The Little French Girl
PART I
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.