The Little French Girl
PART II

CHAPTER IX

Madame Vervier did not come down to breakfast next morning. Giles had heard a murmur of voices in the room next his till late into the night and he saw from Alix’s eyes that she had slept little. They breakfasted as usual in the little dining-room which overlooked the garden at the back of the house and might have been dark, with its old polished panelling, had not the sunlight at this hour so flooded it. A linen cloth of blue-and-white squares was on the table, and a bowl of marigolds, that seemed to bring the sunlight clotted and palpable among them, in the middle. Above the marigolds, Alix, in Maman’s place, poured out their coffee, heavy-eyed but still adequate.

Monsieur de Maubert and André argued about politics with an impersonal vehemence that recalled to Giles, in its transposed key, the altercation of the friendly men in the train. He gathered, however, that they were both agreed on the necessity of a strong man for France and on many lopped heads. The French had not changed so much since the Revolution after all. Whatever the party, the solution seemed the same. Mademoiselle Fontaine, rushing in with a wonderful pink sunbonnet on her head, vividly contributed her own brand of violence, and then announced that it was the very morning for la pêche aux équilles. The tide was low; the sun shone; the breeze blew; and she had promised Maman and Grand’mère a marvellous friture for their déjeuner.

Giles had not yet seen this mildest sport. Armed with spades, bare-legged and shod in espadrilles, they made their way to the beach and, following the receding waves, dug vigorously for the evasive prey, half fish, half eel. He found himself laughing with them as they climbed rocks and raced to fresh stretches of wet, shining sand. He had never known anything more disquieting than the mingling of aversion and liking he felt for them. He and André and mademoiselle Blanche sat on a rock to rest while, at some distance, near the edge of the waves, Alix dug alone, and, as he listened to them and watched her, Giles realized that Alix had been with rather than of them. She had smiled, also, she had even laughed; but there was a disquiet in her deeper even than his own, and if she dug there so intently it was because she found relief in the childish toil.

“What a sky!” said André, looking up at the rippled blue and silver. “It is like music, is it not? Music of a celestial purity. Are you fond of César Franck, monsieur Giles?”

It filled Giles with gloom to hear André speak of celestial purity. It was not that he felt the charming young Frenchman to be impure. What separated them was their conception of life. André’s, like monsieur de Maubert’s, like madame Vervier’s, was a pagan philosophy and his was a Christian. He did not believe that they could understand César Franck.

“Ah! He is not for me!” cried mademoiselle Blanche, appropriately, her chin in her hand as she looked out with brilliant, intelligent eyes at the far horizon. It was strange to see her sitting there, her face whetted by artificial emotion, dyed and touched and rearranged to suit a fashion, among things as primitive as rocks and cliffs and sky. “It is a music without breathing; without blood; the music of a trance. The waves do not break, the clouds do not sail, the birds are silent; one is fixed in an eternity. I do not like eternity.”

“Ah, mademoiselle,” said André, “monsieur Giles here, who is a Platonist, will tell you that only when we reach eternity do we find life.”

André’s fox-seraph face was artificial, too, though so differently. Everything he had experienced had been a selection. He had had, all his life through, only to stretch forth his beautiful hand and take from the heaped and splendid corbeille offered him by destiny what fruit, curious or lovely, most tempted him. And his grace, his gift, lay in the fact that he was tempted only by what was curious or lovely. There was nothing of sloth or sensuality in his being. Tempered like steel, he mastered every lesser taste by one finer, and Giles saw him like one of the gravely joyous youths of the Parthenon frieze riding life, as if it were a perfectly broken steed. How exquisite a being must madame Vervier be to have attached him! Such was the thought that passed through Giles’s mind, revealing to him, as it did so, how far he had advanced in the understanding of pagandom. And a stranger thought followed it. Unwilling as he was to admit it, it was yet indisputable that Owen had gained a value in his eyes from having been chosen by such a being; from having been André de Valenbois’s predecessor. Whatever Owen had lost—and Giles knew that the loss was beyond computation—that he had certainly gained. Meanwhile, on the subject of eternity and César Franck, he maintained a silence which, he hoped, might not seem too morose.

When they returned to Les Chardonnerets with their pêche, madame Vervier sat on the verandah embroidering. Monsieur de Maubert was beside her, and Giles felt sure, from the moment he set eyes upon them, that monsieur de Maubert had by now fully repeated to her the conversation of yesterday. Giles’s impressions and discoveries and beliefs were known to her; and, no doubt, the fact that he had never had a mistress. She and monsieur de Maubert had talked him over and over and up and down, but what they had made of him he could not even imagine.

Her eyes met his with the bland serenity of a statue’s. “Have you had a good pêche?” she asked Alix. She took her by the hand and drew her to her side and looked down into the bucket. “Admirable! Albertine will be overjoyed. Dieu, que tu as chaud, ma chèrie!”

“It is the climb up the cliff, Maman,” Alix bent her head obediently while her mother passed a handkerchief over her neck and brows.

Monsieur de Maubert had got up and gone inside and mademoiselle Blanche had parted from them at the cliff-top.

“I will sit here in the shade with you and rest, chère madame,” said André, casting himself into monsieur de Maubert’s vacated garden chair.

“And you, ma petite,” said madame Vervier, still holding her child by the hand, “may, if you wish, and if monsieur Giles will accompany you, bathe now. You will have time before lunch.”

“I should like that very much. But I do not need anyone. It is quite safe,” said Alix, with a curious lassitude in her tone.

“But, indeed, you may not go alone,” smiled madame Vervier.

“And I should love a swim,” said Giles.

So, presently, he and Alix were on the beach again.

But when they came to the rock where, with safety, the bathing-robes might be deposited, Alix, instead of doffing hers, sat down and said: “Shall we talk a little?”

“Do let us talk,” said Giles, and a great wave of relief went through him. At all events, Alix would not keep things from him. He sat down beside her. Only the sea and sky were before them.

“I had to tell Maman last night, Giles,” said Alix. She looked straight before her, wrapped to her chin in the white folds of her robe, and he felt that she had to keep herself by sheer self-mastery from reddening before him now, as she had last night when she had heard Maman talk of Toppie.

“Ah. Yes,” said Giles as quietly as he was able. “I thought perhaps you’d feel it best.”

Alix, her dark brows slightly knotted, looked before her. “And I think she sent me here with you so that I should tell you,” she went on. “Tell you, I mean, that she believed what she said last night about Captain Owen and Toppie. That Toppie was first with him. Not until I told her of his silence to you all did she see—what you and I saw, Giles;—that he cared most for her.”

Giles sat, struck to an icy caution. Yes; he saw it in a flash; that was how she would put it to Alix. He could find no word. But Alix expected none. Carefully she continued her tale. “It made her very sad when I told her of his silence. It made her cry. But she was not angry with me for having kept it from her. She understood.”

“And was she angry with him?” Giles asked after a moment.

Alix at that turned her eyes upon him and he read in them a deep perplexity. “I do not know,” she said. “She did not say. I do not think she was angry with him either. She is a person who understands everything. But I do not think she would have been so unhappy if it had not hurt her very much. Why else should she cry?”

Why, indeed? Was it for her unveiling before himself? How difficult to think it after the blank gaze of those dark eyes. Was it not, rather, in fear and grief at seeing her child entangled, at last, in her vicissitudes? However it might be, there was a new burden on her heart and, inevitably, Alix now must bear part of its weight with her.

“Well, I’m glad it’s all out,” Giles murmured. “It makes everything simpler, doesn’t it?”

“Does it?” said Alix.

When she asked that, he was aware that part of his thought had been that it made it simpler in regard to Alix herself and what he hoped to do for her. But was he really so sure of this? Would madame Vervier be more willing to let them have Alix now that she saw all her vicissitudes disclosed to him?

“I hope she’ll have a talk with me,” he said. “One can’t talk, really, if things aren’t clear.”

“She is going to talk with you, Giles,” said Alix. She still spoke with her lassitude. It was as if Maman had stretched her too far. “I do not know when. She is occupied, as you see, with her other friends. But she will talk with you. You please her. Very much.”

“Oh, do I?” Giles murmured. If it hadn’t been his dear little Alix he could hardly have kept the irony from his voice. “I hope it will be soon,” he said. “I hadn’t intended my visit to last over the week, you know.”

“I think it will be soon,” said Alix. “But I cannot say for Maman. Shall we swim now, Giles?”

When they all met again at lunch, over the marigolds, it seemed to Giles that madame Vervier looked at him with a new kindliness. She seemed to take it for granted that from his little interview with Alix there must have come a gain for their relation. She asked him if he was coming this afternoon to tennis, and when he said no, that he had work to do, she went on, smiling at him: “You will be abandoned, then, for we all have our tea at Allongeville. But perhaps you will take refuge with madame Dumont and her daughter.”

Alix had told tales. That was evident. Giles summoned an answering smile with which to own that nothing could be further from his wishes than to have tea with mesdames Dumont and Collet.

“You do not care for our ancient neighbor?”

“Not at all,” said Giles.

“Ah, in her day, la pauvre vieille, she had her qualities,” said monsieur de Maubert.

“Blanche told me that Grand’mère found you un jeune homme très sévère,” said madame Vervier, her eyes still resting on him as if with a mild amusement. “She is not accustomed to young men such as you. I do not think she has ever met such a one. It is a heavy intelligence”—she now addressed monsieur de Maubert. “It must always, I imagine, have been a heavy talent. One wonders where Blanche found her delicious gift.”

“A grandfather, a father, might account for that,” said monsieur de Maubert.

“A father might. A grandfather has only madame Collet to his credit,” smiled madame Vervier.

“Her talent is too sharp. Like herself,” said André.

“But the parts she prefers need the keen edge,” said madame Vervier.

“Every part needs a soul, and she has none; elle n’a pas d’âme,” said André.

Madame Vervier defended her friend.

“With so much intelligence she needs less soul than other people.”

“Pardon, chère madame. With so much intelligence one needs more. It is that one feels in her. The sheath is too thin. The blade comes through.”

“Vous êtes méchant,” said madame Vervier, and there was in her voice none of the inciting gaiety usual to the reproach; she spoke gravely, looking down at the cloth and slightly moving her spoon and fork upon it, and Giles suddenly divined that poor mademoiselle Blanche was in love with André.

“Mais non! Mais non! I think her charming,” laughed André. “But I can understand that madame Dumont is her grandmother.”

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