The Little French Girl
PART III

CHAPTER VIII

Toppie stood in the middle of the room with open packing-cases around her. The sun came in and shone upon the walls and the room looked pale and high and vacant. There were no flowers anywhere; all the little intimate things were gone. Toppie stood alone among her doves. And upstairs, in Toppie’s room, the doves brooded upon a little box where Captain Owen’s letters lay.

She was packing the books, carrying them from the shelves that filled the spaces between the windows and laying them in the boxes; and as Alix entered so softly, closing the door behind her, she stood still, holding a book in her hand and looking up with what, for a moment, was only surprise.

A horrible blow of pity assailed Alix as she saw her. All in black; so white; so wasted, she was like the cierge unlighted. “But it is for her sake, too,” Alix thought, seeing Toppie sinking, sinking away from the world of sun and friendship into the silence and solitude of the grave. “Better to suffer; better to suffer dreadfully, and come back to us,” she thought. And the visions that had always accompanied her thoughts still moved before her so that it was pain like fire she saw lifted in her own hands towards the cold cierge; to light it into life once more.

Toppie stood holding her book and looking across at her, and, all unbidden and unwelcome as she must feel her guest to be, the deep fondness of her heart betrayed itself by a faint smile.

“I have come to speak with you, Toppie,” said Alix. She could not smile back. She could not go towards Toppie with outstretched arms. The sofa where she and Toppie always sat together was on the other side of the room. She felt that she could not stand and tell Toppie; her strength might forsake her; she might find herself, when the moment came, turning away and escaping. If she and Toppie were on the sofa it would be safer. “I have seen Giles,” she said. “It is because of what Giles has told me that I have come—May I sit down? Will you come beside me?”

Toppie said not a word. She stood there, her smile vanished, holding the book, and watched her as she crossed the room to the sofa and sank down upon it. Then, after a moment, she laid down the book and followed her.

“This is very wrong of you, Alix.” These were the words she found. Her mind, Alix saw, fixed itself upon the time of her own former intercession for Giles. Coldness gathered in her eyes. “Giles did not send you, I am sure. You have no right to come.”

Still, she had taken her place and was sitting there in her black, waiting for what Alix had to say to her.

“I know it must seem strange,” said Alix. “When you have had so much to bear. But I had to come. No, Giles did not send me. He would not have let me come if he had known. He does not think of himself. He thinks of you—only—always. Giles would never lift a finger to save himself—although his heart might be breaking.”

“Alix—this is impossible.” Toppie was scanning her face with stern yet startled eyes. “No one knows as well as I do what Giles would do for me.—You are not yourself.—You seem to me to be hysterical.”

“No; you do not know what he would do,” said Alix. She felt that her heart had begun to knock with heavy thuds against her side and a shudder passed through her as she sat there straightly, her hands pressed together in her lap, her gaze fixed on Toppie; but she saw her way to the end of what she had to say and she could say it. “You cannot know it. No one knows but he and I—and my mother. He has spared you; and he has spared someone else. But I must tell. Toppie, your lover was not true to you. He did not love you as you love him. He did not understand love as Giles understands it, or love you with a tenth of the love that Giles has given.—Oh, Toppie—I am sorry”—Toppie had started to her feet and was drawing away with a look of horror—“But you must know. You must not shut yourself away from life because of someone who is not with you at all.—It was my mother that Captain Owen loved. He was with us three times in Paris and he kept it from you.”

“You are mad! You do not know what you are saying. Go away. Go away at once.” Toppie stood there as if she had been a snake—ghastly with disgust and repudiation.

“I am not mad. It is true. Giles knows. I lied to Mrs. Bradley when she asked me why we had never seen Captain Owen again. When I saw that he had hidden it, I lied. I did not understand why he had kept it from you all and it was Giles who told me—that it was because he had betrayed you by loving Maman most. Three times he was with us in Paris that Spring before he died.”

“Do you know what you are saying?” Toppie stared at her with dilated eyes. “Do you understand what you are saying? Owen with you? Before he died?—Why not? Why not?—He was your mother’s friend.”

“It was friendship in Cannes. In Paris it was different. Giles made me see why it was different. He would not have kept it from you if it had been friendship.”

“Giles? Giles made you see?” Toppie put her hands to her head as if her skull cracked with the dreadful blows Alix dealt her, and, while a deathly sickness crept over her, Alix went on relentlessly: “He had seen them together in Paris. They did not see him, but he saw them walking in the Bois. That was why, when I lied to his mother, he knew it was a lie. Last Winter, Toppie; when I first came. And I was to help him in keeping it from you always.”

Toppie stood still, up there in the thin bright sunlight, her hands pressed now before her face; and, with the growing sickness, Alix suddenly seemed to see another figure beside her. It was as if Maman, too, was standing there, in the bright sunlight, with that intent look; dumb, like a figure in a nightmare; yet in her stillness conveying a terrible reproach. “It was not Maman’s fault,” Alix muttered. “She cannot help it if she is loved. She did not know that he had kept it from you.”

From behind Toppie’s hands now came a strange voice. It was as if it spoke from the pressure of some iron vice screwed down upon it.

“Your mother is a wicked woman. You do not know what you are saying; but I know that it is true. Your mother took my lover from me. She is a wicked woman and you are a miserable child.”

Alix felt herself trembling now in every limb; but it was even more before Maman that she trembled than before Toppie. “Is it wicked to be loved? Is it wicked to be preferred?”

“Yes. It is wicked,” said Toppie in the crushed and straining voice. “There is no greater sin for a woman than such stolen love. Your mother is an abandoned woman. She has lovers. No one is safe from her. I knew that already!—Oh, God, I knew it!” Was Toppie speaking on to her, or, in her agony, to herself? Alix, standing outside the torture-chamber, heard the cries of the victim. But she, too, was bound upon a wheel.

“You are not wicked. You had a lover. Captain Owen was your lover.” She forced her trembling lips to speak. “Giles knows her. He knows that she is not wicked. It is false what you say. You must not say such false things of my mother.”

“You do not understand,” Toppie moaned. She had fallen down upon a chair, her face still hidden in her hands. “It is terrible to be so ignorant as you are. You are too old to be so ignorant.—Yes, it is true—all true. She took him from me. Oh, I know now—I know what Giles was hiding from me!—Go away, Alix.—You drive me mad!—Go away, poor unhappy child!”

Alix had risen to her feet, but still she could not go. To fly, to escape; to hide herself for ever; this was the cry of all her nature; but there was something else. It was not only upon herself, upon Maman, that she had brought this disaster. What had she done to Giles?

“I will not stay.—Do not think that I will stay.—You say things of my mother that are not to be forgiven.—It is only for Giles.—You will not blame him? He has done nothing wrong. You will see him? He will explain all that I have not understood.—It is for Giles.—Oh, Toppie—all is not so lost when Giles, who loves you, is still there.”

“Yes. It is lost. All, all lost,” Toppie murmured. Her voice had sunken to ashes now. Her head hung forward upon her hands. Looking at her, for the last time, Alix seemed, dizzily, to see her as a figure in a long-past epoch, a black figure, with bent fair head, sitting in the pale room with the doves about it. It was as if Toppie would sit on there for ever. “Oh, Owen!” Alix heard her moan, as she went, unsteadily, to the door.

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