Molly Brown of Kentucky

“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 on last 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!”

CHAPTER VIII.

DES HALLES

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 little green 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 ease in 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 my pouree d’epinard is smoother and better than Gaston’s, and only yesterday she bought a tray of it for their déjeuner 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 his petite voiture along 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 for cheese, 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 it will 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 at which 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.”

CHAPTER IX.

THE AMERICAN MAIL

Judy had, clasped in her arms, a package of mail, unopened except for the letter on top, which was the one that poor, brave Mrs. Brown had written her. She had kept throughout the letter the same gallant spirit of belief in her son’s safety, but Judy could not take that view.

“Gone! Gone! and all because of poor miserable, no-account me!” her heart cried out in its anguish, but she shed no tear and made no sound. Her face, glowing with health and spirits only a few minutes ago, was now as pale as a ghost and her eyes had lost their sparkle.

Père Tricot hastened towards her as she came slowly down the street.

“My dear little girl, what is it?”

“He is drowned and all for me – just my stubbornness!”

“Who? Your father?”

“No!”

“Your brother, then?”

“I have no brother.”

“Ah, then, your sweetheart? Your fiancé?”

“I – I – sometime he might – that is, we were not fiancéd, not exactly.”

The old man drew her down on the bench beside him:

“Now tell me all about it, ma pauvre petite.”

And Judy told him of her friends in Kentucky. Of Molly Brown and her brother Kent; of her own stubbornness in not leaving France when the war broke out; and then she translated Mrs. Brown’s letter for him.

“Ah, but the good lady does not think he is drowned!”

“Yes, but she is so wonderful, so brave.”

“Well, are you not wonderful and brave, too? You must go on with your courage. If a mother can write as she has done and have faith in le bon Dieu, then you must try, too – that will make you worthy of such a belle mère. Does she not say that two passengers were seen to be saved by the enemy?”

“Oh, Père Tricot, you are good, good! I will try – if Kent’s own mother can be so brave, why surely I must be calm, too, I, who am nothing to him.”

“Nothing? Ah, my dear Mam’selle, one who is nothing does not have young men take trips across the ocean for her. But look at the spinach wilting in the sun! We must hasten to get the cooking done.”

Poor Judy! All zest had gone out of the morning for her. She put her package of mail in the cart, not at all caring if it got at the fishy end, and wearily began to push. Père Tricot, well knowing that work was a panacea for sorrow, let her take her share of the burden, and together the old peasant in his stiff blue blouse and the sad young American girl trundled the provisions down the boulevard.

“You have more letters, my daughter?”

“Yes, I have not read them yet. I was afraid of more bad news.”

“Perhaps there is something from the mother and father.”

“No, the big one is from Molly and the others are just from various friends.”

When they reached the shop, of course Mère Tricot started in with her usual badinage directed against her life partner, but he soon tipped her a wink to give her to understand that Judy was in distress, and the kind old grenadier ceased her vituperation and went quietly to work washing spinach and making ready the fowls for the spit.

Judy took her letters to a green bench in the diminutive court behind the apartment which passed for garden, with its one oleander tree and pots of geraniums. Her heart seemed to be up in her throat; at least, there was a strange pulsation there that must be heart. So this was sorrow! Strange to have lived as long as she had and never to have known what sorrow was before! The nearest she had ever come to sorrow was telling her mother and father good-by when they started on some perilous trip – but they had always come back, and she was used to parting with them.

But Kent – maybe he would never come back! It was all very well for Mrs. Brown to refuse to believe in his being gone forever, but why should he be the one to be saved, after all? No doubt the passengers who were lost had mothers and – and what? Sweethearts – there she would say it! She was his sweetheart even though they were not really engaged. She knew it now for a certainty. Kent did not have to tell her what he felt for her, and now that it was too late, she knew what she felt for him. She knew now why she had been so lonesome. It was not merely the fact that war was going on and her friends were out of Paris – it was that she was longing for Kent. She understood now why she felt so homeless just at this time. She was no more homeless than she had always been, but now she wanted a home and she wanted it to be Kent’s home, too. Fool! fool that she had been! Why hadn’t she gone home like all the sensible Americans when war was declared? The Browns would never forgive her and she would never forgive herself. She read again Mrs. Brown’s letter. How good she was to have been willing to have Kent turn right around and go back to Paris for that worthless Julia Kean. And now he was gone, and it was all her fault! Ah, me! Well, life must be lived, if all the color had gone out of it.

She wearily opened the letter addressed in Molly’s handwriting. It was from her father, and in it another from her mother, forwarded by Molly. At last she had heard from them. They, too, hoped she had gone back to America. Had taken for granted she had, since they had sent the letters to Molly. She read them over and over. The love they had for her was to be seen in every word. Never again would she part from them. How she longed for them! They would understand about Kent, even though she was not engaged to him. And now she knew what Bobby would advise her to do were he there in Paris: “Work! Work until you drop from it, but work!”

Already the great range, that stretched the entire length of the tiny tiled kitchen, was filled with copper vessels, and appetizing odors were permeating the living room and the little shop beyond.

“Let me help,” said Judy bravely. “Must I mind the shop or do you need me here? I can’t cook, but I can wash spinach and peel potatoes.”

“Marie can look after the shop this morning, my dear child, so you go rest yourself,” said the good wife.

“I don’t want to rest! I want to work!”

“Let her work, Mother! Let her work! It is best so,” and Judy’s old partner got the blue bowl, sacred to mayonnaise, and Judy sat on the bench in the court and stirred and stirred as she dropped the oil into the beaten egg. Her arm ached as the great smooth yellow mass grew thicker and thicker, but the more her arm ached, the less her heart ached. When the bowl was quite full, she started in on a great basket of potatoes that must be peeled, some for Saratoga chips and some for potato salad. Onions must be peeled, too, and then the spinach cleaned and chopped in a colander until it was a purée.

The Tricots worked with a precision and ease that delighted Judy. She never tired of watching the grenadier turn out the wonderful little tarts. On that morning a double quantity was to be made as Marie was to carry a basket of them to “the regiment”; that, of course, meant Jean Tricot’s regiment. They had not yet been ordered to the front, but were ready to go at any moment.

The old woman put batch after batch in the great oven. They came out all done to a turn and all exactly alike, as though made by machinery. Then they were put in the show cases in the shop; and more were rolled out, filled and baked.

“Sometime may I try to do some?”

The old woman smiled indulgently at Judy’s pale face.

“You may try right now.”

Judy made a rather deformed batch but Mère Tricot declared the children would not know the difference, and they could be sold to them. “The soldats must have the prettiest and another time you can make them well enough for them.”

So far, Judy had not shed a tear. Her eyes felt dry and feverish and her heart was still beating in her throat in some mysterious way. Suddenly without a bit of warning the tears came. Splash! Splash! they dropped right on the tarts.

“Never mind the tarts!” exclaimed the kindly grenadier. “Those must go to Jean’s regiment. They will understand.”

“I could not help it,” sobbed poor Judy. “I was thinking how proud Kent would be of me when he knew I could make tarts and wondering how many he could eat, when all of a sudden it came to me that he never would know – and – and – Oh, Mother Tricot!” and she buried her face on the bosom of the good old woman, who patted her with one hand and held her close while she adroitly whisked a pan of tarts from the oven with the other.

“Tarts must not burn, no matter if hearts are broken!”

CHAPTER X.

THE ZEPPELIN RAID

Judy’s cry did her good, although it left her in such a swollen state she was not fit to keep shop, which was what she had planned to do for the afternoon.

“I think I’ll go round to the studio in Rue Brea for a little while. I want to get some things.”

What she really wanted was to get a bath and to be alone for a few hours. Her kind hosts thought it would be wise to let her do whatever she wanted, so they gave her God-speed but begged her not to be out late.

Judy now longed for solitude with the same eagerness she had before longed for companionship. She knew it would be unwise for her to give up to this desire to any extent and determined to get back to her kind friends before dark, but be alone she must for a while. She got the key from the concierge and entered the studio. All was as she had left it. Windows and doors opened wide soon dispelled the close odor. A cold bath in the very attractive white porcelain tub, the pride of the Bents, made poor Judy feel better in spite of herself.

“I don’t want to feel better. I’ve been brave and noble all morning and now I want to be weak and miserable. I don’t care whether school keeps or not. I am a poor, forlorn, broken-hearted girl, without any friends in all the world except some Normandy peasants. The Browns will all hate me, and my mother and father I may never see again. Oh, Kent! Kent! Why didn’t you just pick me up and make me go with you? If you had been very, very firm, I’d have gone.”

Judy remembered with a grim smile how in old days at college she had longed to wear mourning and how absurd she had made herself by dyeing her hair and draping herself in black. “I’m going into mourning now. It is about all I can do for Kent. It won’t cost much and somehow I’d feel better.” Judy, ever visualizing, pictured herself in black with organdy collar and cuffs and a mournful, patient look. “I’ll just go on selling tarts. It will help the Tricots and give me my board.” She counted out her money, dwindled somewhat, but now that she was working she felt she might indulge her grief to the extent of a black waist and some white collars and cuffs. “I’ve got a black skirt and I’ll get my blue suit dyed to-morrow. I’ll line my black sport hat with white crêpe. That will make it do.” In pity for herself, she wept again.

She slipped out of the studio and made her few purchases at a little shop around the corner. Madame, the proprietaire, was all sympathy. She had laid in an especial stock of cheap mourning, she told Judy, as there was much demand for it now.

It took nimble fingers to turn the jaunty sport hat into a sad little mourning bonnet, but Judy was ever clever at hat making, and when she finished just before the sun set, she viewed her handiwork with pardonable pride. She slipped into her cheap black silk waist and pinned on the collar and cuffs. The hat was very becoming, so much so that Judy had another burst of tears.

“I can’t bear for it to be becoming. I want to look as ugly and forlorn as possible.”

She determined to leave her serge suit in the studio and come on the following day to take it to a dye shop. As she was to do this, she decided not to leave the key with the concierge but take it with her.

Her kind friends looked sadly at the mourning. They realized when they saw it that Judy had given up all hope of her friend.

“Ah, the pity of it! The pity of it!” exclaimed the old grenadier.

Marie, whose apple-like countenance was not very expressive of anything but health, looked as sympathetic as the shape of her face would allow. Round rosy cheeks, round black eyes, and a round red mouth are not easy to mold into tragic lines, but Judy knew that Marie was feeling deeply for her. She was thinking of her Jean and the possibility of turning her bridal finery into mourning. There was so much mourning now and according to the Temps, the war was hardly begun.

“I’ll have my serge suit dyed to-morrow,” Judy confided to her.

“Ah, no! Do not have it dyed! Mère Tricot and I can do it here and do it beautifully. The butcher’s wife over the way is dyeing to-morrow and she will give us some of her mixture. It is her little brother who fell only yesterday.”

That night there was great excitement in the Montparnasse quarter. A fleet of air ships circled over the city, dropping bombs as they flew. The explosions were terrific. The people cowered in their homes at first and then came rushing out on the streets as the noise subsided.

Père Tricot came back with the news that no great harm had been done, but it was his opinion that the Prussians had been after the Luxembourg.

“They know full well that our art treasures are much to us, and they would take great pleasure in destroying them. The beasts!”

“Where did the bombs strike?” asked Judy from her couch in the living room. She had wept until her pillow had to be turned over and then had at last sunk into a sleep of exhaustion only to be awakened by the ear-splitting explosions.

“I don’t know exactly, but it was somewhere over towards the Gardens of the Luxembourg. I thank the good God you were here with us, my child.”

CHAPTER XI.

“L’HIRONDELLE DE MER.”

Kent Brown, when he reached New York on his return trip to Paris in quest of the rather wilful, very irritating, and wholly fascinating Judy, got his money changed into gold, which he placed in a belt worn under his shirt.