she put up her hand and pushed it back while she -gazed at him. “Oh, Giles!” she repeated, putting back -the short tresses that whipped across her eyes and lips. -“Can you ask me that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her face was like a beacon set against the storm, -high in the sky. In its light he read all the monstrousness -of what he had asked, and her hand, still holding -back her hair, seemed to clear it for him so that he -could receive the full illumination.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As he read her look and saw the tears that suddenly -welled up into her eyes, Giles, with an overwhelming -lift of the heart, felt himself sobbing. “Forgive me! -Forgive me, darling.—It was all that I could think.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, poor Giles,” she said brokenly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They were walking on, quickly now. Somewhere, -near by, Giles was conscious of a great brightness approaching -him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I was horribly afraid. I could think of nobody else. -And he loves you;—you see that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I see it.—Yes.—You have suffered.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And though it seemed to me that you hated him;—it -might not have prevented.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do not let us speak of it.—And she has suffered. -You would think, would you not, that I would hate -him more for what he has made her suffer.” Alix -spoke with difficulty, in short breaths; and though -the wind blew her hair backward, now that they again -were breasting it, she still kept her hand up against her -face, looking before her as she tried to tell him her -difficult thoughts.—“Yet it is not so. It is not so,” -she repeated. “I feel as if I understood it all.—It is -so strange, Giles, all that I have had to understand in -these last months. I seem to understand people like -him and Maman.—They are helpless, Giles. They -are like that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, my darling!” said Giles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They went on side by side. The rain had begun to -fall in great drops. On their tip of promontory they -seemed poised between sky and sea, the marshalled -chaos—above, below. And the brightness was spreading -in Giles’s heart.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There is Allongeville,” said Alix. The town lay -beneath them, half obliterated with the rain.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let us run,” said Giles. “We can go into a shop.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Or into the church,” said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He put out his hand for hers and they started to -run.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He could have sung with exultation. Not only -André’s sinister shadow was gone; but that tumult in -himself. He was a boy again, and Alix, his child, his -darling, was beside him. They ran, with deep breaths, -smiling round at each other. The long wooded <span class='it'>allées</span> -of the town stretched nearly to the cliff-top, and once -beneath a steep, green tunnel there was no need to go -so fast, for they hardly felt the rain, so dense was the -roof of green; only heard it pattering heavily on the -leaves above their heads. But, still running, they -reached the emptied <span class='it'>place</span>, its cobblestones glistening -with the wet, and as they passed Giles saw an astonished -face at the toy-shop door, where stout madame -Bonnefoix stood looking out between bunches of -spades and buckets, string bags full of brightly coloured -balls and festoons of dolls in stiff muslin chemises. -The peaceful sculptured porch of the church was before -them, and it seemed to Giles that it had been waiting -for them—for centuries.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When they entered, they found the church, with its -whitewashed walls and innocently bedizened saints, -light and smiling after the darkened day outside. A -smell of incense, flowers, and cobwebs was in the air.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix paused to cross herself with holy water from the -<span class='it'>bénitier</span> carved into the stone of a pillar and bent her -knee before the High Altar as they crossed the nave, -while Giles held his Protestant head bashfully high.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They sat down on a bench far back in an aisle -and smiled, tremulously, at each other. They were so -much more alone than on the cliff with the rain and -sea. No one was in the church; no one was in the <span class='it'>place</span> -outside. It was very still, and the sound of the rain -falling straightly and steadily outside made the stillness -more manifest. The wind had already dropped. -It was a summer rain, now, full of sweetness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“May we talk in church?” Giles whispered. He -looked away from Alix at the remembered statue of the -Virgin, all white and blue, with pots of pink hydrangeas -at her feet.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think we may,” Alix said. “We disturb no one.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Your saints won’t mind, will they?” Giles could -not keep the tremor from his voice. “Such a good -Catholic as you are, Alix!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think my saints are pleased,” Alix’s voice, too, -trembled; though she was not as shy as he was.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You know, Toppie has gone into her convent,” -Giles said, gazing at the Virgin, whose uplifted, blessing -hands brought the image of Toppie so vividly before -him. It was as if Toppie herself stood there, smiling -down upon them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Your mother wrote of it,” said Alix.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We met again in Oxford, only a little while ago,” said -Giles. “She saw something that everybody has been -seeing; even Jerry saw it.—You know, Alix, I love -Toppie as much as ever; yet I’m so changed. It’s all so -different. Can you understand that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I never dreamed you could be different about Toppie,” -Alix murmured after a moment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Was that why you thought I’d never guess, even -if I saw your letter to Jerry?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I did not think you would ever guess.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I didn’t. I never dreamed there was a chance for -me; never dreamed it.—That’s what I told them all;—that -there wasn’t a chance.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix, too, had been gazing before her, sitting there -beside him in her wet white cloak; but as he said this -she leaned forward and put her hands up to her face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, darling, are you crying?” Giles’s arms were -round her as he asked it. “Have I been so stupid?—Is -it really me you love?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ever since that day I came to you from Toppie.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was crying; but it was in his arms and his cheek -was against her dear wet head.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Happy;—Happy;—Happy”—were the only -words in Giles’s mind and they went on and on like a -song while he heard the rain falling sweetly and the -brightness was all about them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He listened to the rain for a long time, but when he -spoke it was to answer her last words.—“It’s been -since then with me, too.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Alix’s head lay against his shoulder and he held both -her hands in his against his breast; and he was seeing -the little French girl, the strange, ominous little French -girl, sitting in the Victoria waiting-room with her -straight black brows and her eyes calm over their fear. -He was seeing the lovely dancing head bound with -crystal, aware of him, looking for him even in her joy; -he was seeing the Alix who had come from Toppie. -“We’ve always been so near, from the first, haven’t -we?” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So near, Giles. That was what troubled me, though -I did not understand, when Jerry asked me to marry -him.—You were so much nearer than Jerry.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And who did you think I should believe it to be, -darling, when I saw the letter to Jerry?—Didn’t you -know I’d have to ask you some time? Did you really -believe, when we were so near as that, you could hide -it from me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I thought I could. I had to stop Jerry from coming. -I could have pretended that there was someone -you didn’t know.—Someone who might not love me, -but whom I should always love.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You who promised never to tell me a lie!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But for those things women must always lie, Giles.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She raised her head now to look at him. Her face -was radiant yet grave. “There will never be anything -to hide any more;—never—never.—There -is nothing you do not understand. You understand -all my life. You understand Maman.—Giles, how -happy this will make her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hope it will. But I came to plead Jerry’s cause, -you know. She thinks I’m pleading it now.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How happy it will make her that you did not have -to plead it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Will it? I can’t help being afraid that she’ll be -disappointed. She’d have preferred the better match -for you, darling little Alix.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She will not think it better. It was all she had left -to hope for, that was all. It has wounded her pride -horribly to have to hope for it—after the bitter things -it has meant for her and for me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But—if you could have cared.—Everything -would have come right. Lady Mary is so fond of you -and she would have stood by. Darling, it isn’t only -loving;—no one knows that better than you do;—it’s -living. Do you face it all? To live in Oxford? To -be the wife of a humdrum scholar? To have no balls -and no riding? To wear”—Giles found—“the -wrong sort of clothes and think about ordering breakfast. -Darling, Jerry loves you, you know, and the -bitter things would all fade away. Such a different life -is there for you to take. I can’t help seeing, though we -love each other, that it’s the life you were meant for -and that the life with me in Oxford isn’t.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, no, Giles, you do not see that,” said Alix. She -put her hand on his shoulder, as if with its pressure to -help him to think clearly. “You are English and believe -that more than anything it is right to marry the -person you love.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you are French, Alix. It’s the other belief -that’s in your blood. The belief in what’s suitable.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, but it is true what Maman says to me, when -she reproaches me; I have in some things become English. -I think the thing most suitable of all is to love -one’s husband. To marry Jerry, loving you;—no, -Giles; you know that that would not be possible to me. -And I do not love him at all. He is not near me at all; -while you are like a part of my life.—No, listen to -me, dear Giles.—This is not making love. It is being -French; it is being reasonable. Even the clothes and -the breakfasts;—oh, I know that they are important.—But -I am used to being poor and to knowing how to -be right with very little money.—In clothes and in -breakfasts, Giles, I shall know how to be right.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her eyes, resting on him, were the eyes of the English -Alix, of the woman who chooses, for herself, her -life and the man she will share it with; yet their look -was a French look, too. The look of one who has no -illusions; who sees an order and accepts it; an order to -live for and to make one’s own. “And there will be the -ideas and the atoms to watch, and the Bach choir to -sing in,” she finished; “and walks in the country;—and -then I shall be in France, for all the holidays, -with Maman, Giles.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She rose as she spoke, for the storm had passed. -Sunlight was flooding in through the high pale windows -of the clerestory. The Virgin’s crown glittered -against her pillar. Slowly, hand in hand, Alix and -Giles walked down the nave.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But there was something more he had to say to her, -here, in her France, in her church, beneath her Virgin’s -blessing hands. This woman Alix had made none of the -conditions that the child Alix, bewildered, charmed, -afraid, had asked of her first lover. She asked no -promises. She left everything to him. It was his order -she accepted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And before they turned aside to go, Giles paused and -took both her hands in his. It was at the feet of the -dear, silly Virgin in her white and blue and gold that he -made his promise: “Darling, you shall lose nothing, -nothing that I can help. It will never be alone that -you’ll come for those holidays. If you take England -for me, you must give me all that you can of France.—Everything -that is sacred to you, is sacred to me, -too.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When they opened the door the world was dazzling -with sunlight and a great white cloud towered up like -an august and welcoming angel in the sky, while across -the <span class='it'>place</span> the little Curé came hurrying, stout and -active with his rosy, peasant face and thick grey hair. -He looked at them kindly, if very shyly, murmuring a -word of greeting to Alix as they all met in the porch, -and Giles, in deference to convention, dropped the -hand he held. But Alix, as she smiled at the Curé -and smiled beyond him at all the sunlit world she was -entering, took Giles’s hand in hers again, and said: -“Monsieur le Curé, may I present to you my <span class='it'>fiancé</span>?”</p> - -<p class='line0' style='text-align:center;margin-top:3em;'>FINIS</p> - -<div><h1>TRANSCRIBER NOTES</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>Mis-spelled words and printer errors have been fixed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Inconsistency in hyphenation has been retained.</p> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE FRENCH GIRL ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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