“‘Which I wish to remark,And my language is plain,That for ways that are darkAnd for tricks that are vain,The heathen Chinee is peculiar.’”
“‘Which I wish to remark,And my language is plain,That for ways that are darkAnd for tricks that are vain,The heathen Chinee is peculiar.’”
“‘Which I wish to remark,And my language is plain,That for ways that are darkAnd for tricks that are vain,The heathen Chinee is peculiar.’”
“All the same, I bet old Epi Anti doesn’t tell Molly any more what a sweet thing Alice Fern is.”
“How do you know he did?”
“Insight into human nature,” and Billie made a saucy moue.
“Gee, my back aches!” said Jo. “I think I’ll do housework often. It certainly does reach muscles we don’t know about. But didn’t it pay just to see dear old Molly’s face when we rolled out from behind the sofa?”
And all of them agreed it had.
“Edwin,” said Molly, after the girls had gone, “I think I’ll send for Kizzie to come help me. I may put her in the kitchen and take Katy for a nurse.”
“Good! I am certainly glad you have come to that decision. What changed you?”
“Well, it seems to me that when it comes to the pass that my college girls feel so sorry for me they cut such lectures as yours to give the whole morning to cleaning up for me I must do something, and the only thing I can think of doing is to send for Kizzie.”
“Can you mix the black and white without coming to grief?”
“Remember, Katy is more green than white, and she is so good-natured, she could get along with anything.”
“I can’t tell you how relieved I am, honey. I wanted you to do what pleased you, but I could not see how I was coming in on this. I felt very lonesome, and while I wasn’t jealous of the baby, I was certainly envious of her. If Kizzie comes, you can be with me more and nurse me some.”
“Yes, dearie, I missed it, too, but somehow I couldn’t get through. If Katy had been more competent——”
“But she wasn’t and isn’t.”
“No, she certainly isn’t, but she adores Mildred already and Mildred actually cries for her. I believe she would make a fine nurse. If only she doesn’t feel called upon to scrub the baby.”
Edwin laughed and, settling himself for a pleasant smoke, opened the morning paper, which neither he nor Molly had found time to read.
“Oh, what a shame!” he exclaimed. “The Germans dropping bombs on Paris! Infamous!”
“Paris! How can they? Oh, Edwin, Judy and Kent both there!”
When the teller of a tale has to fly from one side of the ocean to the other in the twinkling of an eye, as it were, at any rate between chapters, and the persons in the tale have no communication with one another except by letters that are more than likely to be tampered with on the high seas, it is a great comfort to find that all the characters have at last arrived at the same date. On that morning after the dropping of bombs when Judy, dressed in her sad mourning garb, was selling spinach and tarts to the hungry occupants of the Montparnasse quarter, Molly, allowing for the difference in time, was oversleeping herself after a wakeful night and the college girls were quietly cleaning her living room. Kent and Jim Castleman were stretching themselves luxuriously in the not too comfortable beds of theHaute Loirepreparatory tomaking themselves presentable, first to find Judy, and then to find the general who, no doubt, would be glad to have the Kentucky giant enlist in the ranks, even though his letter of introduction and credentials had gone to the bottom with theHirondelle de Mer. Jim Castleman’s appearance was certainly credential enough that he would make a good fighter.
A bath and a shave did much towards making our young men presentable. Kent with a needle and thread, borrowed from the chambermaid, darned the knees of his trousers so that they did very well just so long as he did not try to sit down; then the strain would have been too much. Jim’s were hopelessly short.
“Nothing but a flounce would save me, so I’ll have to go around at high water mark; but I’ll soon be in a uniform, I hope.”
They had breakfast in a little café where Kent had often gone while he was a student at the Beaux Arts, and there Jim Castleman astonished the madame by ordering four eggs. She couldn’t believe it possible that any one couldeat that muchdéjeunerand so cooked his eggs four minutes. His French was quite sketchy but he plunged manfully in with what he had and finally came out with breakfast enough to last until luncheon. Kent was willing to do the talking for him but he would none of it.
“Let me do it myself! I’ll learn how to get something to eat if I starve in the attempt.”
And now for Judy! Kent could hardly wait for his famished friend to eat his two orders of rolls and coffee and his four eggs, but at last he was through.
First to the bank! No, they did not know where Mlle. Kean was. She had been in once to get money but they were sorry they could not honour her letter of credit. She had left no address.
Then to the American Club! Judy had been in the day before for mail, and had had quite a budget. She had left no address, but came for letters always when the American mail was reported in.
Where could she be?
Next, to his cousin, the Marquise d’Ochtè, on the Faubourg!
The venerable porter, at the porte-cochère, who came in answer to the vigorous ring that the now very uneasy Kent gave the bell, said that none of the family was within and they had no visitor. Madame the Marquise had gone to the front only the day before, but was coming home soon to open a hospital in her own home. Even then the workmen were busy carrying out her orders, packing away books, pictures, ornaments, rugs and what not so that the house would be the more suitable to care for the wounded. The Marquis and Philippe were both with their regiments. The old porter was sad and miserable. Jules, the butler, was gone; also Gaston, the chef whose sauces were beyond compare. Madame had taken great hampers of food with her, even going to Montparnasse for tarts from Tricots’.
Kent turned sadly away. Judy was somewhere, but where? Her letter to Molly telling of her being in the Bents’ studio had come afterKent left Kentucky and he had no way of knowing that she was there. Polly Perkins and his wife, he knew were in the thick of the battle from the first letter he had seen from Judy. Where was Pierce Kinsella? He had not heard from his studio mate and friend but he rather thought there was little chance of finding him. At any rate, he determined to go to the Rue Brea and see if the concierge there knew anything of the lost damsel.
They found a crowd at the entrance to the court on which the studios fronted. The concierge in the midst of them was waving her arms and talking excitedly.
“Yes, and the first I heard was a click! click! click! and that, it seems, was the terrible thing flying over us and then an explosion that deafened me. They say it was meant for the Luxembourg and they missed their mark. That I know nothing about——”
“What is it? Tell me quick!” demanded Kent, elbowing his way through the crowd with the help of Jim, that renowned center rush.
“Ah, Monsieur Brune!” she exclaimed, grasping his hand. “Did you know that a dirty Prussian had sent a bomb right down through the skylight of the good Bents’ and now all their things are wrecked?”
“The Bents’!” gasped Kent. “Was any one hurt?”
“And that we can’t say. The young lady has not been sleeping there lately but yesterday she came and got the key and did not return it, so I thought she must have slept there last night! This morning we can find no trace of her. The bomb did much damage, but surely it could not have destroyed her completely.”
“Destroyed her! What young lady?”
“Why, Mademoiselle Kean, of course.”
Kent was glad of the strong arm of Jim Castleman. He certainly needed a support but only for a moment. He pushed through the crowd and made his way to the shattered wall of the studio. The bomb had not done so much damage as might have been expected. The front wall was fallen and the skylight was broken all over the floor.The chairs and easels were piled up like jackstraws at the beginning of a game. The bedrooms were uninjured but the balcony where Judy and Molly had slept that happy winter in Paris had fallen.
Would Judy have slept up on the roost just for auld lang syne or would she have occupied a more comfortable bedroom? If she had been blown into such small bits that there was nothing to tell the tale, why should these other things have escaped? There were the blue tea cups in the china closet uninjured, although most of them were turned over, showing that the shock had reached them, too. What was that blue thing lying on the divan in the corner under untold débris?
Kent pulled off the timbers and broken glass and unearthed Judy’s blue serge dress, which was waiting to be dyed a dismal black. He clasped it in his arms in an agony of apprehension. Letters fell out of the pocket. He recognized his mother’s handwriting, also Molly’s. So, Judyhad heard from Kentucky! He stuffed them back in the jacket.
“Jim, I simply don’t believe she was here. I couldn’t have slept all night like such a lummux if she—if she——”
“Yes, old fellow! I know! I don’t believe she was here, either.”
“I just know I would have had some premonition of it! I would have been conscious of it if anything had been happening to Judy,” which showed that Kent Brown was his mother’s own son. He was not going to mourn the loss of a loved one until he was sure the loved one was gone, and he had her own unfailing faith that something could not have happened to one he cared for without his being aware of it.
“Sure you would!” declared Jim, not at all sure but relieved that his friend was taking that view of the matter.
“I know something that will be a positive proof whether she was here or not last night.” Kent walked firmly to the bath room, which was behind the bed rooms and out of the path of thebomb. He threw open the door and looked eagerly on the little glass shelf for a tooth brush.
“Not a sign of one. I know and you know that if Judy had been here last night her tooth brush would have been here, too. I am sure now! Come on, and let’s look somewhere else.”
Kent went out with Judy’s serge dress over his arm. The concierge looked sadly after him: “Her dress is all he has to cherish now. The poor young man! I used to see he was in love with her when Mrs. Brune was in the Bents’ studio and her son occupied the one to the right with Mr. Kinsella. Oh, la la!Mais la vie est amer!”
The crowd dispersed, since there was nothing more to see and the hour fordéjeuner a la fourchettewas approaching. The concierge went off to visit her daughter who was ill. The studios were all empty now and her duties were light. Her husband was to see that no one entered the court to carry off the Bents’ things, which were exposed pitifully to the gaze of the public until the authorities could do something. He, good man, waited a little while and then made his wayto a neighbouringbrasserieto get his tumbler of absinthe, and one tumbler led to another and forgetfulness followed soon, and the Bents’ studio properties were but dreams to his befuddled brain.
Judy had spent a busy morning. Marie had gone to carry tarts to “the regiment” and all of the waiting in the shop fell on her. She did it gladly, thankful that she was so busy she could not think. She measured soup and weighed spinach and potato salad and wrapped up tarts until her back ached. Finally Mère Tricot came in from the baking of more tarts.
“My child, go out for a while. You need the air. I am here now to feed these gourmands.”
“All right, Mother! I want to get my dress at the studio. Marie says she will dye it for me.”
“Certainly! Certainly! We can save many a sou by doing it ourselves. Go, child!”
Judy put on her little mourning bonnet and sadly found her way to the Rue Brea.
“I wonder where the bomb hit last night. Père Tricot said near the Luxembourg.”
What was her amazement to find the poor studio in ruins. No concierge to tell her a thing about it, for her lodge was locked tight and no one near. Judy picked her way sadly over the fallen front wall.
“I’ll get my dress, anyhow.” But although she was sure it had been on the divan in the studio, no dress was to be found.
“Well, I’ll have to have something to wear besides this thin waist. I am cold now, and what will I do when winter, real winter comes? I shall have to send to Giverny for my trunk, and no telling what it will cost to get it here. Oh, oh, how am I to go on? I wish to God I had been sleeping on that balcony when the bomb struck. Then I would have been at peace.”
Judy gave herself up to the despair that was in her heart. She made a thorough search for the suit through the poor wrecked apartment but no sign of it could she see. She went sadly back to the delicatessen shop and stepped behind thecounter, her hat still on, to assist the good Mother Tricot, who was being besieged with customers.
“Take off your hat, child. Here is a fresh cap of Marie’s and an apron. Did you get your dress?”
Judy told her kind friend of the bomb-wrecked studio and her lost suit.
“Oh, the vandals! The wretches! There must be a Prussian in our midst who would be so low as to steal your suit. No Frenchman would have done it. Before the war,—yes, but now there is not one who would do such a dastardly trick. We are all of one family now, high and low, rich and poor,—and we do not prey on one another.”
“Well, it makes very little difference,” said Judy resignedly. “I’ll send for my trunk. I have other suits in it.”
“Other suits! Oh, what riches!” but then the old woman considered that the friend of the Marquise d’Ochtè perhaps had many other suits.
Judy donned the cap and apron and went on with the shop keeping. No one could have told her from a poor little bereaved French girl. Thecap was becoming, as was also the organdy collar. Her face was pale and her eyes full of unshed tears, but the sorrow had given to Judy’s face something that her enemies might have said it had lacked: a softness and depth of feeling. Her friends knew that her heart was warm and true and that the feeling was there, but her life had been care free with no troubles except the scrapes that she had been as clever getting out of as she had been adroit getting in. She had many times considered herself miserable before but now she realized that all other troubles had been nothing—this was something she had had no conception of—this tightening of the heart strings, this hopeless feeling of the bottom having dropped out of the universe.
She felt absolutely friendless, except for her dear Tricots. The Browns could never see her again. They must blame her, as it was all her fault that Kent had come for her. If she had not been so full of her own conceit, she would certainly have sailed for America when all the others did at the breaking out of the war. Hermother and father seemed as remote as though they were on another planet. The war might last for years and there seemed no chance of their leaving Berlin.
“I’ll just stay on here and earn my board and keep,” she sighed. “The Tricots find me useful and they want me.”
In the meantime, Kent and Jim Castleman went and sat down in the Garden of the Luxembourg to smoke and talk it over, Kent still fondly clasping the serge dress.
“I’ll find her all right before night,” declared Kent. “She’ll be sure to go to the Bents’ studio sometime to-day. I’ll write a note and leave it with the concierge. I’ll also leave a note at the American Club. She must go there twice a week at least. I’d like to know where the poor little thing is,” and Kent heaved a sigh.
“I bet she is all right, wherever she is,” comforted Jim. “Say, Brown, I don’t like to mention it, but I am starved to death.”
“Not mention it! Why not?”
“Well, you see when a pal is in trouble it seems so low to go get hungry.”
“But I’m not in trouble. Now if I thought that Judy had been in that place last night there would be something to be troubled about, but as it is, I just can’t find her for a few hours, or maybe minutes. Where shall we eat?”
“That’s up to you. I’m getting mighty low in funds, so let’s do it cheap but do it a plenty,” and Jim looked rather ruefully at his few remaining francs.
“I am still in funds but I shall have to go it mighty easy, too, to get Judy and me home. I tell you what we might do. Let’s go to a shop where they have ready cooked food and bring it out here and eat it. They say you can live on half what it costs to eat in a restaurant. When I was studying over here I knew lots of fellows who lived that way. Of course, they had studios where they could take the stuff and eat it, but the Luxembourg Garden is good enough. I know a place where the Perkinses used to deal. They are the funny lot I told you about, the long-hairedman and the short-haired woman. He is driving an ambulance now and goodness knows where she is.”
“Well, let’s go to it. I am so hungry I can hardly waddle. These Continental breakfasts with nothing but bread and coffee don’t fill me up half way.”
Kent smiled, remembering the two full orders and the four eggs his friend had tucked away, but he said nothing. Having a good appetite of his own, he had naught but sympathy for his famished friend.
They left the garden and made for the shop where Jo and Polly Perkins had bought their ready cooked provisions.
“These people make some little pies that are mighty good, too. We might get half a dozen or so of them as a top off,” suggested Kent.
“Fine! I’ve got a mouth for pie, all right.”
Judy had gone to the kitchen for a moment to bring to the fore the smoked tongue that Père Tricot had been slicing in those paper-thin slices that he alone knew how to accomplish. She bore aloft a great platter of the viand, the even slicesarranged like a wreath of autumn leaves. While she was still in the living room behind the shop, two strangers entered. Their backs being to the light, Judy only saw their silhouettes as they bent over the show cases eagerly discussing what selection of meats and vegetables they should make, while Mère Tricot, accustomed to slim-pocketed customers, patiently waited. Suddenly she leaned over the counter and touched something which one of the young men had thrown over his arm.
“What is this?” she demanded with the manner she could so well assume, that of a woman of the Commune who meant to right her wrongs.
The purchaser of sauce and potato salad, the two cheapest and most filling of the wares, held up rather sheepishly a blue serge suit.
“Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle! Come quick! It is your suit—and no Frenchman, as I said, but a Prussian, no doubt.”
The grenadier slid quickly from behind the counter and putting her brawny arm out, held the door firmly, so that no escape could be possible.
Judy emerged from behind the curtains which divided the family living room from the little shop, the platter of tongue held high. In her cap and apron, she reminded one of a Howard Pyle illustration for some holiday number of a magazine.
“Gee, what a beaut!” exclaimed the taller of the two strangers.
The one with the serge suit dropped it and made a rush for the girl. He had her in his arms, platter of tongue and all, before Mère Tricot could rescue it. But that dame managed to extricate the big dish before any greater damage was done than disarranging the effect of a wreath of autumn leaves.
Hearts that were broken may be mended butplatters of smoked tongue must not be dropped on the floor and smashed.
“Oh, Judy gal, Judy gal! Tell me all about it!”
“Kent! Kent! I thought you were drowned and have gone into mourning for you,” sobbed Judy.
As for Jim Castleman, in the most execrable and impossible French, he was explaining to good Mother Tricot how it all happened, and Father Tricot hastened to the shop from his carving to find out what it was all about, and then such a handshaking and hugging as ensued was never seen!
“We were all about to sit down todéjeuner a la fourchette,” said the ever hospitable old man, “and if the young gentlemen would come with us, we should be much honoured.”
The grenadier was equally pleased to have them and, indeed, Jim Castleman was so hungry by that time that he would have eaten cold spinach with his fingers.
How that old couple plied the young Americanswith their delightful food and how they listened to their tale of shipwreck and rescue! When Kent told of their fooling the Prussians with Tutno, the childish language they had known in their youth, the Tricots laughed with such glee that a gendarme put his head in the door to see what it was all about. When Jim Castleman in a speech that sounded more like Tutno than Parisian French, informed his hosts that he was there to join the army of Joffre, old Mère Tricot helped him to two more tarts, although he had already eaten enough of them to furnish dessert for any ordinary French family of four.
“And now, Madame,” said Kent to his hostess, “I want you to do another thing for me. You have done so many things already that maybe I should not ask you.”
“What is it, mon brave?” and the old woman smiled very kindly on the young American, whom she had not half an hour before called a Prussian and accused of stealing Judy’s serge suit.
“I am to be married very soon and I want you to help me out in it.”
“Married!” Judy gasped.
“Yes, Miss Judy Kean, I am to be married and so are you. What’s more, it is to be just as soon as the French law will tie the knot.”
“Well, of all——”
“Yes, of all the slippery parties, I know you are the slipperiest and I have no idea of letting you get away. Am I right, Jim?”
Jim was too busy with a tart to be coherent. He nodded his head, however, and when Kent put the same question to Mère Tricot in French, she upheld him.
“It would be much more convenable if you were married. It is very easy to get married in war time. The authorities are not near so difficult to approach on the subject. I will see what can be done by the magistrate who married Jean and Marie, and no doubt if you interview your American Ambassador, much can be attended to in a short time.”
“Kent Brown, if you think——” sputtered Judy.
“I don’t think a thing, I just know,” said Kentvery calmly. “Put on your hat, honey, and let’s take a little walk.”
“Well, all right—but——” Was this the Judy Kean who prided herself on so well knowing her own mind, calmly consenting to be married against her will? Was it against her will? She suddenly remembered the communings she had had with herself, in which she had cried out to Kent: “Why, why, did you not make me go with you?”
“I shall have to rip the lining out of my hat before I can go out,” she said quite meekly.
“The lining out of your hat?” questioned Kent.
“Yes, you see I went into mourning when—when——” and Judy, now that it was all over, still could not voice the terrible thing she thought had happened to Kent.
“Please don’t rip it out until I see you in it. Not many men live to see how their widows look mourning for them.”
“Widows, indeed! Kent Brown, you presume too much!” exclaimed Judy, but she could nothelp laughing. The hat was very becoming and she was not loathe to wear it, just once.
First Mère Tricot must be assisted with the dishes, however; but then Judy got ready to go walking with Kent.
Père Tricot undertook to be guide to Jim Castleman, offering to lead him to the proper place to enlist.
“I’ll only look into it to-day,” said Jim, grasping Kent’s hand. “I shan’t join for keeps until I have officiated as best man.”
Judy, who had gone into Marie’s tiny bedroom to get into her rescued serge suit, overheard this remark and blushed to the roots of her fluffy hair. As she put on her white lined hat, she peeped again into the mirror: “Judy Kean, you are much too rosy for a widow,” she admonished her image.
Mère Tricot saw them off, her good man and Jim to the recruiting station, and Kent and Judy to the Luxembourg Gardens, a spot hallowed by lovers.
“Well, well!” she said to herself. “The goodGod has brought the poor lamb her lover from the grave. I am glad, very glad,—but it is certainly a pity to waste all that good dye the butcher’s wife saved for us. It is not good when kept too long, either. I won’t throw it out yet a while, though,—some one will be wanting it, perhaps.”
Marrying in Paris was certainly a much easier matter than it had been almost two years before when Molly Brown and Edwin Green had struggled to have the nuptial knot tied. Judy’s baptismal certificate was not demanded as had been Molly’s, and the long waiting for research work, as Kent expressed it, was not required. Mère Tricot undertook to engineer the affair and did it with such expedition that it could have been accomplished even before Judy got her trunk from Giverny.
It was very nice to have one’s trunk again, although it really was embarrassing to take up so much of the Tricots’ living room with the huge American affair.
“It seems funny to be married without any trousseau,” Judy confided to Mère Tricot.
“No trousseau! And what is in that great box if not trousseau?”
“I am sure I don’t know. I really haven’t any clothes to speak of that I can remember,” declared Judy.
“Well, let us see them!” begged Marie and her belle mère.
They were dying of curiosity to peep into the great box, so Judy unpacked for their benefit, and their eyes opened wide at her stack of shirt waists and lingerie and her many shoes.
“Two more suits and a great coat, silk dresses—at least three of them—and skirts and shirts of duck and linen!” exclaimed Marie. “And hats and gloves—and blouses enough for three! Not many war brides will boast such a trousseau.”
So our bride began to feel that in comparison to the little Marie, she had so much that she must not worry about wedding clothes. Instead, she divided her store of riches, and making up a bundle with a silk dress and some blouses and lingerie, a suit and a hat, she hid it in MèreTricot’s linen press for Marie to find when she, Judy, was married and gone over the seas.
She well knew that the French girl would not accept the present unless it were given to her in a very tactful way, and just to find it in the linen press with her name on it and the donor out of reach seemed to Judy the most diplomatic method.
Madame le Marquise d’Ochtè must be looked up again. Not only were Kent and Judy very fond of her, but they knew they could not show their faces to Mrs. Brown unless they had seen her dear Sally Bolling. This time they found her in the old home in the Faubourg. She had been to the front and come back to get her house in readiness for the wounded.
Could this be the gay and volatile Marquise, this sad looking, middle-aged woman? She had grown almost thin during those few months of the war. Her beautiful Titian hair was now streaked with grey. Judy remembered with a choking feeling the first time she had come to the Ochtè home on that night soon after Molly and her mother had arrived in Paris, when theyhad dined in the Faubourg and then gone to hearLouiseat the Opera. The Marquise had been radiant in black velvet and diamonds, a beautiful, gay woman that one could hardly believe to be the mother of Philippe. She had looked so young, so sparkling. She had said at one time that she allowed no grey hairs to stay in her head, but had her maid pull them out no matter how it hurt. Now it would take all a maid’s time to keep down the grey hairs in that head, and would leave but a scant supply for a coiffure could they be extracted.
Kent thought she looked more like his mother and loved her for it. Her greeting was very warm and her interest great in what Judy and Kent had been doing and what they meant to do. She received them in the great salon that had been converted into a hospital ward. All of the Louis Quinze furniture had been stored away in an upper chamber and now in its place were long rows of cots. The floor was bare of the handsome rugs which had been the delight and envy of Judy on former visits, and now theparquetted boards were frotted to a point of cleanliness that no germ would have dared to violate.
“I left the pictures for the poor fellows to look at—that is, those who are spared their eyesight,” she said sadly. “My hospital opens to-morrow, but I want the privilege of giving a wedding breakfast to you young people. I can well manage it in the smallsalle à manger. That is left as it was.”
“Oh, you are so kind, but dear old Mère Tricot is making a great cake for us and she would be sad indeed if she could not give the breakfast,” explained Judy.
“That is as it should be,” said the Marquise kindly, “but am I invited?”
“Invited! Of course you are invited, and the Marquis and Philippe if they can be got hold of.”
“They are still in camp and have not gone to the fore, so I will manage to reach them. Jean is very busy, drilling all the time, but a family wedding must be attended. Philippe is learningto fly,” and she closed her eyes a moment as though to shut out the remembrance of accidents that happen all the time to the daring aviators.
Judy wondered if he had come in contact with Josephine Perkins, but said nothing as it was a deep secret that Jo was passing off as a man and a word might give her away.
“There are many Americans in the aviation camp, and very clever and apt they are, Philippe says. I am proud of my countrymen for coming forward as they are.”
“Yes, I think it is great for them to. I—I—think I ought not to marry Kent and go off and leave so much work to be done. I ought to help. Don’t you think so, Cousin Sally?” asked Judy.
The Marquise smiled at Judy’s calling her cousin, smiled and liked it. Kent looked uneasy and a little sullen. Suppose his Judy should balk at the last minute and refuse to leave the stirring scenes of war! What then? He had sworn not to return to United States without her, and unless he did return in a very short time, the verygood job he had picked up in New York would be filled by some more fortunate and less in love young architect.
“Why, my dear, it is not the duty of all American girls to stay on this side and nurse any more than it is the duty of all American men to stay here and fight. Only those must do it who are called, as it were, by the spirit. You must marry my young cousin and go back to United States, and there your duty will begin, not only to make him the brave, fine wife that I know it is in you to make, but also to remember suffering France and Belgium. There is much work waiting for you. This war will last for years, thanks to that same Belgium who threw herself in the breach and stopped the tide of Prussians flowing into France. If it had not been for Belgium, the war would have been over now—yes, over—but France would have been under the heel of the tyrant and Belgium off of the map. Thank God for that brave little country!” and Judy and Kent bowed their heads as at a benediction.
Kent kissed the Marquise for her sensible advice. He very well knew that Judy would have been a great acquisition to his cousin’s hospital, and that workers were not numerous (not so plentiful at the beginning of the war as they were later). Her advice was certainly unselfish. He thanked her, also, for realizing that it was not up to all American men to stay and fight. He had no desire to fight any one unless his own country was at war, and then he felt he would do his duty as his ancestors had done before him.
“I tell you what we’ll do, you children and I: I’ll order out the car—I still keep one and a chauffeur so that with it I can bring the wounded back to Paris—and we will go out to the aviation camp and see Philippe and ask him to the wedding. You would like to see the camp, eh?”
“Above all things!” exclaimed Kent and Judy in chorus.
The broad grassy field, bordered by houses, sheds and workshops, presented a busy scene as the Ochtè car drove up. Biplanes were parkedto one side like so many automobiles at a reception in a city, or buggies at a county seat on court day in an American town. The field was swarming with men, all eagerly watching a tiny speck off in the blue sky in the direction of the trenches where the French had called a halt on the Germans’ insolent and triumphant march to Paris.
No more attempt was made to stop the car of Madame the Marquise from coming into the aviation camp than there would have been had she been Joffre himself.
“They know me very well,” she said in answer to Kent’s inquiry as to this phenomenon, as he well knew they were very strict about visitors in camp. “I am ever a welcome guest here, not only because they know I love them, but because of something I bring.” She pointed to a great hamper of goodies packed in by the chauffeur.
The car was surrounded by eager and courteous young aviators and soldiers, and Kent and Judy well knew it was not all for thegateauxthat the Marquise was so beloved. Philippe wassummoned and clasped in his mother’s arms. Her heart cried out that every time might be the last.
The Marquise was changed but her son even more so. His dilettantish manner was gone for good, as was also his foppish beard. His face, clean shaven except for a small moustache, was brown and lean; his mouth had taken on purpose; his eyes were no longer merely beautiful but now had depth of expression and a look of pity, as though he had seen much sorrow.
He was greatly pleased to see his cousin Kent and also Miss Kean, who, of course, he thought had gone back to America long ago. He remembered Judy always as the young lady he came so near loving. Indeed, he would have addressed her when Molly Brown had refused him, had he not been made to understand by his fair cousin how important it was to love with one’s whole soul if married happiness was to be expected. He had, after that, gone very slowly in possible courtships. Molly’s friend, Frances Andrews, had almost been his choice, but there was somethingof fineness lacking in her that deterred him in time, and he was in a measure relieved when that dashing young woman proceeded to marry an impoverished Italian prince. His mother was relieved beyond measure at what she could not but look on as her Philippe’s escape. In fact, she had never seen but one girl she thought would be just right for her beloved son and that was Molly Brown.
Philippe was told of Kent’s being shipwrecked and of Judy’s having taken up her abode with the Tricots. This last bit of information amused him greatly. Judy told with much sprightliness of her serving in the shop and of her learning to make tarts. Philippe began to look upon his cousin Kent as a very lucky dog. He sighed when he promised to come to the wedding breakfast, that is, if he could get leave. Why did all of the charming American girls pass him by?
“J’ai la France et ma mère,” he muttered, as his arm crept around the waist of that beloved mother.
“What are they all looking at so intently?” asked Judy.
“Why, that is a daring young American aviator who has gone to seek some information concerning the trenches of our friends the enemy. He is a strange, quiet little fellow. No one ever gets a word out of him but he has learned to manage his machine quicker than any of the nouveaux, and now is intrusted to carry out all kinds of dangerous orders. He looks like a boy sometimes and sometimes when he is tired, like a strange little old man. He is not very friendly but is quick at repartee and so the fellows let him alone. Speaks French like a Parisian. I have seen him before somewhere, but can’t place him. I asked him once and he was quite stiff and said I had the advantage of him. Of course I didn’t like to force myself on him after that, but I’d really like to be friendly if he would let me. See, here he comes! Look!”
They watched in silence the aeroplane sinking in a lovely spiral glide. As it sank to rest on the greensward, many hands were outstretchedto assist the grotesque little figure to alight. Judy recognized in an instant the person she had thought all the time Philippe was describing. It was, of course, Jo Bill Perkins. She was swathed in a dark leather coat and breeches, with a strange shaped cap coming down over her ears. The great goggles she wore could not deceive Judy.
“What is his name?” she asked Philippe.
“Williams is all I know, J. Williams.”
“I believe I know him. Would you mind taking him my card and asking him to come speak to me?”
“Not a bit, but I don’t believe he will come. Let him make his report first, and then I will tell him you are here. You are very charming and fetching, Mademoiselle, but I doubt your being able to bring Williams to your feet.”
Judy felt that perhaps she was not quite fair to Jo to test her by this interview, but she did long to speak to her. If Kent and Cousin Sally recognized her, she knew full well she could trust them to keep silent.
Philippe crossed the field and stopped the daring little aviator just after he had made his report to the commander.
“A young lady is asking for you.”
“A young lady for me? Absurd!”
“Yes, she has heard of your wonderful feats and longs to meet you,” teased Philippe; and then added: “Really, Williams, you are superb.”
“Not at all! Well, I am tired and don’t want to meet any young ladies.”
“But this one already knows you,” and Philippe produced Judy’s card.
“Miss Julia Kean,” Jo read in amazement. “How did she get out here, anyhow? Where is she?”
“Over here with my mother,” and Philippe looked with some amusement at the evident blush that spread over Jo’s freckled cheeks. She still had on the grotesque cap and goggles which would have made recognition of her difficult. She wanted very much to see Judy. She wanted to hear something of her Polly, too, and she intended to have Judy look him up if possible, and report to her.
“Will you see her?”
“Sure!”
“Miss Kean is a charming girl, Williams, isn’t she?” said the quizzing Philippe, looking searchingly at his companion as they made their way across the field.
“You bet!” said Jo.
“Have you known her long?”
“Quite a while,” and Jo’s cheeks again were suffused with a dark flush.
“Poor little fellow!” thought Philippe. “Ican’t bear to tell him she is to be married. He is such a dare devil the chances are he will be killed before long and he may never have to know that his inamorata has chosen a better looking man, not a better man—they don’t make them to beat little Williams.”
As they approached the car, impulsive Judy jumped out and ran to meet her friend. Jo ran, too, and they embraced with such ardor that Philippe stood back amazed. Maybe Kent Brown was not to be so envied, after all. If the girl who was to marry him in a day was so lavish with her embraces for other men, what kind of wife would she make? Of course, Williams was a rather dried up person, but then a man’s a man for a’ that.
Kent, too, was rather astonished when his fiancée left him with such precipitation and before all the aviation camp hugged and kissed the strange bunchy little figure. Ardor for the heroes of France was all well enough, but a fellow’s sweetheart need not be quite so warm in her manner of showing her appreciation, especiallywhen the fellow happens not to be one himself in the habit of making daily daring flights to spy out the weakness in the trenches of the enemy.
The Marquise laughed as she had not done since the first week in August of that terrible year. Kent looked at her in astonishment. She was not so very much like his mother, after all. His mother would not have been so much amused over the discomfiture of a young lover.
That matron was saying to herself: “How stupid men are!” She had recognized Jo from the beginning. Kent had known in some far off corner of his brain that Mrs. Polly Perkins was doing something or other about the war, but his mind had been so taken up with his own affairs and Judy’s possible danger that that knowledge had stayed in the corner of his brain while the more important matter of getting married was uppermost. Suddenly the truth flashed over him and he was overcome with laughter, too.
“Caught on, eh?” asked his cousin.
He nodded.
“We must keep mum,” she admonished. “There is no reason why a woman should not do her part this way if she can. I’d fly in a minute if that would help any. Of course these stupid men would raise a hue and cry if they knew a woman was carrying off the honours.”
“I am as quiet as the grave,” declared Kent.
Judy came to the car with her friend and with the utmost audacity introduced Jo as Mr. Williams. The Marquise greeted the supposed young man graciously. Kent sprang out and shook Jo warmly by the hand, much to the astonishment of his cousin Philippe.
“Can’t I see you a moment alone?” whispered Jo in Judy’s ear. The Marquise, as though she divined what was in the heart of Mrs. Polly Perkins, asked her to come sit in the car; and then she suggested that Philippe show the camp to Kent and on second thought decided to go with them. The chauffeur had been sent with the hamper to the mess hall, so Judy and Jo had a few minutes alone.
“I must find out something about Polly. Ifeel as though I could wait no longer for news of him. Can’t you help me?”
“Well, you know I am to be married to-morrow and sail for United States, but I am going to see that news is got to you somehow. Cousin Sally will do it, of course. She is the very person.”
“Oh, but that Philippe must not know. He has already been very curious about where he has seen me before, and I have had to be insufferably rude to him to keep him from prying into my past. I have made good as a man, but still they would not like it, I know.”
“How on earth did you ever get in? I am dying to hear all about it.”
“Well, naturally the examination for physical fitness was worrying me some. I got that little dried up art student named Joel Williams, the one who was always trying to claim kin with me, to take the examination and then let me slip in in his place. I bought his ticket to America to pay him for his trouble. He was broke, as usual, and scared to death when the war started, andwilling to do anything to get home. It was really very simple to manage it. I am the same type, in a way, although I hope I am not so dried up as my would-be cousin. Same initials, too, which made the entering rather more regular.”
“Oh, Jo, what a girl you are!”
“Shh! Don’t call me a girl even to yourself. Do you think the Marquise d’Ochtè recognized me?”
“Of course she did and Kent, too! Do you think they would have left us alone if they had not thought you were safe? Kent wouldn’t have left me with such a bird if he had not known who the bird was. He would be afraid I might fly away with you. Oh, Jo, I do so want to fly!”
“Well, why not?”
“Oh, could I really?”
“I think so. I have brought in information to our commander that is valuable enough for me to ask one small favor of him. Come on, let’s ask!”
The two girls were across the field and knocking for admittance at the Commander’s tent beforethe Marquise and the two young men had begun their tour of inspection.
“A favor to ask!” exclaimed the grizzled old warrior who sat poring over a map where Jo had only a few moments before added some crosses that meant much to the tactics of the French army.
“I want to take a friend up in a machine.”
“A friend! I am sorry, my son, but it is hard to tell friends in this day of war. I can’t let you. He might be no friend, after all, to France.”
“He! It is not a man but an American girl. She is just outside your tent,” and Jo raised the flap and motioned Judy to enter. Judy was introduced. The old warrior looked at her searchingly.
“Tell me, are you related to Robert Kean?”
“His daughter, sir.”
“Robert Kean’s daughter! Why, my child, your father and I have been close friends for years. Tell me where he is and what he is doing.”
So Judy told of her father’s letter and his beingheld in Berlin because of the knowledge he had of Turkey’s topography. She made him laugh long and loud when she told of the ridiculous limericks he had written on the paper boats.
“And you, Robert Kean’s daughter, want to fly, and to fly with our bravest and most daring aviator! Well, don’t fly off to America with him,—and God bless you, my children,” and he gave Judy a fatherly embrace and went back to his map.
When Kent got back to the car with his cousin, there was no Judy.
“Where can she have gone and where is Williams?”
Philippe looked rather mysterious. Young girls who rushed up and embraced bird men with such ardor should not be allowed too much rope.
“No doubt she will be back soon. Williams is perhaps showing her the camp. Look, there goes another machine up! Two in it! By Jove, it is Williams! I can tell by his way of starting.He has such a smooth getaway always. Could the passenger be Miss Kean?”
“More than likely,” said Kent composedly. “She has always been crazy to fly. I reckon Williams will take good care of her and not go too high or try any stunts.”
“Oh, certainly not!” said Philippe wonderingly. Americans were a riddle to him. He never quite understood his own mother, who had rather a casual idea of proprieties herself at times. That good lady, coming up just then, expressed no concern over the impropriety of Judy’s flying with a man when she was to be married on the morrow to some one else.
Kent sat in the car with his cousin Sally and together they enjoyed Judy’s flight. Jo took her as close to the fighting line as she dared, but she had no idea of endangering the life of her passenger. They dipped and curved, for the most part confining their maneuvers to the vicinity of the camp. Judy never spoke one word, but held her breath and wept for sheer joy.
“To be flying! To be flying! Oh, Judy Kean,you lucky dog!” she said to herself. “All my life I’ve been dreaming I could fly and now I am doing it.”
“Dizzy?” asked Jo.
“No, but happy enough to die,” gasped Judy. “If I wasn’t going to be married, I’d be a bird man.”
When the landing was finally made and Judy stepped out, the world seemed very stale, flat and unprofitable. She was glad Kent was there waiting for her. If she could not be a bird man, she could at least be a very happy war bride. The great leather coat she had worn in her flight was very ugly and unbecoming, and she was thankful for one thing that she did not have to wear such frightful looking clothes all the time.
On the way back to Paris she asked cousin Sally how she had recognized Jo Williams so readily.
“By her feet, of course! Why, no man on earth ever had such eternally feminine feet.” That good lady promised to find out immediatelysomething about Polly and let his spunky wife know where and how he was. “She will have the Cross of Honour before she gets through, Philippe says.”
“You don’t feel as though it were your duty to tell she is a woman, do you?” asked Judy.
“Duty to tell! Heavens, child! I feel it is my duty to help France in every way I can, and surely to get that girl out of the aviation corps would be a hindrance tola Patrie. I doubt even Philippe’s thinking it his duty to tell, and,” with a twinkle in her eye that the horrors of war could not altogether dim, “Philippe has a very stern idea of his duty. He felt maybe it was his duty to get in a flying machine and go after you and Mr. Williams so he could chaperone you. He felt that the dignity of the family was at stake,—so soon to be the bride of his cousin and flying with another man! Terrible!”
“Why, of course! I never thought of how it looked. There I went and hugged and kissed Jo right before everybody. I bet you a sou thisminute Philippe and all the rest of them are feeling sorry for you, Kent.”
“Well, they needn’t be,” declared that young man as he found Judy’s hand under the robe. “I’m satisfied—but I did feel a little funny for half a minute when you went and kissed Jo so warmly. It took me a moment longer to recognize her. Why didn’t you put me on?”
“Put you on? How could I, with all the people around?”
“You promised me once you wouldn’t fly with anybody until you could fly with me. Don’t you remember?”
“Of course I did, you goose! But I didn’t say anybody—I said any man; so you see I didn’t break my promise when I flew with Mrs. Polly Perkins!”
When the Marquise d’Ochtè said she would do something, she always did it and did it as well as it could be done. When she undertook to find out where and how Polly Perkins was for the benefit of his spunky wife, she did it and did it immediately. And not only did she find him, but she got a little respite from duty for him and bore him back to Paris where she had already spirited Jo to be present at the wedding breakfast. She had asked a holiday for Jo, too, although the grizzled commander was loathe to let his best aviator off even for a day.
Jo was taken to the converted d’Ochtè mansion and there dressed like a nice, feminine little woman, her hair curled by madame’s maid. A tight velvet toque and a dotted veil completed the transformation and the commander himselfwould not have recognized his one time prize aviator. All of this masquerade was for the sole purpose of fooling Philippe, who, also, was to be one of the guests at the Tricots’.
Polly was so happy to see his Jo again that it was pathetic to behold, and her pride in him and his bravery was beautiful. Polly was vastly improved. Kent, who had always liked the little man and had insisted that there was much more to him than the other members of the colony could see, was delighted to have his opinion of his friend verified.
The ceremony was a very simple one, performed, not by the magistrate as Mère Tricot had suggested, but at the Protestant Episcopal Church. Polly Perkins gave away the bride, and Jo looked as though she would burst with pride at this honour done her husband. Jim Castleman was best man, and Cousin Sally fell in love with him on the spot.
“He is like the young men of my youth,” she declared, “the young men of Kentucky, I am not saying how many years ago.”
The little living room at the Tricots’ soon after the ceremony was full to overflowing, but every one squeezed in somehow. The old couple were very happy in dispensing hospitality. Their Jean came home for a few hours and their hearts were thankful for this glimpse of their son. Marie beamed with joy and the rosy baby delighted them all by saying, “Pa-pa!” the first word it had ever uttered.
Philippe, looking so handsome that Judy, too, wondered that all the American girls passed him by, fraternized with Jean, the peasant’s son, with that simplicity which characterizes the military of France.
The party was very gay, so gay that it seemed impossible that the Germans were really not more than thirty miles from them. Of course they talked politics, men and women. Old Mère Tricot had her opinions and expressed them, and they listened with respect when she pooh-poohed and bah-bahed the notion that the Nations had gone to war from altruistic motives.
“Belgium might as well die fighting as die notfighting. The Germans had her any way she jumped. France had to fight, too, fight or be enslaved. As for Great Britain—she couldn’t well stay out of it! When the Germans got Antwerp, why, where was England? Let us fight, I say—fight to a finish; but let’s be honest about it and each country say she is fighting for herself.”
“Do you think United States should come over and help?” asked Kent, much interested in the old woman’s wisdom.
“Not unless she has wrongs of her own to right!” spoke the grenadier.
“But think how France helped us out in ’76!” exclaimed Judy.
“Yes, and helped herself, no doubt. I am not very educated in history, but I’ll be bound she had a crow of her own to pick with England.”
“To be sure,” laughed Philippe, “France did want to destroy the naval supremacy of Great Britain. Her alliance with Spain meant more to France than her alliance with America. Shewas not wholly disinterested when she helped the struggling states.”
“Oh, Heavens, Philippe, please don’t take from me the romantic passion I have always had for Lafayette!” begged his mother. “I used to thrill with joy when tales were told of my great grandmother’s dancing with him.”
“Keep your passion for Lafayette. He was at least brave and disinterested, but don’t waste much feeling on the government that backed him. Vergennes, the minister of France at that time, prepared a map in which the United States figured as the same old colonial strip between the Alleghenies and the sea. They had no idea of helping United States to become a great nation.”
“Yes, I remember reading a letter from Jay in which he said: ‘This court is interested in separating us from Great Britain, but it is not their interest that we should become a great and formidable people.’ But I feel deeply grateful to France for all she did,” said Kent.
“Me, too!” cried Jim Castleman. “And I mean to do all I can to pay it back.”
“Ah! My American Lafayette!” cried the Marquise. “A toast, a toast, to my American Lafayette!” And they stood up and drank a toast to the blushing young giant.
“I didn’t dream any one could have such a good time at her own wedding,” said Judy when the last vestige of cake had disappeared. It was a wonderful cake with a tiny white sugar bride and a chocolate groom perched on top. There had been much holding of hands under the table. Every other person seemed to be eating with his or her left hand, and Cousin Sally complained that she had no hand to eat with at all, as Philippe held one of her hands and the American Lafayette held the other.
The Marquis could not come, much to the regret of all the company, for his regiment expected to be called to the front any day and no leaves could be granted.
Judy put up a brave front when adieux were in order, but her heart was very sad. How many terrible things might happen to these kind friends she was leaving! The Tricots, good souls,might be bereft at any moment. Dear Cousin Sally, with two in the war, might be doubly visited by the hand of death. Polly and Jo Perkins were to part after this brief time of happiness, holding hands under the Tricots’ hospitable board, one to return to his office of caring for the wounded, the other to her office of keeping the German ambulance drivers busy. The young Kentucky giant, Jim Castleman, was to join his regiment on the following day. His glee at having a chance to swat the Prussians was intense. He didn’t look like a person who could ever die, but one bit of shrapnel might in the twinkling of an eye destroy that virile youth.
“Come to see me when you can, my American Lafayette,” begged the Marquise, “and if you get so much as a tiny little wound, let me nurse you if you can get to me.”
Jim had delighted the little party by translating into his execrable French football terms to describe his idea of how the war should be conducted. His left tackle was frankly: “gauche palan,” and his centre rush was: “cintre jonc.”
He and Kent were not very demonstrative in their parting, but both of them felt it deeply.
“Wuv e lul lul! Sus o lul o nun gug!” called Jim, as the cab bearing the bride and groom started.
“Gug o o dud lul u sank kuk!” was Kent’s feeling rejoinder.