The Little French Girl/Part 1/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
For many hours the little French girl slept on dreamlessly, and when she woke it was as if an abyss of space and time lay between her and yesterday morning. As she gazed up at the dim ceiling, only the most recent memories wove themselves softly into her returning sense of identity: the yellow sauce that Giles had told her to scrape off; his faded khaki necktie; Aunt Bella's small, glazed hands. Kindness, security, lay behind these appearances, and an apprehension of pain seemed at first substanceless and irrational. Then, with a gathering effort, it shaped itself: France; Maman; what was she doing and was she happy? She had not been really happy yesterday morning. Why had monsieur Giles been so troubled when they met? And why had he never come to see them in all the nine months he had been in France?
There was a tap at the door and an elderly maid came in, neatly capped, bearing a brass hot-water-can, which she stood in the basin. Then she drew the curtains and turned up the electric light and placed by the bedside a very amusing little tea-set on a tray. It was Alix's initiation into early-morning tea, and for a moment, as she gazed at it, she feared it was to be all her breakfast until the maid, withdrawing, said, very distinctly, as though she might be deaf: “Breakfast at nine, Miss; and the bathroom is opposite.”
That was all right, then. Alix lifted the lid of the little pot and sniffed at the tea and decided that the afternoon was the only time at which she felt drawn to it. And as for the two slices of bread and butter, they were very thin, but she would rather save her appetite. Meanwhile there was a real brouillard de Londres pressing close against the window, so close that one could see nothing—Alix had jumped up to look—except the spectral top of a tree below the window and, below the tree, a blurred street-lamp. It was interesting, exciting, to get up like this as if it were after dinner instead of before breakfast, for there were lights in the hall and bathroom and one's morning face had such a curious look as one combed one's hair under an electric bulb. She forgot her waking apprehensions as she dressed, and when she went into the dining-room and found Giles there, the day seemed to have started really well.
Giles was reading a newspaper, standing under the light. The room was small and he looked very large in it; so did a pink, frilled ham on the sideboard and an engraving hanging over the mantelpiece of an old, erect gentleman, en favoris, his hands on a book and with a very high collar. When Aunt Bella came in a moment later, they all seemed quite crowded between the fog outside and the steam from the shining kettle on the table, and it was rather, Alix thought, as though they were floating in a little boat on a misty sea or suspended—this was a more exciting comparison—high in the air in an aeroplane.
She was seated opposite the mantelpiece, Giles under it, and, following her eyes, Aunt Bella said: “That is our great Mr. Gladstone, Alix. You've heard of Mr. Gladstone.”
Alix had to confess that she had not.
“Well, you'll have heard of George Washington, then,” said Aunt Bella. “There he is, behind you.” And Alix turned round to look up at the austere face in powdered hair.
“He was an American, was he not, and your enemy?” she inquired.
“He was the enemy of one of our foolish kings,” said Aunt Bella, “but an Englishman, and one we are all proud of. And that's Cobden.” She completed her educational round with the third large engraving that hung near the window.
“And now, perhaps,” said Giles, “you'll like to hear what they all did and why Aunt Bella has them hanging here. By the time you do that you'll have quite a good idea of modern English history.”
Alix for a moment was afraid that Aunt Bella might really be going to instruct her, and she had not the least wish to know anything about any of the respectable gentlemen who presided over the breakfast-table.
But Giles was going on, with his bantering smile. “If you go to Aunt Bella, you'll get a one-sided impression, perhaps. She's a great Liberal. We are all Liberals in my family. What you'd call Republicans.—Aunt Bella, you're not asking this helpless French child to drink tea for her breakfast!”
“Doesn't she have tea?” Aunt Bella asked, and though Alix insisted that she did not mind it at all, there was much concerned conversation, and the elderly maid was summoned and told to ask cook to make some cocoa for the young lady.
“You hate tea, I suppose,” said Giles, and Alix replied that she liked it very much at five o'clock, and Giles went on: “Whereas Aunt Bella likes it at all hours of the day and night; and Indian tea, I'm grieved to say; it's the only rift within our lute, Aunt Bella's Indian tea;—since we do agree about Gladstone. Now you're a Royalist, I suppose, Alix?”
“But surely no rational person in France is a Royalist any longer,” said Aunt Bella.
“Grand-père did not love the Republic,” said Alix, “but Maman admires Napoleon and the Revolution.”
“I sometimes think we shall get both a revolution and a Napoleon in this country,” said Aunt Bella, “at the rate things seem to be going.”
“There'll never be a revolution in England,” said Giles. “People who drink Indian tea could never make a revolution, could they, Alix?”
“I do not think so,” Alix smiled. “Nor in a country with such fogs.”
“That's a good idea! Eh, Aunt Bella? People must see each other clearly in order to hate each other sufficiently.—What?”
“That is just it,” Alix nodded, laughing. “And you are all so kind. Kinder, I am sure, than we are.”
She and Giles understood each other. He treated her like a child, yet they understood each other, really, better than he and Aunt Bella, for she looked a little cautious when Giles embarked on his sallies, as if she did not quite know in what admission he might not involve her unless she were careful. She took things au pied de la lettre, Aunt Bella, as, after all, an elderly lady would do who sat down to breakfast every morning with such cold comfort on her walls as Messieurs Gladstone, Cobden, and Washington. A row of smiling Watteau engravings hung round Maman's little dining-room in the rue de Penthièvre. Alix did not think that Gladstone, Cobden, or Washington would look with an eye of approval at Le Départ pour Cythère or the Assemblée Galante. Though Washington might. She liked him far the best of the three.
“And does your grandfather really expect to get the Bourbons back?” Aunt Bella inquired. “You are a Roman, I suppose, my dear child.”
“A Roman?” Alix, for all her English, was perplexed. “I have no Italian blood.”
“She means your church,” said Giles. “And Catholics, in France, do really all want back a king, don't they?”
“I am a Catholic,” said Alix, “and so, of course, was Grand-père, and he certainly did not like the Republic. We had a very unscrupulous, intriguing mayor at Montarel and perhaps that was one reason. But I do not think that Grand-père expected anything any more or thought at all about kings.”
“A very strange people, the French,” Aunt Bella remarked, as if the fact were so patent that one of them, being present, could not object to its statement. “A very strange people, indeed. And where do you say your grandfather lives, my dear?”
“He is dead,” said Alix. “It was at Montarel he lived; near the Alps.”
“You may have noticed the water-colours of Avignon that I did some years ago, hanging in your bedroom,” said Aunt Bella. “Parts of France are very picturesque. But I prefer our scenery.”
“And now,” said Giles, looking at his watch, “we must be thinking about our train. Are you packed up, Alix?”
“Tell your mother,” said Aunt Bella, “that I expect her on Thursday for the two committees. She'll spend the night, of course.” And when Alix's box and bag had been brought and a taxi summoned, Aunt Bella said to her very kindly, as they stood for farewells in the hall: “You must come again and see me, my dear, when you are in London. I could take you to the National Gallery and Westminster Abbey, and, if you care about Social Work, you might be interested in my Infant Welfare Centre and Working Girls' Gymnasium.”
“Is she an official, your aunt?” Alix inquired as she and Giles drove off to the station.
“An unofficial official,” Giles explained. “She runs more things than most officials. She sits on councils and governs hospitals and makes speeches. There can't be a busier woman in London and she's a splendid old girl;—though I do enjoy pulling her leg.” And then, since Alix was startled by this expression, also new to her, he had again to explain.