Mont St. Michel

“LITTLE MISS FIX-IT”

Nancy’s mother, who as a young art student had lived in France, knew all the places that Cynthia, as a younger art student, ought to see and go.

“Don’t,” she told Cynthia, “despise the well-worn routes just because they are well-worn. Later on you can go to the out of the way places too. But you need the talked-about places as a basis for comparison, just as you need to know black and white in order to paint color.”

The idea interested Cynthia. “What do you call the well-worn places.”

“Mother means those that are full of tourists and trippers,” explained Nancy.

“Yes, of course,” said Mrs. Brewster, “Just the sort of places you saw in Paris. The Louvre, the tomb of Napoleon, Montmartre, the Arc de Triomphe. You don’t need to rush through them, Baedecker in hand—though a guidebook is always useful—like the American couple out of Punch. ‘You see the outside Marthy, and I’ll see the inside, and we’ll cut the time in half.’”

Cynthia laughed. She knew those tourists, so intent on gathering data to relate at home that they were blind to real beauty, to all the little local color and pleasant customs of the people. “But besides Paris, what would you suggest?”

“Well, there’s Carcassonne, of course.”

“Oh yes!” agreed Cynthia. Carcassonne had been on her list too.

“Then I think you should see a bit of the Basque country. It’s lovely, though it has become a little self-conscious lately, with so many books being written about it.”

Nancy had a suggestion here. “Don’t you think Cynthia would adore Mouleon Soule?” And Mrs. Brewster, agreeing, had promised a letter of introduction to an old Basque artist there. “And that will be real local color too. Then there’s Rome and Venice and Florence ...”

Cynthia shook her head. Not much chance of her getting to Italy, not unless the reward for capturing Goncourt, on the ship coming over, should materialize. “Tell me some places near here. Normandy, Brittany.”

“Mont St. Michel!” cried Nancy.

Mrs. Brewster nodded. “I wonder ...” she began.

Nancy took her up. “If we couldn’t go too?”

“Oh that would be wonderful!” cried Cynthia. And so the matter was arranged.

Mont St. Michel was famous for four things; its tides and the island with its mile long causeway to land, its fortress abbey, and omelets. Nature was responsible for the first two, Normandy abbots and the wealth which William of Normandy had filched from England, for the second, and Madame Poulard now dead, but still surviving in her reputation, for the third.

It was to partake of the third that Cynthia was seated, on the evening of her first day at Mont St. Michel, before a red checked cloth covered table in the Hotel Tete D’or. It was a distracting scent. The great arched room with ceiling darkened by the smoke of many fires, the enormous fireplace under the great cowled chimney, and the fascinating process of mixing that omelet which Madame Poulard had made famous among gourmets all the world over. And for a further distraction there was the couple at the corner table; the man so dark and slim and ... well, interesting looking, the girl so pretty, and so angry. Cynthia’s attention was doubly held, by the girl’s prettiness and by her anger.

Nancy’s tug at her sleeve pulled Cynthia’s attention back to the omelet making. This was a ceremony, a rite in itself that people came from all over the world to see. A huge bowl of sweet butter, eggs, and the long handled iron skillet held in Madam’s skillful hand. From the butter she sliced a great golden gob, dumped it into the pan and held it over the small fire in the big fireplace.

“I knew the original Madam Poulard,” Mrs. Brewster was saying. “She and her husband were the handsomest couple in Normandy, or so it was said. Look ... the eggs go in now.”

The little cook, plump and trim in her black dress and neat white apron poured the golden mass into the hot butter, stirred it slowly with a long handled spoon. “Funny to think how small a thing, like an omelet, can make a place famous,” mused Cynthia.

“Oh, but she made it an art. Like your child portraits, Cynthia,” said Mrs. Brewster.

A delicious smell, wood smoke, butter, the omelet. Cynthia grew ravenous just watching the process. In another moment it would be ready for them. And again her attention sought the couple at the further table. The man looked almost French, thin and wiry and intense, the girl had buttercup hair that gleamed in the lamplight, and slim, capable hands with which she gestured as she talked.

The finished omelet was served piping hot upon a plate warmed before the fire. When Cynthia had finished the last delicious morsel she looked up again. The party of two had become three by the addition of an older man, obviously the father of the girl.

“I wonder if they’re engaged,” said Cynthia turning the little emerald on her own slim finger.

“Who’s engaged, Cyn?” asked Nancy. “Listen honey, try the raspberries, with sour cream, they’re delicious.” But then Nancy’s back was toward the interesting couple so she might be excused for a lack of interest. Mrs. Brewster caught Cynthia’s eye and smiled.

“The man looks like a Basque,” she said. “But I think the girl is American. I saw them in our hotel this afternoon.”

The Brewsters, who with Cynthia had come the short but complicated trip from Brittany that morning, planned now to spend several days at Mont St. Michel. After that Cynthia was reconciled to traveling alone again. Meanwhile she and Nancy could paint and explore the abbey fortress and talk Academy gossip, there wouldn’t be such another chance till Cynthia got back to New York.

Exploration got under way immediately after breakfast the next morning. Nancy with her mother’s sketch box, Cynthia with the sketching stool accompanied Mrs. Brewster up the steep cobbled street of the tiny village.

“Just as far as half way up the hill,” directed Mrs. Brewster. “There’s a small garden of cabbages there that takes on the most heavenly color in the sunlight. That is if the man has planted cabbages this year.” The man had, and they were indeed heavenly. Cynthia sucked in her breath at the beauty of the color. One had not guessed that mere cabbages could be so decorative.

Below them stretched stairs and more stairs of the dark purplish brown stone of the island, all the long, steep, curving way up which they had come. Slowly the stairway had widened, houses dropped away and now, level with the eye, rose the second and third stories of the fortress-like dwellings that fringed the town. Chimneys incredibly thick threw long morning shadows of rich blue on salmon pink walls and grey tiled roofs. Round towers lent piquant variety to the outlines and the incongruity of a bedquilt stuffed through the window of a beetling fortress, to air above a frowning keep, made Cynthia’s fingers tingle for paper and pencil with which to note it all down. Below the windows, tiny gardens—something pinkish, something ochre—Cynthia with eyes half closed to shut out shapes of things saw only color where some thrifty Normandy farmer had planted provender for the coming winter. And cabbages, so green they were almost blue, jewel vivid, jewel bright. Cynthia nodded. Tomorrow she would bring her paint box.

“My stool, Cynthia dear.” Amusedly Mrs. Brewster broke in on her reverie. “I’ll be here for two hours at least. Run along and don’t fall off any parapets or into any oubliettes.”

“What’s an oubliette?” asked Cynthia racing upward beside Nancy.

“It’s a ‘forgettery,’” explained Nancy, “and if that doesn’t mean anything to you, my child, it’s an extremely graphic name for the trap-door, underground dungeons that they used to drop you into if you offended a king or an abbot. Monte Cristo stuff, you know. I believe this place is simply riddled with ’em.”

“Ugh! Horrid people, kings and abbots!”

“Ah, but they could build. Look up, honey!”

Above now, far above them, rose the peaks and pinnacles of this fairy-tale place. Below them the whole island rose like a hand from the sea, joined to the mainland by only the single mile-long causeway. Ringed about the finger’s root were the far off houses, fronting the sea, backs to the land. And surmounting the whole, like a thimble atop the finger, the abbey, rising, ever rising in the still clear air to the final peak of all, the glittering image of Saint Michel de la mer du peril; of the perilous sea. The Archangel, it seemed, loved heights. From the tip of the tower that crowned his abbey, wings of gold outspread, sword uplifted, his mailed foot crushed the devil who crawled beneath, and atop one foot perched the golden cock, symbol of eternal vigilance.

Cynthia, gazing skyward murmured, “Lovely!”

“Marvelous!” whispered Nancy looking seaward. The sands of St. Michel, those treacherous sands through which the tide can rip and roar in minutes, seconds almost, shone far below them now, peacefully dry, almost lavender in the sun, creating a false horizon for the fringe of little houses along the shore.

“Let’s get a guide,” suggested Nancy turning back. “I detest them as a rule. But this place is a perfect labyrinth, and besides you can pick up so much information the guide books don’t give you.”

At the entrance gate, where a few francs bought admittance, they found that a group would start through the abbey in about twenty minutes. Preferring to wait outside they braced themselves against the wall where the sun was pleasantly warm and watched their fellow tourists assemble.

A little old lady and her husband, both very winded from the long climb. “From Ioway,” Cynthia bet Nancy in a whisper. “And on their wedding anniversary trip.”

“Heads you win, tails I lose,” said Nancy scornfully. “But these are Britishers, I’ll bet my new tube of Prussian blue.”

Sober hats set high on the head, bright complexions, and, as they drew nearer up the stair, broad A’s and clipped G’s proved Nancy to be right. Next three French sisters in black and white, from some religious order.

“Probably from a convent in Canada,” hazarded Nancy, listening to their French. “They come on holiday to visit the churches in France. Mother and I have crossed with groups of them several times; they are always so picturesque and so jolly. And here’s a pretty girl for your sketch book, Cyn.”

It was the girl from the restaurant, the girl with the buttercup hair. And her young man. The girl seemed to half recognize Cynthia, for she gave a little tremulous smile, then turned abruptly away as though she wasn’t sure whether they had met or not.

“Mesdames et Messieurs ...” began the guide in shrill tones and, fumbling with an enormous bunch of keys, unlocked the great door to the abbey. For the next hour he led them through cloisters twelve hundred feet above the ocean, through the refectory and the ancient church, through banqueting halls in which kings and princes had feasted. “They say Harold the Saxon was a guest and a prisoner here of William of Normandy before William became the Conqueror,” translated Nancy.

Beyond her the young man also translated for the benefit of the girl with him. Between them Cynthia managed to pick up most of the guide’s information. They were in the banqueting hall, that long gray drafty hall with its many pillars, and Cynthia, gazing about her, tried to transform it to the way it must have been when Harold was the unwilling guest. A place of flaring torches, lords and ladies in silks and velvets, in trailing veils and sky-pointing hennins, lifting their heavy trains from the rushes that covered the floor. There would be tapestries, rippling along the walls as the drafts caught them, painted ceilings that had long ago faded to gray and stone color, minstrels to make music, great dogs to lie about on the rush-strewn floor, and the delicious scent of long forgotten foods from those great fireplaces in the kitchens beyond. Yes, the far off times must have been fun too. She wished she had been here then.

But the oubliettes changed her opinion on that. Only a few of them, so the guide said, now remained open to the public. The others, cut down through the solid rock, lay far, far below, damp, almost airless, foul with rats and crawling things.

“And if the abbot or the king wanted you out of the way, you lived for years down there,” said Nancy.

One, not far below the dining hall, was a tiny place, dark, airless, with scarcely room to lie or sit or stand upright.

“Do you mean to say,” asked Cynthia, “that those people up above could dance and sing and ... and enjoy themselves with all those prisoners down below them?”

The group had gone on a way; but Cynthia, lingering behind to explore, had jumped down into the oubliette to see just what kind of a place it really was. She spoke from the floor, some distance below Nancy’s neat brown oxfords.

Nancy shrugged. “That’s the middle ages, darling.”

Cynthia reached up. “Give me a hand, Nancy. I want to get out of here. Ugh ...” once on the floor beside the other, “I hate this place, it’s haunted by all those horrible things they used to do.”

Nancy looked at her queerly. “Not see any more? All right. I’m willing,” and five minutes later they stood once more before the great western entrance looking out over the sands and the town below.

“Ou ... uf!” Cynthia drew a great breath of the free air. “I’d go off my nut if we stayed in there much longer. It’s beautiful, but gosh, it was cruel. Let’s go somewhere and pick daisies and get the smell of those forgetteries out of our noses. C’mon, Nannie.” And grabbing Nancy’s wrist she hauled her headlong down the stairs towards the town below.

As they raced past, Mrs. Brewster was still absorbed in her cabbages and did not even look up. The steps narrowed, they came to the block-long village with its dark, tiny windowed houses where were displayed all the usual tricks to catch the tourist trade.

“Daisies!” cried Cynthia. “Where can we get daisies?” and looked about her. Steep cobbled streets, the sands ahead.

“Let’s stop and get us a citronade, and I’ll ask,” suggested the diplomatic Nancy. While they sipped the sweet warmish drink from thick tumblers she chattered with the waitress. “It’s all right,” she reported. “There are pretty flowers for you to pick, my child. Oh, there’s your blonde friend’s boy friend, and all alone.”

Cynthia had noticed him too, furiously striding down the steep street. Where was the buttercup girl? “They were quarreling last night,” she said, watching the nervous wiry back as it turned the lower corner of the street, entered the hotel. “And then her father came in. She didn’t seem very happy today either.” “Little Miss Fix-it,” teased Nancy. “What’s it to you? Come on now, we’ll go hunt daisies.”

At the very foot of the street where, at high tide the seas must wash, where boats lay, small and deserted on the yellow sand, footprints led along the base of the cliff. Here, rounding the turn, the wind blew freshly from off the coasts of England, small crabs scuttled to shelter as they passed and far far above them Saint Michel dominated his devil and the cock eternally crowed.

Above them suddenly rose steep cliffs covered with coarse grass, and, if not daisies, at least their French cousins. No houses here, though piles of rubble and a bit of crumbled wall told that the abbey buildings must once have straggled down the face of this cliff. Far above small peasant children climbed and called, or swung bare legs from an outcrop of rock, and still higher a small hunched figure sat all alone on a rock. Cynthia was about to say, “Oh, there’s the little American,” but remembering what Nancy had just called her, held her tongue and busied herself with collecting a bouquet for Mrs. Brewster’s room. Presently wearying of this she sat on a stone to survey the steep climb she had already come and the sands beyond that. It seemed to her that the color of the sand had changed, darkened, in the past ten minutes. Idly she noted that the children had gone; already she could see them scampering past the rock at the base, saw them disappear. She looked back of her. Nothing here, no connection with the town. To get home one must go the way they had come. Just beyond where Nancy was still picking flowers was the American girl. Cynthia’s gaze took her in with the rest of the scene. Suddenly she was startled almost out of her wits by a small figure that tore past her, yelling at the top of his lungs.

She sprang to her feet, and was still more startled to see Nancy come pelting after the boy.

“La marÉe ... la marÉe montante ...”

“What is it?” asked Cynthia, gazing after the small figure that had passed. A good model that boy would be, with his wind blown curls, his startled eyes.

Nancy grabbed her arm, shouted in her ear, “Run ... run ...” “What ... why?” Cynthia’s feet pounded after Nancy. Over her shoulder Nancy flung, “‘The tide,’ he said. ‘The tide is rising.’”

Cynthia looked back. The girl behind them had risen from her rock. With a wrench Cynthia freed her arm from Nancy’s grasp, put hands to mouth and megaphoned. “Hurry! Hurry! The tide!”

She seemed to get the idea for immediately she came leaping down over the rocks. Cynthia paused only once to glance behind and see what good speed the girl was making, then raced to catch up with Nancy. Almost together the three reached the sands.

So that was why they had changed so rapidly from ochre to lavender. Water, tidal water, seeping swiftly, menacingly from beneath, pouring in from every side. But the sand at the base of the rocks was still dry, it was hardly five minutes race around the rocks to the end of the little street. Hearts pounding, breath sobbing, they reached it together.

Cynthia could not stop there. She wanted to reach her hotel, her room, feel safe ground, familiar ground that could not dissolve into seas beneath her feet, before she stopped. As she tore through the hallway, passed the astonished eyes of Madame at the desk, Nancy was close behind. Together they dragged the little American in with them, slumped together on the two beds.

“Well!” gasped Cynthia.

“Well!” Nancy echoed her. “My good gosh, Cynthia, that was a close call!” The buttercup girl rose first, stood for a long moment at the window looking out. “Look here ...” she said at last, seemed to have trouble with her voice and spoke again, “Come here, you two.” It was the first they had heard her speak.

Cynthia who had by now slightly recovered her breath, felt that her knees would bear her again. But when she looked out she nearly lost what breath she had gained.

“Nancy ... oh Nancy!”

From base of rock to farthest horizon the sea rushed, tumbling, foaming, stealthily rising, rising. Ten minutes later and they would have been engulfed in it, even five minutes later and the quicksands, forerunner of the rush of waves, would have caught them. “They say it rises sixteen feet every tide.” Nancy’s voice was shaking.

The best thing that could have happened was the entrance of Mrs. Brewster. Having heard Madame’s story at the desk she immediately took cheerful charge of the situation. “We’ll have lunch here in the room,” she suggested. “I’ll order anything you like, and then all three of you had better lie down for an hour. This is Miss ...?”

“Comstock, Betsey Comstock,” murmured the buttercup girl.

Cynthia, endeavoring to follow Mrs. Brewster’s cheerful lead, asked if the hotel couldn’t serve some escargots, snails. She had heard they were good, and she said she felt in a mood to experiment. Actually not even snails for lunch seem very reckless after their recent experience. Betsey still seemed a little dazed but Nancy had several wildly fantastic suggestions and Mrs. Brewster rang for the waiter, ordered lunch to be brought to their room.

They had scarcely sat down to eat when a knock sounded imperatively on the door. As Mrs. Brewster answered it Cynthia saw beyond her shoulder a man’s face, distraught and white.

“Oh, Madame,” he cried. “Is Miss ... I was told ... that is. ...”

“Robert!” Betsey Comstock had rushed past Mrs. Brewster, and flung herself into the young man’s arms. Smiling, Mrs. Brewster discreetly closed the door, but murmurs and soft voices as though in reconciliation sounded beyond it. The girls were half way through lunch when Betsey, such a changed Betsey, all smiles and radiance, reappeared.

“Apologies, please,” she begged charmingly. “Robert had a luncheon engagement with a man he met here at the hotel, an architect. So I did not ask him in. But the rest, I’d like to explain.”

To Cynthia it sounded very romantic, a young Basque, Yberri was the name, educated in America for his career of architecture and Betsey, now engaged to be married to him, with her own career as a costume designer. What could be nicer?

“Who do you work for?” asked the practical Nancy. “Have you sold anything yet?”

“I had my first act in Cochran’s Revue, the recent one, in London.” “Oh! Moms and I saw that. Did you see the lovely ballet with the Chinese pagodas on their heads?”

Betsey flushed a little and smiled. “That one was mine. ...”

“Cynthia, she’s good,” Nancy turned enthusiastically to the others. “The stuff was swell. ...”

Betsey continued. They were to be married next week, in Paris, and return to the States, Dad and Robert and she. Betsey had letters of introduction to two or three big theatrical producers in New York and promise of further work with Cochran.

“Grand!” applauded Nancy.

But the trouble, it seemed, was this: Robert didn’t want his wife to continue her work after they were married.

“Oh dear!” murmured Cynthia. Just suppose Chick didn’t want her to keep on with her covers. But then Chick was an artist also; he understood.

“Stop your painting?” asked Nancy, puzzled to understand anyone in a family that didn’t design or illustrate or paint. “Oh no, he’s willing I should keep on with the designing, but not willing I should earn money with it.”

Which explained their quarrel at the table last night, explained why Betsey had gone off today by herself on the rocks.

“But now it’s all right, isn’t it?” asked Cynthia.

Betsey’s smile became somewhat less bright. “No ... o,” she admitted. “We made it up, the quarrel I mean. But nothing is decided, nothing definite.”

“It’ll work out somehow,” consoled Cynthia. “Just see if it doesn’t.”

Betsey of the buttercup hair was still on her mind next morning. Nancy had volunteered to go on a hunt for the small boy of the hill, the one who had warned them of the tide. Cynthia had an idea that he would make a good model for her next magazine cover. She herself was sharing the privilege of the cabbage patch and the shade of the parapet with Mrs. Brewster, both painting busily, when Betsey’s voice sounded slightly above Cynthia’s right ear.

“’S good,” murmured the voice. Cynthia looked up. “Hi!” she said, around the paintbrush in her mouth, but her gaze wandered back to the sunny ochre of the sands and the blue-green of the cabbages. Difficult to depict sunlight against that false horizon; you need blue sky to make a landscape look sunny.

“I’m going up to the abbey,” whispered Betsey with an eye on Mrs. Brewster busily painting along the wall.

“Stop on the way back. And don’t fall into any oubliette.” But after she had gone Cynthia still worried about her. It was all mixed up with the hue of cabbages in sunlight. Why was Betsey alone, had they quarreled again? If that Robert Yberri had any sense he’d let her keep on with her work ... oh glory, how did you get the color of that shadow! Cynthia took a peek at Mrs. Brewster’s oil sketch, almost groaned at the comparison, but mixed a tiny drop of rose madder with her wash and cocked her head on one side. Perhaps that was it!

An hour later she put the last touch on it, yawned, stretched and looked up. Mrs. Brewster had tactfully stolen away. Below the fortress wall the sands were slowly darkening into lavender as they had yesterday and the shadow of the wall no longer gave her shelter. Time to pack up and go home.

But with her paints packed, her box strapped neatly, she perched on the wall to watch again that relentless tide. First the darkening of the sand. One could not say at just what instant the lavender began to gleam with moisture, at what precise second one noted water seeping into this hollow and that, at what tick of the watch the hollows joined, ran into each other, became larger, ran into a hundred thin, continuous streams across the wide expanse of sand.

Someone was coming up the steps, a man with thick brown hair uncovered, with American plus fours.

“Miss Wanstead?” asked Betsey’s Robert.

Cynthia nodded, then glanced back at the sands below, and gasped. Where an instant before had been wet sand with a few thin streams across it a dozen rushing rivers now flowed, joining swiftly into a relentless, heaving sea.

“Frightening, isn’t it?” said Betsey’s Robert. “We saw it rise like that two days ago. That’s why I’m here. I know how dangerous it is and I want to thank you for bringing Betsey back yesterday, you and Miss Brewster.”

“Oh,” murmured Cynthia. “It ... it wasn’t anything.” Then she laughed. “I mean, of course, it was a lot. Only she would have got back. ...”

“She says she wouldn’t. Of course she could have stayed there eight or nine hours.”

“Or you could have sent for her in a boat,” suggested the more practical Cynthia.

“Anyway, I’m tremendously grateful.” He sat down on the wall beside her. “Imposing, isn’t it?” He gestured toward the great abbey behind them. “One of the most imposing sites in all the world, and combined with what man has done to it, it’s stupendous. You’re an artist, aren’t you?”

Cynthia admitted it. “And you too ... and Betsey.”

“Betsey’s a smart kid.” And suddenly Cynthia thought, “Why, he’s awfully in love with her,” and liked him better, even if he were as stubborn as a mule.

“Is she?” she asked aloud and ingenuously, so that Robert had to brag a little. “She’s worked for Cochran, you know; costumes,” with quiet pride in the ability of his fiancÉe.

“Marvelous. She must be good. Though of course he takes lots of beginners, doesn’t he, for a short tryout?” She knew nothing of the kind, but spoke as one with inside information.

Robert flushed and set his jaw. “Not at all,” he said stiffly. “Betsey’s good enough to keep on with him, show after show. And to get work in New York too, if she wishes.”

“Really?” Cynthia’s eyebrows expressed her scepticism. “Only of course, once she’s married. ... I mean no girl can really manage two jobs, can she?”

She almost giggled at the way he took it. “I ...” his mouth hung open a minute. But stubborn people were contrary, too, and Robert was no exception. “Well, after all, I expect to keep on with architecture after I’m married.”

“Oh yes, but a man ...” Cynthia’s air was still one of polite incredulity. “Here’s Betsey now.”

Buttercup hair windblown, cheeks very pink. “But my dear, you’ve been crying again,” thought Cynthia and wondered if it wouldn’t be tactful to withdraw immediately. Betsey herself answered that.

“Finished your sketch, Cynthia? I’m so glad you waited. I’ve got a telegram to show you. ... I’m leaving tonight, if I can get across to the mainland.” She was carefully avoiding Robert’s eyes.

Betsey had a little pink slip in her hand. Cynthia took it and read aloud, as well as she could, the garbled English of the French wire. “Miss Elizabeth Comstock. Hotel des Poissons ... and so on. Please be in London Monday the eleventh, my office. Stop. Wish to talk over two scenes in new revue. Stop. Charles Cochran.”

So. Betsey had made her decision. What would Betsey’s Robert say to that. Cynthia looked up, was about to burst into congratulations when the man forestalled her.

“Betsey! I’m so glad! But hadn’t we better hurry? I’ve got to pack and you know how slow I am. We’ll get your Dad to chaperon us as far as London and get married there instead of in Paris. This Cochran thing is too grand a chance to miss.”

Cynthia, viewing Betsey’s radiant astonishment, thought almost smugly, “What price Nancy’s little Miss Fix-it?”