Anne Douglas Sedgwick

“ Giles laughed, though aware of ambiguous cross-currents. “I’m glad you find us noble.”
“She is quite right, mon ami,” André said cordially. “You are a race of adventurers. And it is as adventurous to reflect among a people indifferent to thought as it is to set forth with a bundle on your back and conquer a continent by chance. You are a people, in other words, who do not need to see your goal.”
“But you prefer your own rationality,” said Giles.
“I prefer it; yes. I distrust instinct; perhaps because in our history, as mademoiselle Alix has pointed out, we have so often been foiled by it. ”

“ Giles stood motionless, gazing down at her. He was seeing, suddenly, straight into Toppie’s heart; straight into the heart of their situation. How futile were his denials, when he could deny only for himself—and not for the other. The vein of piercing intuition in Toppie had led her to the portals of the truth. The name she saw inscribed there was the wrong name; that was all. Change Giles to Owen, and the truth was in her grasp. She knew that madame Vervier was beautiful, mysterious, compelling. She knew that both he and Owen had felt her a goddess. A chill of fear crept about Giles’s heart. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Jerry was a boy beside him; beside the power of André’s beautifully possessed, beautifully balanced experience, Jerry would always seem a boy. He remembered, snatching still at hope, that Alix had found such completeness agaçant; but then she might not really like him even now. It might be some helpless hereditary strain that had brought her, her young heart proudly pruned of its first happy buddings, under the spell of the love that monsieur de Maubert had defined on the distant Summer day; the love that burns itself out and that may have nothing to do with liking. ”

“ Giles said that they heard of her.
“Femme exécrable!” madame Dumont exclaimed. “Femme sans cœur! How many lives did she not destroy!”
“Ah, but I am always on the side of the woman, when it comes to les affaires de cœur,” said mademoiselle Fontaine, with a smile at Giles. “We are so often the losers that I feel a certain satisfaction when a woman, even if ruthlessly, redresses the balance. And with all its romanticism, what a great talent it was, that of the good George! Do not say too much ill of her.”
“Good! You can call a woman good who tricks one lover under the nose of the other! ”

“ 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.” ”

“ What fate more pitiful for a beautiful woman than to find a rival in her daughter!”
“Nothing of that sort could ever happen between Alix and her mother,” said Giles angrily.
“Nothing of that sort. Précisément. You, a young man, and I, an old woman, see eye to eye when it comes to such a comparison,” madame Dumont disconcertingly concurred. “La petite Alix is not of a type to seduce. She has distinction; an air of race; mais elle n’est pas séduisante!—Tandis que la mère!”—and madame Dumont, with eye and hand uplifted, took Heaven to witness of her appreciation. ”

“ She felt sure that it had been in the hope of a word with Toppie rather than to fetch herself that Giles had come.
“Oh, we have so many words; every day; all our lives long,” said Toppie, and, though she continued to advance, Alix felt a slight constraint in her voice. “He is a dear, is he not, Giles?” she added, as if irrelevantly.
“Oh, a dear!” said Alix. “I felt him that at once. And so good; and so intelligent.”—“More intelligent than Captain Owen; more good,” was in her mind. But that made, she knew, no difference. People were not loved for their intelligence, or their goodness, either. ”

“ Alix felt a little shy of sharing with Giles her deepest intuition about Mrs. Bradley’s selflessness.
“I am afraid not enough, Giles. Did he really see her as you see her? I am afraid he was not a part of herself, and that is what one expects in England and that is why she must have been sad. And I think she loved best always—if you do not mind my saying so—the ones who were most part of herself—you and Captain Owen and Francis. One cannot help loving most people who are most part of oneself.” ”

“ He knew, while he listened to Lady Mary, that it would be difficult to say why it was not so bad; but the loyalty to madame Vervier that had so direfully betrayed him to Toppie rose up in grief and anger against these suave definitions. “Madame Vervier isn’t mercenary,” he said. “To be a demi-mondaine you must be mercenary. And I’m sure,” he added, while his mother’s eyes, aghast, and Lady Mary’s eyes, imperturbably kind, dwelt on him, and he knew that to the one he appeared ominously mature, and to the other attractively boyish;—“I’m sure that Alix is legitimate; if that’s any comfort to us.” ”

“ Lady Mary is so fond of you and she would have stood by. Darling, it isn’t only loving;—no one knows that better than you do;—it’s living. Do you face it all? To live in Oxford? To be the wife of a humdrum scholar? To have no balls and no riding? To wear”—Giles found—“the wrong sort of clothes and think about ordering breakfast. Darling, Jerry loves you, you know, and the bitter things would all fade away. Such a different life is there for you to take. I can’t help seeing, though we love each other, that it’s the life you were meant for and that the life with me in Oxford isn’t.” ”

“ The sense of savour, of satisfaction everywhere; of life as its own justification. The very smell, warm, golden, balmy, wafted towards him from the pâtissier’s was such as no pastry-cook’s shop in England could ever yield; a dank surmise of suet and strong tea would there hang about it and none of the cakes would give one the same confidence of tasting as good as they looked. Why was it, Giles wondered, as Alix came out with her flat-bottomed, cone-shaped, snowy little parcel, saying as she stepped in beside him: “It is in honour of your arrival, Giles, the baba. ”

“ And when he had spoken he turned, leaning against the window, and looked at Alix, poised in her whiteness above the bowl of glowing flowers, looked at her as Giles had never before seen him look; as if with resentment that she should be so beautiful; as if with a challenge to her to deny his right to find her so.
“Oh, but that is not so,” said Alix. “One loves roses—especially white roses;—and carnations; and jasmine; nothing in Spring is more lovely than jasmine.”
“I would give them all for a handful of primroses,” said André, his eyes fixed on her. ”

“ Lovely in her white, the white rose, the jasmine, madame Vervier bent her forehead to Alix’s kiss and something in the daughter’s eyes made Giles think of a sword in the hand of an avenging, or protecting, angel.
André bowed over his hostess’s hand.
“Giles and I are to have a long walk, Maman,” said Alix, going to her place.
“You will be caught in the rain,” said André. “Have you noticed the sky? It is threatening.”
“But see the sunlight,” said madame Vervier, pouring out the coffee. “It will be a beautiful morning of great clouds and sunlight. There is nothing I love better.” ”

“ Not when the child has reached Alix’s age. You don’t want her to marry a man she does not love.”
“Love! Why should she not love him, since she loves nobody else!” cried madame Vervier, a deep exasperation thrilling in her voice. “And even if she did not love him, she cares quite enough. He is an admirable parti, this Jerry; I could not have chosen better had I been free to choose; he is an admirable parti and can give her all that I cannot give; security, position, wealth. Such a marriage would atone for everything that my darling has lacked. ”

“ Jerry’s eyes were on him while he spoke and they dwelt for some moments of bright contemplation as if for the first time he was looking at Giles more carefully than he had looked at the gas-fire and the mantelpiece. “You know, if I may say so, I do think you’re a very remarkable person,” he observed.
“Am I? Why?” Giles asked, smiling rather sadly.
“Well”—Jerry continued to look at him, but he blushed again—“to care so much about a girl you’re not in love with yourself. Doing everything for her. I’ve heard a lot about you, you may be sure. Alix thinks more of you than of anybody in the world.” ”

“ I like so very much being there— Toppie,” she found herself saying quite suddenly, “Giles is the kindest person in the world.”
Toppie looked at her. “Have you only just found that out?”
“No, I knew it the first time I saw him, I think. But he is more than that,” said Alix, feeling the inadequacy of the word. “He is good. Because he understands. Some people are only good because they do not understand. You know what I mean?”
“Perfectly,” Toppie nodded, grave and gentle. “You see things more clearly than most people, Alix. ”

“ Giles heavily repeated, looking down and tugging at the wicker of his chair. “A love that can be repeated over and over, I don’t call love.”
“Bonté divine!” monsieur de Maubert laughed suddenly among the vines. “A fountain cannot throw itself into the air repeatedly and remain itself? Spring cannot return to us again and again? It is with our hearts as with nature; a renewal; a discovery of fresh beauty. And since we are all different, with each new love there is the discovery of new beauty.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ I never thought of you in Normandy somehow. Only in Cannes, among the orange-trees you know, romantic child.”
“It is at Vaudettes-sur-Mer,” said Alix. “I like Normandy better than the Riviera.”
“I never heard of Vaudettes-sur-Mer,” said Ruth. “Is it pretty? Has it got a sandy beach?”
“No; it is galets, not sand; not until the tide is low; and Vaudettes is up on the cliff so that one has a long climb down to get to it. But the village is very pretty.”
“Most French seaside villas are such hideous gimcrack things; worse than ours, I always think. Is your house an old one?” ”

“ She pulled up the blind, for the sun no longer beat into the room, and stood looking out for a moment without speaking, her back turned to him; then she said: “Alix, too, is kind. I do not fear for our relation, hers and mine. When she is of an age to hear the truth, she shall hear it.”
“She loves you very deeply,” said Giles.
“She loves me very deeply,” madame Vervier repeated. “I have no fear.”
Giles, too, had risen, and moved to the mantelpiece where the picture of Alix in its blue-and-silver frame stood. ”

“ They had entered the birch-wood and their footsteps rustled in the fallen golden leaves. They went forward, aimlessly, not thinking of where they went, Alix intent on her reading of Toppie, Giles listening. “Too sure of what she loves and believes in. She has had to be too sure, because she is so unhappy.—Is that it, Giles? And the things she loves and believes in are not the things she sees. Perhaps that makes us hard—if we can only think of the things we love and never see or touch them—makes us hard, I mean, to the things we have with us.” ”

“ We are rebels; that’s what it comes to. Rebels are the people who refuse the seen for the unseen.”
“And yet who pick up the seen, in their stride, as it were, and then don’t know what to make of it.—It is that with which we reproach you. You spoil one world in trying to reach the other.”
“Ah, these are themes too profound for my tea-table,” madame Vervier interposed, while Giles, meeting André’s eye, felt, suddenly, something challenging, sword-like, beneath its blue smile. “We will not pass from history to metaphysics, if you please. Are you tired, Giles? Will you rest? ”

“ Were they decent men? Judged by the world’s standards, André de Valenbois was as decent as Jerry himself. The difference was that he would not be decent for Alix. “Yes,” he said, then, slowly. “I suppose they are quite decent. Only Frenchmen are different, you know.”
He felt Jerry scanning his face. “You mean that no decent Frenchman would think of marrying her?”
At this Giles felt as if he clutched Alix back from a danger. She might have betrayed herself to him; he could not bear to see her betrayed to Jerry. “She may marry someone quite decent, you see, but not of her own class. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Unfortunately, the time of renewal passes,” monsieur de Maubert sighed. “Spring goes, and Summer goes, and even of Autumn there is little left. Winter approaches and one grows old.”
Giles sat silent looking out to sea. The things he held to be of infinite value were invisible to monsieur de Maubert. The things monsieur de Maubert held to be of value were clearly visible to him. He saw the beauty of flame and fountain and the old paganism in his human heart echoed to the thought of love the passion. ”

“ In France, I am sure, we do not feel it so strange a thought.”
“We feel it strange; very strange and dreadful,” said Mrs. Bradley with as much vehemence as she ever displayed on any subject. “And you will, too, I am sure, darling, when you are older and understand what it means to trust someone with your life.—No, no; such a thing would have been impossible with Owen and Toppie. All that I meant was that his love was different in quality from Giles’s. Giles’s nature, in some ways, is deeper than dear Owen’s was.” ”

“ She’ll grow more and more away from the things she has with her and shut herself more and more into her solitude—where she is safe with the things she can’t see.—What can we do about it, Alix?” said Giles gently, a little as if he spoke to a child from whose ingenuous wisdom he sought an oracle.—“Who can help Toppie in any way in which she’d accept help?”
Suddenly it was very easy, there in the twilight woods, to be courageous. She was so near Giles. It was as if her heart beat in his side. “No one can do anything for her but you, Giles. You must marry her and make her happy.” ”

“ And as they had wandered in and out, into the vast, illuminated darkness where the rose windows hung like apparitions, out into the fretted portals with the sunlight washing up their steps, Maman had told her of a Queen Alix who had borne a part in its history. Her heart contracted as she remembered it all. Maman might have been one of those queens. She so belonged to Chartres. When Chartres was in one’s blood, what could one feel for Oxford? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Bradley’s sons must always have interested her more than their father. But she would never have known this, just as she did not know, nor did they, that she was fonder of her boys than of Ruth and Rosemary. “But I believe that in this country everybody is fonder of sons,” thought Alix, marvelling at the reappearance of the strange cabbage cut into squares and recalling impressions of English literature where, despite romantic surfaces, it was apparent to the discerning eye that men always counted for more than women. ”

“ Once or twice yesterday I was afraid for France. Do not forget, when you listen to him, that our French roots are the most tenacious in the world. Perhaps that is why we do not found empires. Sever us from our soil and we bleed to death—or else, a worse destiny, wither. Do not forget that the unconscious is crafty.”
Alix, opposite her mother, sat silent. Whether, in her mother’s presence, she had lost her readiness Giles could not divine. But she made no reply.
“Alix has learned in England to be dispassionate,” said madame Vervier, her lovely russet head a little bent downward. ”

“ You are not an avenging angel,” said madame Vervier, and she was able once more to summon the faint, ironic smile. “You are really, under all the denunciation, so full of kindness. That is what makes you so unexpected.—So very strange.—But do not fear for me too much. I shall know when youth is over. I shall know when the laurels are cut and winter has come to the woods. I shall be able to furl my sails before the night comes on; and if one furls one’s sails in time, monsieur Giles, one is never wrecked. And there will be, I trust, a little harbour for me somewhere. Alix’s children to love. ”

“ Write to Alix, of course; write constantly. Tell her all about it; your feelings, you know, and what you think about her eyes.—You both care for the same things: riding; out of doors; fancy-dress balls, and the ‘Hymn of Pan.’ What you’ve got to uphold, you see, Jerry, what you’ve got to justify, is our English conception of being in love. You must overbear convention; you must break down parental scruples. You must show yourself so much in love to Alix that you’ll convince her that romance is common-sense. ”

“ With the monsieur Vervier, who, Marigold heard, has never divorced her, and still lives. The last is an André de Valenbois and Marigold met his people. It was from them she heard the story, and from what Giles says I see it is all too true. She is a very distinguished, very dignified demi-mondaine. Quite, quite notorious. She’s as well known in Paris,” said Lady Mary with a sigh, relinquishing madame Vervier’s corpse, as it were, to float down the tide of her destiny, “as the Mona Lisa. The masses may not know about her, but everybody else does.” ”

“ Giles felt Alix’s eyes upon them. He did not quite know what he was defending or against whom he was defending it; but it felt to him as if he were upholding England, and all he wanted Alix to gain from England, against all he feared for her in France.
“What we can make use of, what we can see and understand,” said André promptly. “It’s because of our sobriety that we French are capable of living a life beautiful in itself; a self-justifying life. We know how to use life; we know how to shape it. ”

“ It gave me the strangest feeling; like Maman sometimes. And her lovely, small things; like the little pinks and campanulas that grow along the banks; so sweet and tiny; and little mésanges with bright blue heads, hanging upside down in the birches. There is no one like her. Everyone else is still and dull beside her. Who could help loving her? Toppie would love her, I am sure. You would love her, too, Giles, if you knew her. ”

“ 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.” ”