“Whereas Jerry admires her immensely; and he’s only a boy, only just

twenty, you know, and it’s rather tiresome. You will take his mind off

her.—Not that it has ever really worried me,” said Lady Mary; and Alix

knew that it really had.

But Jerry and his flirtation was not Lady Mary’s object. Alix began to

see that her interest in herself was more disinterested than that. She

was making her way, through smoking, and riding, and Marigold, to other

topics. The topic she was really coming to was Giles, and she wanted to

find out just how fond Alix was of him, and just how far went her

commitments to him and to his family.

Alix fancied, watching her, that she had a habit of playing patience

when she wanted to say special things to you and to keep them from

seeming special.

“I don’t wonder at their taking you in as you say they have,” she

remarked, when Alix expressed her sense of gratitude to the Bradleys.

“Their brother, you know; what you and your mother had done for him.

Giles told me about that last night.—And then you are a nice young

person in yourself, Alix. One might like having you about.”

“But it is not because I am nice that they have me,” Alix demurred. “And

even if they did not like me so much they would take me in.”

“Because of him?”

“Yes. Because he was so fond of me. And not even quite that. It is more

as if I had been a fox terrier he had left behind him. I mean it was

like that at the beginning. They would have taken it in and cared for it

always, even if it had not been a very nice one.”

Lady Mary laughed. “Well, you _are_ a very nice one. I liked Giles’s

mother that day in Oxford. She is very earnest, isn’t she?”

“Yes. And very good.”

“But she hasn’t much sense of humour?”

“She is so busy all the time,” said Alix. “When one is so very busy

taking care of people, there is not much time for humour. But she can be

quite playful; like a young girl.”

“I can’t see her being playful,” said Lady Mary. “Just as I can’t see

her with her hair waved or her nose powdered. I don’t suppose she’s ever

powdered her nose, or rouged her lips, or had her hair waved, has she?”

“It would not go with her type,” said Alix. “There is a natural ripple

in her hair, and her nose is of that pale dull sort that does not need

powder.”

Lady Mary was laughing again. “She’s a dear, of course. I saw that. And

of course it isn’t her type. It isn’t his type either, is it; the pretty

surfaces of life. Though _he_ has humour,” said Lady Mary, clipping down

a card with soft deliberation and then shifting it. “Quite grim humour,

too, I felt, once or twice. And I like that.”

“I know no one who has a better sense of humour than Giles,” said Alix.

“He is modest, too,” said Lady Mary. “And most middle-class young men

are so overweeningly proud of their brains. We must all be proud of

something, I suppose. One rather wishes he was not going to be buried in

Oxford; but one feels, too, that it is his _métier_. He would not care a

scrap about getting on or making a name in the world, and it’s such a

happy life, that of the scholar. And if they don’t intend to marry,

there’s no reason why they _should_ strive and strain like worldly

people.”

“But then they do marry,” Alix observed.

“Oh. Yes; perhaps so. But it depends to whom. It would be the

unfortunate wife who would strive and strain in that case, wouldn’t it?

It must be a very dreary life. Marigold wouldn’t like it, would she?”

laughed Lady Mary.

“But they wouldn’t like her,” said Alix.

“It all depends on what you want, of course,” said Lady Mary, holding up

an undecided card. “If one wants earnestness and an unpowdered nose,

that is one thing; and if one wants hunting and dancing and diamonds,

like Marigold, that is another. I detest worldliness,” said Lady Mary,

“but I do like common-sense. Now your dear Giles, I could see that, has

any amount of common-sense and not a scrap of worldliness.”

Alix listening, while Lady Mary thus mused, finding his place for Giles

rather as she found the place for the hovering card, recognized still

further resemblances to Maman. Lady Mary, too, could be sweetly devious.

She would feed you with spoonfuls of honey satisfied that you would

never taste the alien powder that was being administered. She was

talking to her now as to the clever child who could take no personal

interest in the question of marriage. But the experience was to Alix a

familiar one and the admonitory flavour at once detected. She was not to

take an interest, but Lady Mary was taking an interest for her. Lady

Mary was selecting her place for her very much as Maman would have done;

and, as with Maman, Alix often found a malicious pleasure in seeing

through her and pretending not to see, so now she pleased herself by

saying nothing to Lady Mary of Giles’s devotion to Toppie which would so

have set her mind at rest. “Giles is my greatest friend,” was all she

vouchsafed presently, and Lady Mary could make of it what she chose.

There had been minor intimations gliding along beside the major one. If

Giles, in his chosen career, was not to be thought of as a husband,

Heathside and the Bradleys need not be thought of as essential to Alix’s

life in England. Not for a moment did Lady Mary intimate anything so

gross as that Alix should abandon her friends; she only made it clear

that, since she could now count on new ones, she was not dependent on

Heathside. They were very strange, these English people, Alix meditated,

her dark head leaning back in the chair, her blue eyes resting with

their Alpine aloofness on her hostess. How much, if they once liked you,

they took you for granted; and how very easily, so it seemed to Alix,

they did like you. Lady Mary resembled Giles in that; and Toppie and

Mrs. Bradley; and if they swallowed you down, asking no questions, was

it because they were so extraordinarily kind, or because they were so

sure of themselves and of their conditions that they could not conceive

of your doing them any harm? The difference—how often Alix had

meditated these differences—was that the French were so sure of

themselves and of their conditions that they couldn’t conceive of your

doing them any good. The English, certainly, were more kind.

But were they kind enough to make themselves responsible for you? Giles

would. Alix had seen Giles make himself responsible. She believed that

Toppie would; and Mrs. Bradley. Even Ruth and Rosemary, if the test

came, would, she believed, shoulder her. But strangely, painfully—for

she, too, liked Lady Mary, though she did not at all take her for

granted—Alix could imagine this new friend, if consequences proved

troublesome or unpalatable, choosing, simply, as the easiest way out, to

forget all about her. She was dove-like, but she was capricious. Her

life was beautiful, and she enjoyed laying out other people’s lives in

harmony with its beauty, making a chiming pattern of you as she did with

her patience cards, because she liked to make patterns and because she

thought of herself as able to do what she liked. But it would be unwise

to give oneself to the Lady Marys or trust them as they invited you to

trust them. They, too, were far more implicated in the dust of human

conditions than they knew themselves to be. They did not really know

themselves, for they did not know the dust; and, where she herself was

concerned, Alix deeply suspected that consequences might prove dusty;

might prove troublesome and unpalatable. She felt herself to be older

than Lady Mary as she watched her and listened to her; she felt herself

wiser. Life required far more circumspection than Lady Mary imagined. If

Lady Mary was circumspect it was subconsciously, for candour was her

aim. But so one might mislead oneself and other people. And as all these

thoughts went through Alix’s mind, while Lady Mary laid out her pretty

cards, there floated across it a memory of the shrewd old face of a

priest to whom she had once gone for the yearly, the reluctant,

confession. If one was more circumspect than any English person, was it

because of the generations of Catholicism in one’s blood? One’s

confessor always took so many disagreeable things for granted, about

life and about human nature; and, on reflection, one usually found that

he had been right.

CHAPTER VI

Under pressure from Giles, who wrote that of course she must stay on,

Alix’s visit to Cresswell Abbey lengthened itself over the whole

remaining fortnight of the holidays. She went to the Fairlies’ ball,

where she wore her white and crystal dress, and to another, where she

wore her pink with the wreath of rosebuds. She danced and danced. In the

mornings she rode with Jerry.

How strange Heathside seemed to her when she at last returned to it, as

strange as when she had first come to it from France. Life at Cresswell

Abbey was so much more like life at Maman’s than anything at Heathside.

Always, at Maman’s, there was that same sense of mental grace; always

the people, the varying people, coming and going, who displayed it. The

people at Cresswell were not so graceful or so interested in mental

things; but, from the mere fact that there were so many of them and of

so many varieties, they reminded her of the life in Paris with Maman.

And besides the young men and the young girls who danced and played

together, there were pleasant, sagacious women, all so beautifully

dressed, and their political husbands. At Cresswell one had whom one

chose to amuse or instruct one; at Heathside one had to take what the

neighbourhood or the High School provided.

Oddly enough, however, she found herself, on her return, liking not only

Rosemary, her daily companion, more than she had ever liked her, but the

High School girls, too. It was, she knew, because she had seen so much

of Marigold Hamble and because they were so different from Marigold.

Marigold had not attempted to molest her in any way; she had, indeed,

attempted to attach her; but Alix, in regard to Marigold, had never for

a moment relaxed her circumspection, though, in regard to Lady Mary, it

was impossible not often to relax it. She could match Marigold at empty

affability, but she could not display Marigold’s empty affectionateness,

and the more it was displayed, the more she disliked her. If she

disliked Marigold, Marigold hated her; she knew that unerringly with her

growing power of womanly divination. Marigold hated her because Jerry

liked her so much and because she never made an effort to attach him;

while Marigold made every effort compatible with graceful concealment.

By the time she went away it was as if she had become almost as much a

part of the life at Cresswell as she was part of the life at Heathside.

Lady Mary was so fond of her and depended, strangely, Alix thought, on

her taste and judgment about so many things;—and that was like Maman,

too. And Mr. Hamble was fond of her, teaching her billiards and cracking

many cheerful jests with her at the expense of France. It was natural,

it was inevitable, that she should come back again, and for almost all

the winter week-ends she did come back. There was always a party for the

week-ends, and sometimes Jerry motored down from Oxford for the day, and

once he stayed the night for a dance, and Marigold, on this occasion,

adopted a new and surprising attitude towards Alix, behaving as if she

had never seen her before. She also gave scant attention to Jerry, and

Alix remarked that though Jerry did not really like Marigold he was

perturbed by her neglect; so perturbed that he even forgot to dance with

Alix and stood watching Marigold fox-trotting with another man, his

radiance all dimmed by resentful gloom.

“Poor darling; isn’t he foolish?” Lady Mary commented to her young

friend, and Alix, in no need of partners, said calmly that he was,

telling herself that she did not in the least mind what Jerry did. But

she did mind. Since the moment that she had seen his eyes fixed upon her

from the stairs she had minded, not because she cared for Jerry, but

because she cared, intensely, that he should care for her. Was she,

then, another Marigold? She asked herself this question fiercely, lying

awake in her firelit room, her immature young heart strained by the

sense of contest between herself and the crafty woman. Why should she

mind Jerry’s gloom? What was Jerry to her? Nothing; nothing; the answer

came to her irrefutably from the depths of her heart where anger and

pride could not penetrate to blur the truth; Jerry was nothing more than

the charming comrade, unless Marigold was there to take him from her.

Her delight in Jerry, apart from their comradeship, was only her delight

in his delight. She could not understand, she could not see what it was

she wanted nor what was this fire that burned within her, but, feeling

hot tears rising in her eyes, she remembered what the old priest had

said about the wickedness of the human heart and knew again that he was

right.

It was always a relief to get back to Rosemary. Rosemary had not a purr

in her composition, and that was a defect; but she had not a scratch

either. Even in the High School girls, whose virtues she had felt to be

so negative, she appreciated now the positive quality of straightness.

When the Easter holidays came, Alix found that there was no reason why

she should not go to Cresswell for the fancy-dress ball. Giles was to be

away for a fortnight. She would not miss him in going. There were other

reasons for accepting with a mind at ease. Marigold was safely in the

Riviera and Jerry’s letter, telling her of the fact, was very naughty,

breathing as it did an evident relief. Jerry, too, was young and his

heart, too, had been strained by the sense of pointless contest. Eager

comradeship and an assurance of peace infused every line of his pretty

dashing pages.

So Lady Mary’s car came for her and she went off, Rosemary teasing her

from the steps and declaring that they would all be on the lookout for

her picture in the “Daily Mail” dressed as the Blue Boy. Rosemary was a

dear, thought Alix, leaning out to smile and have a last glance at her.

Then came ten days at Cresswell; days that altered all her life.

She must at once tell Giles about it; that was the thought that filled

her mind as she sat with him in the study, on the April morning after

his return and hers. But there was so much to tell that she did not know

how she should begin, and what made it more difficult was that Giles was

very sad.

Toppie was in Bournemouth with her father and it was evident from her

letters that Mr. Westmacott was dying. Although Giles had not seen her

for such a long time, it was natural that he should be thinking of

Toppie rather than of her, so that she said nothing, and it was Giles

himself who introduced her theme.

“Why didn’t you stay on at Cresswell?” he asked her. “I saw Jerry in

Oxford just before I came down, and he evidently thought they were to

keep you for a month.”

“Oh, but I never intended that,” said Alix. “I said I must be back here

for your time at home.”

“That was awfully sweet of you, my dear child,” said Giles, who walked

about, looking very tall in his new grey tweeds. “I’m awfully glad to

find you here, of course; but you know what I feel about cake and

bread-and-butter, and I should like you to eat the full slice. How was

the Blue Boy costume? Jerry told me about that.”

“It was very pretty. I looked well in it,” said Alix. “Our photographs

were all taken. You shall see how I looked, Giles.”

“And you and Jerry rode a lot?”

“Yes. We rode almost every morning. I love riding, Giles. Even more than

dancing.”

“Yes. Of course you do,” said Giles rather absently. “Why shouldn’t you

love it? You like Jerry as much as ever, don’t you? You and he are great

pals?”

Alix almost had to smile a little at this, it was so transparent of

Giles, though, a fortnight ago, she would, perhaps, not have seen how

transparent it was. It made it easier for her, however, and as she

answered:—“Yes. Great pals. Yes; I like him as much as ever,”—she

raised her eyes to his and saw that he continued to look at her as

though aware of approaching confidences. It would not be at all

difficult to make confidences to Giles. She felt him very, very much

older than herself and, if that were possible, even kinder than before.

How strange, the thought passed through her mind;—it was easier to tell

Giles than it would have been to tell Maman. The moment had come and,

keeping her eyes on her friend, she said: “He wants me to marry him.”

She sat there on the sofa in her blue fritillary jumper and her dark

beads, her hands lightly clasped around one of the old leather cushions,

a little as she might have sat, in her early convent days, giving an

account of herself in the _parloir_—where the lives of the saints,

heavily gilded, lay symmetrically on the centre table—to the relative

who had come to pay her a weekly visit. Decorum was in her voice and

attitude; and though she knew a sense of trembling beneath her calm

words she was sustained by her assurance of suitability. It was suitable

that she should tell Giles of her offer of marriage.

And he did not seem at all surprised. He turned to get his pipe and

filled and lighted it, first pressing down the tobacco with his finger

in the way she liked to watch, and all this was done very deliberately

before he spoke. Then he said—could anything be easier than to tell

things to Giles—“And what do you want, Alix?”

He was very much older than she was, and very much older than Jerry. She

almost wished that Jerry were there with her to take counsel of Giles.

“You like him, too, Giles, do you not?” she said.

“Well, _that_ hasn’t much to do with it, has it?” Giles returned,

looking down at her with his smile. “What’s to the point is that you

do.”

“I should not care to like, very much, anyone you did not like,” said

Alix. “Jerry has faults. But we all have faults. I wish you knew him

better. Then you could judge.”

Giles was looking at her with a sort of astonishment, at once tender and

amused. “But I’m not your father, Alix,” he said.

“You are the only father I have ever known,” Alix replied, and, looking

down as she said this, she felt her eyes heavy with sudden tears.

“Well, then, dear little Alix,”—Giles must have seen the tears for he

spoke very gently,—“since I’m to take a father’s place, may I ask you

what you said to this young man,—this young man, whatever his faults,

whom I thought eligible in every way. Highly eligible and altogether

suitable.”

“I said I could not marry in England,” said Alix, and it was with

difficulty now that she restrained her tears, remembering her proud

words to Giles about an English marriage on the cliff-path last summer;

remembering Jerry, so bright and beautiful, and France, brighter and

more beautiful and with claims far deeper than any Jerry could put

forward. What meaning could life have for any Frenchwoman out of France?

Did not all one’s meaning come from her?

“And what did Jerry say to that?” Giles was inquiring.

“He said I was too young. He said he would wait. He said he could

perhaps live in France for part of the time. He did not speak very

reasonably.”

“It seems to me that he spoke very reasonably, indeed. He can wait. And

you are very young. How old is it you are now, Alix?”

“I shall be eighteen in July. Not young enough to change as much as he

expects,” said Alix. “No, he was not reasonable, for he contradicted

himself a great deal. I am afraid he did not mean what he said. I don’t

think that he means to wait. I don’t think that he really would live in

France. Afterwards, when we had talked a little more and he had felt

that I was not so young—he spoke very wildly.”

“How wildly?”

A faint flush rose in Alix’s cheeks. “He did not please me in the way he

behaved. It could not have happened like that with us.—Our way, I

think, is a better way.”

“How did he behave?” Giles, after a moment, inquired.

Alix’s flush was deepening. “He tried to embrace me. He tried to kiss

me.—As if to be embraced and kissed would decide everything.”

In Giles’s gaze, bent upon her, she was aware of a growing wonder. “It

does decide everything, sometimes, you know,” he offered her, as if, for

the moment, it was all that he could find to say.

“But not for people of character, Giles,” Alix returned. She did not

know from what deep tradition she spoke; but it was behind her, around

her, in her very blood. She spoke for the order that was not there to

protect her; for the sanctions that she lacked. Great events like

marriage were approached with a certain austerity. So much more than

oneself was involved. “It could only decide things for _les gens sans

mœurs_,” she said. “It displeased me very much that he should seem to

think of me as one.”

“But he didn’t think of you as one. We’re all like that, in England,”

said Giles, gazing at her with his wonder. “We’re all _sans mœurs_ when

it comes to things like this. We think them so much more important than

_mœurs_.—At least”—he stopped; he reddened:—“A man in love wants to

find out, you see,” he finished.

“To find out what?”

“Why, if you care for him. If you’re in love with him.”

“Can it not be found out without kissing?”

“Well—if you don’t care enough for a man to kiss him—Oh, you’re right,

perfectly right, Alix, dear; for yourself you’re perfectly right. I’m

lost in admiration of your rightness. But didn’t his love touch you at

all?”

Alix at this contemplated her friend in silence for some moments. It was

not the effort to be frank with Giles that held her thoughts; she found

no difficulty in being frank with Giles; it was the effort to read

herself. And, finding the truth slowly, she said: “Yes; it did touch me.

That was my difficulty. That has been my difficulty ever since, Giles;

for I cannot feel it right. He troubled me,” said Alix, and she added to

herself, in French, “_Il m’a beaucoup troublée_.”

Giles then turned away from her, putting his hands in his pockets and

going to stare out of the window, as he had done on that long ago winter

day of their first great encounter when she had felt, without knowing

why it was, that he was thinking of her and not of Maman. She could not

see what it was this time, either, that so moved him. Perhaps to find

himself so trusted. Yet he must have taken that for granted. If she were

not to trust Giles, who on earth was there to trust?

She sat, her hands clasped on her cushion, and looked into the gas-fire

which creaked and crackled softly. The little saucepan of water standing

on it sent up a thin haze of vapour and from the open window came the

loud singing of a chaffinch. Alix, as she listened to the chaffinch,

felt herself mastering with difficulty that sense of tears. She was not

happy. Not at all happy. There was something delicious in the thought of

Jerry and his love; but something that twisted, dislocated all her life.

How strange was life. How near it brought you to people; how far apart

it could carry you, with the mere speaking of a word. If she spoke the

word that Jerry had implored of her, would it not carry her far away

from Giles. Oh, there was a darker surmise. Would it not carry her far

away from Maman? Could Maman remain near if she were to marry Jerry?

Jerry promised, promised everything. He did not know himself at all. He

was very young. He was weak; and she, too, was young and weak, though to

Jerry she had shown only her strength. Yet she knew herself. She could

see her own weakness. “_Il m’a beaucoup troublée._” So much had Jerry

troubled her that she had known for a moment, his ardent eyes upon her,

the fear that she might forget Maman, France, Giles, what they might all

demand, expect of her, for the mere joy of feeling his arms go round

her.

Giles turned to her at last. “Well, then, Alix, how did it end?” he

asked her, leaning against the window-sill and looking over at her with

folded arms. “What was decided in your way, since you wouldn’t let

anything be decided in his?”

“What was decided,” said Alix, glad to take up her tale, “was that he

should tell his mother and father at once. He did not want that at all.

He said his parents had nothing to do with it. He said that until he had

my answer he would tell nobody. He said that they would think him too

young, and that he would not bear interference. It was all so wild and

foolish, Giles. Our way is so much better. But when I told him that

unless they knew his feeling for me I could not return to Cresswell, he

had to consent.”

“Well. And what then? What did they say?” Giles inquired as she paused.

“Mr. Hamble said nothing; I do not think he ever has much to say in the

_conseils de famille_. It was Lady Mary who came to me,” said Alix.

“What did she say then? Had she expected it?”

Alix lifted her eyes to her friend. “That is what I find so strange,

Giles. She had not expected it at all. Is that not a little _naïf_, do

you not think? On the one hand to give perfect freedom, and on the other

to imagine that nothing unforeseen shall happen. If one gives freedom,

one must expect the unforeseen, must one not?—She was very kind. She

said she had thought of me and Jerry as playmates, and that I was right

to say to him that we were far, far too young. She was, I saw, much

disturbed; but she was pleased with me, too, and kissed me and said I

had been a good, wise child—much too good, she said, for her foolish

Jerry. I saw that I surprised her. In all I had to say to her I

surprised her. I do not know why.”

“What did you have to say to her?”

“All my difficulties, Giles. The difficulties about France; how I could

not leave my country; and about Maman, how I must be near her always;

that it is like that with us; that we do not leave our mothers when we

marry. And I said that since I am a Catholic, the children, if I

married, would have to be Catholics, too. It all surprised her very

much. It pleased her, too, and reassured her; for though she is so fond

of me she would much rather her son did not marry a French girl and a

Catholic. And she is right in that.”

“I don’t know that she’s right,” Giles muttered. “You must have

surprised her very much, indeed, Alix. It’s been left, then, as you

intended to have it left?”

“Yes. For the present. I told Lady Mary that nothing could be done till

she and Maman had met and I wrote to Maman and told her of the offer of

marriage. I put only the difficulties before Maman. I am afraid Maman

will see the advantages rather than the difficulties.”

“The difficulties being that you cannot give up France and cannot give

up your religion?”

“Yes. And Lady Mary may have others quite of her own. Maman will have to

face them all. But I think she and Lady Mary will understand one

another.”

“And for yourself, which do you feel the greater difficulty, Alix;—your

country or your religion? You never strike me as having any religion at

all, you know. You always seem to me, as I told you long ago, just a

little pagan.”

“Ah, if it were for myself,” said Alix, “I could give up my religion

more easily than my country. Only my Church would not allow me to marry

a heretic unless I promised about the children. It is simply not allowed

with us, Giles.—Do you not know?”

“But why not turn heretic yourself, and settle the children like that?”

Giles exclaimed, controlling, she saw, a strong inclination to laughter.

But Alix knew that though she was not _dévote_ there were some things

deeper even than France, or were they not the deepest things in France?

They were there, to be taken or left, as one chose; but even if she left

them they were still there, part of her heritage; like a great landscape

on which one might not care to open one’s windows. And it was a heritage

of which one could not deprive others, whatever use one made of it

oneself.

“That I could never do,” she said, shaking her head. “I could not go

against my Church. However much I cared, Giles, I could never be a

Protestant.”

CHAPTER VII

It was only a few days after this interview that the news of Mr.

Westmacott’s death reached them. Toppie spent ten days in Bath with

friends before returning to the Rectory, and it was Mrs. Bradley who

went to her first. She said, when she came back, that Toppie wanted to

see Giles and hoped that he could come to her next morning. She wanted

very much to see him. Giles, when he had been given this message, went

away and shut himself into his study.

“Well, do you expect she’s going to have him at last!” Ruth exclaimed.

“For my part I believe she is, and a good job, too. Giles may be able to

wake her up a bit. I find Toppie distinctly depressing myself.”

“Poor old Giles,” said Rosemary, “it made him look most awfully queer.

It’ll be a shame if she doesn’t have him now, after the way he’s

waited.—If she doesn’t have him, where do you suppose she’ll live?

There’s that jolly cottage on the common empty. It would just do for

her; with an old aunt to live with her.”

“If she doesn’t have him,” said Ruth sagaciously, “my own feeling is

that she’ll go away as far as possible. None of us, except perhaps

Mummy, have ever meant anything to her. She’s not got much heart, if you

ask my opinion. Or, at all events, only heart enough for one person.”

“How did you find her?” Alix asked Mrs. Bradley when they were left

alone. “She will be too unhappy now, so soon after her father’s death,

to think of Giles. But for the future, is there hope did you feel?”

“I really don’t know what to think, dear,” said Mrs. Bradley, taking off

her hat and putting up her hand, with a gesture so like Giles, to push

back her hair. “Toppie is rather strange. That is what I feel most. She

doesn’t seem unhappy. Not more unhappy than she’s always been, I mean.

She talked about Owen all the time. She said she had never felt him so

near. That doesn’t look very hopeful for Giles, does it?”

“She might say that just because she was really turning a little towards

Giles. One might hope that it would work like that in her, perhaps,”

said Alix, though she had not indeed much hope.

“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Bradley sadly. “But haven’t you felt for a long

time that something has come between Toppie and Giles? Since last Autumn

I’ve felt it. I believe, when she came back from Bournemouth, he asked

her, and that it displeased her and made her draw away.”

“Yes, I believe, too, that it was like that,” said Alix. “I have felt

her changed.”

“You know there’s something in what Ruth says,” Mrs. Bradley went on

after a moment. “I’ve always loved and admired Toppie and thought her a

lovely creature; but I confess to you, Alix—because you understand her

so well—that she has always seemed to me a little heartless. Or is that

too strong a word? I don’t know. Something is lacking. She would spend

herself for people and do everything for them; there is no selfishness

in her at all; but it’s as if she’d do the more because she felt the

less, and had to make up for it. It’s strange, Alix, selfish,

warm-hearted people may give much less pain than lovely people like

Toppie. Owen was selfish compared to Toppie; but I don’t think he ever

gave pain.”

“He was like a pool, was he not?” said Alix, struggling with thoughts

Mrs. Bradley could not guess at; “a pool rippling and perhaps shallow,

but open to the sun; and Toppie is like a well, cold and deep and

narrow. And Giles is like the sea; deep and broad, too. How happy she

might still be if she could love Giles.”

“Yes. Yes.” The tears rose to Mrs. Bradley’s eyes. “And all that he

thinks of is to live for her and all that she thinks of is that Owen is

near her. Isn’t it cruel?—I can’t believe that about darling Owen, you

know. I haven’t her faith, and that distresses her in me, too. She

doesn’t want to be with people who haven’t her faith. I feel that. She

doesn’t want anything that seems to come in any way between her and

him.”

“And if she did not believe him so near, so specially near, she could

think of Giles as near,” said Alix, while a sense of unformulated fear,

often felt, never seen, seemed to press more closely upon her than ever

before. “It is Captain Owen who stands between them.”

“I am afraid he will stand between them always, Alix,” said Mrs.

Bradley.

Giles went off to the Rectory next morning. Ruth, Rosemary, and the boys

had planned a picnic with the Eustaces, but Alix said that she would

remain behind with Mrs. Bradley. By luncheon-time Giles had not returned

and, exchanging glances over the table, each knew that the other found

hope in the prolonged absence, for would Toppie keep Giles with her like

this unless all was going well?

“You will see him when he comes back, Alix,” said Mrs. Bradley when,

after luncheon, she stepped into the car to drive off to the station.

She had an address to give in London that afternoon and would not be

back till late.

“Ah, perhaps he will not want to see me,” said Alix. “I shall be very

discreet. I shall be there for him if he wants me; but not otherwise.”

“I think Giles would always want to see you, whatever had happened to

him,” said Mrs. Bradley.

Left alone, Alix went out to her favourite walk, the little path under

the garden wall, half obliterated by heather and grass, its bordering

gorse bushes all broken into soft clusters of gold set in prickles and

smelling of apricots. Bareheaded, her arms wrapped in her blue-and-grey

scarf, she walked, smelling the gorse, feeling the sunshine, listening

to a blackbird that fluted golden arabesques on the April air; while

above her head the leaning fruit-boughs were full of thick grey-green

buds.

The sense of excitement that had been with her since the day of Jerry’s

declaration was immeasurably deepened this afternoon by her imaginative

sharing of Giles’s ordeal. Jerry and Giles were mingled in her thoughts,

and her mind recoiled from the striving of pain and hope and fear

brought to it by their united images. Perhaps it was because she thus

evaded her deep preoccupation, perhaps it was because she paced thus in

the sunlight, as he had paced, that her memory, suddenly liberated, took

a long flight backward to find Grand-père going along the terrace at

Montarel with his dragging step and sombre eye.

It was so strange to think of Grand-père now. Since the day of her first

arrival in England he had hardly visited her thoughts. And with what a

new sadness she saw him again and felt once more his melancholy flow

into her. Was it because she had for so long forgotten him and gone so

far from him and Montarel that she felt thus suddenly the gloomy

pressure of his eyes? It was as if he watched her, her life involved in

lives so remote from his sympathy. It was not only the young yearning of

her heart towards Jerry’s yearning that seemed a betrayal of Grand-père;

this sharper yearning, not towards but over Giles, showed her as even

more removed and alien. Young love Grand-père might have understood; but

hardly this identification with an Englishman’s hopes and fears. She

doubted whether Grand-père had ever in his life spoken to an English

person. He had disliked the English. She recalled how, when she read her

history to him, he would interrupt her to speak bitterly about them.

“_Un peuple pratique; sans idéal_,” he had said. And he had said that

England had always schemed against France and made use of her grace and

generosity. How strange that was to remember now as she waited for Giles

and listened to the blackbird. They had not schemed against her;

France’s daughter; nor made use of her. Would it not be truer to say

that France, through her helpless person, had schemed against and made

use of them?

Maman schemed. Maman, with all her grace, her generosity, was oh! so

practical. “And our people eat the blackbirds,” thought Alix while the

song, as she listened to it, brought Giles’s face vividly before her.

Jerry was like a goldfinch—golden flashes, summery sweetness, swift

eagerness, and gay inconsequent song. Giles was the blackbird; its

tenderness, its trust, its something of heaven and something of drollery

too; and the way it brought long-past things back;—again; again;

again;—brooding on the past with persistent fidelity. Faithful Giles;

he would never forget. And why did the thought of goldfinches merge into

this surreptitious aching? How strange it was that one should feel the

anxious pressure of a new thought before one saw the thought itself!

Goldfinches; Les Chardonnerets; André de Valenbois; she traced the

sequence. Jerry made her think of André; only he was not so finely

tempered; not so intelligent. But the thought of André was only a pain

and a perplexity; whereas Giles believed her to be in love with Jerry;

she had seen in his eyes that he believed her to be in love; and perhaps

she was; only it was round the problem of worth that this new ache was

centring. There must be so much worth on the one hand if, on the other,

it was France that might have to be sacrificed. And Jerry was like the

goldfinches. “Worth,” she thought, listening to the blackbird’s song.

The word was such an English word. She loved the blackbird’s song, best

of all, she said to herself, trying to turn away from the still

half-unseen trouble.

Suddenly, behind her, she heard Giles’s voice speaking her name.

He had come up from the birch-woods; he had not come from the Rectory.

He had been walking; his hair was ruffled with the wind; his shoes were

muddy; he had not eaten; he was very tired. Alix saw all this in flashes

as they approached each other, her mind catching at such straws. For it

was shipwreck that his face revealed to her; so pallid, so haggard, with

dark pinches in the eyelids under the eyes and strange, ageing furrows

of suffering running down from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth.

Could the shipwreck of all his hopes make Giles look like this? There

had been no hope to lose.

He had spoken her name in a quite gentle voice, as if, indeed, he were

glad to find her there; as if she were a haven for what he could drag of

hull and spars up out of reach of the battering waves. He walked beside

her, and said: “Can we get to the study without being seen?”

“They are all out,” said Alix.

It was curious to feel, as she said it, as, silently, they made their

way into the house, that it was as if they had left him to her. Even his

mother had left Giles to her, and as they entered the study and she

heard, through the open window, the blackbird, far away, still singing,

she had the feeling of being in a dream. The past fell back into a

strange, flat tapestry, russet, silver, blue, where the figures of

Grand-père, Maman, and Jerry all went together. She and Giles stood

against that background in the study.

He had walked in before her, to the window, and he stood looking out as

if he, too, were listening to the blackbird, and when he turned at last

and looked at her it was as if he asked her what he should do with

himself. She saw him as a little boy who needed a mother to take him to

her breast. And, like the little boy, he wanted his mother to ask him

what was the matter before he could speak. So Alix asked him.

“What is the matter, Giles?”

Her voice trembled as she spoke. That was why, perhaps, Giles collapsed.

He sank into the chair before the table and laid his head upon his arms

and burst out crying.

Alix felt her heart stand still. “Captain Owen—Captain Owen has parted

them,” she thought. And the unseen fear that had that morning pressed so

near was there beside her now. It was a compulsion laid upon her; a

necessity that was not now to be escaped, though still she did not see

it clearly. She stood by Giles, gazing down at him, and her young face

was stern rather than pitiful. It was hardly of Giles that she was

thinking; or it was of his suffering rather than of him. It was because

of Giles’s suffering that the necessity was laid upon her.

Even when, as if he felt her near in his darkness, he put out an arm and

drew her to him, for the comfort of her closeness, even while she

thought, “I am his mother now,” her face kept its sternness.

He spoke at last. “She’s going to leave us, Alix.”

“Going to leave us?” Alix wondered if Toppie were dying.

“She’s going into a convent. She’s going to be a nun. It was all settled

at Bath. But she’s been meaning it for a long time.”

“Yes. I knew,” Alix murmured. “She told me that on the first day.”

“You knew?” In his astonishment Giles relinquished his clasp and fixed

his broken gaze upon her.

“On that first day. When I went to see her. She told me that she could

understand the wish to be a nun. She told me that you had them in your

Church. If one were alone, she said, it might be the best life.”

Giles now got up and moved, stumbling, towards the sofa, and, Alix

following him, they sat down.

“It’s because of him,” said Giles. He leaned his arm on the end of the

sofa and kept his face covered.

“Because of him,” Alix echoed, sitting straightly beside him and bending

all her strength to thought.

“To be more near him. She says she feels she can be more near like

that,” Giles spoke dully.

“But that is not a vocation,” said Alix after a moment. She was seeing

the face of the old great-aunt at Lyons behind the _grille_. Pale old

eyes; pale cold lips; a dead creature; yet—already the little child who

stood there before her for her blessing felt it—living by a mysterious

life unimaginable to those out in the great turmoil of the world. “You

go into a convent to renounce the world,” she said. “Not to keep it more

near.”

“Ah,” said Giles, and he uttered a hard laugh, “she doesn’t count Owen

as the world. She counts him as heaven. He wasn’t worth it, you know,

Alix,” said Giles, with the hardness in his voice. “Owen wasn’t worth a

devotion like Toppie’s.”

And, while the word “worth,” laden with its thick cluster of

associations, seemed to set a heavy bell ringing in her breast, Alix

answered: “No; he was not worth it.”

They sat then for a long time silent. Once or twice Alix thought that

Giles was going to speak to her. She saw it all now; clearly at last;

and must he, too, not see? Must he not, in another moment, tell her of

the sudden resolve to which, at last, he found himself knit? But when

she turned her eyes—appalled, yet ready, upon him, he was not looking

at her; not thinking at all of what she thought; gazing merely at the

fireless grate, his mind fixed on the one figure that filled it. Toppie

a nun; Toppie blotted out from any life where he could see or hear her.

And suddenly he said: “She was so kind to me. She was so awfully sorry

for me. She’s never been so kind—It was almost—I could see what it

might have been—Oh, Alix, I’m so miserable!” groaned Giles, and again

he put his head down on his arms and broke into sobs.

Alix looked over at him. No; it was her task; not his. Impossible for

him; inevitable for her. It was a debt to be paid. A debt of honour.

More than that. It was the crying out in her heart of intolerable grief.

She could not bear that Giles should suffer so.

He hardly noticed it when she laid her hand on his head and said: “I

will come back in a little while.” He was broken. The waves were going

over him.

She left him there. She left the house. At the garden-gate, looking

through the sunlight across the common, she stood still for a moment,

feeling that she paused, for the last time, in childhood, and that with

the next step she left it for ever behind her. It was she, now, who took

up life; who made it. Destiny went with her; she was no longer its

instrument, but its creator. And in this last moment how strange it was

to hear the blackbird still singing:—It would always remember; that was

what it seemed to be saying:—It would always remember. Even when she

had forgotten her childhood, the blackbird’s song would remember, for

her, how a child’s heart felt.

Once outside upon the common she began to run. She was carrying Giles’s

heart in her hand and it was heavy to carry. From the tapestry she felt

Grand-père’s stern eyes following her; and Maman’s eyes. Intently,

intently Maman’s eyes watched her as she ran. She could not read their

look. And far away, as if he had forgotten her, Jerry rode into the blue

distance with ladies in hennins mounted on unicorns; figures faded to

the pattern of the background. Or was it she who had forgotten Jerry?

When she reached the Rectory, she did not ring. She entered softly,

standing for a moment to regain her breath and listen. Footsteps were

moving in the drawing-room. The drawing-room door was ajar. She pushed

it open and entered.

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.

CHAPTER IX

“Oh, Maman!—What have I done to you!” It was her own voice now that

Alix heard. She was out again upon the common and she had been running.

But suddenly she was walking very slowly among the gorse bushes in the

bright sunlight, and she could hardly drag herself along. Her head ached

as if it would break in two; her limbs were of lead; and now that she

went so slowly she could no longer escape Maman. She saw her there,

moving beside her, with the intent look; silent; without a word of

blame.

“What have I done to you!” Alix muttered.

Maman went beside her, in her white dress, with the heelless shoes such

as she wore at Vaudettes, and bare-headed. It was not blame. Maman’s

look had passed beyond all thought of blame; it had passed even beyond

pity. Alix saw suddenly that what it meant was that she was waiting to

see what Alix would now say to her.

“I must think. I must think,” Alix muttered to herself. But she did not

need to think. It was as if in a kaleidoscope, turned in her hands,

memories, till now unrelated, fell suddenly into a pattern. “_La belle

madame Vervier. Divorcée, vous savez._”—Grand-père’s eyes. Giles’s

silence, when they had met. That strange, deep blush that had dyed

Giles’s face when, in the study, they had spoken of Captain Owen’s

leaves in Paris; André de Valenbois. Maman’s lie to André about Toppie.

All the things she had read in poetry, in novels, of beautiful guilty

women who had lovers. And, creeping through her young heart like a slow

surreptitious flame—falling into place, curving with darts of ardent

colour into the pattern—most recent, most intimate intuitions of what a

woman’s love might mean. “Maman!” she moaned. She fell at Maman’s feet

in supplication. Yet, while she implored her forgiveness, she was

sheltering her, too. She was putting her arms around her to protect her

from the world’s cruel scrutiny. She was promising her—oh, with what a

passion of fidelity—that their love, the love of mother and child, was

unharmed, set apart, firmly fixed and sacred for ever.

When she reached Heathside she heard that the little boys had returned.

They were shouting in the garden with the dogs, and Alix retraced her

steps, skirting the kitchen-garden wall, going softly in by the little

gate, creeping along the back passages past kitchen and scullery

unobserved. Here was Giles’s study. She turned the handle and went in.

Giles was there, sitting at his desk and writing. He had a sick, dogged

look; but he had recovered his composure. He even, as he turned his head

and looked at her, tried to summon a smile of welcome and she knew that

he felt ashamed for having broken down before her.

Alix shut the door and stood against it. “Giles, I have done a dreadful

thing,” she said. Only when she leaned against the door did she know

that she was almost fainting. She felt that all that she desired was

sleep. To tell Giles and then to fall into oblivion. Far away, in

France, she saw where she and Maman, in a sunny garden, walked hand in

hand. They both seemed very old. They were very sad. Yet they smiled at

each other. But this vision was far away. The black ordeal was before

her. “I have done a dreadful thing,” she repeated. “Perhaps you will not

forgive me.”

Giles had risen to his feet and stood, over against the window, tall and

dark with his ruffled head. He was looking at her and his eyes were

frightened.

“I have been to Toppie,” said Alix. “I have told her everything.”

He did not find a word to say.

“It was for your sake I did it, Giles,” said Alix in a dry, unappealing

voice. “I told her so that she might know it was you who loved her; not

he. Perhaps you will not forgive me.”

Giles spoke. “You told her about Owen?”

“About Owen. That he was Maman’s lover.”

Giles put his hand up and pushed it through his hair. “You told her that

for my sake?”

“Yes, Giles. So that she should not leave you to be nearer him.”

“Did you know what you were saying, Alix?” said Giles, after another

moment; and after yet another moment Alix answered him.

“Not when I told her. But afterwards. After what she said. She said that

Maman was a wicked woman. She said that Maman was a woman who had

lovers. She said that for a woman there is no greater sin. And now, I

think, I understand. Giles—Is it true?”

“My darling little Alix,” said Giles in a strange, stern voice, “it is

true. But she’s not wicked. She’s wrong; but not wicked. She’s lovely,

and unfortunate, and wrong, and she needs your love more than ever.”

As Giles spoke these words, Alix suddenly stumbled forward. She put out

her hands blindly—for as she heard him her tears rushed down from under

shut lids—and Giles’s arms received her. She was sobbing against his

breast. “Oh, Giles, thank you! Oh, Giles, do you forgive me?”

“My darling child—my darling little Alix—I understand it all,” said

Giles.

PART IV

CHAPTER I

Two faces were with Giles that night as he turned, sleepless, again and

again, on his pillow; Alix’s face, and Toppie’s face. Toppie was before

him as he had seen her on the Autumn evening in the birch-woods when she

had looked away from him with the wildness in her eyes and had said:

“It’s as if there might be anything. As if you might hide anything.

She’s changed you so much.” She was before him as she said: “It’s as if

she might have changed Owen—if he had ever come to know her as well as

you do.”

It was he himself, in his stumbling confusion, his half truths and his

half loyalties, who had that evening set the deadly surmise before her.

She had not, he believed, since seeing it, drawn a breath at ease. She

would have been ready for what Alix had come to tell her. She would have

known, at the first word, that it was true. He saw her freeze to

stillness before the Medusa head.

Yet, if Toppie’s face brought the groan of helpless pity to his lips

while he tossed and turned, an even deeper piercing came in the thought

of Alix. She stood there, against the study door, facing him; facing the

deed she had done; facing a truth worse than Toppie’s. Toppie saw

herself betrayed by what she had most loved. But Alix saw herself as a

betrayer. Her look was that of a creature at bay, with wolves at its

throat.

Again, with a suffocating compassion, he saw her blind, outstretched

hands; he heard her gasping breath: “Giles—Is it true?” His arms

received her and he felt her sobs against his breast.

She became, while his comprehension yearned over her, part of himself.

Something fiercely tender, something trembling and awe-struck dawned in

his heart as he held her. To understand Toppie was to see her sink away

from him. To understand Alix was to see her enter his very flesh and

blood. It was for him that she had dared the almost inconceivable act;

and, as he thus saw her offered up in sacrifice for him, Giles knew,

with all that had been destroyed, something beautiful had been given. It

was his justification for the act that he had, from the beginning, dared

for her. It was the answer to an old perplexity. He had seen the dear

little French girl as so securely secular, so serenely pagan; so hard.

His perplexity had centred round the word Holiness and he had feared

that she might be impervious to its meaning. But as quietness descended

slowly upon his troubled heart Giles saw, while a sense of radiance grew

about him, that it was Alix herself who showed him further meanings in

the word.

He found on waking next morning that, with all the sense of calamity

that lay like a physical weight on his heart, the sense of beauty, of

something gained, still shone round him. He needed light, for his path

was dark with perplexity. Alix had left him yesterday to go to her room,

and to bed. In the few words that passed between him and his mother on

her return from London the child’s shattered state was sufficiently

explained by Toppie’s decision. Toppie’s decision, he felt, explained

his state, too. Mrs. Bradley heard of it with consternation. “A nun,

Giles! A convent!” she had gasped. Generations of candid Protestantism

spoke in the exclamation. Nuns and convents were, to Mrs. Bradley,

strange, alien, almost sinister anachronisms. Dim pictures from Fox’s

“Book of Martyrs” and the “Pilgrim’s Progress” floated across her mind

as she heard Giles. And tears rose to her eyes as she saw an end, not

only to all his hopes, but to every link that bound them to Toppie.

There was no need to explain anything further to his mother.

He had to face at breakfast the dismay of Ruth and Rosemary.

“Poor Alix! She’s bowled out completely.—Says she doesn’t want any

breakfast; but I’m going to take her up a tray,” said Rosemary. “No, not

kidneys, Jack; if you’re ill in bed you don’t want kidneys;—a boiled

egg’s the thing, and toast, and tea. She looks rotten; perfectly rotten.

She’s awfully fond of Toppie, you see.”

“I suppose there’s no good whatever in my going over and seeing what I

can say to Toppie,” Ruth ventured to her brother when breakfast was

over. “If she’d only let herself be psycho-analysed by Miriam Stott it

would be sure to help. Miriam is extraordinary, you know. She’s a friend

of the Burnetts; she does it professionally. Toppie is just a case for

her.”

“My dear Ruth,” said Giles, “I’m sure you mean well; but you are

sometimes an arrant ass.”

“It’s all very well,” said Ruth to her sister when Giles had gone to

shut himself in his study; “ass or no ass, I’ve thought for some time

now that Toppie was quite liable to go off her chump. It’s sexual

repression coming out in religious mania; plain as day.”

“Sexual repression!” Rosemary stared. “What an extraordinary thing to

say, Ruth! Toppie’s no more repressed than you or I.”

“Yes, she is. Sensible people like you and me work it off, sublimate it,

in games and work and all sorts of healthy activities, whereas poor

foolish Toppie has always moped and brooded at home, never knowing what

she was or what she wanted. You’re old enough to read Freud now,

Rosemary, and the sooner you do the better. He will explain it all to

you.” Ruth’s universe was of the latest tabloid variety.

Giles, meanwhile, in his study, sat and wondered what he should do next.

Until he had seen Alix again he did not know. How could he go to Toppie?

What was there to say to Toppie? He had answered all her questions on

the Autumn afternoon in the birch-woods. He had answered all her

questions about Owen, and he had answered all her questions about

himself. She had seen him on that afternoon place himself on the side of

madame Vervier. “She is the product of her mother,” he had said of Alix.

“Do you find fault with it?” He had showed himself as understanding

madame Vervier; as exculpating her. Toppie might come to forgive Owen,

caught in the horrible siren’s net; she would never, he believed,

forgive him. Unless she sent for him, how could he go to her?

In the midst of these reflections he heard a motor drive up to the door

and, going to look out, saw with astonishment Lady Mary Hamble

descending from it. Lady Mary could only have come to see Alix and,

after she had disappeared, he stood wondering what Alix would find to

say to her. He had, while he had brooded on their disaster, almost

forgotten Alix’s love-story and it seemed now to have lost all its

potency. Jerry was too light, too boyish to face the resolutions that

would now be needed. “She’s too good for him,” Giles muttered to

himself, as he had muttered of the French order on the summer day at Les

Vaudettes, standing with bent head and hands in his pockets as if

listening for what next was to happen. Too good for him. Yet perhaps

Jerry would not fail.

What was next to happen did not long delay, and the sight of his

mother’s face in the doorway warned him that it was something quite

unforeseen.

“Oh, Giles, dear!—Will you come?” Rarely had he heard his mother’s

voice so shaken, and if her face had shown consternation last night it

was almost horror that it showed this morning. “Lady Mary is here,” she

said. “She came to see me. Oh, Giles—it is about poor little Alix. Lady

Mary has heard—terrible things about her mother.”

So it had fallen. Better so, perhaps, thought Giles, as for a moment he

stared at his mother in a receptive silence before following her to the

drawing-room.

Lady Mary was there, floating, to Giles’s sense, in an indefiniteness,

made up of lovely hesitancy, veils, and a touch of tears, that was yet

more definite than a steely armour. She came towards him at once with

outstretched hands, saying: “Dear Giles, perhaps you can help us.”

“For it can’t be true, can it, Giles?” Mrs. Bradley urged in her shaken

voice. She was so much more worn than Lady Mary, yet she looked so much

younger and Giles read on her face a resentment, all unconscious,

against Lady Mary and her standards. “You know her, Giles, and can

explain. She’s unconventional, isn’t she, and unworldly, and might do

unusual things and be misjudged by worldly people;—but Alix’s mother

can’t be a bad woman.”

So he found himself face to face once more with the bad woman.

“I had to come and see if you could tell me more. I’m so fond of darling

little Alix.” Lady Mary had beautifully placed herself in a corner of

the sofa, her furs unfolded, her long veil cast back from the framing

velvet of her little hat. She was not thinking about looking

beautiful;—Giles did her justice;—but she was thinking, very intently,

about doing what she had to do as beautifully as possible, and that

intention seemed to dispose her hands across the sables of her muff, to

cross her silken ankles and tilt to a most appealing angle the pearls

that glimmered in her ears. “You see—Jerry— It’s all foolishness”—she

found her way. “He’s only a boy.—He falls in love with someone

different every six months.—He fancies himself in love with Alix

now—and I don’t wonder at it. She’s the most enchanting young girl I’ve

seen for years.—But Marigold Hamble, my husband’s niece, heard in

Paris, just the other day, such deplorable things. Deplorable.” Lady

Mary’s voice sank to the longest, saddest emphasis. “Marigold is a

wretched gossip, and worse.—She’s a _mauvaise langue_; I would not

trust her story. But she gave chapter and verse to such an extent that I

had to come to you—since you know madame Vervier.”

“But gossip is always like that,” Mrs. Bradley persisted, a spot of

colour on each cheek. “Some people see evil in everything. And Giles

liked her. And everything Alix has told me of her is so lovely. And my

son, Owen, who is dead, was devotedly attached to her. It is because he

was so fond of her mother that Alix is with us now.”

For a moment, after that, Lady Mary’s soft, bright eyes, from between

the veils and the pearls, remained fixed on Mrs. Bradley’s candid

countenance and Giles knew that his mother had revealed more of the

miserable truth to Lady Mary than she herself, he hoped, would ever

know.

“You’re quite right, Mummy, darling. I do like her,” so he felt impelled

to sustain her, though he knew that such sustainment might only be for

her immediate bewilderment. “I do like her,” he repeated, turning his

eyes on Lady Mary and bidding her make what use she liked of the

information. And then he found the words he had used to Alix yesterday:

“She’s not bad. She’s unfortunate and wrong. But, it’s true:—I found

out while I was with her, that she is a woman who—” poor Giles paused,

while Lady Mary and his mother gazed at him—“who,” he finished, “has

lovers.”

After this, it was Mrs. Bradley who first spoke. “Has lovers, Giles?”

He could almost have smiled—but he was nearer weeping at his mother’s

voice. Steeped to the lips in the woes of the world as she was,

lovers—for anyone one knew—for anyone in one’s own walk of life—was

an idea almost as alien, and even more strange and sinister, than nuns

and convents. Poor little shop-girls and housemaids had lovers, though

usually known less romantically as the fathers of illegitimate babies;

she had spent much time and strength in dealing with such sad cases and

in pleading on committees that the man was most at fault. But even with

Ruth flourishing Freudian theories before her and the latest novels of

the newest young writers lying on her tables, Mrs. Bradley thought of

unhallowed relations between men and women as of dark, mysterious

deviations from the obvious standards of civilization. And now she heard

Giles say that Alix’s mother had lovers.

“Has had them for years and years, dear Mrs. Bradley,” Lady Mary sadly

but firmly defined for her. “Ever since she left Alix’s father with, let

us trust, the first of them. With the monsieur Vervier, who, Marigold

heard, has never divorced her, and still lives. The last is an André de

Valenbois and Marigold met his people. It was from them she heard the

story, and from what Giles says I see it is all too true. She is a very

distinguished, very dignified _demi-mondaine_. Quite, quite notorious.

She’s as well known in Paris,” said Lady Mary with a sigh, relinquishing

madame Vervier’s corpse, as it were, to float down the tide of her

destiny, “as the Mona Lisa. The masses may not know about her, but

everybody else does.”

“Not quite so bad as that, is it?” said Giles. He knew, while he

listened to Lady Mary, that it would be difficult to say why it was not

so bad; but the loyalty to madame Vervier that had so direfully betrayed

him to Toppie rose up in grief and anger against these suave

definitions. “Madame Vervier isn’t mercenary,” he said. “To be a

_demi-mondaine_ you must be mercenary. And I’m sure,” he added, while

his mother’s eyes, aghast, and Lady Mary’s eyes, imperturbably kind,

dwelt on him, and he knew that to the one he appeared ominously mature,

and to the other attractively boyish;—“I’m sure that Alix is

legitimate; if that’s any comfort to us.”

“And why are you sure?” Lady Mary asked, Mrs. Bradley remaining

helplessly silent.

“She confided in me,” said Giles, and it was more difficult to face Lady

Mary’s kindness than his mother’s dismay. “She was absolutely straight

with me. It was when we talked about Alix that she told me everything.

It was then I came to like her so much.”

“But, Giles”—poor Mrs. Bradley now almost wept—“how can you say you

like these dreadful people? You made friends with monsieur de Valenbois,

too—how can you like them?”

“But, dear Mrs. Bradley,” said Lady Mary with just the brush of a smile

across her lips, “one _does_ like them. Why not?”

“Dissolute people? People with no sense of conduct or duty? I’ve never

met them. Giles has never, I am sure, met them before. I don’t

understand,” said Mrs. Bradley, and her drawing-room seemed to be saying

that it did not understand either;—the Watts’s “Love and Life” and

“Love and Death,” the bowls of primroses picked by Jack and Francis, the

crétonne covers, and the crayon drawing of Mrs. Bradley’s grandmother, a

dove-eyed lady with lace tied over her head and a cameo brooch.

“I’ve met them,” said Lady Mary with sad equanimity. “I’ve cared very

much for several women who were, alas, in that sense, dissolute. Only

they were more fortunate than madame Vervier; or more discreet. They’ve

not been dissolute openly. So one hasn’t had to lose them.”

“And one’s sons can marry their daughters,” said Giles. His mind was

occupied by no anger against Lady Mary; only by that grief on madame

Vervier’s account; and on Alix’s. Lady Mary he felt that he liked; much

as he liked—it was the strangest feeling—madame Vervier. Lady Mary,

too, was straight; she, too, was magnanimous; and, her eyes on his, she

was liking him, liking him even while, not yielding an inch, she

answered: “Exactly. One’s sons can marry their daughters. The difference

couldn’t be put more clearly.” And she went on, reminding him more and

more of madame Vervier, “Some things fit in and some things don’t. Women

who have kept their place, fit; women who have lost it, don’t. It’s very

harsh; it’s very hypocritical, you will say, Giles; but it is the only

way in which a civilized society can protect itself. It’s impossible to

judge each case on its own merits; so rules are made and the people who

transgress them pay the penalty. It isn’t really that they are put out;

they put themselves out. One pretends about them as long as they allow

one to go on pretending. And when it comes to the sons and

daughters;—young people don’t realize how horrid, how crippling, simple

awkwardness can be. How awkward, for instance, to have a mother-in-law

you couldn’t possibly, ever, invite to the house; how awkward to have

babies to whom you’ve given a _demi-mondaine_ for a grandmother. It

becomes too difficult. One wants to spare one’s children such

difficulty.”

“And what does one want to spare Alix?” Giles asked. With all his

liking, with all her grace, her frankness, her resolve not to hurt, he

was feeling for Lady Mary the same repudiation that he had felt for the

ladies of the chalet—the people who connived and had no right to

reject.

Lady Mary thought for a moment before saying: “Alix can marry someone

who doesn’t mind.”

“But anyone good enough to marry Alix would have to mind,” said Giles.

“Wouldn’t you be the first to say that where she belongs is with the

people who do mind? What you really mean”—and Giles heard that his

voice became rather bitter as he went on—“is that the daughter of the

_demi-mondaine_ must stay in the _demi-monde_. I wouldn’t blame you if

you weren’t so fond of Alix for herself. I wouldn’t blame you if it were

a moral objection; but it isn’t. Those friends of yours are only in

because they’ve escaped being divorced. Your objection to Alix is

really, when you come to look at it, that her mother is

unfortunate.—Isn’t that so?”

Yes, Lady Mary reminded him, vividly now, of madame Vervier. Her soft

gaze was fixed upon him with something of the same surprise, yet with

all of the same security, that madame Vervier’s had shown. Madame

Vervier, in Lady Mary’s place, would feel precisely as she did. And he

could see madame Vervier, after the little pause, bow her head as Lady

Mary bowed hers in saying: “I accept it all. That is my objection. Her

mother is too unfortunate. That is exactly what it comes to.”

Mrs. Bradley, shut out from her son’s understanding and from Lady Mary’s

tolerance, looked from one to the other of them, a deepening flush on

her girlish cheeks. “But it’s worse, far worse than unfortunate,” she

said. “How could she have lived a life like that with a little daughter

to care for? It isn’t as if she had had only to leave a bad husband,

Giles. One could have understood that; one could have felt her right.

But to have lovers—Don’t say only unfortunate when it’s so much worse.”

“I did say she was wrong, you know, Mummy.” Poor Giles rubbed his hand

through his hair. “She knows how wrong I think her. I told her. But the

point for us is to make up to Alix for her mother’s wrongness, isn’t

it?”

“We must keep her here,” said Mrs. Bradley. “We must keep her away from

her mother’s life. It is too terrible to think of our darling little

Alix exposed to such depravity.”

“Well, that’s what I felt, you see,” said Giles.

Lady Mary was observing him. “You have been making up to Alix from the

first, haven’t you, Giles?” she said, and though the kindness of her

voice was unaltered there was in it a touch of dryness, too. “You’ve

been engaged from the first in rescuing her from the _demi-monde_. It

must have been a wonderful scene that between you and madame Vervier,

when you told her how wrong you thought her and promised her to do your

best to place Alix in another world than hers.”

Giles, his hand still clutched in his hair, now stared at Lady Mary,

arrested. “It was you who sought Alix out, you know,” he reminded her

after a moment. “It wasn’t I who asked for anything for her. You took

your chances with Alix, just as we did. It was all on your own

responsibility.”

“Dear Giles—I don’t blame you in the least for not telling me,” Lady

Mary assured him.

But Giles would have none of such assurances. “I didn’t imagine you

could. I hadn’t told my own mother. If anyone can blame me, it’s she.”

“And I’m sure she forgives you,” said Lady Mary.

“But, of course, darling,” Mrs. Bradley, confused, murmured. “How could

you have done differently?”

“And did you think, then,” Lady Mary, all mildness, continued, “that it

would never come out?”

“I knew it would have to come out if Alix ever got married,” said Giles.

“In your case, I knew that you and madame Vervier were to meet. Alix had

seen to that.”

“Yes,” Lady Mary meditated, her eyes on his. “Alix saw to it. Yes; you

knew you could count on Alix. We can all count on Alix. Alix was

perfect.” She had moved away from the theme of reproach, but it still

smarted in Giles and it was with a heavy gaze that he listened as she

went on, sweetly showing him that she, too, appreciated to the full

their little French girl. “She made everything clear. I never met such

clearness. It was wonderful to hear her on that day. Jerry had really, I

believe, touched her heart a little—poor little dear—but the last

thing she was thinking about was her own heart. She was thinking of all

sorts of strange claims and duties. The children, if she married, would

have to be Catholics, she told me! And she could not marry anyone who

asked her to give up France.”

“I hope you recognize,” said Giles, his heavy gaze on her, “that she

would have been just as perfect if, not being French and not being a

Catholic, she’d accepted Jerry.”

It was then as if, in the heavy eyes of the young man sitting there,

Lady Mary found herself arrested by an unfamiliar image of herself. She

had come to do exquisitely what had to be done; and to do it so

exquisitely that the element of forbearance in her attitude should be

barely, if at all, perceptible. She was, perhaps, doing it exquisitely;

but the mirror of dispassionate contemplation presented to her in

Giles’s gaze showed her, for perhaps the first time in her life, an

unbecoming distortion of her features. She might have been seen as

poised there, regretting that she had exposed herself to the revelation.

Then, feeling, no doubt, that no evasion was possible, she submitted to

seeing that while she could retain the grace of candour she must lose

the grace of disinterestedness, and answered: “She wouldn’t have been

nearly so perfect for my purposes.”

Giles, at that, turned his eyes away.

“You see, the truth is, my dear Giles,” said Lady Mary, and it was

perhaps not the least part of her discomfort to know that he was

uncomfortable for her, “dear little Alix needs someone better and braver

to deal with her situation than I can afford to be. Someone quite, quite

detached and devoted must fall in love with her; someone without a

worldly mother to shackle his impulses.—I’m sure he will turn

up,”—Lady Mary’s smile dwelt on him, but Giles did not meet it. “And as

far as I am concerned, my best security is Alix herself. I’m perfectly

aware of that.”

“What is your difficulty, then?” Giles inquired, still averting his eyes

from Lady Mary.

“Why, Jerry, of course,” she said, glad to escape to the wider theme.

“He won’t leave it where Alix made it so possible to leave it. He is

indignant with me and furious with Marigold. He says he won’t give up

Alix if her mother is a Messalina. I’m afraid he’s coming here to see

her.”

“Aren’t you rather proud of him?” Giles inquired.

“No, my dear Giles, I am not proud of him!” Lady Mary now gave herself

the relief of impatience, and Jerry was to bear the weight of her

discomposure. “He isn’t like Alix. He doesn’t see other people’s point

of view. He is thinking only of himself. It was just the same last year

when he wanted to marry a little dancer.”

“He’s thinking of Alix as well as of himself. And you must own that he’s

improved in taste since last year,” said Giles.

He looked at Lady Mary now, and her eyes searched his. “Does that mean

that you’re going to help Jerry?”

Giles reflected. “It means, I suppose, that I’m going to help Alix. If

he’s really good enough for Alix—of course I’ll do my best for them.”

He and Lady Mary gazed deeply at each other. She was clever. She was as

clever as madame Vervier. She saw that she had not concealed herself

from him and that he had recognized her intimations; first that, again

the old dog Tray, he should marry Alix himself, and then, that if he did

not marry her, he should at all events secure Jerry from the

unpropitious match by removing her. Yet, still, he liked Lady Mary. “Why

don’t you stand by them?” he suddenly suggested.

At that, Lady Mary rose; mournful, but showing no reprobation. “I would

stand by them, of course, if it had to be. But I must try to prevent its

being. I must stand by my darling, that’s what it comes to, as you must

stand by yours. Jerry is my only child. I don’t want madame Vervier in

my family.”

“You could count on her, too, you know,” said Giles. “She’d do

everything to make it easy, for Alix’s sake. You see, already she gives

her up to us.”

“Ah—but only because of what she hopes you can do for her!” Lady Mary

exclaimed, and it was now, again, with the note of impatience. “No; the

only person I count upon is Alix herself. I don’t see Alix entering a

family that doesn’t want her. She will draw back when she feels that we

can’t come forward. She’ll send Jerry away—whatever her mother, or you,

or Jerry himself, may say—when she sees that he speaks for himself

alone. And Jerry, when he’s given a little time, will come to feel that

it’s all too difficult. After all, they’re only children. Little by

little he will forget her.”

“And will you?” asked Giles.

Lady Mary, with sweetest, softest emphasis, had pressed Mrs. Bradley’s

hand in farewell and now moved beside him to the door. She was

gracefully occupied in swathing and enfolding; she dropped her veil; she

drew her furs together; she avoided meeting again the mirror of his

eyes; and she said: “At my age one has learned to give up things. I must

give up my dear little Alix.”

She made Giles think of a soft white hand, withdrawing itself, while

avoiding all danger of a rent, from a glove that has proved a misfit.

CHAPTER II

When Giles got back to his study, he found Alix there, looking out of

the window. The sound of Lady Mary’s motor had hardly died away. He saw

that there was nothing now that could be concealed from Alix.

“She had come to speak about my mother,” said Alix.

It was strange to hear her say, “my mother,” and pitiful. Her voice was

strange; yet he knew, in seeing her, that he, too, whatever her

sufferings might be, must count upon Alix. It was Alix who would shield

them.

“Yes. Marigold Hamble has just come back from Paris,” he said. The

gas-fire was alight this morning, burning rather low. He went to it and

turned it up so that there should be a brighter glow; and then, since

there was nothing he could say to Alix, he waited for what she would

find to say. She watched him while he bent to the fire. He felt her eyes

on him. Then, with a slow step, she came forward and sank down in her

corner of the sofa.

Alix was very pale; her eyes were set in dark circles. Glancing at her,

Giles wondered with how much of strength she thus, after the shipwreck

of the day before, possessed herself before him. He guessed from her

attitude as she sat there, straightly, yet leaning a little against the

cushion, that it had only been by the determined exercise of her will

that she had forced herself to rise on hearing the motor arrive, and to

descend to meet whatever fresh disaster her presence among them might

have given birth to. She had parted from him the day before, broken,

speechless, disfigured with weeping; but now she showed him only calm.

Sorrow had not softened or disintegrated her. It had knitted her to a

new hardness, and what she found to say as she sat there looking into

the fire was:

“So Mrs. Bradley knows now, too. Everybody knows about my mother.”

“She doesn’t conceal anything, Alix, dear,” said Giles, dreadfully

troubled. “Everybody who meets her must come to know that her life

is—unconventional.”

“Does Mrs. Bradley know that I know?” Alix asked.

“Not yet,” said Giles. “I told her just now that I’d rather not talk

about it for a little while. She’s a good deal knocked up. But, if you

agree, all I need say to her, Alix, dear, is that I myself have

explained to you the grounds of Lady Mary’s objection. Toppie, I am

sure, will say nothing. Mummy need never know more than what she’s

learned from Lady Mary. She doesn’t know what Toppie knows.”

Alix sat silent, looking into the fire.

“We needn’t talk about any of that, you see, any more,” Giles took up

presently, having walked to the window and back again while he raged at

his helplessness. “Never forget what I said to you yesterday. That’s all

you need understand. I’ll make Mummy understand it, too. And as for you,

she only loves you the more because of your—your difficulties. What we

must talk about, you know, is Jerry. I’d really forgotten all about

him.”

“Yes, I had, too.” Alix did not raise her eyes. “What is there to say of

him?”

Giles, his hands in his pockets, gazed down at her. “He hasn’t forgotten

you.”

“I hope he soon may learn to,” said Alix.

“But, Alix, Jerry is sticking to you,” Giles protested. “Jerry is all

right. I’m very pleased about him. I thought it probable he wasn’t good

enough for you and now I find he is.”

“I am quite sure he is good enough. That is not the question,” said

Alix. She sat there, leaning slightly against her cushion, her hands

folded in her lap, and looked into the fire. “I need not think of Jerry

now. I have only one person to think about, and that is my mother. I

must go back to her at once. To-morrow, Giles.”

“But surely you’re not going to chuck Jerry!” cried Giles.

For a moment, at this, Alix raised her eyes to his, and it was as if in

their dim surprise he read a reproach; the reproach of a serious race

who saw facts as they were. There was no humility or confusion in Alix.

She would not say to him that it was she who was not good enough for

Jerry; but certain facts were there and her glance told him that he did

not help her by pretending not to see them.

“Dear Jerry,” was what she said and she then looked back at the fire. “I

am sorry if he is to be made sad. But it will not be for long. He will

get over it,” said Alix, and her voice was almost the voice of madame

Vervier and of Lady Mary. “He is so young. And he must come to see that

with objections on both sides what he hoped for is impossible.”

Giles now came and sank down on the other end of the sofa. He had not

been pretending. He saw the facts quite as clearly as Alix could ask him

to do; but what it really came to was that his race, he believed with

all his heart, saw further and more important facts than the French did.

“You know,” he said, while Alix continued to gaze at the fire, “I don’t

believe you are looking at it in the right way. You’re looking at it

as—as his mother does, as your mother would, from the point of view of

convention. Why impossible since you care for him?”

“Because it would not be happy,” said Alix, who felt, evidently, no

uncertainty. “It would have been an unsuitable marriage before, when

mine were the only objections; it is much less suitable now. Such a

marriage would make his mother very unhappy. I do not believe it could

make my mother happy either. We do not think of marriage, we French

people, as you do. What you think wrong, we think right; convention,

suitability is right for us. We are not romantic in your English way.”

“And can you really believe that your way is the right way, Alix?” Giles

inquired. “Can you imagine anything more unhappy than having to spend

your life with someone you don’t love? That’s what the _mariage de

convenance_ must often mean;—and, since one hasn’t found love in

marriage, looking for it afterwards outside.”

Alix’s eyes, as Giles thus indicated the tragic unveiled figure that

stood between them, remained fixed upon the fire and she did not flush.

She only seemed to meditate, and, after a further pause, she said: “Even

marriages for love sometimes end like that. People’s hearts may change.

The heart is not always a guide. That is perhaps the great difference;

we do not believe that the heart is the guide; and you do. We believe

that since the heart can make such mistakes—both inside and outside of

marriage—we must depend on other things as well.”

“On the suitable things, you mean,” said Giles. “But isn’t it better to

make mistakes for ourselves, and to abide by the consequences, than to

have other people make them for us? As for suitability, in all the

essentials you and Jerry are perfectly matched. It’s absurd to wreck his

happiness and yours because his mother finds disadvantages in your

mother’s position. Do look at it straight, Alix.”

“But I do look at it straight, Giles,” said Alix. “And all that I can

see is that it would be impossible for me to marry Jerry.”

After this a little silence fell between them. It was strange to feel,

sitting there in the familiar room, with Alix beside him, that the grief

that had brought them so near had also set them apart. Alix had never

been so near him as yesterday; she had never been so far as now. A cold

apprehension entered Giles’s heart as he felt it. If with her first step

into maturity she was so removed, how much might not the future remove

her? What claim, what charm could England have for Alix now? And as if

she answered his thoughts she said: “Will you help me to go back to

Maman to-morrow, Giles?”

“But, my dear Alix,” cried Giles, rising and walking up and down the

room, “why go now? How would you explain your sudden return to her?

Surely you’re not going to deal her such a blow as to let her know what

has happened?”

“I have thought of it all, Giles,” said Alix, “and Jerry will be my

explanation. She knows of Jerry’s offer of marriage, and what is more

natural than that I should return to her if his family object to me? I

shall tell Maman nothing; but I hope that she soon will feel that she

has nothing more to hide from me. When Maman knows that his family

object, she will be able, very soon, to guess why.”

Giles had turned at the end of the room. “You need never say anything,

you mean?”

“I need never say anything”—Alix looked back at him—“except that

Marigold Hamble went to Paris and that when she came back and had seen

Lady Mary they objected. Maman will guess.”

“Well; and after that? What then? When she’s guessed,” Giles asked,

“what is gained?”

“What is gained is that I shall have my right to be with her. I shall

have my right to help her. While she had things to hide I could not help

her; she would not let me. Now, if other things should fail her,” said

Alix, “she will know that I am there to be depended upon.” And with the

words it was as if he saw her go forward and take the tragic unveiled

figure by the hand.

She must have felt some strain in his wide gaze, for, meeting it, she

turned away her eyes, adding: “It was Maman’s mistake ever to have sent

me here. I felt that long ago.”

“And mine to have kept you, then.” Giles turned to look out of the

window, struggling with the sense of tears. His little Alix! To what did

she return? What was the destiny there before her in the jungle? “Do I

count for nothing in all this?” he asked. “I wanted you to stay in the

first place for your own sake. I want you to stay now for mine. Put

Jerry aside. Think of me for a moment. I’ve nobody but you. You’re the

only person in the world who knows what I’ve been through, and isn’t it

true that I’m the only person who understands your life? That’s a bond,

isn’t it? What shall we do without each other?” said Giles, and,

helplessly, his voice was a younger voice at that moment than Alix’s. He

was the lonely little boy begging not to be abandoned.

Behind him Alix was silent for a moment; then she said, very gently:

“But even if I had not Maman to think of, Giles, we should not be

together; you will be in Oxford.”

“And my idea is that you should come to Oxford next year and study at

Somerville. Even while you were here we’d see each other constantly. It

would be everything to know that you were near by.”

“But it is impossible, dear Giles,” said Alix. It was the same word she

always found.

He turned to her from the window. “Do you mean because of Toppie? My

mother? Toppie will be leaving us. My mother’s first thought was that we

must keep you always.”

“She wishes to keep me in order to keep me from Maman.”

“She doesn’t know your mother. I’ll make her understand. She wants to

keep you because she’s so fond of you.”

“But that’s not enough now, Giles,” said Alix, looking across at him.

“You must see yourself that that cannot now be enough. Anyone who loves

me now must take in Maman too. It is Maman I must think of. And my place

is beside her. You will see it, too, dear Giles, when you have had time

to think. I must go to-morrow, and you must help me. Will you, Giles,

for I have no money?”

He saw that he must yield. Such resolution could not be opposed. And

after all wasn’t it best to let her go? He would have struggled against

her longer had it not come to him that nothing would move further the

cause he had at heart, Jerry’s cause, and Alix’s, than her withdrawal.

Better, much better, were Lady Mary to see that Alix was removed; better

for Jerry that he should find something to endure and wait for and win

with difficulty.

And, more than all the rest, he was sustained by that sense of secure

radiance that had come to him from Alix herself. Wherever she was,

whatever befell her, Alix would be safe. He could not have given way, he

could not have consented to see her go, if he had not felt sure of it.

So it ended as she had meant it to end.

“Of course I’ll help you, dear,” he said.

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.

“Dear Giles,” she wrote, “I think I begin to understand all that

you have tried to do for me. It was wrong of you; but I think I

understand. I have been wrong, too. Perhaps this came to show me

that one can love wrongly. I do not think I love him less now;

only differently. I know that he suffered before he died. When I

read his last letters now, I can see the suffering in them. I

send my love to everybody.

“Always your friend, dear Giles,

“TOPPIE.”

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.