The Little French Girl
PART II
CHAPTER VI
“C’est la belle madame Vervier,” said a contemplative
voice behind him, and Giles, glancing round, as he sat
in the thatched chalet overlooking the tennis courts,
saw that it was the lady in grey who spoke.
He had played tennis all the morning with Alix,
André de Valenbois and another young man, a friend
of André’s, who had motored over from a neighboring
château, and now that they had come back after tea,
and, with madame Vervier added to their number,
made a quartette without him, he watched them from
the chalet, with a book. The small old houses and
large new villas of Allongeville climbed a valley that
rose in a wooded amphitheatre about the little watering-place
and the tennis grounds lay just outside it,
pleasantly disposed, the highroad with its poplars on
one hand and on the other a hillside of tall grasses and
wild flowers.
Giles that afternoon had strolled back into the town
to look at the church and buy some tobacco. He liked
the church, with its austere, benignant Gothic and
whitewashed cool interior, clumsy wooden beams
meeting in fishes’ heads above his head and clumsy old
wooden figures of saints standing against the pillars.
Saint Martin was there with his cloak and the beggar;
Saint Roch and his dog and a little round-faced Virgin
Mary at the knee of Saint Anne. It was a homely, intimate
church and a sense of peace fell upon the perplexed
heart of Giles as he wandered about it. He
wished, or almost wished, that he could kneel with as
simple a faith as the washerwoman who set down her
basket of snowy clothes in the aisle and said her rosary
before the bright modern statue of the Virgin.
The mere sense of haven expressed in the attitude of
a sleeping old fisher-woman, with bare legs and hair
like tangled seaweed, was enviable. Giles would have
found comfort in placing a taper to burn on Toppie’s
behalf before the gold-crowned Virgin and he would
have liked to doze beside the fisher-woman and feel
that he had a right to do so. And although he did
not belong there, the church seemed to accept his
presence with a special placidity and kindliness as
though it saw in him merely a strayed sheep. It was
the true fold, it seemed to say, and it could afford to
await, for centuries if need be, the return of all such
wanderers.
From the church he crossed the place, paved with
cobbles and bright with awninged shops, and entered
a leafy path that led up to the cliff-top. A bench was
placed in a grassy recess where one could sit and look
out at the sea, and it was while he rested there that
Giles saw the lady in grey emerge from a white house
further up the cliff-side; a tall, sad, slender, beautifully
dressed woman of middle-years, whose face, turned on
him as she passed, made him think, with its inscrutable
calm and mild dignity, of the face of a Japanese lady.
As much as the Japanese lady, Giles felt, she belonged
to an order, and the meaning of life for her would be
in the fulfilling its requirements.
He was glad to see her reappear after he had established
himself in the doorway of the chalet. A friend
was with her, a stout, dark, sagacious person, and
theirs were evidently the young people who played in
a further court.
Giles rose when they entered and inquired whether
his smoke incommoded them, and the lady in grey,
seeing again the stranger of the cliff-seat, smiled kindly
and said: “Mais pas du tout, monsieur.” She was
charming with her slanting eyes and delicate, faded
face. She carried still further, though, as it were to a
different conclusion, the impression that madame Vervier
had so strongly made upon him, of always knowing
what she meant to do and of saying what she meant
to say. Even her manner of bowing her head and
smiling as she replied to him had a technique. That
was the only word for it. They had a technique for
everything, these French people, Giles more and more
clearly saw it, and not only the Samurai-like ladies,
but the peasants, the shop-keepers, the maids and
waiters. If you presented them with a new situation,
they passed the novelty by and gave you the old
answer.
The friends looked about them. The stout lady had
a long piece of broderie anglaise, fastened, for more
facility, to a strip of glazed green leather. The lady in
grey had silk and a fine steel crochet needle. Giles
could just see her long white hands from where he sat,
with rings of black enamel set with pearls, and the
long earrings on either side of her long white face were
also of pearl and enamel.
They observed the play of the four courts. Madame
Vervier and her party played in the nearest, and what
more natural than that the lady in grey should make
her quiet comment. But though there was no disparagement
in her voice, Giles felt a slight discomfort in
hearing her. Had she not noted him as a foreigner and
seen him as unattached, she would not, he knew, so
have alluded to his hostess.
“Tiens!” said the stout dark lady, and she laid
down her embroidery to look at Alix’s mother.
Madame Vervier playing tennis became an Artemis
for speed, strength, lightness. She flashed there in the
sunlight before them, her russet locks bound with
white, her beautiful arms bare in the white tennis
dress, her slender white-shod feet exquisite in their
unerring improvisation. Her uplifted face, though so
intent, had a curious look of indolent power.
“And the tall child, is she the daughter?” the dark
lady inquired.
“I believe so. Yes. The daughter. She bears the
name of Mouveray,” said the lady in grey.
“Mouveray. Précisément. Her husband divorced
her?”
“Or she him. I do not remember. I do not know
where the fault lay.”
“And this is the husband’s child?”
“Ah, that, ma chère, is more than I can tell you,”
said the lady of the earrings with a touch of melancholy
humour. “But she, also, is beautiful. I find her
more beautiful than the mother.”
“But with less charm,” said the stout lady, evidently
of madame Dumont’s opinion, and she had even
something of madame Dumont’s expression in pronouncing
it. “La mère est toute-à-fait séduisante. C’est
une femme exquise.”
“But the child has more distinction,” said the lady
of the earrings.
“It is a head that would tell well on the stage,” the
stout lady suggested. “And speaking of the theatre I
saw mademoiselle Blanche Fontaine bathing here the
other day. She is very well in the water.”
“Yes. She is staying near madame Vervier at Les
Vaudettes. She is a friend. The child is perhaps destined
for the theatre.—I can hardly imagine mademoiselle
Fontaine in the water,” and the lady of the
earrings smiled. “I can hardly see her off the stage.”
“Ah, she is very well in the water,” the stout lady
again asserted. “Elle est fausse maigre. And she swims
as well as she acts. What a talent it is?”
“A little shrill, a little metallic, perhaps,” said the
lady of the earrings; but the stout lady was quite secure
of her admiration and said that she considered mademoiselle
Fontaine the foremost of their young actresses.
A little silence followed, and Giles, who had contemplated
withdrawal, settled himself again to his
book when the talk, as the friends resumed it, turned
on their families. The stout lady spoke of her Jacques
at the Ecole Polytechnique; of le petit Charlot and his
love for music. The lady of the earrings spoke of Andrée,
who would soon be old enough to marry, and of
Grand-père, left up at the white house on the cliff with
Yvonne to entertain him. Ma tante arrived to-morrow
to open Les Mouettes and was bringing a religieuse, an
admirable woman, who was to take charge of Grand-père.
“Quel homme surprenant,” said the stout lady,
and the lady in grey said that he was, indeed, wonderful.
“Eighty-two, and interesting himself still in all
our lives. I was discussing Andrée’s marriage with him
yesterday. We are fortunate, indeed, in having kept
him so long with us.”
Giles, as he half listened, gained a further impression,
after his impression of the Dumont milieu, different,
yet vividly the same in its one essential, of the
solidly, complicatedly built structure of French family
life; its dependencies; its responsibilities; its ramifications.
They all meant each other. They all lived with
and for each other, and the longer they lived the more
important they became, thus inversing the natural
course of family life in England. Andrée, old enough to
marry, was a very insignificant person compared to
Grand-père.
“And who is the young man with madame Vervier?”
asked the stout lady, who had evidently just
arrived at Allongeville, since she thus plied her friend
with queries. “The little one is René Claussel, I know.—But
the tall one? He is as handsome as madame
Vervier herself.”
“That is André de Valenbois. My uncle named him
to me yesterday. Charmant garçon, n’est-ce pas?”
“André de Valenbois! But is he not to marry Babette
de Cévrieux’s daughter? Surely I have heard
something of a marriage in contemplation there.”
“Ah. That is a sad story. It was, indeed, arranged;
the preliminaries, that is to say, in progress; the young
people brought together; two very pretty little fortunes
and a happily matched young pair. But it is
owing, precisely, to madame Vervier that all has come
to a standstill, as you can imagine from seeing him
with her. He is the present lover. They were in Italy
together last winter.”
“But surely I heard of monsieur de Maubert as the
present lover.”
“Ah—no; that is ancient history. My uncle, who
knows monsieur de Maubert, believes that the relation,
for years, has been platonic. There have been many
names since he was favoured. He is with her now, and
it may, of course, be that he is an amant complaisant,
though it does not seem probable. André de Valenbois,
at all events, is the lover of the moment, and from what
I see and hear poor Babette will have to be patient if
she still thinks of him for Rose-Marie. A vulgar love
would have been less devastating in a young man’s
life.”
Giles now got up. Thrusting his book into his pocket
he stood for a moment staring out at the tennis players.
He could not pass them without speaking to them
and thus reducing to painful confusion his unconscious
informants. Yet he must get away. After a moment
of hot uncertainty, he turned sharply round the chalet
and began, behind it, to climb the hillside.
Well?—in what way was it a surprise? He almost
challenged his sick dismay with the question as he
went knee-deep through the daisies and scabious. Had
not the horrible old woman’s intimations of the day before
prepared him for it? Had he really cherished the
belief that madame Vervier, after her first disaster,
might have known no other love than Owen? But the
sickness answered for him. He had cherished just
these beliefs, and if madame Dumont had left his illusions
unimpaired while the ladies of the chalet destroyed
them, that was because the first was an old
harpy while the latter were women of madame Vervier’s
own world; of what had been her world. The
truth, now, was not to be evaded. Alix’s mother was a
light woman; an immoral woman; only not of the demi-monde
because, he might still believe it, she was not
mercenary. His heart was cold with repudiation as he
climbed. Owen was belittled by what he had learned;
Toppie was more basely wronged; Alix’s poor, proud
little face sank beneath the waters. What spar of pride
would be left for Alix to cling to when she knew? What
would she feel?
But what did those women feel? Suddenly, the
racial difference more sharply revealed to him than
ever, he was aware that the cold repudiation was for
them, too. It was the colder because of their kindness.
They were safe in the citadel of their order. They were
kind because they were safe. Because they were safe
they accepted the jungle as having its own and its
different code. They strolled peacefully along the city
walls and looked down at the bright, prowling, supple
creature without the city, and commented on its skill
and beauty. One might almost say that the jungle itself
was part of the order, since the demi-mondaine was
taken as much for granted as the femme du monde. The
bright creature was seen as dangerous, no doubt, to
adventurers such as André de Valenbois; but Giles surmised
that the danger was not great. Inconvenient
was the apter word; inconvenient to the plans of the
mères de famille. Young men who belonged to the
citadel had, as it were, the freedom of the jungle; that
was where it came into the order; for their pleasure.
They issued forth to adventure; but they came back,
they always came back—to Babette’s daughter—in
the end. Cruel; abominable, such tolerance, such connivance,
combined with such repudiation. For it was
there that Giles’s austere young eyes saw the evil manifest,
while the conception of a social structure more
complicated and more rigid than any England could
ever produce grew upon his vision. For nothing was
worse than cruelty, and what was more cruel than to
repudiate after you had connived?
And where did Alix, child of the citadel, but habitant
of the jungle, come into the picture? His mind
turned to her as he had left her, leaping in the sunlight,
her head thrown back, her arm uplifted; straight,
white, unaware.
He felt himself looking steadily at Alix, eliminating
her companion from his field of vision. He could not
look at André de Valenbois yet. He could never look
at him and at Alix, together, again. The memory of
his romance for them gave him almost a qualm of terror.
André as an individual was hideously eliminated
from any such romance; but, as a type, Giles could feel
between him and madame Vervier’s daughter no disparity
or inappropriateness; none if he were a man with
a spark of generosity or insight. But, as he looked at
Alix and her future, Giles saw that for young men of
the French citadel generosity and insight were sentiments
strictly appointed and conditioned. They did
not enter into the choice of a wife. How could they,
since the choice was made as much by Grand-père at
eighty-two, by all the family, as by the young man
himself. There was in her own country no future for
Alix at all; that was what he saw quite plainly as he
turned down from the hillside a mile beyond Allongeville
and marched across the road and made his way up
the opposite rise of meadow towards Les Vaudettes.
He was striding along the upland now, among the
fields of golden grain. The sea-breeze blowing on his
face seemed to speak of Alix, and his thoughts, almost
with a sense of tears, dwelt on her, on what he divined
of the child’s nature; so young, yet so mature; so sensitive,
yet so hard; and above all so passionately loyal.
What would she feel when she knew the truth?—He
came back to the first question. They must all have an
order, a code, these strange French people. They none
of them stood alone. The individual was implicated
through every fibre in the group to which he belonged.
Would Alix, when she knew, accept the jungle and its
code? What else was there for her to do? Giles was
asking himself this fundamental question by the time
he reached Les Chardonnerets and was finding the
only answer to it. There was nothing that Alix could
do. But he could do something. He and his mother
and all of them. Keep her. Away from the jungle; and
away from the citadel, too. “Damn it!” Giles heard
himself remarking as he marched towards the verandah.
“It thinks itself too good for her and she’s too
good for it. She shall belong to us. It’s the only way
out,” said Giles.