The Little French Girl

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

“Do you really imagine, Giles, that if Maman knew, she would send me back?”

“Well”—he felt that he flushed. He had not foreseen this emergency—“since I know, and since I want you back;—why not she?”

“Do you count Maman’s pride for nothing, Giles?”

Madame Vervier’s pride had never for a moment engaged his attention, and did not now. His attention was fully engaged by Alix’s pride, facing him with a look of granite.

“I don’t really see why she should take it so hardly,” he said after a moment; but he was horribly uncomfortable, for he was not speaking with frankness to his young friend. “Your relation to us has, really, nothing to do with her relation to Owen. It’s a new thing; and that’s an old one; and as you say, it’s all over.”

“But she could not have me there on false pretences, Giles,” said Alix. The pride had dropped now. It was as if with sudden sadness she saw too well the reasons for his misunderstanding. “I could not be there on false pretences. You have a right to think it of me since I have never told her. But it is all over now; the new as well as the old. I need never tell her. For I am at home again and I shall never go back to Heathside.”

“Never come back to Heathside!” Actually for the moment Maman, Owen, Toppie, all the grief and perplexity that hung about these figures, were swept from Giles’s mind by his deep discomfiture. “But this is only your holiday. Your mother’s letter said so.”

“She thinks it is only my holiday. But I am older now. I shall see to it that I do not return to England.”

Ass that he had been not to realize the impasse to which their talk was leading them! Too obviously, from Alix’s side, this was an inevitable decision. And Giles saw that from his side it should have been so, too. With Alix safely back in France, there would be no more danger of pain for his mother and wreckage for Toppie; Owen’s memory might sleep in untarnished peace.

But Alix herself had come to count for far too much. It was as if he saw her walking away into a dark forest where dreadful creatures prowled. Ever since that day in his study, she had counted for too much. She was too fine, too brave, too loyal a little creature to be given up to her fate. He had felt that day that he would fight her fate for her, and he felt now that the moment had come for the first grapple. But the worst of the problem was that in fighting Alix’s fate he must fight her. He could not tell her the fact that would have turned her pride to dust and ashes. He could not tell her that her mother had sent her to them on pretences so false that the minor falsity she repudiated paled beside them. Horribly handicapped as he was for the contest, he seized his bull by the horns: “Look here, my dear child,” he declared, speaking with all the elder brother authority he could summon up, “you said to me that day when we talked that you were going to trust me. Well, I ask you to trust me now. I want you back. We all want you back. Let that suffice. No; wait a moment. I know what you are going to say;—if Toppie knew would she want you? I’ll take the responsibility of answering for Toppie. She is so fond of you that I know she would. Isn’t that enough, really? Can’t we leave it at that? And you’re quite right not to tell your mother. Let the whole thing rest for ever.”