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 theciergeunlighted. “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 coldcierge; 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.
“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
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 amauvaise 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 dignifieddemi-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 ademi-mondaineyou 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, “onedoeslike 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 ademi-mondainefor 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 thedemi-mondainemust stay in thedemi-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 thedemi-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.
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 themariage de convenancemust 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.
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.