Next day, his last at Les Chardonnerets, dawned high, blue, beautiful,
and looking out at sunrise Giles saw his wonderful hostess, as he had
seen her on his first morning, walking back to the house across the
grassy cliffs, wrapped in her bathing-robe. She came slowly. Her tread
had not the buoyancy of the first day. Her head was bent; she meditated
gravely. But she made him think of a goddess who had sought inspiration
and sustainment from immersion in her own elements of sunlight and
sea-water. Power breathed from her as she moved, and Giles, looking out
at her, was filled with a deep yet beautiful sadness. It was like
looking at a goddess. Madame Vervier seemed separated from him by
thousands of years. She might have been a figure of myth and legend
walking there, the outlines of her ruffled hair all haloed by the
sunlight, her white arm crossed upon her breast.
When breakfast brought them all again face to face, Giles marvelled at
Alix. If madame Vervier was ready, she was not less so. Pale, with
darkened eyelids, there were certain appearances that she need not be
expected to keep up. Monsieur de Maubert and André de Valenbois would
understand that it had been a shock to her to learn that her mother was
again to send her from her. But beyond the evidences of this shock they
were to see nothing. Of the greater shock she had received, not a shadow
showed itself in her glance or voice. She was grave and quiet only; she
showed the calm resignation of the _jeune fille sérieuse_ who bows to
the decisions of her elders. She smiled at her mother; she held her
kitten to lap milk. And Giles was sorry for his invulnerable goddess,
for, if it was hard that she should have to shoulder the burden of André
under Alix’s eyes, when she already had more than enough to carry in
Owen, it must be for her the bitterest of alleviations that Alix should
do all in her power to make the burden light. Madame Vervier must feel,
as he felt, that such resource, such understanding in Alix could only
rise from the child’s intuition of how sharp was her mother’s need. She
stood beside her mother. She helped her.
“Maman is going to take charge of my kitten while I am away,” she said
calmly to André.
If Alix could help her mother, Giles could help her. This was an
opportunity. “But why shouldn’t you bring your kitten to England, Alix?”
he said. “There’s no quarantine for cats. You could carry it easily in a
basket.”
From the quick, upward glance that Alix cast at him above the kitten’s
lapping head, he saw that its fate, in spite of Maman’s assurances, had
indeed preoccupied her. “Oh, may I, Giles?”
“Of course you may. _Rather!_”
“Your mother will not mind?”
“Can you imagine Mummy minding another animal at Heathside? Why, she’s
lived and breathed and had her being, always, in a swarm of dogs, cats,
and guinea-pigs. You don’t forget, I’m sure, those white rats all over
the place last winter. She never said a word even when she found them in
her bed.”
“I remember. Yes. She is so kind. I should be very glad to have my
kitten.” Alix stroked the kitten’s back. She looked down at it, and for
a moment Giles was afraid that she might be on the verge of tears.
“And if mademoiselle Alix will permit me,” said André, wishing to do his
bit, but, for once, blundering sadly, “I will present her, in place of
this very ugly little cat, with the most beautiful _chat_ Angora that
can be found in Paris. A superb white Angora, mademoiselle Alix; with
blue eyes like those of a saint in a missal.—_Cela vous sourit?_”
André’s own eyes were as blue and as bright as those of any saint in any
missal.
“Not at all, thank you,” said Alix. “This ugly little cat is the only
one I want.”
Giles wondered, as the day went on, whether Alix was going to let him
see nothing more than she showed the others. There must be for her a
sense of bitter humiliation in Maman’s failure to fulfill her proud
assurances. And it would be like Alix to keep silent if she were
humiliated. But how near him she felt herself to be was shown to him
when, after tea, following the others along the cliff-path, she said:
“So I am to go back to you, Giles.”
She ignored the morning interlude. She dismissed it as the piece of
acting it had been. She faced the whole subject for the first time, with
him, her friend.
“Yes. So your mother told me. I hope you’re not too sorry; for I’m so
awfully glad,” said Giles.
Madame Vervier, with monsieur de Maubert beside her, and André de
Valenbois with mademoiselle Fontaine, went on before them. They were
taking Giles, on his last evening, to see a little château that lay in
its woods near the coast, in the opposite direction from Allongeville.
Giles knew that madame Vervier had arranged that he and Alix should go
together and that she trusted him to uphold her cause as best he could.
“It was what I wanted, you know,” he added.
Alix, as she heard him, fixed her eyes upon her mother’s form, rounding
a green projection of the path, her white sunshade upon her shoulder.
“It was most of all what Maman wanted, was it not, Giles?” she observed,
with a faint, curious smile.
“Not at all,” said Giles. “You know how much I wanted it.”
“You will hardly make me believe,” said Alix, her lips keeping their
smile, “that it was you who persuaded Maman rather than she you.”
“There was no question of persuasion. How could there have been? When we
were both agreed from the first.”
“I wish I could understand what it was that made you agree so strongly,”
said Alix after a slight silence. “Maman says that it is for my good to
finish my studies in England, among such friends. That does not seem to
me a sufficient reason. I could finish my studies in my own country; and
I have good friends here.”
“She thinks, and so do I,” said Giles, “that we are the best friends you
have. Isn’t that a sufficient reason?”
“It seems to me a reason for not taking advantage of such friends,” said
Alix, startling him.
“But that is what good friends ask,” he said. “To be taken advantage
of.”
“You speak for yourself, Giles. There are others besides you. You have
no right to speak for them.”
She had his back against the wall, and Giles knew it. The worst of it
was that she knew it, too.
“I can answer for them. I told you I could. I told you that Toppie was
so fond of you that she’d feel as I do.”
To this, after a moment’s silence, Alix only said in a voice suddenly
grown sombre, “I do not blame you, Giles.”
“I hope you don’t blame your mother,” said Giles.
There before them went madame Vervier, her white, heelless feet hardly
seeming, in their beautiful tread, to touch the grass she passed over.
They had no glimpse of her face. She left them in their privacy, feeling
so secure that their privacy, since it was in his hands, could only be
for her benefit. How deeply madame Vervier had read his heart yesterday!
How clearly she had seen that all that he asked was to show her beauty
to her child and to help her, always, in hiding from Alix the pitiful
handful of dust that, in her truth to him, she had displayed! “I hope
you don’t blame her,” he repeated, for Alix had made no reply, and,
glancing at her now, and seeing her eyes bent down, he guessed that at
his question they had filled with tears.
“It would be strange, wouldn’t it, Alix,” he said gently, “if it were I
who had to defend your mother to you.”
“Very strange, Giles,” said Alix in a low voice.
“It’s all for love of you,” said Giles; and in spite of the handful of
dust he knew that this was the fundamental truth about madame
Vervier—“because of what she thinks best for you.”
“But may one never be a judge of that oneself?” said Alix.
“Not if you are a young French girl; no; you may not,” said Giles, after
a moment’s reflection. “Isn’t that just the great difference between you
and us? We think for ourselves; but you, if you are a girl, may only
think for yourself when you are married.”
“I like England better in that,” said Alix. “One should have a voice.”
“Perhaps your mother feels that you’ll learn to have a right to a voice
by being in England.”
“I do not think so,” said Alix. “I do not think she believes in having a
voice. That is another great difference. You believe that one learns to
have a voice by being given freedom.”
“You can’t be free here, Alix; I see that for myself,” Giles said,
looking at her and wondering how far her thought could follow. Already
in such unexpected places it ran ahead of his own.
She raised her eyes to his. “You mean it is not safe, in France, for a
girl to be free?”
“I’m afraid not. Not yet.”
“And what is our danger? Can you tell me that?”
Giles found an answer that he had only recently seen for himself: “The
danger of growing up; in the wrong way; and too soon.”
“And Maman thinks that I run that danger by remaining with her? Why am
I, then, different from other French girls whose mothers keep them with
them? Why is she different from other French mothers? You need not tell
me that she loves me. I see how it breaks her heart.” Alix’s voice
trembled suddenly. “It breaks her heart to have to send me away. And why
should it be so?”
She mastered the tears that had risen while she spoke, and her eyes held
his. It was the strangest thing in his experience of Alix to feel
himself seeking the right word in which to justify her mother to her.
“She has special difficulties,” he said slowly. “You see some of them
already. You remember what you said to me long ago about her beauty and
bravery, and her danger. It was all true. I’ve seen it now myself. And
you wanted me to help her. You felt sure that if I knew her I’d want to
help her. Well, I do. You must trust us both. For what I have to tell
you now is that I can best help her by showing you how you can.”
Alix’s eyes, widened by the unshed tears, gazed at him. “I help her by
not being with her?”
“Yes, by not being another difficulty, and the greatest of all.”
“And for how long must I be removed?”
“Until you are old enough to be free.”
“Until I marry?”
“Marry, or get the freedom of the English girl; the right to choose
whether you’ll marry or not.”
“But how can I marry if I am in England. Is it to have me marry there
that Maman removes me? Because,” said Alix—and her voice, tearless now,
dropped to an iron note—“that will never be.”
Poor madame Vervier and her hopes! Giles continued to play her hand as
best he could. “You wouldn’t be made to marry in England against your
will. You might meet someone you cared for enough. How can you tell?”
“Cared for enough! To leave Maman! To leave France!” Alix held her head
high and stared before her, facing this confirmation of her fears. And
suddenly, her last words echoing too unbearably in her heart, he saw her
lips tremble; part; and the tears, at last, helplessly ran down her
cheeks.
“Oh—my dear little Alix—don’t grieve like that,” Giles implored. “Of
course you won’t leave them;—unless you come to feel that you care so
much for someone that you can.—And it would never be really to leave.
And while you’re over there, can’t we count a little for you? Can’t I
count? You know how much I care for you. I’ll do my best to make you
happy.”
Alix shook her head. “It is not that,” she uttered brokenly.
“What is it, then? You shan’t be married against your will.” Giles tried
to smile at her.
“It is not that,” Alix repeated. “Already you are too good to me. You
are unbelievably good to me.—It is Maman.” Alix put her hand up to her
eyes and hid her tears from him as she walked. “It is Maman.—How can
she bear to let me go?—How can I bear to be parted from her; far away;
hardly seeing her; until I am old?”