A LETTER AND A MEETING.
Nearly a week later Joyce sat at her desk, hurrying to finish a letter
before the postman's arrival.
"Dear Jack," it began.
"You and Mary will each get a letter this week. Hers is the fairy tale
that Cousin Kate told me, about an old gate near here. I wrote it down
as well as I could remember. I wish you could see that gate. It gets
more interesting every day, and I'd give most anything to see what lies
on the other side. Maybe I shall soon, for Marie has a way of finding
out anything she wants to know. Marie is my new maid. Cousin Kate went
to Paris last week, to be gone until nearly Christmas, so she got Marie
to take care of me.
"It seems so odd to have somebody button my boots and brush my hair, and
take me out to walk as if I were a big doll. I have to be very dignified
and act as if I had always been used to such things. I believe Marie
would be shocked to death if she knew that I had ever washed dishes, or
pulled weeds out of the pavement, or romped with you in the barn.
"Yesterday when we were out walking I got so tired of acting as if I
were a hundred years old, that I felt as if I should scream. 'Marie,' I
said, 'I've a mind to throw my muff in the fence-corner and run and hang
on behind that wagon that's going down-hill.' She had no idea that I was
in earnest. She just smiled very politely and said, 'Oh, mademoiselle,
impossible! How you Americans do love to jest.' But it was no joke. You
can't imagine how stupid it is to be with nobody but grown people all
the time. I'm fairly aching for a good old game of hi spy or prisoner's
base with you. There is nothing at all to do, but to take poky walks.
"Yesterday afternoon we walked down to the river. There's a double row
of trees along it on this side, and several benches where people can
wait for the tram-cars that pass down this street and then across the
bridge into Tours. Marie found an old friend of hers sitting on one of
the benches,--such a big fat woman, and oh, such a gossip! Marie said
she was tired, so we sat there a long time. Her friend's name is
Clotilde Robard. They talked about everybody in St. Symphorien.
"Then I gossiped, too. I asked Clotilde Robard if she knew why the gate
with the big scissors was never opened any more. She told me that she
used to be one of the maids there, before she married the spice-monger
and was Madame Robard. Years before she went to live there, when the old
Monsieur Ciseaux died, there was a dreadful quarrel about some money.
The son that got the property told his brother and sister never to
darken his doors again.
[Illustration: OUT WITH MARIE.]
"They went off to America, and that big front gate has never been opened
since they passed out of it. Clotilde says that some people say that
they put a curse on it, and something awful will happen to the first one
who dares to go through. Isn't that interesting?
"The oldest son, Mr. Martin Ciseaux, kept up the place for a long time,
just as his father had done, but he never married. All of a sudden he
shut up the house, sent away all the servants but the two who take care
of it, and went off to Algiers to live. Five years ago he came back to
bring his little grand-nephew, but nobody has seen him since that time.
"Clotilde says that an orphan asylum would have been a far better home
for Jules (that is the boy's name), for Brossard, the caretaker, is so
mean to him. Doesn't that make you think of Prince Ethelried in the
fairy tale? 'Little and lorn; no fireside welcomed him and no lips gave
him a friendly greeting.'
"Marie says that she has often seen Jules down in the field, back of his
uncle's house, tending the goats. I hope that I may see him sometime.
"Oh, dear, the postman has come sooner than I expected. He is talking
down in the hall now, and if I do not post this letter now it will miss
the evening train and be too late for the next mail steamer. Tell mamma
that I will answer all her questions about my lessons and clothes next
week. Oceans of love to everybody in the dear little brown house."
Hastily scrawling her name, Joyce ran out into the hall with her
letter. "Anything for me?" she asked, anxiously, leaning over the
banister to drop the letter into Marie's hand. "One, mademoiselle," was
the answer. "But it has not a foreign stamp."
"Oh, from Cousin Kate!" exclaimed Joyce, tearing it open as she went
back to her room. At the door she stooped to pick up a piece of paper
that had dropped from the envelope. It crackled stiffly as she
unfolded it.
"Money!" she exclaimed in surprise. "A whole twenty franc note. What
could Cousin Kate have sent it for?" The last page of the letter
explained.
"I have just remembered that December is not very far off,
and that whatever little Christmas gifts we send home should
soon be started on their way. Enclosed you will find twenty
francs for your Christmas shopping. It is not much, but we
are too far away to send anything but the simplest little
remembrances, things that will not be spoiled in the mail,
and on which little or no duty need be paid. You might buy
one article each day, so that there will be some purpose in
your walks into Tours.
"I am sorry that I can not be with you on Thanksgiving Day.
We will have to drop it from our calendar this year; not the
thanksgiving itself, but the turkey and mince pie part.
Suppose you take a few francs to give yourself some little
treat to mark the day. I hope my dear little girl will not be
homesick all by herself. I never should have left just at
this time if it had not been very necessary."
Joyce smoothed out the bank-note and looked at it with sparkling eyes.
Twenty whole francs! The same as four dollars! All the money that she
had ever had in her whole life put together would not have amounted to
that much. Dimes were scarce in the little brown house, and even pennies
seldom found their way into the children's hands when five pairs of
little feet were always needing shoes, and five healthy appetites must
be satisfied daily.
All the time that Joyce was pinning her treasure securely in her pocket
and putting on her hat and jacket, all the time that she was walking
demurely down the road with Marie, she was planning different ways in
which to spend her fortune.
"Mademoiselle is very quiet," ventured Marie, remembering that one of
her duties was to keep up an improving conversation with her
little mistress.
"Yes," answered Joyce, half impatiently; "I've got something so lovely
to think about, that I'd like to go back and sit down in the garden and
just think and think until dark, without being interrupted by anybody."
This was Marie's opportunity. "Then mademoiselle might not object to
stopping in the garden of the villa which we are now approaching," she
said. "My friend, Clotilde Robard, is housekeeper there, and I have a
very important message to deliver to her."
Joyce had no objection. "But, Marie," she said, as she paused at the
gate, "I think I'll not go in. It is so lovely and warm out here in the
sun that I'll just sit here on the steps and wait for you."
Five minutes went by and then ten. By that time Joyce had decided how to
spend every centime in the whole twenty francs, and Marie had not
returned. Another five minutes went by. It was dull, sitting there
facing the lonely highway, down which no one ever seemed to pass. Joyce
stood up, looked all around, and then slowly sauntered down the road a
short distance.
Here and there in the crevices of the wall blossomed a few hardy wild
flowers, which Joyce began to gather as she walked. "I'll go around this
bend in the road and see what's there," she said to herself. "By that
time Marie will surely be done with her messages."
No one was in sight in any direction, and feeling that no one could be
in hearing distance, either, in such a deserted place, she began to
sing. It was an old Mother Goose rhyme that she hummed over and over, in
a low voice at first, but louder as she walked on.
Around the bend in the road there was nothing to be seen but a lonely
field where two goats were grazing. On one side of it was a stone wall,
on two others a tall hedge, but the side next her sloped down to the
road, unfenced.
Joyce, with her hands filled with the yellow wild flowers, stood looking
around her, singing the old rhyme, the song that she had taught the baby
to sing before he could talk plainly:
"Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn,
The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn.
Little Blue Blue, oh, where are you?
Oh, where are you-u-u-u?"
The gay little voice that had been rising higher and higher, sweet as
any bird's, stopped suddenly in mid-air; for, as if in answer to her
call, there was a rustling just ahead of her, and a boy who had been
lying on his back, looking at the sky, slowly raised himself out of
the grass.
For an instant Joyce was startled; then seeing by his wooden shoes and
old blue cotton blouse that he was only a little peasant watching the
goats, she smiled at him with a pleasant good morning.
He did not answer, but came towards her with a dazed expression on his
face, as if he were groping his way through some strange dream. "It is
time to go in!" he exclaimed, as if repeating some lesson learned long
ago, and half forgotten.
Joyce stared at him in open-mouthed astonishment. The little fellow had
spoken in English. "Oh, you must be Jules," she cried. "Aren't you? I've
been wanting to find you for ever so long."
[Illustration: "HE CAME TOWARDS HER WITH A DAZED EXPRESSION ON HIS
FACE."]
The boy seemed frightened, and did not answer, only looked at her with
big, troubled eyes. Thinking that she had made a mistake, that she
had not heard aright, Joyce spoke in French. He answered her timidly.
She had not been mistaken; he was Jules; he had been asleep, he told
her, and when he heard her singing, he thought it was his mother calling
him as she used to do, and had started up expecting to see her at last.
Where was she? Did mademoiselle know her? Surely she must if she
knew the song.
It was on the tip of Joyce's tongue to tell him that everybody knew that
song; that it was as familiar to the children at home as the chirping of
crickets on the hearth or the sight of dandelions in the spring-time.
But some instinct warned her not to say it. She was glad afterwards,
when she found that it was sacred to him, woven in as it was with his
one beautiful memory of a home. It was all he had, and the few words
that Joyce's singing had startled from him were all that he remembered
of his mother's speech.
If Joyce had happened upon him in any other way, it is doubtful if their
acquaintance would have grown very rapidly. He was afraid of strangers;
but coming as she did with the familiar song that was like an old
friend, he felt that he must have known her sometime,--that other time
when there was always a sweet voice calling, and fireflies twinkled
across a dusky lawn.
Joyce was not in a hurry for Marie to come now. She had a hundred
questions to ask, and made the most of her time by talking very fast.
"Marie will be frightened," she told Jules, "if she does not find me at
the gate, and will think that the gypsies have stolen me. Then she will
begin to hunt up and down the road, and I don't know what she would say
if she came and found me talking to a strange child out in the fields,
so I must hurry back. I am glad that I found you. I have been wishing so
long for somebody to play with, and you seem like an old friend because
you were born in America. I'm going to ask madame to ask Brossard to let
you come over sometime."
Jules watched her as she hurried away, running lightly down the road,
her fair hair flying over her shoulders and her short blue skirt
fluttering. Once she looked back to wave her hand. Long after she was
out of sight he still stood looking after her, as one might gaze
longingly after some visitant from another world. Nothing like her had
ever dropped into his life before, and he wondered if he should ever see
her again.