The Little French Girl/Part 4/Chapter 2

Giles got back to his study, he found Alix there, looking out of the window. The sound of Lady Mary's motor had hardly died away. He saw that there was nothing now that could be concealed from Alix.

“She had come to speak about my mother,” said Alix.

It was strange to hear her say, “my mother,” and pitiful. Her voice was strange; yet he knew, in seeing her, that he, too, whatever her sufferings might be, must count upon Alix. It was Alix who would shield them.

“Yes. Marigold Hamble has just come back from Paris,” he said. The gas-fire was alight this morning, burning rather low. He went to it and turned it up so that there should be a brighter glow; and then, since there was nothing he could say to Alix, he waited for what she would find to say. She watched him while he bent to the fire. He felt her eyes on him. Then, with a slow step, she came forward and sank down in her corner of the sofa.

Alix was very pale; her eyes were set in dark circles. Glancing at her, Giles wondered with how much of strength she thus, after the shipwreck of the day before, possessed herself before him. He guessed from her attitude as she sat there, straightly, yet leaning a little against the cushion, that it had only been by the determined exercise of her will that she had forced herself to rise on hearing the motor arrive, and to descend to meet whatever fresh disaster her presence among them might have given birth to. She had parted from him the day before, broken, speechless, disfigured with weeping; but now she showed him only calm. Sorrow had not softened or disintegrated her. It had knitted her to a new hardness, and what she found to say as she sat there looking into the fire was:

“So Mrs. Bradley knows now, too. Everybody knows about my mother.”

“She doesn't conceal anything, Alix, dear,” said Giles, dreadfully troubled. “Everybody who meets her must come to know that her life is—unconventional.”

“Does Mrs. Bradley know that I know?” Alix asked.

“Not yet,” said Giles. “I told her just now that I'd rather not talk about it for a little while. She's a good deal knocked up. But, if you agree, all I need say to her, Alix, dear, is that I myself have explained to you the grounds of Lady Mary's objection. Toppie, I am sure, will say nothing. Mummy need never know more than what she's learned from Lady Mary. She doesn't know what Toppie knows.”

Alix sat silent, looking into the fire.

“We needn't talk about any of that, you see, any more,” Giles took up presently, having walked to the window and back again while he raged at his helplessness. “Never forget what I said to you yesterday. That's all you need understand. I'll make Mummy understand it, too. And as for you, she only loves you the more because of your—your difficulties. What we must talk about, you know, is Jerry. I'd really forgotten all about him.”

“Yes, I had, too.” Alix did not raise her eyes. “What is there to say of him?”

Giles, his hands in his pockets, gazed down at her. “He hasn't forgotten you.”

“I hope he soon may learn to,” said Alix.

“But, Alix, Jerry is sticking to you,” Giles protested. “Jerry is all right. I'm very pleased about him. I thought it probable he wasn't good enough for you and now I find he is.”

“I am quite sure he is good enough. That is not the question,” said Alix. She sat there, leaning slightly against her cushion, her hands folded in her lap, and looked into the fire. “I need not think of Jerry now. I have only one person to think about, and that is my mother. I must go back to her at once. To-morrow, Giles.”

“But surely you're not going to chuck Jerry!” cried Giles.

For a moment, at this, Alix raised her eyes to his, and it was as if in their dim surprise he read a reproach; the reproach of a serious race who saw facts as they were. There was no humility or confusion in Alix. She would not say to him that it was she who was not good enough for Jerry; but certain facts were there and her glance told him that he did not help her by pretending not to see them.

“Dear Jerry,” was what she said and she then looked back at the fire. “I am sorry if he is to be made sad. But it will not be for long. He will get over it,” said Alix, and her voice was almost the voice of madame Vervier and of Lady Mary. “He is so young. And he must come to see that with objections on both sides what he hoped for is impossible.”

Giles now came and sank down on the other end of the sofa. He had not been pretending. He saw the facts quite as clearly as Alix could ask him to do; but what it really came to was that his race, he believed with all his heart, saw further and more important facts than the French did.

“You know,” he said, while Alix continued to gaze at the fire, “I don't believe you are looking at it in the right way. You're looking at it as—as his mother does, as your mother would, from the point of view of convention. Why impossible since you care for him?”

“Because it would not be happy,” said Alix, who felt, evidently, no uncertainty. “It would have been an unsuitable marriage before, when mine were the only objections; it is much less suitable now. Such a marriage would make his mother very unhappy. I do not believe it could make my mother happy either. We do not think of marriage, we French people, as you do. What you think wrong, we think right; convention, suitability is right for us. We are not romantic in your English way.”

“And can you really believe that your way is the right way, Alix?” Giles inquired. “Can you imagine anything more unhappy than having to spend your life with someone you don't love? That's what the mariage de convenance must often mean;—and, since one hasn't found love in marriage, looking for it afterwards outside.”

Alix's eyes, as Giles thus indicated the tragic unveiled figure that stood between them, remained fixed upon the fire and she did not flush. She only seemed to meditate, and, after a further pause, she said: “Even marriages for love sometimes end like that. People's hearts may change. The heart is not always a guide. That is perhaps the great difference; we do not believe that the heart is the guide; and you do. We believe that since the heart can make such mistakes—both inside and outside of marriage—we must depend on other things as well.”

“On the suitable things, you mean,” said Giles. “But isn't it better to make mistakes for ourselves, and to abide by the consequences, than to have other people make them for us? As for suitability, in all the essentials you and Jerry are perfectly matched. It's absurd to wreck his happiness and yours because his mother finds disadvantages in your mother's position. Do look at it straight, Alix.”

“But I do look at it straight, Giles,” said Alix. “And all that I can see is that it would be impossible for me to marry Jerry.”

After this a little silence fell between them. It was strange to feel, sitting there in the familiar room, with Alix beside him, that the grief that had brought them so near had also set them apart. Alix had never been so near him as yesterday; she had never been so far as now. A cold apprehension entered Giles's heart as he felt it. If with her first step into maturity she was so removed, how much might not the future remove her? What claim, what charm could England have for Alix now? And as if she answered his thoughts she said: “Will you help me to go back to Maman to-morrow, Giles?”

“But, my dear Alix,” cried Giles, rising and walking up and down the room, “why go now? How would you explain your sudden return to her? Surely you're not going to deal her such a blow as to let her know what has happened?”

“I have thought of it all, Giles,” said Alix, “and Jerry will be my explanation. She knows of Jerry's offer of marriage, and what is more natural than that I should return to her if his family object to me? I shall tell Maman nothing; but I hope that she soon will feel that she has nothing more to hide from me. When Maman knows that his family object, she will be able, very soon, to guess why.”

Giles had turned at the end of the room. “You need never say anything, you mean?”

“I need never say anything”—Alix looked back at him—“except that Marigold Hamble went to Paris and that when she came back and had seen Lady Mary they objected. Maman will guess.”

“Well; and after that? What then? When she's guessed,” Giles asked, “what is gained?”

“What is gained is that I shall have my right to be with her. I shall have my right to help her. While she had things to hide I could not help her; she would not let me. Now, if other things should fail her,” said Alix, “she will know that I am there to be depended upon.” And with the words it was as if he saw her go forward and take the tragic unveiled figure by the hand.

She must have felt some strain in his wide gaze, for, meeting it, she turned away her eyes, adding: “It was Maman's mistake ever to have sent me here. I felt that long ago.”

“And mine to have kept you, then.” Giles turned to look out of the window, struggling with the sense of tears. His little Alix! To what did she return? What was the destiny there before her in the jungle? “Do I count for nothing in all this?” he asked. “I wanted you to stay in the first place for your own sake. I want you to stay now for mine. Put Jerry aside. Think of me for a moment. I've nobody but you. You're the only person in the world who knows what I've been through, and isn't it true that I'm the only person who understands your life? That's a bond, isn't it? What shall we do without each other?” said Giles, and, helplessly, his voice was a younger voice at that moment than Alix's. He was the lonely little boy begging not to be abandoned.

Behind him Alix was silent for a moment; then she said, very gently: “But even if I had not Maman to think of, Giles, we should not be together; you will be in Oxford.”

“And my idea is that you should come to Oxford next year and study at Somerville. Even while you were here we'd see each other constantly. It would be everything to know that you were near by.”

“But it is impossible, dear Giles,” said Alix. It was the same word she always found.

He turned to her from the window. “Do you mean because of Toppie? My mother? Toppie will be leaving us. My mother's first thought was that we must keep you always.”

“She wishes to keep me in order to keep me from Maman.”

“She doesn't know your mother. I'll make her understand. She wants to keep you because she's so fond of you.”

“But that's not enough now, Giles,” said Alix, looking across at him. “You must see yourself that that cannot now be enough. Anyone who loves me now must take in Maman too. It is Maman I must think of. And my place is beside her. You will see it, too, dear Giles, when you have had time to think. I must go to-morrow, and you must help me. Will you, Giles, for I have no money?”

He saw that he must yield. Such resolution could not be opposed. And after all wasn't it best to let her go? He would have struggled against her longer had it not come to him that nothing would move further the cause he had at heart, Jerry's cause, and Alix's, than her withdrawal. Better, much better, were Lady Mary to see that Alix was removed; better for Jerry that he should find something to endure and wait for and win with difficulty.

And, more than all the rest, he was sustained by that sense of secure radiance that had come to him from Alix herself. Wherever she was, whatever befell her, Alix would be safe. He could not have given way, he could not have consented to see her go, if he had not felt sure of it. So it ended as she had meant it to end.

“Of course I'll help you, dear,” he said.