The Little French Girl

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

“I prefer it; yes. I distrust instinct; perhaps because in our history, as mademoiselle Alix has pointed out, we have so often been foiled by it. I don’t see it as innocent, you know. I see it as crafty. As craftier far than our open-eyed planning. And, apart from large questions of national destiny, it is, I think, more comfortable to live among a people all of whom reflect, if only a little, and all of whom know where they want to get to. Our horizon is more restricted, but because we see the frame we can fit our picture into it. Life with you, over there across the Channel, for all your charm and force, is essentially confused and haphazard. It goes through everything; from your younger sons, flung out to swim or sink as best they can, to your towns and your Shakespeare. You may, in one sense, beat us; but in another we have, I think, the advantage. You take in more, but you don’t know what to make of it. To make all that can be made of the time and space at our disposal, that is our wisdom, mon cher Giles, and can there be a better one?”

“And what is the time and space at our disposal?” Giles felt Alix’s eyes upon them. He did not quite know what he was defending or against whom he was defending it; but it felt to him as if he were upholding England, and all he wanted Alix to gain from England, against all he feared for her in France.

“What we can make use of, what we can see and understand,” said André promptly. “It’s because of our sobriety that we French are capable of living a life beautiful in itself; a self-justifying life. We know how to use life; we know how to shape it. The very workman, sitting at midday in his café, makes a ritual of his meal of sheep’s trotters and sour red wine. The frotteur enjoys the polish he puts on the parquet, and the bonne enjoys her bed-making and dusting. We don’t do things because of something else; we do them because we find them in themselves enjoyable.”

“Yes. It’s true.” Giles was thinking of the French sunlight; of monsieur de Maubert’s philosophy; of the pâtissier’s. The difference went down to the very roots of things. “We are discontented and clumsy and romantic, compared to you; it’s our very religion to be discontented, with ourselves and what we can see. We are rebels; that’s what it comes to. Rebels are the people who refuse the seen for the unseen.”

“And yet who pick up the seen, in their stride, as it were, and then don’t know what to make of it.—It is that with which we reproach you. You spoil one world in trying to reach the other.”

“Ah, these are themes too profound for my tea-table,” madame Vervier interposed, while Giles, meeting André’s eye, felt, suddenly, something challenging, sword-like, beneath its blue smile. “We will not pass from history to metaphysics, if you please. Are you tired, Giles? Will you rest? I have some letters to write for the post. After that we might have a little walk if you felt so inclined.”

Giles said there was nothing he would like better. He would unpack and rest a little and then join her.

She was in the salon with mademoiselle Fontaine when he came down half an hour later, and on the verandah monsieur de Maubert sat alone, heavily, Giles still felt, in his sunny corner; not reading; looking out at the sea. Giles was aware of feeling sorry for him; but he did not want to talk to monsieur de Maubert. He went out quietly at the back of the house, and wandered through the garden, finding himself suddenly, as he came to the gate, bareheaded, his hands in his pockets, face to face with old madame Dumont and madame Collet. They sat in a small wicker pony-chaise drawn by a ruminant stout pony, and Giles inferred, since there was only room for two that mademoiselle Fontaine had walked beside the pony’s head, taking her parents out thus for a peaceful airing. They waited at the gate for her.

“Ah. C’est monsieur Gilles,” madame Collet simpered. “You remember monsieur Gilles, Maman.”

Madame Dumont was not much altered. The vulture-like poise of her head was perhaps more sunken, and her raven eye less piercing; but a light came to it as she saw him; an old resentment and a present glee. “Charmée, monsieur, charmée de vous revoir,” she assured him, and as her eye measured the morsel thus presented to its greed Giles seemed to see the vulture roused and rustling its feathers. “You are just arrived?”