DES HALLES.
Mere Tricot called Judy just at dawn. The kindly old grenadier stood
over her, and this was no dream--she held a real cup of coffee.
"The good man is ready. I hate to wake you, but if you want to go to
market with him, it is time."
"Oh, yes! It won't take me a minute."
Judy gulped the coffee and dived into her clothes. There seemed to
be no question of baths with the good Tricots, and Judy made a mental
note that she would go every day to the Bents' studio for her cold
plunge. A bathroom is the exception and not the rule in the poorer
class of apartments in Paris. In New York, any apartment worthy of the
name boasts a bathroom, but not so in the French city.
Pere Tricot was waiting for her with his little green push cart to
bring home the purchases to be made in market. He was dressed in a
stiff, clean, blue blouse and his kindly, lank old face was freshly
shaven.
"Ah, Mam'selle! So you will go with the old man?"
"Go with you! Of course I will! I love the early morning, and the market
will be beautiful."
The streets were very quiet and misty. Paris never gets up very early,
and as the cold weather comes, she lies abed later and later. The
Gardens of the Luxembourg were showing signs of frost, or was it heavy
dew? The leaves had begun to drop and some of them had turned.
There was a delightful nip in the air and as Judy and the old man
trudged along, the girl felt really happy, happier than she had for many
a day. "It must be having a home that is doing it," she thought. "Maybe
I am a domestic person, after all.
"Pere Tricot, don't you love your home?"
"My home! You don't think that that shop in Boulevard Montparnasse is my
home, eh?"
"But where is your home then?"
"Ah, in Normandy, near Roche Craie! That is where I was born and hope to
die. We are saving for our old age now and will go back home some day,
the good wife and I. Jean and Marie can run the shop, that is, if----"
Judy knew he meant if Jean came through the war alive.
"The city is not for me, but it seemed best to bring Jean here when he
was little. There seemed no chance to do more than exist in the country,
and here we have prospered."
"I have visited at Roche Craie. I think it is beautiful country. No
wonder you want to go back. The d'Ochtes were my friends there."
"The Marquis d'Ochte! Oh, Mam'selle, and to think of your being their
guest and then mine!" Judy could have bitten out her tongue for saying
she had visited those great folk. She could see now that the dear old
man had lost his ease in her presence. "They are the greatest
landowners of the whole department."
"Yes, but they are quite simple and very kind. I got to know them
through some friends of mine who were related to the Marquise. She, you
know, was an American."
"Yes, and a kind, great lady she is. Why, it was only day before
yesterday she was in our shop. She makes a rule to get what she can from
us for her household. She has a chef who can make every known sauce, but
he cannot make a tart like my good wife's. We furnish all the tarts of
the d'Ochtes when they are in Paris. Madame, the Marquise, is also
pleased to say that my _pouree d'epinard_ is smoother and better than
Gaston's, and only yesterday she bought a tray of it for their _dejeuner
a la fourchette_. Her son Philippe is flying. The Marquis, too, is with
his regiment."
"How I wish I could have seen her!"
"Ah, then, Mam'selle would not be ashamed for the Marquise to see her
waiting in the shop of poor Tricot?"
"Ashamed! Why, Pere Tricot, what do you take me for? I am only too glad
to help some and to feel that I can do something besides look on," and
Judy, who had been walking on the sidewalk while her companion pushed
his _petite voiture_ along the street, stepped down into the gutter and
with her hand on the shaft went the rest of the way, helping to push the
cart.
As they approached the market, they were joined by more and more
pedestrians, many of them with little carts, similar to Pere Tricot's
and many of them with huge baskets. War seemed to be forgotten for the
time being, so bent were all of them on the business of feeding and
being fed.
"One must eat!" declared a pleasant fat woman in a high stiff white cap.
"If Paris is to be entered to-morrow by the Prussians, I say we must be
fed and full. There is no more pleasure in dying for your country empty
than full."
"Listen to the voice of the Halles, Mam'selle. Can't you hear it
roaring? Ah! and there is the bell of St. Eustache."
The peal of bells rose above the hum of the market.
"St. Eustache! Can't we go into the church a little while first?"
And so, hand in hand with the old Normandy peasant, Judy Kean walked
into the great old church, and together they knelt on the flagged floor
and prayed. Judy never did anything by halves, not even praying. When
she prayed, she did it with a fervor and earnestness St. Anthony himself
would have envied. When they rose from their knees, they both looked
happier. Old Tricot had prayed for his boy, so soon to be in the
trenches, and Judy offered an impassioned petition for the safety of her
beloved parents.
When they emerged from the church, the sun was up and the market was
almost like a carnival, except for the fact that the color was subdued
somewhat by the mourning that many of the women wore.
"Already so many in mourning!" thought the girl. "What will it be
later?"
"First the butter 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 butter 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, butter 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
butter 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 naive 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 sturdy
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."