Читать книгу Lark Ascending - Mazo de la Roche - Страница 8

JOSIE FROWARD could talk fluently enough when she was alone with Fay Palmas. Then she was freed from the shyness that hedged her in when she was with strangers. She was free also from the necessity of watching Diego, paying him the homage of watchfulness and female sneers. She and Fay talked for hours, interrupting each other, chiming in on each other, but always developing one theme, like chimes in a steeple. High on a hill the bakeshop stood with its flight of steps leading to the door. They would hear someone mount the steps, the bell inside the shop door would jangle, and their talk cease. Josie would wipe her hands and go in behind the counter, looking into the eyes of the customer with her enquiring, rather hostile, look. She would carefully place the fresh, warm purchase in a paper bag, ring the cash register, and hurry back to chime in with the talk. The two exulted over their impending freedom. They honestly mourned for the dead baker, yet they could not have borne to have had him back and become his prisoners.

The October gales (once that Indian summer was by) lashed the sea, strewed jellyfish and starfish on the beach, and drove flecks of foam and dead leaves through the street. And all in bright sunshine. There was not a cloudy day. All foretold excitement and more excitement. And, unsubstantial as the dead leaves, feckless as the foam, gossip scurried through Saltport. . . . What were those Palmases up to? For Josie was included under that name. The doubtful glamour that always hung about them was intensified. The townspeople, sallow, sharp-featured, with eyes as blue as their summer sea, sought to pierce the soul of young Diego with one glance, as he slouched by them on the street, his dark brow exposed beneath his beret, a lazy, contemptuous smile curving his lips. For the Palmas family were scornful of their neighbours even while they detested the imperfections of each other. Fay Palmas had never forgiven her husband for becoming a baker, yet she thought him the most intellectual man in Saltport. He had despised what he had considered her lack of intellect, yet he had thought her above all other women of the town. Josie was constantly chafed by Fay and Diego, but put them on a pedestal. Diego felt that he and his family were the subject of envious gossip. Now that the Summer Colony was gone he had no friend except Purley Bond. Not a day passed but Diego spent an hour or more in the drug store discussing plans for the future with Bond. The soda-water fountain and its appurtenances had been put out of sight, and Bond had settled down to a long season of dignified repose. The bathing-caps, beach balls, fly powder and picture post cards had been taken from the window, and only the large glass jars filled with green fluid, that had entranced Diego as a child, remained. He could no longer treat Diego to ice-cream soda, but gave him acid drops and cigarettes instead, for he liked his visits. He led him on to talk about Fay. He cherished any remark of hers repeated by her son, sat alone in his dark corner with his pipe brooding on it, turning it over in his mind, being either encouraged or troubled by it.

Gossip was beginning to connect his name with Fay’s, for, though he always went to the bakery at night, there was always some person to see him and pass the word on. His neighbour heard his gate click and saw him go out. Someone passed him on the street, lingered in a convenient shadow, and saw him go in. What sort of stepfather would he make to Diego? Or was it perhaps Josie he was after? In their anxiety to discover the truth they bought more cakes and pies than ever before, though there was no doubt that the quality had gone down since the death of Palmas. And not only that—neither Josie nor Fay any longer cared. In spirit they were already removed from Saltport.

Then a great disappointment came. The prospective buyer of the business faded away and was not heard from again. No other appeared in his place. Still they were not discouraged. They advertised the business in the Boston papers and put a sign in the window. They hated the sight of the shop and resented the very customers who came to buy.

Fay and Josie made two visits to Boston, leaving Diego to look after the shop. They left what they thought an ample supply for two days (they had reached the point where they no longer minded their bread and cakes being a little stale), but it was not nearly enough. Their customers, hearing that Diego was in charge, thought he might be more communicative than the women and flocked like curious birds to the bakery.

Diego rather enjoyed the unusual situation. He lounged against the counter, cigarette in mouth, handing out what was asked for, and accepting what was given for it with a nonchalant air. To every purchaser he gave, as a sort of premium, some cryptic remark about a flat in Paris, an art course in Rome, or a houseboat on the Thames. He said whatever came into his head, and, between customers, lay on his back on the sofa in the sitting-room nursing the cat. Certainly, thought Saltport, the Palmases were going to the dogs.

Fay and Josie bought new clothes in Boston—the sort of things they had seen in fashion papers but had never worn. They looked so striking when they appeared at the Baptist church in these that the usher all but shewed them into the strangers’ pew. They were poor church-goers, but they went twice that Sunday, Josie sneering at herself for doing it, but carried away by Fay’s exuberance.

Bond did not go to church, but he called the next evening. Fay, in a black crêpe de Chine dress, received him, opening the door of the shop herself and letting him in. She had asked the assistant in a Boston shop for a “simple black dinner dress—not too expensive.” The price of it had terrified her, but she had bought it. The price of the little black dress that the assistant had tried on Josie had terrified Josie so that she had almost screamed, but Fay had bought it without the flicker of an eyelash. Old acquisitive pirate blood was surging in her. The trickle of acquisitive Indian blood stung her into the decking of her body and Josie’s. She was too generous ever to want anything the girl could not have.

“Oh, Fay,” Josie had said, half laughing, half crying, when they were back in their own house, “you must be crazy!”

“There’s nothing extravagant in it,” answered Fay. “We can’t expect to be noticed in Paris if we dress as we dress here. And I should just like these Saltporters to see us in style before we go.”

“But how can we go if no one buys the business?”

“I’ll find a buyer. And if I can’t, Purley Bond will. He’d like nothing so well as to help us.”

“What about marrying him, Fay?”

But Fay shook her head. “No, I must be free—spread my wings first. Of course—if nothing else. . . .”

Josie felt sorry somehow for Purley Bond. Was Fay going to keep him in reserve—a last resort? The image of him came before her mind, his well-shaped, tow-coloured head; his eyes, of a tender blue, under their rough blond brows. He was too good for that. . . . She said rather sharply:

“You hate yourself, don’t you?”

But Fay was not offended. Nothing could offend her in those October days.

The next time they went to Boston she and Josie had their photographs taken. The large “Studio” sort, in enormous folders, by the most expensive photographer. Fay told him that they were New Yorkers who had taken a house in Saltport for the sake of her son’s health. She had scarcely uttered the words when a superstitious fear overtook her. What if she should bring some terrible illness to Diego! Illness could be induced by thought—it was mental—she’d heard that—and there might be an inherited tendency to lung trouble from his father. She hastily repeated the remark, using the word “daughter” instead of “son,” and looked apologetically but firmly at Josie, who returned the look with startled resentment. It was contemptible of Fay so readily to wish an evil on her for the sake of sparing Diego!

What captivated the photographer was how Fay had managed to have a daughter as old as Josie. Josie was twenty-one, but a look of intensity made her seem older. Fay was thirty-eight and scarcely looked more than thirty. The photographs were perfect. Every pose was so good that Fay must order a finished example of each. This so brought up the cost that, when the bill came in, Josie again almost screamed.

Fay placed the five photographs of herself on the table in front of Bond. He was to choose one for himself. Josie had refused even to allow him to see hers.

He sat hunched above the pictures, his fingers clutching his hair, baffled by the problem. He studied each pose with hungry eyes, noting the line of her neck in this, the curve of her side in that, the strange likeness and haunting unlikeness brought out by the camera. Fay did not hurry him. She would have joyfully spent the evening hanging over the photographs with him, aiding his indecision. . . . Josie and Diego sat side by side on the haircloth sofa, looking on.

At last Bond chose one, with a desperate final twist of his yellow hair. He took it home, but, within the week, he visited Boston and bought the other four for himself. One of Josie’s photographs was shewn in the window. He lingered, scarcely interested, to look at it for a moment.

Diego viewed these extravagances with some resentment, especially since he had no part in them. To be sure, presents were brought to him, but these were a new supply of paints and a wrist watch which seemed to indicate that time was flying and that he ought to get to work. He shewed his resentment on the second occasion by locking up the bakery and going duck-shooting with Bond.

When Fay and Josie came home, more than half the supply they had left in the bakery remained. They were aghast. What had happened?

“The natural thing,” answered Diego. He was lolling on the sofa eating a banana. He held it by the stalk, peeling it all the way down, so that it tottered and seemed about to fall on him. The two women regarded him in speechless irritation as he took a large mouthful. When he had swallowed it he said:

“The folks here are getting tired of you gallivanting. They know you’re not interested in the business. And there’s that For Sale card in the window. They’re going to the Model to buy.” The Model Bakery did a second-rate trade near the railway station. He finished the banana, slid the skin across the linoleum under the sofa and turned his face to the wall.

It was a chastened pair of adventuresses who removed the stale bread and cake from the cases and stayed up half the night baking fresh. After that there were no more trips to Boston. Winter descended on them.

Diego still nursed his feeling of resentment against the others. He sat hunched by the stove in the sitting-room reading novels from the lending library, or he sat with Bond in the dim drug store listening while Bond talked. He too was a patron of the library and borrowed a book or two of travels each week. He talked about these to Diego, telling of the strange customs of foreign countries and sketching out trips he would like to make. One night he took Diego home with him to supper. It was the first time the boy had been in his house, and to him it seemed austerely beautiful, quite different from the houses of the Summer Colony, which had been his standard of the artistic and beautiful. He wondered what it would be like to have a house all to oneself and no bakery in front of it—just a nice quiet drug store on the main street where there were few customers to bother one and unlimited supplies of cigarettes and ice-cream soda. He rather envied Bond and told him so.

“Oh, don’t envy me,” said Bond. “I’m a lonely sort of fellow. I’ve no one to care about me.”

“And I don’t suppose you care about anyone,” probed Diego.

“Not many.”

“Well, you’re lucky not to have two women watching everything you do, like I have. Of course, a wife’s all right. I’m not saying anything against a’wife. I’ll probably marry myself when I’m twenty-five or thirty, but a mother and a cousin, who thinks herself superior, make a fellow feel like a little boy. It’s sort of boring.”

“Perhaps a wife would make one feel like that too.”

“Well, I wouldn’t stand any nonsense from a wife. . . . But Josie’s always watching me. Doesn’t seem able to stop watching me if I’m in the room.” He spoke with a certain complacency.

“She’s a queer girl. I certainly don’t interest her. She seldom looks in my direction.”

Diego began to laugh loudly. Then he told Bond what had happened on the day of the duck-shooting. Bond laughed too, but, when he went to bed that night, he was filled with anger at the thought of Fay, tired out after her journey, greeted by cases of unsold cakes, staying up half the night to bake fresh ones. He felt a swift anger against Diego. The thought of Fay baking for the stupid clowns of Saltport disgusted him. He must and would help her to free herself from her bondage. For two months now the idea of selling his own business had been in his head. Why should he rust for the remainder of his days in Saltport? If Fay left it would be intolerable. He knew that he could rent his house for the summer at a good rental. Suddenly he discovered that he was sick and tired, not only of the soda fountain and all that it stood for, but of drugs, prescriptions and everything that had to do with his life in Saltport. Everything and everybody but Fay Palmas. . . . He would never tire of being near her. He also sent an advertisement to a Boston paper.

There was a heavy snowfall that winter, and in February a great storm of wind and sleet came off the sea. It froze again and the sun appeared, shewing Saltport as a port of salt indeed, glittering like Sodom, cursed in whiteness and yet grown proud.

Diego glided along the back passage into the shop. It was empty, as he knew. It was the dinner hour and Fay was laying the table. Josie had run up to her room. He opened the cash register where he had seen his mother put the monthly payment of an hotel, which she supplied with bread, an hour before. It had come into his mind that morning that it was his turn to have a trip into Boston. It was against his mood of resentment to ask his mother for money. He would take it—after all, it was as much his as hers—but he would take it without being seen, and when she discovered the loss, let her say what she would—it was his turn now. She and Josie had had their fling. He never had two cents to rub together. . . .

But, just as he slid the drawer of the register into place, Fay caught him. That faint Indian strain in her made her wary of every sound. He had listened to her singing as she set the dishes out, had heard her voice break and the tune carried on in a clear sweet whistle, had thought the moment safe. But, under cover of the whistle, she had come upon him and caught his wrist and held it. She drew her lips from her fine teeth and stared into his eyes without speaking.

“Let me go!” he snarled, struggling, but she held him fast.

“You little thief!” she exclaimed fiercely.

He raised his voice and shouted:

“It’s as much mine as yours!”

“To think that I’d raise a thief!”

“I’m taking my own.”

“Then why did you sneak about it?”

He gave a roar like a young bull and pulled himself away. The money was scattered over the floor. Josie came running down the stairs to find mother and son facing each other like enemies.

An old woman, a gossip, was cautiously ascending the icy steps to the bakery. Diego threw open the door to her with a grand gesture and she entered, walking, as she had often dreamed she was doing, on a pathway of strewn banknotes. The shop bell clanged. He gave a fierce, tragic, despairing look over his shoulder at his mother, then flung himself out of the door and slithered down the glittering steps.

Josie ate dinner alone. Fay lay upstairs on her bed, weeping. Josie ate in a kind of haze and sat afterward smoking one cigarette after another, brooding on Diego. Twice she was interrupted to serve customers, but she came back, lighted another cigarette and again sank into thought. She despised Diego for what he had done. If he had boldly demanded the money of Fay she would have admired him. But, after all, he was a boy and they had treated him rather badly. His tragic expression haunted her. What was he doing now? She lived over again the time in the studio when he had kissed her, held her in his arms. She had seen each separate hair of his brows and lashes, he had been so close. She rose, stretched out the arm that he had stroked, to its fullest extent, then dropped it to her side. She looked about the untidy dining-room with hatred. Upstairs Fay began to cry loudly, like a child, but Josie sullenly collected the dishes and washed them between interruptions from customers. After a while she carried a cup of coffee to Fay, who drank it thirstily and moaned:

“He will never come back! Oh, he will never come back!”

But Josie knew quite well that Fay was not really frightened. Yet when a blue shadow of evening fell at four o’clock she had a sudden pang of fear herself. She went to the telephone and called up Purley Bond. No—he had not seen Diego. She had been cooking doughnuts. She was hot and tired as she climbed the stairs to Fay’s room. She found her sleeping in the twilight, her dark hair lying across the pillow, even hanging dramatically over the side of the bed to the floor. She woke when Josie came in.

“Has he come back?” she asked instantly.

“No. I’ve baked the doughnuts.”

Fay sat up with a wild look. “As though I wanted to hear about doughnuts! My God, it’s nearly dark! Why did you let me sleep like this?” She got up and began to coil her hair.

“You stay and mind the shop,” said Josie. “I’ll go and find him.”

“Did you telephone Purley?”

“He’s not been there.”

The shop bell clanged. Fay said:

“We mustn’t let anyone know there’s anything wrong. I’ll go down while you look for him.”

Although it had been twilight in the house, the sea and the ice heaped up on the beach were red in the sunset as Josie ran down the sloping street toward the studio. A remembrance had come to her, filling her with horror, of how Diego had once said that the rafters in the studio would be convenient to hang oneself from. He had got a rope and thrown it across one as though in preparation for such a deed, and she had paid his teasing the homage of screaming and pretended fright—just as he had expected. That had been a year ago. But might not the thought have remained in his mind? She felt that he was strange, unaccountable, beyond her understanding.

In the untrampled snow of the little side street one set of footprints was easily discovered. She followed them, placing her own feet in the pure blue-white depth of each. They led to the door of the studio. But none led away. She opened the door softly and went inside. There was a dead dark chill there, and she could see heel-marks of snow on the stairs. She called in a shrill, trembling voice:

“Diego! Are you up there?”

There was no answer. Terror seized her and she hurried out of the studio, closing the door behind her. She went through the snow to the beach and stared up at the windows. Two gulls were flying above the skylight crying and peering down at it as though to see what was inside. The waves made a crunching sound against the broken ice.

She ran up the steep street, not following the tracks now but ploughing through the snow to her knees. She ran along the main street to the drug store and presented herself before Bond, in his dark corner, with a blanched face.

“Come with me to the studio!” she said, trembling all over. “Diego has done something to himself in there!”

Bond switched on the light. He had dropped asleep over a book of travel. Now he blinked under the glare and his pale yellow hair looked white.

“What’s he done?”

“I don’t know. Something awful, I’m sure. He and Fay quarrelled and he burst out of the shop, looking black. I went into the studio and called, but he didn’t answer. There are some gulls flying over the skylight as if there was something queer inside.”

Bond got his hat, and they hurried together to the studio. She had come upon him so suddenly and so distractedly that she had him almost as frightened as herself.

The snow on the steep side street lay in violet shadow, but the ice-covered rocks below the studio shone with a brighter radiance. The sun had disappeared, but the western clouds still discovered his power and spread it on the sea and rocks, giving the impression of a newly created world. Bond and Josie, snow to the knees, went into the studio, she clutching his sleeve as they climbed the stairs.

Above it was almost dark except for a red splash of light that revealed a half-finished study in the nude. A gust of fresh air icier than the dead chill of the room below met them. As they cautiously advanced they saw that the skylight was open and above it hovered the gulls crying loudly, their wings reddened by the afterglow.

Bond struck a match with a hand that trembled a little—there was a genuine sense of horror in the room—and looked about. . . . Diego was lying on the couch with all the quilts and blankets Josie had carefully folded away, heaped on top of him. He was sound asleep. . . . They bent over him and heard his comfortable breathing, smelled the odour of moth balls from the blankets. . . .

“Well, if this isn’t the limit!” said Bond. “He ought to be horsewhipped!” He dragged the bed-clothes off him and shook him. “Wake up, you young scoundrel! I should think you’d be ashamed! You’ve got your mother and Josie almost scared to death!”

“Not me!” cried Josie angrily, as he sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Fay was, poor thing! But not me! I knew it was just bluff!” Her fascinated eyes were fixed on his face, on his fingers, as he rubbed his heavy eyelids. She felt the warmth of him come out to her from under the heavy quilts.

“I don’t know what it was all about,” said Bond, with an unreasoning feeling of compassion for Diego, “but he might have caught his death of cold. I’d better send around a dose of something for him.”

Diego got up and began to manipulate the rope that controlled the skylight. It closed with a noise that sent the gulls off screaming.

“What were they after?” asked Bond, staring up.

“I opened it to let in the sun. Then I threw them some stale rolls that were here.” He shivered audibly. “I’d rather have them about me than women.”

“Nevertheless home’s the place for you, my boy,” said Bond, “and go straight to bed. Josie, you come with me and I’ll give you a dose for him.”

Again they climbed the snowy incline to the main street and separated there, Diego, bareheaded, going in a loose jog-trot toward the bakery.

“He’s a queer boy,” said Bond as they hurried along the deserted street, their steps crunching the packed snow.

“I hate Jimmie sometimes,” answered Josie in a husky voice. “He’s so damned inhuman. He’s just like a cruel glossy cat. He cares for no one but himself. He purrs when he gets what he wants, and when he doesn’t get what he wants he lopes off to some dark hole and hides!”

“Well, there’s nothing very cruel about that, is there?” commented Bond.

“Oh, you don’t understand. He’s got an overpowering sort of personality. . . . Then he and Fay had an awful scrap. They talked at the tops of their voices, and old Mrs. Bell was just coming in and saw the money lying all over the floor.”

“So it was about money!”

She answered only by a small suffocated sound, and when they were in the light of the drug store he saw that she was crying. He brought her something in a small glass.

“Here,” he said, his blue eyes kind, “drink this. It will steady you.”

But she turned her head away and would not touch it. She began to sob loudly. Bond took his father’s watch from his pocket and looked at it. Time to close—and safer too, with Josie in this state. He locked the door and led her to his own corner. He was really distressed. He tried to force her to take the brandy. But she would not touch it. She caught his arm in her hands and held it. Her face was hidden against his shoulder. Bond was amazed, for she had always been distant with him. He looked down at her and saw the lovely colour flushing her cheek. Gently he took the little red knitted hat from her head and stroked her fine hair comfortingly. “Now, Josie—now, Josie,” he repeated, as though soothing a child.

She raised her face to his. Her eyes were wet, her lips looked hot and were trembling from sobs.

“Kiss me,” she breathed. “Kiss me. . . .” Her hands left his arm and were clasped behind his neck.

He could not believe it possible he would be so moved. He held her to him and kissed her—not once, but again and again. They stood together then, locked in each other’s arms, silent and motionless. They heard someone come to the door, try it and go away, the footsteps crunching packed snow.

At last she gave a deep sigh and withdrew herself. She took her hat from his hand and pulled it on her head well over the eyes. She picked up the glass then and drank the brandy.

“Good girl,” he said. “You’ll feel better now.”

He turned away embarrassed and began to prepare something for Diego.

“I suppose you think I’m a queer girl,” she said.

“No. You were just feeling overwrought. It was quite natural for you to . . .”

“I just had to! I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t mean anything—particular——”

He agitated the mixture he was preparing. “I know. I just happened to be on the spot.”

“You needn’t think,” she said quickly, “that I would have done that to anyone.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“For your sake—or mine?”

“Well—for both our sakes——”

“Why?”

“I’d like us to be friends. You’ve never been very friendly with me.”

“What about to-night?”

He gave her an amused look. “You’ll be angry if I tell you what I think about that.”

“I swear I won’t! Tell me—please!”

“Better not.”

“You must!”

“Very well. I think you were pretending to yourself that I was Diego.”

Her colour flamed but she said quietly:

“I daresay you’re right. . . . I’m as silly about him as you are about Fay.”

She had given better than she had got. Bond almost dropped the bottle. “Well—that was a mean one,” he said.

“I didn’t intend to be mean. I just want you to know that we’re in the same boat.”

“And might as well pull together, eh?”

“I’ll help you, if I can.”

Bond was much embarrassed. He fidgeted with the things on his desk to hide it.

“I guess I’ll go,” said Josie.

He took up his hat. “I’ll go with you as far as the door and see how he is. That was a terrible thing for him to do.”

“Better than hanging, though.”

At the door of the bakery she said:

“You wait here and I’ll run in and see if they’ve made it up. Perhaps Fay will want to speak to you.”

In a few minutes she was back.

“She says to come in. They’re sitting on the sofa together. As thick as thieves. What a pair! We do all the worrying.”

They went in.

“Hello, Purley!” called out Fay when she heard his step in the shop. “Come right in! I want you to look at Diego and see if you think I ought to get a doctor. He seems kind of feverish.”

She and her son were sitting pressed close together on the sofa. Their resemblance, not often noticeable, was at the moment striking. They both were flushed, with eyes bright, and under the eyes the skin was brownish dark. Their dark thick hair was ruffled.

Bond felt his pulse, Fay looking up at him with what, he suddenly thought, was a look of animal trust. Diego’s hand hung limp from his, like a child’s.

“How is he?”

“His pulse is a little quick. He ought to get to bed. I’ll come in the morning and take his temperature.”

“Want my supper first,” muttered Diego in a surly, sick-boy voice. “Nothing to eat since breakfast.”

“For pity’s sake, Josie, get us something to eat!” exclaimed Fay. “We’re starving! Purley’s to stay and eat with us. Don’t you say a word against it, Purley!”

Josie laid a new yellow-and-white check cloth on the table and set it with the best dishes. It was the first time Bond had taken a meal with them. She was so excited by the presence of a guest that she took twice as long as usual in preparing the meal. It was laid in the sitting-room so that Diego need not leave the heat which Fay had created by filling the self-feeder to the lid.

“What are you giving us, Josie?” asked Fay. “Let’s see—ham and eggs, fried potatoes, that’s all right.” She drew Josie aside. “What’s to finish on?”

“Canned peaches,” answered Josie, “and cocoanut cake. There are two pies left in the case—mince and pumpkin. Which will you have?”

“Which would you like?” Fay asked of Bond, with a happy intimate look.

“Let Diego choose,” answered Bond a little grimly. “It’s his party.”

“Punkin!” shouted Diego.

The four who were to have so many meals together sat down.

Fay had had the table moved beside the sofa so that Diego might not be caused the exertion of crossing the room. He sat up tousle-headed beside it, beaming with satisfaction. Bond had his back against the stove and his rather pale skin soon glowed a deep pink. Fay had coiled up her hair so rapidly that it was now of itself uncoiling, and curled, like a snake ready to spring, on her shoulder. She was oblivious of everything but her relief of spirit. She praised everything Josie had done. She pressed Bond to eat to repletion. She hung over Diego, reached out her dark-skinned shapely hand to stroke his hair, all but fed him.

With their cigarettes they drank large cups of coffee golden tan with thick cream.

Bond, accustomed to eating alone, experienced a feeling of boyish hilarity in the closeness of this group. He found himself talking fluently about the travel books he had read. He found himself wanting to tell them of his plan for selling the drug business which his father, with so many cautious ponderings, had bought for him. All the while he talked of France and Italy and Algiers he was thinking how astonished they would be if they knew what was in his mind. Then, almost before he knew it, the words slipped out and the half-formed idea loomed like an accomplished fact. It was a fact, he said recklessly, he had advertised the business in a Boston paper.

The other three were in a mood in which nothing surprised them. It seemed the natural thing that Bond should sell out and join them in their adventure.

“We’ll say that you are my brother,” said Fay. “And so prevent any gossip.”

He did not object even to that.

“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” he said. “We’ll take a Mediterranean cruise and get off at Monaco. Then we can make our way to Paris, taking our own time.”

“How heavenly!” said Fay, stroking Diego’s hand. “If only someone will come along and buy us out!”

Someone did. Before the New Year, both the drug store and the bakery had been disposed of, and their passages were booked on a foreign cruiser