The Little French Girl
PART II
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.