The Little French Girl

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

She saw now that Giles’s large eyes were dwelling upon her from a distance; but they were not like the other eyes. They kept their look of thoughtfulness. He was not seeing her in the magic. He was only seeing her as herself. It would always be only oneself that Giles would see. From within her fountain of happiness she glimmered a little smile over to him—for Jerry was beside her saying that he was to take her in to dinner—and in Giles’s answering smile she read something touched and gentle. She was glad that it should be so, for Giles might have looked gloomily at her, seeing her so happy at being beautiful; but he was only touched; and those gentle eyes of Giles’s seemed at once to quiet the excitement and to reassure her, as though he said: “But of course you must be happy, dear kid.”

The long table in the dining-room, shining under the candles, was like a lake of bright water all drifted over with floating knots of flowers. Everything made her think of gliding, falling water to-night; everything was beautiful. Jerry was beside her and he was used to beautiful people. He saw them every day of his life. He was like André de Valenbois in that. Giles’s very thoughts about André crossed her mind as she turned her eyes on the charming face beside her. He, too, was a person removed from the earthy, primitive aspects of life; he, too, had only had, always, to choose what he would have and never to have what he did not choose. And now—she felt it falling around her, cool and refreshing as the sense of crystal drops—it was herself he chose rather than Mrs. Hamble. He did not look at Mrs. Hamble. He talked and talked, trying to find out about her all the things that interested him; her tastes, her prejudices, the colour of her personality. He talked happily, eagerly, with something of the ardour of a little boy playing at gardening; that was the simile that came to Alix while she smiled quietly at him—a little boy who gathers up armfuls of flowers and thistles, the lovely and the commonplace together, and brings them for admiration:—“Beautiful, isn’t it?” was what he said continually; and he did not see that there were thistles. He was younger than André; much younger. She was dimly glad of that, for something in the likeness she had felt disquieted her. She liked him better than André, though he had not André’s fine discrimination. His admirations lay along the paths of fashion, and the fact that fashion prided itself on being a pioneer led him into ardours for the new and the strange soon discarded for the newer and the stranger. He had an air, Alix saw, of caring, immensely, that you should sympathize with him about the latest painter, the latest poet, the latest composer. He did not really care whether you sympathized or not; but if you didn’t, you were negligible for his purposes. She saw that he had already found Giles negligible; and she wondered why he did not put her into the same category. Did he imagine that she possessed and withheld even fresher appraisals? It was not so and she did not pretend it, looking at him with her quiet smile and softly shaking her head now and then. She had never thought of herself as a person whose appraisals mattered; she had thought of herself as too much of a child. But perhaps it was because Jerry found her beautiful that he was indifferent to her indifference.

After dinner they danced. Many young people arrived and the tall red Chinese screens in the hall were put back. There was a piano and two violins and one of the young men who played had such a gloomy face, like a French or Italian face—like Jules’ face—that Alix wished she could talk to him and ask him if he were a foreigner. But there was no time for talk. She and Jerry found that their steps went beautifully together. 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. She made him dance with her and they laughed together as they went slowly round the hall, for Giles did not dance well. Afterwards she saw that he talked with Lady Mary and with Mr. Hamble. He did not go into the mirage. He only looked on at it.

When Alix fell asleep that night in the firelight, she dreamed that a cool crystal stream flowed round her and that she floated on its silver surfaces. Golden lights lay like a chain of little suns along its margin and her hands, softly moving in the current, felt rosy petals pass between their fingers. The throb of dance-music, sweet, reckless, imbecile, beat in her blood, and in her ears the sound of Jerry’s voice saying: “Beautiful, isn’t it?” And Giles’s eyes were there watching her. In her dream she wanted to tell Giles that she had nothing to conceal. She tried to tell him, but she felt the silver stream flowing over her lips and making them dumb, though they smiled. If Giles looked at her like that she might begin to blush. But even so she did not want him gone. While he was there she was so safe.

CHAPTER V

“And you will see that Blaise is happy until I come back, Giles?” said Alix, as she stood beside the car next morning to say good-bye. “And you will write to me?”

“We haven’t time for many letters, you know,” Giles smiled reassuringly. “I’ll see to Blaise.”

“Give my love to them all,” said Alix. The car was beginning slowly to slide away and she went beside it. She was not unhappy; not sad; it was only that she was a little frightened to see Giles go. If one night had changed so much in herself, what changes might not one week bring? She almost felt she loved Ruth and Rosemary this morning. Whatever their deficiencies they had not false faces. It was true that they could not, even if they had wished to, have concealed themselves gracefully; but it would never occur to them to wish to be concealed; gracefully or otherwise. Neither were they insipid like the two Wagstaffe girls. If Ruth and Rosemary were like roast mutton, the Wagstaffes, Alix reflected, were like fondants. She stood gazing after Giles for a moment as he disappeared among the beeches.

Jerry and his mother stood on the step above her, having come out with her to say good-bye. Lady Mary was looking at her, a little, she felt, as Giles had looked at her last night; thoughtfully, with great kindness in the thoughtfulness; seeing her as herself.

“Now you’re going to let me teach you how to ride,” said Jerry. “Mummy has a habit for you.”