“Oh! ‘exactly’! Who would care to be ‘exactly’ beautiful!” said Maman.
He had told them that Miss Westmacott—Toppie’s real name was Enid Westmacott—had come with her father to live near them when she was only fifteen. Mr. Westmacott was the Rector of their parish and he had to explain to them—for Maman said that with all her English she could never get it quite clear—what rectors were and how they came to have daughters; and when Maman said, as though rectors must make up for having daughters by having devout ones, “Elle est très dévote?” Captain Owen, with his charming smile, rejoined, “Oh, much better than that!”
Later on, when they were alone, Maman had remarked to her: “She is pretty; but nothing more. Elle est nulle, cette Toppie; très, très nulle.” But Alix had not agreed. Often she did not agree with Maman. The little photograph had not said much, but it had said something definite. “She is like someone in a tower.” So she tried to fix her feeling.
“Even in a tower one may oneself be insignificant,” said Maman, and to this Alix had replied: “Not if one is the tower oneself.”
Toppie was there when they got in. A fire had been lighted for tea in the drawing-room, a long room with roses on the chairs and sofas and a high wainscotting of dark woodwork, and above that blue paper with old-fashioned crayon portraits and large photographs from famous pictures. A tall grey figure stood at the further end, and Alix knew at once that it was Toppie who turned her head to look at her like that. She was helping Mrs. Bradley arrange flowers, Michaelmas daisies, oak leaves, and sprays of golden larch. She held a large bronze vase and wore a grey tweed skirt and a grey woollen jumper and grey shoes strapping across the instep with a buckle. Her hair was as fair as primroses and was ruffled up a little above the black ribbon that bound it.
“This is Alix, Toppie, dear,” said Mrs. Bradley in a gentle voice, and she came forward and passed her arm in Toppie’s as if she knew that it must mean something very special to her to see the little French girl.
“I’m so glad,” said Toppie. She gazed at Alix for a long moment, as though forgetting that she held the vase; then, looking round her, vague in her absorption, she set it down on a table and held out her hand.
The water from the vase had spilled over it, and as it closed on Alix’s it made her think of the hand of a dryad, a naiad, or some chill, unearthly creature. “Yes; in towers,” she thought, as Toppie’s eyes dwelt on her. “And how much she loved him!”
She saw then that Giles was there. He was stretched out in a deep chair on one side of the fire, his hands clasped behind his head, and he was watching Toppie; her meeting with Toppie.
“And how much Giles loves her!” came the further thought, sharp with its sense of sudden elucidation. If he sat there, in that rather mannerless fashion, not helping with the water-cans, the baskets of flowers, the scissors, it was because he loved her and wanted to watch her.