The Little French Girl
PART III

CHAPTER V

“And you will see that Blaise is happy until I come back, Giles?” said Alix, as she stood beside the car next morning to say good-bye. “And you will write to me?”

“We haven’t time for many letters, you know,” Giles smiled reassuringly. “I’ll see to Blaise.”

“Give my love to them all,” said Alix. The car was beginning slowly to slide away and she went beside it. She was not unhappy; not sad; it was only that she was a little frightened to see Giles go. If one night had changed so much in herself, what changes might not one week bring? She almost felt she loved Ruth and Rosemary this morning. Whatever their deficiencies they had not false faces. It was true that they could not, even if they had wished to, have concealed themselves gracefully; but it would never occur to them to wish to be concealed; gracefully or otherwise. Neither were they insipid like the two Wagstaffe girls. If Ruth and Rosemary were like roast mutton, the Wagstaffes, Alix reflected, were like fondants. She stood gazing after Giles for a moment as he disappeared among the beeches.

Jerry and his mother stood on the step above her, having come out with her to say good-bye. Lady Mary was looking at her, a little, she felt, as Giles had looked at her last night; thoughtfully, with great kindness in the thoughtfulness; seeing her as herself.

“Now you’re going to let me teach you how to ride,” said Jerry. “Mummy has a habit for you.”

“An old one of mine. I don’t ride any longer,” said Lady Mary, putting her hand on Alix’s shoulder as they went into the warm sweet house. “I think it will fit you beautifully. You and I are rather of the same build, aren’t we, Alix?”

“Alix’s shoulders are broader than yours, Mummy,” said Jerry, “and I’m afraid, darling, that her legs are a little longer. She’s rather like a Jean Goujon nymph and you are just a lovely mortal size.”

It was odd, Alix thought, to have a young man define the length of one’s legs; but not mal élevé, as it would have been in France. Jerry discussed the physical attributes of his friends as he would have discussed their moral qualities.

“The habit may be a trifle too short, it’s true,” said Lady Mary; “but that makes no difference. The Jean Goujon nymph will be able to get into it. We must dress Alix in the Gainsborough Blue Boy clothes one day, Jerry, to show off her long legs. We must have a little fancy-dress ball in the Easter holidays.”

“Oh, but I’m afraid I cannot be here in the Easter holidays,” said Alix. “You see, those are Giles’s holidays, too. I should miss him.”

“You’ll be coming here off and on, I hope;—and Giles will, too, perhaps,” smiled Lady Mary. “I can always send the car for you. Where’s Marigold, Jerry? Not up yet?”

“You know, she looks rather like the Blue Boy, doesn’t she?” said Jerry. “Only his eyes aren’t blue, and he has a gentler face. Alix’s face is rather farouche;—is that the word?—You frighten me a little, Alix, with those cold blue eyes of yours.—Marigold’s still in bed. She sent for me to see her just now. Writing letters,” said Jerry, “in a most adorable little cap; a Watteau little cap; most frightfully becoming. That was why she sent for me, of course, so that I should see her in it; though the alleged motive was the Fairlies’ ball.”

“Naughty Jerry,” smiled his mother.

“Not a bit naughty. I told her I saw through her. I told her that the cap was a brilliant success. Nothing souterrain about me.—Eh, Alix? Is that right?” They all called her Alix;—as if she had been ten years old; or as if they had always known her.

“I think you must try to talk a little French with Alix,” said Lady Mary. “His accent is good, isn’t it? But his verbs and genders are dreadful, and souterrain isn’t right, my dear boy.”

“Don’t you think Marigold quite extraordinarily beautiful?” Jerry inquired. “Isn’t the colour of her hair and eyes a Hans Christian Andersen fairy-tale colour?”

“But she is much more like a Watteau than like a fairy-tale,” said Alix.

“But Watteau people are fairy-tale people.—You mean she’s an artificial fairy-tale.—Yes, I see what you mean.—And it’s really more Fragonard than Watteau, too—‘A dainty rogue in porcelain,’ that’s what she is. Do you read Meredith? I love him, though I know he is démodé just now.”

But Alix had not read Meredith.

Half an hour later, when Jerry had lightly hoisted her to the saddle and the groom had released the chestnut’s eager head, Alix felt as if, at last, she had discovered her true vocation. This—yes, even more than dancing—was what she had been made for.

She did not feel that she had anything to learn. She felt no fear. Her hands went easily where Jerry told her to put them; her knee and foot found their security. Nothing this delicious creature could do, moving with satin ease and steel strength beneath her, would take her unawares. She understood him, and he, his gentle ears quivering at the sound of her voice, understood her. “Yes; yes, I see,” she said, as Jerry gave his explanations. “Yes, we will walk to the end so that I shall be quite used to it and then canter on the turf. Yes; I understand; holding with my knee.”

It was not swimming, or dancing, or flying, but it combined the delights of all three. One floated, buoyantly sustained; one embodied the beauty of rhythmic movement; one glided at a height strange enough for a sense of slight, delicious trembling. The earth was new, seen from this height; one looked into the branches of the beeches at the level where the chaffinches were perching and flitting.

“You sit as if you were born to it,” Jerry told her, and she replied that her father had been a great horseman.

Then came the canter. It surprised her a little. For one surging moment, cheeks hot, lips closed fast, she felt that she was coming off and then, suddenly, that nothing could bring her off. Between that fast-held knee and that supple foot, she was poised in safety. Her mind and body adjusted themselves to the sense of mastered peril.

“Splendid!” Jerry smiled at her when they drew rein at the end of the long upland.

Below them the country fell away in rippled planes of colour, like a tapestry, russet, silver and blue. Alix seemed to see it threaded with ladies riding unicorns and wearing high white hennins. Fragments of song rang in her mind; the joyous melancholy of Les Filles de la Rochelle, the blissful sadness of L’Amour de moi. Riding brought such memories crowding to one’s mind. This was a better intoxication than the dancing mirage. It went deeper. It set the bells of all the buried Atlantises of the soul ringing.

“What are you thinking about now!” she heard Jerry ask. She had almost forgotten Jerry while she gazed and listened;—far away in France; in an old, old France. But it was part of the better happiness to find Jerry again and to feel herself again a child, with Jerry her comrade. Mrs. Hamble was as remote as a lady on a unicorn. The woman’s happiness of the night before, made up of power and conquest, faded before the child’s mere joyousness. Jerry made her think of the chestnut horse she rode, with his eager russet head.

“Oh, I do so like riding, Jerry!” she exclaimed.

“You’d soon be able to hunt, if you get on like this. How I wish I could take you out hunting!”

“I should not care to hunt,” said Alix. “This is what I like. Riding in a beautiful country with everything happy around one.”

“But everything is happy around you when you hunt,” said Jerry. “Hounds and horses and people. One is part of an immense shaded joy. And one never sees how beautiful a country is until one has ridden right across it and known that at every wall one might break one’s neck.”

“I like this better,” said Alix. “This is like riding with a flower in one’s hand, and that would be to ride with a knife between one’s teeth.—Though I understand the pleasure of the danger.—But the fox would spoil it all for me. He would not be part of the immense joy.”

“Oh, I assure you—he enjoys it, too, in his own sharp way. Imagine his joy when he outwits us.”

“A terrible joy,” said Alix. “There must always be terror in his blood. No; I could not bear to feel that he was there, with his straining heart, before us. I could never hunt. But I should like to ride for ever.”

When they got back they went to find Lady Mary in the morning-room.

“Alix is a marvel, Mummy!” Jerry exclaimed. “She’s not afraid of anything, and rides as if she’d been born in the saddle.”

“I was afraid once,” said Alix. “When we started to canter.”

Lady Mary sat at her writing-bureau, photographs and flowers ranged about her, and smiling at them both she said: “You must come and tell me all about it, Alix, when you’ve had your bath. Will you? I shall be here.”

“And I must do some reading,” said Jerry. “Au revoir, Alix. Billiards after lunch, you know.”

Lady Mary had finished her morning tasks when Alix returned and was sitting near the fire with a little table before her on which she was laying out tiny patience cards. Alix again thought of a lady in a hennin as she saw her there in her long, grey, fur-bordered robe; a hennin would have been so becoming to her.

“Curl up in the big chair,” she said. “You must be tired, and you’ll find yourself very stiff by to-morrow. Do you smoke? Not yet? Good. I’m glad not. Joan and Patience both do already, and I’m sure it’s bad for them. That’s all their life it seems to me; smoking and dancing. Have you many girls in France like that? I haven’t stayed in France for so many years.”

“I should not be allowed to smoke; not until I married, I think,” said Alix, leaning her head on the side of the big chair and watching her hostess’s white hands place the little cards. “I don’t know about other girls. But I do not think that they have as much liberty as in England. I like liberty; but not for so many cigarettes.”

She felt very much at home with Lady Mary, who continued to make her think of Maman.

“Liberty for the right things and not for the foolish things,” smiled Lady Mary. “And it’s a pity to have liberty for foolish things even when one marries. Tell me where you and Jerry went. Across the ridge and down to Minching’s Pond? A wonderful place that is for birds in Spring—Three Oaks Corner; yes; only the oaks went during the war. Did Jerry tell you? Dreadful to see the empty places. And as far as the Mill. That was a splendid round. Ah, I felt sure you’d like Darcy. Isn’t he a lamb of a horse! Jerry wanted you to have Darcy.—I’m so glad you are here to play with Jerry,” Lady Mary went on. “Marigold is such a flirt. She can’t help it.” Lady Mary smiled at Alix and shuffled her cards. “She is a born siren. And Jerry is too young for sirens.”

Alix had again the sensation of being confided in despite her youth. It was curious how quickly, if they liked you, they confided in you, these strange English people.

“You didn’t answer Jerry this morning about her looks,” Lady Mary was going on. “It’s a thin little face, I feel, don’t you? And too pink-and-white; too blue-and-gold. But perhaps that’s because I’m dark. I suppose dark people, like you and me, Alix, usually suspect the white-and-gold ones of being cats.”

“I do not like her face,” said Alix.

“Whereas Jerry admires her immensely; and he’s only a boy, only just twenty, you know, and it’s rather tiresome. You will take his mind off her.—Not that it has ever really worried me,” said Lady Mary; and Alix knew that it really had.

But Jerry and his flirtation was not Lady Mary’s object. Alix began to see that her interest in herself was more disinterested than that. She was making her way, through smoking, and riding, and Marigold, to other topics. The topic she was really coming to was Giles, and she wanted to find out just how fond Alix was of him, and just how far went her commitments to him and to his family.

Alix fancied, watching her, that she had a habit of playing patience when she wanted to say special things to you and to keep them from seeming special.

“I don’t wonder at their taking you in as you say they have,” she remarked, when Alix expressed her sense of gratitude to the Bradleys. “Their brother, you know; what you and your mother had done for him. Giles told me about that last night.—And then you are a nice young person in yourself, Alix. One might like having you about.”

“But it is not because I am nice that they have me,” Alix demurred. “And even if they did not like me so much they would take me in.”

“Because of him?”

“Yes. Because he was so fond of me. And not even quite that. It is more as if I had been a fox terrier he had left behind him. I mean it was like that at the beginning. They would have taken it in and cared for it always, even if it had not been a very nice one.”

Lady Mary laughed. “Well, you are a very nice one. I liked Giles’s mother that day in Oxford. She is very earnest, isn’t she?”

“Yes. And very good.”

“But she hasn’t much sense of humour?”

“She is so busy all the time,” said Alix. “When one is so very busy taking care of people, there is not much time for humour. But she can be quite playful; like a young girl.”

“I can’t see her being playful,” said Lady Mary. “Just as I can’t see her with her hair waved or her nose powdered. I don’t suppose she’s ever powdered her nose, or rouged her lips, or had her hair waved, has she?”

“It would not go with her type,” said Alix. “There is a natural ripple in her hair, and her nose is of that pale dull sort that does not need powder.”

Lady Mary was laughing again. “She’s a dear, of course. I saw that. And of course it isn’t her type. It isn’t his type either, is it; the pretty surfaces of life. Though he has humour,” said Lady Mary, clipping down a card with soft deliberation and then shifting it. “Quite grim humour, too, I felt, once or twice. And I like that.”

“I know no one who has a better sense of humour than Giles,” said Alix.

“He is modest, too,” said Lady Mary. “And most middle-class young men are so overweeningly proud of their brains. We must all be proud of something, I suppose. One rather wishes he was not going to be buried in Oxford; but one feels, too, that it is his métier. He would not care a scrap about getting on or making a name in the world, and it’s such a happy life, that of the scholar. And if they don’t intend to marry, there’s no reason why they should strive and strain like worldly people.”

“But then they do marry,” Alix observed.

“Oh. Yes; perhaps so. But it depends to whom. It would be the unfortunate wife who would strive and strain in that case, wouldn’t it? It must be a very dreary life. Marigold wouldn’t like it, would she?” laughed Lady Mary.

“But they wouldn’t like her,” said Alix.

“It all depends on what you want, of course,” said Lady Mary, holding up an undecided card. “If one wants earnestness and an unpowdered nose, that is one thing; and if one wants hunting and dancing and diamonds, like Marigold, that is another. I detest worldliness,” said Lady Mary, “but I do like common-sense. Now your dear Giles, I could see that, has any amount of common-sense and not a scrap of worldliness.”

Alix listening, while Lady Mary thus mused, finding his place for Giles rather as she found the place for the hovering card, recognized still further resemblances to Maman. Lady Mary, too, could be sweetly devious. She would feed you with spoonfuls of honey satisfied that you would never taste the alien powder that was being administered. She was talking to her now as to the clever child who could take no personal interest in the question of marriage. But the experience was to Alix a familiar one and the admonitory flavour at once detected. She was not to take an interest, but Lady Mary was taking an interest for her. Lady Mary was selecting her place for her very much as Maman would have done; and, as with Maman, Alix often found a malicious pleasure in seeing through her and pretending not to see, so now she pleased herself by saying nothing to Lady Mary of Giles’s devotion to Toppie which would so have set her mind at rest. “Giles is my greatest friend,” was all she vouchsafed presently, and Lady Mary could make of it what she chose.

There had been minor intimations gliding along beside the major one. If Giles, in his chosen career, was not to be thought of as a husband, Heathside and the Bradleys need not be thought of as essential to Alix’s life in England. Not for a moment did Lady Mary intimate anything so gross as that Alix should abandon her friends; she only made it clear that, since she could now count on new ones, she was not dependent on Heathside. They were very strange, these English people, Alix meditated, her dark head leaning back in the chair, her blue eyes resting with their Alpine aloofness on her hostess. How much, if they once liked you, they took you for granted; and how very easily, so it seemed to Alix, they did like you. Lady Mary resembled Giles in that; and Toppie and Mrs. Bradley; and if they swallowed you down, asking no questions, was it because they were so extraordinarily kind, or because they were so sure of themselves and of their conditions that they could not conceive of your doing them any harm? The difference—how often Alix had meditated these differences—was that the French were so sure of themselves and of their conditions that they couldn’t conceive of your doing them any good. The English, certainly, were more kind.

But were they kind enough to make themselves responsible for you? Giles would. Alix had seen Giles make himself responsible. She believed that Toppie would; and Mrs. Bradley. Even Ruth and Rosemary, if the test came, would, she believed, shoulder her. But strangely, painfully—for she, too, liked Lady Mary, though she did not at all take her for granted—Alix could imagine this new friend, if consequences proved troublesome or unpalatable, choosing, simply, as the easiest way out, to forget all about her. She was dove-like, but she was capricious. Her life was beautiful, and she enjoyed laying out other people’s lives in harmony with its beauty, making a chiming pattern of you as she did with her patience cards, because she liked to make patterns and because she thought of herself as able to do what she liked. But it would be unwise to give oneself to the Lady Marys or trust them as they invited you to trust them. They, too, were far more implicated in the dust of human conditions than they knew themselves to be. They did not really know themselves, for they did not know the dust; and, where she herself was concerned, Alix deeply suspected that consequences might prove dusty; might prove troublesome and unpalatable. She felt herself to be older than Lady Mary as she watched her and listened to her; she felt herself wiser. Life required far more circumspection than Lady Mary imagined. If Lady Mary was circumspect it was subconsciously, for candour was her aim. But so one might mislead oneself and other people. And as all these thoughts went through Alix’s mind, while Lady Mary laid out her pretty cards, there floated across it a memory of the shrewd old face of a priest to whom she had once gone for the yearly, the reluctant, confession. If one was more circumspect than any English person, was it because of the generations of Catholicism in one’s blood? One’s confessor always took so many disagreeable things for granted, about life and about human nature; and, on reflection, one usually found that he had been right.

Last | Next | Contents