The Little French Girl
PART I

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.

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