Kitabı oku: «Molly Brown of Kentucky», sayfa 4
“Ah, I have bean pensè so mooch. You may spick ze Eengleesh with me, Mees. Gueseberry jaam! Ha, ha! An’ now, Mees, there iss wan question I should lak a demandè of the so beootifool demoiselle: what iss the prize of wan leetle kees made in a so lufly tart?” He leaned over the counter, his eyes rolling in a fine frenzy.
Where was Mère Tricot now? What a fine time to brandish her pastry board! Gone to the innermost recesses of the apartment with the rosy baby! Suddenly Judy remembered exactly where she had seen that silly face before.
“At Versailles, the day I got on the wrong train!” flashed through her mind. She remembered well the hateful creature who had sat on the bench by her and insulted her with his attentions. She remembered how she had jumped up from the bench and hurried off, forgetting her package of gingerbread, bought at St. Cloud, and how the would-be masher had run after her with it, saying in his insinuating manner: “You have forgot your gouter, cherie. Do you like puddeen very much, my dear?”
It was certainly the same man. His soldier’s uniform made him somewhat less of a dandy than his patent leather boots and lemon coloured gloves had done on that occasion, but the dude was there in spite of the change of clothes. On that day at Versailles she had seized the gingerbread and jammed it in her mouth, thereby disgusting the fastidious Frenchman. She had often told the story and her amused hearers had always declared that her presence of mind was much to be commended.
The soldier leaned farther and farther over the counter still demanding: “A leetle kees made in so lufly a tart.”
Ha! An inspiration! Judy grasped the desired gooseberry tart and thrust the whole thing into her mouth. There was no time to ask the leave of Mère Tricot.
“Ah quelle betise!” exclaimed the dandy, and at the same moment he, too, remembered the young English demoiselle at Versailles. He straightened up and into his ogling eyes came a spark of shame. With a smile that changed his whole countenance he saluted Judy.
“Pardon, Mademoiselle!”
Judy’s mouth was too full to attempt French but she managed to say in her mother tongue:
“Why do you come in a respectable place like this and behave just like a Prussian?”
“Prussian! Ah, Mademoiselle, excuse, excuse. I – the beauty of the boutiquier made me forget la Patrie. I have been a roué, a fool. I am henceforth a Frenchman. Mademoiselle iss wan noble ladee. She efen mar her so great beauty to protec her dignitee. I remember ze pain d’epice at Versailles and la grande bouchée. Mademoiselle has le bel esprit, what you call Mericanhumor. Au revoir, Mademoiselle,” and with a very humble bow he departed, without buying anything at all.
The Tricots laughed very heartily when Judy told them her experience.
“I see you can take care of yourself,” said Père Tricot with a nod of approval. “If the Prussians come, they had better look out.”
“Do you forgive me for eating the last gooseberry tart?” she asked of Mère Tricot. “I was very glad of the excuse to get it before some one bought it from under my very nose.”
Mother Tricot not only forgave her but produced another one for her that she had kept back for the guest she seemed to delight to honour.
“Our boutiquier has sold out the shop,” declared the old man. “I shall have to go to market very early in the morning to get more provisions cooked.”
“Ah, another excuse for absenting thyself!”
“Oh, please, may I go with you?” begged Judy.
“It will mean very early rising, but I shall be so pleased,” said the delighted old man, and his wife smiled approval.
It was arranged that Judy was to sleep on a couch in the living room. This suited her exactly, as she was able after the family had retired to rise stealthily and open a window. The French peasant and even the middle class Parisian is as afraid of air in a bedroom as we would be of a rattlesnake. They sleep as a rule in hermetically sealed chambers and there is a superstition even among the enlightened of that city that night air will give one some peculiar affection of the eyes. How they keep as healthy as they do is a wonder to those brought up on fresh air. Judy had feared that her sleeping would have to be done in the great bed with Marie and the baby and welcomed the proposition of the couch in the living room with joy. There was a smell of delicatessen wares but it was not unpleasing to one who had been economizing in food for so many days.
“I’d rather smell spinach than American Beauties,” she said to herself, “and potato salad beats potpourri.”
Her couch was clean and the sheets smelled of lavender. Marie, the little daughter-in-law, had been a blanchisseuse de fin before she became the bride of Jean Tricot. She still plied her trade on the family linen and everything she touched was snow white and beautifully ironed. The clothes were carried by her to the public laundry; there she washed them and then brought them home to iron.
As Judy lay on the soft, clean couch, sniffing the mingled smells of shop and kitchen and fresh sheets, she thanked her stars that she was not alone in the Bents’ studio, wondering what she was to do about breakfast and a little nervous at every sound heard during the night.
Even the bravest feels a little squeamish when absolutely alone through the long night. Judy was brave, her father’s own daughter, but those nights alone in the studio in Rue Brea had got on her nerves. It was just so much harder because of the gay, jolly winter spent in the place.
“I feel like one who treads alone
Some banquet hall, deserted,”
expressed her sentiments exactly. Once she dreamed that Molly Brown was standing over her with a cup of hot coffee, which was one of Molly’s ways. She was always spoiling people and often would appear at the bed side with matutinal coffee. The dream came after a particularly lonesome evening. She thought that as Molly stood over her, her hand shook and some of the coffee splashed on her face. She awoke with a start to find her face wet with hot tears.
Here at the Tricots, life was quite different. Mère and Père Tricot were playing a happy duet through the night with comfortable snores. Marie could be heard cooing to her baby as she nursed it and the baby making inarticulate gurgles of joy at being nourished. The feeling of having human beings near by was most soothing. Judy did not mind the snores, but rejoiced in them. Even when the baby cried, as it did once in the night, she smiled happily.
“I am one of a family!” she exclaimed.
CHAPTER VII.
A MOTHER’S FAITH
“Edwin, Kent has been gone over two weeks now and not one word from him,” announced Molly when Mr. Bud Woodsmall had come and gone, leaving no mail of any great importance. “I can see Mother is very uneasy, although she doesn’t say a word.”
“What was the name of his steamer?” asked the professor as he opened his newspaper. “I wouldn’t worry. Mail is pretty slow and it would take a very fast boat to land him at Havre and have a letter back this soon.”
Edwin spoke a little absent-mindedly for the Greens were very busy getting ready for their yearly move to Wellington College and time for newspaper reading was at a premium.
“But he was to cable.”
“Oh! And what was the name of the steamer?”
“L’Hirondelle de Mer, swallow of the sea. I fancy it must mean flying fish. Paul says it is a small merchantman, carrying a few passengers.”
“L’Hirondelle de Mer?” Edwin’s voice sounded so faint that Molly stopped packing books and looked up, startled.
“What is it?”
“It may be a mistake,” he faltered.
Molly jumped up from the box of books and read over her husband’s shoulder the terrible headlines announcing the sinking of the small merchantman L’Hirondelle de Mer by a German submarine. No warning was given and it was not known how many of the crew or passengers had escaped. The news was got from a boat-load of half-drowned seamen picked up by an English fishing smack. The cargo was composed of pork and beef.
Molly read as long as her filling eyes would permit, and then she sank on her knees by her husband’s chair and gave way to the grief that overcame her.
“Oh, Molly darling! It may be all right. Kent is not the kind to get lost if there is any way out of it.”
“But he would be saving others and forget himself.”
“Yes, but see – or let me see for you – it says no women or children on board.”
“Thank God for that! – And now I must go to Mother.”
“Yes, and I will go with you – but we must go with the idea of making your mother feel it is all right – that Kent is saved.”
“Yes – and I truly believe he is! I couldn’t have been as happy for the last few days as I have been if – if – Kent – ” She could say no more.
Edwin held her for a moment in his arms and then called to Kizzie to look after little Mildred, who lay peacefully sleeping in her basket, blissfully ignorant of the trouble in the atmosphere.
“Look! There’s Mother coming through the garden! She knows! I can tell by the way she holds her head.”
“My children! You were coming to me. You know, then?”
“Yes, Mother! But Edwin and I think Kent is too strong and active to – to – ”
“I know he is safe,” declared the intrepid mother. “I am as sure of it as though he were here in the garden of Chatsworth standing by me. One of my children could not have passed away without my being conscious of it.” She spoke in an even, clear tone and her countenance was as one inspired.
“Oh, Mother! That is what I felt, too. I could not have been so – so happy if anything awful had happened to Kent.”
Edwin Green was very thankful that the women in his family could take this view of the matter, but not feeling himself to be gifted with second sight, he determined to find out for sure as soon as possible what had become of his favorite brother-in-law. He accordingly telegraphed a night letter to Jimmy Lufton in New York to get busy as quickly as possible, sparing no expense, and find out if the Americans on board the vessel were saved.
No doubt my readers will remember that Jimmy Lufton was the young newspaper man whom Edwin Green had feared as a rival, and now that he had won the prize himself, his feeling for that young man was one of kindliness and pity.
Answer came: a stray sailor had reported that he had seen the submarine take on board two of the passengers who were battling with the heavy sea. Whether Kent was one of them, he could not tell.
There were days of anxious waiting. Molly and Edwin went on with the preparations for their flitting, but could not leave Mrs. Brown until she had assurance of the safety of her beloved son. That lady continued in the belief that all was well with him, in spite of no news.
Aunt Clay came over to Chatsworth to remonstrate with her younger sister over what she called her obstinacy.
“Why should you persist in the assertion that you would know if anything had happened to your son? We all know that things happen all the time and persons near to them go on in ignorance of the accidents. For my part, I think it is indecent for you and your daughters to be flaunting colours as you are. You should order your mourning and have services for those lost at sea.”
As Mrs. Brown’s flaunting of colors consisted of one lavender scarf that Nance Oldham had knitted for her, this was, to say the least, unnecessary of Sister Clay.
Molly, who was present when the above unfeeling remarks were made, trembled with rage and wept with misery; but not so Mrs. Brown.
“I don’t agree with you,” she said with a calmness that astonished her daughter.
“Well, if Kent is alive, why does he not communicate with you? He is certainly careless of you to leave you in ignorance for all of this time.”
Molly noticed with a kind of fierce joy that her mother’s head was now held very high and her sensitive nostrils were a-quiver. “Her nose was a-wuckin’,” as Aunt Mary put it.
“Careless of me! Kent! Sister Sarah, you are simply speaking with neither sense nor feeling. It has been your own fault that you have not obtained the love and affection of my children and so you wish to insinuate that they are careless of me. My son will let me know where he is as soon as he can. I already know he is alive and safe. You ask me how I know it! I can only say I know it.” This was said with so much fire that Aunt Clay actually seemed to shrink up. She bullied Mrs. Brown up to a certain point, but when that point reached criticism of one of her children, woe betide Aunt Clay.
Molly, whose certainty of Kent’s being alive was beginning to grow weak and dim with the weary days, felt new strength from her mother’s brave words. Edwin Green was forced to leave for the opening of Wellington, but Molly closed the bungalow and brought little Mildred over to Chatsworth, there to wait with her mother for some definite news.
Old Aunt Mary was a great comfort to them. She shared in their belief that their dear boy was alive.
“Cose nothin’ ain’t happened ter that there Kent. Didn’t he tell me he was a goin’ ter Parus ter bring home that Judy gal? The Dutch ain’t a goin’ ter do nothin’ ter a kind faceded pusson like our Kent. As fer drowndin’! Shoo! I done hear Lewis say that Kent kin outswim de whole er Jeff’son County. He kin swim to Indiany an’ back thout ever touchin’ lan’, right over yander by the water wucks whar the riber is mo’n a mile. An’ waves! Why, Lewis say whin the big stern wheelers is a jes’ churnin’ up the riber till it looks like the yawnin’ er grabes at Jedgement Day that Kent would jes’ laff at them an’ plunge right through jes’ lak a feesh. An’ I do hear tell that the waters er the mighty deep is salty an’ that makes me know that Kent ain’t goin’ ter sink. Don’t we tes’ the brine fer pickles wif a aig? An’ don’t the aig float? An’ if’n the mighty deep is called the briny deep don’t that mean it kin float a aig? What kin float a aig kin float a young man what already knows how ter swim crost an’ back on the ’Hier Riber.”
Julia Kean’s second letter came, also the one from her father in Molly’s care. Molly immediately sent it to the American Club in Paris. Judy’s letter certainly had nothing in it to reassure them as to her safety, except the meeting with the old man with whom she had danced at St. Cloud.
“It means that Judy is able to make friends wherever she goes, and as she says, she can always light on her feet, somehow,” sighed Molly. She did not add what was in her mind: “If she had only come home with Kent!”
“Mother, I must write to Judy now that I have some kind of address. Must I tell her?”
“Yes, my dear, tell her all we know, but tell her of our conviction that all is well. I will write to her myself, on second thought.”
John and Paul both spent every night at Chatsworth now, although it meant very early rising for both of them and often a midnight arrival or departure for Dr. John, whose practice was growing but seemed to be restricted to persons who persisted in being taken very ill in the night.
“It is because so many of them are charity patients or semi-charity and they always want to get all they can,” he would declare. “Of course, a doctor’s night rates are higher than day rates, and when they are getting something for nothing, if they call me up at two a. m. they are getting more for nothing than they would be if they had their toe aches in the day time.”
Ten days had passed since the half-drowned sailors had been picked up by the English fishing smack, and still no message from Kent.
Mrs. Brown wrote and dispatched her letter to Judy Kean. It was a hard letter to write, much harder than it would have been had there been an engagement between the two. The good lady felt that Judy was almost like a daughter and still it required something more than existed to address her as one. She must convey to Judy the news that Kent was shipwrecked, and still she wanted to put in the girl’s heart the faith she had in his safety.
“Poor Judy! If she is alone in Paris, think what it will mean for this news to reach her!” Molly agonized to herself. “She may and may not care for Kent enough to marry him, but she certainly is devoted to him as a friend. She will feel it just so much more keenly because he was on his way to her.”
Molly could not sleep in her great anxiety, and her faith and the certainty of Kent’s safety left her. “I must keep up for Mildred’s sake,” she would cry as she tried to choke down food. Her every endeavor was to hide this loss of faith from her mother, whose belief in her son’s being alive and well never seemed to falter.
Daily letters from Edwin were Molly’s one comfort. He was back in the grind of lectures at Wellington and was missing sorely his wife and child.
“Molly darling, you mustn’t wait any longer in Kentucky,” her mother said at breakfast one morning. Molly was trying to dispose of a glass of milk and a soft boiled egg, although her throat seemed to close at the thought of food.
“But, Mother, I wouldn’t leave you for anything in the world,” she declared, making a successful gulp which got rid of the milk, at least.
“Your husband needs you, child, and I know it would be best for you. There is no use in waiting.”
Molly looked up, startled. Had her mother, too, lost heart? Her face had grown thinner in those days of waiting and her hair was quite grey, in fact, silvery about the temples; but her eyes still held the light of faith and high resolve.
“She still has faith! And you, Molly Brown Green! Oh, ye of little faith! What right have you to be a clog and burden? Take another glass of milk this minute and keep up your health and your baby’s health.” This to herself, and aloud: “Why, Mumsy, I want to stay right here. Little Mildred is thriving and Edwin is doing very well at Wellington. Every one is asking him out to dine, now that he is untrammelled with a wife. He reports a big gain in attendance 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.”
