“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.”