“He is dead,” said Alix. “It was at Montarel he lived; near the Alps.”
“You may have noticed the water-colours of Avignon that I did some years ago, hanging in your bedroom,” said Aunt Bella. “Parts of France are very picturesque. But I prefer our scenery.”
“And now,” said Giles, looking at his watch, “we must be thinking about our train. Are you packed up, Alix?”
“Tell your mother,” said Aunt Bella, “that I expect her on Thursday for the two committees. She’ll spend the night, of course.” And when Alix’s box and bag had been brought and a taxi summoned, Aunt Bella said to her very kindly, as they stood for farewells in the hall: “You must come again and see me, my dear, when you are in London. I could take you to the National Gallery and Westminster Abbey, and, if you care about Social Work, you might be interested in my Infant Welfare Centre and Working Girls’ Gymnasium.”
“Is she an official, your aunt?” Alix inquired as she and Giles drove off to the station.
“An unofficial official,” Giles explained. “She runs more things than most officials. She sits on councils and governs hospitals and makes speeches. There can’t be a busier woman in London and she’s a splendid old girl;—though I do enjoy pulling her leg.” And then, since Alix was startled by this expression, also new to her, he had again to explain.
CHAPTER IV
The third-class carriage was not foul and wooden as it would have been in France, and they had it to themselves; but the cushions smelt of fog, and Alix thought she had never seen anything so ugly as the view from the window. It had been too dark to see the suburbs of London the night before, on the way up from Newhaven; but they lay all mean and low and toad-coloured this morning, wet under the lifted fog, and for as far as the eye could follow there was nothing to be seen but squatting roofs and gaunt factory chimneys.
“Bad, isn’t it?” said Giles. He sat opposite her, looking out with his face so young and so worn. She liked him so much and felt so safe with him, and yet it frightened her a little to look at him, just—strange association—as it had frightened her to look at Grand-père. Only Giles was kinder, far, than Grand-père. “But worse, do you think,” he went on, “than the suburbs of Paris?”
Alix did not quite like to say how much worse she thought it; it did not seem polite. “There, at least, one has the sky to look at,” she suggested. “It is happier, I think.”