The Little French Girl

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

“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.”

Alix listening, while Lady Mary thus mused, finding his place for Giles rather as she found the place for the hovering card, recognized still further resemblances to Maman. Lady Mary, too, could be sweetly devious. She would feed you with spoonfuls of honey satisfied that you would never taste the alien powder that was being administered. She was talking to her now as to the clever child who could take no personal interest in the question of marriage. But the experience was to Alix a familiar one and the admonitory flavour at once detected. She was not to take an interest, but Lady Mary was taking an interest for her. Lady Mary was selecting her place for her very much as Maman would have done; and, as with Maman, Alix often found a malicious pleasure in seeing through her and pretending not to see, so now she pleased herself by saying nothing to Lady Mary of Giles’s devotion to Toppie which would so have set her mind at rest. “Giles is my greatest friend,” was all she vouchsafed presently, and Lady Mary could make of it what she chose.

There had been minor intimations gliding along beside the major one. If Giles, in his chosen career, was not to be thought of as a husband, Heathside and the Bradleys need not be thought of as essential to Alix’s life in England. Not for a moment did Lady Mary intimate anything so gross as that Alix should abandon her friends; she only made it clear that, since she could now count on new ones, she was not dependent on Heathside. They were very strange, these English people, Alix meditated, her dark head leaning back in the chair, her blue eyes resting with their Alpine aloofness on her hostess. How much, if they once liked you, they took you for granted; and how very easily, so it seemed to Alix, they did like you. Lady Mary resembled Giles in that; and Toppie and Mrs. Bradley; and if they swallowed you down, asking no questions, was it because they were so extraordinarily kind, or because they were so sure of themselves and of their conditions that they could not conceive of your doing them any harm? The difference—how often Alix had meditated these differences—was that the French were so sure of themselves and of their conditions that they couldn’t conceive of your doing them any good. The English, certainly, were more kind.

But were they kind enough to make themselves responsible for you? Giles would. Alix had seen Giles make himself responsible. She believed that Toppie would; and Mrs. Bradley. Even Ruth and Rosemary, if the test came, would, she believed, shoulder her. But strangely, painfully—for she, too, liked Lady Mary, though she did not at all take her for granted—Alix could imagine this new friend, if consequences proved troublesome or unpalatable, choosing, simply, as the easiest way out, to forget all about her. She was dove-like, but she was capricious. Her life was beautiful, and she enjoyed laying out other people’s lives in harmony with its beauty, making a chiming pattern of you as she did with her patience cards, because she liked to make patterns and because she thought of herself as able to do what she liked. But it would be unwise to give oneself to the Lady Marys or trust them as they invited you to trust them. They, too, were far more implicated in the dust of human conditions than they knew themselves to be. They did not really know themselves, for they did not know the dust; and, where she herself was concerned, Alix deeply suspected that consequences might prove dusty; might prove troublesome and unpalatable. 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. If one was more circumspect than any English person, was it because of the generations of Catholicism in one’s blood? One’s confessor always took so many disagreeable things for granted, about life and about human nature; and, on reflection, one usually found that he had been right.

CHAPTER VI

Under pressure from Giles, who wrote that of course she must stay on, Alix’s visit to Cresswell Abbey lengthened itself over the whole remaining fortnight of the holidays. She went to the Fairlies’ ball, where she wore her white and crystal dress, and to another, where she wore her pink with the wreath of rosebuds. She danced and danced. In the mornings she rode with Jerry.

How strange Heathside seemed to her when she at last returned to it, as strange as when she had first come to it from France. Life at Cresswell Abbey was so much more like life at Maman’s than anything at Heathside. Always, at Maman’s, there was that same sense of mental grace; always the people, the varying people, coming and going, who displayed it. The people at Cresswell were not so graceful or so interested in mental things; but, from the mere fact that there were so many of them and of so many varieties, they reminded her of the life in Paris with Maman. And besides the young men and the young girls who danced and played together, there were pleasant, sagacious women, all so beautifully dressed, and their political husbands. At Cresswell one had whom one chose to amuse or instruct one; at Heathside one had to take what the neighbourhood or the High School provided.

Oddly enough, however, she found herself, on her return, liking not only Rosemary, her daily companion, more than she had ever liked her, but the High School girls, too. It was, she knew, because she had seen so much of Marigold Hamble and because they were so different from Marigold. Marigold had not attempted to molest her in any way; she had, indeed, attempted to attach her; but Alix, in regard to Marigold, had never for a moment relaxed her circumspection, though, in regard to Lady Mary, it was impossible not often to relax it. She could match Marigold at empty affability, but she could not display Marigold’s empty affectionateness, and the more it was displayed, the more she disliked her. If she disliked Marigold, Marigold hated her; she knew that unerringly with her growing power of womanly divination. Marigold hated her because Jerry liked her so much and because she never made an effort to attach him; while Marigold made every effort compatible with graceful concealment.

By the time she went away it was as if she had become almost as much a part of the life at Cresswell as she was part of the life at Heathside. Lady Mary was so fond of her and depended, strangely, Alix thought, on her taste and judgment about so many things;—and that was like Maman, too. And Mr. Hamble was fond of her, teaching her billiards and cracking many cheerful jests with her at the expense of France. It was natural, it was inevitable, that she should come back again, and for almost all the winter week-ends she did come back. There was always a party for the week-ends, and sometimes Jerry motored down from Oxford for the day, and once he stayed the night for a dance, and Marigold, on this occasion, adopted a new and surprising attitude towards Alix, behaving as if she had never seen her before. She also gave scant attention to Jerry, and Alix remarked that though Jerry did not really like Marigold he was perturbed by her neglect; so perturbed that he even forgot to dance with Alix and stood watching Marigold fox-trotting with another man, his radiance all dimmed by resentful gloom.