The Little French Girl

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

Monsieur de Maubert and André argued about politics with an impersonal vehemence that recalled to Giles, in its transposed key, the altercation of the friendly men in the train. He gathered, however, that they were both agreed on the necessity of a strong man for France and on many lopped heads. The French had not changed so much since the Revolution after all. Whatever the party, the solution seemed the same. Mademoiselle Fontaine, rushing in with a wonderful pink sunbonnet on her head, vividly contributed her own brand of violence, and then announced that it was the very morning for la pêche aux équilles. The tide was low; the sun shone; the breeze blew; and she had promised Maman and Grand’mère a marvellous friture for their déjeuner.

Giles had not yet seen this mildest sport. Armed with spades, bare-legged and shod in espadrilles, they made their way to the beach and, following the receding waves, dug vigorously for the evasive prey, half fish, half eel. He found himself laughing with them as they climbed rocks and raced to fresh stretches of wet, shining sand. He had never known anything more disquieting than the mingling of aversion and liking he felt for them. He and André and mademoiselle Blanche sat on a rock to rest while, at some distance, near the edge of the waves, Alix dug alone, and, as he listened to them and watched her, Giles realized that Alix had been with rather than of them. She had smiled, also, she had even laughed; but there was a disquiet in her deeper even than his own, and if she dug there so intently it was because she found relief in the childish toil.

“What a sky!” said André, looking up at the rippled blue and silver. “It is like music, is it not? Music of a celestial purity. Are you fond of César Franck, monsieur Giles?”

It filled Giles with gloom to hear André speak of celestial purity. It was not that he felt the charming young Frenchman to be impure. What separated them was their conception of life. André’s, like monsieur de Maubert’s, like madame Vervier’s, was a pagan philosophy and his was a Christian. He did not believe that they could understand César Franck.

“Ah! He is not for me!” cried mademoiselle Blanche, appropriately, her chin in her hand as she looked out with brilliant, intelligent eyes at the far horizon. It was strange to see her sitting there, her face whetted by artificial emotion, dyed and touched and rearranged to suit a fashion, among things as primitive as rocks and cliffs and sky. “It is a music without breathing; without blood; the music of a trance. The waves do not break, the clouds do not sail, the birds are silent; one is fixed in an eternity. I do not like eternity.”

“Ah, mademoiselle,” said André, “monsieur Giles here, who is a Platonist, will tell you that only when we reach eternity do we find life.”

André’s fox-seraph face was artificial, too, though so differently. Everything he had experienced had been a selection. He had had, all his life through, only to stretch forth his beautiful hand and take from the heaped and splendid corbeille offered him by destiny what fruit, curious or lovely, most tempted him. And his grace, his gift, lay in the fact that he was tempted only by what was curious or lovely. There was nothing of sloth or sensuality in his being. Tempered like steel, he mastered every lesser taste by one finer, and Giles saw him like one of the gravely joyous youths of the Parthenon frieze riding life, as if it were a perfectly broken steed. How exquisite a being must madame Vervier be to have attached him! Such was the thought that passed through Giles’s mind, revealing to him, as it did so, how far he had advanced in the understanding of pagandom. And a stranger thought followed it. Unwilling as he was to admit it, it was yet indisputable that Owen had gained a value in his eyes from having been chosen by such a being; from having been André de Valenbois’s predecessor. Whatever Owen had lost—and Giles knew that the loss was beyond computation—that he had certainly gained. Meanwhile, on the subject of eternity and César Franck, he maintained a silence which, he hoped, might not seem too morose.

When they returned to Les Chardonnerets with their pêche, madame Vervier sat on the verandah embroidering. Monsieur de Maubert was beside her, and Giles felt sure, from the moment he set eyes upon them, that monsieur de Maubert had by now fully repeated to her the conversation of yesterday. Giles’s impressions and discoveries and beliefs were known to her; and, no doubt, the fact that he had never had a mistress. She and monsieur de Maubert had talked him over and over and up and down, but what they had made of him he could not even imagine.

Her eyes met his with the bland serenity of a statue’s. “Have you had a good pêche?” she asked Alix. She took her by the hand and drew her to her side and looked down into the bucket. “Admirable! Albertine will be overjoyed. Dieu, que tu as chaud, ma chèrie!”

“It is the climb up the cliff, Maman,” Alix bent her head obediently while her mother passed a handkerchief over her neck and brows.