_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.