This was very pleasant to Alix.
“She has a false face,” she observed. “I shall certainly let her alone; for she displeased me from the first.”
Then Lady Mary came back and sat down and talked with them, of France again, and of Oxford, and Professor Cockburn, and then Jerry, having changed his hunting-clothes for homespun, came and carried Giles off to billiards, but Lady Mary said she would keep Alix with her, and, when the two young men were gone, said: “How dear he is, your Giles; such a delightful solid mind,” so that Alix flushed with pleasure. She was glad to have Giles appreciated and it made her fonder of Lady Mary that she should appreciate him.
Lady Mary then questioned her about Giles and his family and how she had come to know them, and Alix, replying, felt herself move along the surfaces prepared for her by Giles and Maman. She told Lady Mary about Captain Owen and how great a friend he had been and of how he had wished her to know his family. There was nothing else to tell. Lady Mary knew just what Mrs. Bradley knew.
She was glad to rest for a little while before dinner, lying in her room on the sofa with a soft cushion under her head and the firelight softly glowing on her closed eyelids, until it was time to dress. Debenham had laid out on the bed the very dress she herself would have chosen; her prettiest dress, of white and crystal; and the sense of elation and excitement mounted in her with thick swift strokes, as of rising wings, while, before the mirror, Debenham fastened it for her. Debenham thought her beautiful. Her quiet, sagacious face, glancing at the reflected figure, told Alix that she thought so; and Debenham had seen many pretty young ladies.
When she was left alone, she stood and looked at herself. Yes; was it true. Beautiful that little head; beautiful the long, splendid throat, the breast and arms so white. In the tilted mirror she looked like a naiad hovering within the thin falling lines of a fountain. Tiny crystal drops fell along her arms and flowed from breast to hem. She moved, and liquid lines of crystal moved with her. Her shoes were of silver and a fillet of twisted silver and crystal bound her dark hair. “Dieu que je suis belle!” Alix murmured. She seemed to float on a sense of buoyant power. She had never known such happiness.
They all thought her beautiful. She saw that as she came among them. Jerry was there—he was the first she saw, looking at her; and the young sailor looked; and kind Mr. Hamble; Marigold Hamble in pink and diamonds looked, too, very hard.
“The lovely dress! Paris, of course,” said Lady Mary, smiling at her as though she were grateful to her for placing an object so decorative in her drawing-room.
“Paris and Maman,” Alix smiled, and the memory of Maman rushed over her almost with a smart of tears. She owed it all to Maman, this transfiguration. She was not really so beautiful, by daylight. It was Maman’s magic that enveloped her, and Maman was not here to see her in it. It was cruel that a stranger, Lady Mary, should garner Maman’s sheaves.
She saw now that Giles’s large eyes were dwelling upon her from a distance; but they were not like the other eyes. They kept their look of thoughtfulness. He was not seeing her in the magic. He was only seeing her as herself. It would always be only oneself that Giles would see. From within her fountain of happiness she glimmered a little smile over to him—for Jerry was beside her saying that he was to take her in to dinner—and in Giles’s answering smile she read something touched and gentle. She was glad that it should be so, for Giles might have looked gloomily at her, seeing her so happy at being beautiful; but he was only touched; and those gentle eyes of Giles’s seemed at once to quiet the excitement and to reassure her, as though he said: “But of course you must be happy, dear kid.”
The long table in the dining-room, shining under the candles, was like a lake of bright water all drifted over with floating knots of flowers. Everything made her think of gliding, falling water to-night; everything was beautiful. Jerry was beside her and he was used to beautiful people. He saw them every day of his life. He was like André de Valenbois in that. Giles’s very thoughts about André crossed her mind as she turned her eyes on the charming face beside her. He, too, was a person removed from the earthy, primitive aspects of life; he, too, had only had, always, to choose what he would have and never to have what he did not choose. And now—she felt it falling around her, cool and refreshing as the sense of crystal drops—it was herself he chose rather than Mrs. Hamble. He did not look at Mrs. Hamble. He talked and talked, trying to find out about her all the things that interested him; her tastes, her prejudices, the colour of her personality. He talked happily, eagerly, with something of the ardour of a little boy playing at gardening; that was the simile that came to Alix while she smiled quietly at him—a little boy who gathers up armfuls of flowers and thistles, the lovely and the commonplace together, and brings them for admiration:—“Beautiful, isn’t it?” was what he said continually; and he did not see that there were thistles. He was younger than André; much younger. She was dimly glad of that, for something in the likeness she had felt disquieted her. She liked him better than André, though he had not André’s fine discrimination. His admirations lay along the paths of fashion, and the fact that fashion prided itself on being a pioneer led him into ardours for the new and the strange soon discarded for the newer and the stranger. He had an air, Alix saw, of caring, immensely, that you should sympathize with him about the latest painter, the latest poet, the latest composer. He did not really care whether you sympathized or not; but if you didn’t, you were negligible for his purposes. She saw that he had already found Giles negligible; and she wondered why he did not put her into the same category. Did he imagine that she possessed and withheld even fresher appraisals? It was not so and she did not pretend it, looking at him with her quiet smile and softly shaking her head now and then. She had never thought of herself as a person whose appraisals mattered; she had thought of herself as too much of a child. But perhaps it was because Jerry found her beautiful that he was indifferent to her indifference.
After dinner they danced. Many young people arrived and the tall red Chinese screens in the hall were put back. There was a piano and two violins and one of the young men who played had such a gloomy face, like a French or Italian face—like Jules’ face—that Alix wished she could talk to him and ask him if he were a foreigner. But there was no time for talk. She and Jerry found that their steps went beautifully together. She danced with him; many times; and with other young men; and Jerry helped her to evade Mr. Fulham who, seeing how many partners she had, wished to be one of them. But with Jerry it was best of all, and how much more important it was to have steps that chimed than to care about the same books and pictures! It seemed to-night, among the flowers, and lights, and music, the most important of all things; though once or twice, when she found Giles’s eyes again, she knew that the sense of ecstasy on which she floated must have the evanescence of a mirage. Dear Giles. She made him dance with her and they laughed together as they went slowly round the hall, for Giles did not dance well. Afterwards she saw that he talked with Lady Mary and with Mr. Hamble. He did not go into the mirage. He only looked on at it.
When Alix fell asleep that night in the firelight, she dreamed that a cool crystal stream flowed round her and that she floated on its silver surfaces. Golden lights lay like a chain of little suns along its margin and her hands, softly moving in the current, felt rosy petals pass between their fingers. The throb of dance-music, sweet, reckless, imbecile, beat in her blood, and in her ears the sound of Jerry’s voice saying: “Beautiful, isn’t it?” And Giles’s eyes were there watching her. In her dream she wanted to tell Giles that she had nothing to conceal. She tried to tell him, but she felt the silver stream flowing over her lips and making them dumb, though they smiled. If Giles looked at her like that she might begin to blush. But even so she did not want him gone. While he was there she was so safe.
“And you will see that Blaise is happy until I come back, Giles?” said Alix, as she stood beside the car next morning to say good-bye. “And you will write to me?”
“We haven’t time for many letters, you know,” Giles smiled reassuringly. “I’ll see to Blaise.”
“Give my love to them all,” said Alix. The car was beginning slowly to slide away and she went beside it. She was not unhappy; not sad; it was only that she was a little frightened to see Giles go. If one night had changed so much in herself, what changes might not one week bring? She almost felt she loved Ruth and Rosemary this morning. Whatever their deficiencies they had not false faces. It was true that they could not, even if they had wished to, have concealed themselves gracefully; but it would never occur to them to wish to be concealed; gracefully or otherwise. Neither were they insipid like the two Wagstaffe girls. If Ruth and Rosemary were like roast mutton, the Wagstaffes, Alix reflected, were likefondants. She stood gazing after Giles for a moment as he disappeared among the beeches.
Jerry and his mother stood on the step above her, having come out with her to say good-bye. Lady Mary was looking at her, a little, she felt, as Giles had looked at her last night; thoughtfully, with great kindness in the thoughtfulness; seeing her as herself.
“Now you’re going to let me teach you how to ride,” said Jerry. “Mummy has a habit for you.”
“An old one of mine. I don’t ride any longer,” said Lady Mary, putting her hand on Alix’s shoulder as they went into the warm sweet house. “I think it will fit you beautifully. You and I are rather of the same build, aren’t we, Alix?”
“Alix’s shoulders are broader than yours, Mummy,” said Jerry, “and I’m afraid, darling, that her legs are a little longer. She’s rather like a Jean Goujon nymph and you are just a lovely mortal size.”
It was odd, Alix thought, to have a young man define the length of one’s legs; but notmal élevé, as it would have been in France. Jerry discussed the physical attributes of his friends as he would have discussed their moral qualities.
“The habit may be a trifle too short, it’s true,” said Lady Mary; “but that makes no difference. The Jean Goujon nymph will be able to get into it. We must dress Alix in the Gainsborough Blue Boy clothes one day, Jerry, to show off her long legs. We must have a little fancy-dress ball in the Easter holidays.”
“Oh, but I’m afraid I cannot be here in the Easter holidays,” said Alix. “You see, those are Giles’s holidays, too. I should miss him.”
“You’ll be coming here off and on, I hope;—and Giles will, too, perhaps,” smiled Lady Mary. “I can always send the car for you. Where’s Marigold, Jerry? Not up yet?”
“You know, she looks rather like the Blue Boy, doesn’t she?” said Jerry. “Only his eyes aren’t blue, and he has a gentler face. Alix’s face is ratherfarouche;—is that the word?—You frighten me a little, Alix, with those cold blue eyes of yours.—Marigold’s still in bed. She sent for me to see her just now. Writing letters,” said Jerry, “in a most adorable little cap; a Watteau little cap; most frightfully becoming. That was why she sent for me, of course, so that I should see her in it; though the alleged motive was the Fairlies’ ball.”
“Naughty Jerry,” smiled his mother.
“Not a bit naughty. I told her I saw through her. I told her that the cap was a brilliant success. Nothingsouterrainabout me.—Eh, Alix? Is that right?” They all called her Alix;—as if she had been ten years old; or as if they had always known her.
“I think you must try to talk a little French with Alix,” said Lady Mary. “His accent is good, isn’t it? But his verbs and genders are dreadful, andsouterrainisn’t right, my dear boy.”
“Don’t you think Marigold quite extraordinarily beautiful?” Jerry inquired. “Isn’t the colour of her hair and eyes a Hans Christian Andersen fairy-tale colour?”
“But she is much more like a Watteau than like a fairy-tale,” said Alix.
“But Watteau people are fairy-tale people.—You mean she’s an artificial fairy-tale.—Yes, I see what you mean.—And it’s really more Fragonard than Watteau, too—‘A dainty rogue in porcelain,’ that’s what she is. Do you read Meredith? I love him, though I know he isdémodéjust now.”
But Alix had not read Meredith.
Half an hour later, when Jerry had lightly hoisted her to the saddle and the groom had released the chestnut’s eager head, Alix felt as if, at last, she had discovered her true vocation. This—yes, even more than dancing—was what she had been made for.
She did not feel that she had anything to learn. She felt no fear. Her hands went easily where Jerry told her to put them; her knee and foot found their security. Nothing this delicious creature could do, moving with satin ease and steel strength beneath her, would take her unawares. She understood him, and he, his gentle ears quivering at the sound of her voice, understood her. “Yes; yes, I see,” she said, as Jerry gave his explanations. “Yes, we will walk to the end so that I shall be quite used to it and then canter on the turf. Yes; I understand; holding with my knee.”
It was not swimming, or dancing, or flying, but it combined the delights of all three. One floated, buoyantly sustained; one embodied the beauty of rhythmic movement; one glided at a height strange enough for a sense of slight, delicious trembling. The earth was new, seen from this height; one looked into the branches of the beeches at the level where the chaffinches were perching and flitting.
“You sit as if you were born to it,” Jerry told her, and she replied that her father had been a great horseman.
Then came the canter. It surprised her a little. For one surging moment, cheeks hot, lips closed fast, she felt that she was coming off and then, suddenly, that nothing could bring her off. Between that fast-held knee and that supple foot, she was poised in safety. Her mind and body adjusted themselves to the sense of mastered peril.
“Splendid!” Jerry smiled at her when they drew rein at the end of the long upland.
Below them the country fell away in rippled planes of colour, like a tapestry, russet, silver and blue. Alix seemed to see it threaded with ladies riding unicorns and wearing high white hennins. Fragments of song rang in her mind; the joyous melancholy ofLes Filles de la Rochelle, the blissful sadness ofL’Amour de moi. Riding brought such memories crowding to one’s mind. This was a better intoxication than the dancing mirage. It went deeper. It set the bells of all the buried Atlantises of the soul ringing.
“What are you thinking aboutnow!” she heard Jerry ask. She had almost forgotten Jerry while she gazed and listened;—far away in France; in an old, old France. But it was part of the better happiness to find Jerry again and to feel herself again a child, with Jerry her comrade. Mrs. Hamble was as remote as a lady on a unicorn. The woman’s happiness of the night before, made up of power and conquest, faded before the child’s mere joyousness. Jerry made her think of the chestnut horse she rode, with his eager russet head.
“Oh, I do so like riding, Jerry!” she exclaimed.
“You’d soon be able to hunt, if you get on like this. How I wish I could take you out hunting!”
“I should not care to hunt,” said Alix. “This is what I like. Riding in a beautiful country with everything happy around one.”
“But everything is happy around you when you hunt,” said Jerry. “Hounds and horses and people. One is part of an immense shaded joy. And one never sees how beautiful a country is until one has ridden right across it and known that at every wall one might break one’s neck.”
“I like this better,” said Alix. “This is like riding with a flower in one’s hand, and that would be to ride with a knife between one’s teeth.—Though I understand the pleasure of the danger.—But the fox would spoil it all for me. He would not be part of the immense joy.”
“Oh, I assure you—he enjoys it, too, in his own sharp way. Imagine his joy when he outwits us.”
“A terrible joy,” said Alix. “There must always be terror in his blood. No; I could not bear to feel that he was there, with his straining heart, before us. I could never hunt. But I should like to ride for ever.”
When they got back they went to find Lady Mary in the morning-room.
“Alix is a marvel, Mummy!” Jerry exclaimed. “She’s not afraid of anything, and rides as if she’d been born in the saddle.”
“I was afraid once,” said Alix. “When we started to canter.”
Lady Mary sat at her writing-bureau, photographs and flowers ranged about her, and smiling at them both she said: “You must come and tell me all about it, Alix, when you’ve had your bath. Will you? I shall be here.”
“And I must do some reading,” said Jerry. “Au revoir, Alix. Billiards after lunch, you know.”
Lady Mary had finished her morning tasks when Alix returned and was sitting near the fire with a little table before her on which she was laying out tiny patience cards. Alix again thought of a lady in a hennin as she saw her there in her long, grey, fur-bordered robe; a hennin would have been so becoming to her.
“Curl up in the big chair,” she said. “You must be tired, and you’ll find yourself very stiff by to-morrow. Do you smoke? Not yet? Good. I’m glad not. Joan and Patience both do already, and I’m sure it’s bad for them. That’s all their life it seems to me; smoking and dancing. Have you many girls in France like that? I haven’t stayed in France for so many years.”
“I should not be allowed to smoke; not until I married, I think,” said Alix, leaning her head on the side of the big chair and watching her hostess’s white hands place the little cards. “I don’t know about other girls. But I do not think that they have as much liberty as in England. I like liberty; but not for so many cigarettes.”
She felt very much at home with Lady Mary, who continued to make her think of Maman.
“Liberty for the right things and not for the foolish things,” smiled Lady Mary. “And it’s a pity to have liberty for foolish things even when one marries. Tell me where you and Jerry went. Across the ridge and down to Minching’s Pond? A wonderful place that is for birds in Spring—Three Oaks Corner; yes; only the oaks went during the war. Did Jerry tell you? Dreadful to see the empty places. And as far as the Mill. That was a splendid round. Ah, I felt sure you’d like Darcy. Isn’t he a lamb of a horse! Jerry wanted you to have Darcy.—I’m so glad you are here to play with Jerry,” Lady Mary went on. “Marigold is such a flirt. She can’t help it.” Lady Mary smiled at Alix and shuffled her cards. “She is a born siren. And Jerry is too young for sirens.”
Alix had again the sensation of being confided in despite her youth. It was curious how quickly, if they liked you, they confided in you, these strange English people.
“You didn’t answer Jerry this morning about her looks,” Lady Mary was going on. “It’s a thin little face, I feel, don’t you? And too pink-and-white; too blue-and-gold. But perhaps that’s because I’m dark. I suppose dark people, like you and me, Alix, usually suspect the white-and-gold ones of being cats.”
“I do not like her face,” said Alix.
“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, youarea 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. Thoughhehas 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 hismétier. 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 theyshouldstrive 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.
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 theparloir—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,thathasn’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 forles 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 allsans mœurswhen it comes to things like this. We think them so much more important thanmœurs.—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 theconseils 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 littlenaïf, 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 notdévotethere 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.”
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 thegrille. 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.