The Little French Girl/Part 2/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
He had not imagined madame Vervier coming down to breakfast; but she was up long before it. Giles, looking from his window at seven, was astonished to see her form, wrapped in a white bath-robe, advancing leisurely from the cliff that she had, evidently, just ascended after a morning swim. She was alone. It was so early that she had awakened no one to share with her the delicate sting of the morning waves. Giles indeed imagined, watching her, that these early hours were set apart by her for solitude; that no one ever shared them with her. She walked, her russet head bent down, a little as she had walked in the Bois; meditating, it seemed. He heard her afterwards on the verandah, in the salon below, moving quietly to and fro. Her calm voice directed Albertine. '“Ne réveillez pas mademoiselle. Elle est si fatiguée,”' he heard.
A little while later, Albertine's voice broke out far away, at the garden gate, in vehement yet not unfriendly altercation with the baker's lady; and then, stealing deliciously into his sleepy senses, mingling with the fragrance of the carnations by his bedside, the aroma of roasting coffee-beans delicately tinctured the air. Albertine came in with a jug of steaming water and it was time to get up.
When he went down at half-past eight, monsieur de Valenbois was singing in the drawing-room with madame Vervier at the piano; the song was “D'Une Prison,” and he sang well.
Albertine was laying breakfast on the verandah, and Giles stood leaning against a pillar listening to the song. At its end madame Vervier soberly commended the singer, yet turned a leaf, here and there, to suggest an alteration. “Qu'as-tu fait de ta jeunesse?” monsieur de Valenbois sang again, with a new poignancy; and yet again. “Bien; très bien,” said madame Vervier's quiet voice.
Then monsieur de Maubert appeared, and they came out to greet him and Giles. Monsieur de Maubert wore a small white woollen shawl over his shoulders and madame Vervier asked him with solicitude whether he would rather have breakfasted in the salle-à-manger, as usual. It had seemed so deliciously mild a morning that she had told Albertine to lay the table here.
Monsieur de Maubert said he delighted in the plan. He would merely take precautions against a courant d'air; and to ensure him further from this calamity his chair was placed in a corner behind the table, Giles aiding in his disposal and amused by the idea of Jove sheltering from a courant d'air.
“Oh, breakfast here! Quel bonheur!” cried Alix, emerging. She made Giles think of a swallow as she skimmed out, her feet in their heelless espadrilles hardly seeming to touch the ground. André de Valenbois also, he saw, noted her swiftness, her light, direct movement; noted, too, no doubt, her clear face, stern in its carven structure, yet sweet in smile and glance. Alix was really growing up; she was already a person to be noted by a young man with an eye for beauty in all its manifestations, and Giles, while monsieur de Valenbois' eyes rested almost musingly upon her, knew a fraternal, nay, almost a paternal, stir of anxious surmise. Would that be a solution? He did not feel the need of a solution for Alix's problem to be so pressing as he had on the steamer yesterday. It was difficult in this radiant milieu to believe her so in need of rescue. However heinous madame Vervier's fault, she could not, without manifest priggishness, be seen as a mother unfit to care for a daughter. But problem or no problem, it would be a comfort to know Alix settled, and during coffee and rolls he began to see, very plainly, that this settlement must almost certainly have presented itself to madame Vervier. If André de Valenbois were here on these terms of happy intimacy, when her child arrived, had she not seen to it that he was here? Could she have chosen better? If Alix was charming, so was he; he was, indeed, Giles considered, having not thought much of Alix as in the category, more obviously charming than she was; a veritable prince of the fairy-tale in face, form, and demeanour, and if Alix was not already affected by his presence that could only be because she was still so much a child. He was not a young man to leave a maiden's fancy unaffected.
“A penny for your thoughts, monsieur Giles,” monsieur de Valenbois' voice broke in, disconcertingly, upon his meditations. That he had allowed them to become absorbing was evident to him from the smiles that met his eyes as he raised them. He felt himself foolishly blushing.
“Giles never talks much at breakfast,” Alix commented.
“I don't get much chance to, at home, do I?” said Giles, grateful for her intervention.
“You shall have every chance here,” said madame Vervier. “We rarely have a young English philosopher among us. We must profit by the occasion.” Her smile was very kind.
“I know what monsieur Giles was thinking of,” said monsieur de Valenbois.
“Oh, no, you don't,” Giles laughed.
“I wager you!” monsieur de Valenbois challenged him, tilting back his chair, his brilliantly blue eyes on his friend. “Do you defy me?”
“Absolutely,” said Giles.
“Well, own to my perspicacity when I tell you, then, that you were thinking about mademoiselle Alix. You were reassembling your arguments against the Russian ballet and reflecting that the best of them would be that it is idle to go to art for something we can find more perfectly displayed in nature.”
Giles stared at him. It was near enough to cause him to stare.
“Well?” smiled monsieur de Valenbois.
“How did you know I was thinking about Alix?” Giles demanded.
“How did I know?—Because I was!” laughed monsieur de Valenbois. “And the same thoughts.”
Madame Vervier was looking at them both, and again, Giles imagined, with her veiled vigilance. “The Russian ballet?” she questioned. “What has Alix to do with the Russian ballet?”
“Forgive my execrable taste, chère madame!” exclaimed monsieur de Valenbois, “in making mademoiselle Alix the subject of these divinations! But did you remark the way in which she bounded out of the house just now? It was a remarkable bound,” smiled monsieur de Valenbois. “It started the same strain of thought in me and in monsieur Giles, you see. We were discussing the Russian ballet last night.”
“But I wasn't thinking about the Russian ballet,” Giles rather helplessly protested, and he felt madame Vervier not quite pleased. “That's what I should have thought, no doubt, if it had come to my mind. But it didn't.”
“Ah; but the essential you will not deny,” said monsieur de Valenbois, and Giles, feeling his blushes mount again, wondered just how far the essential had indeed been divined.
Alix was gazing first at him, then at monsieur de Valenbois and then at her mother; and her mother's eyes, while they caressed and approved her silence, put her aside into the retirement suitable to a jeune fille.
“Monsieur Giles has disowned the essential,” she remarked.
“Do you like him, Giles?” Alix questioned when, after breakfast, she moved off with her friend to the cliff-path.
Giles really felt a little abashed before her calm; felt that he deserved, rather than monsieur de Valenbois, madame Vervier's implicit reproof.
“Monsieur de Valenbois?” he questioned. “Very much. Don't you? I think him charming.”
“Charming,” Alix reflected.
“Have you known him for a long time?” Giles inquired.
“A long time? I?” Alix's eyes came back to him surprised. “I never saw him before.”
“Really. He's a new friend of your mother's, then.”
“Yes. They met at Cannes last winter,” said Alix. “Charming. He is that, I suppose; but I think it a little agaçant for anyone to look so sure of happiness.”
“Sure of happiness? You think he looks that?”
“Yes. As if, always, he had had everything he wanted. That is a little agaçant, I think. Though of course it is not his fault.”
“It may be only a part of his intelligence, his general tact and taste, to look it,” Giles suggested. “He would always be thinking about his responsibilities towards his surroundings. If he wasn't happy, nobody would know it.”
“But would that not be for his own sake rather than for theirs? He would feel it a disadvantage to look unhappy,” said Alix.
“But he's so kind,” said Giles. “He seems to me, now that I come to think of it, even more kind than he is charming. He's been most awfully kind to me already.”
“And why should he not be?” Alix inquired. She took off her hat and the morning breeze blew back her hair.
“Well, I'm a rather unprepossessing young foreigner. I shouldn't have known how to be kind to him.”
“He is quicker on the surface than you are, Giles; but you are quite as quick beneath it, and deeper far, I feel sure,” said Alix.
“Hang it!” said Giles, laughing, “how do you manage to think these things at your age?”
“I am of an age, it appears, to have monsieur de Valenbois discuss my appearance in my presence,” said Alix.
“Oh—but just because you are so young,” Giles, already alarmed for the good fortune of his romance, protested.
“Ah, but if I were as young as you mean, I should not be worth discussing,” Alix returned.
Giles glanced at her from the tail of his eye. How young, how old, indeed, was Alix. His sense of a suffering only biding its time to spring upon her came strongly to him as he scanned surreptitiously the high young face that seemed to soar beside him, the vast background lending an added haughtiness to its delicate projections. How French, how French she was; how much a foreigner with all her familiarity; so much so that he could not, even now, foresee what she would feel, what love, what suffer. “And monsieur Jules;—I've never heard anyone call him anything but Jules.—And mademoiselle Fontaine? Give me your impressions of all these people,” he said. “They are so strange and new to me.”
“Poor Jules. I am fond of him. Very. I have known him for many years,” said Alix. “Ever since Maman admired a picture of his and bought it and then found him, starving, with his little wife. Maman has been their good angel always. Success is coming to him now; now when it is too late. And mademoiselle Fontaine is an old habituée of Maman's salon. I have not seen her in the country before. She has taken this little villa for the summer to be near Maman. She does not seem to belong to the country. We will go one day to have tea with her and her mother and old grandmother and see the little 'fox,' ” Alix added. “Her grandmother knew Chopin. She will tell you so at once; and George Sand. She was an actress, too. I do not think that I care much for actresses.”
“And was mademoiselle Fontaine's mother an actress?”
“Oh, not at all. Her mother is quite different. Une bonne petite bourgeoise tout simplement; quite insignificant and creeping. They both adore the grandmother. You must see them,” Alix repeated, a slight amusement on her lips, as if she spoke of quaint animals she had to display to her friend.
He and Alix and monsieur de Valenbois bathed before luncheon. Bathing at Les Chardonnerets was a rather arduous affair. One undressed in one's room and ran out over the cliff-top in espadrilles and bath-robe. The long iron staircase down the face of the cliff was almost as steep as a fire-escape in places, and at the bottom there was shingle to traverse and then, if the tide was low, as on this morning, a stretch of wet sand. Giles was an excellent swimmer and so was monsieur de Valenbois. Alix, not yet proficient, though her stroke was good, swam between them out to sea, and Giles, as he and the young Frenchman smiled at each other over her dark head, felt a growing assurance for his romance. André de Valenbois, he saw, found Alix a charming young creature, and what could be a better beginning than that? She rested, when they turned to come back, holding first Giles by the shoulders and then monsieur de Valenbois.
Madame Vervier was sitting on the grass, high against the sky. She watched them from under a white sunshade, monsieur de Maubert, under a green-lined one, extended beside her. “Now let me swim again and show her how much progress I have made,” said Alix, and she bravely pointed her hands through the waves, Giles and André beside her, exhorting, directing, commending. Giles felt that madame Vervier, on her height, watched it all complacently. Complacently, yet with that vigilance, too. Alix was given the full liberty of the jeune fille moderne; but he had already noted that however far and free her roamings her mother was always aware of when, how, and with whom they took place.
It so befell that Giles made the acquaintance of mademoiselle Fontaine's family that very day. Madame Vervier and monsieur de Valenbois went off for a long motor drive and it was arranged with mademoiselle Fontaine, who appeared soon after the swim, that Giles and Alix were to drink tea with her and Maman and Grand'mère at their cottage. Monsieur de Maubert was spending the afternoon with friends in the country.
The smallest, most smiling little house it was, that of mademoiselle Fontaine's family. It stood behind a pink-and-grey wall in a tiny garden and when they entered the gate at four o'clock they were welcomed by the fox terrier, and found old madame Dumont, crumpled up in black draperies and under a black parasol all lace and fringes, sitting out in the sun on the flagged path with a row of white and purple petunias leading up to her. Mademoiselle Fontaine stood behind her chair and gently but forcibly shouted their names to her, and mademoiselle Fontaine's mother, who did not bear her name, but was plain madame Collet, emerged from the house with a tray of tea and coffee. She was a stout, pale little woman with a high, old-fashioned bosom and prominent, old-fashioned hips and an old-fashioned fringe across her faded forehead. Careful, cautious, grave and happy, she seemed as one who moved among precious objects to whose well-being and security she knew herself essential. “Is that as you wish it, Blanche?” Giles heard her whisper to her daughter; and to her mother, “You are warm enough, Maman?”
As for Grand'mère, Giles, in spite of Alix's intimations, was hardly prepared for such a fearsome old lady. Very fearsome he found her, peering shrewdly up at him through the fringes of her parasol with the beady eye of an old raven under a dark-blue beetling eyebrow. She was powdered and dyed, and an erection of black lace ornamented her ample indigo wig and fell in lappets on either side of her long Semitic cheeks. Her smile was histrionic and her voice hoarse as if with years of use for public purposes. Now and then she emitted a loud gong-like laugh, and Giles could somehow imagine her, so full of vitality did she still seem, standing in classic draperies on a vast stage and bellowing forth passages from Victor Hugo. She talked almost immediately of Chopin and mademoiselle Fontaine stood leaning on the back of her chair listening to her as if she felt the rôle of listener, for herself as well as for them, a privilege. Giles could not but admire what, he supposed, was the effect of the French tradition of family life. It was difficult to associate an intelligence as versatile as mademoiselle Fontaine's with this derelict antiquity, and even more difficult to think of her as the daughter of the homespun little person who poured out their tea and coffee. But mademoiselle Fontaine showed no sign, apologetic or explanatory, of finding anything amiss with either of them, and if her manner towards madame Collet was often curt and authoritative, an affection that could show itself at moments in quite a pretty playfulness evidently underlay it.
“See what a naughty little mother I have, monsieur Bradley,” she exclaimed. “She pretends always to forget that I do not like my afternoon coffee made with chicory. In the morning, yes; I admit it; later in the day, no. Ah, Maman! no excuses!! Je vous connais. Economy is the motive!—She has never escaped the fear that unless one saves all one's sous one may die in indigence.”
“Chicory, Blanche? What do you say of chicory?” the old lady inquired, leaning an ear towards her grandchild. “Mais c'est très sain, la chicorée. Ca rafraichit le sang.—If you drink chicory every day in your coffee”—and now it was an eye she turned, half closed in sagacious admonition, on the startled Giles—“you will not need to purge yourself, my young man.”
“Fi donc, Grand'mère! We do not talk of l'hygiène now!” laughed mademoiselle Fontaine.
“Ah, it is a thing never to forget,” said madame Dumont. “If Chopin had not neglected his health, how many more works of genius he would have given to the world.—He was my master, did I tell you, monsieur Gillet?”—mademoiselle Fontaine had not succeeded in conveying Giles's name to her in a retainable form. “I had great talent for the piano. It was said to me, when I chose the theatre as a career, that it was one I chose and one I threw away.—You have heard of George Sand in England?”
Giles said that they heard of her.
“Femme exécrable!” madame Dumont exclaimed. “Femme sans cœur! How many lives did she not destroy!”
“Ah, but I am always on the side of the woman, when it comes to les affaires de cœur,” said mademoiselle Fontaine, with a smile at Giles. “We are so often the losers that I feel a certain satisfaction when a woman, even if ruthlessly, redresses the balance. And with all its romanticism, what a great talent it was, that of the good George! Do not say too much ill of her.”
“Good! You can call a woman good who tricks one lover under the nose of the other! Do you forget Pagello and Alfred de Musset!” cried madame Dumont. “As for Musset; let it pass; he was not one to be pitied.—But Chopin! A man as simple as a child. Non. C'était un monstre!” madame Dumont declared.
“And I will leave you to tell monsieur Giles what you think of George Sand while I ask mademoiselle Alix to come upstairs with me and see a new dress that has come from Paris,” said mademoiselle Blanche, thus further demonstrating her intelligence to Giles, for indeed madame Dumont's reminiscences had begun to make him uneasy.
Alix had picked up the friendly “fox” and was giving scant attention; but once her impeding presence was removed, madame Dumont's recitals took on a disconcerting raciness and when, presently, madame Collet gathered together the tea-things and carried away the tray, the old lady, as if she had bided her time, lurched towards Giles, with a terrible leering smile, to whisper: “Elle est belle, n'est-ce pas, madame Vervier?”
“Très belle,” said Giles, drawing away a little.
“Sa fille ne sera jamais aussi belle,” whispered madame Dumont. “She need not fear her. What fate more pitiful for a beautiful woman than to find a rival in her daughter!”
“Nothing of that sort could ever happen between Alix and her mother,” said Giles angrily.
“Nothing of that sort. Précisément. You, a young man, and I, an old woman, see eye to eye when it comes to such a comparison,” madame Dumont disconcertingly concurred. “La petite Alix is not of a type to seduce. She has distinction; an air of race; mais elle n'est pas séduisante!—Tandis que la mère!”—and madame Dumont, with eye and hand uplifted, took Heaven to witness of her appreciation.
“That's not what I mean at all. You quite misunderstand me,” said Giles, more angrily.
“Vous dites, monsieur?” said madame Dumont, fixing a very shrewd, sharp eye upon him as if she suddenly discerned new aspects of an obvious case. “It is the daughter you admire?”
Madame Collet reappeared and Giles maintained a hostile silence. To attempt to enlighten madame Dumont would be futile.
“It is time for your repos, Maman,” said madame Collet. “She is so old, so very old, monsieur,” she added, casting a glance of proud possessorship upon Giles. “Only by constant care do we keep her with us. And now it is time for the little afternoon nap.”
The old lady, muttering something about chicory and hygiène, signified her readiness to withdraw and Giles assisted her daughter in hoisting her upon her feet. But for all her decrepitude she was still not lacking in female sensitiveness and had time, it was evident, to make her reflections upon something unflattering in the attitude of the young Englishman, for, before she disappeared into the house, she bade him farewell with an extreme and sudden haughtiness.
Alix soon came down after that and they went away.
“Well?” smiled Alix. “And did you appreciate the celebrated madame Dumont?”
Her smile hurt Giles. Its unconsciousness of what madame Dumont really meant; her ignorance of what such old harpies thought and said of her mother. “Horrible old creature!” he could not repress.
“Horrible?” Alix was evidently surprised. “That is very severe.”
“I want to be severe. I think she is quite horrible.”
“It is always horrible to be so old. But she is not stupid, Giles. She has been a great actress; at least, almost great. Monsieur de Maubert saw her act years ago, and says that it was good. And sometimes she will still repeat one of her famous scenes—as Phèdre or Athalie—to make one's blood run chill.”
“She makes my blood run chill without any acting,” said Giles.