Molly Brown of Kentucky

“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!”

“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 aloneSome banquet hall, deserted,”

expressed her sentiments exactly. Once she dreamed that Molly Brown was standing over her with a cup of hot coffee, which was one of Molly’s ways. She was always spoiling people and often would appear at the bed side 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.