AT THE TRICOTS'.
It took one month and three days for Judy to get the above letter,
but her mind was set somewhat at rest long before that time by the
Ambassador himself, who had learned through his confrere in Berlin that
Mr. and Mrs. Kean were safe and at large, although not allowed to leave
Berlin.
The daughter was so accustomed to her parents being in dangerous places
that she did not feel so concerned about them as an ordinary girl would
have felt for ordinary parents. Ever since she could remember, they had
been camping in out-of-the-way places and making hair-breadth escapes
from mountain wild cats and native uprisings and what not. She could not
believe the Germans, whom she had always thought of as rather bovine,
could turn into raging lions so completely.
"Bobby will light on his feet!" she kept saying to herself until it
became almost like a prayer. "No one could hurt Mamma. She will be
protected just as children will be!" And then came terrible, exaggerated
accounts of the murder in cold blood of little children, and then the
grim truth of the destruction of Louvain and Rheims, and anything seemed
possible.
"A nation that could glory in the destruction of such beautiful things
as these cathedrals will stop at nothing." But still she kept on saying:
"Bobby will light on his feet! Bobby will light on his feet!" She no
longer trusted the Germans, but she had infinite faith in the sagacity
and cleverness of her father. He always had got himself out of difficult
and tight places and he always would.
In the meantime, money was getting very low. Try as she would to
economize, excitement made her hungry and she must eat and eat three
times a day.
"If I only had Molly Brown's skill and could cook for myself!" she would
groan as she tried to choke down the muddy concoction that she had just
succeeded in brewing and was endeavoring to persuade herself tasted a
little like coffee. She remembered with swimming eyes the beautiful
little repasts they had had in the Bents' studio during that memorable
winter.
"Judy Kean, you big boob! I believe my soul you are going to bawl about
a small matter of food. If the destruction of Louvain did not make you
weep, surely muddy coffee ought not to bring tears to your eyes, unless
maybe they are tears of shame."
The truth of the matter was, Judy was lonesome and idle. She could not
make up her mind to paint. Things were moving too fast and there was too
much reality in the air. Art seemed unreal and unnecessary, somehow.
"Great things will be painted after the war but not now," she would say.
She carried her camera with her wherever she went and snapped up groups
of women and children, soldiers kissing their old fathers, great ladies
stopping to converse with the gamin of the street; anything and
everything went into her camera. She spent more money on films than on
food, in spite of her healthy hunger.
On that morning in September as she cleared away the scraps from her
meager breakfast, her eyes swimming from lonesomeness, appetite
unappeased and a kind of nameless longing, she almost determined to
throw herself on the mercy of the American Legation for funds to return
to New York. The Americans had cleared out of Paris until there were
very few left. Judy would occasionally see the familiar face of some art
student she had known in the class, but those familiar faces grew less
and less frequent.
"There's the Marquise! I can always go to her, but I know she is taken
up with her grief over Philippe's going a soldiering," she thought as
she put her plate and cup back on the shelf where the Bents kept their
assortment of china.
A knock at the door! Who could it be? No mail came to her and no
friends were left to come.
"Mam'selle!" and bowing low before her was the lean old partner of St.
Cloud, Pere Tricot. "Mam'selle, my good wife and I, as well as our poor
little daughter-in-law, we all want you to come and make one of our
humble menage."
"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, Pere 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.
Mere 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, Mere 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 Mere 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 role 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 Mere 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 pense 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 demande 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 Mere 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
Mere 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 roue, 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 bouchee_. 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 Pere 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
Mere 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. Mere and Pere 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.