CHAPTER XII
The tennis-players returned at tea-time, bringing monsieur Claussel with them. He was a young man with shy, soft, prominent dark eyes and the smallest dot of a dark moustache on either side of a nervous upper lip, and, when tennis was not in progress to absorb his attention, it was excessively directed to the social exigencies of the occasion. Giles imagined, as he watched him spring from his chair to offer it, stand back to let a lady pass, bow with heels together, and tentatively resume his seat only again to leave it, that he was perhaps less at home in the jungle than André, and felt, in his introduction to it, a doubled need for every amenity. It was his first appearance at the Chardonnerets tea-table, and in his presence, the presence of mademoiselle Fontaine, her mother and grandmother, madame Vervier may have felt a convenience. If she found it at all difficult to face Alix and André and Giles after the interview from which she had just come, her guests, and monsieur Claussel in particular, gave her an excuse for looking at them rather than at her intimates. And Giles felt sure that she avoided her daughter’s eyes.
They were on her, those remote blue eyes of Alix’s, with no insistence, no appeal. They dwelt in a wide contemplativeness that recalled to him madame Vervier’s own, were it not that proud patience rather than security lay behind it; and Giles had the fancy, as he looked at her, that, in the gaze of Alix, the Mouverays, beneath the threshold of the child’s consciousness, were judging Hélène Vervier. Whatever the verdict, Alix’s tenderness for her mother would not waver; but he watched the Mouverays imparting to her need a further reënforcement of pride and courage.
Tea was prolonged. Madame Dumont, in a great crested bonnet, sat enthroned, receiving cakes and homage. She was rather silent, rather, in her black draperies, the sunken old raven, its feathers ruffled high. Yet Giles caught more than once the piercing glint of an avid eye, turning in conjectures that he could too well imagine upon madame Vervier and André; upon himself and Alix; and once, in the glance of mademoiselle Blanche, he seemed to see a stealthy hereditary surmise, and Alix rather than madame Vervier was its object.
Monsieur Jules was persuaded to bring out his canvases and range them for monsieur Claussel’s admiration. The painful, vivid patterns and colours still distressed Giles, but, his eyes already acclimatized to their strangeness, began to exercise a charm. “Quel horreur!” madame Dumont cried, but was fondly checked by mademoiselle Blanche, who murmured to her, smiling over her head at Giles: “We are no longer in the days of Bouguereau and Meissonnier, Grand’mère!”
She confided to him, as they stood side by side, that monsieur Claussel was a devout admirer of modern art and that his admiration, since he was the heir to a fortune princière—faite dans les pâtes—might be of much significance to poor Jules. “She arranged it all, you may be sure,” said mademoiselle Blanche, casting a fond glance upon their hostess. “It is always she who thinks of such opportunities for her friends.—What a heart, what a mind it is!—Whatever her own perplexities and anxieties—and I can assure you that her life does not lack them—she never fails in resource and kindness when it is a question of her friends’ interests.—She is looking pale—very weary, is it not so?—You take mademoiselle Alix back to England with you?” And since Giles, disconcerted, remained silent, mademoiselle Blanche added: “She is ready always to sacrifice herself.”
“Mais oui, c’est très bizarre,” little madame Collet murmured, craning her neck to see the pictures, while Giles wondered over mademoiselle Blanche.
André, meanwhile, smiling in a happy confidence, pointed out planes and stresses to the heir of les pâtes, who stood with his little shoulders screwed up, his elbows in his hands, rapt away from shyness and self-consciousness by his sincere delight. Monsieur Jules remained morose; but it was evident that he had found a munificent patron.
And when they were all gone and an evening of dusky rose began, after the hot day, to drop softly from the sky, madame Vervier said to André that she must take the air. She would go with him for a little turn in his car.
She was not yet ready for a meeting with her child. If she was to think things over and decide how she should put them to Alix, she must get away to do it. Giles understood; but how could Alix understand such necessities? He guessed at the grief and perplexity that must strive within her.