The Little French Girl

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

“I like all your family,” said Alix politely.

“Well, of course, in a way, you’d like them all,” said Giles. “But I am afraid they rather wear you out. There are so many of them and they are so young and vigorous. You must take refuge here when they dash over you too much. I’ll do my reading, and you can read or write or meditate, as you like. I shan’t speak to you and you mustn’t speak to me. I’ve noticed you are a kid who can keep still. We shall get on capitally.”

So it was arranged, and as Alix took her place at the little writing-table he pulled forward for her, she noticed that there were many books along two sides of the room and along the other a row of large framed photographs of Greek and Sicilian temples that more than atoned for the mantelpiece. When she did not feel like reading or writing, she would look at those. They made her think, in the sense of space and tranquillity and splendour they gave her, of Montarel.

For the first mornings of her withdrawal there mingled with her sense of security an apprehension of the unsaid things that lay between her and Giles and that might still have to be said; but this grew less with every day. It became quite evident that Giles was going to say nothing. Perhaps, indeed, she had imagined something of the trouble and confusion she had felt in him at their first meeting. Perhaps in some odd, twisted way, it had all been because of Toppie; because the sight of her brought back so vividly the memory of the dead brother and of Toppie’s loss. Whatever it had been, she did not think he would ever show it to her again.

She owed more than the peaceful mornings to him. He seemed to restore Maman to her. Now, at last, she could really tell Maman, with a mind composed, how surprised Mrs. Bradley had been at hearing that she wore a linen chemise next her skin and felt no need of wool; how like a dignified sheep was Toppie’s father; how strange the sense of growing strength the choruses of “The Messiah” gave one, like a sort of calisthenic. And how Mrs. Bradley had taken her up to London to choose a delightful winter outfit; woollen jumpers, ribbed stockings, and a winter coat and hat. Alix told Maman all about this and about the fat, jovial old lady with short grey hair with whom they had had tea in Kensington, a friend of Mrs. Bradley’s father and a public speaker. Some things, however, she did not tell her. She gave no account of Toppie’s beliefs in regard to Captain Owen, and, a lesser matter, yet significant, she had never yet satisfied Maman as to the social status of her new friends.

Perhaps it was because Giles sat there, his pipe between his teeth, his feet propped up against the mantelpiece, his hand, as he perused the tome upon his knees, raised now and then to rub his hair on end, that it seemed so irrelevant to write about such things. After all what business was it of Maman’s? She had had no further use for them than that they should warm and feed her child during a hard winter; what difference did their status make to her? It was true that she and Maman had always shared impressions to the last crumb of analysis, and it was with a slight sense of malice that she thus withheld from her the crumb for which she asked more than once. “Who are they? What are they, ma chérie?” Maman, from Cannes, inquired. “The train de vie you described seems that of the true confort anglais; but, apparently, there is no elegance. What are their relations? Do they go at all dans le monde? Is there a vie de château in the neighbourhood? I am interested in all you have to tell me of these excellent people.” Naturally. But though Alix might not have felt it unmeet, a month ago, to tell Maman all this, she would have felt it unmeet now. How funny Giles would have thought it if he had known that she sat there informing Maman that his family did not go dans le monde at all, in the sense that Maman meant by le monde; and that they were decidedly of the bourgeoisie. It was not that Maman was wrong in wanting to know, or that Giles would have been right in thinking that le monde didn’t matter. It was simply that she did not care to write in that way to Maman about him and his family.

Maman, meanwhile, was evidently enjoying many relations; dancing, dining, playing tennis, entertaining her friends. There were important names in her letters and Alix sometimes meditated a little over them. When she did not write or read, she meditated Giles’s Greek temples and Maman’s relations. The important names, in the world of art and letters—but that was not the world Maman meant in asking about the Bradleys—were male and female; in the world of fashion, male only. It was the marquis and the prince; but never the marquise and the princesse. Why? Alix wondered. Did Maman find the wives of fashion dull? But if one didn’t know them, too, could one be said to be dans le vrai grand monde? She knew how Maman’s gay, sombre eyes would meet the question (not that it was one that Alix would ever dream of putting to her): “Je suis du monde qui me plaît, ma chérie.” But Alix was not quite sure that this was true. She was not sure that Maman’s indifference was as securely grounded as Giles’s. Perhaps real indifference only came from reading so much Plato and Aristotle. Yet she herself, who did not read Plato, was indifferent. It was only in regard to Maman that she was not indifferent, and perhaps it was true that it was only in regard to herself that Maman was not. Poor, beloved, beautiful Maman; and wronged; deeply wronged, Alix felt sure. Always, when she thought of her, her heart expanded in love and then contracted in anxiety. She saw her as a wild, lovely creature caught in a trap and only escaping maimed for life. She could not range as far and as freely as the unmaimed creatures; dimly Alix saw that, as the explanation of what was ambiguous in her position. She had lost the full liberty hers by birth and instinct. Yet, despite the limitations of her misfortune, she had every right to her own standards.

Judged by Maman’s standards Alix could not conceal from herself that the Bradleys were very undistinguished. Maman would have hated the bounteous, graceless meals; Mrs. Bradley sitting at breakfast among the noise and porridge and kippers, heaped round with letters and circulars, reading an appeal for crippled babies while she poured out the tea and coffee and oftener than not slopping it into the saucer. “Oh, I’m so sorry, dear,” she would exclaim; but Maman would have commented, dryly, that a woman so much occupied had better breakfast in bed and get through her correspondence out of sight. Maman could be terribly dry about disorder and gracelessness. Alix had never forgotten the terse and accurate reproofs that her own lapses in these respects had called down upon her in her childhood. As for the uproarious children, “Ces marmots-là ne sonts pas appétissants,” was what Maman would have said of Ruth and Rosemary, taking their ease during the holidays and padding from sideboard to table in shabby bedroom slippers, while Jack and Francis had already got their hands dirty. Alix could not see Maman at that breakfast-table; but then there was no need to try to. She would never have come down at all to breakfast, and Alix could not really think of anything later in the day that she would have thought it worth while to come down to. A drive with Giles in the car, perhaps. She would have liked Giles. She would have liked him, perhaps, as much as she had liked Captain Owen. But as for the rest of the family, she would have found them only fit for the happy task of warming, feeding, and clothing her child. “Trop honorée,” Maman might even remark, in the mood of mirthful impertinence she could display. Maman’s impertinencies usually amused Alix; but she did not want to see them evoked, ever, by the Bradleys. It hurt her to think of it. Already she was too fond of them. Maman must never come to Heathside.

Christmas was now close upon them, and the house, like a mysterious boiling pot, bubbled with happy secrets. Francis came to lunch unaware of the strip of gold paper gummed to his nose; Ruth and Rosemary sat hunched in corners working surreptitiously at belated pieces of knitting. Giles went up to London with his mother for a day’s shopping and came back in the evening with parcels hanging from every finger, and she and Toppie had a wonderful day there, for Mrs. Bradley had given her pocket-money to spend on presents and some had come from Maman, too, so that there was a real meaning for her in the long indecisions over crowded counters.

Alix usually went over to the Rectory to work at her presents with Toppie. She was making a tea-cloth for Mrs. Bradley and embroidering monograms, that elicited Toppie’s admiration, on fine handkerchiefs for Ruth and Rosemary; and she had found the right books for the boys and a silver pencil for Giles. Toppie had a beautiful cushion for his chair at Oxford, and Toppie, too, had thought of Maman. Alix almost felt the tears rise to her eyes when she showed her the little frame of blue and silver she had embroidered enclosing a snapshot of Alix herself, standing at the edge of the wood with the dogs about her. She had not expected anyone to think of Maman. Maman, she knew, would not think of them. And then Christmas was different in France.