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A Canary for One

THE train passed very quickly a

long, red-stone house with a garden and four thick palm-trees w ith

tables under them in the shade. On theother side was the sea. Then there wasa cutting through red stone and clay, andthe sea was only occasionally an d far below ag ainst rocks.

I bought him in Pale rmo , the American lady said. W e only had an hourashore and it was Sunday morning. Th eman wanted to be paid in dollars and Igave him a dollar and a half. H e reallysings very beautifully.

It was very hot in the train and it was

very hot in the lit salon compartment.There was no breeze came through theopen window. Th e American lady pulledthe window-blind down and there was nomo re sea, even occasionally. On theother side there was glass, then the corridor, then an open window, and outside thewindow were dusty trees and an oiledroad and flat fields of grapes with gray-stone hills behind them.

There was smoke from many tall chimneys coming into M arseilles, and the trainslowed down and followed one track

through many others into the station.The train stayed twenty-five minutes inthe station at Marseilles and the American lady bou ght a copy of The aily Ma iland a half-bottle of Evian water. Shewalked a little way along the stationplatform, but she stayed near the stepsof the car because at Cannes, where itstopped for twelve minutes, the train hadleft with no signal of departure and shehad only gotten on just in time. Th eAmerican lady was a Httle deaf and shewas afraid that perhaps signals of departure were given and that she did nothear them.

The train left the station in Marseillesand there was not only the switch-yardsand the factory smoke but, looking back,the town of Marseilles and the harborwith stone hills behind it and the last ofthe sun on the water. As it was gettingdark the train passed a farmhouse burningin a field. Motor-cars were stopped along

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the road and bedding and things from inside the farmhouse were spread in thefield. M any people were watching thehouse burn . After it was dark the trainwas in Avignon. People got on and off.At the news-stand Frenchmen, returningto Paris, bought th at d ay's French papers.On the station platform were negro soldiers. Th ey wore brown uniforms andwere tall and their faces shone close underthe electric light. Th eir faces were veryblack and they were too tall to stare. Th etrain left Avignon station w ith the negroesstanding there. A short white sergeantwas with them.

Inside the lit salon compartment theporter had pulled down the three bedsfrom inside the wall and prepared themfor sleeping. In the night the Americanlady lay without sleeping because thetrain was a rapide and went very fast andshe was afraid of the speed in the night.The American lady's bed was the onenext to the window. Th e canary fromPalermo, a cloth spread over his cage,was out of the draft in the corridor thatwent into the compartment wash-room.There was a blue light outside the compartment, and all night the train wentvery fast and the American lady layawake and waited for a wreck.

In the morning the train was near Paris,and after the American lady had comeout from the wash-room, looking verywholesome and middle-aged and American in spite of not having slept, and hadtaken the cloth off the bird-cage and hungthe cage in the sun, she went back to theresta uran t car for breakfast. Wh en shecame back to the lit salon compartmentagain the beds had been pushed back intothe wall and made into seats, the canarywas shaking his feathers in the sunlightthat came through the open window, andthe train was much nearer Paris.

H e loves the sun, the Americanlady said. He 'll sing now in a littlewhile.

The canary shook his feathers andpecked into them . I' v e always lovedbirds, the American lady said. I ' m

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A C A N A RY F O R O N E 359

taking him home to my Uttle girl. The rehe's singing now.

The canary chirped and the feathers onhis throat stood out, then he dropped hisbill and pecked into his feathers again.The train crossed a river and passedthrough a very carefully tended forest.The train passed through many outsideof Paris towns. The re were tram-ca rsin the towns and big advertisements forthe Belle Jardiniere and Dubonnet andPernod on the walls toward the train.All that the train passed through lookedas though it were before breakfast. Forseveral minutes I had not Hstened to theAmerican lady, who was talking to mywife.

Is your husband American too?asked the lady.

Y es, said my wife. W e're bothAmericans.

I thought you were English.Oh, no .Perhaps that was because I wore

brac es, I said. I had starte d to saysuspenders and changed it to braces in themouth to keep my EngHsh character.Th e American lady did not hear. Shewas really quite deaf she read lips, andI had not looked toward her. I hadlooked out of the window. She went ontalking to my wife.

I 'm so glad you're Americans. American men make the best husb ands, theAmerican lady was saying. T h at waswhy we left the Con tinent, you know. M ydaughter fell in love with a man in Ve-vey. She stopped. Th ey were simplymad ly in love . She stopped again. Itook her away, of course.

Di d she get over i t ? asked mywife.

I don 't think so, said the Americanlady. Sh e wouldn't eat anything andshe wo uldn 't sleep at all. I've tried sovery hard but she doesn't seem to take an

interest in any thing . She does n't careabo ut things. I could n't have herma rrying a foreigner. She paused .Some one, a very good friend, told me

once 'No foreigner can make an American girl a good husband.'

N o, said my wife, I suppose no t.The American lady admired my wife's

travelling coat, and it turned out that theAmerican lady had bought her own

clothes for twenty years now from thesame maison de couturier in the RueSaint Honore. They had her measurements, and a vendeuse who knew her andher tastes picked the dresses out for herand they were sent to Am erica. Th eycame to the post-ofiS.ce near where shelived up-town in New York, and the dutywas never exorbitant because they openedthe dresses there in the post-office to appraise them and they were always verysimple-looking and with no gold lace norornaments that would make the dresseslook expensive. Before the present vendeuse, named Therese, there had beenanoth er vendeuse, nam ed Amelie. Altogether there had only been these twoin the twe nty years. It had always beenthe same couturier. Prices, however, hadgone up . Th e exchange, though, equalized

that. They had her daughter's measureme nts now too. She was grown up andthere was not m uch chance of their changing now.

The train was now coming into Paris.The fortifications were levelled but grasshad not grown. The re were ma ny carsstanding on tracksbrown wooden restaurant cars and brown wooden sleeping-cars that would go to Italy at five o'clockthat night, if that train still left at five;the cars were mark ed for Rom e, and cars,with seats on the roofs, that went back

and forth to the suburbs with, at certainhours, people in all the seats and on theroofs, if that were the way it were stilldone, and passing were the white wallsand ma ny windows of houses. No thinghad eaten any breakfast.

Americans make the best husbands,the American lady said to my wife. I wasgetting down the bags. Am erican menare the only men in the world to marry.

How long ago did you leave Vevey ?asked my wife.

Tw o years ago this fall. It 's her, you

know, that I 'm taking the canary to.Was the man your daughter was inlove with a Swiss

Yes , said the Am erican lady. H ewas from a very good family in Vevey.He was going to be an engineer. The yme t there in Vevey. Th ey used to go onlong walks together.

I know Vev ey, said my wife. W ewere there on our honeymoon.

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360 T H I S A P R I L

W ere you really? Th at must havebeen lovely. I ha d no idea, of course, tha tshe'd fall in love with him.

I t was a very lovely place , said mywife.

Yes, said the American lady. Isn 't

it lovely? Where did you stop the re?We stayed at the Trois Couronnes,said my wife.

It 's such a fine old ho tel, said theAmerican lady.

Yes, said my wife. We had a veryfine room and in the fall the country waslovely.

Were you there in the fall?Y es , said my wife.

We were passing three cars that hadbeen in a wreck. Th ey were splinteredopen and the roofs sagged in.

Lo ok , I said. The re's been awreck.

The American lady looked and saw thelast car. I was afraid of just th at allnigh t, she said. I have terrific presentiments abo ut things sometimes. I'll

never travel on a rapide again at night.There must be other comfortable trainsthat don't go so fast.

Then the train was in the dark of theGare de Lyons, and then stopped andporters came up to the windows. I

handed bags through the windows, andwe were out on the dim longness of theplatform, and the American lady put herself in charge of one of three men fromCook's who said: Ju st a mom ent, ma-dame, and I'll look for your name.

The porter brought a truck and piledon the baggage, and my wife said good-by and I said good-by to the Americanlady, whose name had been found by theman from Cook's on a typewritten pagein a sheaf of typewritten pages which hereplaced in his pocket.

We followed the porter with the truckdown the long cement platform beside thetrain. At the end was a gate and a ma ntook the tickets.

We were returning to Paris to set upseparate residences.

This AprilB Y B E R N I C E K E N Y O N

IT would take so small a fire to burn meSo little water to drown. . . .I wonder what intrepid forces turn me

Back to this dreadful town?

Here the lengthening winter broods and lingers;No spring breaks here.

And I am sick for seeing the grass's fingersPricking pale and clear.

For seeing in one brief day the sky unclouded,For breathing meadowy breath. . . .

Here is only the sound of footsteps crowded.Hollow, empty as death,

Over sealed pavements, over the wild seeds springingIn arid places apart

Over the sound of terrible futile singingSecretly in my heart.

It would take so light a blow to sunderBody and hopeless brain. . . .

What can ever hold me now, I wonder.Safe in this town again?