_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.