CHAPTER IV.
A LETTER AND A MEETING.
Nearly a week later Joyce sat at her desk, hurrying to finish a letterbefore the postman's arrival.
"Dear Jack," it began.
"You and Mary will each get a letter this week. Hers is the fairy talethat Cousin Kate told me, about an old gate near here. I wrote it downas well as I could remember. I wish you could see that gate. It getsmore interesting every day, and I'd give most anything to see what lieson the other side. Maybe I shall soon, for Marie has a way of findingout anything she wants to know. Marie is my new maid. Cousin Kate wentto Paris last week, to be gone until nearly Christmas, so she got Marieto take care of me.
"It seems so odd to have somebody button my boots and brush my hair, andtake me out to walk as if I were a big doll. I have to be very dignifiedand act as if I had always been used to such things. I believe Mariewould be shocked to death if she knew that I had ever washed dishes, orpulled 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 Iwere a hundred years old, that I felt as if I should scream. 'Marie,' Isaid, 'I've a mind to throw my muff in the fence-corner and run and hangon behind that wagon that's going down-hill.' She had no idea that I wasin earnest. She just smiled very politely and said, 'Oh, mademoiselle,impossible! How you Americans do love to jest.' But it was no joke. Youcan't imagine how stupid it is to be with nobody but grown people allthe time. I'm fairly aching for a good old game of hi spy or prisoner'sbase 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 rowof trees along it on this side, and several benches where people canwait for the tram-cars that pass down this street and then across thebridge into Tours. Marie found an old friend of hers sitting on one ofthe benches,--such a big fat woman, and oh, such a gossip! Marie saidshe was tired, so we sat there a long time. Her friend's name isClotilde Robard. They talked about everybody in St. Symphorien.
"Then I gossiped, too. I asked Clotilde Robard if she knew why the gatewith the big scissors was never opened any more. She told me that sheused to be one of the maids there, before she married the spice-mongerand was Madame Robard. Years before she went to live there, when the oldMonsieur Ciseaux died, there was a dreadful quarrel about some money.The son that got the property told his brother and sister never todarken his doors again.
OUT WITH MARIE.]
"They went off to America, and that big front gate has never been openedsince they passed out of it. Clotilde says that some people say thatthey put a curse on it, and something awful will happen to the first onewho 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 heshut up the house, sent away all the servants but the two who take careof it, and went off to Algiers to live. Five years ago he came back tobring his little grand-nephew, but nobody has seen him since that time.
"Clotilde says that an orphan asylum would have been a far better homefor Jules (that is the boy's name), for Brossard, the caretaker, is somean to him. Doesn't that make you think of Prince Ethelried in thefairy tale? 'Little and lorn; no fireside welcomed him and no lips gavehim a friendly greeting.'
"Marie says that she has often seen Jules down in the field, back of hisuncle'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 talkingdown in the hall now, and if I do not post this letter now it will missthe evening train and be too late for the next mail steamer. Tell mammathat I will answer all her questions about my lessons and clothes nextweek. Oceans of love to everybody in the dear little brown house."
Hastily scrawling her name, Joyce ran out into the hall with herletter. "Anything for me?" she asked, anxiously, leaning over thebanister to drop the letter into Marie's hand. "One, mademoiselle," wasthe answer. "But it has not a foreign stamp."
"Oh, from Cousin Kate!" exclaimed Joyce, tearing it open as she wentback to her room. At the door she stooped to pick up a piece of paperthat had dropped from the envelope. It crackled stiffly as sheunfolded it.
"Money!" she exclaimed in surprise. "A whole twenty franc note. Whatcould Cousin Kate have sent it for?" The last page of the letterexplained.
"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 shehad ever had in her whole life put together would not have amounted tothat much. Dimes were scarce in the little brown house, and even penniesseldom found their way into the children's hands when five pairs oflittle feet were always needing shoes, and five healthy appetites mustbe satisfied daily.
All the time that Joyce was pinning her treasure securely in her pocketand putting on her hat and jacket, all the time that she was walkingdemurely down the road with Marie, she was planning different ways inwhich to spend her fortune.
"Mademoiselle is very quiet," ventured Marie, remembering that one ofher duties was to keep up an improving conversation with herlittle mistress.
"Yes," answered Joyce, half impatiently; "I've got something so lovelyto think about, that I'd like to go back and sit down in the garden andjust think and think until dark, without being interrupted by anybody."
This was Marie's opportunity. "Then mademoiselle might not object tostopping in the garden of the villa which we are now approaching," shesaid. "My friend, Clotilde Robard, is housekeeper there, and I have avery important message to deliver to her."
Joyce had no objection. "But, Marie," she said, as she paused at thegate, "I think I'll not go in. It is so lovely and warm out here in thesun 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 tospend every centime in the whole twenty francs, and Marie had notreturned. Another five minutes went by. It was dull, sitting therefacing the lonely highway, down which no one ever seemed to pass. Joycestood up, looked all around, and then slowly sauntered down the road ashort distance.
Here and there in the crevices of the wall blossomed a few hardy wildflowers, which Joyce began to gather as she walked. "I'll go around thisbend in the road and see what's there," she said to herself. "By thattime Marie will surely be done with her messages."
No one was in sight in any direction, and feeling that no one could bein hearing distance, either, in such a deserted place, she began tosing. It was an old Mother Goose rhyme that she hummed over and over, ina low voice at first, but louder as she walked on.
Around the bend in the road there was nothing to be seen but a lonelyfield 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 theroad, unfenced.
Joyce, with her hands filled with the yellow wild flowers, stood lookingaround her, singing the old rhyme, the song that she had taught the babyto 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 asany bird's, stopped suddenly in mid-air; for, as if in answer to hercall, there was a rustling just ahead of her, and a boy who had beenlying on his back, looking at the sky, slowly raised himself out ofthe grass.
For an instant Joyce was startled; then seeing by his wooden shoes andold blue cotton blouse that he was only a little peasant watching thegoats, she smiled at him with a pleasant good morning.
He did not answer, but came towards her with a dazed expression on hisface, as if he were groping his way through some strange dream. "It istime to go in!" he exclaimed, as if repeating some lesson learned longago, and half forgotten.
Joyce stared at him in open-mouthed astonishment. The little fellow hadspoken in English. "Oh, you must be Jules," she cried. "Aren't you? I'vebeen wanting to find you for ever so long."
"HE CAME TOWARDS HER WITH A DAZED EXPRESSION ON HISFACE."]
The boy seemed frightened, and did not answer, only looked at her withbig, troubled eyes. Thinking that she had made a mistake, that shehad not heard aright, Joyce spoke in French. He answered her timidly.She had not been mistaken; he was Jules; he had been asleep, he toldher, and when he heard her singing, he thought it was his mother callinghim 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 sheknew the song.
It was on the tip of Joyce's tongue to tell him that everybody knew thatsong; that it was as familiar to the children at home as the chirping ofcrickets 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 hisone beautiful memory of a home. It was all he had, and the few wordsthat Joyce's singing had startled from him were all that he rememberedof his mother's speech.
If Joyce had happened upon him in any other way, it is doubtful if theiracquaintance would have grown very rapidly. He was afraid of strangers;but coming as she did with the familiar song that was like an oldfriend, he felt that he must have known her sometime,--that other timewhen there was always a sweet voice calling, and fireflies twinkledacross a dusky lawn.
Joyce was not in a hurry for Marie to come now. She had a hundredquestions 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 atthe gate, and will think that the gypsies have stolen me. Then she willbegin to hunt up and down the road, and I don't know what she would sayif 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 solong for somebody to play with, and you seem like an old friend becauseyou were born in America. I'm going to ask madame to ask Brossard to letyou 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 skirtfluttering. Once she looked back to wave her hand. Long after she wasout of sight he still stood looking after her, as one might gazelongingly after some visitant from another world. Nothing like her hadever dropped into his life before, and he wondered if he should ever seeher again.
The Gate of the Giant Scissors Page 4