He had not imagined madame Vervier coming down to breakfast; but she was
up long before it. Giles, looking from his window at seven, was
astonished to see her form, wrapped in a white bath-robe, advancing
leisurely from the cliff that she had, evidently, just ascended after a
morning swim. She was alone. It was so early that she had awakened no
one to share with her the delicate sting of the morning waves. Giles
indeed imagined, watching her, that these early hours were set apart by
her for solitude; that no one ever shared them with her. She walked, her
russet head bent down, a little as she had walked in the Bois;
meditating, it seemed. He heard her afterwards on the verandah, in the
salon below, moving quietly to and fro. Her calm voice directed
Albertine. “_Ne réveillez pas mademoiselle. Elle est si fatiguée_,” he
heard.
A little while later, Albertine’s voice broke out far away, at the
garden gate, in vehement yet not unfriendly altercation with the baker’s
lady; and then, stealing deliciously into his sleepy senses, mingling
with the fragrance of the carnations by his bedside, the aroma of
roasting coffee-beans delicately tinctured the air. Albertine came in
with a jug of steaming water and it was time to get up.
When he went down at half-past eight, monsieur de Valenbois was singing
in the drawing-room with madame Vervier at the piano; the song was
“_D’Une Prison_,” and he sang well.
Albertine was laying breakfast on the verandah, and Giles stood leaning
against a pillar listening to the song. At its end madame Vervier
soberly commended the singer, yet turned a leaf, here and there, to
suggest an alteration. “_Qu’as-tu fait de ta jeunesse?_” monsieur de
Valenbois sang again, with a new poignancy; and yet again. “_Bien; très
bien_,” said madame Vervier’s quiet voice.
Then monsieur de Maubert appeared, and they came out to greet him and
Giles. Monsieur de Maubert wore a small white woollen shawl over his
shoulders and madame Vervier asked him with solicitude whether he would
rather have breakfasted in the _salle-à-manger_, as usual. It had seemed
so deliciously mild a morning that she had told Albertine to lay the
table here.
Monsieur de Maubert said he delighted in the plan. He would merely take
precautions against a _courant d’air_; and to ensure him further from
this calamity his chair was placed in a corner behind the table, Giles
aiding in his disposal and amused by the idea of Jove sheltering from a
_courant d’air_.
“Oh, breakfast here! _Quel bonheur!_” cried Alix, emerging. She made
Giles think of a swallow as she skimmed out, her feet in their heelless
_espadrilles_ hardly seeming to touch the ground. André de Valenbois
also, he saw, noted her swiftness, her light, direct movement; noted,
too, no doubt, her clear face, stern in its carven structure, yet sweet
in smile and glance. Alix was really growing up; she was already a
person to be noted by a young man with an eye for beauty in all its
manifestations, and Giles, while monsieur de Valenbois’ eyes rested
almost musingly upon her, knew a fraternal, nay, almost a paternal, stir
of anxious surmise. Would that be a solution? He did not feel the need
of a solution for Alix’s problem to be so pressing as he had on the
steamer yesterday. It was difficult in this radiant _milieu_ to believe
her so in need of rescue. However heinous madame Vervier’s fault, she
could not, without manifest priggishness, be seen as a mother unfit to
care for a daughter. But problem or no problem, it would be a comfort to
know Alix settled, and during coffee and rolls he began to see, very
plainly, that this settlement must almost certainly have presented
itself to madame Vervier. If André de Valenbois were here on these terms
of happy intimacy, when her child arrived, had she not seen to it that
he was here? Could she have chosen better? If Alix was charming, so was
he; he was, indeed, Giles considered, having not thought much of Alix as
in the category, more obviously charming than she was; a veritable
prince of the fairy-tale in face, form, and demeanour, and if Alix was
not already affected by his presence that could only be because she was
still so much a child. He was not a young man to leave a maiden’s fancy
unaffected.
“A penny for your thoughts, monsieur Giles,” monsieur de Valenbois’
voice broke in, disconcertingly, upon his meditations. That he had
allowed them to become absorbing was evident to him from the smiles that
met his eyes as he raised them. He felt himself foolishly blushing.
“Giles never talks much at breakfast,” Alix commented.
“I don’t get much chance to, at home, do I?” said Giles, grateful for
her intervention.
“You shall have every chance here,” said madame Vervier. “We rarely have
a young English philosopher among us. We must profit by the occasion.”
Her smile was very kind.
“I know what monsieur Giles was thinking of,” said monsieur de
Valenbois.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Giles laughed.
“I wager you!” monsieur de Valenbois challenged him, tilting back his
chair, his brilliantly blue eyes on his friend. “Do you defy me?”
“Absolutely,” said Giles.
“Well, own to my perspicacity when I tell you, then, that you were
thinking about mademoiselle Alix. You were reassembling your arguments
against the Russian ballet and reflecting that the best of them would be
that it is idle to go to art for something we can find more perfectly
displayed in nature.”
Giles stared at him. It was near enough to cause him to stare.
“Well?” smiled monsieur de Valenbois.
“How did you know I was thinking about Alix?” Giles demanded.
“How did I know?—Because I was!” laughed monsieur de Valenbois. “And
the same thoughts.”
Madame Vervier was looking at them both, and again, Giles imagined, with
her veiled vigilance. “The Russian ballet?” she questioned. “What has
Alix to do with the Russian ballet?”
“Forgive my execrable taste, _chère madame_!” exclaimed monsieur de
Valenbois, “in making mademoiselle Alix the subject of these
divinations! But did you remark the way in which she bounded out of the
house just now? It was a remarkable bound,” smiled monsieur de
Valenbois. “It started the same strain of thought in me and in monsieur
Giles, you see. We were discussing the Russian ballet last night.”
“But I wasn’t thinking about the Russian ballet,” Giles rather
helplessly protested, and he felt madame Vervier not quite pleased.
“That’s what I should have thought, no doubt, if it had come to my mind.
But it didn’t.”
“Ah; but the essential you will not deny,” said monsieur de Valenbois,
and Giles, feeling his blushes mount again, wondered just how far the
essential had indeed been divined.
Alix was gazing first at him, then at monsieur de Valenbois and then at
her mother; and her mother’s eyes, while they caressed and approved her
silence, put her aside into the retirement suitable to a _jeune fille_.
“Monsieur Giles has disowned the essential,” she remarked.
“Do you like him, Giles?” Alix questioned when, after breakfast, she
moved off with her friend to the cliff-path.
Giles really felt a little abashed before her calm; felt that he
deserved, rather than monsieur de Valenbois, madame Vervier’s implicit
reproof.
“Monsieur de Valenbois?” he questioned. “Very much. Don’t you? I think
him charming.”
“Charming,” Alix reflected.
“Have you known him for a long time?” Giles inquired.
“A long time? I?” Alix’s eyes came back to him surprised. “I never saw
him before.”
“Really. He’s a new friend of your mother’s, then.”
“Yes. They met at Cannes last winter,” said Alix. “Charming. He is that,
I suppose; but I think it a little _agaçant_ for anyone to look so sure
of happiness.”
“Sure of happiness? You think he looks that?”
“Yes. As if, always, he had had everything he wanted. That is a little
_agaçant_, I think. Though of course it is not his fault.”
“It may be only a part of his intelligence, his general tact and taste,
to look it,” Giles suggested. “He would always be thinking about his
responsibilities towards his surroundings. If he wasn’t happy, nobody
would know it.”
“But would that not be for his own sake rather than for theirs? He would
feel it a disadvantage to look unhappy,” said Alix.
“But he’s so kind,” said Giles. “He seems to me, now that I come to
think of it, even more kind than he is charming. He’s been most awfully
kind to me already.”
“And why should he not be?” Alix inquired. She took off her hat and the
morning breeze blew back her hair.
“Well, I’m a rather unprepossessing young foreigner. I shouldn’t have
known how to be kind to him.”
“He is quicker on the surface than you are, Giles; but you are quite as
quick beneath it, and deeper far, I feel sure,” said Alix.
“Hang it!” said Giles, laughing, “how do you manage to think these
things at your age?”
“I am of an age, it appears, to have monsieur de Valenbois discuss my
appearance in my presence,” said Alix.
“Oh—but just because you are so young,” Giles, already alarmed for the
good fortune of his romance, protested.
“Ah, but if I were as young as you mean, I should not be worth
discussing,” Alix returned.
Giles glanced at her from the tail of his eye. How young, how old,
indeed, was Alix. His sense of a suffering only biding its time to
spring upon her came strongly to him as he scanned surreptitiously the
high young face that seemed to soar beside him, the vast background
lending an added haughtiness to its delicate projections. How French,
how French she was; how much a foreigner with all her familiarity; so
much so that he could not, even now, foresee what she would feel, what
love, what suffer. “And monsieur Jules;—I’ve never heard anyone call
him anything but Jules.—And mademoiselle Fontaine? Give me your
impressions of all these people,” he said. “They are so strange and new
to me.”
“Poor Jules. I am fond of him. Very. I have known him for many years,”
said Alix. “Ever since Maman admired a picture of his and bought it and
then found him, starving, with his little wife. Maman has been their
good angel always. Success is coming to him now; now when it is too
late. And mademoiselle Fontaine is an old _habituée_ of Maman’s salon. I
have not seen her in the country before. She has taken this little villa
for the summer to be near Maman. She does not seem to belong to the
country. We will go one day to have tea with her and her mother and old
grandmother and see the little ‘fox,’” Alix added. “Her grandmother knew
Chopin. She will tell you so at once; and George Sand. She was an
actress, too. I do not think that I care much for actresses.”
“And was mademoiselle Fontaine’s mother an actress?”
“Oh, not at all. Her mother is quite different. _Une bonne petite
bourgeoise tout simplement_; quite insignificant and creeping. They both
adore the grandmother. You must see them,” Alix repeated, a slight
amusement on her lips, as if she spoke of quaint animals she had to
display to her friend.
He and Alix and monsieur de Valenbois bathed before luncheon. Bathing at
Les Chardonnerets was a rather arduous affair. One undressed in one’s
room and ran out over the cliff-top in _espadrilles_ and bath-robe. The
long iron staircase down the face of the cliff was almost as steep as a
fire-escape in places, and at the bottom there was shingle to traverse
and then, if the tide was low, as on this morning, a stretch of wet
sand. Giles was an excellent swimmer and so was monsieur de Valenbois.
Alix, not yet proficient, though her stroke was good, swam between them
out to sea, and Giles, as he and the young Frenchman smiled at each
other over her dark head, felt a growing assurance for his romance.
André de Valenbois, he saw, found Alix a charming young creature, and
what could be a better beginning than that? She rested, when they turned
to come back, holding first Giles by the shoulders and then monsieur de
Valenbois.
Madame Vervier was sitting on the grass, high against the sky. She
watched them from under a white sunshade, monsieur de Maubert, under a
green-lined one, extended beside her. “Now let me swim again and show
her how much progress I have made,” said Alix, and she bravely pointed
her hands through the waves, Giles and André beside her, exhorting,
directing, commending. Giles felt that madame Vervier, on her height,
watched it all complacently. Complacently, yet with that vigilance, too.
Alix was given the full liberty of the _jeune fille moderne_; but he had
already noted that however far and free her roamings her mother was
always aware of when, how, and with whom they took place.
It so befell that Giles made the acquaintance of mademoiselle Fontaine’s
family that very day. Madame Vervier and monsieur de Valenbois went off
for a long motor drive and it was arranged with mademoiselle Fontaine,
who appeared soon after the swim, that Giles and Alix were to drink tea
with her and Maman and Grand’mère at their cottage. Monsieur de Maubert
was spending the afternoon with friends in the country.
The smallest, most smiling little house it was, that of mademoiselle
Fontaine’s family. It stood behind a pink-and-grey wall in a tiny garden
and when they entered the gate at four o’clock they were welcomed by the
fox terrier, and found old madame Dumont, crumpled up in black draperies
and under a black parasol all lace and fringes, sitting out in the sun
on the flagged path with a row of white and purple petunias leading up
to her. Mademoiselle Fontaine stood behind her chair and gently but
forcibly shouted their names to her, and mademoiselle Fontaine’s mother,
who did not bear her name, but was plain madame Collet, emerged from the
house with a tray of tea and coffee. She was a stout, pale little woman
with a high, old-fashioned bosom and prominent, old-fashioned hips and
an old-fashioned fringe across her faded forehead. Careful, cautious,
grave and happy, she seemed as one who moved among precious objects to
whose well-being and security she knew herself essential. “Is that as
you wish it, Blanche?” Giles heard her whisper to her daughter; and to
her mother, “You are warm enough, Maman?”
As for Grand’mère, Giles, in spite of Alix’s intimations, was hardly
prepared for such a fearsome old lady. Very fearsome he found her,
peering shrewdly up at him through the fringes of her parasol with the
beady eye of an old raven under a dark-blue beetling eyebrow. She was
powdered and dyed, and an erection of black lace ornamented her ample
indigo wig and fell in lappets on either side of her long Semitic
cheeks. Her smile was histrionic and her voice hoarse as if with years
of use for public purposes. Now and then she emitted a loud gong-like
laugh, and Giles could somehow imagine her, so full of vitality did she
still seem, standing in classic draperies on a vast stage and bellowing
forth passages from Victor Hugo. She talked almost immediately of Chopin
and mademoiselle Fontaine stood leaning on the back of her chair
listening to her as if she felt the rôle of listener, for herself as
well as for them, a privilege. Giles could not but admire what, he
supposed, was the effect of the French tradition of family life. It was
difficult to associate an intelligence as versatile as mademoiselle
Fontaine’s with this derelict antiquity, and even more difficult to
think of her as the daughter of the homespun little person who poured
out their tea and coffee. But mademoiselle Fontaine showed no sign,
apologetic or explanatory, of finding anything amiss with either of
them, and if her manner towards madame Collet was often curt and
authoritative, an affection that could show itself at moments in quite a
pretty playfulness evidently underlay it.
“See what a naughty little mother I have, monsieur Bradley,” she
exclaimed. “She pretends always to forget that I do not like my
afternoon coffee made with chicory. In the morning, yes; I admit it;
later in the day, no. Ah, Maman! no excuses!! _Je vous connais._ Economy
is the motive!—She has never escaped the fear that unless one saves all
one’s _sous_ one may die in indigence.”
“Chicory, Blanche? What do you say of chicory?” the old lady inquired,
leaning an ear towards her grandchild. “_Mais c’est très sain, la
chicorée. Ca rafraichit le sang._—If you drink chicory every day in
your coffee”—and now it was an eye she turned, half closed in sagacious
admonition, on the startled Giles—“you will not need to purge yourself,
my young man.”
“_Fi donc, Grand’mère!_ We do not talk of _l’hygiène_ now!” laughed
mademoiselle Fontaine.
“Ah, it is a thing never to forget,” said madame Dumont. “If Chopin had
not neglected his health, how many more works of genius he would have
given to the world.—He was my master, did I tell you, monsieur
Gillet?”—mademoiselle Fontaine had not succeeded in conveying Giles’s
name to her in a retainable form. “I had great talent for the piano. It
was said to me, when I chose the theatre as a career, that it was one I
chose and one I threw away.—You have heard of George Sand in England?”
Giles said that they heard of her.
“_Femme exécrable!_” madame Dumont exclaimed. “_Femme sans cœur!_ How
many lives did she not destroy!”
“Ah, but I am always on the side of the woman, when it comes to _les
affaires de cœur_,” said mademoiselle Fontaine, with a smile at Giles.
“We are so often the losers that I feel a certain satisfaction when a
woman, even if ruthlessly, redresses the balance. And with all its
romanticism, what a great talent it was, that of the good George! Do not
say too much ill of her.”
“Good! You can call a woman good who tricks one lover under the nose of
the other! Do you forget Pagello and Alfred de Musset!” cried madame
Dumont. “As for Musset; let it pass; he was not one to be pitied.—But
Chopin! A man as simple as a child. _Non. C’était un monstre!_” madame
Dumont declared.
“And I will leave you to tell monsieur Giles what you think of George
Sand while I ask mademoiselle Alix to come upstairs with me and see a
new dress that has come from Paris,” said mademoiselle Blanche, thus
further demonstrating her intelligence to Giles, for indeed madame
Dumont’s reminiscences had begun to make him uneasy.
Alix had picked up the friendly “fox” and was giving scant attention;
but once her impeding presence was removed, madame Dumont’s recitals
took on a disconcerting raciness and when, presently, madame Collet
gathered together the tea-things and carried away the tray, the old
lady, as if she had bided her time, lurched towards Giles, with a
terrible leering smile, to whisper: “_Elle est belle, n’est-ce pas,
madame Vervier?_”
“_Très belle_,” said Giles, drawing away a little.
“_Sa fille ne sera jamais aussi belle_,” whispered madame Dumont. “She
need not fear her. What fate more pitiful for a beautiful woman than to
find a rival in her daughter!”
“Nothing of that sort could ever happen between Alix and her mother,”
said Giles angrily.
“Nothing of that sort. _Précisément._ You, a young man, and I, an old
woman, see eye to eye when it comes to such a comparison,” madame Dumont
disconcertingly concurred. “_La petite_ Alix is not of a type to seduce.
She has distinction; an air of race; _mais elle n’est pas
séduisante!—Tandis que la mère!_”—and madame Dumont, with eye and hand
uplifted, took Heaven to witness of her appreciation.
“That’s not what I mean at all. You quite misunderstand me,” said Giles,
more angrily.
“_Vous dites, monsieur?_” said madame Dumont, fixing a very shrewd,
sharp eye upon him as if she suddenly discerned new aspects of an
obvious case. “It is the daughter you admire?”
Madame Collet reappeared and Giles maintained a hostile silence. To
attempt to enlighten madame Dumont would be futile.
“It is time for your _repos_, Maman,” said madame Collet. “She is so
old, so very old, monsieur,” she added, casting a glance of proud
possessorship upon Giles. “Only by constant care do we keep her with us.
And now it is time for the little afternoon nap.”
The old lady, muttering something about chicory and _hygiène_, signified
her readiness to withdraw and Giles assisted her daughter in hoisting
her upon her feet. But for all her decrepitude she was still not lacking
in female sensitiveness and had time, it was evident, to make her
reflections upon something unflattering in the attitude of the young
Englishman, for, before she disappeared into the house, she bade him
farewell with an extreme and sudden haughtiness.
Alix soon came down after that and they went away.
“Well?” smiled Alix. “And did you appreciate the celebrated madame
Dumont?”
Her smile hurt Giles. Its unconsciousness of what madame Dumont really
meant; her ignorance of what such old harpies thought and said of her
mother. “Horrible old creature!” he could not repress.
“Horrible?” Alix was evidently surprised. “That is very severe.”
“I want to be severe. I think she is quite horrible.”
“It is always horrible to be so old. But she is not stupid, Giles. She
has been a great actress; at least, almost great. Monsieur de Maubert
saw her act years ago, and says that it was good. And sometimes she will
still repeat one of her famous scenes—as Phèdre or Athalie—to make
one’s blood run chill.”
“She makes my blood run chill without any acting,” said Giles.