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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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