Molly Brown of Kentucky

CHAPTER XVIII.

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE

When the teller of a tale has to fly from one side of the ocean to the other in the twinkling of an eye, as it were, at any rate between chapters, and the persons in the tale have no communication with one another except by letters that are more than likely to be tampered with on the high seas, it is a great comfort to find that all the characters have at last arrived at the same date. On that morning after the dropping of bombs when Judy, dressed in her sad mourning garb, was selling spinach and tarts to the hungry occupants of the Montparnasse quarter, Molly, allowing for the difference in time, was oversleeping herself after a wakeful night and the college girls were quietly cleaning her living room. Kent and Jim Castleman were stretching themselves luxuriously in the not too comfortable beds of the Haute Loire preparatory to making themselves presentable, first to find Judy, and then to find the general who, no doubt, would be glad to have the Kentucky giant enlist in the ranks, even though his letter of introduction and credentials had gone to the bottom with the Hirondelle de Mer. Jim Castleman’s appearance was certainly credential enough that he would make a good fighter.

A bath and a shave did much towards making our young men presentable. Kent with a needle and thread, borrowed from the chambermaid, darned the knees of his trousers so that they did very well just so long as he did not try to sit down; then the strain would have been too much. Jim’s were hopelessly short.

“Nothing but a flounce would save me, so I’ll have to go around at high water mark; but I’ll soon be in a uniform, I hope.”

They had breakfast in a little café where Kent had often gone while he was a student at the Beaux Arts, and there Jim Castleman astonished the madame by ordering four eggs. She couldn’t believe it possible that any one could eat that much déjeuner and so cooked his eggs four minutes. His French was quite sketchy but he plunged manfully in with what he had and finally came out with breakfast enough to last until luncheon. Kent was willing to do the talking for him but he would none of it.

“Let me do it myself! I’ll learn how to get something to eat if I starve in the attempt.”

And now for Judy! Kent could hardly wait for his famished friend to eat his two orders of rolls and coffee and his four eggs, but at last he was through.

First to the bank! No, they did not know where Mlle. Kean was. She had been in once to get money but they were sorry they could not honour her letter of credit. She had left no address.

Then to the American Club! Judy had been in the day before for mail, and had had quite a budget. She had left no address, but came for letters always when the American mail was reported in.

Where could she be?

Next, to his cousin, the Marquise d’Ochtè, on the Faubourg!

The venerable porter, at the porte-cochère, who came in answer to the vigorous ring that the now very uneasy Kent gave the bell, said that none of the family was within and they had no visitor. Madame the Marquise had gone to the front only the day before, but was coming home soon to open a hospital in her own home. Even then the workmen were busy carrying out her orders, packing away books, pictures, ornaments, rugs and what not so that the house would be the more suitable to care for the wounded. The Marquis and Philippe were both with their regiments. The old porter was sad and miserable. Jules, the butler, was gone; also Gaston, the chef whose sauces were beyond compare. Madame had taken great hampers of food with her, even going to Montparnasse for tarts from Tricots’.

Kent turned sadly away. Judy was somewhere, but where? Her letter to Molly telling of her being in the Bents’ studio had come after Kent left Kentucky and he had no way of knowing that she was there. Polly Perkins and his wife, he knew were in the thick of the battle from the first letter he had seen from Judy. Where was Pierce Kinsella? He had not heard from his studio mate and friend but he rather thought there was little chance of finding him. At any rate, he determined to go to the Rue Brea and see if the concierge there knew anything of the lost damsel.

They found a crowd at the entrance to the court on which the studios fronted. The concierge in the midst of them was waving her arms and talking excitedly.

“Yes, and the first I heard was a click! click! click! and that, it seems, was the terrible thing flying over us and then an explosion that deafened me. They say it was meant for the Luxembourg and they missed their mark. That I know nothing about – ”

“What is it? Tell me quick!” demanded Kent, elbowing his way through the crowd with the help of Jim, that renowned center rush.

“Ah, Monsieur Brune!” she exclaimed, grasping his hand. “Did you know that a dirty Prussian had sent a bomb right down through the skylight of the good Bents’ and now all their things are wrecked?”

“The Bents’!” gasped Kent. “Was any one hurt?”

“And that we can’t say. The young lady has not been sleeping there lately but yesterday she came and got the key and did not return it, so I thought she must have slept there last night! This morning we can find no trace of her. The bomb did much damage, but surely it could not have destroyed her completely.”

“Destroyed her! What young lady?”

“Why, Mademoiselle Kean, of course.”

Kent was glad of the strong arm of Jim Castleman. He certainly needed a support but only for a moment. He pushed through the crowd and made his way to the shattered wall of the studio. The bomb had not done so much damage as might have been expected. The front wall was fallen and the skylight was broken all over the floor. The chairs and easels were piled up like jackstraws at the beginning of a game. The bedrooms were uninjured but the balcony where Judy and Molly had slept that happy winter in Paris had fallen.

Would Judy have slept up on the roost just for auld lang syne or would she have occupied a more comfortable bedroom? If she had been blown into such small bits that there was nothing to tell the tale, why should these other things have escaped? There were the blue tea cups in the china closet uninjured, although most of them were turned over, showing that the shock had reached them, too. What was that blue thing lying on the divan in the corner under untold débris?

Kent pulled off the timbers and broken glass and unearthed Judy’s blue serge dress, which was waiting to be dyed a dismal black. He clasped it in his arms in an agony of apprehension. Letters fell out of the pocket. He recognized his mother’s handwriting, also Molly’s. So, Judy had heard from Kentucky! He stuffed them back in the jacket.

“Jim, I simply don’t believe she was here. I couldn’t have slept all night like such a lummux if she – if she – ”

“Yes, old fellow! I know! I don’t believe she was here, either.”

“I just know I would have had some premonition of it! I would have been conscious of it if anything had been happening to Judy,” which showed that Kent Brown was his mother’s own son. He was not going to mourn the loss of a loved one until he was sure the loved one was gone, and he had her own unfailing faith that something could not have happened to one he cared for without his being aware of it.

“Sure you would!” declared Jim, not at all sure but relieved that his friend was taking that view of the matter.

“I know something that will be a positive proof whether she was here or not last night.” Kent walked firmly to the bath room, which was behind the bed rooms and out of the path of the bomb. He threw open the door and looked eagerly on the little glass shelf for a tooth brush.

“Not a sign of one. I know and you know that if Judy had been here last night her tooth brush would have been here, too. I am sure now! Come on, and let’s look somewhere else.”

Kent went out with Judy’s serge dress over his arm. The concierge looked sadly after him: “Her dress is all he has to cherish now. The poor young man! I used to see he was in love with her when Mrs. Brune was in the Bents’ studio and her son occupied the one to the right with Mr. Kinsella. Oh, la la! Mais la vie est amer!”

The crowd dispersed, since there was nothing more to see and the hour for déjeuner a la fourchette was approaching. The concierge went off to visit her daughter who was ill. The studios were all empty now and her duties were light. Her husband was to see that no one entered the court to carry off the Bents’ things, which were exposed pitifully to the gaze of the public until the authorities could do something. He, good man, waited a little while and then made his way to a neighbouring brasserie to get his tumbler of absinthe, and one tumbler led to another and forgetfulness followed soon, and the Bents’ studio properties were but dreams to his befuddled brain.

Judy had spent a busy morning. Marie had gone to carry tarts to “the regiment” and all of the waiting in the shop fell on her. She did it gladly, thankful that she was so busy she could not think. She measured soup and weighed spinach and potato salad and wrapped up tarts until her back ached. Finally Mère Tricot came in from the baking of more tarts.

“My child, go out for a while. You need the air. I am here now to feed these gourmands.”

“All right, Mother! I want to get my dress at the studio. Marie says she will dye it for me.”

“Certainly! Certainly! We can save many a sou by doing it ourselves. Go, child!”

Judy put on her little mourning bonnet and sadly found her way to the Rue Brea.

“I wonder where the bomb hit last night. Père Tricot said near the Luxembourg.”

What was her amazement to find the poor studio in ruins. No concierge to tell her a thing about it, for her lodge was locked tight and no one near. Judy picked her way sadly over the fallen front wall.

“I’ll get my dress, anyhow.” But although she was sure it had been on the divan in the studio, no dress was to be found.

“Well, I’ll have to have something to wear besides this thin waist. I am cold now, and what will I do when winter, real winter comes? I shall have to send to Giverny for my trunk, and no telling what it will cost to get it here. Oh, oh, how am I to go on? I wish to God I had been sleeping on that balcony when the bomb struck. Then I would have been at peace.”

Judy gave herself up to the despair that was in her heart. She made a thorough search for the suit through the poor wrecked apartment but no sign of it could she see. She went sadly back to the delicatessen shop and stepped behind the counter, her hat still on, to assist the good Mother Tricot, who was being besieged with customers.

“Take off your hat, child. Here is a fresh cap of Marie’s and an apron. Did you get your dress?”

Judy told her kind friend of the bomb-wrecked studio and her lost suit.

“Oh, the vandals! The wretches! There must be a Prussian in our midst who would be so low as to steal your suit. No Frenchman would have done it. Before the war, – yes, but now there is not one who would do such a dastardly trick. We are all of one family now, high and low, rich and poor, – and we do not prey on one another.”

“Well, it makes very little difference,” said Judy resignedly. “I’ll send for my trunk. I have other suits in it.”

“Other suits! Oh, what riches!” but then the old woman considered that the friend of the Marquise d’Ochtè perhaps had many other suits.

Judy donned the cap and apron and went on with the shop keeping. No one could have told her from a poor little bereaved French girl. The cap was becoming, as was also the organdy collar. Her face was pale and her eyes full of unshed tears, but the sorrow had given to Judy’s face something that her enemies might have said it had lacked: a softness and depth of feeling. Her friends knew that her heart was warm and true and that the feeling was there, but her life had been care free with no troubles except the scrapes that she had been as clever getting out of as she had been adroit getting in. She had many times considered herself miserable before but now she realized that all other troubles had been nothing – this was something she had had no conception of – this tightening of the heart strings, this hopeless feeling of the bottom having dropped out of the universe.

She felt absolutely friendless, except for her dear Tricots. The Browns could never see her again. They must blame her, as it was all her fault that Kent had come for her. If she had not been so full of her own conceit, she would certainly have sailed for America when all the others did at the breaking out of the war. Her mother and father seemed as remote as though they were on another planet. The war might last for years and there seemed no chance of their leaving Berlin.

“I’ll just stay on here and earn my board and keep,” she sighed. “The Tricots find me useful and they want me.”

In the meantime, Kent and Jim Castleman went and sat down in the Garden of the Luxembourg to smoke and talk it over, Kent still fondly clasping the serge dress.

“I’ll find her all right before night,” declared Kent. “She’ll be sure to go to the Bents’ studio sometime to-day. I’ll write a note and leave it with the concierge. I’ll also leave a note at the American Club. She must go there twice a week at least. I’d like to know where the poor little thing is,” and Kent heaved a sigh.

“I bet she is all right, wherever she is,” comforted Jim. “Say, Brown, I don’t like to mention it, but I am starved to death.”

“Not mention it! Why not?”

“Well, you see when a pal is in trouble it seems so low to go get hungry.”

“But I’m not in trouble. Now if I thought that Judy had been in that place last night there would be something to be troubled about, but as it is, I just can’t find her for a few hours, or maybe minutes. Where shall we eat?”

“That’s up to you. I’m getting mighty low in funds, so let’s do it cheap but do it a plenty,” and Jim looked rather ruefully at his few remaining francs.

“I am still in funds but I shall have to go it mighty easy, too, to get Judy and me home. I tell you what we might do. Let’s go to a shop where they have ready cooked food and bring it out here and eat it. They say you can live on half what it costs to eat in a restaurant. When I was studying over here I knew lots of fellows who lived that way. Of course, they had studios where they could take the stuff and eat it, but the Luxembourg Garden is good enough. I know a place where the Perkinses used to deal. They are the funny lot I told you about, the long-haired man and the short-haired woman. He is driving an ambulance now and goodness knows where she is.”

“Well, let’s go to it. I am so hungry I can hardly waddle. These Continental breakfasts with nothing but bread and coffee don’t fill me up half way.”

Kent smiled, remembering the two full orders and the four eggs his friend had tucked away, but he said nothing. Having a good appetite of his own, he had naught but sympathy for his famished friend.

They left the garden and made for the shop where Jo and Polly Perkins had bought their ready cooked provisions.

“These people make some little pies that are mighty good, too. We might get half a dozen or so of them as a top off,” suggested Kent.

“Fine! I’ve got a mouth for pie, all right.”

Judy had gone to the kitchen for a moment to bring to the fore the smoked tongue that Père Tricot had been slicing in those paper-thin slices that he alone knew how to accomplish. She bore aloft a great platter of the viand, the even slices arranged like a wreath of autumn leaves. While she was still in the living room behind the shop, two strangers entered. Their backs being to the light, Judy only saw their silhouettes as they bent over the show cases eagerly discussing what selection of meats and vegetables they should make, while Mère Tricot, accustomed to slim-pocketed customers, patiently waited. Suddenly she leaned over the counter and touched something which one of the young men had thrown over his arm.

“What is this?” she demanded with the manner she could so well assume, that of a woman of the Commune who meant to right her wrongs.

The purchaser of sauce and potato salad, the two cheapest and most filling of the wares, held up rather sheepishly a blue serge suit.

“Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle! Come quick! It is your suit – and no Frenchman, as I said, but a Prussian, no doubt.”

The grenadier slid quickly from behind the counter and putting her brawny arm out, held the door firmly, so that no escape could be possible.

CHAPTER XIX.

WASTED DYE

Judy emerged from behind the curtains which divided the family living room from the little shop, the platter of tongue held high. In her cap and apron, she reminded one of a Howard Pyle illustration for some holiday number of a magazine.

“Gee, what a beaut!” exclaimed the taller of the two strangers.

The one with the serge suit dropped it and made a rush for the girl. He had her in his arms, platter of tongue and all, before Mère Tricot could rescue it. But that dame managed to extricate the big dish before any greater damage was done than disarranging the effect of a wreath of autumn leaves.

Hearts that were broken may be mended but platters of smoked tongue must not be dropped on the floor and smashed.

“Oh, Judy gal, Judy gal! Tell me all about it!”

“Kent! Kent! I thought you were drowned and have gone into mourning for you,” sobbed Judy.

As for Jim Castleman, in the most execrable and impossible French, he was explaining to good Mother Tricot how it all happened, and Father Tricot hastened to the shop from his carving to find out what it was all about, and then such a handshaking and hugging as ensued was never seen!

“We were all about to sit down to déjeuner a la fourchette,” said the ever hospitable old man, “and if the young gentlemen would come with us, we should be much honoured.”

The grenadier was equally pleased to have them and, indeed, Jim Castleman was so hungry by that time that he would have eaten cold spinach with his fingers.

How that old couple plied the young Americans with their delightful food and how they listened to their tale of shipwreck and rescue! When Kent told of their fooling the Prussians with Tutno, the childish language they had known in their youth, the Tricots laughed with such glee that a gendarme put his head in the door to see what it was all about. When Jim Castleman in a speech that sounded more like Tutno than Parisian French, informed his hosts that he was there to join the army of Joffre, old Mère Tricot helped him to two more tarts, although he had already eaten enough of them to furnish dessert for any ordinary French family of four.

“And now, Madame,” said Kent to his hostess, “I want you to do another thing for me. You have done so many things already that maybe I should not ask you.”

“What is it, mon brave?” and the old woman smiled very kindly on the young American, whom she had not half an hour before called a Prussian and accused of stealing Judy’s serge suit.

“I am to be married very soon and I want you to help me out in it.”

“Married!” Judy gasped.

“Yes, Miss Judy Kean, I am to be married and so are you. What’s more, it is to be just as soon as the French law will tie the knot.”

“Well, of all – ”

“Yes, of all the slippery parties, I know you are the slipperiest and I have no idea of letting you get away. Am I right, Jim?”

Jim was too busy with a tart to be coherent. He nodded his head, however, and when Kent put the same question to Mère Tricot in French, she upheld him.

“It would be much more convenable if you were married. It is very easy to get married in war time. The authorities are not near so difficult to approach on the subject. I will see what can be done by the magistrate who married Jean and Marie, and no doubt if you interview your American Ambassador, much can be attended to in a short time.”

“Kent Brown, if you think – ” sputtered Judy.

“I don’t think a thing, I just know,” said Kent very calmly. “Put on your hat, honey, and let’s take a little walk.”

“Well, all right – but – ” Was this the Judy Kean who prided herself on so well knowing her own mind, calmly consenting to be married against her will? Was it against her will? She suddenly remembered the communings she had had with herself, in which she had cried out to Kent: “Why, why, did you not make me go with you?”

“I shall have to rip the lining out of my hat before I can go out,” she said quite meekly.

“The lining out of your hat?” questioned Kent.

“Yes, you see I went into mourning when – when – ” and Judy, now that it was all over, still could not voice the terrible thing she thought had happened to Kent.

“Please don’t rip it out until I see you in it. Not many men live to see how their widows look mourning for them.”

“Widows, indeed! Kent Brown, you presume too much!” exclaimed Judy, but she could not help laughing. The hat was very becoming and she was not loathe to wear it, just once.

First Mère Tricot must be assisted with the dishes, however; but then Judy got ready to go walking with Kent.

Père Tricot undertook to be guide to Jim Castleman, offering to lead him to the proper place to enlist.

“I’ll only look into it to-day,” said Jim, grasping Kent’s hand. “I shan’t join for keeps until I have officiated as best man.”

Judy, who had gone into Marie’s tiny bedroom to get into her rescued serge suit, overheard this remark and blushed to the roots of her fluffy hair. As she put on her white lined hat, she peeped again into the mirror: “Judy Kean, you are much too rosy for a widow,” she admonished her image.

Mère Tricot saw them off, her good man and Jim to the recruiting station, and Kent and Judy to the Luxembourg Gardens, a spot hallowed by lovers.

“Well, well!” she said to herself. “The good God has brought the poor lamb her lover from the grave. I am glad, very glad, – but it is certainly a pity to waste all that good dye the butcher’s wife saved for us. It is not good when kept too long, either. I won’t throw it out yet a while, though, – some one will be wanting it, perhaps.”

CHAPTER XX.

A WAR BRIDE

Marrying in Paris was certainly a much easier matter than it had been almost two years before when Molly Brown and Edwin Green had struggled to have the nuptial knot tied. Judy’s baptismal certificate was not demanded as had been Molly’s, and the long waiting for research work, as Kent expressed it, was not required. Mère Tricot undertook to engineer the affair and did it with such expedition that it could have been accomplished even before Judy got her trunk from Giverny.

It was very nice to have one’s trunk again, although it really was embarrassing to take up so much of the Tricots’ living room with the huge American affair.

“It seems funny to be married without any trousseau,” Judy confided to Mère Tricot.

“No trousseau! And what is in that great box if not trousseau?”

“I am sure I don’t know. I really haven’t any clothes to speak of that I can remember,” declared Judy.

“Well, let us see them!” begged Marie and her belle mère.

They were dying of curiosity to peep into the great box, so Judy unpacked for their benefit, and their eyes opened wide at her stack of shirt waists and lingerie and her many shoes.