The Little French Girl
PART IV

CHAPTER III

He saw Alix off next day. Her departure cast consternation through the Bradley household. An unfortunate love affair, the fact that Alix did not wish to marry Jerry Hamble, could not be made to bear the weight of such a sudden mystery.

“I always knew those Hambles would do her no good!” cried Rosemary.

“The truth is, if you ask me,” said Ruth, “that she wants to go back to France. She’s never really cared about being here at all.”

But against this Jack and Francis protested hotly, asserting that Alix liked nothing better than playing games with them.

Poor Mrs. Bradley was dismayed. Giles could do nothing to make her understand. “But she’s been happy here; I know she’s been happy,” she said. “I see that you can’t explain to her why she should stay with us. But, oh, Giles, she ought to stay till she is much, much older. We can take her away. I can take her to Edinburgh, to stay with the Raeburns, if she wants to avoid Mr. Hamble—I’ll do anything to keep her.”

Giles could only reiterate: “Alix is very wise, Mummy. You must trust her to know best. I think she suspects already that things aren’t happy with her mother; and she wants to be near her.”

His mother asked him not another question about madame Vervier. She made no surmises about Owen’s friendship. Giles at moments wondered, with all her ingenuousness, whether some dim suspicion had not entered her mind, as it had entered Toppie’s, and he blessed her for her gift of silence.

He thought for a moment that Alix was going to cry when she bade his mother good-bye; tears were in Mrs. Bradley’s eyes.

“Darling, whenever you want to come back to us—you will know;—we’ll always be waiting, Alix, dear.”

“Good-bye, old thing,” said Rosemary staunchly.

“We’ll come to see you in France,” Ruth assured her, “at your Vaudettes place; though I do hate shingle to bathe on.”

“All of you must come, whenever you will,” Alix murmured, pale in her little blue buttoned cape. Alix knew what they did not know, that they would never be allowed to come.

Then he saw the last of her. She stood leaning on the railing of the steamer deck, Blaise in his basket beside her, and waved to him until the blue mist of the April day dissolved her form, and as he saw her disappear Giles felt a dreadful loneliness. Tame, flat, colourless did life become to him. The sense of Alix’s presence had been in his mind like the sense of Alpine flowers brought within one’s own garden precincts, sweet, strange, yet intimate; like the sense of mountain ranges on one’s horizon, aloof, mysterious, yet visible. “Beautiful, darling creature,” he heard himself murmuring as he drove home through a country that had lost all savour. The loss of Toppie from his life was like a pervading, half-stupefied aching; but from the sharpness that the loss of Alix brought he saw how little in comparison Toppie’s going meant real loss. He had never possessed Toppie. The ache might now be deeper, but it was still the same ache that the thought of Toppie had always meant.

He had not seen her. None of them had seen her again. And on the morning of Alix’s departure they heard that she had returned to Bath. Another three days passed before a letter came for him. It was short, yet it brought him more comfort than he could have believed possible.

And a postscript, written hurriedly, ran: “Keep poor, brave little Alix with you.”

Under the dry phrases he read the mastered anguish. But it was mastered. That was the comfort that Toppie’s letter brought him. She had risen already above her own sense of personal wreckage and could contemplate its meaning. As her piercing intuition on the day among the birch-woods had led her to the portals of the truth, so now it had led her to its heart. She saw at last, truly, what Giles had done; she no longer misunderstood him. Even, perhaps, she had begun, dimly, to understand what manner of woman madame Vervier might be. Toppie was noble enough for that. It would appease rather than lacerate her heart to believe that the woman to whom Owen had given his heart was not ignoble.

It was on the morning of Toppie’s letter that Jerry was ushered into Giles’s study.

Giles, as he rose to greet the bright apparition in his doorway, did not know whether it was with more gloom or satisfaction that he saw it. He was glad that Jerry was holding on, yet his presence there seemed to add to his own sense of bereavement. He could do nothing more for Alix. She had shown him that he could do nothing more. But though she had disowned Jerry, it now remained to be seen if Jerry could do something.

“Is she gone!” Jerry exclaimed. Giles’s face might have told it to him and his charming eyes, so like his mother’s, went swiftly round the room, partly as if they might still discover the missing Alix, and partly in the unconscious appraisal of a new milieu. Like his mother, Jerry would always see everything, wherever he might be.

“Yes. She’s gone,” said Giles, giving a push to the sofa. Strange, indeed, to have Alix’s suitor sitting in Alix’s own corner; Giles was aware of a sense of relief as Jerry did not yet take it. “It seemed the simplest thing for her to do.”

For a moment, then, he seemed to detect, or suspect, a flavour of relief in the discomfiture on Jerry’s face, but it was in immediate self-exculpation that he said, as if Giles might call him to account: “I couldn’t get here before; really I couldn’t. I’ve been away. I didn’t know till yesterday that Mummy had stolen a march on me. Mummy couldn’t hide from me—she didn’t try to—I’ll do her that justice—how splendidly you’ve been standing up for us.—If she’s gone, do you mean she knows?”

“She knows, or has guessed enough,” said Giles. “I don’t really think she’d have seen you if you’d got here before. It’s three days now since she went. What she says, you see”—and Giles again indicated Alix’s corner to Jerry—“is that there are now insuperable objections on both sides, and that her place is with her mother. Do sit down.”

But Jerry stood for a moment longer, gazing. “Yes, I see,” he then said. “Yes. That’s just what she would say. But how disgusting that she should have to say anything about it—poor little darling. Isn’t it a miserable business,” he added, as he dropped on to the sofa and glanced with a sort of gentle alarm at the gas-fire, rather as though he might, unless he held himself in, shy at it. He was making Giles, too, think of a nervous, charming horse.

“Yes. It’s very miserable in some ways,” said Giles. He did not sit. He stood, his hands in his pockets and leaned against the mantelpiece looking down at his visitor. Very much like a charming horse was Jerry. Giles could almost see him nibbling reconnoitringly at the edge of the stained-oak mantelpiece or choosing suddenly to take a flying leap out of the window.

Jerry offered his cigarette-case as though it might help them.

“It’s that confounded Marigold nosing out this story about Alix’s mother,” he said, striking his match. “And it’s true, you say?”

“Not exactly as she put it, I gather; but true enough. Since it is true enough, it’s better, I suppose, that it came out as soon as possible,” said Giles.

“Oh—I’d rather it had never come out at all,” Jerry objected. “It makes no difference to me. I don’t care a hang about ancestors and all that sort of thing, and I expect we’ve plenty of rotters among our own. It’s Mummy who takes it so hard. If only Alix had consented to marry me at once, when I asked her, we’d have been all right. People always put up with the fait accompli, don’t they, and Mummy’s so awfully fond of Alix. Marigold might have come trotting with her little tale of woe, but she’d have been too late. Well, she’s too late now, and I’ll show her so—horrid little cat. I shall go over to Paris at once, and I don’t suppose I shall meet with much opposition from madame Vervier.”

“I think you’ll meet with a great deal from Alix,” said Giles, aware of restlessness and inquiry beneath the brave parade of Jerry’s words. “I don’t think you’ve a chance of marrying her against your mother’s wishes. Your only chance is to bring your mother round. That will take time. You’ll have to show your mother that you mean it.”

Jerry eyed him for a moment. “Well, Alix is a French girl. She’s rubbing it in enough that she’s French—and she’ll obey her mother. If her mother tells her that she’s to marry me, I expect she will; and I’m pretty sure I could get round madame Vervier. By the way, what sort of a woman is she, really?” Jerry added, and boyishly, touchingly in Giles’s eyes, he suddenly flushed.

Giles was thinking how like wax in madame Vervier’s hands would Jerry be. “She’s a charming woman,” he said.

“Well, of course she’s that,” Jerry assented. “But I mean, is she a lady, all that sort of thing?—Not that I care.”

Giles reflected. “The only person I ever met who reminds me of her is your mother.”

“Mummy?” Jerry stared, indeed.

“They’re not alike at all in what they’ve done; but they are very much alike in what they are. You could count upon madame Vervier as you could count upon your own mother. She’d always know what to do. If you and Alix married, she’d never trouble you.”

“You mean she’d give up Alix if it was for her happiness?”

“Absolutely. What she wants most is Alix’s happiness. Your difficulty wouldn’t be at any time with madame Vervier, but with Alix herself.”

“She wouldn’t give her mother up, you mean?”

“From what you know of her, do you think she would?”

Jerry turned his eyes upon the fire and contemplated it. “She’s awfully young,” he suggested.

“Yes, but she won’t change, in that respect, in getting older. It would be difficult. Alix’s feeling for her mother would make it all very difficult. You’d have to face that, Jerry.”

Jerry had never had to face anything that was difficult. Everything about him seemed to be saying that as he sat there, his thoughtful cigarette in his hand, his russet head poised meditatively. He saw Alix as a bright object that he naturally wanted, and now it was shown to him that, bright as she might be, darkness lay about her. It was evident to Giles that he turned away from the thought of darkness as he said presently: “Isn’t she absolutely the loveliest creature you ever beheld?”

“Do you know,” Giles confessed, surprised by the change of theme, but willing to follow to the best of his ability, “I’ve never thought much about Alix’s appearance. I don’t suppose one does when one has known someone from a child. I suppose she is lovely. I like everything her face means; and the more I know Alix the more it goes on meaning.”

“She’s a Nike,” said Jerry, gazing at the fire. “She’s on the prow of a Greek ship flying over the wine-dark sea. You’ve seen her dance—in that white and crystal dress with the silver round her head—it’s like the rhythm of Shelley’s Hymn of Pan. When I look at her dancing, I long to dance with her; when I dance with her, I long to be looking at her. Odd, isn’t it, how one never can get enough at once. She’s got the most extraordinarily cold eyes, you know,” said Jerry, fully launched upon his theme. “Even when one’s dancing with her and looks down into them;—she’s so happy, she smiles up at you—and yet they are as cold, as blue, as deep as mountain lakes.”

“Yet she’s not cold,” said Giles. He was seeing Alix as Jerry spoke about her eyes, not dancing, not smiling, but looking as she had looked the other morning when she had said: “Now, if other things should fail her, she will know at least I am there to be depended upon.” With the words he had seen her go forward to take her mother by the hand. A tenderness, passionate, enfolding, had thrilled beneath the quiet words. How right had madame Vervier been in believing that she could count always upon Alix.—And Jerry only saw her dancing.

But he himself wanted Alix to dance. He wanted her to marry Jerry. He believed that it might still be possible if Jerry could be good enough. “If you hold on, you know,” he said—and Jerry could not think it irrelevant—“I feel sure your mother will stand by you, and if she stands by you, everything will fall into place and you and Alix can go on dancing. So hold on. Deserve her. I’m standing by you already, as you know.” He smiled down at Jerry, so young, so slight, but so charming and so sound. If Jerry could get strength enough to hold on, he would waft Alix far away. Philosophers could have little to do with dancing white and silver Nikes. “Deserve her, you see,” he repeated.

“Not go over to-morrow, you mean?” Jerry questioned, looking up at his host, docile to any suggestion. “I’d so much rather have it settled straight off. And I have a feeling that if I could get at Alix over there, with her mother to help me, I should get it settled.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t. And nothing would unsettle your own mother so much. You’ll gain everything with Alix, and with your mother, if you show them that you can wait. Write to Alix, of course; write constantly. Tell her all about it; your feelings, you know, and what you think about her eyes.—You both care for the same things: riding; out of doors; fancy-dress balls, and the ‘Hymn of Pan.’ What you’ve got to uphold, you see, Jerry, what you’ve got to justify, is our English conception of being in love. You must overbear convention; you must break down parental scruples. You must show yourself so much in love to Alix that you’ll convince her that romance is common-sense. You see, I want you to win her, not only for yourself, but for England.”

Jerry’s eyes were on him while he spoke and they dwelt for some moments of bright contemplation as if for the first time he was looking at Giles more carefully than he had looked at the gas-fire and the mantelpiece. “You know, if I may say so, I do think you’re a very remarkable person,” he observed.

“Am I? Why?” Giles asked, smiling rather sadly.

“Well”—Jerry continued to look at him, but he blushed again—“to care so much about a girl you’re not in love with yourself. Doing everything for her. I’ve heard a lot about you, you may be sure. Alix thinks more of you than of anybody in the world.”

Giles, too, was blushing now. “Does she?” he said. They were suddenly two boys together, and as they spoke of love and of Alix their words, to Giles, seemed to lift her far away out of childhood and to set her, a woman, between them.

“I’m most awfully fond of Alix,” he said.

“I know. That’s what’s so remarkable,” said Jerry, shyly smiling. “To be so fond, yet not to be in love.”

“You see,” Giles found himself offering, really as if in a sort of exculpation, “one may be in love with someone else; that would prevent, wouldn’t it? And you can care immensely about someone without being in love with them.”

“Could one? When she’s Alix? I can’t imagine it,” Jerry a little nervously smiled. “Unless, as you suggest, there’s someone else, and then I shouldn’t have time to care so much for another girl.”

Jerry’s ingenuous analysis certainly had its potency; Giles did not quite know what to say to him. “Even if I had been, it wouldn’t have done me any good,” he suggested. “Alix would never have thought of me.”

“Well, you mustn’t ask me to say that she would!” Jerry laughed out at this.

He got up as he spoke and went to the mantelpiece, picking up and examining one of the horrid little china animals thereon. But he was not seeing it.

“England will get her in a much more satisfactory way, for Alix, than it would if I were in the running,” said Giles.

“And you really think it may get her; you really think I can manage it,” Jerry murmured, still examining the china cow. Jerry, more than ever, because he saw him as so remarkable, was depending upon him for sustainment. It would have been a comparatively easy matter for him to leap over the barriers and make off to the beloved. To wait, to hold on, was a different matter, and Giles knew a little turn of fear as he saw it. It was no good Jerry’s thinking that anyone else could hold on for him.

“You can’t manage it unless you can count on yourself,” he now informed him. “There’s nobody else for you to count on. Alix is against you, and your mother is against you. It won’t be an easy thing to marry Alix. It’s not only as a dancing Nike you have to think of her. It’s as madame Vervier’s daughter, too.”

“And as a Catholic. And as French,” Jerry murmured, setting down the cow to take up the cat. “You know she said—funny little darling—that the children would have to be Catholics. Not that I’d care a rap.—Only, it does somehow make everything more difficult.”

“It certainly does. Alix has all her objections. Nothing could be more difficult,” Giles rather heavily assured him.

“And as the English lover it’s up to me to overcome them; show her that I can carry her off in spite of them—in spite of herself—what? How would you like it if your children had to be Catholics?” Jerry very gloomily inquired.

Giles did not have to reflect for long. “I should not like it at all. It’s one of the things I’d put up with if I were in love with Alix and she in love with me.”

“Do you know, I almost wish you were,” Jerry now said, and he spoke from a sudden cloud of darkness.

Giles paused. “Does that mean that you’ve given her up?” he inquired.

“No, I’ve not given her up.” Jerry looked down at the china cat. “I’m going to try to live up to the part of the English lover. It’s only,” said Jerry, “that I see the difficulties.”

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