The Little French Girl
PART II

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?”

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