At exactly 3:41 a little sheet-iron engine drawing a string of green
wooden boxes with small windows entered the _Gare de Seaux_ in a cloud
of black smoke.
The cushions were light blue. Marie sat against the window and Spike
sat very close against her. They had the compartment to themselves.
"Our earthquake didn't upset the railroads!" she observed.
The train moved through its tunnel no faster than a man can walk.
The tiny lamp burned at the center of a yellow halo. Coal smoke came
through all the crevices of window frames and made their throats burn.
"I hope nobody was killed. Why did it make such an explosion, I wonder?"
Marie frowned, catching a memory. "The ring has never been rejected
before. The witch said if it were ever deliberately thrown away, its
power would be broken.... It got stronger and stronger because nobody
could ever use it, and nobody would ever give up hoping that they
could. The witch always had to steal it back! But we threw it away. And
that ended the ring!"
"It is a wonder the quake did not level all Paris. My chair felt as if
somebody were shaking it with his hands!" Spike was not so gay as Marie.
"Paris shook when Magic left the world.... It's a relative world
now...." Suddenly there were tears in his eyes. Again life was
different and the past was dead. The world changed so incessantly.
Yesterday, yesterhour would never return.... Hope of Magic,
Something-out-of-Nothing, had perished from the earth!
Marie was patting his arm. "Well, the ring is gone." She seemed not to
blame him.
"Marie, wouldn't you like to be rich?"
"I should say I would! Maybe I will be some day. It was too bad we
could not make the ring work!" He noticed the pronoun.
Marie shook his arm, coaxing his gayety. "You can't trim a hat with
remorse!" she told him. "That's a proverb I just made up.... Look
here's where we come to the surface."
Gasping, but triumphant, the train crawled out into the daylight.
Marie looked for her gloves. "Oh, I left them at the café!"
"We've been excited!" They laughed. "And no wonder!"
The train stopped often; but, mysteriously, nobody seemed to get on
or off. It was an enchanted train. It's very slowness was part of the
enchantment.
"Why do they run this train?" Spike wondered. "Nobody knows. Nobody
ever rides in it, yet it leaves the _Gare de Luxembourg_ every
afternoon at 3:20. It is bewildering."
"Of course people ride on it! People missed it today because everybody
is talking about the earthquake!"
The _Parc Montsouris_ and the green mound of the city wall were soon
left behind. Sunlight shone brightly on dismal suburban villages of
"villas" so decorated with colored tile, turrets and fancy windows as
to seem monuments made of poisonous candy. They seemed newer and far
uglier than anything in Minnesota.... But the locomotive persevered,
and Spike looked up from a silent game of making other words from the
letters in "_C'est Dangereux de se Pencher_," to see woods and a long
smooth wave of meadow land beyond them.
"When we get to St. Remy we'll walk to a hill I know and when it
is twilight we'll have supper in the _bosquet_ of an inn near the
crossroads."
"That'll be gay. The sunshine is bright. And look, how green the little
hill is!"
They talked of things momentous for the moment. Spike said her
broad-brimmed hat was chic.
"I know about hats," Marie admitted.
He said he liked her black jacket with its checked collar and pointed
cuffs. He liked her full checked skirt, and her gray silk stockings and
gray shoes.
She saw the dress in a window near the _rue de Rivoli_ and went right
home and made herself this good copy. "I am glad that you like it,"
she said. "You have beautiful hair, and blue eyes. Do many men in
Minnesota have your kind of hair?"
"Oh, no! I am sort of different. I think I am about the only one with
hair just this color. I get it from my mother. She was Scotch. We have
a picture of her at home. She looks like me. My father was a sort of
lump. She was the handsome one of the family!"
"I see!"
"There! Hold your hand just that way! You have lovely hands. During
those five days I used to close my eyes and see your finger tips ...
because they are pink and bend back."
Marie looked at them, seriously--from delicacy suppressing a delighted
smile. "Oh, you are so sweet," she said. "If I had not lied to the
witch, I would not have met you, and things would be as they always
were and now I would be in my room, hoping that maybe something nice
would happen tomorrow, and it wouldn't!"
The train stopped. Here was a dusty station--an autobus, two or three
_barouches_, a _gendarme_ walking with his hands behind his back.
A youth in a black jacket, a narrow straw hat, pointed collar, and
general imperfect imitation of a big city clerk, opened the door
of the compartment and stumbled over their feet. He shrank into the
farthest corner and unrolled the _Petit Parisien_.
"Spike, will you tell me something?"
"If I know it!"
"_Alors_...." Marie went no further.
"Yes?"
"Oh, another time, perhaps. Not now." She flushed as she looked at him.
"It might spoil things!"
"Nothing could! Ask it!" She would not.
They passed low hills and fields of wheat. Spike's arm was around her.
"Spike...."
"Yes?"
"When do we get to St. Remy?"
The man in the straw hat, who had several times stared at them
curiously over the top of his newspaper, now looked again.
"Any time now," said Spike easily.
"I beg your p-pardon," their fellow passenger leaned forward, nervous
with embarrassment, stuttering. "I--I--I b-b-b-beg your p-pardon, d-do
you wish to descend at S-s-s-s-...."
They waited politely while he hissed. Spike came to his aid. "St. Remy.
Yes, m'sieu!"
The fellow looked greatly concerned. He opened his mouth, but no sound
came.
"Well?"
"Well?"
"I g-g-g-got on at St. Remy!"