Molly Brown's Orchard Home Part 10

"Sitting under our own vine and fig tree, sir! At least, it will be ours in about ten days," answered Molly.

"You don't mean it! Well, if this isn't luck! Pierce, I'll go back and sign up with the concierge immediately. Such neighbors as these would make the meanest studio desirable and, after all, these are pretty good rooms. We could hardly do better in the Quarter."

Pierce was pleased to have the matter settled, as he felt himself to be among friends and had visions of many good times in store for him after working hours with the three bright girls and Mrs. Brown, who was even more attractive to him than the girls. Mr. Kinsella had a.s.sured Mrs.

Brown that Elise would be sure to fall in with any plans that good lady may have made for her, and he answered for Mrs. Huntington's acquiescence in any arrangements he saw fit to bring about for her daughter. She had really washed her hands of the matter, and had given him to understand that since he had interfered and insisted upon Elise's having a chance to go on with her much interrupted art studies, he could go ahead and place her where he chose. For her part, she declared, it made no difference one way or the other. She had seen too much of Bohemia in the old days to want ever to cross the borderland again. Mr.

Kinsella felt sure she had secretly hoped that Mrs. Brown would want Elise with her, and he only awaited their arrival from Brussels to let them know of the studio apartment in the Rue Brea and of the cordial welcome Elise O'Brien would have from all three of the ladies concerned.

The next ten days were very busy and exciting ones. Judy and Pierce plunged into their drawing with renewed zest. Pierce was at Julien's, too, but as the men's school is in an entirely different part of Paris from the women's, he and Judy saw each other only in picture galleries or on the delightful jaunts that the whole crowd took. The _Maison Pace_ was not a very pleasant place to make a call, as there was always a bunch of snuffy old maids huddled together in the parlor, knitting shawls and swapping tales of the good and bad pensions they had encountered in their travels. When a caller braved the ordeal, they always stopped knitting and talking and sat spellbound, intent on not losing one word of the visitor's conversation.

Mr. Kinsella and Pierce made one essay, but the occasion was so stiff and formal and Mrs. Pace so monopolizing that they determined never to repeat it, but to wait until their friends were installed in their own apartment. That longed-for time arrived quickly enough for Molly and her mother, who were sight-seeing in a most systematic manner, with Baedecker in one hand and Hare's "Walks in Paris" in the other. They would come home tired and footsore but very happy and enthusiastic.

Molly wrote Professor Green that she felt like the little girl at the fair, who, when her mother noticed she lagged behind and asked her if she were tired, said: "My hands and feet are tired, but my face isn't."

"We do become weary unto death but each morning we get up with renewed zest," she wrote, "with so many wonderful things to see before nightfall. One thing that bothers us is having to dress and sit through a formal dinner with the eagle eye of Mrs. Pace upon us. We are looking forward to the time when we shall be in our own apartment, where we need not dress for dinner unless we have a mind to. My Cousin Philippe d'Ochte declares that already my mother and I know more about Paris than he does. We are trying to be systematic in our sight-seeing and not to hurry, as we have the winter before us, but at every corner and square there is something interesting to find out about.

"Philippe is very kind to us and ready to escort us through any parts of the city where he thinks it best for women not to go alone. For my part, I think we could go anywhere we wished. The Parisians are so obliging and courteous, and so far no one has been the least rude to us. The old maids in our pension have many tales to tell of the encounters they have had with impertinent men, and one lady declares that she never goes on the street without being insulted. But I agree with Mr. Kean who says: 'If you have some business to attend to--and attend to it, you women can go anywhere in the world you want to in perfect safety.'

"I have not begun my studies yet, as my time has been so taken up with seeing the places of interest, but Philippe is going to see that I am put in the proper cla.s.s in French Lit. at the Sorbonne where he has obtained a very important degree. He says there are several English and American women there, so I shall not feel strange.

"I am so glad your orchard home is coming on so well. Kent writes us that it is already beginning to look like a house. The rough stone chimneys and foundations are lovely, I know, and will make such a beautiful support for English ivy.

"We are looking forward to Christmas with great eagerness. This is the first Christmas I have had with my mother for five years and the first one she has spent away from all of her other children ever. I shall have to make a noise like seven Browns to keep her from being homesick."

Here Molly stopped and reflected that some of those five Christmases she had spent in the company of Professor Edwin Green and she wondered if he would remember it, too; and if he would miss her as she felt she was missing him, in spite of all the delightful things she was doing and seeing. "I know he is not thinking of me at all and I am a goose to waste any sentiment on him. I have never had a single letter from him I could not show mother and Judy. When Judy gets a letter from Kent she never shows it to us, but takes it to her own room and evidently gets great satisfaction from its perusal, as she always comes out beaming. Ah me! I am sure I shall die an old maid,--but anyhow I do not intend to knit shawls and sit around a boarding house talking about the food!"

When poor Professor Green received the letter, part of which is given above, he, too, was plunged into sad reflections. He reached for a pretty azure paper weight that always stood on his desk and reminded him of a certain pair of blue, blue eyes, and looking into it as though he were crystal-gazing, he shook his head mournfully and said: "Ah, Molly, you little know how you hurt me! And still, what right have I to expect anything else from you? I see you now being conducted around Paris by your Cousin Philippe. I'll be bound he thinks you need a courier even when you go to a Duval restaurant, the sly dog. I know his type: small and dark, with a pointed beard and insinuating manner.

"Here I am tied to Wellington and these hated cla.s.ses and lectures, when I hoped to be in Paris acting courier for Molly instead of this disgusting foreigner, who won't know how to appreciate her----But what an a.s.s I am! I don't know that Philippe is disgusting, and from what Miss Molly says of his mother, the marchioness, she must be charming.

"I do wish she would not write so coolly of my 'orchard home.' I should think she would know by telepathy that I always think of it as 'Molly Brown's Orchard Home.' I was a fool to take Mrs. Brown's advice and not tell Molly of my love. It may be too late now, and then what shall I do?"

The distinguished professor of English at Wellington College groaned aloud. His housekeeper, who was bringing in his tea, heard him and almost dropped the tray in her alarm.

"And is it the schtomic ache ye be ahfter havin'?"

"No, Mrs. Brady, it is higher up than the stomach. I am glad to see my tea. 'The beverage which cheers but does not inebriate' may make me feel better."

"Phwat ye need is a wife to look ahfter ye and keep ye straight.

Schmokin', schmokin' all the time an' brroodin' over the fire is not good for a young gintleman. An' your disk and floor littered up wit'

paaperrs and ashes."

The kindly old soul began to clear off the untidy desk and stooped to pick up a piece of paper that had fallen from Molly's letter without Professor Green's having read it or noticed its existence. She started to put it in the waste basket, but the professor noticed the action, being, like most scholars, impatient of having his books and papers touched. In fact, he had over his desk a framed rubbing of Shakespeare's epitaph which he had once confided to Molly he kept there especially to scare Mrs. Brady and make her let his things alone:

"Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare To digg ye dust encloased heare Bleste be ye man yt spares the stones And curst be he yt moves my bones."

"Wait, my good Mrs. Brady! What is that you are throwing away?"

"Nawthin' but a bit o' blue paaperr, Profissorr. To be shure there's a schrap o' writin' on the back. Blue things always brring to me mind the swate eyes o' Miss Molly Brown, the saints protict her" and she handed the stray piece of thin, blue, foreign letter paper to the eager young man, who clutched it and smoothed it out and read the following postscript:

"My cousins, the d'Ochtes, have been very anxious to get up a party and take us to Fontainebleau to see the palace and then drive through the forest; but I have done everything to keep from going and I hope the scheme has fallen through. You have told me so much of the wonderful forest and the walk from Fontainebleau to Barbizon that I am hoping to see the place for the first time with you. The spring is the time to see it, anyhow, I am sure, and perhaps by then you can find a suitable subst.i.tute and have a holiday."

Professor Green looked up from the perusal of the little half sheet of paper with his face beaming. What can't a woman put in a postscript? The pain, which he had confessed to Mrs. Brady was a little higher up than his stomach, had entirely disappeared. He was no longer jealous of "any little, black, dried-up Frenchman." That is the way he thought of Philippe; and it was certainly well for the young American's peace of mind that he did not know that Molly and Judy always spoke of Philippe d'Ochte as "the Adonis."

"Mrs. Brady, your good, strong, hot tea has done wonders for me. I am feeling so much better, I am going to take your advice and go for a long walk and not sit over the fire any longer."

He accordingly unwound his long legs, put the little blue letter with its health-giving postscript carefully in his breast pocket, (right over the spot of the vanished pain!) and went for one of his fifteen-mile tramps, humming sentimentally, "When the robins nest again, and the flowers are in bloom."

Mrs. Brady looked after him and smilingly shook her head: "He may say it's the tay, but there was some preschription in that bit o' blue paaperr I was ahfter destroyin' that was the pain-killer this toime for the poor young gintleman. Me prrivit opinion is that he, too, is a-missin' the swate eyes o' Miss Molly Brown!"

Professor Edwin Green came home from his long walk in an excellent frame of mind, happy and tired; but he was not too tired to write to Molly a letter that somehow she forgot to read to her mother and Judy.

CHAPTER X.

BOHEMIA.

What fun it was to be moving to their own apartment! Mrs. Pace was the only drawback to their happiness. She was very lugubrious and was sure they would find the ground floor damp, although it was explained to her that there was a good cellar under the studio and you went up several steps to the entrance. For a week before they left her, she would emit groans and shake her head sadly, saying: "I know it is a great mistake.

These artists are notoriously careless and the place will be filthy, I haven't a doubt. And then the expense of keeping house is so great.

Never mind, I shall hold your rooms in readiness for you and you can come back to them at any time."

"I beg you will do no such thing," said Mrs. Brown. "Of course we shall stay in the studio for six months, as we have rented it for that time.

As for the dirt we are sure to find: you see Mrs. Bent is not an artist and she has the cleanest rooms I have ever seen."

But nothing convinced Henrietta Pace. She only knew that she was not to have the very pleasant boarders, so well connected, too, and so easy to please and courteous. Of course she blamed it on that very pert Miss Kean, who had defied her from the beginning; but what could one expect from a girl brought up in no place in particular, not even born in a fixed spot, (Julia Kean, you remember, was born at sea,) with a father who openly boasted of having a gizzard? And Mrs. Pace would give what Judy called, "one of her black satin sighs."

"Why should she dress in black satin all the time?" exclaimed Judy, after a particularly dismal dinner where Mrs. Pace had spent the time telling of all the misguided persons who had left her protecting wing and of the direful things that had befallen them. "The idea of any one as huge as she is wearing tight black satin! Why, I noticed two great square high-lights on her, measuring six inches across, one on her arm and one on her capacious bosom. In the latter, the whole dinner table was reflected. She should wear soft, loose things where no accenting high-lights could find a foothold."

"Oh, Judy, you are too delicious!" laughed Molly. "Who but you would notice the high-lights on your landlady's bosom, and then even the reflections in those high-lights? But weren't you amused at the 'unmerciful disaster that followed fast and followed faster' all the boarders that had not stayed at _Maison Pace_?

"One girl married a worthless art student and had to paint bathtubs for a living; one girl got lead poisoning in a studio where she was studying; one lady got her pocket picked on the Bois de Boulogne and one poor gentleman was lost at sea. Two of these calamities certainly could not have happened in this place. I'd defy anyone to get married here, even to a worthless art student, nor could one very well get lost at sea. I am glad we are to leave to-morrow and also glad that Elise O'Brien will not come until we are installed in the Rue Brea."

Molly had seen Frances Andrews several times since the recognition at the Opera, and had found her very agreeable but still peculiar, pa.s.sionate and moody. She was extravagant in her affection for Molly and seemed eager to please Mrs. Brown. On the one occasion in which she had seen Judy when she called at the _Maison Pace_, she had been embarra.s.sed and ill at ease with her and a little wistful, Molly thought.

She whispered to Molly on leaving: "I know Miss Kean despises me, but don't let her influence you. I am not as good as you think I am, but I am not half so bad as Miss Kean thinks I am. I got in wrong at Wellington and never could live down that sc.r.a.pe. Breaking the eleventh commandment is a terrible mistake: getting found out, I mean. I really did not do anything nearly so bad as lots of the other girls: Judith Blount, for instance. She did _mean_ things and I never did. I was my own worst enemy and harmed no one else."

"Well, Judith Blount has 'come through,' as the darkeys say when they get religion, wonderfully well. It was the best thing that ever happened for her to become poor; and then she had such a wise little friend, Madeleine Pett.i.t, who showed her how to work. You know I am your friend, Frances, and always did like you. You must not think Judy Kean does not, too. I am sure she has no reason to dislike you," and Molly bade her good-by with promises to come to call on her and her grandmother very soon.

But Frances was not mistaken about Judy's feelings for her. That young woman had a deep-seated dislike to the handsome, dashing Frances. "I don't trust her, Molly. She certainly did a dishonorable thing at college, and her eyes, although they are so beautiful, are a little shifty. I don't want to like her and I don't mean to, so there!"

The Browns' move from Boulevard St. Michael amounted almost to a flitting in the eyes of Mrs. Pace, as they departed while she was at market and had to leave their good-bye with Alphonsine for their respected landlady. The Marquise d'Ochte sent her limousine to convey them to their new quarters, and knowing the habits of the redoubtable Henny, she deliberately had the chauffeur call very early for her cousins so that they could avoid the stormy good-bye she knew they would have to undergo.

They found the apartment shining and beautiful, everything swept and garnished, a fire burning in the big stove in the studio and a wonderful green bowl of chrysanthemums on the table. A little note was stuck in the flowers, bidding them welcome from the Bents and wishing them joy in the apartment where they had been so happy themselves.

"Aren't they the nicest people you ever saw," exclaimed Mrs. Brown. "The place looks as though it had been arranged for honored guests instead of just renters. I don't see how they could have slept here last night, eaten breakfast here, and left everything in such apple pie order. I almost wish Mrs. Pace could see it, just to keep her from feeling so sorry for us. Now let's unpack, put away our clothes, and make a list of what we need in the larder. When we go out for luncheon, we can do our purchasing."

"Of course we'll have dinner at home to-night. Elise gets in at four-thirty and Mr. Kinsella says he thinks there will be no doubt about her coming straight to us. He is to meet them at the station and intends to put the question immediately to Mrs. Huntington, and if her answer is favorable, he will bring Elise to us bag and baggage. So Pierce told me when he stopped in on his way to the art school to see if he could be of any service to us in the move. Oh, my mother, aren't we going to have a lovely time in our own little flat and away from that terrible dragon?"