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.”