The Little French Girl/Part 3/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
If Toppie, too, was changed, she was not changed to her. That was the first thing that Alix felt when she saw her again; next day;—for a note had been waiting for her at Heathside asking her to come to the Rectory.
It was a hot, still day and a bee was droning lazily about the Rectory drawing-room, flying out into the sunlight and in again to the bowl of mignonette that stood on a table near the window; and the bee made the day more still. It had been strange to find herself thinking of Racine as she waited for Toppie. Nothing so trivial and intimate as a bee could be imagined in any play of Racine's; yet its soft drone had accompanied her sense of a pause, of an ominous interlude, like the pause before a scene where the heroine was to enter with some quiet, conclusive word. It was, perhaps, because of this association of ideas that Toppie, when she entered, had looked to her like the Racine heroine, like a creature delicate and austere, dimly conscious of an impending doom. There was fear in Toppie's face as it found her there. Alix saw its white gleam mastered, resolutely veiled, while, at the same moment, the full security of Giles's assurance was brought warmly home to her by Toppie's encircling arms, by a new note of emotion in her voice as she said, kissing her, “Dear, dear child.”
Toppie was changed; but it could not be because of her. It was her father's illness that had changed her and Giles had spoken the whole truth; but all the same, involuntarily, she found herself saying, while Toppie's arms were still around her: “Are you glad to have me back?” And she heard that her voice trembled in speaking.
Whatever the fear had been, Toppie had mastered it. She held her by the shoulders and looked at her, smiling, and said: “So glad, dear little Alix, that I feel we ought to keep you always.” Then she held her off and looked her up and down, still smiling, and added: “But it isn't a child any longer. It's an almost grown-up young person.”
It was strange to feel herself, all reassured as she was, wanting dreadfully to cry; but Alix, too, was an adept at mastering emotion, and she said, taking off her hat so that Toppie should see all the changes: “Do you like my hair?”
“I like it very much.” Toppie kept her hand, turning her round. “I like seeing your forehead, such a gentle, thoughtful forehead. I like that big black bow at your neck.”
“That is a jeune fille bow—a bow of transition,” smiled Alix. “It is to be there while the hair grows long enough to make a knot.”
“I like it all,” said Toppie.
They sat down on the sofa side by side, Toppie still holding her hand, and then she said: “Toppie, I had not realized from your letter that your father was so ill.”
Toppie looked at her in silence for a moment and, slowly, her eyes filled with tears. “He is going to leave me, Alix,” she said.
It was her father, then. Alix could not but feel the deep, selfish relief. “Oh, you must hope,” she said.
“I do try to hope. I try to live on hope. But I am afraid he is going to leave me,” Toppie repeated. “He is not much changed,” she went on, for Alix found nothing to say. “You will not see much change in him, I am sure. I will take you up to him presently. He likes to follow what goes on. In a way he follows more than he has ever done. It is a sort of clinging, I think. And he is quite cut off from his own work. I read to him a great deal. Perhaps you will come sometimes and read to him in French. He likes that, you know.”
“I like it, too. You must let me come often. It is curious, Toppie, but when Giles is away my English life is really here with you; not that I am not very fond of them all at Heathside.”
“Is it?” Toppie looked at her very intently. “I am glad of that. Glad that I can mean home to you.—Dear little Alix.—But you are fond of them.”
“Especially of Mrs. Bradley. Only she is there so little. One hardly sees her. I am fond of Ruth and Rosemary, too. But I would rather be with you.” Alix smiled a little.
“And it will be Rosemary only this winter, since Ruth is going to Oxford. I am glad she is to be there. Giles will like having her near him.” Toppie spoke calmly the name of Giles.
“Do you think so?” said Alix. “Do you think she means much to Giles?”
“He is devoted to all his family. It will certainly be a pleasure to him to have her,” said Toppie, and Alix now thought she detected in her voice a strange detachment.
“He is fond of them to do things for them; not to be with them—I mean his sisters. He is so unlike his sisters; and most of all unlike Ruth. Ruth is so stupid beside Giles.”
“She is a very good girl; very courageous and honest,” said Toppie. “I think I see Ruth's good points more than I used to. I think, Alix, the older one grows, the more one cares for those sterling qualities. Black would always be black to Ruth, and white, white. That has value, the highest value, in a person's character, you know.”
Something in Toppie's tone now dimly offended Alix. “But you could not really compare Ruth and Giles, Toppie. Giles is all that she is and so much more besides. He sees the greys and all the delicate in-between shades, too. Nothing is really black or white, and that is what is so stupid in Ruth; she sees things so.”
“It sometimes seems to me that they are nothing else,” said Toppie very calmly. “And Ruth has, I think, because of that downrightness in her, more strength of character than Giles. He would so much more easily be mistaken;—misled.” Toppie paused before finding these words. “He has what would be called the artistic temperament, I suppose; and that is the penalty one pays for having it; a certain weakness; a certain yielding. I feel that Giles would yield where Ruth would stand up like granite;—and I like the granite thing in people.”
Alix sat in indignant astonishment. “I have never known anyone so true as Giles,” she said slowly.
“I did not say that he was not true,” Toppie returned, with a touch of severity. “I said that he would be more easily misled than Ruth. I said that he was weaker than Ruth.”
They sat for a few strange moments silent.
“But it is as if you were changed to Giles,” Alix cried suddenly. She could not repress the cry. “What is it, Toppie? What has he done to displease you? You are unkind to him. You speak as if you did not care for him.”
A deep blush rose in Toppie's face; but it was not the blush of surprise or confusion. Alix saw a competent sternness in the eyes bent upon her. “You must not say things like that,” Toppie said slowly, considering every word. “There are things you do not understand. I shall always care for Giles. I have not changed to him. No,” she repeated as if to herself, “I have not changed to Giles.”
They sat there, still hand in hand. Alix felt that she wished to fling Toppie's hand aside. In answer to her sternness she had felt an instant anger rise within her. That Toppie should reprove, rebuff her, was itself an affront she bore with difficulty—and bore only because she feared to damage Giles's cause by rejoinder; but her anger passed the personal wrong by and fastened itself, strangely, inevitably, on the figure of Captain Owen.
It was Toppie herself, in the picture she had drawn of Giles, who had set him so vividly before her. Captain Owen, not Giles, was the person who would blur black into grey; Captain Owen was the person who, in comparison with honest Ruth, lacked something. Giles was everything that his brother had not been, and yet it was Captain Owen who had betrayed Toppie—she found the word and it sank with a cold weight on her heart;—it was Captain Owen, now, she felt sure of it, who parted Giles and Toppie. She sat, her eyes fixed proudly before her; her lips hard.
“Alix,” Toppie said in a gentle voice, “if so much has changed in my life—you mustn't change.”
“It feels to me as if it were you who were changed, Toppie,” said Alix.
“You must forgive me, then,” said Toppie with her firm gentleness. “I am not quite myself, perhaps. I am rather on edge. I know I seemed to speak harshly. You see, dear Alix, you are still, really, a child—one cares for you so much that one forgets it. But there are things you cannot understand.”
“Perhaps I understand some things better than you do, Toppie,” Alix returned, still not looking at her friend.
At that, for a moment, Toppie sat quite silent. “Perhaps you do,” she then said. “Some things, perhaps you do. But I feel sure that you do not understand the things I am speaking of.”
After that they tried to talk as if nothing had happened. Toppie's manner had an atoning sweetness. Once or twice, in the way she spoke, the way she looked at her, it was as if, Alix felt, one of Toppie's doves had spread its brooding wings over her, protectingly, tenderly. She knew that she had not forgiven Toppie; and yet she was the fonder of her because she had not forgiven her.
She was taken up to see Mr. Westmacott, who sat at an open window, a reading-table before him with books upon it. Sitting there, as formally courteous as ever, with his tall pale head and eyes still clearly blue, he did not look so ill. It was more in his voice as he questioned her about her journey that she felt change. His voice had become dry and brittle, like a glacial wind fluttering the leaves of an old abandoned volume that no one would ever read again. He would soon die; Alix felt sure of that as she heard him. He would die, and Toppie would leave the Rectory and wander forth desolate, among her doves. Why, oh, why, would she not see and understand Giles? Why would she not marry him? “Oh, if I could see her married to Giles,” she thought, when she had said good-bye to Toppie and was out again upon the common. “If I could only help Giles so that he should marry her, it would have been worth while that I should have come to England!” And that there was mistake, misunderstanding between Giles and Toppie, she was now sure.
She had gone halfway across the dried heather, when, as on the evening of her first visit to the Rectory, she saw Giles approaching her, Jock at his heels, and she knew now, as she had then only felt instinctively, that he had been waiting for her and that he was afraid of something. Of the same thing; yet of more.
Jock saw her and raced ahead to jump against her knees. He was still her special pet among the dogs and had received Blaise kindly. Alix stooped to caress his head while she watched Giles approach her.
“Well, how did you find Toppie?” he asked simply, as they met.—Giles not true! Giles easily misled! Alix felt herself suddenly blushing with anger as the thought of Toppie's strange delusion returned to her. Giles drew her arm within his and they went across the common towards the birch-wood. It gave her a deep feeling of consolation that he should thus seek refuge with the one person who could understand him.
“I find her changed, Giles,” she said.
“In what way changed?” said Giles quickly.
And as quickly Alix answered: “Not at all to me, Giles.”
“You see how desperately ill her father is, don't you?” said Giles. “She's quite worn out with nursing him, you know. In what way do you feel her changed?” he repeated, looking down into her face.
Alix was pondering. She was not a person who believed in black and white. She believed in the greys and the in-between shades. She did not mean to tell Giles how she thought Toppie changed. What she found to say was: “If Toppie were happier she would not be so hard.”
“Hard?” She was looking at the ground, but she heard in Giles's voice how the word startled him.
“Do you not think Toppie hard?” she asked.
“If she is,” said Giles after a moment, “it's because of what you say—that she is unhappy.”
“And because she is too sure,” said Alix. They had entered the birch-wood and their footsteps rustled in the fallen golden leaves. They went forward, aimlessly, not thinking of where they went, Alix intent on her reading of Toppie, Giles listening. “Too sure of what she loves and believes in. She has had to be too sure, because she is so unhappy.—Is that it, Giles? And the things she loves and believes in are not the things she sees. Perhaps that makes us hard—if we can only think of the things we love and never see or touch them—makes us hard, I mean, to the things we have with us.”
Giles was, she knew, keeping his eyes on her as she put together these suggestions, and as he meditated for a little pause, her thoughts, in the silence, while she watched the golden leaves, took a long flight to France and she found herself suddenly wondering if perhaps Maman and André de Valenbois were wandering under the autumnal trees in the Bois—as Giles had seen Maman and Captain Owen wander under the Spring trees. And with the thought came such a pang of fear and grief.
“You're right, I think,” Giles said. “And I see no help for it. She'll grow more and more away from the things she has with her and shut herself more and more into her solitude—where she is safe with the things she can't see.—What can we do about it, Alix?” said Giles gently, a little as if he spoke to a child from whose ingenuous wisdom he sought an oracle.—“Who can help Toppie in any way in which she'd accept help?”
Suddenly it was very easy, there in the twilight woods, to be courageous. She was so near Giles. It was as if her heart beat in his side. “No one can do anything for her but you, Giles. You must marry her and make her happy.”
“Oh, my dear little Alix,” he said, smiling bitterly, not even pausing to assess her daring, just as she herself had not needed to pause. “There's no hope for me. No one can help her less than I.”
“Do you mean there never was hope;—or is none now?”
“There never was, perhaps;—but there's less now. Her heart is full of Owen.”
“Yet if he had not been there, it would have been you she would have loved.”
“Who can tell? Perhaps.”
“And is it because of him that there's less hope, even, now?”
“Put it like that if you choose,” said Giles. “Yes. Because of him.”