Cynthia Steps Out

“It must be fun to be an artist.” Stasia’s speech was somewhat impeded by the mouthful of pins she was trying not to swallow.

“Fun?” Cynthia frowned, thinking. “Yes, I suppose it is. I wouldn’t know how to be anything else. Ouch! That was me you were pinning.” She braced herself with one arm against the bulkhead as the ship tipped at a slight angle. “Make that sleeve as short as you can.”

Stasia took the last pin out of her mouth. “Slip off your blouse now, and I’ll baste it up for you. You’ll make a sweet pirate, if pirates ever were sweet.”

Cynthia, free of the blouse, turned to experiment before the long mirror in the door, hesitating between the respective merits of a red bandana handkerchief over her black curls and the more sinister effect of a black scarf which could be continued down into a black mask with eyeholes.

Stasia bit off her thread. “There, that’s ready. When will you break it to Miss Mitchall that she’s got to wear a costume tonight?”

Cynthia giggled. “You ought to come along and help me. But I guess I’ll wait till the last minute and rush her into the idea.” She glanced toward the bed where a tall, witch’s cap, made of green cardboard from the ship’s barber shop, reposed beside a cape of green broadcloth, borrowed from Stasia, and a pair of Miss Mitchall’s own shoes, now adorned with huge buckles of cardboard and silver foil.

“I’ll need some help with my wig,” said Stasia, “and then I think we’re all finished.” The wig was of bright orange yarn, loosely knitted into a tight fitting cap of coarse net which completely covered Stasia’s sleek bob.

“It needs tightening at the back. Wait a moment.” Cynthia braced her feet. “Dash this boat, I hope she stops rolling before dinner or we shan’t have any dance. Do they always have a costume party every trip?”

“Uh-huh. Always the second day before we get into Cherbourg, Paris, day after tomorrow. Aren’t you thrilled?”

Cynthia, pinning the wig into a better fit, murmured a vague assent. But she didn’t feel at all thrilled. After eight days the ship was like another home in which she knew, by sight at least, almost every occupant. Paris was going to be new and strange. Oh yes, a grand new adventure, but sometimes she got scared at the thought of it. So big, with all the street signs and the menus in a different language and so much that was new to learn. What if she failed to make good on the job that had brought her over, the dozen covers for Little Ones’ Magazine? Suppose she didn’t have the money to stay? Suppose she couldn’t make people understand her French, even though Stasia had been coaching her all week? Oh shut up, Cynthia!

“Miss Mitchall’s the old girl I admire,” she said suddenly. “She’s got more courage! You know she’s returning practically without a job and without money and she’s fifty if she’s a day, though she looks sixty, poor darling. I don’t believe she’s got ten dollars beyond her fare to London.”

“What was she doing in the States?” asked Stasia.

Stasia hadn’t, Cynthia thought, much imagination, but perhaps that was because her father was president of the line. Look at this suite de luxe, the best in the ship. And if she had never earned her own living she couldn’t imagine what it was to be like Miss Mitchall.

“Oh, she had some sort of a governess job. But she’s English you know, and she didn’t come in on the quota and so she had to go back home. She was with a Canadian family in Buffalo. They are paying her fare back, but that’s all. I wish ...” she stopped. She was going to say she wished she could help her.

Stasia looked at her watch, the little platinum watch circled with diamonds. “It’s six my dear, and dinner’s at half past seven. If you’re going to get your roommate into her costume ...”

“You’re right, you’re perfectly right.” Cynthia struggled into her wool dress, grabbed the black scarf, the buckled shoes, threw the blouse over her arm. “Here, give me a hand with the other stuff, will you? I’ll take the hat.”

Cynthia’s small cabin was down, down, two steep flights below the cabins de luxe. Clean white corridors smelling of soap and sea and ship, doors shut and white, doors open and dark, doors open and lighted, a narrow corridor turning down to the left, two doors facing each other, the left one always closed. Cynthia often wondered about that door. She knew the cabin was occupied because the room steward went in and out but no one else ever did. The door to the right was Cynthia’s and Miss Mitchall’s.

“Here we are. Thanks a lot. Can I help with make-up or anything?” Cynthia dumped her things on the bunk, turned on the lights.

“No, thanks. The stewardess and Lilia will help if I want it.” Lilia was Stasia’s maid. Cynthia smiled. Think of having a maid to yourself!

Stasia was gone. Cynthia hustled out of her dress again, turned on the hot water, whistled happily. This was going to be fun tonight. Like the old Art Academy days when everybody dressed up and the dances lasted till morning.

Someone in the cabin across the corridor coughed, a man’s cough. Cynthia turned off the hot water and listened, caught herself staring with wide gray eyes at the wide gray eyes in the mirror over the wash basin.

The night she had come on board that left hand door had been wide open and in the corridor there had been a suitcase, big and black, with lots of stickers on it. Cynthia hurrying along the hall with an arm full of last minute fruit and flowers and books, Chick and Judy and the others of the old Art School bunch at her heels, had tripped and fallen full length over that suitcase. When Chick had picked her up, unhurt, and brushed her off, she had noted the suitcase and a huge Ottawa Hotel paster on its side, bright with greens and blues and oranges. Chick had noticed it too. “A good poster design, that,” he had said.

And Cynthia, thinking about Chick, sat down on the lower bunk and for three minutes was devastatingly and overwhelmingly homesick for New York and the studio, for Judy and Chick. Chick had, in this very room, standing on that very same rug, kissed her good-bye with his arms tight around her and wished her good luck and told her how rotten it was for him to have to stay behind like this. “Keep my ring on your finger and my face in your heart,” he had said.

Cynthia twisted the pretty emerald, which had belonged to Chick’s mother, now so ill that he couldn’t get away for the trip they had planned together. It was a sweet ring. Cynthia’s eyes were getting teary when the dressing gong sounded. Goodness, was it as late as that!

The pirate costume had long black trousers--full ones from Cynthia’s beach pyjamas. A wide sash of twisted red and green bristled with an arsenal of silver paper pistols and knives. The white blouse, with sleeves tacked very short, bore a black silk skull and crossbones over the heart. She was tying heavy thread on brass curtain rings to loop over her ears when Miss Mitchall pattered in, closing the door gently behind her.

Miss Mitchall’s small sloping shoulders, claw-like hands and thin blond hair, now a dusty gray, were the characteristics of the story-book English governess, but her eyes gleamed brightly behind her spectacles and one felt that her spirit was unconquerable.

“Oh my dear, how sweet you look,” she twittered.

Cynthia hung an earring over one ear and patted it with a slim finger to see if it would swing free. In a minute she’d have to break the news to her roommate. But Miss Mitchall had news of her own.

“I just heard a voice across the corridor, talking to the steward. It’s a man and he talks with a Canadian accent,” she whispered.

They had both wondered about that room, for on this small ship everyone seemed to know everyone else, with that exception. Was he ill, perhaps, that he never came out, not even for meals? But there wasn’t time to discuss him now.

“Hurry and get into your costume for the party,” directed Cynthia.

“Costume? Oh yes.” Miss Mitchall was going to appreciate the small jest. “You mean my black dress.” She turned, bustling a little, to put her purse and book and scarf and sweater on the long couch beneath the porthole.

“No, I don’t mean just the black dress,” stated Cynthia in what she hoped was a firm tone. “I mean your costume. Stasia Carruthers and I made one for you this afternoon. You’re going as a Green Witch. See here.” She took down the tall peaked hat, clapped it on the small gray head and turned her roommate to face the mirror. “Then the cape, like this.” She flung the long cape around the thin shoulders. “Of course we must make you up. A little powder on your nose, probably some rouge on your cheeks. But put on your black dress first. And hurry.”

“Oh my dear, I couldn’t--I’m too old--what will people think?” Mildly clucking, continuing to protest, Miss Mitchall was shoved into her costume, into the shoes with the silver buckles, into the long green cape. Cynthia, against the other’s mild opposition, patted rouge on the pale cheeks, then flung a towel over the cape and shook half a box of white talcum powder on the gray hair.

“But my dear,” beamed Miss Mitchall, “it ... it makes me look so ... so young.”

Indeed it did. The contrast of green cloth against the white hair was dramatic. “Very successful,” purred Cynthia. “You’ll be the belle of the ball. And it’s not immoral to look young you know. Now sit down there and be good till I get this scarf tied. Or no, ring for the steward, we must get a broom to go with the witch.”

By the time they hurried out of their cabin the echoes of the dinner gong had been dead for ten minutes. But the corridors were full of laughing groups: harlequins, monks, pierrots, Turkish ladies, Dutch girls and nondescript costumes that defied a label. For fear that the Green Witch might bolt back to the cabin, Cynthia kept close behind her but after a few minutes realized this was unnecessary. Their passage was a minor triumphal procession for everyone turned to look at them and made some delighted exclamation over the novel costumes. Cynthia was amused to note that Miss Mitchall’s sharp little chin went higher, her step became firmer as the approbation grew and by the time they reached the stairway to the dining saloon she walked like a princess approaching her throne.

Cheers and a spatter of applause greeted their descent and three tables claimed their company but Cynthia looked around and made a quick decision. In a far corner sat Harvey O’Neill, as the Tin Woodman, and Johnnie Graham, in sackcloth and straw, presumably a scarecrow. Miss Mitchall needed what only an Irish tongue could supply. Cynthia steered toward the small table.

“May I introduce the Green Witch of Greenwich Village?” sang Cynthia above the hubbub. “Did you know that Green Witches had special magic and charms, much stronger than black and white ones?”

“Special charms, certainly,” agreed the Irishman. “Come and cast a spell on me, Miss Witch,” and he pulled out a chair for her. Cynthia took the one next to Johnnie.