Whitewash. Ethel Watts Mumford

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       Ethel Watts Mumford

      Whitewash

      Published by Good Press, 2020

       [email protected]

      EAN 4064066065218

Table of Contents

       WHITEWASH

       BY ETHEL WATTS MUMFORD

       WHITEWASH

       PROLOGUE

       CHAPTER I.

       CHAPTER II.

       CHAPTER III.

       CHAPTER IV.

       CHAPTER V.

       CHAPTER VI.

       CHAPTER VII.

       CHAPTER VIII.

       CHAPTER IX.

       CHAPTER X.

       CHAPTER XI.

      ​

      (Handwritten note)

      ​

      "HE'S AN ENGLISHMAN, I'LL WAGER A FRANC."

      (See page 20)

      ​

WHITEWASH

       Table of Contents

BY ETHEL WATTS MUMFORD

       Table of Contents

      Author of "Dupes," "Partners," etc.

Illustrated by A. G. LEARNED

      BOSTON

      DANA ESTES & COMPANY

      Publishers

      ​

      Copyright, BY DANA ESTES & COMPANY

       All rights reserved

       Published August, 1903 WHITEWASH

      Colonial Press

       Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. SImonds & Co.

       Boston, Mass., U. S. A.

      ​

      ​

WHITEWASH

       Table of Contents

PROLOGUE

       Table of Contents

      THE July sun blazed unrelentingly upon the wide, hard-baked road that led, straight as a giant ruler, across the forlorn level country. Gorse and stubble, ground-pine and intensely green, wiry broom covered the moors, from which a quivering radiance of heat mounted to the molten sky, the horizon shook with it, and the distant dome of the Basilica of St. Anne of Auray, with its golden statue, wavered upward like a white flame.

      It was St. Anne's Eve, and the incoming human tide was near its flood. The following day would bring the great feast, when the cure-working statue would be carried in procession. The throng ​pushed forward in anticipation. Here were ancient and dilapidated diligences, called into service by the influx of visitors, carts, drays, carriages of all ages and previous conditions of servitude, heavy, high swinging landaus, with emblazoned panels, bringing the chatelaines of the neighborhood, even the pumping, banging automobiles that all fashionable France had gone mad over. Mixed in and about the carriage pilgrims came the rank and file of foot farers: men from Beltz, with white trousers and coats of peacock blue; women of Lorient, in the dress made famous by the "chocolatière" of Dresden; peasants of Pont-Aven in their pleated collars and wide-winged head-dresses; deputations from Morlaix, wearing the fifteenth century "hénin" in all its glory; women of Point l'Abbé, broad-shouldered and square-hipped, marching through the heat in multitudinous black cloth skirts and yellow embroidered jackets. And in all alike, men, women, and children, the deep, contained fire of fanatic faith.

      An ancient and dilapidated vehicle of the period of the first Empire, driven by a pompous peasant ​of Auray, in full regalia, swung from side to side in the jostling mass, like a distressed ship in a human sea. Reclining on the threadbare velvet cushions, four girls, of obviously foreign extraction, volleyed with assorted cameras on the crowd about them. Many shrank from the black boxes in fear of witchcraft, others, more experienced in the ways of strangers, grinned broadly or became suddenly petrified into awkwardness. From their coign of vantage the cameras continued to snap with regardless vehemence.

      "Hold on, stop the driver! I want to take that ditch full of horrors," exclaimed the smallest of the quartette, a slim, blonde girl of eighteen or twenty, who answered cheerfully to the nick name of "Shorty."

      A red-haired young woman rose from her seat.

      "Oh, gorgeous person on the box-seat, have the obligeance to restrain Bucephalus."

      The peasant grinned, and obeying her gesture, which was the only thing he understood, caused so sudden a halt, that the occupants of the Empire coach fell violently into each other's arms. Upon the stopping of the carriage, an immediate con​gestion of pedestrians and horses took place in the rear, and the pilgrimage was profaned by remarks not intended for the ears of St. Anne. With true American independence the four girls calmly proceeded to focus their kodaks at the line of writhing wretches, who, seeing the attention they were attracting, dragged themselves nearer, whining dolorously.