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CHAPTER V.
LETTERS FROM PARIS AND BERLIN
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 proud driver 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’t go 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 the Commune. 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 I am 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 hoped for 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 I cannot. 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 benefit it 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 I would 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 forced to 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 are you 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 more man 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!”
or this:
“I wish that my Room had a Floor —
I don’t so much care for a Door,
But this walking around
Without touching the ground
Is 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 caste
From 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 communication with 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 most ill 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 uneasiness to 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 draw any 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.
CHAPTER VI.
AT THE TRICOTS’
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 as rather 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 old fathers, 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? No mail 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, rags even. 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, help in 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 what news 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 Tricot on 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 waxed until 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 waxed moustache 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 of groseille which was the word she wanted, she blurted out in plain English:
“Gooseberry jam!”
