The Little French Girl
PART I

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.”

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