me everything; everything you remember,” said Toppie. She was striding along over the heather, a grey woollen scarf tossed over her shoulder, a knitted cap drawn down closely over her ears, and she made Alix feel shy. She had seen that Toppie liked her and she had foreseen that she would question her. But as she felt the pressure of her longing she knew how little she could satisfy it.
“I think I remember him best of all as I first saw him,” she said, searching her thoughts.
“Yes. As you first saw him. Tell me about it. How did you first see him? He wrote to me, often, from Cannes; so much about your mother; so much about you. He said you were the dearest little girl. I understand why he said it—if you don't mind my saying so.—But he couldn't tell me what I most wanted to know, could he? How he himself looked to you.—What he said to you.—How he seemed.—You understand, I know, though you are so young, how one longs for everything that remains on earth of anyone one loves. People's memories; they are precious. You understand that,” said Toppie. And Alix felt that only by the pressure of her longing was she thus lifted above her natural reticence. The very words she used were not habitual to her; she would have been shy of using such words ordinarily.
“Yes; I understand,” said Alix. “We saw him first on the great road that runs above the sea. Maman and I were going up and he was coming down, so that we saw him tall against the sky; limping a little as he came. He looked at us, and we looked at him;—it is almost as if one recognized the people who are destined to be our friends, is it not, Mademoiselle?—and when we had passed, I looked back at him and he was looking round at us. It had been a mutual impression. We talked of it afterwards. We saw him against the sky and he saw us against the sea; as if we had risen from it, like people in a fairy-tale, he told us; and Maman laughed and said that people didn't rise from the sea carrying parasols. I remember so well the expression of his eyes”—Alix felt still shyer, but she forced herself through the shyness—“gay and searching like a dog's; out-of-door eyes. He had field-glasses in his hand. And that very evening, at the Casino, a friend of Maman's brought him and introduced him to her. So it all began.”
“Tall against the sky. Out-of-door eyes. Yes, I can see him.—Don't call me mademoiselle, Alix; call me Toppie.—And with his bird-glasses. He would have been watching birds. I see it all,” said Toppie, her eyes before her. “And then?”
“Then he came to see us every day. It was of birds we talked on the first day that he and I and Maman went for a walk. I knew them a little; not their names; but their songs and their habits, from having been so much in the country; whereas Maman is so much the parisienne that she was very ignorant and she laughed at us and said they were all much alike; small, grey silhouettes in the leaves. And he used to say that I was like a black-cap and she like a nightingale; though we did not see those birds at Cannes.
“And then?” Toppie repeated as Alix paused.
“He was still very lame,” said Alix, "so that he could not play tennis, but he used to come with us and watch Maman play; she is one of the finest players at Cannes; did he tell you? It is beautiful to watch her, she is perhaps at her best when playing tennis. And he used to write his letters in the garden of our little villa;—it was lent us, that Autumn, by friends; a charming little place; he will have told you of it. He must often have written you letters from the garden. And he and Maman sat there and read, he would read to her and she would correct his French, and she would read to him so that his ear might become accustomed to the correct accent. And sometimes it was I who read while he held, I remember, a skein of silk on his hands for Maman to wind to balls; lemon-coloured silk for a little jacket she was knitting me. She is so clever with her fingers.”
“Oh, she was so good to him! I know!” Toppie exclaimed, her eyes still fixed on the distance. “I don't know what he would have done with himself if it hadn't been for her kindness. He had been so frightfully lonely there at Cannes. He found it such a dismal place until you came; perhaps because it is supposed to be so gay; and that, in war-time, must have been dreadful. No shade, I remember he said; only sun and shadows.”
Yes; I remember that he found ho much sun depressing, and that seemed very strange to him, for we so love the sun. Hut there was real shade in our garden under the trees. The fuchsias, too, were in bloom everywhere, I remember, and I associate them so much with him; gay, delicate flowers.”