The Little French Girl

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

Giles, as he half listened, gained a further impression, after his impression of the Dumont milieu, different, yet vividly the same in its one essential, of the solidly, complicatedly built structure of French family life; its dependencies; its responsibilities; its ramifications. They all meant each other. They all lived with and for each other, and the longer they lived the more important they became, thus inversing the natural course of family life in England. Andrée, old enough to marry, was a very insignificant person compared to Grand-père.

“And who is the young man with madame Vervier?” asked the stout lady, who had evidently just arrived at Allongeville, since she thus plied her friend with queries. “The little one is René Claussel, I know.—But the tall one? He is as handsome as madame Vervier herself.”

“That is André de Valenbois. My uncle named him to me yesterday. Charmant garçon, n’est-ce pas?”

“André de Valenbois! But is he not to marry Babette de Cévrieux’s daughter? Surely I have heard something of a marriage in contemplation there.”

“Ah. That is a sad story. It was, indeed, arranged; the preliminaries, that is to say, in progress; the young people brought together; two very pretty little fortunes and a happily matched young pair. But it is owing, precisely, to madame Vervier that all has come to a standstill, as you can imagine from seeing him with her. He is the present lover. They were in Italy together last winter.”

“But surely I heard of monsieur de Maubert as the present lover.”

“Ah—no; that is ancient history. My uncle, who knows monsieur de Maubert, believes that the relation, for years, has been platonic. There have been many names since he was favoured. He is with her now, and it may, of course, be that he is an amant complaisant, though it does not seem probable. André de Valenbois, at all events, is the lover of the moment, and from what I see and hear poor Babette will have to be patient if she still thinks of him for Rose-Marie. A vulgar love would have been less devastating in a young man’s life.”

Giles now got up. Thrusting his book into his pocket he stood for a moment staring out at the tennis players. He could not pass them without speaking to them and thus reducing to painful confusion his unconscious informants. Yet he must get away. After a moment of hot uncertainty, he turned sharply round the chalet and began, behind it, to climb the hillside.

Well?—in what way was it a surprise? He almost challenged his sick dismay with the question as he went knee-deep through the daisies and scabious. Had not the horrible old woman’s intimations of the day before prepared him for it? Had he really cherished the belief that madame Vervier, after her first disaster, might have known no other love than Owen? But the sickness answered for him. He had cherished just these beliefs, and if madame Dumont had left his illusions unimpaired while the ladies of the chalet destroyed them, that was because the first was an old harpy while the latter were women of madame Vervier’s own world; of what had been her world. The truth, now, was not to be evaded. Alix’s mother was a light woman; an immoral woman; only not of the demi-monde because, he might still believe it, she was not mercenary. His heart was cold with repudiation as he climbed. Owen was belittled by what he had learned; Toppie was more basely wronged; Alix’s poor, proud little face sank beneath the waters. What spar of pride would be left for Alix to cling to when she knew? What would she feel?

But what did those women feel? Suddenly, the racial difference more sharply revealed to him than ever, he was aware that the cold repudiation was for them, too. It was the colder because of their kindness. They were safe in the citadel of their order. They were kind because they were safe. Because they were safe they accepted the jungle as having its own and its different code. They strolled peacefully along the city walls and looked down at the bright, prowling, supple creature without the city, and commented on its skill and beauty. One might almost say that the jungle itself was part of the order, since the demi-mondaine was taken as much for granted as the femme du monde. The bright creature was seen as dangerous, no doubt, to adventurers such as André de Valenbois; but Giles surmised that the danger was not great. Inconvenient was the apter word; inconvenient to the plans of the mères de famille. Young men who belonged to the citadel had, as it were, the freedom of the jungle; that was where it came into the order; for their pleasure. They issued forth to adventure; but they came back, they always came back—to Babette’s daughter—in the end. Cruel; abominable, such tolerance, such connivance, combined with such repudiation. For it was there that Giles’s austere young eyes saw the evil manifest, while the conception of a social structure more complicated and more rigid than any England could ever produce grew upon his vision. For nothing was worse than cruelty, and what was more cruel than to repudiate after you had connived?