CHAPTER V.LETTERS FROM PARIS AND BERLIN.

“‘The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,Moves on: nor all your Piety nor WitShall lure it back to cancel half a line,Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.’”

“‘The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,Moves on: nor all your Piety nor WitShall lure it back to cancel half a line,Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.’”

“‘The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,Moves on: nor all your Piety nor WitShall lure it back to cancel half a line,Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.’”

Molly stood over Kent with a cup of steaming tea and taking her cue from her mother’s quotation from the Rubaiyat and prompted by his knownothing attitude with his Aunt Clay, she got off the stanza:

“Yesterday This Day’s Madness did prepare;To-morrow’s Silence, Triumph, or Despair:Drink! for you know not whence you came nor why:Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.”

“Yesterday This Day’s Madness did prepare;To-morrow’s Silence, Triumph, or Despair:Drink! for you know not whence you came nor why:Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.”

“Yesterday This Day’s Madness did prepare;To-morrow’s Silence, Triumph, or Despair:Drink! for you know not whence you came nor why:Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.”

From Miss Julia Kean to Mrs. Edwin Green.

Paris, and no idea of the date.No fixed address, but the AmericanClub might reach me.

Molly darling:

Things are moving so fast that even I can’t quite catch on, and you know I am some mover myself. Jo and I came to Paris as I wrote you we would, but I haven’t seen her since. She told me in as polite words as she could command that she couldn’t be bothered with me any more. At least that was the trend of her remarks. She has the business before her of making up to look as much like a man as possible and then of being taken into the aviation school.

I met an art student from Carlo Rossi’s on the street and he told me Polly was already the prouddriver of an ambulance. Lots of the American art students have enlisted or joined the Red Cross. If I liked sick folks or nursing, I think I’d join myself. I feel that I should be doing something while I wait to hear from Bobby. I hope to see the American Ambassador next week. He is simply floored under with duties just now. I don’t want any help from him, but just to find out something about Bobby and Mamma.

If you could see Paris now! Oh, Molly, our gay, beautiful, eternally youthful city has grown suddenly sad and middle-aged. There is no gaiety or frivolity now. Her step has changed from a dance to a march. Her laughter has turned to weeping, but silent weeping—she makes no outcry but one knows the tears are there. Her beautiful festive clothes are laid away and now there is nothing but khaki and mourning. The gallant little soldier is to discard his flaming red trousers and blue coat for khaki. The German finds him too easy a mark.

I begin to tremble for Paris, but strange to say I have no fear for myself.

I have seen the Ambassador! He was very grave when I told him about Bobby. There was some English capital involved in the railroad that Bobby was to build in Turkey, and for that reason there may be some complication. He is to communicate with Gerard immediately. In the meantime, he advises me to go home. I told him I had no home, but would wait here until I found out something. He asked me if I had plenty of money and I told him yes, indeed, my letter of credit was good for almost any amount. I had not had to draw on it as I had stocked up before I went to G—— to keep house with the Polly Perkinses. The Ambassador actually laughed at me. Do you know, I can’t get any more money? What a fool I have been! I have been so taken up with Paris and the sights and sounds that money has never entered my head. I have quite a little left, though, and I intend to live on next to nothing.

The Bents have left for America and have given me their key to use their studio as I see fit. Mrs. Bent wanted me to go with them, but I can’tgo until we hear from Gerard. Now I am back in the Rue Brea! It seems strange to be there again where we had such a glorious winter. The studio where Kent and Pierce Kinsella lived all last year is vacant. I don’t know where Pierce is. Gone to war, perhaps!

I spend the days on the streets, walking up and down, listening to the talk and watching the regiments as they move away. I ran across some old friends yesterday. You remember a wedding party I butted in on at St. Cloud that day I scared all of you so when I took the wrong train from Versailles and landed at Chartres? Well, I ran plump against the bride on Montparnasse (only she is no longer a bride but had a rosy infant over her shoulder). She came out of a little delicatessen shop and her husband in war togs followed her, and there I witnessed their parting. I seem fated to be present at every crisis in their lives. The girl did not recognize me but the young man did. I had danced with him in too mad a whirl for him to forget me. Then came the old father and his wife who looked like a member of theCommune. They keep the little shop, it seems. I shook hands with them and together we waited for the young man’s regiment to come swinging down the street. With another embrace all around, even me, he caught step with his comrades and was gone. The bonnemère clasped her daughter-in-law to her grenadier-like bosom and they mingled their tears, the rosy baby gasping for breath between the two. The old father turned to me:

“This is different from the last time we met, ma’mselle!”

“Yes, so different!”

“Come in and have a bite and sup with us. There is still something to eat in Paris besides horse flesh.” His wife and daughter-in-law joined him in the invitation and so I went in. I enjoyed the meal more than I can tell you. The grenadier is some cook and although the fare was simple, it was so well seasoned and appetizing that I ate as I have not done since I got back to Paris. The truth of the matter is, I am living so cheap for fear of getting out of money and Iam afraid I have been neglecting my inner man. I can’t cook a thing myself, which is certainly trifling of me, and so have depended on restaurants for sustenance. I dressed the salad (you remember it is my one accomplishment) and it met with the approval of host and hostess.

I told them of my trouble and how I felt I must wait until I heard something definite of my mother and father, and they were all sympathy. I have promised to come to them if I get into difficulty, and you don’t know the comfortable feeling I have now that I have some adopted folks.

I might go to the Marquise d’Ochtè, but I know she has all on her hands and mind that she can attend to. I don’t need anything but just companionship. I am such a gregarious animal that I must have folks.

I am dying to hear from you and to know if Kent landed his job. Is he—well, angry with me for staying over? I would not have missed staying for anything, even if he should be put out. I can’t believe he is, though. I had rather hopedfor letters when the American mail came in this morning, but the man at the bank was very unfeeling and had nothing. Nobody seems to be getting any mail. I wonder if they are stopping it for some reason or other. I have a great mind to take this to some American who is fleeing and have it mailed in New York. I will do that very thing. Good by, Molly—don’t be uneasy about me. You know my catlike nature of lighting on my feet.

Your own,Judy.

From Mr. Robert Kean to his Daughter Julia.

Berlin.

My dear Judy:

I know you are intensely uneasy about us, but down in your heart you also know that we never get into scrapes we can’t get out of, and we will get out of this. This letter will probably be postmarked Sweden but that does not mean I am there. In fact, I am in durance vile here in Berlin. I am allowed to walk around the streets and to pay my own living expenses but leave Berlin Icannot. Your mother can’t leave, either—not that she would. You know how she thinks that she protects me and so she insists that she will stay. I am allowed to write no letters and can receive none. I am getting this off to you by a clever device of your mother’s, which I shall not divulge now for fear it might be seized and thus get an innocent person in bad with this remarkable Government.

I am kept here all because I know too much about the geography and topography of Turkey. Of course I have made careful maps of the proposed railroad from Constantinople, the one we have been trying to get the concessions for. Well, they have naturally seized the maps. But before I dreamed of the possibility of this war, for, like all of us fool Anglo Saxons, I have been nosing along like a mole, I had a talk with a high Prussian Muckamuck at dinner one evening about this proposed road and I drew the blame thing on the table cloth, and with bits of bread and salt cellars and what not I explained the whole topography of the country and the benefitit would be to mankind to have this particular railroad built, financed by my particular company. That was where I “broke my ’lasses pitcher.” Of course, having surveyed the country and made the maps, at least, having had a finger in the pie from the beginning, I can reproduce those maps from memory, if not very accurately, at least, accurately enough to get the Germans going if that particular information should be needed by the Allies.

Do you know what I see in this? Why, Turkey will be in this war before so very long.

I am hungry for news. I feel that I will go mad if I can’t get some information besides what is printed in these boot licking newspapers of Berlin. They speak of their soldiers as though they were avenging angels—avenging what? Avenging the insult Belgium offered them for not lying down and making a road of herself for them to walk over. Avenging France for not opening wide her gates and getting ready the Christmas dinner the Kaiser meant to eat in Paris. I’d like to prepare his Christmas dinner, and surely Iwould serve a hors-d’œuvre of rough-on-rats, an entrée of ptomaines, and finish off with a dessert of hanging, which would be too sweet for him. Now just suppose this letter is seized and they see this above remark—what then? I must not be allowed to write my opinion of their ruler to my own daughter, but these Prussians who go to United States and get all they can from our country, feel at perfect liberty to publish newspapers vilifying our President and to burst into print at any moment about our men who are high in authority.

Berlin is wild with enthusiasm and joy over her victories. Every Belgian village that is razed to the ground makes them think it is cause for a torch-light procession. I can’t understand them. They can hardly be the same kindly folk we have so often stayed among. They are still kind, kind to each other and kind in a way to us and to all the strangers within their gates, but how they can rejoice over the reports of their victories I cannot see.

They one and all believe that they were forcedto fight. They say France was marching to Berlin for the President to eat Christmas dinner here, and that Belgium had promised they should go straight through her gates unmolested and did not regard the agreement of neutrality. I say nonsense to such statements. At least I think nonsense. I really say very little for one who has so much to say. I am bubbling over to talk politics with some one. Your poor little mumsy listens to me but she never jaws back. I want some one to jaw back. I have promised her to keep off the subject with these Prussians. They are so violent and so on the lookout for treason. There is one thing I am sure of and that is that no Frenchman would want to eat Christmas dinner or any other kind of dinner here if he could eat it in Paris. I am sick of raw goose and blood pudding and Limburger cheese.

As I write this tirade, I am wondering, my dear daughter, where you are. Did you go back to America with Kent Brown, who, you wrote me in your last letter, was sailing in a week, or areyou in Paris? I hope not there! Since I see the transports of joy these law-abiding, home-loving citizens, women and men, can get in over an account of what seems to me mere massacre, I tremble to think what the soldiers are capable of in the lust of bloodshed.

From the last bulletin, the Germans are certainly coming closer and closer to Paris. I hope they are lying in their report. They are capable of falsifying anything.

I am trying to get hold of our Ambassador to get me out of this mess, but he is so busy it is hard to see him. I think he is doing excellent work and I feel it is best for me to wait and let the Americans who are in more urgent need get first aid. I have enough money to tide us over for a few weeks with very careful expenditure. Of course I can get no more, just like all the rest of, the Americans who are stranded here.

I feel terribly restless for work. I don’t know how to loaf, never did. I’d go to work here at something, but I feel if I did, it would just mean that these Prussians could then spare one moreman for their butchery, and I will at least not help them that much. Your mother and I are on the street a great deal. We walk up and down and go in and out of shops and sit in the parks. I keep moving as much as possible, not only because I am so restless but because I like to keep the stupid spy who is set to watch over me as busy as possible. He has some weird notion that I do not know he is ever near me. I keep up the farce and I give him many anxious moments. Yesterday I wrote limericks and nonsense verses on letter paper and made little boats of them and sent them sailing on the lake in the park. If you could have seen this man’s excitement. He called in an accomplice and they fished out the boats and carefully concealing them, they got hold of a third spy to take them to the chief. I wonder what they made of:

“The Window has Four little Panes:But One have I.The Window Panes are in its Sash,—I wonder why!”

“The Window has Four little Panes:But One have I.The Window Panes are in its Sash,—I wonder why!”

“The Window has Four little Panes:But One have I.The Window Panes are in its Sash,—I wonder why!”

or this:

“I wish that my Room had a Floor—I don’t so much care for a Door,But this walking aroundWithout touching the groundIs getting to be quite a bore!”

“I wish that my Room had a Floor—I don’t so much care for a Door,But this walking aroundWithout touching the groundIs getting to be quite a bore!”

“I wish that my Room had a Floor—I don’t so much care for a Door,But this walking aroundWithout touching the groundIs getting to be quite a bore!”

I only wish I could see the translations of these foolish rhymes that must have been made before they could decide whether or not I had a bomb up my sleeve to put the Kaiser out with. Fancy this in German:

“The poor benighted Hindoo,He does the best he kindo;He sticks to casteFrom first to last;For pants he makes his skindo.”

“The poor benighted Hindoo,He does the best he kindo;He sticks to casteFrom first to last;For pants he makes his skindo.”

“The poor benighted Hindoo,He does the best he kindo;He sticks to casteFrom first to last;For pants he makes his skindo.”

Some of the ships sank and they had to get a boat hook and raise them. My nonsense seems to have had its effect. I saw in this morning’s paper that some of the foreigners held in Berlin have gone crazy. I believe they mean me. I must think up some more foolishness. I feel that the more I occupy this spy who has me in charge, the better it is for the Allies. I try to be neutral but my stomach is rebelling at German food,and who can be neutral with a prejudiced stomach?

We are trying to cook in our room. You know what a wonder your little mumsy is at knocking up an omelette and making coffee and what not, and we also find it is much more economical to eat there all we can. When we are there, we are out of sight of the spy, who, of course, can’t help his job, but neither can I help wanting to kick his broad bean. He is such a block-head. He reminds me of the Mechanician Man, in our comic papers: “Brains he has nix.” He is evidently doing just exactly what he has been wound up and set to do. I can’t quite see why I should be such an important person that I should need a whole spy to myself. I can’t get out of Berlin unless I fly out and I see no chance of that.

*******

I have had my interview with the Ambassador. He sent for me, and the wonderful thing was that it was because of the ball you had set rolling in Paris. When one Ambassador gets in communicationwith another Ambassador, even when it is about as unimportant a thing as I am, there is something doing immediately. You must have made a hit, honey, with the powers in France, they got busy so fast. It seems that the Imperial Government is very leary about me. My being an American is the only thing that keeps me out of prison. They are kind of scared to put me there, but they won’t let me go. I had to wait an hour even after I got sent for, and I enjoyed it thoroughly because it was raining hard and blowing like blazes and I knew that my bodyguard was having to take it. Indeed I could see him all the time across the strasse looking anxiously at the door where he had seen me disappear. I also had the delight of reading a two weeks old American newspaper that a very nice young clerk slipped to me. I suppose the American Legation gets its newspaper, war or no.

Nothing can be done for me as yet. I have been very imprudent in my behaviour, reprehensible, in fact. The paper boats were mostill advised, especially the one that goes: “My Window has Four little Panes.” That is something to do with maps and a signal, it seems. “The Window Panes are in its Sash,” is most suggestive of information. Ah, well! They can’t do more than just keep us here, and if our money gives out, it will be up to them to feed us. The time may come when I will be glad to get even blood pudding, but I can’t think it.

Your poor little mumsy, in spite of the years she has spent with me roughing it, still has a dainty appetite, and I believe she would as soon eat a live rat, as blood pudding or raw goose. She makes out with eggs and salad and coffee and toast. So far, provisions are plentiful. It is only our small purse that makes us go easy on everything. But if the war goes on (which, God willing, it will do, as a short war will mean the Germans are victorious), I can’t see how provisions will remain plentiful. What is England doing, anyhow? She must be doing something, but she is doing it very slowly.

Your being in Paris is a source of much uneasinessto us, but I can’t say that I blame you. You are too much like me to want to get out of excitement. I feel sure you will take care of yourself and now that the French are waltzing in at such a rate, I have no idea that the Germans will ever reach Paris. After all, this letter is to be taken by a lady who is at the American Legation and mailed to Mrs. Edwin Green and through her sent to you. They could not get it directly to you in France, but no doubt it will finally reach you through your friend, Molly. I am trusting her to do it and I know she will do it if any one can, because she is certainly to be depended on to get her friends out of trouble. In the meantime, the Ambassador here is to communicate formally with the Ambassador in Paris, and he is to let you know that all is well with your innocent if imprudent parents. Of course, your mother could go home if she would, but you know her well enough to know she won’t. In fact, there is some talk of making her go home, and she says if they start any such thing she is going to swear she can drawany map of Turkey that ever was known to man, and can do it with her eyes shut and her hands tied behind her.

We both of us wish you were safe in Kentucky with your friends. We spend many nights talking of you and reproaching ourselves that we have left you so much to yourself. I don’t see how we could help it in a way, but maybe I should have given up engineering and taken up preaching or been a tailor or something. Then I might have made a settled habitation for all of us. Your mumsy is writing you a long letter, too, so I must stop. She is quite disappointed not to use her clever scheme for getting the letter to you, and rather resents the lady at the Legation.

Yours,Bobby.

It took one month and three days for Judy to get the above letter, but her mind was set somewhat at rest long before that time by the Ambassador himself, who had learned through his confrère in Berlin that Mr. and Mrs. Kean were safe and at large, although not allowed to leave Berlin.

The daughter was so accustomed to her parents being in dangerous places that she did not feel so concerned about them as an ordinary girl would have felt for ordinary parents. Ever since she could remember, they had been camping in out-of-the-way places and making hair-breadth escapes from mountain wild cats and native uprisings and what not. She could not believe the Germans, whom she had always thought of asrather bovine, could turn into raging lions so completely.

“Bobby will light on his feet!” she kept saying to herself until it became almost like a prayer. “No one could hurt Mamma. She will be protected just as children will be!” And then came terrible, exaggerated accounts of the murder in cold blood of little children, and then the grim truth of the destruction of Louvain and Rheims, and anything seemed possible.

“A nation that could glory in the destruction of such beautiful things as these cathedrals will stop at nothing.” But still she kept on saying: “Bobby will light on his feet! Bobby will light on his feet!” She no longer trusted the Germans, but she had infinite faith in the sagacity and cleverness of her father. He always had got himself out of difficult and tight places and he always would.

In the meantime, money was getting very low. Try as she would to economize, excitement made her hungry and she must eat and eat three times a day.

“If I only had Molly Brown’s skill and could cook for myself!” she would groan as she tried to choke down the muddy concoction that she had just succeeded in brewing and was endeavoring to persuade herself tasted a little like coffee. She remembered with swimming eyes the beautiful little repasts they had had in the Bents’ studio during that memorable winter.

“Judy Kean, you big boob! I believe my soul you are going to bawl about a small matter of food. If the destruction of Louvain did not make you weep, surely muddy coffee ought not to bring tears to your eyes, unless maybe they are tears of shame.”

The truth of the matter was, Judy was lonesome and idle. She could not make up her mind to paint. Things were moving too fast and there was too much reality in the air. Art seemed unreal and unnecessary, somehow. “Great things will be painted after the war but not now,” she would say. She carried her camera with her wherever she went and snapped up groups of women and children, soldiers kissing their oldfathers, great ladies stopping to converse with the gamin of the street; anything and everything went into her camera. She spent more money on films than on food, in spite of her healthy hunger.

On that morning in September as she cleared away the scraps from her meager breakfast, her eyes swimming from lonesomeness, appetite unappeased and a kind of nameless longing, she almost determined to throw herself on the mercy of the American Legation for funds to return to New York. The Americans had cleared out of Paris until there were very few left. Judy would occasionally see the familiar face of some art student she had known in the class, but those familiar faces grew less and less frequent.

“There’s the Marquise! I can always go to her, but I know she is taken up with her grief over Philippe’s going a soldiering,” she thought as she put her plate and cup back on the shelf where the Bents kept their assortment of china.

A knock at the door! Who could it be? Nomail came to her and no friends were left to come.

“Mam’selle!” and bowing low before her was the lean old partner of St. Cloud, Père Tricot. “Mam’selle, my good wife and I, as well as our poor little daughter-in-law, we all want you to come and make one of our humble menage.”

“Want me!” exclaimed Judy, her eyes shining.

“Yes, Mam’selle,” he said simply. “We have talked it over and we think you are too young to be so much alone and then if—the—the—well, I have too much respect for Mam’selle to call their name,—if they do get in Paris, I can protect you with my own women. I am not so old that I cannot hit many a lick yet—indeed, I would enlist again if they would have me; but my good wife says they may need me more here in Paris and I must rest tranquilly here and do the work for France that I can best do. Will you come, Mam’selle?”

“Come! Oh, Père Tricot, I’ll be too glad to come. When?”

“Immediately!”

Judy’s valise was soon packed and the studio carefully locked, the key handed over to the concierge, and she was arm in arm with her old friend on her way to her new home in the little shop on the Boulevarde Montparnasse.

Mère Tricot, who looked like a member of the Commune but acted like a dear, kindly old Granny, took the girl to her bosom.

“What did I tell you? I knew she would come,” she cried to her husband, who had hurried into the shop to wait on a customer. It was a delicatessen shop and very appetizing did the food look to poor Judy, who felt as though she had never eaten in her life.

“Tell me!” he exclaimed as he weighed out cooked spinach to a small child who wanted two sous’ worth. “Tell me, indeed! You said Mam’selle would not walk on the street with an old peasant in a faded blouse if she would come at all, and I—I said Mam’selle was what the Americans call a good sport and would walk on the street with an old peasant, if she liked him, in any kind of clothes he happened to be in, ragseven. Bah! You were wrong and I was right.”

The old Tricots were forever wrangling but it was always in a semi-humorous manner, and their great devotion to each other was always apparent. Judy found it was better never to take sides with either one as the moment she did both of them were against her.

How homelike the little apartment was behind the shops! It consisted of two bed rooms, a living room which opened into the shop and a tiny tiled kitchen about the size of a kitchen on a dining car—so tiny that it seemed a miracle that all the food displayed so appetizingly in the windows and glass cases of the shop should have been prepared there.

“It is so good of you to have me and I want to come more than I can say, but you must let me board with you. I couldn’t stay unless you do.”

“That is as you choose, Mam’selle,” said the old woman. “We do not want to make money on you, but you can pay for your keep if you want to.”

“All right, Mother, but I must help some, helpin the shop or mind the baby, clean up the apartment, anything! I can’t cook a little bit, but I can do other things.”

“No woman can cook,” asserted old Tricot. “They lack the touch.”

“Ah! Braggart! If I lay thee out with this pastry board, I’ll not lack the touch,” laughed the wife. She was making wonderful little tarts with crimped edges to be filled with assortments of confiture.

“Let me mind the shop, then. I know I can do that.”

“Well, that will not be bad,” agreed old Tricot. “While Marie (the daughter-in-law) washes the linen and you make the tarts, Mam’selle can keep the shop, but no board must she pay. I’ll be bound new customers will flock to us to buy of the pretty face.” Judy blushed with pleasure at the old peasant’s compliment.

“And thou, laggard and sloth! What will thou do while the women slave?”

“I—Oh, I will go to the Tabac’s to see whatnews there is, and later to see if Jean is to the front.”

“Well, we cannot hear from Jean to-day and Paris can still stand without thy political opinion,” but she laughed and shoved him from the shop, a very tender expression on her lined old face.

“These men! They think themselves of much importance,” she said as she resumed her pastry making.

Having tied a great linen apron around Judy’s slender waist (much slenderer in the last month from her economical living), and having instructed her in the prices of the cooked food displayed in the show cases, Mère Tricot turned over the shop to her care. The rosy baby was lying in a wooden cradle in the back of the little shop and the grandmother was in plain view in the tiny kitchen to be seen beyond the living room.

“Well, I fancy I am almost domesticated,” thought Judy. “What an interior this would make—baby in foreground and old Mother Tricoton through with her rolling pin. Light fine! I’ve a great mind to paint while I am keeping shop, sketch, anyhow.”

She whipped out her sketch book and sketched in her motive with sure and clever strokes, but art is long and shops must be kept. Customers began to pile in. The spinach was very popular and Judy became quite an adept in dishing it out and weighing it. Potato salad was next in demand and cooked tongue and rosbif disappeared rapidly. Many soldiers lounged in, eating their sandwiches in the shop. Judy enjoyed her morning greatly but she could not remember ever in her life having worked harder.

When the tarts were finished and displayed temptingly in the window, swarms of children arrived. It seemed that Mère Tricot’s tarts were famous in the Quarter. More soldiers came, too. Among them was a face strangely familiar to the amateur shop girl. Who could it be? It was the face of a typical Boulevardier: dissipated, ogling eyes; black moustache and beard waxeduntil they looked like sharp spikes; a face not homely but rather handsome, except for its expression of infinite conceit and impertinence.

“I have never seen him before, I fancy. It is just the type that is familiar to me,” she thought. “Mais quel type!”

Judy was looking very pretty, with her cheeks flushed from the excitement of weighing out spinach and salad, making change where sous were thought of as though they were gold and following the patois of the peasants that came to buy and the argot of the gamin. She had donned a white cap of Marie’s which was most becoming. Judy, always ready to act a part, with an instinctive dramatic spirit had entered into the rôle of shop keeper with a vim that bade fair to make the Tricots’ the most popular place on Boulevarde Montparnasse. Her French had fortunately improved greatly since her arrival in Paris more than two years before and now she flattered herself that one could not tell she was not Parisienne.

The soldier with the ogling eyes and waxedmoustache lingered in the shop when his companions had made their purchases and departed. He insisted upon knowing the price of every ware displayed. He asked her to name the various confitures in the tarts, which she did rather wearily as his persistence was most annoying. She went through the test, however, with as good a grace as possible. Shop girls must not be squeamish, she realized.

One particularly inviting gooseberry tart was left on the tray. Judy had had her eye on it from the first and trembled every time a purchaser came for tarts. She meant to ask Mère Tricot for it, if only no one bought it. And now this particularly objectionable customer with his rolling black eyes and waxed moustache was asking her what kind it was! Why did he not buy what he wanted and leave?

“Eh? Qu’est-ce que c’est?”he demanded with an amused leer as he pointed a much manicured forefinger at that particularly desirable tart.

Judy was tired and the French for gooseberry left her as is the way with an acquired language.Instead ofgroseillewhich was the word she wanted, she blurted out in plain English:

“Gooseberry jam!”

“Ah, I have bean pensè so mooch. You may spick ze Eengleesh with me, Mees. Gueseberry jaam! Ha, ha! An’ now, Mees, there iss wan question I should lak a demandè of the so beootifool demoiselle: what iss the prize of wan leetle kees made in a so lufly tart?” He leaned over the counter, his eyes rolling in a fine frenzy.

Where was Mère Tricot now? What a fine time to brandish her pastry board! Gone to the innermost recesses of the apartment with the rosy baby! Suddenly Judy remembered exactly where she had seen that silly face before.

“At Versailles, the day I got on the wrong train!” flashed through her mind. She remembered well the hateful creature who had sat on the bench by her and insulted her with his attentions. She remembered how she had jumped up from the bench and hurried off, forgetting her package of gingerbread, bought at St. Cloud, and how the would-be masher had run after herwith it, saying in his insinuating manner: “You have forgot yourgouter, cherie. Do you like puddeen very much, my dear?”

It was certainly the same man. His soldier’s uniform made him somewhat less of a dandy than his patent leather boots and lemon coloured gloves had done on that occasion, but the dude was there in spite of the change of clothes. On that day at Versailles she had seized the gingerbread and jammed it in her mouth, thereby disgusting the fastidious Frenchman. She had often told the story and her amused hearers had always declared that her presence of mind was much to be commended.

The soldier leaned farther and farther over the counter still demanding: “A leetle kees made in so lufly a tart.”

Ha! An inspiration! Judy grasped the desired gooseberry tart and thrust the whole thing into her mouth. There was no time to ask the leave of Mère Tricot.

“Ah quelle betise!”exclaimed the dandy, and at the same moment he, too, remembered theyoung English demoiselle at Versailles. He straightened up and into his ogling eyes came a spark of shame. With a smile that changed his whole countenance he saluted Judy.

“Pardon, Mademoiselle!”

Judy’s mouth was too full to attempt French but she managed to say in her mother tongue:

“Why do you come in a respectable place like this and behave just like a Prussian?”

“Prussian! Ah, Mademoiselle, excuse, excuse. I—the beauty of theboutiquiermade me forgetla Patrie. I have been a roué, a fool. I am henceforth a Frenchman. Mademoiselle iss wan noble ladee. She efen mar her so great beauty to protec her dignitee. I remember zepain d’epiceat Versailles andla grande bouchée. Mademoiselle hasle bel esprit, what you call Mericanhumor.Au revoir, Mademoiselle,” and with a very humble bow he departed, without buying anything at all.

The Tricots laughed very heartily when Judy told them her experience.

“I see you can take care of yourself,” saidPère Tricot with a nod of approval. “If the Prussians come, they had better look out.”

“Do you forgive me for eating the last gooseberry tart?” she asked of Mère Tricot. “I was very glad of the excuse to get it before some one bought it from under my very nose.”

Mother Tricot not only forgave her but produced another one for her that she had kept back for the guest she seemed to delight to honour.

“Ourboutiquierhas sold out the shop,” declared the old man. “I shall have to go to market very early in the morning to get more provisions cooked.”

“Ah, another excuse for absenting thyself!”

“Oh, please, may I go with you?” begged Judy.

“It will mean very early rising, but I shall be so pleased,” said the delighted old man, and his wife smiled approval.

It was arranged that Judy was to sleep on a couch in the living room. This suited her exactly, as she was able after the family had retired to rise stealthily and open a window. The French peasant and even the middle class Parisian is asafraid of air in a bedroom as we would be of a rattlesnake. They sleep as a rule in hermetically sealed chambers and there is a superstition even among the enlightened of that city that night air will give one some peculiar affection of the eyes. How they keep as healthy as they do is a wonder to those brought up on fresh air. Judy had feared that her sleeping would have to be done in the great bed with Marie and the baby and welcomed the proposition of the couch in the living room with joy. There was a smell of delicatessen wares but it was not unpleasing to one who had been economizing in food for so many days.

“I’d rather smell spinach than American Beauties,” she said to herself, “and potato salad beats potpourri.”

Her couch was clean and the sheets smelled of lavender. Marie, the little daughter-in-law, had been ablanchisseuse de finbefore she became the bride of Jean Tricot. She still plied her trade on the family linen and everything she touched was snow white and beautifully ironed. The clotheswere carried by her to the public laundry; there she washed them and then brought them home to iron.

As Judy lay on the soft, clean couch, sniffing the mingled smells of shop and kitchen and fresh sheets, she thanked her stars that she was not alone in the Bents’ studio, wondering what she was to do about breakfast and a little nervous at every sound heard during the night.

Even the bravest feels a little squeamish when absolutely alone through the long night. Judy was brave, her father’s own daughter, but those nights alone in the studio in Rue Brea had got on her nerves. It was just so much harder because of the gay, jolly winter spent in the place.

“I feel like one who treads aloneSome banquet hall, deserted,”

“I feel like one who treads aloneSome banquet hall, deserted,”

“I feel like one who treads aloneSome banquet hall, deserted,”

expressed her sentiments exactly. Once she dreamed that Molly Brown was standing over her with a cup of hot coffee, which was one of Molly’s ways. She was always spoiling people and often would appear at the bed side withmatutinal coffee. The dream came after a particularly lonesome evening. She thought that as Molly stood over her, her hand shook and some of the coffee splashed on her face. She awoke with a start to find her face wet with hot tears.

Here at the Tricots, life was quite different. Mère and Père Tricot were playing a happy duet through the night with comfortable snores. Marie could be heard cooing to her baby as she nursed it and the baby making inarticulate gurgles of joy at being nourished. The feeling of having human beings near by was most soothing. Judy did not mind the snores, but rejoiced in them. Even when the baby cried, as it did once in the night, she smiled happily.

“I am one of a family!” she exclaimed.

“Edwin, Kent has been gone over two weeks now and not one word from him,” announced Molly when Mr. Bud Woodsmall had come and gone, leaving no mail of any great importance. “I can see Mother is very uneasy, although she doesn’t say a word.”

“What was the name of his steamer?” asked the professor as he opened his newspaper. “I wouldn’t worry. Mail is pretty slow and it would take a very fast boat to land him at Havre and have a letter back this soon.”

Edwin spoke a little absent-mindedly for the Greens were very busy getting ready for their yearly move to Wellington College and time for newspaper reading was at a premium.

“But he was to cable.”

“Oh! And what was the name of the steamer?”

“L’Hirondelle de Mer, swallow of the sea. I fancy it must mean flying fish. Paul says it is a small merchantman, carrying a few passengers.”

“L’Hirondelle de Mer?”Edwin’s voice sounded so faint that Molly stopped packing books and looked up, startled.

“What is it?”

“It may be a mistake,” he faltered.

Molly jumped up from the box of books and read over her husband’s shoulder the terrible headlines announcing the sinking of the small merchantmanL’Hirondelle de Merby a German submarine. No warning was given and it was not known how many of the crew or passengers had escaped. The news was got from a boat-load of half-drowned seamen picked up by an English fishing smack. The cargo was composed of pork and beef.

Molly read as long as her filling eyes would permit, and then she sank on her knees by her husband’s chair and gave way to the grief that overcame her.

“Oh, Molly darling! It may be all right. Kent is not the kind to get lost if there is any way out of it.”

“But he would be saving others and forget himself.”

“Yes, but see—or let me see for you—it says no women or children on board.”

“Thank God for that!—And now I must go to Mother.”

“Yes, and I will go with you—but we must go with the idea of making your mother feel it is all right—that Kent is saved.”

“Yes—and I truly believe he is! I couldn’t have been as happy for the last few days as I have been if—if—Kent——” She could say no more.

Edwin held her for a moment in his arms and then called to Kizzie to look after little Mildred, who lay peacefully sleeping in her basket, blissfully ignorant of the trouble in the atmosphere.

“Look! There’s Mother coming through the garden! She knows! I can tell by the way she holds her head.”

“My children! You were coming to me. You know, then?”

“Yes, Mother! But Edwin and I think Kent is too strong and active to—to——”

“I know he is safe,” declared the intrepid mother. “I am as sure of it as though he were here in the garden of Chatsworth standing by me. One of my children could not have passed away without my being conscious of it.” She spoke in an even, clear tone and her countenance was as one inspired.

“Oh, Mother! That is what I felt, too. I could not have been so—so happy if anything awful had happened to Kent.”

Edwin Green was very thankful that the women in his family could take this view of the matter, but not feeling himself to be gifted with second sight, he determined to find out for sure as soon as possible what had become of his favorite brother-in-law. He accordingly telegraphed a night letter to Jimmy Lufton in New York to get busy as quickly as possible, sparingno expense, and find out if the Americans on board the vessel were saved.

No doubt my readers will remember that Jimmy Lufton was the young newspaper man whom Edwin Green had feared as a rival, and now that he had won the prize himself, his feeling for that young man was one of kindliness and pity.

Answer came: a stray sailor had reported that he had seen the submarine take on board two of the passengers who were battling with the heavy sea. Whether Kent was one of them, he could not tell.

There were days of anxious waiting. Molly and Edwin went on with the preparations for their flitting, but could not leave Mrs. Brown until she had assurance of the safety of her beloved son. That lady continued in the belief that all was well with him, in spite of no news.

Aunt Clay came over to Chatsworth to remonstrate with her younger sister over what she called her obstinacy.

“Why should you persist in the assertion that you would know if anything had happened toyour son? We all know that things happen all the time and persons near to them go on in ignorance of the accidents. For my part, I think it is indecent for you and your daughters to be flaunting colours as you are. You should order your mourning and have services for those lost at sea.”

As Mrs. Brown’s flaunting of colors consisted of one lavender scarf that Nance Oldham had knitted for her, this was, to say the least, unnecessary of Sister Clay.

Molly, who was present when the above unfeeling remarks were made, trembled with rage and wept with misery; but not so Mrs. Brown.

“I don’t agree with you,” she said with a calmness that astonished her daughter.

“Well, if Kent is alive, why does he not communicate with you? He is certainly careless of you to leave you in ignorance for all of this time.”

Molly noticed with a kind of fierce joy that her mother’s head was now held very high and hersensitive nostrils were a-quiver. “Her nose was a-wuckin’,” as Aunt Mary put it.

“Careless ofme!Kent! Sister Sarah, you are simply speaking with neither sense nor feeling. It has been your own fault that you have not obtained the love and affection of my children and so you wish to insinuate that they are careless of me. My son will let me know where he is as soon as he can. I already know he is alive and safe. You ask me how I know it! I can only say I know it.” This was said with so much fire that Aunt Clay actually seemed to shrink up. She bullied Mrs. Brown up to a certain point, but when that point reached criticism of one of her children, woe betide Aunt Clay.

Molly, whose certainty of Kent’s being alive was beginning to grow weak and dim with the weary days, felt new strength from her mother’s brave words. Edwin Green was forced to leave for the opening of Wellington, but Molly closed the bungalow and brought little Mildred over to Chatsworth, there to wait with her mother for some definite news.

Old Aunt Mary was a great comfort to them. She shared in their belief that their dear boy was alive.

“Cose nothin’ ain’t happened ter that there Kent. Didn’t he tell me he was a goin’ ter Parus ter bring home that Judy gal? The Dutch ain’t a goin’ ter do nothin’ ter a kind faceded pusson like our Kent. As fer drowndin’! Shoo! I done hear Lewis say that Kent kin outswim de whole er Jeff’son County. He kin swim to Indiany an’ back thout ever touchin’ lan’, right over yander by the water wucks whar the riber is mo’n a mile. An’ waves! Why, Lewis say whin the big stern wheelers is a jes’ churnin’ up the riber till it looks like the yawnin’ er grabes at Jedgement Day that Kent would jes’ laff at them an’ plunge right through jes’ lak a feesh. An’ I do hear tell that the waters er the mighty deep is salty an’ that makes me know that Kent ain’t goin’ ter sink. Don’t we tes’ the brine fer pickles wif a aig? An’ don’t the aig float? An’ if’n the mighty deep is called the briny deep don’t that mean it kin float a aig? What kin float aaig kin float a young man what already knows how ter swim crost an’ back on the ’Hier Riber.”

Julia Kean’s second letter came, also the one from her father in Molly’s care. Molly immediately sent it to the American Club in Paris. Judy’s letter certainly had nothing in it to reassure them as to her safety, except the meeting with the old man with whom she had danced at St. Cloud.

“It means that Judy is able to make friends wherever she goes, and as she says, she can always light on her feet, somehow,” sighed Molly. She did not add what was in her mind: “If she had only come home with Kent!”

“Mother, I must write to Judy now that I have some kind of address. Must I tell her?”

“Yes, my dear, tell her all we know, but tell her of our conviction that all is well. I will write to her myself, on second thought.”

John and Paul both spent every night at Chatsworth now, although it meant very early rising for both of them and often a midnight arrival or departure for Dr. John, whose practice wasgrowing but seemed to be restricted to persons who persisted in being taken very ill in the night.

“It is because so many of them are charity patients or semi-charity and they always want to get all they can,” he would declare. “Of course, a doctor’s night rates are higher than day rates, and when they are getting something for nothing, if they call me up at two a. m. they are getting more for nothing than they would be if they had their toe aches in the day time.”

Ten days had passed since the half-drowned sailors had been picked up by the English fishing smack, and still no message from Kent.

Mrs. Brown wrote and dispatched her letter to Judy Kean. It was a hard letter to write, much harder than it would have been had there been an engagement between the two. The good lady felt that Judy was almost like a daughter and still it required something more than existed to address her as one. She must convey to Judy the news that Kent was shipwrecked, and still she wanted to put in the girl’s heart the faith she had in his safety.

“Poor Judy! If she is alone in Paris, think what it will mean for this news to reach her!” Molly agonized to herself. “She may and may not care for Kent enough to marry him, but she certainly is devoted to him as a friend. She will feel it just so much more keenly because he was on his way to her.”

Molly could not sleep in her great anxiety, and her faith and the certainty of Kent’s safety left her. “I must keep up for Mildred’s sake,” she would cry as she tried to choke down food. Her every endeavor was to hide this loss of faith from her mother, whose belief in her son’s being alive and well never seemed to falter.

Daily letters from Edwin were Molly’s one comfort. He was back in the grind of lectures at Wellington and was missing sorely his wife and child.

“Molly darling, you mustn’t wait any longer in Kentucky,” her mother said at breakfast one morning. Molly was trying to dispose of a glass of milk and a soft boiled egg, although her throat seemed to close at the thought of food.

“But, Mother, I wouldn’t leave you for anything in the world,” she declared, making a successful gulp which got rid of the milk, at least.

“Your husband needs you, child, and I know it would be best for you. There is no use in waiting.”

Molly looked up, startled. Had her mother, too, lost heart? Her face had grown thinner in those days of waiting and her hair was quite grey, in fact, silvery about the temples; but her eyes still held the light of faith and high resolve.

“She still has faith! And you, Molly Brown Green! Oh, ye of little faith! What right have you to be a clog and burden? Take another glass of milk this minute and keep up your health and your baby’s health.” This to herself, and aloud: “Why, Mumsy, I want to stay right here. Little Mildred is thriving and Edwin is doing very well at Wellington. Every one is asking him out to dine, now that he is untrammelled with a wife. He reports a big gain in attendance onlast semestre and is as cheerful as can be. Caroline, please bring me another glass of milk, and I think I’ll get you to soft boil another egg for me!”

Mère Tricot called Judy just at dawn. The kindly old grenadier stood over her, and this was no dream—she held a real cup of coffee.

“The good man is ready. I hate to wake you, but if you want to go to market with him, it is time.”

“Oh, yes! It won’t take me a minute.”

Judy gulped the coffee and dived into her clothes. There seemed to be no question of baths with the good Tricots, and Judy made a mental note that she would go every day to the Bents’ studio for her cold plunge. A bathroom is the exception and not the rule in the poorer class of apartments in Paris. In New York, any apartment worthy of the name boasts a bathroom, but not so in the French city.

Père Tricot was waiting for her with his littlegreen push cart to bring home the purchases to be made in market. He was dressed in a stiff, clean, blue blouse and his kindly, lank old face was freshly shaven.

“Ah, Mam’selle! So you will go with the old man?”

“Go with you! Of course I will! I love the early morning, and the market will be beautiful.”

The streets were very quiet and misty. Paris never gets up very early, and as the cold weather comes, she lies abed later and later. The Gardens of the Luxembourg were showing signs of frost, or was it heavy dew? The leaves had begun to drop and some of them had turned.

There was a delightful nip in the air and as Judy and the old man trudged along, the girl felt really happy, happier than she had for many a day. “It must be having a home that is doing it,” she thought. “Maybe I am a domestic person, after all.

“Père Tricot, don’t you love your home?”

“My home! You don’t think that that shop in Boulevard Montparnasse is my home, eh?”

“But where is your home then?”

“Ah, in Normandy, near Roche Craie! That is where I was born and hope to die. We are saving for our old age now and will go back home some day, the good wife and I. Jean and Marie can run the shop, that is, if——”

Judy knew he meant if Jean came through the war alive.

“The city is not for me, but it seemed best to bring Jean here when he was little. There seemed no chance to do more than exist in the country, and here we have prospered.”

“I have visited at Roche Craie. I think it is beautiful country. No wonder you want to go back. The d’Ochtès were my friends there.”

“The Marquis d’Ochtè! Oh, Mam’selle, and to think of your being their guest and then mine!” Judy could have bitten out her tongue for saying she had visited those great folk. She could see now that the dear old man had lost his easein her presence. “They are the greatest landowners of the whole department.”

“Yes, but they are quite simple and very kind. I got to know them through some friends of mine who were related to the Marquise. She, you know, was an American.”

“Yes, and a kind, great lady she is. Why, it was only day before yesterday she was in our shop. She makes a rule to get what she can from us for her household. She has a chef who can make every known sauce, but he cannot make a tart like my good wife’s. We furnish all the tarts of the d’Ochtès when they are in Paris. Madame, the Marquise, is also pleased to say that mypouree d’epinardis smoother and better than Gaston’s, and only yesterday she bought a tray of it for theirdéjeuner a la fourchette. Her son Philippe is flying. The Marquis, too, is with his regiment.”

“How I wish I could have seen her!”

“Ah, then, Mam’selle would not be ashamed for the Marquise to see her waiting in the shop of poor Tricot?”

“Ashamed! Why, Père Tricot, what do you take me for? I am only too glad to help some and to feel that I can do something besides look on,” and Judy, who had been walking on the sidewalk while her companion pushed hispetite voiturealong the street, stepped down into the gutter and with her hand on the shaft went the rest of the way, helping to push the cart.

As they approached the market, they were joined by more and more pedestrians, many of them with little carts, similar to Père Tricot’s and many of them with huge baskets. War seemed to be forgotten for the time being, so bent were all of them on the business of feeding and being fed.

“One must eat!” declared a pleasant fat woman in a high stiff white cap. “If Paris is to be entered to-morrow by the Prussians, I say we must be fed and full. There is no more pleasure in dying for your country empty than full.”

“Listen to the voice of the Halles, Mam’selle. Can’t you hear it roaring? Ah! and there is the bell of St. Eustache.”

The peal of bells rose above the hum of the market.

“St. Eustache! Can’t we go into the church a little while first?”

And so, hand in hand with the old Normandy peasant, Judy Kean walked into the great old church, and together they knelt on the flagged floor and prayed. Judy never did anything by halves, not even praying. When she prayed, she did it with a fervor and earnestness St. Anthony himself would have envied. When they rose from their knees, they both looked happier. Old Tricot had prayed for his boy, so soon to be in the trenches, and Judy offered an impassioned petition for the safety of her beloved parents.

When they emerged from the church, the sun was up and the market was almost like a carnival, except for the fact that the color was subdued somewhat by the mourning that many of the women wore.

“Already so many in mourning!” thought the girl. “What will it be later?”

“First the butter and eggs and cheese! This way, Mam’selle!”

They wormed their way between the great yellow wagons unloading huge crates of eggs and giant cheeses. The smell of butter made Judy think of Chatsworth and the dairy where she had helped Caroline churn on her memorable visit to the Browns. Ah me! How glad she would be to see them again. And Kent! She had not let herself think of Kent lately. He must be angry with her for not taking his advice and listening to his entreaties to go back to the United States with him. He had not written at all and he must have been home several weeks. Maybe the letter had miscarried, but other letters had come lately; and he might even have cabled her. He certainly seemed indifferent to her welfare, as now that the war had broken out, he had not even inquired as to her safety or her whereabouts; not even let her know whether or not the job in New York had materialized.

She was awakened from her musings by her old friend, who had completed his bargaining forcheese, butter and eggs and now was proceeding to the fish market.

“I must buy much fish. It is Friday, you remember, and since the war started, religion has become the style again in France, and now fish, and only fish, must be eaten on Friday. There are those that say that the war will help the country by making us good again.”

And so, in a far corner of the cart, well away from the susceptible butter and cheese, many fish were piled up, fenced off from the rest of the produce by a wall of huge black mussels in a tangle of sea weed.

“Well, there are fish enough in this market to regenerate the whole world, I should think,” laughed Judy.

The stalls were laden with them and row after row of scaly monsters hung from huge hooks in the walls. Men, women and boys were scaling and cleaning fish all along the curbings.

“Soon there will be only women and boys for the work,” thought Judy sadly, “and maybe itwill not be so very long before there will be only women.”

Cabbages and cauliflowers were bought next (cauliflowers that Puddenhead Wilson says are only cabbages been to college); Brussels sprouts, too; and spinach enough to furnish red blood for the whole army, Judy thought; then chickens, turkeys and grouse; a great smoked beef tongue, and a hog head for souse. The little green wagon was running over now and its rather rickety wheels creaked complainingly.

Old Tricot and Judy started homeward at as rapid a rate as the load would allow. Judy insisted upon helping push, and indeed her services were quite necessary over the rough cobbles. When they reached the smooth asphalt, she told Père Tricot she would leave him for a moment and stop at the American Club in the hope of letters awaiting there for her.

How sweet and fresh she looked as she waved her hand at the old man! Her cheeks were rosy, her eyes shining, and her expression so naïve and happy that she looked like a little child.

“Ah, gentile, gentile!” he murmured. His old heart had gone out to this brave, charming American girl. “And to think of her being friends with Madame the Marquise!” he thought. “That will be a nut for the good wife and Marie to crack.”

He pushed his cart slowly along the asphalt, rather missing the sturdy strength that Judy had put into the work. Then he sat on a bench to rest awhile, one of those nice benches that Paris dots her thoroughfares with and one misses so on coming back to United States.

Paris was well awake now and bustling. The streets were full of soldiers. Old women with their carts laden with chrysanthemums were trudging along to take their stands at the corners. The air was filled with the pungent odors of their wares. Old Tricot stretched himself:

“I must be moving! There is much food to be cooked to-day. It is time my Mam’selle was coming along. Ah, there she is!” He recognized the jaunty blue serge jacket and pretty little velour sport hat that Judy always knew atwhich angle to place on her fluffy brown hair. “But how slowly she is walking! And where are her roses? Her head is bent down like some poor French woman who has bad news from the trenches.”

Back to IndexNext