The Little French Girl

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

“And why not?”

“Could one feel like that and be married?”

“Oh, you funny child!” Toppie was really laughing, and Alix, seeing how she amused her, laughed, too. This was so much better than talking about the dead.—“You mean a priest could not? We are quite different about that, too. But I see what you mean”—Toppie’s eyes dwelt on her—“and sometimes I think that you are right. I think, perhaps”—Toppie was grave now—“that the best life could be lived if one were quite free; with no close human ties. One could live better for God, and for humanity, then. And we have nuns in our church, too, Alix.”

“Oh, but it is dreadful to be a nun!” Alix exclaimed. “I had an old great-aunt who was a nun. Grand-père’s sister. I was always taken to see her in her convent in Lyon. She came to a grille and blessed me through it. She was like a sad old fish in an aquarium. One felt that her flesh must be cold. It would be death to me, such a life. And you? Can you really imagine it?”

“Perhaps not an order like that, that shuts one quite away,” said Toppie; “but there are nursing and teaching orders. Yes, I can imagine it. Not while I have my father; but if I were alone.”

“No, no! Do not imagine it!” Alix exclaimed, and there rose before her the memory of Giles’s face as he had watched Toppie yesterday evening. “Do not even imagine it. It is too dreadful. I am sorry that in your church you have nuns, too. That is foolish of you, I think, when you need not have them. It is different for priests. They have to administer the sacraments. But for a woman it is dreadful. Far, far better marry and be out in the world.”

“Perhaps.” Toppie was smiling sadly at her, seeing her, it was evident, as quite a child, yet touched by her feeling. “But if all question of marrying is over, the situation alters. You could not understand while you are so young.—See, Alix, I want you to look at this.” She moved forward a fire-screen, a square of satin on a mahogany stand. “Are you interested in needlework? French girls do it so beautifully, I know. My mother embroidered this. She copied it from those old chairbacks. Do look at them. Her grandmother did those.”

The screen, on a background of pearly satin, had two doves in a basket, entwined with laurel; and the chairs, in a softer, sadder key, repeated them.

“They are beautiful,” said Alix. It seemed to her, as she looked at the gentle doves, that the dead, in Toppie’s drawing-room, joined pale hands around her and whispered: “We are here.” But it was so sad. The doves nestling side by side, so confident of love, made her think of all the partings of the world.

“My great-grandmother was married to a soldier,” said Toppie, “and went out to India and died there when my grandfather was born. She did all those chairs while she was waiting for his birth. She was only twenty-one. I often think of her; so young; stitching her thoughts of home, her hopes for her baby—the past and the future—into the embroidery. And one feels how happy she must have been in her marriage to have chosen that design. My poor great-grandfather brought all her things back to England, with his little boy.—That funny little water-colour sketch is of him, in his frilled cap; with his ayah.—And he grew up to be a soldier, too, and was killed, out in India, fighting a frontier tribe. My mother was his only child. I was fourteen when she died. How happy you are to have your mother, Alix. She makes beautiful things, too. I shan’t forget the little lemon silk jacket.”