The Little French Girl

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

“No; my father was his son; his only child.”

“But you and your mother were often with him?”

“Only I. He liked having me alone.” Alix did not require consideration to find an answer. To Giles, in the train, frankness had been possible; but it was difficult to repeat such frankness. And Toppie, Alix felt, was so different from Giles. She would not understand Maman being divorced as he had. So she evaded her question.

They had reached the Rectory now, and she was glad not only that they had passed away from Grand-père and his causes for unhappiness, but from Captain Owen, too. She would have been sorry to have had to answer questions about the Paris days when so much of the brightness had dropped from him. Her memories of Captain Owen in Paris were all tinged with sadness; perhaps because the war was so much nearer in Paris and Captain Owen’s return to it so imminent. It was as if, in seeing him there with them for his short leaves, they had seen death always beside him.

“I hope you will be here when our roses are out,” said Toppie, in the Rectory garden. “Father and I are proud of our roses.”

Alix counted on being back with Maman long before the time of roses, but she said that she hoped so, too, and as they passed a window she caught a glimpse of a tall, bleached man sitting at a writing-table, very erect, austere, and absorbed; like an old eighteenth-century print of d’Alembert, Diderot, or some such erudite wigged gentleman.

“Yes; it’s my father,” said Toppie. “You’ll see him directly; at tea.”

Alix stood still for a moment as they entered the drawing-room. It had everything of charm that the Bradleys’ drawing-room lacked, except the charm of cheerfulness, for it was, though so serenely beautiful, perhaps a little sad. The eighteenth-century panelling was painted in dim green, and three tall windows at one side looked out at the garden while, at the other, was a beautiful fireplace. In the walls were deep niches filled with rows of old china, and sedate chairs with backs and seats embroidered in green and dove-colour were ranged along the wall.

“And look at my china roses,” said Toppie, pleased, Alix saw, by her involuntary pause of pleasure. “Aren’t they rather wonderful for November? Only smell how sweet.” And Alix bent over the bowl filled with the little deep pink roses.

There was a sedate sofa to match the chairs, with the tea-table placed as at the Bradleys’; but how different was this tea. No thick bread-and-butter; no loaves of cake. Only a plate of little dry biscuits, that Alix liked, however, and another of bread-and-butter cut to a wafer-like thinness. And instead of the affectionate turmoil of Heathside was Toppie’s sweet, chill voice and Mr. Westmacott’s silence. He drank his tea, looking, with his crossed legs, which should have been in buckled knee-breeches, more than ever like d’Alembert; addressed a courteous question to Alix about her journey and her mother’s health, and soon went away, back to his writing-table; but not, Alix felt, to do much of significance there. He had a tall head and a meditative eye; but there was something of the sheep in his appearance, too. If he had had the close curled wig, that went with his type he would, Alix thought, have looked very like a silent, dignified sheep that may, in the meadow, as it looks at you, emit once or twice a formal baa.