Molly Brown of Kentucky Part 10

"Already so many in mourning!" thought the girl. "What will it be later?"

"First the b.u.t.ter 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 b.u.t.ter 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, b.u.t.ter 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 b.u.t.ter 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 Pere 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 nave 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 st.u.r.dy strength that Judy had put into the work. Then he sat on a bench to rest awhile, one of those nice benches that Paris dots her thoroughfares with and one misses so on coming back to United States.

Paris was well awake now and bustling. The streets were full of soldiers. Old women with their carts laden with chrysanthemums were trudging along to take their stands at the corners. The air was filled with the pungent odors of their wares. Old Tricot stretched himself:

"I must be moving! There is much food to be cooked to-day. It is time my Mam'selle was coming along. Ah, there she is!" He recognized the jaunty blue serge jacket and pretty little velour sport hat that Judy always knew at which angle to place on her fluffy brown hair. "But how slowly she is walking! And where are her roses? Her head is bent down like some poor French woman who has bad news from the trenches."

CHAPTER IX.

THE AMERICAN MAIL.

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

"Gone! Gone! and all because of poor miserable, no-account me!" her heart cried out in its anguish, but she shed no tear and made no sound.

Her face, glowing with health and spirits only a few minutes ago, was now as pale as a ghost and her eyes had lost their sparkle.

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

"My dear little girl, what is it?"

"He is drowned and all for me--just my stubbornness!"

"Who? Your father?"

"No!"

"Your brother, then?"

"I have no brother."

"Ah, then, your sweetheart? Your fiance?"

"I--I--sometime he might--that is, we were not fianced, not exactly."

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

"Now tell me all about it, _ma pauvre pet.i.te_."

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

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

"Yes, but she is so wonderful, so brave."

"Well, are you not wonderful and brave, too? You must go on with your courage. If a mother can write as she has done and have faith in _le bon Dieu_, then you must try, too--that will make you worthy of such a _belle mere_. Does she not say that two pa.s.sengers were seen to be saved by the enemy?"

"Oh, Pere Tricot, you are good, good! I will try--if Kent's own mother can be so brave, why surely I must be calm, too, I, who am nothing to him."

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

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

"You have more letters, my daughter?"

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

"Perhaps there is something from the mother and father."

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

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

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

But Kent--maybe he would never come back! It was all very well for Mrs.

Brown to refuse to believe in his being gone forever, but why should he be the one to be saved, after all? No doubt the pa.s.sengers who were lost had mothers and--and what? Sweethearts--there she would say it! She was his sweetheart even though they were not really engaged. She knew it now for a certainty. Kent did not have to tell her what he felt for her, and now that it was too late, she knew what she felt for him. She knew now why she had been so lonesome. It was not merely the fact that war was going on and her friends were out of Paris--it was that she was longing for Kent. She understood now why she felt so homeless just at this time.

She was no more homeless than she had always been, but now she wanted a home and she wanted it to be Kent's home, too. Fool! fool that she had been! Why hadn't she gone home like all the sensible Americans when war was declared? The Browns would never forgive her and she would never forgive herself. She read again Mrs. Brown's letter. How good she was to have been willing to have Kent turn right around and go back to Paris for that worthless Julia Kean. And now he was gone, and it was all her fault! Ah, me! Well, life must be lived, if all the color had gone out of it.

She wearily opened the letter addressed in Molly's handwriting. It was from her father, and in it another from her mother, forwarded by Molly.

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