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diff --git a/old/53197-0.txt b/old/53197-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index d375757..0000000 --- a/old/53197-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5691 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Cynthia Steps Out, by Erick Berry - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Cynthia Steps Out - -Author: Erick Berry - -Release Date: October 2, 2016 [EBook #53197] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CYNTHIA STEPS OUT *** - - - - - - - - - - - - - - _Cynthia_ - STEPS OUT - - BY - ERICK BERRY - - - CHICAGO - - _The Goldsmith Publishing - Company_ - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1937, BY - THE GOLDSMITH PUBLISHING COMPANY - - Made in U. S. A. - - - - -CONTENTS - - - CHAPTER PAGE - - I ALWAYS TRUST YOUR LUCK 11 - _Shipboard_ - - II CORNED BEEF HASH 42 - _Paris_ - - III COLD-IN-THE-HEAD 69 - _Brittany_ - - IV LITTLE MISS FIX-IT 99 - _Mont St. Michel_ - - V THE CUCKOO 127 - _Basque Country_ - - VI ROMANCE IN CARCASSONNE 158 - _Carcassonne_ - - VII THE RACING SNAIL 190 - _Siena_ - - VIII ALL IS NOT LOST 219 - _Venice_ - - - - -CHAPTER 1 - -_Shipboard_ - -ALWAYS TRUST YOUR LUCK - - -“It must be fun to be an artist.” Stasia’s speech was somewhat impeded -by the mouthful of pins she was trying not to swallow. - -“Fun?” Cynthia frowned, thinking. “Yes, I suppose it is. I wouldn’t -know how to be anything else. Ouch! That was me you were pinning.” She -braced herself with one arm against the bulkhead as the ship tipped at -a slight angle. “Make that sleeve as short as you can.” - -Stasia took the last pin out of her mouth. “Slip off your blouse now, -and I’ll baste it up for you. You’ll make a sweet pirate, if pirates -ever were sweet.” - -Cynthia, free of the blouse, turned to experiment before the long -mirror in the door, hesitating between the respective merits of a red -bandana handkerchief over her black curls and the more sinister effect -of a black scarf which could be continued down into a black mask with -eyeholes. - -Stasia bit off her thread. “There, that’s ready. When will you break it -to Miss Mitchall that she’s got to wear a costume tonight?” - -Cynthia giggled. “You ought to come along and help me. But I guess I’ll -wait till the last minute and rush her into the idea.” She glanced -toward the bed where a tall, witch’s cap, made of green cardboard from -the ship’s barber shop, reposed beside a cape of green broadcloth, -borrowed from Stasia, and a pair of Miss Mitchall’s own shoes, now -adorned with huge buckles of cardboard and silver foil. - -“I’ll need some help with my wig,” said Stasia, “and then I think we’re -all finished.” The wig was of bright orange yarn, loosely knitted into -a tight fitting cap of coarse net which completely covered Stasia’s -sleek bob. - -“It needs tightening at the back. Wait a moment.” Cynthia braced her -feet. “Dash this boat, I hope she stops rolling before dinner or we -shan’t have any dance. Do they always have a costume party every trip?” - -“Uh-huh. Always the second day before we get into Cherbourg, Paris, -day after tomorrow. Aren’t you thrilled?” - -Cynthia, pinning the wig into a better fit, murmured a vague assent. -But she didn’t feel at all thrilled. After eight days the ship was -like another home in which she knew, by sight at least, almost every -occupant. Paris was going to be new and strange. Oh yes, a grand new -adventure, but sometimes she got scared at the thought of it. So big, -with all the street signs and the menus in a different language and -so much that was new to learn. What if she failed to make good on the -job that had brought her over, the dozen covers for _Little Ones’ -Magazine_? Suppose she didn’t have the money to stay? Suppose she -couldn’t make people understand her French, even though Stasia had been -coaching her all week? Oh shut up, Cynthia! - -“Miss Mitchall’s the old girl I admire,” she said suddenly. “She’s got -more courage! You know she’s returning practically without a job and -without money and she’s fifty if she’s a day, though she looks sixty, -poor darling. I don’t believe she’s got ten dollars beyond her fare to -London.” - -“What was she doing in the States?” asked Stasia. - -Stasia hadn’t, Cynthia thought, much imagination, but perhaps that was -because her father was president of the line. Look at this suite de -luxe, the best in the ship. And if she had never earned her own living -she couldn’t imagine what it was to be like Miss Mitchall. - -“Oh, she had some sort of a governess job. But she’s English you know, -and she didn’t come in on the quota and so she had to go back home. -She was with a Canadian family in Buffalo. They are paying her fare -back, but that’s all. I wish ...” she stopped. She was going to say she -wished she could help her. - -Stasia looked at her watch, the little platinum watch circled with -diamonds. “It’s six my dear, and dinner’s at half past seven. If you’re -going to get your roommate into her costume ...” - -“You’re right, you’re perfectly right.” Cynthia struggled into her wool -dress, grabbed the black scarf, the buckled shoes, threw the blouse -over her arm. “Here, give me a hand with the other stuff, will you? -I’ll take the hat.” - -Cynthia’s small cabin was down, down, two steep flights below the -cabins de luxe. Clean white corridors smelling of soap and sea and -ship, doors shut and white, doors open and dark, doors open and -lighted, a narrow corridor turning down to the left, two doors facing -each other, the left one always closed. Cynthia often wondered about -that door. She knew the cabin was occupied because the room steward -went in and out but no one else ever did. The door to the right was -Cynthia’s and Miss Mitchall’s. - -“Here we are. Thanks a lot. Can I help with make-up or anything?” -Cynthia dumped her things on the bunk, turned on the lights. - -“No, thanks. The stewardess and Lilia will help if I want it.” Lilia -was Stasia’s maid. Cynthia smiled. Think of having a maid to yourself! - -Stasia was gone. Cynthia hustled out of her dress again, turned on the -hot water, whistled happily. This was going to be fun tonight. Like the -old Art Academy days when everybody dressed up and the dances lasted -till morning. - -Someone in the cabin across the corridor coughed, a man’s cough. -Cynthia turned off the hot water and listened, caught herself staring -with wide gray eyes at the wide gray eyes in the mirror over the wash -basin. - -The night she had come on board that left hand door had been wide open -and in the corridor there had been a suitcase, big and black, with lots -of stickers on it. Cynthia hurrying along the hall with an arm full of -last minute fruit and flowers and books, Chick and Judy and the others -of the old Art School bunch at her heels, had tripped and fallen full -length over that suitcase. When Chick had picked her up, unhurt, and -brushed her off, she had noted the suitcase and a huge Ottawa Hotel -paster on its side, bright with greens and blues and oranges. Chick had -noticed it too. “A good poster design, that,” he had said. - -And Cynthia, thinking about Chick, sat down on the lower bunk and for -three minutes was devastatingly and overwhelmingly homesick for New -York and the studio, for Judy and Chick. Chick had, in this very room, -standing on that very same rug, kissed her good-bye with his arms tight -around her and wished her good luck and told her how rotten it was for -him to have to stay behind like this. “Keep my ring on your finger and -my face in your heart,” he had said. - -Cynthia twisted the pretty emerald, which had belonged to Chick’s -mother, now so ill that he couldn’t get away for the trip they had -planned together. It was a sweet ring. Cynthia’s eyes were getting -teary when the dressing gong sounded. Goodness, was it as late as that! - -The pirate costume had long black trousers--full ones from Cynthia’s -beach pyjamas. A wide sash of twisted red and green bristled with an -arsenal of silver paper pistols and knives. The white blouse, with -sleeves tacked very short, bore a black silk skull and crossbones over -the heart. She was tying heavy thread on brass curtain rings to loop -over her ears when Miss Mitchall pattered in, closing the door gently -behind her. - -Miss Mitchall’s small sloping shoulders, claw-like hands and thin blond -hair, now a dusty gray, were the characteristics of the story-book -English governess, but her eyes gleamed brightly behind her spectacles -and one felt that her spirit was unconquerable. - -“Oh my dear, how sweet you look,” she twittered. - -Cynthia hung an earring over one ear and patted it with a slim finger -to see if it would swing free. In a minute she’d have to break the news -to her roommate. But Miss Mitchall had news of her own. - -“I just heard a voice across the corridor, talking to the steward. It’s -a man and he talks with a Canadian accent,” she whispered. - -They had both wondered about that room, for on this small ship everyone -seemed to know everyone else, with that exception. Was he ill, perhaps, -that he never came out, not even for meals? But there wasn’t time to -discuss him now. - -“Hurry and get into your costume for the party,” directed Cynthia. - -“Costume? Oh yes.” Miss Mitchall was going to appreciate the small -jest. “You mean my black dress.” She turned, bustling a little, to put -her purse and book and scarf and sweater on the long couch beneath the -porthole. - -“No, I don’t mean just the black dress,” stated Cynthia in what she -hoped was a firm tone. “I mean your costume. Stasia Carruthers and I -made one for you this afternoon. You’re going as a Green Witch. See -here.” She took down the tall peaked hat, clapped it on the small gray -head and turned her roommate to face the mirror. “Then the cape, like -this.” She flung the long cape around the thin shoulders. “Of course we -must make you up. A little powder on your nose, probably some rouge on -your cheeks. But put on your black dress first. And hurry.” - -“Oh my dear, I couldn’t--I’m too old--what will people think?” Mildly -clucking, continuing to protest, Miss Mitchall was shoved into her -costume, into the shoes with the silver buckles, into the long green -cape. Cynthia, against the other’s mild opposition, patted rouge on the -pale cheeks, then flung a towel over the cape and shook half a box of -white talcum powder on the gray hair. - -“But my dear,” beamed Miss Mitchall, “it ... it makes me look so ... so -young.” - -Indeed it did. The contrast of green cloth against the white hair was -dramatic. “Very successful,” purred Cynthia. “You’ll be the belle of -the ball. And it’s not immoral to look young you know. Now sit down -there and be good till I get this scarf tied. Or no, ring for the -steward, we must get a broom to go with the witch.” - -By the time they hurried out of their cabin the echoes of the dinner -gong had been dead for ten minutes. But the corridors were full of -laughing groups: harlequins, monks, pierrots, Turkish ladies, Dutch -girls and nondescript costumes that defied a label. For fear that the -Green Witch might bolt back to the cabin, Cynthia kept close behind her -but after a few minutes realized this was unnecessary. Their passage -was a minor triumphal procession for everyone turned to look at them -and made some delighted exclamation over the novel costumes. Cynthia -was amused to note that Miss Mitchall’s sharp little chin went higher, -her step became firmer as the approbation grew and by the time they -reached the stairway to the dining saloon she walked like a princess -approaching her throne. - -Cheers and a spatter of applause greeted their descent and three tables -claimed their company but Cynthia looked around and made a quick -decision. In a far corner sat Harvey O’Neill, as the Tin Woodman, and -Johnnie Graham, in sackcloth and straw, presumably a scarecrow. Miss -Mitchall needed what only an Irish tongue could supply. Cynthia steered -toward the small table. - -“May I introduce the Green Witch of Greenwich Village?” sang Cynthia -above the hubbub. “Did you know that Green Witches had special magic -and charms, much stronger than black and white ones?” - -“Special charms, certainly,” agreed the Irishman. “Come and cast a -spell on me, Miss Witch,” and he pulled out a chair for her. Cynthia -took the one next to Johnnie. - -“Smart of you,” he whispered in her ear, “to give her a costume that -went with her specs. It’s one of the best on the floor.” - -There was an almost continual pageant down the wide stairs. Stasia made -her entrance alone and effectively in the long, slinky costume of a -modern French doll. From the bright orange wig of knitted yarn, through -the high bodice and long full skirt of brilliant reds and raw blues -to the absurdly high heeled slippers of green satin and the painted -circles on her cheeks beneath the wide lashed baby stare, she was -perfect in every detail. Even to a price tag on her shoulder stating -“twenty five francs.” She was followed by a Spanish señorita on the arm -of a George Belchers, charlady, red nosed, apron-garbed, three dingy -violets nodding in his bonnet as he stumbled apologetically, paused -to mop up the steps before the señorita and dramatized the amusing -entrance. - -How she hated to have this end, Cynthia thought. Paris, surely, wasn’t -going to be half so much fun. And never to see any of these nice people -again. ... Miss Mitchall for instance. It didn’t seem possible that you -could get to know a person so well and then let them slip out of your -life. Stasia was going to stay in Cherbourg for a week. Johnnie ... - -“Where do you go, Johnnie?” she asked. - -“Straight through Paris and down to Provence. I’m studying the poetry -of Mistral, who, if you don’t happen to know, was the greatest poet of -southern France. Why?” - -But she turned to O’Neill. “And you’re going to Ireland, aren’t you?” - -“Yes. Better come along,” he suggested, “it’s a bit of heaven.” - -“Oh yes, there’s a song about that, isn’t there,” she laughed. Weren’t -any of these people going to be in Paris? Suppose she couldn’t get -in touch with the editor she had come to see? Suppose the job didn’t -materialize? Suppose ... well, these were nice cheerful meditations to -have in the middle of a party! She bet Miss Mitchall wasn’t harboring -any such gloomy thoughts. Suddenly Cynthia wished there was some way, -some nice, tactful, subtle manner in which she could help the little -governess without her knowing it. But a loan was out of the question. -Cynthia herself hadn’t much more than the price of a ticket home. And -you don’t pick up purses in mid ocean. - -“I wish there was a Duchess on board, with a million pounds sterling -and eighteen children, and that she would fall overboard and I could -save her life,” was her fantastic thought. She must have said it out -loud for Johnnie murmured, “Heaven help us!” and then glanced at the -little governess. “Oh, you mean for Miss Mitchall. But why stop at -eighteen when you’re wishing!” - -Cynthia spluttered into giggles and felt better. In fact she could -scarcely eat her dinner for all that was going on around her. Bright -balloons bumped her elbow, a rain of multicolored confetti sprinkled -the table cloth and brilliant streamers of paper flying through the -air, must be picked up and returned, lacing the dining saloon with -carnival colors. - -After dinner there was a dance in the lounge. Cynthia had looked -forward to it all day and the day before, but after a few waltzes and -foxtrots it began, somehow, to fall flat. Everyone else seemed to -be having a perfectly gorgeous time. Even little Miss Mitchall was -plentifully supplied with partners but their enjoyment seemed only to -increase Cynthia’s gloom as every step she made took her nearer to the -time of leaving the ship, to the dreaded unknown. - -She knew what it was. She had done too little work for days. This -wasn’t the first time that idleness had made her miserable, and it -would be useless to explain this to her puzzled partners. Between -dances she would slip off and dive below for her sketch pad. Drawing -would bring the relief it always had brought and as for models, they -were all about her. All she needed was her book to make a record, not -just of the clever costumes around her, but of the movement and the -groups that the dancers made. Why not get it? Left, for the moment, -between dances without a partner, Cynthia decided that she would, and -sped down to the cabin. - -As she came along the main corridor, deserted now since all of the room -stewards were at their dinner, she heard a door banging, banging, with -the slow swing of the ship and irritatedly wondered why no one had -fastened it. - -Turning down the small corridor that led to her own cabin she noted -that the swinging door was that opposite her own. If someone were ill -in there, the door must be extremely annoying. She opened her own door, -switched on the cabin light, found her sketch book and stepped out -again. Again the door opposite slammed back. The cabin light was on. -She tapped gently on the doorframe. Perhaps the occupant was too ill to -get up. But no one answered. - -Cynthia put her hand on the knob to close it, but the door was partly -wedged by a suitcase which had slid against it--the suitcase which she -recognized as the same she had tripped over when she first came on -board. Or was it the same? There was that Mexican Airways label, and -next to it a circular yellow paster which formed a pattern her mind -had already recorded, but something was missing. She closed the door -gently, shoved it to see that it was firmly latched, and hurried along -the corridor. But as she ran up the stairway she remembered what was -missing. The Ottawa label had been sponged off. There was a darker spot -on the leather where it had been. - -At the entrance to the lounge, the color and light and music burst on -her like a shower of thrown confetti. Figures whirled and swayed to the -music, the room was a shifting patchwork of bright color. Even Miss -Mitchall had been persuaded to dance and jigged round and round happily -with a little Hungarian whose bent knees and extreme speed were relics -of an older era. - -Cynthia passed behind the row of chairs at the end of the dance floor -and skirted the room to where, in a remote corner behind an empty card -table, she could be comfortably inconspicuous yet have a good view of -the dancers. She leafed through her sketch book, found some blank -pages and began to work. - -Between encores the couples paused, chatted, and applauded. That -scarecrow with his whitened face and clay pipe ... Cynthia got it with -a few strokes of the pencil. Then Miss Mitchall’s rapt expression as -she gazed into her partner’s face, radiant, unconscious. Oh darn! The -music had started again. - -Cynthia made a dozen rapid action sketches of the dancing couples (some -of them so close to caricatures she wouldn’t have cared to have the -models see them), yawned, and looked about her. Perhaps it would be -more fun to go back to dancing. - -Most of the older people had drifted away and were talking at the -further end of the room, or had gone in to the card tables. How -different some of them looked in costume. She would scarcely have -recognized Mrs. Moody, for instance, in the white hair and patches of -a colonial belle. And the man with her ... Cynthia frowned, trying to -place him. Oh yes, it was the hat that had put her off. He was the -man in the golf cap who tramped the deck all day long ... “walking -to Europe,” Johnnie Graham had said. But the middle aged man who sat -alone, not far from Cynthia? Surely she had never seen him before, -surely she would have remembered that beak-like nose, the hollow cut -deeply on either side of it and the thin lipped mouth. - -She made a few strokes of her pencil on the blank page of her sketch -book, then, noting how still her unconscious model sat, became absorbed -in the portrait. Not a good face, but a strong one. The brows were -as heavy as her pencil could etch, the graying hair at the temples -disappeared beneath the tightly drawn edge of a stocking cap and the -long chin dipped into a wide pierrot ruff. The costume was that of a -harlequin and had probably been rented from the ship’s barber, who -carried a stock of fancy costumes for these parties. - -Cynthia, absorbed in her sketch, worked rapidly. The claw-like hand -that had reached up to pull away the ruff ... the long white scar just -showing at the side of the chin, not an old scar, she thought, for it -still showed pink at the edges. Her model sat quietly, unaware of the -attention he was receiving. - -No, that chin wasn’t right. Cynthia flipped over another page and made -a more detailed study of the lower part of the face. This was a type -she could use, sometime, in an illustration. She wondered vaguely what -the man did when he wasn’t on ship board. Then the music stopped. - -Perhaps it was that his attention had wandered from the dancers or -perhaps it was a sudden sense of being watched, but the man turned -quickly in his seat and sent such a glare of enmity at the astonished -Cynthia that she started and dropped her book. When she emerged from -groping beneath the table her model had disappeared. He must have moved -very quickly for he was already slipping through the door. Cynthia -shook herself. That man certainly didn’t like artists! But this was a -good waltz, why not enjoy it. - -It was after midnight when she tiptoed into the cabin. Miss Mitchall -was already asleep. Her tall green hat and the long cape were neatly -disposed on the couch beneath the window. She was still asleep when -Cynthia dressed silently next morning, when she left for breakfast. -The dining saloon was almost deserted. Nearly everyone seemed to be -sleeping late or breakfasting in bed. - -“My last day on shipboard,” thought Cynthia a little mournfully. What -to do to stretch it out to its full length? She decided to spend the -morning on deck, sketching; the afternoon in the lounge with a book, -or perhaps a game of deck tennis with Stasia. But in the middle of -the morning a thunder shower drove everyone indoors and Cynthia found -Stasia and her father over coffee and toast in the lounge. - -“This is Dad’s second breakfast and my first,” announced Stasia. “Have -some coffee, Cynthia?” - -Cynthia declined the coffee. “I was up with the larks, or at least -the seagulls,” she said. “Do you mind if I sketch you while you eat? -I’ve wanted to get you all week.” But what she really wanted was Mr. -Carruthers with his rugged beak of a nose, his thin, slightly curling -mouth. In fact she became so intent on her sketch that she forgot she -was supposed to be drawing Stasia till the tall girl laughed: - -“Dad, she’s found you more beautiful than I am!” - -“What, what? That so?” Mr. Carruthers had been the ideal model, -absolutely unconscious of Cynthia’s flying pencil. It seemed only fair, -however, to show him the drawing when it was finished. - -“And this is my roommate. Look, Stasia, I got her last night when she -was dancing with the Hungarian.” - -Stasia murmured, “wish I could draw like that.” Mr. Carruthers, too, -seemed impressed. “Good work, young lady,” he nodded. But Cynthia -felt he wouldn’t have much use for artists. He would have all the -conventional ideas about them; temperament and talk and starving in -garrets. - -Stasia was turning the leaves slowly, making here and there a comment, -Mr. Carruthers looking over her shoulder till he stopped her with a -large forefinger suddenly on one page. - -“Who is this? Where did you sketch him?” he asked. - -Cynthia leaned across the table. “Oh, that man? Isn’t it a wicked face? -I wish you could have seen ...” - -But Mr. Carruthers was impatient. He took the book from Stasia. “Tell -me about this. When did you sketch this? Last night? And what was this, -part of the costume? Make-up?” - -“No,” Cynthia laughed, “it was a bad scar, a fairly new one for it was -still pink and raw-looking. I think he had tried to cover it with that -harlequin ruff, but when he grew warm he forgot about it, and pushed -the ruff away from his face.” - -Mr. Carruthers had already pushed the little electric bell with an -insistent finger. Before the hurrying steward had reached the table, -Mr. Carruthers barked, “Ask Captain Wain if we can see him immediately, -in his office, and tell the purser to join us there.” Then he turned to -Cynthia, “I’d like you to come along and tell the Captain what you just -told me. And may we borrow your sketch book for an hour or two?” - -Puzzled and excited, Cynthia followed Stasia and her father out of -the lounge, down the corridor towards the captain’s office. Captain -Wain was a plump little man with a ruddy complexion that had weathered -many storms, white walrus whiskers, and a blue uniform with lots -of glittering buttons. Behind him stood the purser whom Cynthia -already knew, a lean, hatchet-faced man, with small sharp eyes and an -apologetic manner. - -Mr. Carruthers held the door for the two girls, then closed it firmly -behind him and plunged immediately into his subject. - -“It’s this matter of Goncourt,” he stated, and opened Cynthia’s -sketchbook where his thumb had been keeping the place. “I want you two -to see this.” - -The Captain leaned to look at the portrait of the man in the ruff, and -passed it to the purser with no comment save a brief “Mmumph!” - -The purser examined it somewhat longer. “Miss Wanstead made this?” he -asked. - -Cynthia, bewildered, explained when and where she had made the sketch, -and questioned further, explained about the scar. - -“He really had such a scar? It wasn’t grease paint, or whatever it is -you use on your face?” - -Cynthia shook her head. You didn’t put things like that in a sketch -when you were making notes from real life. It was, she told them, -exactly as she had drawn it. She didn’t have any reason to make it up. - -Mr. Carruthers sat down and waved the others to chairs. “Might we,” he -suggested, “see Goncourt’s passport again?” - -Yes, the purser would bring it. He seemed glad to get away. Stasia, -who had quietly watched all this now said, “Don’t you think it would -be a good plan, Dad, if we told Cynthia what this was all about?” -And, at her father’s nod of assent, explained: “Dad is owner of this -steamship line, you see, and the night we sailed from New York the head -of the Police Department came down to see us off. He had come, he said, -especially to get track of a man with a scar on his face. It was then -late in the evening, you see, and most of the passengers were on board, -but the purser examined all passports for a man with a scar like that. -It was said to be very conspicuous, and the men at the gate watched all -other passengers who came in after that, but they decided that no such -man was on board.” - -“He’s wanted by the police?” asked Cynthia, feeling very much like a -murder-mystery tale. - -“Yes, for smuggling ... in ...” - -“Here is the passport.” The purser, returning, had a little blue book, -not a dark red one, such as Cynthia’s, in his hand. He passed the book -to the Captain who gave it a brief glance, grunted non-committally -and shoved it towards Mr. Carruthers. Stasia’s father compared the -photograph to the face in Cynthia’s sketch book, but as one was full -face, the other in profile, little could be gained by the comparison. - -“Is this the man?” he asked Cynthia, indicating the passport photograph. - -Cynthia got up and came around the desk. Passport in hand she moved -to the window for a better light. As she examined the picture she was -aware of the silent tenseness behind her and suddenly had an idea of -how important all this was, important to several people. Closing her -eyes, she tried to remember more fully the face she had sketched, not -from the side as she had drawn him, but as he had quickly turned to -gaze at her, full face, under the dark frowning brows. Then she looked -again at the picture in her hand. It was very like. Still ... - -“No, it’s not the same man.” - -There was a little stir in the room and Mr. Carruthers got up and came -to stand beside her. - -“But it’s very like him.” Something teased at her brain. Like and not -like ... like and not like ... - -“It might be a relation,” she hazarded dubiously. “This man,” she -tapped the passport, “has had a broken nose at some time. We had a -model with one at the Academy, so I recognized the peculiar shape.” It -was not at all like the beaky feature she had sketched. - -Absently she gazed at the cover of the passport. “What cabin is this -man in? The one with the passport.” - -“He’s in 376, Miss,” the purser answered. - -And Cynthia was in 374, right across the little corridor. The passport -in her hand was Canadian, and Miss Mitchall had said ... “Look here,” -Cynthia said suddenly, “could my roommate be called? I think she might -be able to help us;” and added, “you can be sure she won’t talk.” - -The captain glanced dubiously at Stasia’s father. “The less people who -know about this ...” then, at the other’s nodded gesture toward the -purser, “ask her to come here,” he commanded gruffly. - -Miss Mitchall, slightly fluttering, was produced almost immediately. -Cynthia didn’t try to explain the circumstances, just showed her the -passport. “Did you ever see this man? I mean, does he look familiar?” - -Squinting near-sightedly, the little governess examined the picture, -then passed it back with a shake of her head. “No, my dear. I’ve never -seen him.” - -There was a sigh in the cabin. But Cynthia had not finished. That -teasing idea of hers ... Miss Mitchall had once told her something that -bore on this. ... “Then if not that man, someone very like him?” - -“Someone like him, surely. But not that man. Probably a twin brother. I -was a twin myself.” - -So that was it. Cynthia’s memory had almost, but not quite, done the -trick. - -“By Gad!” barked the Captain, “the woman has brains! Where did you see -this man, madame?” His tone was weighty with respect. - -“In the cabin across from 374. Once the door was open as I passed and -he was shaving, with the light full on his face. There was quite a scar -on his cheek. He shut the door with a slam when he saw me.” - -Cynthia was still looking at the passport in her hand. “Was this man -from Ottawa, the one you wanted?” she asked. Then gasped. - -It was almost as though she had sprung a mine, so laughably surprised -were the faces about her. “How did you know that?” the Captain’s gruff -tones held suspicion. - -But Cynthia had suddenly remembered the suitcase she had stumbled over -the first day, and the dark patch that showed some label had been -removed from it. “You see,” she explained further, “I’m accustomed to -remembering the shapes and colors of things, perhaps more than most -people do because that’s part of my job. I remembered an Ottawa paster -on the suitcase because of a certain clever arrangement of colors, -green and blue and orange.” - -Mr. Carruthers stopped her with a gesture. Stepping into the doorway he -spoke a moment in a low voice to the steward outside then returned to -the room. “Will you describe this label for us, or could you draw it?” - -“It’s something like this.” Cynthia took the pencil out of her pocket -and made a little diagram on a blank page of her note book. “It had an -orange moon and a tower, rather medieval, dark blue against it. Then -there was a jiggley border of green, in this manner.” - -The steward with something in his hand, stood in the doorway. Mr. -Carruthers rose and brought in a suitcase, not the black one, but a -small, light-tan airplane case. He turned it around so that all might -see the Ottawa label, exactly as Cynthia had sketched it. - -“We were in Ottawa a few weeks ago,” he explained, “and I remembered -this label on our bag. You see,” he turned to Cynthia, “this man is -wanted in Canada for jewel stealing. The police of Ottawa had wired the -police of New York to watch for him on any boat leaving port within the -next few days. I believe he has sailed on this line before, but we have -to be awfully sure before we can make an arrest. The publicity, if the -man were innocent, would be unpleasant for the steamship company.” - -“I’ll go and make the arrest myself.” The Captain departed, taking the -purser with him. - -Stasia, who had been quiet as a mouse all this time, prodded her father -with a finger. “Daddy, tell Cynthia the rest of it.” - -“Oh yes ... ah,” Mr. Carruthers cleared his throat. “A hum ... we are -extremely grateful to you ladies, Miss Wanstead, and Miss Mitchall. -It would have been awkward if he had escaped by our line. Of course -you understand that there is a reward for information leading to his -arrest. And I think we can say that the reward will be yours if this is -Goncourt, as we now fully believe.” - - * * * * * - -“And to think that it really was Goncourt and that he has been in that -cabin all the week,” thrilled Miss Mitchall for the hundredth time. - -Cynthia grinned. “And to think of your suggesting the twin business, of -your knowing it was a Canadian accent. That was really as important as -the sketch. You see he got the scar in Ottawa, when he made a big haul -of some jewels, about a year ago, and then he went to Quebec and did -the same thing. But then he used the picture of a twin brother on his -passport and covered the scar with a muffler when he came on board. I -suppose he was afraid to go out of his cabin very much.” - -“How like a Wallace novel!” - -Cynthia went on folding things to put into her suitcase. In another -minute she could close it, not to be opened again until she was in -France. “I wonder,” she asked without turning, “if you would do me a -great favor?” - -“Why of course my dear, what is it?” - -“Well, you see this reward business is rather a bother.” Cynthia didn’t -say that Stasia had warned her it might be some weeks before the check -got through. “I wonder if you would take some of my money now, as part -of your share. If I have too much I’m liable to spend it on Paris hats -and foolish things, you see. Perhaps a hundred now, and when the check -comes I’ll send you the rest of your half.” - -For a moment Cynthia was afraid Miss Mitchall would see through her -plan and refuse, but the little governess smiled and nodded. Yes, she -knew how tempting Paris was if you had money. Yes, she’d be glad to -take some of it now. - -Cynthia snapped off the light and hauled herself into the upper bunk. -Paris tomorrow! But she wasn’t afraid of her luck any more. She’d -proved it would stand by her. - - - - -CHAPTER 2 - -_Paris_ - -CORNED BEEF HASH - - -Steamship and steamer friends had been left behind. Paris was ahead, -closer now with every minute, every hurrying second. The little French -girl who had kept on her hat and gloves and had read, in silence, a -paper covered copy of Anatole France all the way from Cherbourg, let -down the window, leaned out to wave a beckoning hand, and shouted, -“_Porteur! Porteur!_” - -Cynthia waited patiently, but as the other seemed in no haste to -relinquish her place at the window, the American finally leaned over -the French girl’s shoulder and beckoned in similar fashion. The long -train slid gently to a stop and a score of stout little blue smocked -men seemed to spring from the ground and began taking baggage from the -open windows, loading it on wide straps over their sturdy shoulders. - -Cynthia captured the eye of number 972; a beady eye above a red nose -and a moustache that would have graced a member of the Beggar’s Opera. -She gulped, “Taxi!”--thank goodness, there was a word that meant the -same in several languages, at which he grinned cheerfully and slung her -heavy suitcase and her paint box in one huge paw. The other grasped her -neighbor’s bags and the whole strange and unwieldy combination lumbered -off down the platform. Was he gone for good? Better follow that French -girl, Cynthia decided. She seemed unconcerned. Oh, one had to give up -the ticket here, and there was the porter again. No more customs, that -had all been cleared at the quay, earlier in the morning. - -The street met her with a blast of warm July air, a dazzle of summer -sunlight and such a medley of strange noises: taxis hooting in a new, -high key; shrill-pitched voices, mingled shouts and confusion, that she -stood for a moment bewildered and lost. Horrid luck that no one she -knew from the boat had been coming to Paris on this train! - -Then Cynthia saw that her bag and paint box had been piled into a -taxi like a shiny black beetle and the blue smocked one waited for -his _pourboire_. She tipped him ten francs. Was that too much, or too -little? She had been warned that, in either case, he would glare, but -this one smiled, muttered, “_Merci!_” and departed. The hotel address -was written on a card and Cynthia had only to show that to the driver, -hop in, and they were off. - -“Well!” - -“Well, so this is Paris!” - -“Well ...,” Cynthia giggled nervously. To be really here. To have -arrived safely, all by herself. Well, that was something. “Paris!” - -She sighed, relaxed back against the cushions and closed her eyes for a -moment. Oh, the taxi was stopping. Her eyes popped open. Just a little -policeman in a toy soldier cape and a white stick with which he seemed, -miraculously, to hold up this mad traffic. Off again. She shut her eyes -once more. New smells, hot asphalt, violets, damp warm air, something -cooking, other things. She just couldn’t keep her eyes shut. - -The car was running along gray cobbles between gray houses high and -incredibly ancient. Tall, plane trees leaned out over gray walls that -held in a silvery stream. The Seine! A little gay colored steamer, like -a miniature ferry-boat, hooted and put off from a landing. Cynthia -wanted to hug it all at once, to pinch herself to be sure she was here. -How she wished Judy could see it, and Chick, dear Chick. This was to -have been their honeymoon. He’d be over shortly, a few weeks at the -most. And meanwhile there was work to be done; a language to learn, -Nancy and Mrs. Brewster to see, and covers to be done for _Little One’s -Magazine_. - -Was that, could that possibly be, Notre Dame over there to the left? -And the Eiffel Tower clear ahead, misty against sunny sky? She had seen -it as they came in on the train. Really Paris! - -“Not a motion picture!” chuckled Cynthia. And tomorrow she could go and -see it all for herself. - -Then a second bridge, Place St. Michel. And a swift turn to the left -into a narrow street where noises echoed back from the high stone -houses to right and left. They drew up before a door and a boy, in a -horizontal striped waistcoat and white shirt sleeves, came out from -the hotel entrance. Here was her home in Paris. - -Inside, at the little brass-railed desk, they had a key for her room -and a letter from Mrs. Brewster, who had made her reservation for her. -There was a little cage-like elevator into which one squeezed, barely -avoiding the folding doors, and then up, up, like a wobbly balloon. A -hallway musty and dark, and at last a tall room with two high French -windows opening on to a small balcony. - -“Yes, this will do nicely,” said Cynthia in her best French, and so -moved into Paris. - -When the door closed, Cynthia sat down to catch her breath. So much had -happened in the last half hour, she had seen so much that was new, and -strange, and lovely. “I suppose there are people that live in Paris all -the time and take it as a matter of course,” she told herself. “And, I -suppose, I shall get to take it that way too, after a bit. But now it’s -all rather frightening. I wonder if I can make myself understood, I -wonder if I shall get lost, I wonder ... oh goodness, how shall I order -meals? But perhaps menu French is the same everywhere.” - -Mrs. Brewster’s letter was reassuring. She seemed to think Cynthia -would find everything very simple and easy. “But I am giving you the -address of a little French girl, who speaks excellent English, she was -a governess in London for some years. If you get lonely, or wish to -improve your accent,” ha, _accent!_ “don’t hesitate to look her up.” -Enclosed was also a note from Nancy. - -“Do come to Conquet,” she begged. “Mother and I are both painting here. -It’s all pearly gray mists and long, empty beaches and sabots, and fish -and steep streets and old houses. And you can find lots of children to -pose for your covers.” - -It did sound fun. But Paris seemed quite enough adventure for the -moment. And Cynthia’s purse was very flat. She must first see Mr. -Culbert, who was over here now, and was the editor of the magazine for -which she had a contract for a dozen covers, see if she couldn’t get an -advance on the first order, and if he could put her in touch with a way -to get models. Just at the moment she hadn’t the slightest idea how to -go about getting one for the painting she must do. - -She sat down and wrote to Nancy, planning to mail the letter when she -went out to dinner. Then leaning out on the little balcony, she watched -the light fade in the street below, listening to the sounds of Paris -echo up between the ancient, stained, backward sloping housefronts. - -What, she wondered, with a little pang of homesickness, were they doing -now at home? Six o’clock ... but no, time was different. Was it three -over there, or nine, now? The mental gymnastics made her head reel and -she decided that she was hungry. But plenty of time yet. Cynthia hated -to admit to herself that she dreaded that first meal alone, doubted her -ability to order food, even to find her way home again, once she had -set her foot off the hotel doorstep. It was after eight o’clock when -she finally tore herself away from the window and summoned courage to -go out for dinner. “You can’t starve till morning, idiot!” she told -herself severely. “Just walk downstairs, and out the door. There must -be lots of places to eat within the next two blocks. Why, France is a -nation of cooks!” - -A short way up the Boule’ Miche’, she found a little place with pretty -red-and-white checked table cloths on the iron topped tables, behind -dusty box hedges in their wooden boxes. This was pleasantly removed -from a small band that was playing lustily, and not too melodiously, on -the street corner. Funny about those bands. She had passed three in the -short distance from the hotel and another had begun playing beneath her -window just as she went out. - -No one else seemed to be eating. Perhaps French people dined later -than this. The menu was as much an enigma as she had expected. It was -written in a flowing Spencerian hand, in dim violet ink on a limp and -food-stained bit of paper. Hardly a word seemed legible, and none of it -was intelligible. “Goodness,” murmured Cynthia, and looked about her. -Could she get up and leave, and try another place? But the waiter had -already placed a napkin beside her, fork and knife beside the napkin. -Cynthia decided she hadn’t the moral courage to rise and depart. Well, -here goes! - -“Bring me some of that, and that, and that,” she directed and pointed -near the center of the page. The main body of a meal always came near -the middle of the menu, didn’t it? - -The waiter, who wore a spotty black dinner jacket and a white apron, -broke into a voluble explanation of some sort. Evidently they were out -of this, would mademoiselle not prefer that? Mademoiselle nodded in -agreement. Yes, anything. _Oui, oui, oui!_ The waiter departed on swift -feet. Cynthia wondered what he would bring. - -What he brought was a strange piece of pink meat swimming in a -cold bath of oil. This she poked about with a fork, wondering what -particular portion of what animal it might be. It hardly seemed edible, -and certainly though she was hungry, she was not yet hungry enough for -that. After a long time the waiter seemed to appreciate that she had -finished with that course, and brought her some hot boiled potatoes. -These were more palatable. And bread helped too. Then came a small -white something wrapped in tin foil, and served with a large salt -shaker. - -But the foil proved to contain a small roll of really delicious cream -cheese, and eaten with sugar, which came from the large salt shaker, -and more of the crisp French bread. It served to round off the simple -meal. - -“I suppose I have eaten,” thought Cynthia as she wandered home again. -“I wish I weren’t still so hungry. At least that meal was cheap, -and that’s important at the moment.” But she continued to think of -hot beefsteaks, and hot muffins, and hot chicken pies, and what she -wouldn’t do to a big plate of ham and eggs. ... Oh dear! But tomorrow -she’d try another place. Perhaps that wasn’t a really good example of -French cooking. - -As she strolled slowly back towards the hotel all the little bands -were going full force. Cynthia noticed that people were beginning to -dance, under the lights, on the hard cobbled pavements to the jiggling, -monotonous tunes. She leaned for a while against the closed iron -shutter of a shop, and watched the gay crowds gather. They seemed very -happy. Was it some celebration, she wondered, or did French people -always dance like this in the evening? The musicians beneath her -window were in fine fettle, tootling, sawing, and bumping away at no -particular tune, but just a sort of penny whistle noise with a strongly -marked rhythm for the dancers. - -She sat in her window watching them till she got so sleepy she could -no longer keep her eyes open, then deciding they’d probably keep it up -pretty late, till ten or maybe eleven, crawled into bed. It had been a -long day since Cherbourg that morning, and in spite of the band, which -surely must stop before midnight, she thought she could sleep. - -But the monotonous, tuneless sound seemed to go round, and round, and -round inside her head. She dreamed that she was waltzing rapidly with -the _garçon_ of the striped waistcoat, with Madame in her black taffeta -dress and wide gold chain, with the black cat of the restaurant. Then -woke to hear the band still scraping, and bumping merrily. Foggily -she struggled out of bed and closed first the heavy wooden shutters, -then the window and went back to sleep with her head hot under the -bedclothes. Twice she woke again at odd hours, but always that rhythm -penetrated the darkness. - -Then she woke again. Surprisingly all was still. How blissful that -was! She was sure the musicians had stopped only a short time ago, -and waited tensely to see if they would start again. But there was no -sound. Then rolling over with aching head she saw that light streamed -from between the chinks of the shutters, and that her watch said seven -o’clock. - -She opened her window, went back to bed and slept till nine. Then she -wandered out to find breakfast. Only a gnawing hunger had made her get -up at all. - -Strangely enough none of the restaurants seemed to be open. She peered -in at two, between drawn net curtains, to see chairs piled on empty -tables, and boys washing down the floors. Then rounding a corner -Cynthia came full on the Seine, between its gray stone banks, and a -gray stone bridge beyond which loomed, full in the summer sunlight, the -twin towers of Notre Dame de Paris. Oh lovely! - -Along the embankment were the tiny stalls of the booksellers, all -closed now. Didn’t Paris people go to work until noon, she wondered? - -Then at the end of the block, facing a small open square she saw a -sign which read “_Café, Chocolat_.” Here, perhaps, she could get some -sort of meal. Outdoors, under a gay striped awning she found a little -wicker table with a red and white top, and wicker chairs. A big black -cat with a white bib, and green eyes gave her welcome with purrs and -ankle rubbings. This was going to be jolly. She stammered her desire -for chocolate, and learned that “little breads,” and butter could also -be procured, and that little breads were really crisp warm rolls. - -Notre Dame faced her, serene, solid, impregnable. When breakfast was -over she’d go across and visit the church, and stroll along by the -river. This must be the famous Left Bank, where all the artists and -students lived. - -The cat rubbed, purring, about the table, and a small boy with eyes -as softly dark as the cat’s fur, and clad in a diminutive smock of -black, with a small black beret perched on his dark curls came out to -stare solemnly at this stranger. Cynthia buttered a piece of roll, and -offered it to him. With a shy, “_Merci!_” muttered in an oddly deep -voice he took it, bolted it, and watched for the next mouthful. Cynthia -grinned at him, ate a bit herself and gave him, thereafter, alternate -bites. By the time two rolls were finished, and the big pitcher of hot -chocolate was drained to the last sweet drop, the small boy had smiled -also, had told her that his name was Nono, and that he lived here. Here -at last was a friend. Tomorrow she’d bring a sketchbook to breakfast. - -When tomorrow came Nono appeared, along with his black cat, for more -bits of warm roll. But this time he smiled immediately, crinkling -his dark eyes with an amused and delightful welcome. When his father -brought the chocolate, he said something in brief reproof, but Cynthia -protested. “Let him stay,” she begged and displayed her sketchbook. - -The man grinned and nodded. He knew about artists, and explained to -the boy that he must sit still for mademoiselle. Whereat Nono climbed -into one of the café chairs, and grasping firm hold of the huge and -somewhat reluctant cat, proceeded to demonstrate that he was born to be -an artist’s model. - -Oh, this was glorious. Cynthia’s fingers flew to get it all down before -it could dissolve, and when the cat finally went calmly to sleep, Nono -continued to sit immovable, wide eyed, minutes on minutes. Cynthia got -more and more thrilled. It was going to be a honey of a sketch. She -wondered if, maybe, colors tomorrow. ... - -At last she nodded to the child. He laughed and stretched, and dumped -the sleeping cat from his knees. Cynthia put two francs in his small -hand. Was that, she wondered, too much, or too little? It was what her -breakfast had cost her. Apparently, by his reception, it was all right. - -“Tomorrow?” she asked in French, and pointed toward the chair again. - -“_Oui, oui, Demain_,” agreed Nono. Then he must know that artists -sometimes wanted one to pose again. - -That was on Sunday. Saturday had not been strikingly successful. For -some reason, perhaps because it was Saturday, everything, banks and the -Express Company, Mr. Culbert’s office and most of the museums Cynthia -wished to visit, had been closed. Monday, of course, they would be open -again, and she could get in touch with Mr. Culbert. Cynthia’s money was -running low and she must ask for an advance on the first cover, and -must find some way to get in touch with models to work from. - -But Monday was no better than Sunday, nor than Saturday had been. -The band, for the third time, had played all night, and Cynthia had -slept fitfully, hot and miserable in the closed, noisy room. She awoke -feeling as though she could sleep for a week. Then she remembered Nono. -Here at last was one bright spot in Paris. She hurried out to breakfast -with her large sketch pad and her color box under her arm. - -Nono was waiting for her, and so was the black cat. Cynthia was -ravenously hungry. A continental breakfast wasn’t enough food to last -one through a day of sightseeing, and so far she had found no good -place to eat. Hastily she drank her chocolate, shared a double order of -rolls and butter with the somewhat greedy little Nono. She herself was -anxious to get to work on this color sketch. - -Nono, complete with the large sleepy cat, clambered into his wicker -chair. The sunlight reflected warm and yellow beneath his chin and his -eyes were half closed, amusingly, in the glare. The black smock seemed -almost a dark green in contrast to the cat’s soft fur, and beyond them -was the red and white ruffle of the awning, a brilliant splash of warm -color. Cynthia asked to have her little painting pail filled with -water, sketched in the brief outline of her composition, and slashed -happily into color. Once she said, mechanically “Rest!” and found that -the boy understood. In a few minutes he returned to his place. The -cat was a little different, but Cynthia had allowed for that, and now -sketched him in and completed that part of the drawing all in one pose. - -The drawing was emerging with both charm and strength. Black, red and -warm flesh tones accented with the green of the cat’s eyes, and one -white paw lifted to rest against Nono’s black smock. This, thought -Cynthia, was one of the nicest things she had ever done. Even fatigue -and hunger seemed to have added to her ability since her senses seemed -sharpened, nerves tautened by the past two days. - -She had decided to go that afternoon and find the little French girl -Mrs. Brewster had recommended for language lessons. Her visit to the -Express Company, and to the office where she had hoped to find Mr. -Culbert were as unsuccessful as Saturday’s visits. Everything was still -closed tight. - -Cynthia was beginning to worry. She had only a few hundred francs, -about fifteen dollars, left in her purse and there was no telling how -long this celebration might last. It puzzled her. She had asked Madame -at the desk and had learned that it was the “Fourteenth of July,” -whatever that was! But Friday had been the fourteenth. Surely they -didn’t celebrate America’s Fourth of July over here, did they? Foggily -she tried to connect it with Lafayette and the two Revolutions, but -couldn’t make it out. Everywhere the little street bands continued to -play and people continued to dance in the streets. - -Still pondering on this mystery she found the house on the Boulevard -St. Michel that bore the address of the Mademoiselle Menard. Mrs. -Brewster had explained that she lived on the fifth floor and that “in -France the first floor is not the ground floor, nor the next, which is -called the entresol. You have to go up two flights to get to the first -floor and then begin to count from there!” They were long flights, -too, and Cynthia had begun to feel a little faint by the time she -reached the top. When she found Mr. Culbert, if she ever did, she would -certainly beg him to take her out for a real dinner! - -Cynthia put her finger on the large white push button and a bell pealed -somewhere way off inside. But no one answered it. After a bit she tried -again, and then again. What should she do next? She already had visited -Notre Dame, and knew the Cluny and Luxembourg Gardens, for the past two -days, as well as the palm of her hand. Besides she still felt strangely -faint. She leaned against the heavy stone balustrade and looked down. - -Suddenly up through the hallway, wafted from below came the most -glorious and enchanting odor. Cynthia closed her eyes. It made her -think of home, of a loaded dinner table with big plates of corned-beef -hash, with an egg on top, slabs of bread and butter, and a thick slice -of apple pie with cheese. Oh dear! - -Like a good little hound following the scent, Cynthia, hypnotized by -that delicious smell, stepped down, step after step, to the floor -below. Still that beckoning, delightful odor. Another flight. It was -stronger now, over the banisters. - -“Heavens!” thought Cynthia. “How can I ever stand this?” - -Here was the door and she had tracked it to its lair. A door, heavy -and thick and solid, like those above. It was open just a crack, which -was why the lovely smell had wandered out. Cynthia leaned against the -doorpost. There were tears of hunger and of homesickness in her eyes as -she sniffed ... and sniffed. Onions in that hash, too! No calves head -in cold oil here, no tough thin steaks that might, or might not, be -horsemeat! - -Then the door opened with a _whoosh_ and Cynthia almost fell through it -into the hall beyond. - -“_’Ello!_” said a cheery voice in French. Another girl, shorter than -Cynthia but about her own age, with an amusing long nose, twinkly brown -eyes, her hair covered by a chic little straw hat with a red quill, a -white wool dress embroidered in red. - -The girl continued to chatter something in French. Cynthia looked as -blank as a brick wall; she had been wrenched all too suddenly from -that corned-beef-hash day-dream. - -“Say!” cried the girl suddenly. “You’re an American, too, aren’t you?” - -Cynthia could have hugged her, right then and there. Why she hadn’t -heard a word of English for three whole days. - -“Oh, _yes!_” she almost shouted. “And oh, is that hash you are cooking?” - -The girl giggled, then sniffed appreciatively. “Does smell good, -doesn’t it? Mother’s a swell cook. Look here ...” she opened the door -that had half closed behind her. “Hey, Mums, have we got enough for a -guest?” and before Cynthia could object, had shoved her ahead, down the -hallway, into a wide room lit by late sunlight. - -“Take off your mittens and bonnet and shawl,” laughed the girl. “You’re -invited to dinner ... that is if you can stay. Mums, this is Miss -America, winner of all beauty prizes to date, isn’t she pretty? ...” -Heavens how the girl did rattle on, thought the amused Cynthia. ... “I -found her fainting on our doorstep and brought her in.” - -“Mums” was wide and comfortable looking in a huge white apron and -carried a turning-spoon in her hand. She seemed unperturbed by her -daughter’s nonsense. - -“My name’s Wanstead, Cynthia,” explained the owner of that name. “And -I do hope you will forgive me. I sniffed your delicious cooking two -flights up.” - -“Good grief, I must have left that door open again!” rattled the girl. -“We’d just about lose our French lease if they sniff our cooking in the -hall. Oh, I forgot, my name is Murchison. This is Mrs. Murchison, my -honored parent. ... Listen I’ve got to run out with some letters for -the post. Sit still and I’ll be back in a jiffy.” - -Cynthia was only too glad to sit. Normally she would have protested -more strongly against their forced hospitality, but today, homesick and -genuinely hungry and considerably worried about the future, she found -this American household irresistible. Mrs. Murchison puttered into the -room and out again murmuring absentmindedly: “Father loves corn-beef -hash. ... Can’t get French cook to make it properly. ... Marie, our -cook, gone home for the holidays ...” and still murmuring disappeared -at last in the direction of the kitchen. - -Over the delicious dinner Cynthia heard the story of the mysterious -holiday. “It’s the Jour de Bastille,” Alice explained to her, “in -celebration of the destruction of that beastly prison. The French never -have a half-holiday. They save it up and make four days of it. Father’s -in the consular service and had to be home for tomorrow morning, but -most Americans who live here plan to stay out of Paris during these -four days, they’re so noisy. Our cook won’t be worth her salt for the -next week, she’ll be so sleepy. If you ask me, you look half asleep.” - -“I’ve had one of those bands under my window for the past three -nights,” apologized Cynthia. “Please, can I have some more hash?” - -“Save room for real American ice cream,” advised her hostess, and, when -dinner was over, “I’m going to tuck you into bed right away, you poor -thing. It’s only seven and you can sleep till ten or eleven. Then I’ll -wake you to go home. Come on, my room is at the back, on the garden, -you won’t hear a single drum or whistle or even a taxi horn.” - -Cynthia was too weary to utter more than a feeble protest. “It seems -kind of funny to break into a stranger’s house, eat their hash and go -to sleep in their bed,” she murmured as she slipped off her shoes. - -“Take off your dress. That’s right. I’ll just throw a blanket over you -and open this window a little. Sleep _doucement!_” - -Cynthia started to call, “Don’t fail to wake me,” but must have been -asleep before she could speak the words. At least when she awoke an -apparent few minutes later the sentence still hung unuttered, in her -mind. She stretched, blinked, fumbled for her thoughts, then glared at -the window. It was full daylight! - -Frantically she bent to look at her watch. It had stopped. Then it -_was_ next day? The little clock on the bureau said “eight o’clock” and -then Alice, tousle headed, in bright pink candy-striped pyjamas peeped -round the edge of the door. - -“Hello you! Gosh how you did sleep! Are you by any chance a descendant -of the Sleeping Beauty? I phoned your hotel so they wouldn’t think you -had got run over, and went in to sleep with Mother.” - -She pranced into the room and perched on the foot of the bed. “It’s a -swell day. And things started to move again today. You’ll find your -little editor chap, no doubt. Will you have your breakfast on a tray in -here, milady, and go back to sleep again?” - -“Goodness no! Oh, I feel fine.” Cynthia swung her feet out of bed. - -It was nearly noon, however, when Cynthia sent her name to Mr. Culbert, -the editor of _Little Ones’ Magazine_. He came out immediately, a plump -little man with a round jolly face and held out both hands, beaming his -welcome. - -“Such a shame you landed here in the middle of the holiday. I was down -in the south of France with the owner of the magazine, but got back -last night. Now, my dear child, about those covers of yours, I suppose -you want to get right at them. About models ... that’s going to be a -bit difficult. Children, you know. ...” - -“Not a bit difficult.” Cynthia’s eyes were dancing. “I’ve been -working,” she said demurely. - -“What, not already? Well, you are a wonder! Oh, you’ve got something -there? Come into the office, will you? This is just a borrowed place -and I hate it. Drat these French chairs. I like a good old swivel chair -I can lean back in. Shall be glad to get back to the States myself. Now -let’s see. ...” - -He had chatted incessantly as he led the way into a room resembling -more a window display of a decorator’s shop than an office. Cynthia -perched on the corner of the elaborate inlaid desk and slipped the -wrapper off her drawing, the one Nono, over her second breakfast, had -finished posing for, just a half hour ago. - -“Here you are.” She knew it was good. Would he think so too? Gosh, he -liked it! She could tell by his face. - -“Sa ... ay, that’s fine. My dear child, you have certainly surpassed -anything you have done yet.” He set it on the floor, propped against -the wall and leaned back to squint at it. - -It was nice to be praised and Cynthia felt herself getting warm and -pink cheeked. Yes, she knew Nono had been her best effort ... to date. -“There’ll be better ones, though,” she told the little editor. “I’m -going to Brittany next week to join the Brewsters, and to paint. I’ll -do you a Breton child for the issue after this one.” - -Mr. Culbert got up and took her arm. “Now we’ll go and get a check -made out for this. I know you can always use money in Paris. And then -how about a celebration dinner tonight, some place where they have -marvelous French cooking?” - -Cynthia laughed. “I can do better than that, I’ve got an invitation for -you, instead. We’re both invited to a really American meal. Please, -_do_ you like corned beef hash?” - - - - -CHAPTER 3 - -_Brittany_ - -COLD-IN-THE-HEAD - - -Nancy’s rapid, fluent French gave directions to the small, sabot shod -boy who dragged behind him a blue painted hand cart. Then she turned to -bestow an additional hug on the waiting Cynthia. - -“Oh, but it is grand to see you. And how brown you will get here! Come -along. François’ll bring your luggage in his perambulator.” - -Cynthia drew a deep whiff of the ocean scented air. “Ouff! ’S nice to -get on solid ground again. I feel inches deep in train dirt and trolley -dust. How sweet the air smells, Nancy.” - -“You’ll see the broad Atlantic in a moment or two, just over that way a -few blocks. We have to walk about a half mile to the bathing beach, but -it’s a beauty when you get there.” - -Cynthia gave a little skip of delight. “How’s your especially nice -parent?” she asked. - -“She’s always lovely. At the moment she’s in a seventh heaven, having -donned a disreputable paint-smeared smock, stuck an old straw hat on -her head, and is painting ocean foam and wet rocks, laying the color -on the canvas with a trowel! She’s awfully glad to be free of the -illustration business for a time, if you ask me. But you’ll see her -soon. She gets hungry and comes home to meals.” Nancy babbled on and -Cynthia had a chance to see how brown and strong she looked, how much -good the summer in this tiny provincial town was doing her. - -“We turn here, to the right. This, ladieeze and gen’lemen, is the main -and principal street of Le Conquet, the most wester-r-r-n town in all -France. Sweet, isn’t it, Cindy?” - -It was, Cynthia admitted, adorable. Old and gray and cobblepaved, with -a tiny, one-pedestrian sidewalk along one wall, and with little two- -and three-story houses of old, pearly-gray stone whose tiny windows -opened intimately close to the street, as did the heavy wooden doors. -Green lichened roofs sloped steeply, and there were red geraniums -blooming in open windows between blowing red and green checked -curtains, to give color to the mellow softness of the ancient stone. - -“Our American hero, Mr. Jones, used to put in here, they say,” remarked -Nancy casually. - -“What Mr. Jones?” asked Cynthia, then at Nancy’s deepening dimple, -always an index to her mood, suspected a trap. “Who was Mr. Jones?” - -“Why surely you remember John Jones, of the U. S. Navy? No? ... Not Mr. -John _Paul_ Jones?” - -“Beast!” laughed Cynthia, then “Tell me some more.” - -“Well, as you know, this is the Department of Finisterre, Lands End, -and is the farthest west of all western provinces. Some centuries -ago, dunno how many, but not long, it belonged to England and the -people here are closer to the southwest-of-England type than you could -imagine.” - -They turned a corner, past a wide lipped stone well where a woman -dipped water in a huge, creamy-toned pitcher. Cynthia murmured, “Wait -till I can get to my sketch book!” and Nancy nodded understandingly. - -“Then the French got it back,” she continued, “and perhaps the English -again after that. Anyway the English burnt it a couple of times, though -there were still some English families living here, but spared the -houses in which they lived. That’s why there are still some very old -places, in spite of the conquerors. Here’s the quay. You must get out -your canvas sneakers, these cobbles are death on good leather shoes. -Wooden sabots are best, though I’ve never tried ’em.” - -The tiny hotel smelled pleasantly of soap and good Breton cooking. One -went steeply up two flights of stairs to a narrow hall and turned into -a small, whitewashed room with a dresser, a wash stand and a white -covered bed. The single window overlooked the long stretch of quay and -the tidal river, very low now and turning to marvelous lavender in the -sunset light. - -“My room is next door, and mother’s beyond that. Here are your things. -I brought you the longest way so you could see the town--Goodness, you -aren’t catching a cold are you?” - -Cynthia sneezed again. “I hope not. But a small child in the train from -Paris had frightful snuffles, right in my own compartment, and it was -sort of drafty on the trolley from Brest.” - -Promising to hurry, she closed the door and went to the window to hang -out, gazing. Wooden shoes clattered merrily on the cobbles of the quay, -and along the distant dunes, purpling with dusk, smoke rose from the -smouldering potash fires where, Nancy had said, the thrifty Bretons -burned seaweed for fertilizer. - -She was pleasantly weary and very hungry. All last night she had been -traveling, more than half the width of France from Paris to Brest. -Uncle Leslie had sailed from Brest after the Armistice, she remembered, -and its steep streets and ancient houses, built on half a dozen -different levels, had fascinated her during the hours she had to wait -for her trolley to Le Conquet. - -It had been surprisingly hard to leave Paris. That city had changed for -her, almost overnight. She could have stayed on there, almost happily, -doing paintings and more paintings, digging herself in. _Almost_ -happily, but not quite. After all, she could have done that in New -York. And what was the use of keeping on with a thing, once you had -learned you could really do it, once you had met it and conquered it? -While she was over here it was up to her to travel, learn, experiment, -grow. - -And here, right outside the window was her first view of a real French -village. How different from Paris, how quaint and sweet and clean--and -oh, how paintable it was going to be. No wonder Nancy’s famous artist -mother planned to spend her summer here. Perhaps Mrs. Brewster would be -able to tell her how to find a model for the next cover, the Christmas -number of _Little One’s Magazine_. Cynthia wanted to paint a little -dark eyed Breton girl or boy, in wooden shoes and quaint cap for that -December number. - -Goodness, there was the dinner gong! Cynthia pulled in her head just in -time to face Nancy at the door. “Mother just came up stairs. Want to -come say hello?” - -Cynthia sneezed and fumbled in her suitcase for a clean handkerchief. -“Just a moment, Nan. I’ve been so busy just looking that I haven’t -had time to get washed or combed. Now where did I put those hankies? -Pour out the water, will you honey? So I can wash. Oh ... darling Mrs. -Brewster!” - -Nancy’s mother, as pretty as ever, tanned from sea bathing, seemed -hardly older than her daughter. “We’re so glad to have you here, my -child. I want to hear all about your covers, and see what you’ve -been doing. Nancy tells me you’ve already completed one painting, in -Paris--Here’s the dining room, and this is our table.” - -There were several painters and two writers among the jolly little -crowd at the Hotel Des Poissons. Cynthia got a tremendous thrill out -of having these older people, all professional craftsmen of proved -ability, regard her with respect and as an artist already “arrived.” -Yet she was, after all, also a professional, traveling, actually -seeing the world on what she earned with her brush and pencil. -When she stopped to think about that, Cynthia always felt like a -fairy-tale-princess who has rubbed the magic ring. But generally she -was too busy to think about it. - -The next morning Nancy took her to explore the little town, not a long -tour, for there were not six streets in the whole place. The ancient -sturdy houses, facing the sea for half a dozen centuries seemed to -grow from the very rock on which they were built. Below the hotel one -crossed a bridge, at high water, or walked on a raised path across the -sands, at low tide, to a long sandy beach bordered with dunes and tall -waving grasses, very white and flat and clean. - -Cynthia surveyed the clear stretch of deserted sand, and Nancy’s brief -little bathing suit with a longing eye. “I won’t go swimming for a -day or two, I guess,” she decided. “This cold doesn’t seem to get any -better and I’d rather not risk it.” She wondered if she were being -old-maid fussy about herself. - -Breakfast was a delightfully informal meal, at almost any hour of the -morning, and in the inn parlor, not the dining room. Here the ceiling -quivered with reflections from the sunspangled river. - -On the second morning Nancy brought to breakfast a large, mysterious -bag, and when she had received her huge bowl of _café au lait_, weak -coffee made with milk, she opened the paper bag and dumped a handful -of what appeared to be rolled oats, raw, into her bowl. - -“What on earth is that?” asked Cynthia. - -“That’s my breakfast food, want to try some?” - -Cynthia shook her head, “Goodness no. But where can you get breakfast -food, American style, in a paper bag, in a French village?” - -“Feed store,” mumbled Nancy around her large spoonful. “It’s just -chicken feed. Bran. I get so hungry by noon, with these continental -breakfasts.” - -“How about an egg?” was Cynthia’s suggestion. “Soft boiled.” - -“Try and get it.” Nancy’s tone was amused. - -Cynthia struggled with the hard-to pronounce _oeuf_. Shortly it came, -all alone on a small dish. It was hot, so it must have been in hot -water. But when she broke it ... “Ugh! It’s completely raw!” - -“They simply won’t boil it any longer, unless you want a twenty minute -egg, like a rock,” explained Nancy. “It’s one of the unsolved mysteries -of the French cuisine. You’ll come to chicken-feed yet!” - -Meanwhile the time was passing. Cynthia had arrived on a Thursday, -Sunday had rolled round, her Christmas cover must go off to Paris this -week, and she seemed no nearer it than the week before. In fact, so -far, she hadn’t seen any children that looked paintable. - -“They are pretty enough,” she mourned, at breakfast on Sunday. “But -it’s merely a matter of color with them. I haven’t seen a single child -that I thought would make a good poster cover.” - -Mrs. Brewster nodded. “I know. But some of the old people are -marvelous. There are no better types for models of old people in all of -France.” - -“But not for the Christmas cover of a children’s magazine. Unless ... -there is a thought, I give them a Breton Santa Claus.” - -“No whiskers on ’em here.” Nancy was most discouraging. “What have you -to suggest, Mother?” - -“Hark, there’s the church bell. I suggest that you two hurry into your -best bonnets and shawls and go to church. All the village will be there -and you will have a good chance to look them over. Then if you find -what you want I’ll ask Madame, our patronne, to introduce us. Hurry -now!” - -It was a splendid idea, Cynthia admitted, as she followed Nancy into -the little stone church. Surely every good Breton inhabitant of Le -Conquet was present, the women in wide skirts trimmed with bands of -black velvet, with full sleeves, and tight black bodices setting off -the lace-trimmed white aprons, the frosty white caps of Breton lace -and the wide lace collars. Here at least, all the lovely quaintness -of medieval France had not gone down before the stupid uniform of -store-bought gingham dresses. - -The men were no less picturesque, with their low crowned wide brimmed -hats, the shining silver buttons on their short, black velvet coats. -And each child was a miniature replica of its parents, with the -exception of the caps which mark the married women. - -The small bleak church was warmed to light by the rustle of many -garments, by the soft glow of candles and Cynthia was enchanted by the -little ship-models that swung from the hand hewn rafters, all of them -as perfect as skill and loving care could make them. - -“They are thank offerings for the safe return of the ships they -represent,” Nancy whispered to her. “Oh look, Cindy; isn’t she a -darling?” Her elbow nudged for Cynthia’s attention. - -The minute Cynthia saw her, her artist’s eye registered her as the one -model for that Christmas cover. Such pansy-brown eyes, such soft curls -around the little pink-cheeked face, such a dimpled round chin above -the starched white collar and the tight little bodice, like a small -child playing at grown-up. - -Cynthia nodded her approval of Nancy’s choice. “How nice,” she thought, -“to be with artists again. Oh, I wish they could be with me all over -France,” remembering her loneliness in Paris. - -After the service they edged their way toward the door, Cynthia keeping -the child in sight all the way. The little girl’s mother, who walked -behind her, was a larger edition of the same type and must have been -lovely when she was young, but was now bent and weary eyed, like so -many of the hard working Breton peasants. - -Nancy’s eyes had been roving the church. Now she gave Cynthia a -reassuring nod. “Wait for me outside,” she commanded and wriggled away -through the crowd. Cynthia, who was taller than most of the villagers, -saw her stop at last before a woman in black and wearing a hat. Their -own patronne from the hotel, very much in her Sunday best. Nancy waved -to Cynthia, then the two disappeared, blotted out by the congregation. - -Five minutes later she joined Cynthia in the little square above the -fountain. “It’s all right,” she reported triumphantly. “We identified -your model and her mother, and Madame says she will ask her about -posing.” - -That was fine. Cynthia already saw her cover, painted, delivered, -printed, and exhibited on every Christmas news stand in New York. She -drew a breath of relief. - -They strolled back toward the hotel and the pleasant smell of Sunday -dinner, the crowd slowly trickling away behind them. The little bakery -was already doing a brisk business, for many of these small shops -opened as soon as the church was out. Cynthia’s eyes caught a new -poster on the bakery wall, a single sheet of vivid lemon yellow with -blue and red type, such a bright patch of color in the pearly gray -street that she hauled Nancy along to look at it. - -“Well ...” after a minute of Nancy’s silent contemplation. “What does -it say, stupid? Can’t you read out loud, the way you were taught?” - -Nancy chuckled. “Sorry, I forgot. Well, ‘Hypnotiste’ means ‘Hypnotist.’” - -“I gathered as much as that. What comes after it?” - -“‘World renowned Professor Reynaldo.’ That sounds Spanish but he -says he’s from Paris--‘Parisien’--will be here on Tuesday evening to -give a demonstration of his stupendous and altogether unexplainable -power of the human eye,” Nancy translated loosely. “It also says his -demonstration will be held in the meat market. ... I suppose that’s the -biggest room they have, except the church, and that admission will be -one and two francs. Standing room fifty centimes. Poor thing, he can’t -make much of a living out of that.” - -“Let’s go,” suggested Cynthia. - -“Eh? ... Well ... yes.” Then as the idea struck her. “I think it would -be fun. Maybe mother would like to go. Let’s ask her now.” - -Mrs. Brewster was amused at the idea and quite willing they should go, -but refused to be a third of the party. “Not if it’s to be held in the -meat market. I never could stand the odor of so many sides of beef and -mutton. But you children go along. I’m sure you will find it an amusing -cross section of the peasant’s amusement. I believe they have never had -a hypnotist here before.” - -But Cynthia very nearly didn’t get to the entertainment after all. For -on Sunday afternoon she went swimming with Nancy. It was an hour or two -after dinner, the warmest part of the day when the girls took their -bathing suits and crossed the little path across the tidal river. The -way straggled along the top of a high, wind-torn meadow where coarse -grasses tangled about the feet and where, on the rocks below, the sea -piled, churning among the crevices. But the further side of this little -peninsula was the bathing beach, quite wild and deserted, and one could -choose any of a hundred grass-grown sand dunes for a dressing room. - -Nancy had raced on ahead, and Cynthia sneezed twice, and wondered -if she ought to go for this swim, after all. She wrestled with her -conscience for a bit ... and conscience lost. - -It was a beautiful swim, but about midnight Cynthia awoke with such -a sore throat she could scarcely whisper. “Oh, darn!” she murmured -feverishly. “What a bother! I do hope I’m not going to be sick!” - -She lay for a bit thinking about that, then rapped gently beside her -bed. She heard Nancy’s springs creak, heard her mutter something -sleepily, and in a moment the light of Nancy’s candle appeared beneath -the crack of the door. The crack widened and a sleepy voice asked, “Did -you rap, honey? Oh, you poor thing! Cynthia, you are a wreck!” - -Mrs. Brewster was called immediately and then Madame. Together they -applied a hot, oily cloth to Cynthia’s throbbing throat, a funny -aluminum hot-water bottle to her feet, and gave her a dose of something -else, equally unpleasant and equally hot. Then she was given something -to breathe on a handkerchief ... Cynthia muttered that it nearly blew -off the top of her head, but it did miraculously clear her nose for -its original purpose of breathing. - -Next day she felt heaps and heaps better and protested that she could -easily get up. But she was kept in bed till noon and then allowed out -only for a short stroll in the sunshine, equipped with a handkerchief -soaked in the breathing stuff. “But no more bathing till you are quite -over this,” was the stern order of Nancy’s mother. - -“Yes’m,” murmured Cynthia meekly, ashamed to have given them all such a -fright. - -There was, however, a final straw. At dinner that night Madame reported -that she had seen the mother of the little girl, Leonie her name was, -and that the woman refused to let the child pose for her portrait. - -“But how silly,” stammered Cynthia. “What is the matter? I’ll pay for -her time of course.” - -“It’s not that,” Mrs. Brewster explained from Madame’s conversation. -“But they are rather afraid of artists. The few who come here paint -only the sea and the dunes. They aren’t accustomed to the idea of -artists’ models, not even for portraits. This woman seems unusually -simple and I suppose the word ‘posing’ made her think of wicked Paris! -I’m sorry, for I think I might have persuaded her. Madame probably -didn’t know how to go about it tactfully. ... If the woman could have -met you. ... But aren’t there others you can get? I’m sure there must -be.” - -So that Christmas cover had gone to smash, too! It would be hard to -pick out another child, after having seen Leonie. Perhaps she’d have -another opportunity to see the villagers at the meeting on Tuesday -evening. - -Mrs. Brewster again gave her reluctant, though amused, consent. “If -you’ll take a fresh handkerchief with some of that Breathex on it. ...” - -“Three of ’em,” promised Cynthia and Nancy together. - -“... And come straight home if you find you’re in a draft, or if you -start to sneeze.” - -“We will,” came the chorus. - -Mrs. Brewster laughed. “All right. And I may sound fussy, but a tiny -village in a foreign country is no place for one to get ill. Now run -along and get ready for your show.” - -They followed the crowd and the clomp of wooden shoes to the meat -market at the center of the town. Here, in the big hall, benches--rough -boards on trestles--had been arranged and the Professor himself stood -at the improvised ticket window. - -“Shall we be extravagant and take a two-franc ticket? Then we can sit -in the front row,” suggested Nancy. - -“Let’s,” urged Cynthia. “What fun to have eight cents buy so much -luxury.” - -The first two rows were very de luxe; benches with backs, but so hard -and narrow that Cynthia was glad they had brought their coats for -cushions. The children, giggling and whispering, somewhat awestruck by -the promised entertainment, crowded into the seats behind them, and in -the front rows sat the old ladies, some even with their knitting, very -straight and stiff and impressive. There was a scuffle of sabots on the -stone floor and outside a tied sheep baa-a-a-ed plaintively. - -Everyone peered and craned and turned heads to see the two American -mademoiselles, and discussed them in friendly fashion, but quite -openly. Cynthia’s bright beret and red coat, her gray eyes and dark -curls, her shoes, her silk stockings, the ring on her finger, were -argued and debated ... and relayed by Nancy in a choked murmur. - -“You are rich, since you wear a gold ring with a greenglass stone in -it. Someone suggests that you are married, also because of the ring, -but it seems Madame at the hotel has reported that you are still a -‘Mees,’ judging by your letters. Oh, here is our professor!” - -M’sieu Reynaldo, who had been at once ticket taker and dispenser, -usher, and frightener-away of small boys who would press their snubby -noses against the windows, at last barred the doors and strode proudly -up the center, and only, aisle. The stage was a rough platform on -saw-horses, beneath the light of a half dozen dim, swinging lanterns, -and was but a few feet from the de luxe seats occupied by Cynthia and -Nancy. - -“Look, Nancy; there’s my lost model, Leonie. See, there at the end. -Isn’t she a darling!” - -“Sh-h,” Nancy nudged her. “He’s going to begin.” - -The professor’s performance began with a short talk on hypnotism, its -great antiquity, its meaning, and mostly of how wonderful he was at -that ancient art. How, with the supreme power of his eye and a few -passes of his hands--somewhat soiled hands they were--he could control -his subjects and command them, thereafter to do his bidding. - -“I don’t believe it,” murmured Cynthia. - -“Wait and see,” muttered Nancy. - -“I must have absolute quiet here, during my demonstrations,” frowned -the great Reynaldo. He was a small, slender-boned man in a soiled -velvet jacket, and the jetty hair, the low brows, the wide cheekbones -of the typical lower class Parisien--an amusing contrast to the bigger, -blonder, slow-moving Breton audience. - -He asked first for two volunteers from the audience. After considerable -shy shuffling of feet and chattering insistence on the part of their -feminine escorts, two boys were shoved forward, down the aisle. -Laughing, red with embarrassment, the clumsy young fishermen mounted -the stage, then half numb with stage fright awaited the next move. - -A chorus of murmured advice came from the interested and neighborly -audience. - -“Silence!” ordered the professor, with a flash of his Paris-black eyes. - -Then before the eyes of each volunteer he made passes with his hand, -gave a low murmured command, and first one, then the other became -glassy eyed and appeared to go into a waking sleep, there on the stage. -The hall was intensely still, hardly a foot stirred or a skirt rustled. - -Cynthia choked in her handkerchief. “Oh, dear,” she thought. “I believe -I’m going to sneeze, and how shall we ever get out of here!” But the -scent on her handkerchief, though it nearly strangled her, did put a -halt to the sneeze. - -“You are now asleep,” the Professor told his subjects. “You will do -exactly as I say. Lie down and roll over.” - -The two young men lay down on the platform and rolled over. There was a -murmur of awe from the onlookers. - -“Now this is a stairway and you are climbing up it,” continued the -orders. “Now open this door,” where there was no door. “It is cold and -windy out and the rain beats on your faces as you open it.” The two -staggered back, arms over eyes as though they had indeed opened a real -door on a blast of wind and rain. - -Cynthia was getting a little bored with this. It seemed so onesided, -so unsporting. The audience tittered, but the boys were such simple -country lads it seemed unfair they should be made a laughing stock like -this. She didn’t like that oily little man with his velvet coat and his -soiled hands. “I wish he’d stop,” she thought. - -The exhibition continued with various orders. The subjects were given -water to taste, an empty glass to smell, but the Professor directed -that they smell or taste whatever he dictated, and their faces -amusingly registered disgust or delight or surprise. Yes, they were -funny, but Cynthia felt uncomfortable and looked back over her shoulder -toward the bolted door. She wished she hadn’t come. - -Only once did the little professor nearly lose his subjects. During -a tense and silent moment the sheep in the yard uttered a prolonged -“Ba-a-ah!” The audience giggled hysterically and one of the young men -began to come to himself again, looked around in a bewildered fashion -and walked to the edge of the platform. - -The Professor waved his hands, snapped his fingers. “Go, it is -finished,” he commanded. - -The two subjects blinked awake. If they had been caught abroad in their -nightshirts they could not have looked more red and sheepish. - -After that the renowned Reynaldo attempted to hypnotize a small dog, -a little fox terrier that belonged to someone in the audience. The -effort was hardly a success, for the fox terrier didn’t seem to realize -he was a subject for the professor’s art. But the audience, with the -remembrance of the former demonstration, was properly impressed and -after a bit the terrier was allowed to go, barking his joy at the -release, unharmed to his master. - -Again the Paris Professor called for volunteers, asking this time for -two little girls as he had already demonstrated his power over grown -men. The children on the benches behind Cynthia and Nancy giggled and -nudged, “You go ... no, you go ... Let M’rie go ... Let Leonie ...” -till five had been suggested and the professor, making his choice, -called two to the stage. - -“Oh, there goes my little model,” murmured Cynthia, really distressed. -“Can’t we stop her, Nancy?” - -Nancy shook her head, her eyes on the stage. “I don’t know how we -could. After all, the professor is French and we are just outsiders. -Better let them handle it themselves.” - -Cynthia subsided meekly but kept an eye on the little Leonie. What a -lovely pose ... and that one ... and the next. Why the child was a born -model, a picture in herself! - -She was also excellent material for the hypnotist, for she immediately -obeyed his orders, going to sleep bolt upright in her chair before the -professor’s waving, commanding hands. The other little girl, older and -of stouter stuff, though not so easy a victim was also finally put to -sleep. To Cynthia’s relief Reynaldo used more discretion in this case -and satisfied his audience by having the children do a little dance, by -having them appear to smell a rose when he gave them an onion, seem to -taste something sour when he gave them a bonbon. - -Then he asked if either of the girls were musical. Someone in the -audience volunteered that Marie could sing but that Leonie could not -sing a note. He then commanded Leonie to come forward and perform for -them. “Sing correctly,” he ordered, and named a little nursery tune -known to all French children. - -The child really had a very pretty voice and performed with -considerable credit. Also her friends seemed to think it marvelous -that she could sing at all. But Cynthia, stifling a sneeze in her -handkerchief, tapped a restless foot on the stone floor. - -Good, it was going to end! Monsieur Reynaldo had commanded with a -sharp clap of his hand beside the ear of each child, that his subjects -come awake. M’rie blinked her china blue eyes, smiled timorously and -clattered down the steps to join her friends. - -But Leonie was a different matter. As Cynthia, taking a deep breath of -her “Breathex” soaked handkerchief, watched with some interest, then -growing apprehension, it seemed that the Professor also was becoming -concerned. - -To cover his own confusion, he ordered her to get up, to walk across -the stage, to do various things, all of which she performed with her -former obedience. But when he again made passes before her eyes, then, -in a low tone to cover possible failure, again ordered her to waken, -she remained as soundly, as blank-eyed asleep as before. The audience -was apparently undisturbed, and seemed to take all this as part of the -performance. - -“I’m worried,” Cynthia confided to Nancy through the muffling folds -of her handkerchief. “Oh, but this stuff is strong.” Her eyes were -streaming with tears, but so far she had managed to keep back that -sneeze. - -“Worried?” Nancy turned big eyes on Cynthia. “Do you mean to say ...” - -“I don’t think he can get that child out of that trance. I wonder ...” - -Cynthia turned to look around the audience. They too were beginning, -unconsciously, to reflect the professor’s concern. Quietly, three times -now, he had given his command, Cynthia’s ears were abnormally keen, in -spite of the cold. - -She glanced back again at the stage, then decided what she would do. -Evading Nancy she slipped out of her seat, past the two old ladies who -sat on the aisle. It was just a step to the stage, a step or two across -it. Leonie’s blank stare did not turn to follow her, but Cynthia knew -that she had the attention of every other soul in the house. - -She smiled briefly at the bewildered professor and crossed to the -child. From her pocket she drew a clean handkerchief soaked with the -over-powering scent of “Breathex.” - -“I wonder,” Cynthia spoke in English in the hope that the professor, -being from Paris, knew a little of that tongue, “if the _petite enfant_ -would like to smell this.” And before the hypnotist could protest, had -clapped the handkerchief to Leonie’s little snub nose. - -It was like a double dose of smelling salts. The American makers would -have been proud of their preparation, though perhaps no such strange -application of it had ever been suggested to them. - -Leonie choked, coughed, strangled a moment. But the blank left her -eyes and she struggled to escape the handkerchief. Bewildered, for a -moment she gazed at Cynthia, then smiled shyly in a perfectly human, -understanding fashion. - -Tactfully Cynthia withdrew. “Merci, Professor,” she murmured and backed -down the steps. - -She heard little of what followed. The Professor’s florid explanation -of this occurrence, of the American’s interference with his -demonstration, but his willingness to let that pass ... and so on and -so on. The audience murmured polite amazement, stared at Cynthia, -clapped at the end of Reynaldo’s speech, and began to rise from their -benches. The door swung open into the sweet, starlit night. - -“Well ...!” stated Nancy. “You certainly distinguished yourself. Gosh, -but that was a close call for Leonie. Wonder what would have happened -...” - -Cynthia shook her head. “But I knew something must happen if she got a -whiff of this. It would have pulled a mummy back to life. Ah, here’s -Leonie.” - -The child’s mother had appeared beside her, holding her hand. She at -least was not unaware that the American Mees had done something, -though she wasn’t quite sure what, for her petite. - -“Thank you,” she murmured in shy, halting English; then, that proving -to be all she knew, she broke into fluid French which almost stumped -Nancy to translate. - -“She asks,” interpreted Miss Brewster, “if there is anything she can do -for the pretty American ... make a bow, Cindy ... She says she is very -grateful to you and that it was very naughty for her Leonie to go up on -the stage like that, before all the village. I’ve told her that we will -come tomorrow to pay our respects to Leonie’s household. We’ll bring -Mother along, too. That all sounds sufficiently formal.” - -They streamed out into the fan of light across the cobbled road. The -white caps and dark dresses of the audience melted behind them into -darkness. The night was sweet and warm and there was a sound of the sea -on the rocks, far off. - -“Good night,” called Cynthia. “Good night!” then slipped her hand into -Nancy’s arm. - -“There,” said Nancy, “is your Christmas cover, my dear, and in such a -funny way.” - -“_Aitchoo!_” sneezed Cynthia in eloquent reply. - - - - -CHAPTER 4 - -_Mont St. Michel_ - -“LITTLE MISS FIX-IT” - - -Nancy’s mother, who as a young art student had lived in France, knew -all the places that Cynthia, as a younger art student, ought to see and -go. - -“Don’t,” she told Cynthia, “despise the well-worn routes just because -they are well-worn. Later on you can go to the out of the way places -too. But you need the talked-about places as a basis for comparison, -just as you need to know black and white in order to paint color.” - -The idea interested Cynthia. “What do you call the well-worn places.” - -“Mother means those that are full of tourists and trippers,” explained -Nancy. - -“Yes, of course,” said Mrs. Brewster, “Just the sort of places you -saw in Paris. The Louvre, the tomb of Napoleon, Montmartre, the Arc -de Triomphe. You don’t need to rush through them, Baedecker in -hand--though a guidebook is always useful--like the American couple out -of Punch. ‘You see the outside Marthy, and I’ll see the inside, and -we’ll cut the time in half.’” - -Cynthia laughed. She knew those tourists, so intent on gathering data -to relate at home that they were blind to real beauty, to all the -little local color and pleasant customs of the people. “But besides -Paris, what would you suggest?” - -“Well, there’s Carcassonne, of course.” - -“Oh _yes!_” agreed Cynthia. Carcassonne had been on her list too. - -“Then I think you should see a bit of the Basque country. It’s lovely, -though it has become a little self-conscious lately, with so many books -being written about it.” - -Nancy had a suggestion here. “Don’t you think Cynthia would adore -Mouleon Soule?” And Mrs. Brewster, agreeing, had promised a letter of -introduction to an old Basque artist there. “And that will be real -local color too. Then there’s Rome and Venice and Florence ...” - -Cynthia shook her head. Not much chance of her getting to Italy, not -unless the reward for capturing Goncourt, on the ship coming over, -should materialize. “Tell me some places near here. Normandy, Brittany.” - -“Mont St. Michel!” cried Nancy. - -Mrs. Brewster nodded. “I wonder ...” she began. - -Nancy took her up. “If we couldn’t go too?” - -“Oh that would be wonderful!” cried Cynthia. And so the matter was -arranged. - -Mont St. Michel was famous for four things; its tides and the island -with its mile long causeway to land, its fortress abbey, and omelets. -Nature was responsible for the first two, Normandy abbots and the -wealth which William of Normandy had filched from England, for the -second, and Madame Poulard now dead, but still surviving in her -reputation, for the third. - -It was to partake of the third that Cynthia was seated, on the evening -of her first day at Mont St. Michel, before a red checked cloth covered -table in the Hotel Tete D’or. It was a distracting scent. The great -arched room with ceiling darkened by the smoke of many fires, the -enormous fireplace under the great cowled chimney, and the fascinating -process of mixing that omelet which Madame Poulard had made famous -among gourmets all the world over. And for a further distraction there -was the couple at the corner table; the man so dark and slim and ... -well, interesting looking, the girl so pretty, and so angry. Cynthia’s -attention was doubly held, by the girl’s prettiness and by her anger. - -Nancy’s tug at her sleeve pulled Cynthia’s attention back to the omelet -making. This was a ceremony, a rite in itself that people came from all -over the world to see. A huge bowl of sweet butter, eggs, and the long -handled iron skillet held in Madam’s skillful hand. From the butter she -sliced a great golden gob, dumped it into the pan and held it over the -small fire in the big fireplace. - -“I knew the original Madam Poulard,” Mrs. Brewster was saying. “She and -her husband were the handsomest couple in Normandy, or so it was said. -Look ... the eggs go in now.” - -The little cook, plump and trim in her black dress and neat white apron -poured the golden mass into the hot butter, stirred it slowly with a -long handled spoon. - -“Funny to think how small a thing, like an omelet, can make a place -famous,” mused Cynthia. - -“Oh, but she made it an art. Like your child portraits, Cynthia,” said -Mrs. Brewster. - -A delicious smell, wood smoke, butter, the omelet. Cynthia grew -ravenous just watching the process. In another moment it would be ready -for them. And again her attention sought the couple at the further -table. The man looked almost French, thin and wiry and intense, the -girl had buttercup hair that gleamed in the lamplight, and slim, -capable hands with which she gestured as she talked. - -The finished omelet was served piping hot upon a plate warmed before -the fire. When Cynthia had finished the last delicious morsel she -looked up again. The party of two had become three by the addition of -an older man, obviously the father of the girl. - -“I wonder if they’re engaged,” said Cynthia turning the little emerald -on her own slim finger. - -“Who’s engaged, Cyn?” asked Nancy. “Listen honey, try the raspberries, -with sour cream, they’re delicious.” But then Nancy’s back was toward -the interesting couple so she might be excused for a lack of interest. -Mrs. Brewster caught Cynthia’s eye and smiled. - -“The man looks like a Basque,” she said. “But I think the girl is -American. I saw them in our hotel this afternoon.” - -The Brewsters, who with Cynthia had come the short but complicated trip -from Brittany that morning, planned now to spend several days at Mont -St. Michel. After that Cynthia was reconciled to traveling alone again. -Meanwhile she and Nancy could paint and explore the abbey fortress and -talk Academy gossip, there wouldn’t be such another chance till Cynthia -got back to New York. - -Exploration got under way immediately after breakfast the next morning. -Nancy with her mother’s sketch box, Cynthia with the sketching stool -accompanied Mrs. Brewster up the steep cobbled street of the tiny -village. - -“Just as far as half way up the hill,” directed Mrs. Brewster. “There’s -a small garden of cabbages there that takes on the most heavenly color -in the sunlight. That is if the man has planted cabbages this year.” - -The man had, and they were indeed heavenly. Cynthia sucked in her -breath at the beauty of the color. One had not guessed that mere -cabbages could be so decorative. - -Below them stretched stairs and more stairs of the dark purplish brown -stone of the island, all the long, steep, curving way up which they -had come. Slowly the stairway had widened, houses dropped away and -now, level with the eye, rose the second and third stories of the -fortress-like dwellings that fringed the town. Chimneys incredibly -thick threw long morning shadows of rich blue on salmon pink walls and -grey tiled roofs. Round towers lent piquant variety to the outlines and -the incongruity of a bedquilt stuffed through the window of a beetling -fortress, to air above a frowning keep, made Cynthia’s fingers tingle -for paper and pencil with which to note it all down. Below the windows, -tiny gardens--something pinkish, something ochre--Cynthia with eyes -half closed to shut out shapes of things saw only color where some -thrifty Normandy farmer had planted provender for the coming winter. -And cabbages, so green they were almost blue, jewel vivid, jewel -bright. Cynthia nodded. Tomorrow she would bring her paint box. - -“My stool, Cynthia dear.” Amusedly Mrs. Brewster broke in on her -reverie. “I’ll be here for two hours at least. Run along and don’t fall -off any parapets or into any oubliettes.” - -“What’s an oubliette?” asked Cynthia racing upward beside Nancy. - -“It’s a ‘forgettery,’” explained Nancy, “and if that doesn’t mean -anything to you, my child, it’s an extremely graphic name for the -trap-door, underground dungeons that they used to drop you into if you -offended a king or an abbot. Monte Cristo stuff, you know. I believe -this place is simply riddled with ’em.” - -“Ugh! Horrid people, kings and abbots!” - -“Ah, but they could build. Look up, honey!” - -Above now, far above them, rose the peaks and pinnacles of this -fairy-tale place. Below them the whole island rose like a hand from -the sea, joined to the mainland by only the single mile-long causeway. -Ringed about the finger’s root were the far off houses, fronting the -sea, backs to the land. And surmounting the whole, like a thimble atop -the finger, the abbey, rising, ever rising in the still clear air -to the final peak of all, the glittering image of Saint Michel de la -mer du peril; of the perilous sea. The Archangel, it seemed, loved -heights. From the tip of the tower that crowned his abbey, wings of -gold outspread, sword uplifted, his mailed foot crushed the devil who -crawled beneath, and atop one foot perched the golden cock, symbol of -eternal vigilance. - -Cynthia, gazing skyward murmured, “Lovely!” - -“Marvelous!” whispered Nancy looking seaward. The sands of St. Michel, -those treacherous sands through which the tide can rip and roar in -minutes, seconds almost, shone far below them now, peacefully dry, -almost lavender in the sun, creating a false horizon for the fringe of -little houses along the shore. - -“Let’s get a guide,” suggested Nancy turning back. “I detest them as a -rule. But this place is a perfect labyrinth, and besides you can pick -up so much information the guide books don’t give you.” - -At the entrance gate, where a few francs bought admittance, they found -that a group would start through the abbey in about twenty minutes. -Preferring to wait outside they braced themselves against the wall -where the sun was pleasantly warm and watched their fellow tourists -assemble. - -A little old lady and her husband, both very winded from the long -climb. “From Ioway,” Cynthia bet Nancy in a whisper. “And on their -wedding anniversary trip.” - -“Heads you win, tails I lose,” said Nancy scornfully. “But these are -Britishers, I’ll bet my new tube of Prussian blue.” - -Sober hats set high on the head, bright complexions, and, as they -drew nearer up the stair, broad A’s and clipped G’s proved Nancy to -be right. Next three French sisters in black and white, from some -religious order. - -“Probably from a convent in Canada,” hazarded Nancy, listening to their -French. “They come on holiday to visit the churches in France. Mother -and I have crossed with groups of them several times; they are always -so picturesque and so jolly. And here’s a pretty girl for your sketch -book, Cyn.” - -It was the girl from the restaurant, the girl with the buttercup hair. -And her young man. The girl seemed to half recognize Cynthia, for she -gave a little tremulous smile, then turned abruptly away as though she -wasn’t sure whether they had met or not. - -“_Mesdames et Messieurs_ ...” began the guide in shrill tones and, -fumbling with an enormous bunch of keys, unlocked the great door to the -abbey. For the next hour he led them through cloisters twelve hundred -feet above the ocean, through the refectory and the ancient church, -through banqueting halls in which kings and princes had feasted. “They -say Harold the Saxon was a guest and a prisoner here of William of -Normandy before William became the Conqueror,” translated Nancy. - -Beyond her the young man also translated for the benefit of the girl -with him. Between them Cynthia managed to pick up most of the guide’s -information. They were in the banqueting hall, that long gray drafty -hall with its many pillars, and Cynthia, gazing about her, tried to -transform it to the way it must have been when Harold was the unwilling -guest. A place of flaring torches, lords and ladies in silks and -velvets, in trailing veils and sky-pointing hennins, lifting their -heavy trains from the rushes that covered the floor. There would be -tapestries, rippling along the walls as the drafts caught them, painted -ceilings that had long ago faded to gray and stone color, minstrels to -make music, great dogs to lie about on the rush-strewn floor, and the -delicious scent of long forgotten foods from those great fireplaces in -the kitchens beyond. Yes, the far off times must have been fun too. She -wished she had been here then. - -But the oubliettes changed her opinion on that. Only a few of them, so -the guide said, now remained open to the public. The others, cut down -through the solid rock, lay far, far below, damp, almost airless, foul -with rats and crawling things. - -“And if the abbot or the king wanted you out of the way, you lived for -years down there,” said Nancy. - -One, not far below the dining hall, was a tiny place, dark, airless, -with scarcely room to lie or sit or stand upright. - -“Do you mean to say,” asked Cynthia, “that those people up above could -dance and sing and ... and enjoy themselves with all those prisoners -down below them?” - -The group had gone on a way; but Cynthia, lingering behind to explore, -had jumped down into the oubliette to see just what kind of a place it -really was. She spoke from the floor, some distance below Nancy’s neat -brown oxfords. - -Nancy shrugged. “That’s the middle ages, darling.” - -Cynthia reached up. “Give me a hand, Nancy. I want to get out of here. -Ugh ...” once on the floor beside the other, “I hate this place, it’s -haunted by all those horrible things they used to do.” - -Nancy looked at her queerly. “Not see any more? All right. I’m -willing,” and five minutes later they stood once more before the great -western entrance looking out over the sands and the town below. - -“Ou ... uf!” Cynthia drew a great breath of the free air. “I’d go off -my nut if we stayed in there much longer. It’s beautiful, but gosh, -it was cruel. Let’s go somewhere and pick daisies and get the smell -of those forgetteries out of our noses. C’mon, Nannie.” And grabbing -Nancy’s wrist she hauled her headlong down the stairs towards the town -below. - -As they raced past, Mrs. Brewster was still absorbed in her cabbages -and did not even look up. The steps narrowed, they came to the -block-long village with its dark, tiny windowed houses where were -displayed all the usual tricks to catch the tourist trade. - -“Daisies!” cried Cynthia. “Where can we get daisies?” and looked about -her. Steep cobbled streets, the sands ahead. - -“Let’s stop and get us a citronade, and I’ll ask,” suggested the -diplomatic Nancy. While they sipped the sweet warmish drink from -thick tumblers she chattered with the waitress. “It’s all right,” she -reported. “There are pretty flowers for you to pick, my child. Oh, -there’s your blonde friend’s boy friend, and all alone.” - -Cynthia had noticed him too, furiously striding down the steep street. -Where was the buttercup girl? “They were quarreling last night,” she -said, watching the nervous wiry back as it turned the lower corner of -the street, entered the hotel. “And then her father came in. She didn’t -seem very happy today either.” - -“Little Miss Fix-it,” teased Nancy. “What’s it to you? Come on now, -we’ll go hunt daisies.” - -At the very foot of the street where, at high tide the seas must wash, -where boats lay, small and deserted on the yellow sand, footprints led -along the base of the cliff. Here, rounding the turn, the wind blew -freshly from off the coasts of England, small crabs scuttled to shelter -as they passed and far far above them Saint Michel dominated his devil -and the cock eternally crowed. - -Above them suddenly rose steep cliffs covered with coarse grass, -and, if not daisies, at least their French cousins. No houses here, -though piles of rubble and a bit of crumbled wall told that the abbey -buildings must once have straggled down the face of this cliff. Far -above small peasant children climbed and called, or swung bare legs -from an outcrop of rock, and still higher a small hunched figure sat -all alone on a rock. Cynthia was about to say, “Oh, there’s the little -American,” but remembering what Nancy had just called her, held her -tongue and busied herself with collecting a bouquet for Mrs. Brewster’s -room. - -Presently wearying of this she sat on a stone to survey the steep climb -she had already come and the sands beyond that. It seemed to her that -the color of the sand had changed, darkened, in the past ten minutes. -Idly she noted that the children had gone; already she could see them -scampering past the rock at the base, saw them disappear. She looked -back of her. Nothing here, no connection with the town. To get home -one must go the way they had come. Just beyond where Nancy was still -picking flowers was the American girl. Cynthia’s gaze took her in with -the rest of the scene. Suddenly she was startled almost out of her wits -by a small figure that tore past her, yelling at the top of his lungs. - -She sprang to her feet, and was still more startled to see Nancy come -pelting after the boy. - -“_La marée ... la marée montante ..._” - -“What is it?” asked Cynthia, gazing after the small figure that had -passed. A good model that boy would be, with his wind blown curls, his -startled eyes. - -Nancy grabbed her arm, shouted in her ear, “Run ... _run_ ...” - -“What ... why?” Cynthia’s feet pounded after Nancy. Over her shoulder -Nancy flung, “‘The tide,’ he said. ‘The tide is rising.’” - -Cynthia looked back. The girl behind them had risen from her rock. With -a wrench Cynthia freed her arm from Nancy’s grasp, put hands to mouth -and megaphoned. “Hurry! _Hurry!_ The _tide!_” - -She seemed to get the idea for immediately she came leaping down over -the rocks. Cynthia paused only once to glance behind and see what good -speed the girl was making, then raced to catch up with Nancy. Almost -together the three reached the sands. - -So that was why they had changed so rapidly from ochre to lavender. -Water, tidal water, seeping swiftly, menacingly from beneath, pouring -in from every side. But the sand at the base of the rocks was still -dry, it was hardly five minutes race around the rocks to the end of -the little street. Hearts pounding, breath sobbing, they reached it -together. - -Cynthia could not stop there. She wanted to reach her hotel, her room, -feel safe ground, familiar ground that could not dissolve into seas -beneath her feet, before she stopped. As she tore through the hallway, -passed the astonished eyes of Madame at the desk, Nancy was close -behind. Together they dragged the little American in with them, slumped -together on the two beds. - -“Well!” gasped Cynthia. - -“_Well!_” Nancy echoed her. “My good gosh, Cynthia, that was a close -call!” The buttercup girl rose first, stood for a long moment at the -window looking out. “Look here ...” she said at last, seemed to have -trouble with her voice and spoke again, “Come here, you two.” It was -the first they had heard her speak. - -Cynthia who had by now slightly recovered her breath, felt that her -knees would bear her again. But when she looked out she nearly lost -what breath she had gained. - -“Nancy ... oh _Nancy!_” - -From base of rock to farthest horizon the sea rushed, tumbling, -foaming, stealthily rising, rising. Ten minutes later and they would -have been engulfed in it, even five minutes later and the quicksands, -forerunner of the rush of waves, would have caught them. - -“They say it rises sixteen feet every tide.” Nancy’s voice was shaking. - -The best thing that could have happened was the entrance of Mrs. -Brewster. Having heard Madame’s story at the desk she immediately took -cheerful charge of the situation. “We’ll have lunch here in the room,” -she suggested. “I’ll order anything you like, and then all three of you -had better lie down for an hour. This is Miss ...?” - -“Comstock, Betsey Comstock,” murmured the buttercup girl. - -Cynthia, endeavoring to follow Mrs. Brewster’s cheerful lead, asked if -the hotel couldn’t serve some _escargots_, snails. She had heard they -were good, and she said she felt in a mood to experiment. Actually not -even snails for lunch seem very reckless after their recent experience. -Betsey still seemed a little dazed but Nancy had several wildly -fantastic suggestions and Mrs. Brewster rang for the waiter, ordered -lunch to be brought to their room. - -They had scarcely sat down to eat when a knock sounded imperatively on -the door. As Mrs. Brewster answered it Cynthia saw beyond her shoulder -a man’s face, distraught and white. - -“Oh, Madame,” he cried. “Is Miss ... I was told ... that is. ...” - -“Robert!” Betsey Comstock had rushed past Mrs. Brewster, and -flung herself into the young man’s arms. Smiling, Mrs. Brewster -discreetly closed the door, but murmurs and soft voices as though in -reconciliation sounded beyond it. The girls were half way through lunch -when Betsey, such a changed Betsey, all smiles and radiance, reappeared. - -“Apologies, please,” she begged charmingly. “Robert had a luncheon -engagement with a man he met here at the hotel, an architect. So I did -not ask him in. But the rest, I’d like to explain.” - -To Cynthia it sounded very romantic, a young Basque, Yberri was the -name, educated in America for his career of architecture and Betsey, -now engaged to be married to him, with her own career as a costume -designer. What could be nicer? - -“Who do you work for?” asked the practical Nancy. “Have you sold -anything yet?” - -“I had my first act in Cochran’s Revue, the recent one, in London.” - -“Oh! Moms and I saw that. Did you see the lovely ballet with the -Chinese pagodas on their heads?” - -Betsey flushed a little and smiled. “That one was mine. ...” - -“Cynthia, she’s good,” Nancy turned enthusiastically to the others. -“The stuff was swell. ...” - -Betsey continued. They were to be married next week, in Paris, and -return to the States, Dad and Robert and she. Betsey had letters of -introduction to two or three big theatrical producers in New York and -promise of further work with Cochran. - -“Grand!” applauded Nancy. - -But the trouble, it seemed, was this: Robert didn’t want his wife to -continue her work after they were married. - -“Oh dear!” murmured Cynthia. Just suppose Chick didn’t want her to keep -on with her covers. But then Chick was an artist also; he understood. - -“Stop your painting?” asked Nancy, puzzled to understand anyone in a -family that didn’t design or illustrate or paint. - -“Oh no, he’s willing I should keep on with the designing, but not -willing I should earn money with it.” - -Which explained their quarrel at the table last night, explained why -Betsey had gone off today by herself on the rocks. - -“But now it’s all right, isn’t it?” asked Cynthia. - -Betsey’s smile became somewhat less bright. “No ... o,” she admitted. -“We made it up, the quarrel I mean. But nothing is decided, nothing -definite.” - -“It’ll work out somehow,” consoled Cynthia. “Just see if it doesn’t.” - -Betsey of the buttercup hair was still on her mind next morning. Nancy -had volunteered to go on a hunt for the small boy of the hill, the one -who had warned them of the tide. Cynthia had an idea that he would make -a good model for her next magazine cover. She herself was sharing the -privilege of the cabbage patch and the shade of the parapet with Mrs. -Brewster, both painting busily, when Betsey’s voice sounded slightly -above Cynthia’s right ear. - -“’S good,” murmured the voice. - -Cynthia looked up. “Hi!” she said, around the paintbrush in her mouth, -but her gaze wandered back to the sunny ochre of the sands and the -blue-green of the cabbages. Difficult to depict sunlight against that -false horizon; you need blue sky to make a landscape look sunny. - -“I’m going up to the abbey,” whispered Betsey with an eye on Mrs. -Brewster busily painting along the wall. - -“Stop on the way back. And don’t fall into any oubliette.” But after -she had gone Cynthia still worried about her. It was all mixed up -with the hue of cabbages in sunlight. Why was Betsey alone, had they -quarreled again? If that Robert Yberri had any sense he’d let her keep -on with her work ... oh glory, _how_ did you get the color of that -shadow! Cynthia took a peek at Mrs. Brewster’s oil sketch, almost -groaned at the comparison, but mixed a tiny drop of rose madder with -her wash and cocked her head on one side. Perhaps that was it! - -An hour later she put the last touch on it, yawned, stretched and -looked up. Mrs. Brewster had tactfully stolen away. Below the fortress -wall the sands were slowly darkening into lavender as they had -yesterday and the shadow of the wall no longer gave her shelter. Time -to pack up and go home. - -But with her paints packed, her box strapped neatly, she perched on -the wall to watch again that relentless tide. First the darkening of -the sand. One could not say at just what instant the lavender began to -gleam with moisture, at what precise second one noted water seeping -into this hollow and that, at what tick of the watch the hollows -joined, ran into each other, became larger, ran into a hundred thin, -continuous streams across the wide expanse of sand. - -Someone was coming up the steps, a man with thick brown hair uncovered, -with American plus fours. - -“Miss Wanstead?” asked Betsey’s Robert. - -Cynthia nodded, then glanced back at the sands below, and gasped. Where -an instant before had been wet sand with a few thin streams across it -a dozen rushing rivers now flowed, joining swiftly into a relentless, -heaving sea. - -“Frightening, isn’t it?” said Betsey’s Robert. “We saw it rise like -that two days ago. That’s why I’m here. I know how dangerous it is and -I want to thank you for bringing Betsey back yesterday, you and Miss -Brewster.” - -“Oh,” murmured Cynthia. “It ... it wasn’t anything.” Then she laughed. -“I mean, of course, it was a lot. Only she would have got back. ...” - -“She says she wouldn’t. Of course she could have stayed there eight or -nine hours.” - -“Or you could have sent for her in a boat,” suggested the more -practical Cynthia. - -“Anyway, I’m tremendously grateful.” He sat down on the wall beside -her. “Imposing, isn’t it?” He gestured toward the great abbey behind -them. “One of the most imposing sites in all the world, and combined -with what man has done to it, it’s stupendous. You’re an artist, aren’t -you?” - -Cynthia admitted it. “And you too ... and Betsey.” - -“Betsey’s a smart kid.” And suddenly Cynthia thought, “Why, he’s -awfully in love with her,” and liked him better, even if he were as -stubborn as a mule. - -“Is she?” she asked aloud and ingenuously, so that Robert had to brag a -little. - -“She’s worked for Cochran, you know; costumes,” with quiet pride in the -ability of his fiancée. - -“Marvelous. She must be good. Though of course he takes lots of -beginners, doesn’t he, for a short tryout?” She knew nothing of the -kind, but spoke as one with inside information. - -Robert flushed and set his jaw. “Not at all,” he said stiffly. -“Betsey’s good enough to keep on with him, show after show. And to get -work in New York too, if she wishes.” - -“Really?” Cynthia’s eyebrows expressed her scepticism. “Only of course, -once she’s married. ... I mean no girl can really manage two jobs, can -she?” - -She almost giggled at the way he took it. “I ...” his mouth hung open -a minute. But stubborn people were contrary, too, and Robert was no -exception. “Well, after all, I expect to keep on with architecture -after I’m married.” - -“Oh yes, but a man ...” Cynthia’s air was still one of polite -incredulity. “Here’s Betsey now.” - -Buttercup hair windblown, cheeks very pink. “But my dear, you’ve been -crying again,” thought Cynthia and wondered if it wouldn’t be tactful -to withdraw immediately. Betsey herself answered that. - -“Finished your sketch, Cynthia? I’m so glad you waited. I’ve got a -telegram to show you. ... I’m leaving tonight, if I can get across to -the mainland.” She was carefully avoiding Robert’s eyes. - -Betsey had a little pink slip in her hand. Cynthia took it and read -aloud, as well as she could, the garbled English of the French wire. -“Miss Elizabeth Comstock. Hotel des Poissons ... and so on. Please be -in London Monday the eleventh, my office. Stop. Wish to talk over two -scenes in new revue. Stop. Charles Cochran.” - -So. Betsey had made her decision. What would Betsey’s Robert say to -that. Cynthia looked up, was about to burst into congratulations when -the man forestalled her. - -“Betsey! I’m so glad! But hadn’t we better hurry? I’ve got to pack and -you know how slow I am. We’ll get your Dad to chaperon us as far as -London and get married there instead of in Paris. This Cochran thing -is too grand a chance to miss.” - -Cynthia, viewing Betsey’s radiant astonishment, thought almost smugly, -“What price Nancy’s little Miss Fix-it?” - - - - -CHAPTER 5 - -_The Basque Country_ - -THE CUCKOO - - -It was Nancy and Mrs. Brewster who had suggested the Basque country. -This was partly because Cynthia needed a new type of child’s head -for her covers for _Little One’s Magazine_, and partly because they -thought it would be a new and amusing adventure. It bore also the -extra recommendation of economy. Mrs. Brewster had a friend in a tiny -village, well off the beaten track of tourists. He was an artist, he -would see that Cynthia found good accommodations, if not in his own -house, then in a house nearby. Good, she would write to him, find out -for sure if he was still living. For he was, she said, old, old. - -The Basque country seemed, to Cynthia, a very long way off from Paris, -and from the Brewsters in Brittany, and from all the places she had -grown to know. The scare and loneliness of Paris had been exorcised -by her first success with the portrait of Nono. No place where you can -earn a living can be, after you have proved yourself, really strange -or unfriendly. But miles and miles away, in the southwestern corner of -France it might be different. - -Somewhat reluctantly, feeling a little forlorn and abandoned, Cynthia -left the Brewsters in Britanny and returned to Paris. France is a great -spider web of glittering rails of railways, but Paris, like a giant, -not unfriendly, spider, sits in the heart, if not the exact center, and -to go almost anywhere it is cheaper and easier to return to that city -and start all over again. - -An hour on the train, and the feeling of forlornness began to -disappear. Under Nancy’s stern tutelage Cynthia’s French had improved -enormously. Now she knew how to order a meal, where and how to buy her -lunch, if there was no dining car on the train; knew that she must give -up her ticket at the exit barrier, but retain it until then, and half a -hundred other small things that went to make life and travel smoother -and more pleasant. - -Going back to Paris was almost like going home again. Her own little -room up near the roof in the Hotel St. Severin, or one very like it -except that the wallpaper sprawled magenta fuschias on a green ground -instead of huge coins of blue and gold and purple on a red ground. A -dinner with Alice and the Murchisons, and a pressing invitation to -bring over her bags from the hotel and stay with them as long as she -could. Then she encountered, of all people, Stasia Carruthers, in front -of the Café de la Paix, and was carried off to Rumplemeier’s for one of -their scrumptious teas. - -News was exchanged. Stasia had been down to Switzerland, was back now -for some fittings and to buy some new hats. Gaily Cynthia plunged -into her own adventures, even to how she had sold three portraits of -children in the little town of Le Conquet, once she had succeeded in -breaking down the reserve of the villagers. For just a little while -she found herself envying Stasia; her new, smart little Paris hat, her -trick little silk suit, fresh from the scissors of Chanel. Looking up -suddenly she surprised a strange expression in Stasia’s dark eyes. -Could it be envy? Envy for the greater adventure of earning your way. -Anyone could buy his way on a fat letter of credit. But to earn as you -went, that was the greater risk, hence the greater adventure. - -Cynthia chuckled to herself, tucked a stray curl beneath the brim of -the hat she had bought for fifty francs in the Rue St. Roch, and ceased -to envy Stasia. - -Two days later, having restocked her box of water colors on the -Boulevard Montparnasse, that parnassus of all good little art students, -she took train at some uncanny hour of the early morning for Bordeaux. -There, late in the afternoon and from the shouting hotel runners at the -station, each screaming the particular merits of his own hotel, she -chose the Hotel de New York. It seemed homelike as to name at least. - -It proved dingy and down at heels, but with a charming view out over -one of Bordeaux’ countless city squares. Cynthia yawned through her -dinner, left an early call for breakfast, and was off again almost -before daylight for Gotien, in the Basses-Pyrénées. Three times that -day she changed trains, until, from sheer weariness Gotien began to -seem like some Never-never land, always retreating as one advanced. And -beyond Gotien--the address she was bound for was Mouleon-Soule. - -She had gone through the gate with her suitcase and sketch box and -stood, almost shaking with weariness full in the afternoon sun that -streamed across the dusty, cobblestoned plaza. No one could tell her -how to get to Mouleon-Soule. But perhaps if she could find the station -hotel, get a good dinner and a night’s sleep, she could grapple, -tomorrow, with the problem. - -Then from beyond the ragged plane trees that lined the plaza came -a little shabby, stoop-shouldered man in a Basque beret timidly -displaying a wide, toothless smile. His English savored quaintly of -both French and American. - -“Is it that this is the Mademoiselle Euanstead?” - -Cynthia squinted against the sun. She was too weary to think. Was -someone to meet her here? - -“Yes, I’m Miss Wanstead.” - -“_Bon!_ We had the letter from Madame Brewster.” - -“Oh, then you are Monsieur Marge. How nice! I couldn’t discover a train -for Mouleon.” - -“No train,” he shook his head. “Only the tramcars. But come and meet my -wife.” - -Madame was a plump little dumpling in plain worn black, knitting on -one of the benches beneath the trees. She beamed a silent welcome and -carried her knitting with her, needles clicking without a break, into -the tram which had been waiting, small town fashion, for Monsieur Marge -to find his guest. For an hour, while Cynthia struggled to keep her -eyes open, they rattled and banged through clouds of dust toward the -tiny town of Mouleon, then out again into open country. - -Sunset had passed and it was nearly dark when they reached their final -stop and Cynthia stumbled up the path behind her hosts. Twice, during -the simple dinner, she found herself nodding. Then at some brief remark -from Madame, Monsieur Marge suggested kindly: - -“My wife sees that you are very tired. I will light the candle and show -you to your room.” Behind him a silly little cuckoo clock chirped nine -times, as Cynthia stumbled up the bed. - -Cynthia woke slowly, aware of an unusual sound. Something, someone was -snoring. Surely--no, the sound couldn’t possibly be human. She lay -still a moment, listening, then decided she really must investigate, -and sat up against her pillows. - -She was in a high, story-book bed, such a bed as might have -accommodated the princess of a Grimm fairy-tale. With four high posts, -heavy dark draperies sweeping the floor, and, actually, three little -steps of a ladder to lead up to it. She leaned over and peered down at -them, then gave a delighted bounce. She had been too sleepy the night -before to notice those steps, but she did remember her host’s very -French warning that the night air was dangerous and that she must keep -her windows tight closed. But after Madame and Monsieur had departed -she had crossed to the casements and opened them wide. - -Now she pattered, barefooted, down the steps and leaned out over the -low sill. The curious snores came from just below. Grunts, not snores! -Oh, the darlings! Pigs, little ones, and all ten of them very vocal and -very hungry and directly beneath her window. - -“Well, I never thought I’d live over a pigpen,” laughed Cynthia. “Isn’t -that France for you!” - -At the end of the long room a dusty old mirror in a tall gold frame -reflected the polished parquet floor with its dark oak inlay, the huge -heavy furniture, built to last many lifetimes, the two high windows, -and the Basque Pyrénées, towering, blue, beyond the green of rolling -fields. In the center of it all Cynthia herself, like some new kind of -a blue-and-white striped, pyjamaed, fairy-tale princess; dark hair a -tangle of curls, blue eyes wide and amused, bare pink toes pattering -over the shining floor. - -“Well, you certainly are an anach ... anachronism ... or however you -pronounce it when you mean you’re out of place!” she twinkled at the -fairy in the mirror. “Wonder what time they breakfast here! Gosh, I’m -hungry!” - -She tiptoed to the door. It swung silently on well-oiled hinges. No -footsteps sounded below but there was a murmur of soft voices, the -smell of toast--she sniffed--and chocolate. Then from somewhere in the -house a bird call sounded. Nine times. - -A cuckoo clock. Nine cuckoos. My, but it was late! Hurry and get -dressed, my dear. She scampered back to fling on her clothes. “Glory, -what a day!” - -She must have slept twelve hours solid. Goodness, how heavenly the -pines smelled, how wonderful this peace and quiet after the hot -asphalt, the ceaseless noise, the rattle and scream of Paris. - -She ran a comb through her hair, gave a dab of powder to her nose and -opened the door again. The wide shallow stairs led directly into the -sun-drenched kitchen. - -Madame, looking up, beamed good morning from her work over the stove. -“Bon jour, bon jour,” and seemed very proud of even that much French. -Her own language was Basque, of course. - -“Good morning, Mam’selle Euanstead. You have slep’ well?” - -“Gorgeously! Is this for me, Monsieur Marge?” - -A single place at the kitchen table was set with a bowl of hot cocoa on -a red checked napkin. There was another napkin, a big spoon, crisp hot -bread fresh toasted in the oven, and a huge sweet orange. - -“An egg also?” asked Monsieur Marge from the doorstep where he sat with -his pipe. “No? Then when you have finished a second cup of cocoa I -shall show you my hive’ and my bee’ and my studio.” - -The latter proved to be a small, dingy, not too well-lighted building -behind the rambling, whitewashed, red-roofed house. Here dusty -canvases and dried tubes of paint, bits of old tapestry and ancient -stretcher-frames were piled and presided over by two of those artist’s -lay figures that resemble life-sized, wigless dolls. - -Monsieur Marge turned over the quaint old pictures to display them and -Cynthia murmured appreciation, trying hard to find something to admire -in each. But they were of such an ancient manner, of the “brown gravy” -school, with shadows dead as brown paint and thick, lifeless color, -that proper applause was difficult. - -“You know I paint in America too?” he asked her proudly. - -“Yes, Mrs. Brewster told me. Where was that?” - -“I live in Philadelphia fifteen years. That was before the war. Then -I live in South America with my son, long time. Many Basque live in -South America. Then I come home here, to my old farm I buy when I young -man ... many year ago. That was before you were born.” He chuckled at -his own age. “Long ago I paint those panorama for the World Fair in -Chicago.” - -“Goodness! Did you? I’ve heard of them but never saw one.” - -“Yes, indeed. They be gre-e-a-t painting.” He spread his arms to -indicate an immense canvas. “And figures modeled like life. I paint -twelve of those. They go all round the country. Twelve Battle of -Gettysburg, with men in uniform in the wheat field. Battle of -Gettysburg, she was fought in a wheat field.” He chuckled again and -sucked on his empty pipe. “We work all night, many night, on that to -get her ready for the opening of the Fair. We were all French, the -artists who work on her. But the day after the opening we close the -doors again, take her down and paint again all night long.” - -“Oh, why?” cried Cynthia. - -“Because,” he grinned in cheerful toothlessness. “We have paint -_French_ wheat field. Full of puppies. American wheat field have no -puppies.” And he roared with laughter over the ancient jest. - -“Pup ...” for a moment Cynthia was puzzled. Then she too laughed. “Oh -yes, _poppies!_” For all day yesterday she had admired the glorious -silky red flowers blooming among the wheat beside the railway. - -“You want to paint this morning?” And, when Cynthia decided that she -might as well start immediately, “Go down the road and then turn right, -by the mill. That is near and pretty, and tomorrow you can go further. -You have everything you want? Oil? Turpentine? Oh, you paint in the -water color. That is pretty, too.” - -So Cynthia settled down contentedly on the old Basque farm. It was two -miles through the hot sunlight to the nearest village but she found -plenty to paint within easy walking distance of the Marge house; nearby -houses with their Spanish iron balconies overhung with roses and vines; -the sturdy Basque farmers at work in the fields, and their great cream -colored oxen that paced so slowly along the road. The houses were white -with steep roofs and wide eaves of deep gray and heavy shutters painted -green, and the vines, sprayed with arsenic green made rich shadow -patterns on the old walls. Then she found an old stone church with the -three-peaked tower so characteristic of Basque village churches and -beneath its porch an iron grill to discourage the pigs from entering -the place of worship. She peeped through the stone doorways where the -lintels bore blurred dates of the early seventeenth century, to peer -into the dim, dark timbered kitchens on whose table-high hearthstones -a tiny fire of twigs burned beneath the black kettle on a crane. With -many of the women she had a pleasant nodding and smiling acquaintance, -but she spoke no word of their language and found that her French was -not understood. Besides, these people seemed unusually reserved. She -could establish no contact with them. - -Cynthia began to suspect that Monsieur Marge was in a similar position -and was very lonely because of it. He had lived so long in America -that he had lost touch with these, his own people, and when he had -returned to them found that they considered him a foreigner. He was now -neither Basque nor American. - -It was a valley of enchantment hidden between the high snow capped -peaks of the Pyrénées. Each day was as clear-skied, as sunny and warm -as the one before it and Cynthia woke each morning in her fairytale -bed to look forward to another bright morning of painting, another -sleepy afternoon of sketching. Still, she reminded herself after a week -of this, she wasn’t getting any further with her job for the month. -She had come down here to do a Basque cover for the _Little Ones’ -Magazine_. Somewhere she must find herself a model. - -Her second week in the Basque country had started. Monday slipped by, -Tuesday evening she sat, as usual on the doorstep after a late dinner. -Monsieur Marge smoked placidly, Madame knitted in the half dark of the -vine-hung verandah. There was a sound of cattle bells far down the -smooth winding road and the mountains leaned, purple dark, against the -sunset. - -Cynthia and the old man had been comparing their memories of old -songs. Astonishing how many of the old ones, the really old ones that -belonged to mother’s, even to grandmother’s day, he remembered from his -years in America. There was “Sweet Marie” and “Sweet Rosey O’Grady,” -and “Sidewalks of New York.” - -“Oh yes, they sing that still,” cried Cynthia and whistled it with him. -Madame hummed and smiled placidly while her fingers seemed to twinkle -in time to the gay little tune. - -“A Bicycle Built for Two,” he suggested. - -Yes, Cynthia knew that one. She had heard it in the movies. A moment -of silence then, while they paused to think of more, and from the dark -room behind them came a cheerful “Cuck ... oo. Cuckoo ...!” - -“What makes the bird in the clock cuckoo?” asked Cynthia when she had -finished counting nine warbles. - -“Wait, I show you.” Monsieur sprang to his feet and disappeared into -the kitchen, to return a moment later with the clock beneath his arm. - -Madame gave a little chuckle and Monsieur explained. “We bought this on -our wedding trip, in Switzerland, almost fifty years ago.” - -He set it down on the step and returned for a lamp, which he lighted -and placed beside the clock. Then, with delicate fingers he removed the -screws in the back and exposed the carved wooden works for Cynthia to -see. Unlike the usual cuckoo-clock this was all self-contained, without -the long pendulum and the heavy iron weights that usually hang down -below the little box. Its face and the surrounding frame was like old -lace, interwoven with tiny intricate figures and small deer and cows -and squirrels, the whole dark with age and good French furniture polish. - -“See,” explained the old man. “There are two little b’lows, here, and -here,” and his finger indicated the tiny bellows of leather, like those -used to blow a fire, “Now watch. I make him sing.” - -He turned the white hands to ten o’clock, and the cuckoo popped out, -opened his little red mouth and warbled. One small bellow went _Cu ... -ck_, and the other, immediately afterwards, went _ooooo. Cuck ... oo. -Cuck ... oo!_ Over and over. Ten times. - -“Oh, I never knew what made him do it,” cried Cynthia. “Now let me -try.” The bird popped out in such a quaintly serious fashion that one -wanted to laugh every time he appeared. - -“I will keep him here and oil him in the morning,” decided Monsieur -Marge. “Perhaps, in the night, he will attract other cuckoos, yes?” -Madame chuckled. - -“Does she understand English?” asked Cynthia, getting up to put the -clock on the verandah table. - -“I un’ stand,” murmured Madame, in the darkness and her husband shook -his head. “Only little. But she too lazy to speak anything but Basque. -We are conservative peepul, we Basque. Per’aps it is as well. Otherwise -we could not remain so entrench’ against the centuries of invaders, and -of change.” And as the night deepened and the stars came out Cynthia -heard old tales of Charlemagne and of his blond barbarians from the -north who had been defeated in these very hills. Of how the Basque had -dwelt here for hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years, unconquered, -unchanging. - -“It may be because our language is so difficul’,” explained the old man -with pride. “We have a saying that the Devil once came here, to our -country and stayed seven years. In that time he learn but two words. -... “By” for “Yes,” and “Es,” for “No.” At las’ disgusted by his waste -of time, he flew away again, and soon forgot even those two. That is -why the evil never comes here.” - -He sighed in the darkness and Cynthia felt a pang of pity. Even here, -among his own people, he was homesick, denied a closer contact with -them because of his long years in America. - -The next morning Cynthia unfolded the camp stool, on which she sat to -sketch, beneath the vines at the side of the farmhouse. A stone-paved -walk ran back to the little ramshackle studio and M. Marge pottered -about in the sunlight with his beehives. Cynthia opened her sketch -book, squeezed color onto her palette and set to work. - -The cuckoo clock behind her ticked steadily with no relation to the -hour of the day. Cynthia, rapidly sketching in the grape arbor and -the green door in the white wall beyond it, wondered how to get the -effect of spattered sunlight where the light dribbled down through -leaves, and discovered with a little thrill that part of the trick -lay in breaking the color, patting it on in little spats of the brush -with flecks of white paper showing between, part in letting the shadow -actually dribble off her brush so that it was lightest farthest from -the leaves. - -A small, cooing voice sounded behind her. Turning, she saw on the path, -a little girl of six or maybe less, very Basque in her bright blouse -and dark blue cotton skirt and bare brown feet thrust into rope soled -espadrilles. Her eyes were soft and brown and her hair had been plaited -into two pigtails, so tight that they seemed actually to drag her -eyelids upwards at the corners. - -“Oh, you duck!” breathed Cynthia. “What fun if I could paint you!” - -The brown eyes danced with mischief, and the small mouth was puckered -into a demure rosebud. What could have drawn her up the path from the -road? Cynthia’s glance followed the child’s. The tick of the clock? But -surely she had heard a clock before. Then Cynthia remembered that a -moment before it had erratically struck eleven. Laughing, she gestured -a query towards the clock. Was that it? - -The small one nodded shyly. - -“Sure, I’ll show it to you,” Cynthia offered. “Want to see the birdie, -do you?” She put down book and brushes and led the way up the steps. -Then she turned the hands gently as she had seen M. Marge do the night -before. The bird answered with a startled “Cuck ... oo!” - -“Oh!” The brown eyes danced with delight, the small hands clapped -_ecstatically_. The child came closer. - -“Now the next will be twelve,” Cynthia said, though of course that -wouldn’t mean anything to this infant, and turned the hands again. This -time the bird gave a most satisfactory performance. By the time his -song was finished the child’s face was so close to the little flapping -doors that Cynthia was afraid she would pop inside, out of sheer -rapturous delight. - -“If I could get her, just so, with her head turned like that, and those -quaint little pigtails, and the sunlight behind her--but I’m afraid I’m -not clever enough,” mourned Cynthia. “No; it’s impossible.” Then to the -child, “Birdie’s all gone, my dear. No more today. I refuse to ruin M. -Marge’s wedding present just because a Basque baby wants to hear the -cuckoo clock. Sit down won’t you, and amuse me while I work.” - -Monsieur Marge came up the walk from his beehives. He said something -in Basque to the child, who answered stammeringly. “She should not be -here,” he explained. “She lives down there, the Yturbe house. She is -the only one left. The two sons died in the war, and this is the only -grandchild. The old people worship her. I will take her home.” - -Cynthia was sorry to see her go. “I wish I could paint her,” she -thought again wistfully, but she knew M. Marge was not on good enough -terms with his neighbors to make the unusual request. This was not -Paris, where everyone knew about artists and where models seem to drop -ripe from every lamp-post, blossom in every _zinc_ with your breakfast -cocoa. - -That afternoon a hive of bees swarmed and M. Marge was so busy with -them that the little cuckoo clock waited another night unoiled, -upon the verandah. “I’ll do the job tomorrow and put it back in the -morning,” he promised Madame. “It is quite safe there.” - -But apparently it wasn’t so safe. At least when Cynthia came down to -breakfast M. Marge reported the clock was gone. - -“Gone? ... The cuckoo clock?” Cynthia heard herself repeating -idiotically. “Well! but goodness! Who on earth would take it?” - -M. Marge shook his head and Madame, pouring the morning chocolate, -murmured something in Basque. - -“She says she is sorry to lose our wedding present.” - -“Oh dear, I feel terribly responsible,” mourned Cynthia. “If I only -hadn’t asked you to bring it out and show me.” - -“It is my own fault.” The old man became firmly cheerful. “Mais non, -Mademoiselle, I am a careless old man. I should not have left the clock -on the verandah. But the Basque are honest peepul. We do not steal and -we are too far from the town for gypsies or tramps. I cannot figure it -out.” - -Cynthia painted that morning with a wretched feeling of responsibility. -“I could get them a new clock,” she told herself, “but it wouldn’t be -the same.” She had chosen a spot down the main road, where two small -stone, white-washed houses, overgrown with rambling roses, were as -theatrically picturesque as a scene from the Follies. But the sketch -was not very satisfactory. “It’s not my kind of thing,” she fretted. -“It’s fun to do, but I’d rather paint people. Wonder where my little -friend of yesterday is. She must live in one of those houses. ...” - -A team of oxen plodded slowly down the dusty road, brilliantly golden -beneath the shadow of the blue dyed sheepskin that lay atop their heavy -yoke, their eyes hidden behind a heavy fringe of bright colored net. -Their driver walked ahead, his _makhila_ over his shoulder rested on -the yoke to guide the animals. - -Cynthia listened to the soft jangle of bells till it died in the -distance, then decided she was hungry; that was what must be wrong with -her sketch, and packed up her materials. The Marges never ate lunch. -Cynthia had discovered that a continental breakfast did not sustain one -very well from eight A.M. till five in the afternoon, and after two -days of semi-starvation had persuaded Madame to give her a cold meal -at noon. Today there was sliced duckling and a pleasant salad set on -the red checked table cloth beneath the sun spangled arbor. - -She finished her raspberries, with the thick pat of rich sour cream -and the crust of warm bread and idly watched M. Marge talking to -someone beyond the beehives. It looked like the old man in the Yturbe -household, Thomasina’s grandfather. Cynthia wondered at that, for she -knew the two men were not close friends. “I wish I could get that child -to paint,” she thought idly, remembering the small eager face of the -day before. - -M. Marge came slowly and alone up the stone flagged walk and sat down -on the step beside Cynthia’s luncheon table. - -“There must be gypsies here,” he stated, “For Thomasina has been -stolen.” - -“Thomasina!” cried Cynthia, aghast. “How perfectly dreadful!” and -felt her throat tighten. For a moment she could not speak for fear of -bursting into tears. Little Thomasina! “When ... how long?” she asked -after a moment. - -“Perhaps not stolen ... perhaps. ... But she has been gone since early -this morning. It is two now. She did not come home for her noon meal. -Her grandfather came to ask if we had seen her. She has never gone from -the dooryard before, not until yesterday when she came here. Her father -thinks she may have strayed down the road and met someone; she was very -unhappy over a little thrush they had, which died. She may have been -looking for him.” - -Cynthia knew those little thrushes in their willow cages which hung -outside so many French doorways. - -“They are afraid of the canal, and the mill-pond.” - -“Oh, but surely ...” Cynthia shivered and was silent. No, nothing like -that could happen to someone that one knew! Absently she pushed away -the last of her raspberries. They were her favorite fruit but she had -lost any appetite for them. - -“Painting this afternoon?” asked her host, trying to be cheerful. - -Yes, Cynthia had thought she’d take the tram into the tiny village and -sketch the interior of the old ruined fort, with the remains of the -sally-port and guardhouse. - -Monsieur Marge surveyed the sky, unflinchingly blue. “Too hot to go -into town,” he commented. “Why not stay and we go hunt for mushrooms. -Madame wishes some for the dinner tonight. I know deep woods, cool, -where the sun does not strike.” - -City-bred Cynthia had never gathered mushrooms; it sounded like a new -and amusing experience, and it would certainly be cooler than sketching -on that hot and sunny hill beyond the town. Besides she didn’t really -want to go far from the house, in case little Thomasina should be found -... no, _when_ she should be found. - -Cynthia went to her room for a wide shade hat and came downstairs again -to find M. Marge ready for her. He bore a leather bound _makhila_, the -Basque walking stick, with its graven brass binding and leather strap. - -“Won’t we need a basket or something?” - -“No. I show you.” - -The method, it seemed, was to string the fungus on a long thin peeled -rod. They were big things, flabby and pale lavender, rather like -unpleasantly raw liver, but Monsieur assured her they were delicious -when cooked. - -They had found the grove about two miles from the house up an old -logging road now nearly overgrown with brush and deep damp moss. The -pines rose huge and straight and the air was cool, but after an hour -or more of scrabbling over dead logs and grubbing among fallen leaves -for the mushrooms Cynthia was glad to sink wearily to a seat on a mossy -stone. - -“_Ouff_ but I’m weary. Goodness, how you can walk!” she exclaimed to -the pleased old man. - -“I have been hard worker in my time.” - -“There’s a funny noise about here,” Cynthia commented after a moment of -silence. “Sounds rather like a cricket, yet not. ... I wonder. ...” She -listened again and as the old man started to speak held up her hand for -silence. There was no breeze. The pine boughs high overhead scarcely -moved. There were certainly no crickets about, yet what was that noise? - -Then from a thicket just a few yards away came a familiar call. “Cuck -... oo! Cuck ... ooooo!” - -“Your clock!” Cynthia almost shouted, and jumped to her feet. Monsieur -Marge was right behind her as she parted the brush, looked downward. -She chuckled and held back the branch that he might see. - -There, wrapped in an old shawl and fast asleep was Thomasina Yturbe. -In her arms, its placid little face turned to the skies, ticked the -imperturbable cuckoo clock. - -“Well, we’ve found one kidnapper at least,” laughed Cynthia somewhat -shakily. “Shall we wake her up?” Poor little thing, she had come a long -way in this heat and the clock was quite a weight for those small arms. - -“It is too far to carry her home,” advised the old man. - -The child stirred at his voice, opened one sleepy eye. Her face was -pink as a seashell from the rough warmth of the old shawl beneath her. -For a moment she blinked like a little owl, then recognized them and -beamed, murmuring something. Monsieur chuckled and repeated it for -Cynthia’s benefit. - -“She said the bird wouldn’t sing.” - -“Come on honey. Time to go home.” Cynthia’s words might not have been -understood, but her brightly matter of fact tone was sufficient. -Thomasina scrambled to her feet. “Here, better let me take the clock. -No? All right. But let me carry the shawl, anyway. I wonder why she -brought the shawl?” she puzzled. - -Monsieur had the suggestion that it had been one thrown over the -thrush’s cage at night. - -“Poor kid,” murmured Cynthia. - -It was a long journey back. Monsieur had the two long sticks of -mushrooms. Cynthia, toward the last, was so far trusted as to be -allowed the clock but Thomasina kept one hand in Cynthia’s. One was -to understand that she was not weary, but she wanted closer contact -with her little bird. The clock itself ticked steadily throughout the -journey and twice it even cuckooed. - -It was late and the sun was low, throwing long shadows across the road -as they came down it towards the Yturbe farm. Cynthia heard the soft -cooing of doves, the grunt of the little pigs that lived beneath her -window. Thomasina stumbled once or twice. - -They neared the doorway with its seventeenth century date on the -lintel. Someone inside was sobbing. - -“I won’t go with you.” Cynthia pushed the child forward and nodded that -Monsieur Marge was to follow her. This might be--who could tell?--just -the right moment for him to become a Basque again. - -Thomasina, the clock again in her arms, stumbled through the doorway. -Cynthia heard nothing for a moment, then such a heartfelt cry of -delight and joy as made her, for the second time that day, brush away -the tears. Followed, in three voices, much talk in the rapid Basque -tongue, and after a moment Grandmother Yturbe came out, to throw her -arms about the petite Americaine. - -“She says,” twinkled Monsieur behind her, “that you are wonderful, that -you found her little cabbage.” - -“Non--non. It was Monsieur,” Cynthia gestured towards her host. “It’s -all right anyway, Thomasina would have come home for dinner,” protested -the embarrassed Cynthia. - -They got away at last, but there was more to come. - -After dinner Cynthia and Madame were sitting beneath the vines. -Madame’s fingers flew steadily as her needles ate up the gray yarn, -and moonlight bright as day dripped through the dark leaves of the -arbor. Someone came slowly up the stone walk and spoke in Basque. It -was Thomasina’s grandfather. - -“He has come to thank the American lady,” explained M. Marge after -a moment’s conversation and added that he had told M. Yturbe that -Thomasina was to keep the clock for herself. “After all, we have no -grandchildren ourselves.” And a moment later he translated again, “He -asks if the American lady will do him a portrait of his little one; he -will of course be proud to pay for it.” - -“I’d adore it,” cried Cynthia, “Oh, what a day!” - -The men moved off together, talking. Cynthia saw them cross the road -slowly, two old men together. - -Madame, chuckling richly, made one of her rare remarks in English: -“They not be back till late.” But she seemed more pleased than -concerned. - -“I guess that means M. Marge has become all Basque at last,” thought -Cynthia sleepily. - - - - -CHAPTER 6 - -_Carcassonne_ - -ROMANCE IN CARCASSONNE - - -Cynthia had long ago learned how to say in French “Stand still. Turn -a little to the right ... to the left. Raise the chin please.” And -finally and most urgent, again “stand still!” One needed these phrases -constantly in the one language the model understood. She had had -occasion to use them all, and more besides, this afternoon, for the -ragged little urchin, posing against a background of old stone house -and carved fourteenth century doorway, was an imp, though a delightful -one, and had far too large a circle of friends vitally interested in -what he was doing. Cynthia glanced up from her painting and for the -twentieth time in ten minutes sighed in exasperation. - -Every small child’s head, including of course the model’s, had turned -to watch the small group crossing the square. It was just the usual -collection of American tourists; every child in the city must have -seen their like hundreds of times, herded by the Carcassonne guide--an -old _mutilé_ of the Great War. Cynthia herself had twice been round the -wonderful old walls with him, so she knew quite well what the others -were about to hear; of the ancient old towers, fifty of them, and the -ramparts dating back and back to the tenth century, the foundations -older even than that, for the Romans had held a fortress here; of the -lovely little cathedral of Saint Nazaire, set like a jewel in the heart -of the town; all these and more would the visiting Americans see. The -small model and his friends must know by heart every syllable of the -guide’s lecture, every stone of the city by now. So why need they turn, -like a group of little monkeys, just because someone had crossed the -square! - -“Oh _do_ sit still!” she muttered crossly in French. - -The sketch was a good one, the best she had made this week. Now if she -could get just the right hue of the shadow on his shoulder. ... - -For several minutes the shadow and the mixing of it from her color box -held her absorbed. Then an undue amount of chatter, even for a group -of small French boys watching an American lady who made the _peinture_, -caused her to glance up again. One of the American tourists had let the -group go on without her and had come across to stand behind Cynthia. -She was a tall girl, pretty, though pale, with big black eyes and curly -dark lashes and a smart American traveling suit of blue and white -wash silk. In a low tone she was chatting with the children and with -such amazing ease and flourish of idiom that Cynthia, with a pang of -envy thought; Canadian ... or Louisiana bred. She’s grown up with the -language. Oh darn that model! - -“Look here,” she turned to address the visitor. “I wish you’d tell -this little devil that I won’t pay him the two francs I’d promised -him unless he sits still for ten more minutes. Then he can go. My -vocabulary simply won’t stand the strain of putting that forcefully.” - -The girl laughed. She had a nice laugh thought Cynthia still slightly -resentful of the interruption, then followed a stream of fluent French -addressed to the model. - -“Mind if I watch?” she asked quietly, and Cynthia, again intent on the -color of that shadow, muttered an absent-minded permission. Thereafter -for the space of ten minutes there was peace. - -Along the old walls of Carcassonne, swimming in the golden haze of -afternoon light, pigeons circled and cooed. From a not too distant -watch tower came the nasal drone of the guide, explaining how, just -here, the Black Prince had stormed the city and burned the tower. The -air smelt of hot dust, sleepiness, and France, and Cynthia’s busy brush -flew from palette to sketch and back again. - -Finally, she leaned back on her stool, squinted at the sketch with her -head on one side, then looked up and nodded. “It’s finished I guess. I -don’t know what you said to him, but it worked like a charm. Sorry I -was rude.” - -“You weren’t rude. That’s a lovely painting, and a good likeness -too. You’re American aren’t you? My name is Serena Grayson, from New -Orleans.” Only she said “O’lean” in the prettiest manner imaginable. - -“I guessed it,” grinned Cynthia. “Staying in the Lower Town? Wait till -I pay off this infant and we’ll walk down together.” - -“I should wait for Aunt Anna,” the girl hesitated. “Look here, let -me have a piece of paper from your sketch book, will you? I’ll just -scribble a note to tell her that I’ve gone on. She is shopping in the -Cité, and started me out with that guide.” Serena made a little face of -dislike. “I thought watching you would be more fun, so I deserted, but -she’ll be looking for me when the tour is finished.” - -Cynthia didn’t say anything but she thought it was strange that a girl, -fully her own age, should have to report so carefully on where she was -going. Serena dispatched the note by one of the small urchins who still -lingered to watch the fascinating process of packing up the paint box. -Almost any of them was eager to earn an extra franc. “Though I hope it -gets delivered,” remarked Serena, watching the small boy dubiously as -he scampered off, “perhaps I hadn’t better go, after all.” - -“Oh, come along. It’s just to the Lower Town. Nothing can hurt you and -surely your Aunt won’t care. Why I go all over France alone.” - -“Do you?” almost wistfully. - -The way out of the ancient walled city led down a steep little cobbled -street where houses leaned their heads together, like gossips over tea -cups, and between whose stones grasses grew and the shadows of the late -afternoon flung a welcome coolness. Then out past the tourney court -where once gallant knights in full armor had fought for their ladies’ -favor, and past the Porte d’Aude, which looked out over the lower and -newer ... and uglier town. - -“Where are you staying?” asked Cynthia. “Glory, but it’s good to talk -to an American again! It’s been weeks since I have been able to.” She -hadn’t quite been aware how much she had missed Nancy; had wished that -Chick were here until she met someone from home. - -“It is jolly to speak your own tongue again. We’re staying at the Chat -d’Or, Aunt Anna and myself. We only got here today. And won’t you come -and have dinner with us tonight? I’d love to have you.” - -“I’d love to come. I’ve been here nearly a week now, and it’s worth -every minute you can spend here too. Look!” and Cynthia clutched the -other’s arm to turn her attention behind them. - -Above the road they had descended, full in the glow of the late sun the -city rose, golden pale against the southern sky; turrets and towers, -battlements and barbicans, dreaming in the fairy-tale light exactly as -they had dreamed for the past six hundred years and more. - -“Lovely!” murmured the other, starry eyed. For just a moment Cynthia -thought there were tears in her eyes, as well as stars, but she could -understand that. Cynthia herself often felt teary when something was -too beautiful to believe. - -They took up this matter of dinner again. “It will be nice to eat -somewhere else, neither of the two places I’ve tried are very good -and I’m sick of the boiled veal and caramel custard at the Cheval -Blanc,” said Cynthia. “And where the French ever got the idea they -were a nation of born cooks! ... I know where your hotel is, suppose I -run home now, my road goes this way and yours to the left, then I’ll -get a bath and into a clean dress and be at your place ... when? About -seven?” - -There were three hotels in Carcassonne, one in the upper Cité, very -grand and quaint, and with the grandest, quaintest prices too, and two -in the lower town across the river Aude. Cynthia had taken a room at -the station hotel, which was the first one she saw when she got off -the train. It was at least cheap and convenient. Oh yes, and there -was the Hotel de l’Universe, hardly worthy of the name of a hotel but -displaying its grandiloquent appellation in gilt letters two feet high -across its entire three room frontage. Cynthia had smiled at the name, -for she had found in France that it was generally the smallest places -that bore the biggest names. - -The Universe looked cozy and very clean, and she had even thought of -moving her suitcase inside its hospitable blue door, but had been -too busy to carry out the thought. Often however she dined there and -tonight as she crossed the square and passed the little red checked -gingham curtains and the green painted iron tables on the terrace, she -saw the American boy having a beer on the terrace, just as she had -seen him every evening since she came. She smiled and waved a hand -at him, and he very nearly smiled in return. Cynthia had an impulse -to try once more to talk to him, as she had tried on the train, but -immediately his gaze had returned morosely to the long lane of dusty -plane trees that lined the street. Oh well, she wasn’t going to waste -her time picking up someone who evidently didn’t want to be picked up. -But when you travel for miles and miles, and hours and hours in the -same railway coach with a chap, and you know he’s a fellow countryman, -and hard up probably, like you are ... just look at the clothes he -wore; neat, but not any product of Park Avenue, and when there’s -scarcely another American in the Lower Town, not at least until today, -why it would seem sort of pleasant to meet once or twice and have a -talk. Cynthia gave a little skip of pleasure and forgot the boy on the -terrace. Nice to have a dinner date, nice to be going to talk good old -United States for an evening. Adventure was exciting ... afterwards, -but it was pretty dull sometimes while it was happening. - -But when she returned along the narrow little street, past the Hotel de -l’Universe, with the last rays of the sun gilding the far off towers -of the upper city, the boy was still sitting on the terrace. Cynthia -wondered. - -She had first seen him at Toulouse, standing on the platform with his -suitcase in his hand and Cynthia, leaning out of the window to buy -a _sandwich jambon_ and a bottle of mineral water from the little -pushcart, like a giant baby carriage, that peddles lunches on all the -train platforms in France, noticed his very American shoes. She always -played little games with herself to ward off boredom, and by this time -considered herself quite skillful in telling even Norwegians from -English, who looked so much like them. - -This boy had ascended further down on the corridor train. Cynthia was -riding second class instead of third for it was a long trip from the -Pyrenees to Carcassonne. Later in the afternoon she noticed him in the -very next compartment, and still later passed him in the corridor, -leaning listlessly against the long window. The last time before -Carcassonne she noticed him on the platform of a tiny way-station where -he stopped to buy a flower from a little girl and for the first time, -he smiled. Cynthia was startled at that smile, so white and sudden and -flashing. “Why, he doesn’t look cross and unhappy at all!” she thought. -“Somebody ought to tell him to smile more often!” - -But she hadn’t seen him smile again in all the weeks since then. - - * * * * * - -It might have been a very happy evening, but for Miss Comstock, -Serena’s Aunt Anna. She was a pretty, plump little Southerner, -carefully rouged and powdered and manicured, exquisitely dressed, with -manners as sleek as the fur of a well tended cat. But her manners -didn’t somehow put you at your ease, they just made you feel crude -and ill bred by contrast. Miss Comstock’s slow drawl, even more -pronouncedly of the south than Serena’s, was as purring as a kitten’s -song of content, and she appeared to be intensely interested in all her -guest had been and done and seen. - -The hotel was much more pretentious than Cynthia’s humble Cheval -Blanc, with corridors choked with palm trees and hanging baskets; with -delicious food; and with a great yellow cat on the front mat attesting -to the excellence of the cuisine. Cynthia thought the cat’s smug -countenance bore a fantastic resemblance to Serena’s Aunt Anna, but she -wouldn’t have trusted him alone with a canary. - -“How wonderful to be an artist, wonderful to do as you like with your -life, no cares, no responsibilities, no ties!” gushed Aunt Anna over -their coffee on the terrace. - -Cynthia rudely thought “Oh yeah,” and remembered the cover she must -send back to the States every month and all the other work she had -accomplished in Europe, but said nothing. - -“You know I always had a fancy to be an artist. But once I had an -artist in love with me,” and she sighed romantically. - -“Lots of people in love with you, Auntie,” murmured Serena, in so -dutiful a tone that Cynthia wondered how many hundred times she had -made the same remark. - -Someone was playing a violin in the café across the street, the lights -and the sound of voices streamed out across the little square beyond -the hotel terrace and a big yellow moon swam up behind the plane trees. -The streets were full of people coming and going, for tonight was -Saturday when all the town felt free to play. - -Serena had gone very silent since her last remark and Cynthia, in spite -of the beauty of the hour, was beginning to feel sleepy and finding it -difficult to stifle her yawns as she watched the shadow silhouettes of -people passing, dark against the café lights. It was like a scene in -a play. Some of the characters she already recognized from her week -in the town. There was good old Madame Brassard, who kept the pastry -shop down by the river, leaning plumply on the arm of her thin, gray -little husband, and both in spotless black as befitted a gala Saturday -night. And there was the guide from the Carcassonne walls, limping -on his cane, his face as blankly sweet as a chromo portrait. It had -been, Cynthia knew, almost entirely shot away at Amiens, and repaired -again by a surgeon who had almost, but not quite repeated the charm of -the original. And there was the boy from the other terrace, slouching -slowly, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched disconsolately. Some day, -perhaps tomorrow morning, she would certainly cross the street and -start talking to him. ... - -Aunt Anna gave a faint exclamation and leaned forward, blinking against -the lights, “Oh, isn’t that ... but no, of course not, how foolish -of me!” She gave a nervous little laugh. “I ... excuse me, I thought -I recognized someone from home,” she said, and began to tell Cynthia -all about the nice man in the shop in the Upper Town who was keeping a -lovely silk shawl till she came in to look at it again in the morning. - -Serena, sitting with her back to the light, was still silent. Cynthia -suddenly jumped to her feet and exclaimed. “Come on, let’s go for a -walk up to the walls. It’s a wonderful night to see them, and it’s -perfectly safe, there will be lots of people along the road.” - -Miss Comstock glanced swiftly down the street, then reached out to pat -her hand. “You Yankee girls are so energetic,” she drawled. “I’m sure -Serena would much prefer to sit right here and listen to the beautiful -music.” - -But it seemed Serena wouldn’t. She, too, was on her feet. “We’ll just -go a little way, Aunt Anna,” she said, “and we won’t be gone long. Come -on, Yankee gal,” and she linked her arm through Cynthia’s. - -She laughed and talked animatedly for the next block or two but when -they came out of the new town and faced the walls of the ancient -fortress, all green and dark gold under the moon, with crickets -shrilling from the banks of the little stream and the lights of the -houses behind them, she was silent again. - -“Let’s not go any farther, here’s a splendid place to sit,” suggested -Cynthia, who thought the other might be rather tired, and had found a -seat on the handrail of the little stone bridge. One could hear far off -music and voices sounding faintly, and contrary to expectations the -road was almost deserted. Perhaps the old town had little romance or -mystery for those who had always lived within sight of its walls. But -she must make conversation; this wasn’t being a good guest. - -“Where do you go after Carcassonne?” she asked, politely, then saw, -with astonishment that Serena was crying! - -“Oh, don’t do that!” cried Cynthia distressed. “Look here, you aren’t -happy. Can’t you tell me about it?” - -“Oh I hate France, I hate Europe, I hate this town worst of all!” and -Serena suddenly flopped down beside Cynthia and dropped her head on a -much surprised Yankee shoulder. “I want to go ho ... ome! I want ... to -... go ... ho ... ome!” - -“Is it just homesickness?” asked Cynthia gently. She certainly knew -a lot about that feeling since she came abroad, but Serena shook her -head, then started to wipe her eyes. “No ...” forlornly. “It’s ... it’s -Jack.” - -“Jack? Oh ... ah ... yes,” murmured Cynthia vaguely. “Come, sit up and -tell me all about it,” and she patted the other’s back, reassuringly. -She had heard that it was sometimes easier to tell your troubles to a -stranger. Serena may have heard that too, for she said: - -“It’s Aunt Anna, really. She’s mother’s oldest sister. Oh I know she -doesn’t look it, but she’s always had money and can afford to do things -to keep young and buy clothes to make herself pretty and I guess that’s -about all she cares about anyway. I guess long ago she was in love with -Jack’s father, too, though that’s only a sort of guess.” - -“Jack?” - -“Jack Hemstead. He’s a boy from home,” as though that were sufficient -explanation. “And when Jack ... Jack said he ca ... cared for me ...” -she swallowed, waited a minute and went on, “Aunt Anna made fun of him, -and said it was all foolishness at our age, though I’m eighteen ... and -Jack’s nearly twenty one, and finally she said she’d take me abroad for -the summer and then maybe I’d see Jack wasn’t so marvelous. But he is, -oh he’s the most marvelous person.” - -She’d start to cry again if Cynthia wasn’t careful. “But haven’t you -written him?” she asked. - -Serena nodded vigorously. “Yes, but we had a quarrel just before I -left. He said if I really cared I’d marry him then, even if we weren’t -of age. But I guess maybe I wanted the trip and I thought I could have -Jack too, and I haven’t heard a word, not one single word since I left -home. I’ve written and written begging him to write me and I’m so -ashamed!” - -“Something’s wrong somewhere,” thought Cynthia, wondering what on earth -she could do about it. “Tell me more about him? And how long have you -been over?” - -“Only four weeks and Auntie’s really been awfully kind, in her own way. -She’s bought me things and things, and we shopped for clothes till -I never want to see another Paris label again. I hated Paris. Then -Aunt decided to come to Carcassonne. We are sailing from the south of -France. She said she’d once read a poem about it. But you’re the first -young person I’ve talked to since we left home. On the boat she was -awfully sick and wanted to be read to all the time, so I just stayed in -the cabin with her, I was so grateful for the trip. But I didn’t know -Jack wasn’t going to forgive me,” she wailed. - -Cynthia, looking off towards the walls through the sweet scented -moonlight, felt very sorry for this little Southerner. But it all -seemed too remote, too far away for her to do anything to help. With -Jack in America she couldn’t do anything more than lend a listening ear -to Serena and try to cheer her up as much as possible in the few days -they’d be staying here. - -Serena seemed quite content with that, quite willing, in the days -that followed just to trail along with a book or a bit of sewing and -sit, not too far off, while Cynthia sketched along the walls of the -old city. She proved indeed extremely useful. Her fluent French was a -prop for Cynthia’s faltering accents and she had a delightful knack -with persuading the children to pose. Cynthia made three excellent -portraits, any one of which would do for her monthly cover, then felt -free to give her time to sketching the town itself. - -But wherever they went Aunt Anna either hovered in the background or -knew exactly where they would be from half hour to half hour. It was -like having a secret service man always in the offing. Serena didn’t -mind but Cynthia said it gave her the creeps, always to have Miss -Comstock bobbing up like a cuckoo out of a clock, and put up with it -only for the sake of the other girl. - -Meanwhile she heard more about this Jack person. She heard about the -color of his eyes and of his hair, about his cleverness and about his -family and about his job, which was, at the moment, junior clerk, very -junior indeed, in a big real estate office in New Orleans. - -“He’s got the nicest smile ... you’d think he was cross, really, until -he smiles and then it sort of ... flashes across his face,” expatiated -Serena. They had been sitting for the past hour in the tourney court, -trying to reconstruct the ancient Court of Beauty with its lists; the -ground enclosed for the contest, its seats for the great ladies from -which the Queen of Beauty was chosen. “I wonder if they called her -‘Miss Carcassonne,’ or ‘Miss France,’” murmured Cynthia to herself. - -All was quiet here. One could follow, on the ancient walls, the -reconstruction of centuries, the lower bricks of Roman tile, small and -flat, the higher coarser stone of the tenth century, then above that, -still more careful work of later years and finally the deliberately -antiqued and weathered rebuilding of the great Viollet-le-Duc, without -whose interest and wealth this greatest relic of the middle ages would -not exist today. Birds wheeled in the sunlight above them, but the -shadow of the wall was cool and the small herd of tourists, whose -voices sounded from the tower above them, scarcely left a ripple on the -peace of the afternoon. - -“I love this place,” murmured Cynthia splashing happily in rich blue -shadow color, but she frowned a little. Something Serena had said a -moment back had started her memory working. She didn’t really want it -to work, she wanted to stay here and finish her sketch. “That was it -though ... ‘it sort of flashes across his face!’” - -“This place gives me the shivers,” Serena remarked crossly. “I guess -it’s because it’s so full of romance and I ... I feel so empty of it.” - -Suddenly Cynthia jumped off the wall and began to gather up her -painting materials. She had remembered what she wanted to remember, it -was just a chance, the wildest chance possible, but she had to know for -sure. “I’m going back to the hotel,” she said. “You stay here, Serena -... but I’d like it if you could come along in a couple of hours and -have tea with me. French tea is terrible of course but we can order -citron pressé. I may have something to show you too.” - -“Just me, without Auntie?” asked Serena. - -Cynthia nodded. “Try, for Pete’s sake to get her into a shop for an -hour or two, or tell her it’s time she took the tour around the walls. -She might enjoy the guide, he was very handsome once,” she added -maliciously, “but do come without her.” - -“I’ll try. I’ve got to stay here and wait for her anyway. She said -she’d be along about two o’clock and it’s only half past one.” And -her puzzled dark gaze followed Cynthia down the steep steps to the -court, across it, through the high pointed arch of the gate, and long -afterwards as she appeared again on the dusty stretch of sunlit road to -the lower town. - -Cynthia had suddenly remembered that boy at the Hotel de l’Universe, -and how flashing his smile had been, that one time she had seen it. But -he hadn’t even appeared on the terrace for the past two days, perhaps -he had left Carcassonne entirely, and almost certainly he had no least -connection with Serena’s Jack, but he had looked so forlorn and somehow -he had looked Southern too. Cynthia’s ardent desire to be again a -Little Miss Fixit almost persuaded her she could tell a Yankee from a -Louisianian even before he had said a single word. - -She’d ask at the hotel for the young American with the brown eyes, and -if he were still registered there she’d leave a note inviting him to -join her for tea this afternoon ... anyway it might be rather fun, even -if nothing came of it. - -Serena was on time, and Cynthia suggested that the Hotel de l’Universe -looked more amusing than the terrace of her own hotel. - -“And I’d like to try a grenadine, it’s such a pretty color,” she -announced, once settled at the green painted table. So they each had -one of the sickly pink syrups so beloved of the French and sat sipping -contentedly while they gazed out across the low hedge of dusty box that -separated the terrace from the street. Then Cynthia, who was watching -her companion, saw her grab the edge of the table and go almost white. - -“I was right ... I was right!” thought Cynthia. “Oh Golly!” - -“_Cynthia!_” gasped the other wildly. “Who ... who’s that?” - -A tall figure was lounging down the street, coming swiftly towards -them. Then he had got Cynthia’s little note, and had come almost as -though he had guessed what it was about. - -The next happened so suddenly that Cynthia could scarcely untangle -it all. A very flushed, happily laughing Serena, different from any -Serena Cynthia had yet seen, standing in the entrance to the street, -then tearing wildly towards the approaching boy. A meeting of the two, -no doubt about its being the right Jack ... and the amused delighted -proprietor beaming in the doorway. After all this was Carcassonne, -and it was France, where else in the world would one expect to find -romance, if not here? - -“But how did you guess, how did you guess?” asked Serena, as, -introductions properly over they sat again at the little green table. -Jack had placed his straw hat and the Tauchniz book he had been -carrying on the next table, had ordered a beer, but had made no move to -consume it for his attention was too occupied with Serena. - -“Oh, we traveled together, once upon a time,” began Cynthia but -immediately saw that neither of her listeners was giving her the -slightest attention. Wisest to slip away and stand guard outside. “I’ll -give you a half hour together, _mes enfants_,” she said firmly, “but -if I give an alarm, you’ve got to scoot! Better get busy and make your -plans. May I borrow this?” and picking up the little Tauchnitz paper -covered volume, she nodded, and went out through the dusty hedge. - -All this was making her feel pretty blue, herself. Chick, also, -might have been here today, with a bit of luck. But Chick was a very -satisfying person; he, at least wrote letters, and fat ones too. She -had had one this morning and while she waited would be a good time to -read it again, for the third time. - -That finished she found a seat beneath the plane trees and turned to -the book she had picked up, a volume of Conrad’s sea stories with _Jack -Hemstead_ sprawled in large, plain hand across the cover. She gave -the couple thirty-five minutes, then fearing that Miss Comstock, who -of course knew where Serena had gone for the afternoon, might happen -along, Cynthia got up and briskly returned to the terrace. - -Serena’s head was close to Jack’s tumbled locks, and Cynthia was amused -to note that their warming drinks stood in the glasses just at the -height they had been when she left them. - -“Well children, what’s the plans?” she asked pulling out her chair -again. - -“We’re going to be married.” Serena’s eyes were like stars. “Jack was -twenty one last month and he came over on a cattle boat, wasn’t that -brave of him? He got a big commission, big for a beginner that is, for -selling a business plot in the city, so he decided to trail us over -here and see what was wrong. He found out our address from the hotel in -Paris. I’ve got a first class ticket home, and Jack has a third class, -he thinks we can trade them in for two second class. My ticket’s my own -because Mother paid for that, not Aunt Anna.” - -“The American consul at Marseilles can marry us,” Jack told Cynthia. “I -can’t tell you how grateful we are for arranging this. Serena hasn’t -been getting any of my letters.” - -“Your aunt?” Cynthia’s eyebrows were questioning and Serena nodded and -shrugged. “It’s all right now, but we can’t give her another chance -to mess things up for us. Jack thinks we had better get away on the -_rapide_ tonight. But I don’t see how I can get away before tomorrow, -not without an awful fuss.” - -“You’ve got to,” said Jack firmly, already playing the heavy husband. -“This is one time when you’ll have to put on some Yankee pep. Your -aunt knows I’m here, or at least that I was here for over a week.” - -“_What!_” gasped Serena, and even Cynthia was astonished. - -“Yes, she saw me one evening when I was strolling about the streets -here, that was, let’s see, about five days ago.” - -The night Serena talked to me on the bridge, thought Cynthia ... that’s -so, he passed the café where the lights were so bright. - -“So a couple of days later she hunted me up at the hotel. She said she -had no intention of my seeing her niece and of making her unhappy all -over again, and that Serena’s not writing was proof enough that she was -through caring for me. That sort of set me thinking, for how could she -be sure that Serena wasn’t really writing to me unless she herself was -doing something about it.” - -“But I did write Jack, two letters every week,” protested the indignant -Serena. - -“Yes, I know, honey child, but your aunt was very careful that they -didn’t get mailed, or that you didn’t get mine either. So I let her -come down to the station to see me off. She was most gracious, having -won her point. She saw me buy a ticket for Marseilles and get on the -express, but she didn’t know that it stops again about a half hour -beyond here, and that I got off there and returned by the next train. -I’ve been very careful ever since to keep out of sight as much as -possible, but I’d seen you two together so when I got Miss Wanstead’s -note I suspected that she had arranged something.” - -“Oh Jack, and I never guessed you were in Carcassonne all this time.” - -For a long moment then they forgot all about Cynthia till in protest -that young lady remarked. “Hadn’t we better get on with those plans of -yours?” - -So for fifteen more minutes plans were made, rejected, and reaccepted, -till Cynthia looking up suddenly exclaimed, “And here comes your aunt!” - -Tripping gaily down the street on the arm of the little blesse, parasol -unfurled, eyes upcast in characteristic admiring pose came Miss -Comstock. - -“Run, Jack!” gasped Serena. “She mustn’t see you ...” and there was a -scramble for the doorway, a hasty return for the straw hat, and at the -last minute Cynthia reached out to switch the untasted beer to another -table, as though a departing customer had left it there. But it was a -close shave. - -Aunt Anna was full of the sights she had seen, the new bargains she had -procured, of the delightful little soldier who had showed her around, -but her eyes were keen and Cynthia knew she did not miss that beer at -the next table. Then Cynthia did a clumsy thing, she dropped the volume -of Conrad. For just a moment it lay, face upward on the floor, the -sprawling signature showing plainly across its cover. Cynthia bent to -grab it, hastily flapped it on top her purse, she rose immediately to -go, she couldn’t risk the fact that Miss Comstock might have glimpsed -that name. - -The next two hours were merely a matter of waiting. Serena and her -aunt usually dined at eight, and Cynthia, cautiously strolling along -the street which commanded Serena’s bedroom window watched for the -agreed signal, a handkerchief; pasted against the pane as though put -there for drying. She waited five minutes more, then slipped upstairs, -repeating to herself the story she would tell if any one tried to stop -her. But no one did. - -Serena’s room-key hung, in trusting European fashion on a high nail -beside her door. Cynthia took it down, glanced once again along the -corridor, thought she heard footsteps and hastily turned the key. -Inside. - -Serena’s bag, already packed, had been slid beneath her bed. Her -traveling coat and hat, her street shoes were with it. Cynthia grabbed -the lot and opened the door again. Then came a moment of fright, for -the maid, Agnés, stood just outside in the corridor. But she was -wreathed in smiles, already primed by Serena for the _enlévement_, the -elopement, and her ancient romantic heart was in the job. She piloted -Cynthia along the corridor and down the servant’s stairway, then out -through an alley behind the garage, put her finger to her lips as a -vow of silence, then blew a kiss into the air as a gesture of her best -wishes for the bride and groom. No word between them had been passed -during the whole four minutes of action. Cynthia, giggling, was on her -way. This was certainly something to write home about. - -The remainder worked like a charm, a charm of ancient Carcassonne, -where, even in the tenth century young ladies must have fled with their -heart’s desire. At nine o’clock the _rapide_ for Marseilles stopped for -five minutes at the tiny station. At nine minutes to nine Jack with his -suitcase, Cynthia with Serena’s belongings and a bunch of flowers for -the bride-to-be, watched anxiously down the street. Then against the -sunset appeared Serena, breathless, with dusty evening slippers, still -in her dinner gown, but happy and incoherent with excitement. - -“Oh you treasures, both of you!” she cried. “Have we tickets? ... -Goodness, there’s the train already ... She thinks I’m out buying -some aspirin tablets ... I didn’t have time to leave a note on the -pincushion ... My lamb, will you tell her I’ve gone? ...” and rattled -on and on while they climbed into the compartment. Cynthia kept one -anxious eye on the door. She didn’t know what would be the proper -procedure should Aunt Anna appear at the station with the fire of -suspicion in her eye. Cynthia had a wild momentary vision of herself -grabbing the woman around her ample waist and hanging on until the -train could have pulled out. - -But no one appeared. The conductor blew his little toy trumpet, shouted -the usual warning, and at the last minute Cynthia still clasping the -bridal bouquet had to run beside the carriage to fling it through the -window. She had a final glimpse of Serena’s starry eyes, of Jack’s -white smile. - -Then silence. Nothing. - -Cynthia came out of the station door to the deserted cobble street -and twilight. “I wish it had happened to me,” she thought a little -mournfully. “But maybe it will, soon,” and had no idea how very soon -that would be. The moon hung like a burnished platter above the -romantic old town, too beautiful, too unreal to be true. - -“Well,” thought Cynthia, going practical all of a sudden, “I guess -somebody’s got to break the news to Auntie!” And started down the -street toward the hotel of Miss Comstock. - - - - -CHAPTER 7 - -_Siena_ - -THE RACING SNAIL - - -Then at Marseilles, where Cynthia had planned to take train for Paris, -for Cherbourg and a ship for home, she caught up with her mail. One -specially fat and formidable envelope, with many seals, for which she -had to sign papers and more papers, proved to contain, of all things, -the long deferred check for the capture of Goncourt, the jewel thief. - -Cynthia, in the office of Cook and Sons, stood surveying the paper -with bright round eyes. So many francs--one thought in francs now, not -in dollars--would purchase--what? Presents for home? Her luggage was -already heavy with ’em. More clothes in Paris? She had, really, all -she needed. A trip to some place farther on? Cynthia nibbled a pink -finger tip and thought about that. Maybe never again, after this once, -would she get to Europe. Maybe she’d be some day, a long time off, -one of those little old ladies with shawls who sit in corners, well -out of the draft, and talk with wistful reminiscence of “when I was in -France--when I was in Italy.” Meaning of course the _one_ time they -were there. Perhaps that wouldn’t be true, perhaps she’d come again in -a year or two. But just the same she owed it to herself to get all she -could out of this adventure while she was right here on the spot. The -thief had proved to be just so many extra francs, dropped by the gods -directly into her lap. Shouldn’t she, therefore, take it for a sign, -cable home that she was waiting for a later boat, and go on with the -adventure? - -“When I was in Italy,” the rhythm returned. Cynthia whirled to face the -surprised young man behind the counter. - -“If you had a windfall of ... so many hundred or thousand francs,” she -asked him, “where would you go--from here?” - -The young man grinned cheerfully and replied in meticulous English. -“Madmoiselle, I should go to Italy.” - -“Bon!” Cynthia was enchanted that his advice should agree with her -mental toss of a coin. “And where in Italy, please?” - -The young man grinned more widely and shuffled the papers on his -counter. Here then was a customer for the tickets he had to sell. -“Madmoiselle, I should go to the palio in Siena. It is the month for -that. Madmoiselle has heard of the palio? Non? Oh, but then----,” and -he proceeded to expound. - -Twenty minutes later Cynthia, walking on air, emerged from Cook and -Sons. In her purse reposed a ticket for Italy. And the palio in Siena -would be one of those things she could talk of, once she got to the age -of relating, “When I was in Italy.” - -Five days later Cynthia, in Siena, pressed her small tip tilted nose -flat against the glass of the dusty window, peering in. She had come -again, for the third time today to see the frame. The lovely leather -frame was right in the foreground propped against the glass, just as -it had been yesterday and probably for weeks and weeks before that. -Beside it lay other leather things; cigarette cases, glove boxes -and portfolios, all beautiful. But it was the frame that interested -Cynthia. - -It was the one frame in all Siena, which, after all is a city of -leather frames, for the photograph of Chick which she had received in -the mail in Marseilles. And nothing short of perfection was worthy of -holding that picture. In it the face of Chick squarely fronted the -beholder, the hair of Chick was fluffy and rumpled, as it had been when -the Academy bunch had given him his nickname, the eyes looked straight -and truly into the eyes of Cynthia, and the quirky mouth seemed just -about to say: “Hi, Cynthia ... Darling!” - -The frame was wine colored, the leather as soft as old satin, and all -around its edge was a delicate gold border of conventional ivy leaves, -with, next to it, a band of oak leaves and tiny acorns, and inside, -next to the glass a tiny frail beading. All very simple but it was the -color and the workmanship that held Cynthia’s eye. - -She sighed. She knew to a lira just exactly what was in her purse, knew -that she mustn’t afford the frame, no matter how low the price might -be. Nevertheless she pushed open the paint scarred old door in the -stone housefront and entered the little shop. - -It was, as she had expected, dim and dusty within. The proprietor, -an aged little Italian with the down-drooping nose of one who works -in delicate detail, was busy with another customer. She also, was an -American, small and dainty, expensively clad, older than she appeared. -Cynthia smiled to herself. After two months in Europe she knew the type -very well. - -“Too much, too much!” she was saying, in Italian over and over again, -and gestured prettily with a gloved hand toward a small pile of -cigarette cases lying on the counter. Unexpectedly then she turned to -Cynthia. - -“You look as though you could speak Italian, my dear. Do ask him if he -will give me a better price for the whole dozen. I want them for bridge -prizes, next winter.” - -Cynthia was willing to try, and struggled with her scant store of the -language. The proprietor shrugged his shoulders and spread expressive -Italian fingers wide. “Yes, yes, eight, ten lira less perhaps,” he -smiled. And Cynthia knew that all along he had expected to take less -than his original price. But the pretty lady was pleased. - -“Wrap them up,” she ordered the man, in the loud tone so often employed -to the foreigner who seems not to understand, as though by mere volume -of sound one could impress one’s meaning. - -Cynthia had removed the lovely frame from the window and now held it -in her hand. Close like this, it was even more beautiful than when -viewed through the wavering old glass, and at Cynthia’s “How much?” -the old man smiled almost fondly, as though he too knew this for one -of his best pieces. He named the sum in lire and Cynthia made a rapid -calculation, then, with a sigh, shook her head and turned to replace -it in the window. He might as well have said fifteen hundred dollars, -as fifteen. Why, in her tiny room in the _pensione_ she could live for -two whole weeks on fifteen dollars. Chick would have to wait, unframed, -till she returned to the States and a steady job. - -The American lady was still fussing over the wrapping of her package -when Cynthia left the shop and stepped out into the street again, one -of those steep streets of Siena that seemed to bear always in their -sunny stone the tinge of a perpetual sunset glow. From far down the -street came the roll of a drum, and Cynthia who had already seen two -of these _contrade_ rehearsals pelted off as fast as rubber soles on -cobbles could carry her. Never mind the frame, though she gave it a -regretful relinquishing thought. - -Tomorrow was the Palio, the famous horse race with which Siena, twice -a year, for the past four hundred years, has celebrated her liberation -from the long arm of her tyrant neighbor, Florence. And now for the -past three days Siena had fallen back, body and spirit, into the -fifteenth century. - -Certainly Cynthia, rounding the corner of the narrow street, felt as -though she had been projected feet first into a slice of the middle -ages. Banners of silk and of satin, of tapestry and of heavy velvet, -fringed and tasseled in gold, embroidered with the arms of some ancient -family, hung from a high balcony, and above it, glowing in the warm -stone was carved again the heraldic device. Below the slow swaying -banners stood a little band of Siennese, two drummerboys in long-hose -and doublets, peaked caps over their frizzy locks, their companions two -banner-bearers, all in black and white and gold. The flags displayed -the arms of their _contrada_, or ward; this one Lupa, the Wolf, and -their huge ruffled sleeves and the little purses which dangled from -their belts were embroidered in fine gold with a similar device. - -The drums tapped out a strange, intriguing little rhythm while the two -banner bearers, practising their rite, did a sort of solemn dance with -the great five foot square flags. The object seemed to be to keep up a -continual stepping, with the banners never for one moment allowed to -lag. Under the arms and up again, out and beneath the dancing feet, and -the drums always beating faster and faster. Fascinated, Cynthia watched -for the culmination which she knew would come. With a final roll of -the drums the banners were flung high, high, almost ... incredibly, to -the tops of the houses, then descending, their heavy sticks acting as -weights, were caught lightly and skillfully. And the dance, for the -moment, was over. - -There was a slight cheer from the small group that had gathered to -watch and a voice behind her said “Gosh, that was great!” - -It was such a shock to hear, in this scene of the past, a good American -voice that Cynthia whirled involuntarily to face the speaker. To -her surprise he was all of fifty, with the reddish complexion of a -confirmed golf player, a shock of nice thick white hair, gray tweeds, -the expensive kind, and a panama hat which he wore in his hand. - -Cynthia met his smile with one as friendly. “It is nice, isn’t it,” she -said, for no particular reason except that one so often does speak to -fellow Americans on foreign soil. Then she started to turn away. - -“They’re having a _prove_, in the Piazza del Campo, this morning,” he -informed her. “Perhaps you’d like to see that too?” - -“Oh are they? Thank you,” said Cynthia, and this time she really did -turn away. She had already seen one of the _proves_, the rehearsal for -the big race, and thought she’d prefer, instead of seeing this one, to -find a place to sketch. With her final cover off to America she was -free now to sketch wherever she pleased, and she had an idea that she -might work up material for an exhibition, back in New York. The heads -to be her main attraction but perhaps a few landscapes to add a little -variety to the show. - -That afternoon she saw the man again. She had taken her sketch box -and camp stool, and having hired a tiny barouche, was set down about -two miles out of Siena where a little old monastery sat atop a tall -hill. Here among the cypresses she could sketch for an hour, or two, -or three, nibble her apple and sandwiches, and in the cool of later -afternoon pack her box and walk back to town. - -Cynthia had chosen a shady angle of the wall, and had roughed in her -drawing; a bit of a gateway tiled in warm red, and a tall niche where -stood a della robbia madonna robed in blue as deep as the Italian -sky. Bougainvillea spilled in a fountain of magenta over the wall, -and Cynthia was struggling with this riot of color when she heard the -_clopity-clop_ of horses’ hoofs, but did not look up. Color dried so -swiftly in this warm dry air, one had no time for distractions. - -Then there were voices, two, a man’s and a woman’s, the feminine voice -light, pleasant, but pitched to a note of amused complaint that was -vaguely familiar. Cynthia could not help overhearing. - -“Why on earth you had to drag me way out here, Gerald! Oh, of course -the road was lovely, but we have so little time in Siena and I did want -to get in some more shopping ...” - -“Shopping! Always shopping! Don’t you get enough shops in the States?” -replied the man’s voice in very husbandly tones. - -“Now Gerald, you remember I didn’t really want to come to Siena in the -first place, but then of course I had no idea the leather and the iron -work was so lovely here.” - -Leather, that was it! The woman who had bought the cigarette boxes this -morning. And the man with her? Cynthia, absent-mindedly wiping her -brush on her white skirt said a faint “Darn!” for the color was rose -madder and probably would stain ... peered out from behind her wall. -The man was her nice gray haired acquaintance. Well, his trip to the -monastery was no business of hers. - -Now how to get that tone of sunlight between the deep leaf-shadows? Ah, -that did it! Intent on the success of a trick of the trade, Cynthia -forgot the voices and when she came out of her corner an hour later -there was no one, native or American, in sight. Cynthia took the two -mile walk home through a lemon tinted sunset, ran into another flag -rehearsal just at the edge of the town and enjoyed it hugely. - -So pervasive and insistent was the tap. tap ... tr...r..r..r... tap. -tap. of the drums that she seemed, that night to dream about them all -night long and she woke the next morning with the distant, dream patter -of the rhythm still tapping merrily through her head. In the pale light -of early morning the sound was so real she could not banish it with the -remainder of her doze and finally hopped out of bed to see if she had -been hearing the reality. - -Sure enough, just down the street the banner-dancers were practicing -their strange little steps, and the first rays of sunlight over the -housetops caught the gilded tips of the banner staves as they were -flung, in the final flourish of the dance, to the house tops. Cynthia -remembered the fourteenth of July celebration in Paris and grinned to -herself. She was prepared, now, for such festive spirits. Besides that, -and all reports to the contrary notwithstanding, the Italians didn’t -seem to put so much noise into their celebrations as their French -neighbors. But then they let off more steam in just every-day living. - -When she had finished her brief and early breakfast and emerged to the -street she saw that this was truly and whole-heartedly a gala day. - -The steep cobbled way to the cathedral which crowned the hill was like -an illustration clipped from her Morte d’Arthur, a street made ready -for the entrance of a Lancelot or a King. Banners of silk and banners -of velvet, cloth of gold and cloth of silver, all embroidered with the -arms of Siena and her ruling houses, and, so far as Cynthia knew, of -Mussolini himself, hung from every upper window and balcony, fluttering -in the morning breeze with a constant play of color and pageantry along -the gay little street. Every doorway held smiling faces above the -garments of this holiday mood. Every child carried a brilliant hued -balloon or a whistle, or a small flag. And down around the _piazza_ -where the race was to be run the side streets were crowded with tiny -bright colored booths, peddling those cheap and sticky indigestibles -that go with a holiday all the world over. - -Cynthia wanted very much to see the ceremony of blessing the horses -that were to run in the race. Only ten of the seventeen wards might -compete, due to the tiny race course, and these would be chosen by lot -just before the race began. Each horse would be in the little chapel of -its own _contrada_, so Cynthia chose the Snail, since that of all the -ward names seemed to appeal to her most. It was so delightfully silly -for a Snail to be running a race, even by proxy. - -The chapel was a plain little building of warm stone, hidden in the -lower edges of the walled town, and the room was already crowded with -interested and loyal Snailists, including the horse, who seemed the -most interested of all. - -Cynthia listened with delight to the sonorous Latin phrases of the -little priest, but almost burst into giggles at the horse’s astonished -expression when his nose was sprinkled with water from a kind of -overgrown silver pepper box. It was an emotional relief when she caught -a glance from an amused gray eye, twinkling over the heads of the -shorter Sienese and automatically she twinkled back at it. Then she -saw a tuft of stiff white hair and recognized her acquaintance of the -day before. Cynthia flushed and bit her lip. When she looked again he -was gone. - -Behind the chapel was a room used for exhibition purposes. Here in the -dim glass cases, dusty with age, were the ancient costumes worn in past -Palios by the jockeys of the Snail. Many of them were hundreds of years -old and all displayed the same careful craftsmanship, the same loving -care for detail that Cynthia had noted in the costumes she had seen on -the streets. - -She made some sketches in her notebook, and went back to the _pensione_ -by way of the leather shop to have another look at the frame in the -window. - -Back in her room she emptied her pocketbook on the bed, and counted her -express checks and lire. But the frame was hopeless. She just couldn’t -manage it, not even if she asked the shop keeper to come down in his -price. The price was fair, Cynthia felt that it was even more than -that, and one couldn’t ask a fellow artist to cheapen his wares. - -“I’m afraid, Chick darling,” she told the photograph propped between -the mirror and the hair brush, “you’ll just have to go as you are. -Maybe a little later ...” - -For the future looked very bright indeed. Cynthia had already received -two letters from advertising firms who were interested in her covers on -_Little One’s Magazine_, and she had an idea for a new series for that -same publication, once she was back in the States. But at the moment, -in a strange country, with no friend nearer than Nancy and her Mother -in Brittany, Cynthia didn’t dare risk fifteen of her precious dollars. -Oh dear, it was difficult to be poor, ’specially when Chick needed a -frame! - -Where at she planted a cautious kiss on the pictured countenance of Mr. -Charles Dalton. - -The Palio race was due to start at five that afternoon. Cynthia took -her sketch book and her portfolio to use as a lap-rest and went off -early to find the seat she had purchased three days before. She could -spend the time in sketching the crowd--you never could tell; some day -she might be called on to illustrate a story about Siena and then her -foresight and her sketches would come in handy. - -For days the workmen of Siena had been preparing the Piazza del Campo -for this event. In the center was a walled off space known as the Dog’s -Box, where the poorer people might stand. The race course itself came -between this and the tiers of seats raised against the housefronts that -faced the piazza; hard, narrow little seats like the bleachers of a -ball park. But Cynthia was lucky, for she was on the shady side, and -was so interested that she didn’t much care how long she sat there. - -Her neighbors were mostly tourists, French, Italians from the south, -Germans, a few Austrians, and one or two Americans. Small boys sold -bags of nuts, and programs in five languages while the shadow of the -bell tower slowly crept across the Dog’s Box and the hard packed earth -of the race course. Cynthia noted the mattresses strapped against the -bare walls at the four corners of the course, presumably that the -horses or riders might not be injured in the scramble around these -dangerous places, and learned from her pink leafed program that many -of the horses did daily duty through Siena’s streets, pulled cabs, or -fruit carts during the year and their owners each belonged to the -_contrada_ from which they were chosen to race. - -At last the sound of a mortar. The crowd which had been strolling -leisurely about the course began to squeeze in under the fence to their -places in the box, or scramble, goat-like up the steep tiers of wooden -seats. Urged on by the carabinieri, those delightful, self-contained, -tweedledum and tweedledee police of Italy, loiterers were soon cleared -from the course and way was made for a group of little men, like blue -clad gnomes. These, pushing tiny wheelbarrows, swarmed along the -roadway. Their job seemed to be to cover with earth any places where -the original paving stones might show through. - -Then again the sound of the mortar. And here they come! - -First the Ensign Bearer of Siena, with the simple black and white flag -of the city. Then the Palace Trumpets, the picturesque long trumpets -with their pendent banners carried by youthful pages in jaunty velvet -caps, slashed doublet and sleekly silken hose. Then the musicians, -all in costume and the crossbowmen with their ancient weapons and at -last a group from each _contrada_. In each group a drummer, two flag -bearers, a Lord or Captain on horseback in gorgeous armor, of silver, -or bronze, or steel beautifully inlaid with gold that glittered in the -sunlight. Behind him his squires, his ensign bearers, and on the race -horse, the jockey who would ride later, in the race. - -Slowly the procession passed around the course. Before the judges’ -stand, and four times as they circled the square each group paused that -the drummers might perform their little rhythm, that the banner bearers -might dance their skillful little steps. - -Cynthia sat enthralled. Almost she had to pinch herself to believe it -was real. Glorious in color as an old window of stained glass; silks -and velvets, knights in full armor, pages, banners and trumpeters, and -at the very end the Palio itself, a great banner drawn in a cart, with -the staked flags of the _contrada_ around it. - -The procession was over. Cynthia sat back and cracked a few nuts and -ate them. Just to return to reality for a while, after so much beauty, -was a rest and a relief. She had thought so intensely, packed it -down so tightly into her memory that no least gesture of it might be -forgotten. Even so, she felt as though she would have liked a week of -that procession in order to be able to remember it all. - -Again the mortar. - -The race was about to start. Ten restive little horses ranged behind -a rope, ten jockeys struggling to keep them in line. The sound of the -gun. They’re off! - -Panting, scrambling, hurled against the Dog’s Box, cutting corners, -they tore around the course, and the piazza was one vast shout as -though from a single throat. Cynthia, on her feet like the rest, -stamped and clapped and shouted with the others. The Snail, the little -brown Snail was among the leaders. Once around the course. Three times -was the extent of the race. And the starting post was in sight again. -But one rider was off--which was it? - -The Snail’s! Cynthia could have sobbed aloud with despair, with -disappointment. Her favorite, out of the race because without a rider. -Someone had raised a whip and the Snail’s jockey had been the victim. - -Oh well, so much for that! Cynthia, disgusted, almost sank back to her -seat, but the mass of excitement around her was too strong to resist. -The Snail, for some reason, seemed still to be a favorite, his name -rose again and again from surrounding throats. Stubbornly he kept to -the track, came to the first of the tiny streets that turned off, away -from the race track. Gallantly he resisted temptation, clung to the -course. Past the next alley, past the next street, and well among the -leaders still. Pulling ahead now, faster and faster, because riderless, -guideless. The Snail caught up with the horse of the Eagle, passed him, -caught up with the horse of the Owl, hitherto the leader. The Owl’s -rider plied whip with vigor, but he was a husky youth, quite a burden -for the Owl’s little horse to carry. And the Snail was half a head in -the lead as the goal post was passed for the second time. - -“Oh come on ... come _on!_” Regardless now of the fact that the horse -was riderless, Cynthia wanted only that he should make the circle the -third time. Successfully. - -Now he was well in the lead, past the wicked flail of the Owl’s -malicious rider. Nothing now could stop him, though as he approached -for the third time the steep street leading up into the town Cynthia -held her breath lest this time he should leave the course and gallop up -it. Held her breath so that she was completely unconscious of the broad -shoulders in front of her which her eager hands were grasping. - -For an instant the pony faltered. Then urged on by the pounding hoofs -behind him passed the last temptation. And was on the final stretch for -the goal post. - -Faster. Faster! A length, two lengths, three lengths ahead. Cynthia -shouted wildly, pounded a fist on the harris tweed shoulder and yelled -with the others. “Go on ... Snail ... go on! ... Go on! ... Home! ... -_Ah..h..h!_” - -The race was over. “And quite fitting that it should have been won by -the Snail,” dryly remarked the owner of the harris tweed shoulder. - -Cynthia came out of her daze and gaped at him. It was the nice twinkley -man she had seen in the chapel this morning, the one who had come to -the monastery with his wife. - -“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she gasped, feeling very hot and red in the face. -“Did I pound you to a jelly? Races are pretty exciting, aren’t they?” - -“They certainly are,” he agreed cheerfully. “And that was a most -surprising one.” - -“Do you suppose he really won?” asked Cynthia, carefully following the -man down the steep narrow steps. “I don’t imagine it will be allowed -like that, without a rider, will it?” - -The man laughed. “Well, this is Italy, you know, and after all they may -figure it was a race for horses, not jockeys. And the horse certainly -came in ahead. But let’s go and find out,” he suggested. “By the way, -my name is Lewis, though I believe we have met before, even if you -didn’t know my name.” - -“How do you do, Mr. Lewis. I’m pleased to meet you I’m sure,” stated -Cynthia with mock primness. “And now that’s over, we’re both from the -States, I gather, and my name is Wanstead. Didn’t your wife come to the -races?” - -Mr. Lewis shook his head. “If it had been Longchamps, or Saratoga ... -But she wasn’t interested in a little Italian hick town race. Oh, here -we are, and I imagine there’s little doubt about the winner.” - -The rose-and-gold Snail jockey, wreathed in flowers and comically -suggestive of an ancient Greek statue, a blood stained handkerchief as -additional decoration about his forehead, was being carried high on the -shoulders of a dozen competitors for the honor of the burden. Around -him surged a horde of shouting friends and at least a score of pretty -girls tossed jests and languorous glances toward the victor. - -“I think they ought to be carrying the horse up there,” was Cynthia’s -objection. “The jockey didn’t do anything but tumble off.” - -“That in itself seems to have been a feat not without its perils. How -about some tea up here, to celebrate that our horse won?” - -Over the tea cups, in the ancient palace now transformed into a tea -shop, over delicious tiny cakes, sweet with honey, deep with frosting, -Cynthia heard about Mr. Lewis. Heard that long ago he, too, had been -an art student and had come to Siena, heard that he had come back this -time, a successful broker, to try to recapture some of the enchantment -of that far off time. “But it’s not the same,” he said sadly. “How -about some more tea?--No?--Then some more cakes--oh, just one more.” - -“Well, maybe, just one.” Cynthia chose a cake like a little Italian -palace, all tiled with lemon peel and crowned with a candied cherry. -“And do you know the lovely old monastery at the top of the hill?” - -“I should say I do. I made a sketch of that, years ago--before you -were born, young lady.” Why did people always lay such emphasis on -one’s lack of age? “But my wife didn’t think much of it, and perhaps it -wasn’t very good, really. Anyway it got lost once when we were moving.” - -His smile was slightly rueful and Cynthia forgave the remark about -her youthfulness. “It was of the gate, and a lovely old Della Robbia -madonna. I went out to see it again, just yesterday, but couldn’t find -it.” - -“Why, I found it, and did a sketch of it too,” Cynthia blurted out, -and a moment later wished she hadn’t. It was obvious that he had been -dragged away before he had had time to do much exploring. - -“Did you? Oh, could I see it perhaps? But first won’t you have another -cake, some more tea?” urged the hospitable Mr. Lewis. - -“I couldn’t eat another cake if I knew it was the last one in Siena,” -protested Cynthia. “And I think I’ve got the sketch right here. The -portfolio made a good rest for my sketch book.” - -So there in the tea shop, cool and quiet and growing a bit dim as the -sun sank behind the towers and tiles of Siena, Cynthia hauled out -her sketches. There were some of the crowd she had made just this -afternoon, of the carabinari, heads gravely bent, two by two, always -two by two, white gloved hands folded behind their solemn backs. - -“You have quite a knack for caricature,” commented Mr. Lewis, and -Cynthia said, “You have to, if you are going to do portraits. A really -good likeness always holds a little exaggeration.” - -At which he nodded understandingly. Nice to be showing your sketches to -another artist. - -“And here are some of the landscapes I’ve done around Siena, mostly -bits of streets and old tiled houses. They aren’t as good as my people.” - -“And here is your madonna,” she cried, hauling out the drawing she -had finished the day before. She told him about her plan to have an -exhibition of the heads and of the landscapes together. - -“That’s a good idea too,” he agreed, and propped the little sketch of -the monastery against a chair and sat back to squint at it. - -“I wonder,” he said at last, “if you’d be willing to make a sale before -you go home. I have a fancy to own this one,” and he nodded towards the -little tiled gateway. “Could you part with it, do you think?” - -Cynthia hesitated. She did sort of want to show that one to Chick and -hear his approval. But perhaps tomorrow she could go back to the same -place and make another, even a better one. - -“We..ll, yes,” she agreed reluctantly. “I might.” - -And then came the “How much?” which she had dreaded. Cynthia knew -the value, at least the commercial value, of her portraits. But the -landscapes were different. They were just studies, perhaps not worth -anything at all. “Would ... would two dollars be too much?” she asked. -“Or maybe three?” - -“My dear child!” protested Mr. Lewis, and Cynthia laughed. - -“Well, give me what you like. It will be all right anyway.--Oh, -American money, how nice to see it again!” And it was quite a roll, too. - -She took the two bills and handed over the painting. “Better take -along this cardboard, it’s just the back of the pad, but it fits, and -will keep the sketch from being crumpled. And now I really must run. I -promised a little English girl at the _pensione_ that I’d have dinner -with her tonight and tell her all about the palio. She couldn’t afford -a ticket for it. I know she won’t at all approve of the way it turned -out. ‘Most unsportin’ my deah!’” she laughed, mimicking the other’s -accent. - -“Goodbye,” waved Cynthia from the doorway. Nice Mr. Lewis. It had been -fun, the tea, and such an appreciative audience--and the two dollars. -She opened her purse, just for the comfort of seeing good United States -greenbacks again, shook them out of the rumple and gazed at them, -startled. Not two one dollar bills, but two for ten dollars each. -Twenty good bucks! Oh gosh ... oh glory ... oh joy! - -“Miss British Isles can wait,” said Cynthia aloud to the deserted -street and turned rapidly in a direction opposite to the _pensione_. -She knew somehow that her luck would hold, her marvelous luck of -the day, and that even as late as this sunset hour, with the rosy -housefronts of Siena still holding their perpetual sunset glow, the -little man in the frame shop would still be there. - - * * * * * - -Chick that night was no longer propped limply, somewhat forlornly, -between the dusty, green tinged mirror and the box of cold cream, but -smiled gaily, resplendently, festively, in a frame of wine colored -leather with a border of acorns and gold beading. - -Cynthia bent over and bestowed a brief kiss on the chilly glass. - -“Hi, Chick ... Darling,” she laughed. And turned off the light. - - - - -CHAPTER 8 - -_Venice_ - -ALL IS NOT LOST - - -Cynthia was sleepy when she stumbled into the station at Genoa. She -hadn’t been too sure that the hotel keeper would wake her in time to -get the train for Venice. So all night long she had dozed fitfully, -waking to sit bolt upright and flash on the light to see her watch, -then finally been waked from a sound sleep at five, just an hour before -train time by the sharp summoning knuckles of the garçon on her bedroom -door. - -And it must have been because her eyes were still blurred with sleep -that she took the _rapide_ instead of the express for Venice. They were -standing directly opposite each other, and both of them had “Venezia” -in letters a foot high along the carriages. An Italian _rapide_ does -not necessarily move with great rapidity. By the best of expresses it -is a long day’s journey across the width of Italy and by the time she -had discovered, with the half dozen native phrases that she knew, that -she had taken the wrong train it was too late to do anything about it. -They were already an hour east of Genoa. - -“What time do we get to Venezia,” she begged. “Venezia ... _Venezia_. -...” - -“Si...si...si...si...si,” hissed the beaming conductor as he punched -her ticket. - -“Yes, but what time? Tempo? Tempo?” she pleaded. - -The conductor shook his head and shrugged. Probably mad, this pretty -signorina. But he had no English, and what did she in third class, in -that expensive dress of real silk, with leather shoes upon her feet, -a hat, and a suitcase also of veritable leather? He gave it up and -sauntered down the crowded aisle between the wooden benches to examine -the biglietto of a wizened little great-grandmother traveling, with six -great-grandchildren, to Milan. - -Cynthia grinned and settled philosophically against the frame of the -open window. Ten hours was a pretty long time, and it would be more -than that now in this poky old train, but anyway it was an adventure -and all part of traveling. She was certainly going in the right -direction, there was no one to meet her at the other end, no one to -worry when she didn’t arrive, and she would have all day to observe and -to make sketches. - -Third class had been almost a necessity, this Italian trip hadn’t been -allowed for in her original budget, but Cynthia had found third class -in France so much more fun than second ... and of course even the -Italians say that no one but rich, rich Americans and officials who -travel on passes ever go by first. This was the coolest carriage too, -since the always open windows let in floods of air and sunlight along -with the floods of dust, and the hard wooden benches were pleasantly -free of the small insect life almost universally inhabiting the -upholstery of first and second coaches. - -But third class in Italy! The young man at Cooks who had sold her her -ticket had almost expired to hear of an Anglo-Saxon traveling in so -unorthodox a fashion. No one ... _no one_ ever traveled third class in -Italy! Cynthia surveyed the coach and chuckled again. - -Further down the aisle, two lovely little Sisters of Santa Chiara, in -the soft, dove-gray habit of their order, with spotless wide-spreading -winged headdresses and speckless collars munched contentedly and -daintily on bread and cheese augmented by a bottle of water they had -brought with them. Cynthia’s eye took in the angle of that tilted, -sail-like headdress, stealthily her fingers groped for sketch-book -and pencil. A moment later she was so absorbed in her drawing that -she absent-mindedly grinned back in friendly fashion at the littlest -Sister, who had caught her drawing. Nobody seemed to mind being -sketched in this country. - -Then there was the old great grandmother and her boisterous brood. -Beside them she tended a hen in her apron, a hen that seemed very -content to sleep and to cluck drowsily in the warm depths of that blue -lap. The littlest bambino was not more than a year old, sleeping with -bobbing head on the shoulder of the oldest sister. He had the most -beautiful hands, tapering, with tiny dimples and wee pink nails, which -fell into enchanting poses. Cynthia sketched happily. - -People came and went from every tiny station and crowds gathered -and dispersed beneath the trailing potted flowers that decorated the -pillars of every station platform. Cheerily they screamed “_Buon -giorno!_” “_Addio!_” “_Arrivederci! Arrivederci!_” Italian, someone had -told Cynthia, was a language intended to be shouted. - -The sun grew warmer, the paper beneath her hand sticky with -perspiration. Somewhere along the line a few lire purchased a sandwich -of garlic-flavored sausage between thick slices of warm bread, a bottle -of warmish water and a bunch of sweet, very juicy green grapes. After -lunch she curled in her corner and slept. - -When she awoke the car was nearly empty and they were clattering and -banging through the light of midafternoon. Hills were purple beyond -hot haze and vineyards, white with dust, spread for miles and miles on -either side the track. Cynthia sighed and got up to walk the length of -the car and back again. Where were they now, she wondered? - -When they stopped with a clatter and bang at the next station she -hopped out to look at the map hung on the station wall. Keeping -one careful eye on the train lest it slide out and leave her, she -estimated the probable time that it would reach Venice. Good gracious, -it was hours away yet! And at the rate this train was going ... - -The little horn tooted its warning and Cynthia fled back to her seat. -What to do, what to do? Thank goodness, nobody would be at all worried -or put out by this fool mistake of hers. Nancy, back in Brittany by -now, and Mrs. Brewster were the only people that knew about her trains -and her plans. Mother had insisted when Cynthia first left America that -she keep in touch, close touch, with some one person in Europe, and she -had been awfully faithful about that. She had even written Nancy what -train she was taking from Genoa ... and now, Cynthia grinned ... look -at the darn thing! - -By five o’clock she was ravenous and very weary. From former experience -she knew that she could hop off almost any place that the train might -stop and continue next day on the same ticket. But for hours they had -not passed a decent sized town, just little settlements about the usual -tiny church and inn, a few donkeys and a mangy yellow dog or two. Did -she dare get off just anywhere and risk what she might find, or should -she stick on here till seeming doomsday, till midnight anyway and -arrive at some weird hour on the unknown canals of Venice? - -Fumbling in the pocket of her silk jacket she found a single lira and -on impulse flipped it into the air. It dropped into her lap and she -covered it quickly with her hand. - -“Heads; I’ll get off at the very next stop, no matter if it’s in the -middle of a field. Tails; I’ll go on to Venice, no matter how late we -get there or how hungry I am,” she said aloud. - -She uncovered the coin. Heads it was! - -Cynthia was a little scared. But determined, oh very determined. -Resolutely she took down her suitcase from the rack, swung her painting -box beside it. Firmly she waited by the open window till the train -banged again to a stop beside a little shack that served as a station. -The sign read Santa Maria Something-or-other, a name which meant -nothing to Cynthia. Sturdily she stepped backward down the three steep -steps to the ground, swung her box and suitcase off beside her and -turning her back on the poky little train walked toward the gate. - -“Tomorrow ... tomorrow morning I go to Venice,” she explained to -the gatekeeper who was punching lacework patterns into her ticket. -“_Domani. Comprendo?_” - -“_Si, si._” Wonderingly he let her pass. Not until the gate had closed -firmly did Cynthia feel sure that she herself wouldn’t turn and race -toward the departing train, the train that eventually must reach Venice. - -When the last shriek of the whistle had died along the echoing hills, -when the last smudge of smoke had disappeared against the dazzling -light of the sinking sun, Cynthia was plodding almost ankle deep in -dust along the wide path that seemed to do duty as the town road. But -there was literally no town here. Far off across the plowed fields -a sugar white tower reared against the skyline; the village church. -Four or five scattered houses with the inevitable grape vine, their -whitewashed sides stained verdigris green with arsenic spray, and a -tiny inn to which the gateman had directed her. This latter was her -objective. - -Its entrance was beneath a vine covered lattice and its bare dirt -floor, its collection of dogs looked much like the other farmhouses. -But inside there were several tables and a girl behind a counter. She -slid forward and smiled shyly with a flutter of incredible lashes. -Cynthia felt reassured. - -Stumblingly she asked for a room for the night, explained her wish to -be called early for the first train for Venice. - -Yes, signorina, there was a room, but one. The signorina should regard -it. - -It was bare, save for the bed, table and chair and directly above the -café, but clean and cool. Cynthia nodded, did not ask the price and -letting her suitcase slide to the floor, ordered water with which to -wash. That was easy, one always asked for water. Supper also should be -simple, since a traveler was expected to desire food. Cynthia thought -of her first night in Paris and felt a little proud of how much more -confident she had become since then. What would Chick think of this -adventure of hers, she wondered and was glad he needn’t know about it -for weeks yet. He’d be sure to scold her for taking such a risk. - -It proved however to be no risk at all. At supper, a simple meal of -spaghetti, a salad and grapes, she was examined shyly by several -children, hopefully by several dogs, curiously by the adults of the -family. But the spaghetti was delicious and Cynthia was hungry. After -dinner she was far too sleepy to do more than take a short walk down -the quiet dusty road. Back in her room she wedged a chair under the -latch of the lockless door and fell asleep almost before she could -think again what an adventure this was. - - * * * * * - -The express from the north, to which Cynthia transferred a half hour -beyond the little village, arrived in Venice about nine o’clock. It -looked, she thought as she waited in the train corridor, just a little -disappointing, only a long, tunnel-like train shed. No canals, no -gondolas, no palaces in sight. - -The burly Italian in front of her swung off with his bags, Cynthia -prepared to follow, and stopped stock still, midway of the top step. - -“_Chick!_” - -“_Cynthia_,” came the excited reply, “Where on earth? ...” - -“I ... I thought you were in New York, Chick!” And stood gaping with -open mouth until a large bag prodded her, not too gently, in the middle -of her back. Then she swung down the steps and dropped suitcase and -paint box to fling herself into the arms of the surprised young man. -Almost, it seemed, as surprised as she was. - -“I thought you were due last night, on the _rapide_ from Genoa,” -exclaimed the disgusted Chick. “You wrote that to Nancy you know. And -I’ve been meeting trains almost all night. ... It was only by luck I -stopped here. I was meeting the express from Genoa on track six ten -minutes ago.” - -He signaled a porter. “This your stuff? All of it?” A hand beneath her -elbow, impersonally, kindly, almost as though he were the favorite -nephew of a maiden aunt, all concern for her baggage, that she pass -the _dogana_, the local custom house, that she give her ticket to the -proper uniformed official. They came out of the stone doorway onto a -half dozen steep stone steps. Before them shimmered the canal. So the -popular report was true and Venice did have them? - -“I’ve got a gondola waiting right here ...” he looked along the -bobbing, yelling line of gondoliers who shouted their wares and virtues -below the quay. “Dash that fellow ...” she heard him mutter. “Oh well, -never mind Cyn, we’ll take this one,” and still with that air of a -nephew-who-expects-to-be-well-remembered-in-the-will, piloted her down -the step. - -The wide upholstered seat was very comfortable. With surprisingly -little fuss they were in the center of the stream, Chick had given the -order, his fingers caught hers and held them tight. Good, then they -really were still engaged! Cynthia chuckled happily. - -“I can’t ...” she turned to gaze at him ... “can’t get over this Chick. -It’s the greatest surprise of my life.” - -“That was the intention,” Chick grinned back. He had, he told her, -arrived in Naples two days ago, had promptly wired Nancy to find -Cynthia’s exact address and had been told of the train she would take -to Venice. - -“Neat, very neat!” approved Cynthia. “If I just hadn’t taken a local by -mistake. And now where are you taking me?” - -“Pensione Casa Petrarca?” - -She nodded, Yes, that was where she had reserved a room. - -“Had your breakfast? Good. Then wash and tidy up and we’ll do a bit of -sightseeing. After that. ...” Quietly he slipped his hand from hers, -slid it into his pocket. - -“Oh dear, Chick, what’s the matter, what is it?” - -“I’ve ... that is I seem to have. ...” And with the maddening masculine -manner of one blessed with many pockets started fumbling through them -all, one after another. - -“Lost something?” - -Chick frowned. “Gone. But I hope it’s not lost.” Deliberately he went -through the whole lot again while the gondola rocked gently before the -steps of the pensione. At last he shrugged. “I came out last night and -this morning with a gondolier named Luigi, from the traghetta, that’s a -sort of gondola taxi-stand, across the way. If I’ve dropped the thing, -it’ll probably be in his gondola. Go on up, will you? I’ll see if I can -trace him.” - -A big airy room with a quaint porcelain stove in the corner. As the -door closed behind the porter, Cynthia dropped into a chair and -dragged off her hat. She didn’t know whether to weep or to laugh. Was -she, or was she not, engaged to Chick? He hadn’t mentioned it, he -hadn’t acted like it. She decided to laugh and felt better. Washed her -face, ran a comb through her curls and felt better yet. - -A bit of powder, some rouge and she was ready to meet the world again, -or at least Venice and Chick. He was waiting for her by the pensione -steps. - -“Know any Italian?” he asked anxiously. - -“Not much, I’m afraid, Chick.” But, she thought, probably more than he -did. - -“Well, come see if you can make anything out of this jumble of talk. -I’m about cuckoo. We’ll walk across, it’s a good chance to see the -Rialto bridge.” - -This was of stone, lined with a shallow, stepped, series of shops on -either side, going up, going down till one reached the farther side -of the Grand canal. Here Chick pointed out the row of gondolas as the -taxi-rank from which he had taken Luigi. - -Cynthia stammered a few questions, listened to the voluble replies and -managed to make out that Luigi had gone some where with a sightseeing -party, probably to one of the islands. He’d be back later in the day. - -“This morning?” asked Chick anxiously. - -“I guess so.” Cynthia was slightly careless about that. Funny of Chick, -not like him to make such a fuss over some silly little souvenir he’d -bought. “Come on,” she put a hand on his arm, “let’s go sight-see for a -while.” - -Somewhat reluctantly Chick agreed. Over tiny crooked stone bridges -they went, along quays along whose mossy sides the water lapped dark -and mysterious, down blind, colorful alleys where small children stuck -their heads from windows and yelled shrilly. “_Non passaggio_ ... no -passage!” Cynthia adored it all, adored being with Chick again. - -If he only wouldn’t fuss so, she thought. For he kept looking at his -watch, glancing back over his shoulder, until finally she gave it up in -despair. No use of sightseeing till Chick recovered his lost property. - -“How about going back now and having another try at your gondolier?” -she suggested. - -He was so grateful that she was almost ashamed of her impatience, and -they turned back immediately. But there was no further news; Luigi had -not returned. Desperately Chick started to ask questions, perhaps one -of the other gondoliers had heard Luigi speak of a package he had found? - -Cynthia, first on one foot and then on the other, for she was getting a -little tired, translated to the best of her ability. Chick stuck in a -word now and then. - -“_Perdita._ ... Lost ... lost.” Was Chick’s gender wrong, or had he -really mislaid a blonde? - -But a few in the group of gondoliers got the idea. Apparently each -one had, at one time or another discovered something _perdita_. -From beneath the flea-infested blanket of a gondola was produced a -dogs-eared magazine. Cynthia beginning to be amused read the lurid -title in flaming vermilion sprawled across its cover. “True Tales -of the Wild West.” The date was over a year ago but it had been, -undoubtedly, once lost. - -Other gondoliers left their bobbing craft, passers-by drew closer as -Chick’s eagerness held promise of rich reward. Waving the magazine -aside he chanted impatiently, “Piccolo ... piccolo,” while he made -gestures of small measurement with his hands. Then aside to Cynthia, -“that does mean ‘little,’ doesn’t it? Not a musical instrument?” - -Cynthia nodded silently, not daring to risk speech and watched with -dancing eyes while Chick refused, from a second cheerful brigand a -musty, torn golash. - -Cheerful brigand number two was a sheer loss to high pressure -salesmanship. Cynthia caught the word “_Impermeabile_ ... waterproof,” -as he covered the tear with one big hand. Twisting the rubber inside -out he sought to display its amazing suppleness and elasticity while -an admiring group applauded both at the golash and the salesman, with -ohs and ahs of astonishment. Cynthia was wondering how a single torn -rubber had been brought from so many thousand miles to lie forgotten in -a Venetian gondola, and also how the gondolier thought Chick, with a -foot obviously many sizes larger, was going to use it. But perhaps he -surmised a sentimental attachment. - -She glanced at Chick. Poor darling, this was awfully important to -him, and it was mean of her to take it all so lightly. But he was -being pretty darn solemn and masculine. Impatiently she said. “If -you’d _only_ tell me what it is, Chick, perhaps I could make them -understand.” Oh dear, how annoying men could be! - -Chick seemed not to hear. The new distraction was a cabbage, wilted, -but unquestionably of more recent vintage than either the galosh or -the ancient magazine. Its discoverer had waited for a time outside the -magic circle, while firing forth a rapid stream of “_Ecco ... ecco ... -ecco!_” as he held aloft the proffered vegetable. Breaking through -at last he encountered the two previous presenters of articles, thus -gaining the attention also of the crowd. Which was his downfall. - -An old woman, black shawl over her head, flattened slippers of magenta -felt upon her feet, having heaved her way through by sheer force of -language, not only wanted a cabbage, but _the_ cabbage. Perhaps it was -the cabbage of her childhood, perhaps she had nursed it from a tiny -seedling, this dejected thing. For a moment longer Cynthia listened, -then screwed up her face and clapped frantic hands to ears. Couldn’t -they get out of this soon? - -Close behind the old woman came shouldering two calm carabinieri, just -in time it seemed to prevent a general combat. White gloved hands -behind them, patent leather hats set squarely above unruffled brows, -two identical, magnificent examples of the Venetian police. Tweedledum, -it seemed, asked the questions. Tweedledee answered them. Conversely -Dum asked and Dee answered. Comparative silence settled upon the circle -and Cynthia cautiously removed her hands from her ears. - -All available witnesses began to present their evidence. As there were -perhaps a score in number all acting out their theories in violent -pantomime, Cynthia began to wish they weren’t right in the center -of it. The one who had taken upon himself the part of the inquirer -after lost articles, Chick’s rôle in fact, was losing things in all -directions with wide, dramatic sweeps of his arms. - -Tweedledum and Tweedledee executed a half turn in perfect unison, -raised right hands in gloves of immaculate whiteness in formal -salutation and in Chick’s direction. By now, Cynthia knew them of old, -they would have come to an unshakable conclusion. If they awarded the -galosh to the old lady, the cabbage to Chick, both parties would have -to be content. But no, they had another plan. - -The cabbage was bestowed upon its rightful owner who still lingered, -voluminous with words, to see what else might happen. The golash -returned to the gondolier in whose craft it had originally been found. -Cynthia applauded the decision, then translated for Chick’s benefit -Tweedledum’s speech: - -“We’re to go to the police station, Chick. That’ll teach you, young -man, not to start riots. And I hope it does!” - -Behind them an admiring and still unsilenced throng applauded their -departure, even followed a short distance along the quay and over the -ancient bridge. - -“My heavens!” fumed Chick, “can’t they understand! I’ve said ‘perdita,’ -and ‘piccolo’ till I’m black in the face.” But Cynthia was enjoying -herself. - -“If you’d tell them a little more,” she soothed, slipping her hand into -his arm. “Or if you’d even tell me. ... What in the name of Agatha -_have_ you lost, anyway?” - -The police were speaking again. Cynthia thought she caught the word. -... “Fondere.” Did that mean “found?” The Lost and Found Department -perhaps? She made that suggestion to Chick. - -A few more streets, a bridge or two, a narrow sun-lit way and one of -the innumerable palaces which seemed now to be a police station, with -the crown and arms of Italy above the door. Beyond this a damp and -cheerless room, none too clean and the equivalent of a desk sergeant -who drew towards him a large book and set down their names, Chick’s -and Cynthia’s, and their _pensione_. Dum and Dee were doing all the -explaining but in Italian far too rapid for Cynthia to follow. It might -yet prove that she and Chick had defied municipal authority by starting -a barter shop on the quayside, one decaying golash for a wilted cabbage. - -Tweedledum and Tweedledee had finished, the man at the desk made a -gesture. An attendant opened a door, flung back a huge iron grill that -closed off about half the room behind it and signed for them to enter. -Cynthia clutched at Chick’s arm. Oh dear! - -Frankly uncertain she followed Chick’s slow steps, the attendant -close behind, Dum and Dee bringing up in the rear. Then the attendant -switched on a light, a series of lights disclosing what might have been -a wine cellar. But instead of wine ... Cynthia choked back her laughter -and pointed. - -A bicycle, a shelf of gloves, a regular store of ancient umbrellas and -sunshades, piles and piles of books, mostly Baedeckers by their moldy -red bindings, boots, odd bits of clothing, a coffeepot, market loads -still knotted in capacious handkerchiefs, a coffin, a load of bricks. -... - -Chick’s face was flaming. “How in the name of goodness can we tell -whether it’s here or not!” He turned to Cynthia. “Don’t they have a -list of things somewhere, and the times they were found? Tell them it’s -small, small. And done up in white paper and a box.” - -“I know,” Cynthia nodded solemnly. “A pound of butter, Chick dear. Oh -Chick, you weren’t going to ask me to set up housekeeping were you?” -But at the hurt expression in his eyes her levity dimmed. “I’ll tell -them you lost it last night, is that it?” And turning to Dum and Dee, -carefully choosing her words, she managed to convey the idea. - -One of them gave a shrug of disappointment which was echoed by the -other. With all these things to choose from, they seemed to say, -surely any but the most captious would be satisfied. But they turned -to discuss the matter with the attendant. Lights began to go out, -indication that this particular exhibition was over, Finish. But -apparently more was to follow. Chick might yet discover his pound of -butter. - -As they returned to the main room the attendant departed and polite -gestures demanded that Chick and Cynthia should take chairs and wait. -An air of expectancy hung above the little room. Obviously the choicest -gem of the collection, something too valuable to be left with the other -articles had been sent for. - -“Do you think they’ve sent to the bank?” asked Cynthia. - -Chick brightened at the suggestion, brightened until the door swung -open again. There entered behind the attendant a woman, slatternly, -down at heels, very cross and carrying a basket on her arm. Slowly, -reluctantly she advanced to the desk, lifted the cover of the basket. -At the summons of the sergeant Chick appeared beside her. With a wild -burst Dum and Dee grabbed the basket from the woman, thrust it into -Chick’s reluctant arms. Whereat the basket, considerably disturbed, let -out a long neck, green mottled with brown feathers, a wide open yellow -beak, an indignant eye and a stiffly upstanding comb of violent red. -Loudly the occupant of the basket protested with a violent “... C ck -... a ... doo ... dle ... do!” - -Chick nearly dropped the basket. - -Cynthia, nearly helpless with laughter, had fallen into a chair and, -with face buried in her handkerchief, could only indulge in what Dum -and Dee must surely have considered tears of uncontrolled joy at -this return of her lost property. Sympathetic murmurs, croonings of -consolation echoed about the room. Even the rather hard faced woman was -touched. Chick stood stupidly staring. - -The hardest part of the day came when Cynthia, drying her streaming -eyes, was forced into sufficient sobriety and Italian to explain that -indeed and indeed the rooster, and it was a beautiful rooster, oh a -magnificent rooster, was not theirs. Was not at all what they sought. - -“No, no, no, no, no!” Like a popgun, Cynthia shot out violent -negatives. And at last she had made it clear. Almost with joy the woman -received back the cherished rooster from Chick’s relieved embrace. -Almost haughtily they were shown to the door, sent, with an air of -extreme disapproval, upon their way. - -Outside in the sunlight Cynthia was almost surprised to find it was the -same day, and Chick pulled down his coat, let out a great puff of a -sigh. - -After that first burst of laughter Cynthia had managed to get control -of herself, but she wasn’t sure how long this would last. She must -get somewhere, anywhere, and have it all out with Chick. Meekly she -took his arm, let him lead her along the quay, through small streets -toward the Piazza San Marco. She glanced upward. Chick was being very -masculine, very stern, one might almost think, unforgiving. - -In silence they traversed the small streets. Well, if Chick was going -to be stuffy! ... But he couldn’t be, he simply couldn’t be. And whose -beastly old bundle was it anyway? _She_ didn’t go about leaving things -in gondolas. - -Florio’s, on the Piazza San Marco. A small green iron table, two small -twisted iron chairs and an attentive waiter in a white apron. Chick’s -eyes consulted Cynthia, then ordered two lemonades. They came. In -silence Cynthia sipped hers, bit her lips, gulped and regarded fixedly -a stupid, pink toed pigeon who was strutting, with puffed out chest -before the lovely little faun colored lady of his choice. Sideways out -of her eyes Cynthia caught a glimpse of Chick, then turned to face him. - -His face was red but in his eyes was now a glimmer of understanding, -one might almost say mirth. Cynthia dared a slight, tremulous giggle, -forerunner of the gale to come. Then. ... - -“Oh Chick, Chick, if you could have seen yourself with that silly -rooster. ... And the cabbage ... and Tweedledum ...!” - -The tide had risen now, all bars were down. Rocking with mirth they -clung to the little iron chairs and laughed and laughed. A moment’s -pause to recount the pomposity of the attendant, the old woman with the -cabbage, the galosh, the list of things in that storeroom. Did you see -the bicycle? ... Who could have left those high, buttoned shoes? ... -Oh, and the fans, simply stacks of them! - -For ten minutes the gale raged backwards and forwards then, weak and -helpless Cynthia begged for another lemonade, wiped the tears from her -eyes and subsided into comparative sanity. Their laughter together -had relieved her in many ways. It was going to be all right now, she -and Chick still thought alike, could still find amusement in the same -things, and the doubts of the morning were all swept away. - -“But Chick,” doggedly she returned to the old question. “Now it’s all -over, you can tell me, can’t you? What was in that package?” - -Chick wasn’t going to be stuffy about it any more. He grinned this -time, but shook his head. “If we don’t find it today I’ll really tell -you. Not yet, though.” - -“Cross your heart?” - -“Cross my heart!” - -From the corner of the square a big bell began a slow solemn booming -and as though it was a signal, hundreds, thousands of pigeons rose -against the deep blue of the Venetian sky and the sunlit columns -opposite. Glinting silvery, iridescent, dark blue and rose and gold -they whirled with the muffled beat and roar of a thousand wings. -Cynthia gazed enthralled. - -Across the square, giving access to the Merceria, the Way of the -Merchants, was the clock tower. As the great painted face recorded noon -two giant moors slowly struck a bronze bell with big hammers, marking -the hour. - -“Lovely!” murmured Cynthia. “Oh Chick, I wish ... I wish we didn’t have -to go back, ever. I wish we could stay on, in one of those sweet old -palaces. ...” - -“Like Othello and Desdemona?” - -“No ...,” slowly. “She got smothered, didn’t she? I guess I wouldn’t -care for that.” - -“New York will be fun too,” hazarded Chick. “And with all the -advertisement you’ve had, young lady; your magazine covers on every -newstand, month after month.” - -“Chick! Are they really? Yes, I suppose they are, I hadn’t thought -of that. Better hurry back, hadn’t I?” And then laughed at her own -weather-vane mood. “Well, what shall we do next, Chick? I feel sane -once more.” - -Chick’s suggestion was: lunch at the Danieli, which was the swankiest -hotel in Venice, and, he had heard, one of the loveliest of the old -Venetian palaces. Then back to the traghetti to see if Luigi had come. - -Oh, that again! Cynthia made an impatient gesture. Save us from a man -with one idea! But she adored the lunch, loved the gracious old palace -with its carved, minstrel gallery, its floor of multicolored tiles, its -ceiling carved and painted in deep blue and rose and gold. Out into the -sunlight again, and the Adriatic shimmering as blue as the ceiling, a -pleasant little wind chilled by the snows of the Dalmatian Alps and the -white bubble of the Church of the Salute rising across the lagoon. - -“Shall we ride, or walk?” asked Chick. By the way he said it Cynthia -knew he wanted to walk. - -“We see more on foot, don’t we?” she suggested amiably. Perhaps a -little later they could go through the Grand Canal in a gondola. And -indeed she loved the great Piazza flanked by the Doges Palace, by St. -Mark’s and the long colonnade of the Library and the Mint. And the -shops beneath those columns most fascinating of all. Cynthia’s whole -allowance for abroad had been divided between seeing places, and saving -up a bit for what might, when she got home, prove to be a long wait for -more work. But she had learned a lot by looking just in windows, had -learned that you can so memorize a beautiful thing you can at least -carry it away with you in your mind. - -“See, Chick, isn’t that the loveliest old bracelet? ...” A thick -circle, not quite joined, of gold, the two ends which almost touched -circled with tiny crowns of blue, blue turquoises. “And oh, Chick, just -look at that ring. ...” A lovely old thing of Florentine gold, studded -with seed pearls and surrounding a topaz as richly dark as the gold -itself. Chick put a hand on her arm and urged her along to the next -window which, being full of ancient books and maps was not quite so -enthralling. - -Perhaps it hadn’t been really tactful to admire that ring, almost as -though she had wanted it herself. She had Chick’s own ring, hadn’t she? -The little emerald, very prettily set, not quite good enough, not quite -old enough to be called an antique, not quite the same as though it -had been bought just for her. ... Cynthia checked the feeling. It was -unkind, ungracious, ungrateful. Chick was just a poster artist in the -first year of his success, he had come all the way to Venice just to -see her, or at least she supposed he had, for he hadn’t said so yet. ... - -And thank goodness, here was the traghetti. Perhaps they’d find that -stupid lost bundle of Chick’s at last. - -Word must have been passed around for there was someone, Chick -exclaimed that it was Luigi, waiting for them, his weathered old face a -mass of interweaving laughter wrinkles. Sturdy, stocky, clad in ragged -clean shirt, with the uniform black trousers and sash of the public -gondolier, Luigi dashed up the short flight of steps, rushed toward -them. In his outstretched hand he held a parcel, small, oh very small. -Not big enough even for a quarter of a pound of butter. - -It had been opened, clumsily retied with gray twine. Thrusting it into -Chick’s hand he followed with a flood of rapid Italian. Once more a -circle of interested onlookers threatened to engulf them. - -Chick gave a hasty order, grasped Cynthia’s arm and thrust her down the -steps, into the Luigi gondola. Then waved a wide gesture down the Grand -Canal toward the lagoon beyond. - -“Buono! ... Buono!” agreed Luigi, nodding vigorously like a porcelain -mandarin. There came a faint cheer from the crowd on the quay and -Cynthia recognized a few of their morning’s spectators. But the man -with the galosh, the woman with the cabbage were not present. From the -comfortable cushioned seat she watched palaces of kings and doges, -princesses, great composers and poets glide past. This was heavenly, -this was the way to see Venice, to see any place, with Chick’s hand in -hers and not a care in the world. - -Then she saw the little package in his other hand, glanced up -inquiringly and caught the look in his eyes. Her heart skipped a beat, -two beats. No nephew ever looked like that at a maiden aunt! - -“Let’s,” said Chick, taking his hand out of hers, “let’s both undo the -package. You do want to see what’s in it, don’t you, Cyn?” - -Cynthia laughed. “Here I’ve been hustled and bustled over half of -Venice, in jail and out again ...” she addressed the diminishing houses -of candy pink, baby blue, as the gondola struck the wide lagoon and -rocked slowly away from the town, “and he asks me, do I want to know -what’s in it. Man alive, do you think I’ve got no curiosity?” - -From behind them came a musical shout. Luigi warning off another -gondola. Beyond him, Venice glowed pearl pink in the late light of -afternoon, the long paddle made a soft ripple on the blue lagoon. Dark -Italian eyes looked over their shoulders, whole heartedly, honestly -as curious as Cynthia, and two heads, one brown, one blond bent close -together. - -Cynthia untied the knot, with slim fingers that were cold and -loosened the rumpled white paper. A small box of blue stained leather -beautifully tooled in gilt. She lifted the lid. - -“Oh Chick ... oh you darling! Chick, is it really, really for me?” - -On the third finger of her right hand she slipped it. Quaint old green -gold, delicately lacy as the collar of a doge, held firmly in its heart -a single pink pearl. Chick reached and took the hand in his, slipped -off the ring, slid into his palm the little emerald she had worn all -summer, and in its place substituted the other. It fitted as though it -had been made for her. Perhaps it was. - -“Just for you, yourself,” he said. “It’s quite old, four or five -hundred years they told me. I got it yesterday afternoon in one of -those shops you looked at, Cynthia. And I’ve been frantic all day. ... -I wanted to tell you, just this way, in a gondola, with just this ring. -And I couldn’t, darling, tell you before.” - -“Chick, it’s the most beautiful, beautiful thing I ever saw in my whole -life.” - -“Isn’t it?” said Chick, but when she glanced up his eyes were not -on the ring. “Tomorrow,” he said, “we’ll see the American consul. I -understand he’s the marrying guy about here.” - -Behind them suddenly came a great shout, baritone, Italian. “_Yum -tum tumti tumtum. ... Yum tiddilty tum, tum ti tumitytum_. ...” -Confidentially Luigi leaned forward, whispered in tones that might have -been heard back in Venice. “That, ladiee, gentleman ... that ver’ fine -Venezia loove song. You like?” - - - - -Transcriber’s Notes: - -Inconsistent hyphenation, punctuation, spelling, the use of golash and -galosh and poster and paster, and placement of the apostrophe in Little -One’s Magazine and Little Ones’ Magazine have been retained as printed -in the original publication except as follows: - - Page 16 - had tipped and fallen _changed to_ - had tripped and fallen - - Page 22 - before the senorita and dramatized the _changed to_ - before the señorita and dramatized the - - Page 24 - every step she made took here nearer _changed to_ - every step she made took her nearer - - Page 33 - with small sharp eyes and an opologetic _changed to_ - with small sharp eyes and an apologetic - - Page 43 - a member of the Begger’s Opera - a member of the Beggar’s Opera - - Page 47 - Its all pearly gray mists _changed to_ - It’s all pearly gray mists - - Page 52 - the _garcon_ of the striped waistcoat _changed to_ - the _garçon_ of the striped waistcoat - - Page 60 - leaned againt the heavy stone balustrade _changed to_ - leaned against the heavy stone balustrade - - Page 78 - chance to to look them over _changed to_ - chance to look them over - - Page 79 - medieval France had not, _changed to_ - medieval France had not - - Page 99 - the Arc de Triomph _changed to_ - the Arc de Triomphe - - Page 102 - that omelet which Madame Poularde _changed to_ - that omelet which Madame Poulard - - Page 127 - all right anyway. --Oh _changed to_ - all right anyway.--Oh - - Page 146 - mourned Cynthia. No; it’s _changed to_ - mourned Cynthia. “No; it’s - - Page 160 - darn that model!” _changed to_ - darn that model! - - Page 164 - caramel custard, at the Cheval Blanc _changed to_ - caramel custard at the Cheval Blanc - - Page 166 - street, past the hotel de l’Universe _changed to_ - street, past the Hotel de l’Universe - - Page 171 - till she come in to look at it _changed to_ - till she came in to look at it - - Page 184 - but your Aunt was _changed to_ - but your aunt above was - - Page 199 - of horses hoofs _changed to_ - of horses’ hoofs - - Page 201 - pervasive and insistant was the tap _changed to_ - pervasive and insistent was the tap - - Page 202 - brillant hued balloon _changed to_ - brilliant hued balloon - - Page 208 - the judges stand _changed to_ - the judges’ stand - - Page 215 - and Cynthia said. _changed to_ - and Cynthia said, - - Page 219 - waking to sit bold upright _changed to_ - waking to sit bolt upright - - Page 246 - irridescent, dark blue and rose _changed to_ - iridescent, dark blue and rose - - Page 250 - like a porcelain manderin _changed to_ - like a porcelain mandarin - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Cynthia Steps Out, by Erick Berry - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CYNTHIA STEPS OUT *** - -***** This file should be named 53197-0.txt or 53197-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/3/1/9/53197/ - - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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