Molly Brown of Kentucky Part 6

I am hungry for news. I feel that I will go mad if I can't get some information besides what is printed in these boot licking newspapers of Berlin. They speak of their soldiers as though they were avenging angels--avenging what? Avenging the insult Belgium offered them for not lying down and making a road of herself for them to walk over.

Avenging France for not opening wide her gates and getting ready the Christmas dinner the Kaiser meant to eat in Paris. I'd like to prepare his Christmas dinner, and surely I would serve a hors-d'oeuvre of rough-on-rats, an entree of ptomaines, and finish off with a dessert of hanging, which would be too sweet for him. Now just suppose this letter is seized and they see this above remark--what then? I must not be allowed to write my opinion of their ruler to my own daughter, but these Prussians who go to United States and get all they can from our country, feel at perfect liberty to publish newspapers vilifying our President and to burst into print at any moment about our men who are high in authority.

Berlin is wild with enthusiasm and joy over her victories. Every Belgian village that is razed to the ground makes them think it is cause for a torch-light procession. I can't understand them. They can hardly be the same kindly folk we have so often stayed among. They are still kind, kind to each other and kind in a way to us and to all the strangers within their gates, but how they can rejoice over the reports of their victories I cannot see.

They one and all believe that they were forced to fight. They say France was marching to Berlin for the President to eat Christmas dinner here, and that Belgium had promised they should go straight through her gates unmolested and did not regard the agreement of neutrality. I say nonsense to such statements. At least I think nonsense. I really say very little for one who has so much to say. I am bubbling over to talk politics with some one. Your poor little mumsy listens to me but she never jaws back. I want some one to jaw back. I have promised her to keep off the subject with these Prussians. They are so violent and so on the lookout for treason. There is one thing I am sure of and that is that no Frenchman would want to eat Christmas dinner or any other kind of dinner here if he could eat it in Paris. I am sick of raw goose and blood pudding and Limburger cheese.

As I write this tirade, I am wondering, my dear daughter, where you are.

Did you go back to America with Kent Brown, who, you wrote me in your last letter, was sailing in a week, or are you in Paris? I hope not there! Since I see the transports of joy these law-abiding, home-loving citizens, women and men, can get in over an account of what seems to me mere ma.s.sacre, I tremble to think what the soldiers are capable of in the l.u.s.t of bloodshed.

From the last bulletin, the Germans are certainly coming closer and closer to Paris. I hope they are lying in their report. They are capable of falsifying anything.

I am trying to get hold of our Amba.s.sador to get me out of this mess, but he is so busy it is hard to see him. I think he is doing excellent work and I feel it is best for me to wait and let the Americans who are in more urgent need get first aid. I have enough money to tide us over for a few weeks with very careful expenditure. Of course I can get no more, just like all the rest of, the Americans who are stranded here.

I feel terribly restless for work. I don't know how to loaf, never did. I'd go to work here at something, but I feel if I did, it would just mean that these Prussians could then spare one more man for their butchery, and I will at least not help them that much. Your mother and I are on the street a great deal. We walk up and down and go in and out of shops and sit in the parks. I keep moving as much as possible, not only because I am so restless but because I like to keep the stupid spy who is set to watch over me as busy as possible. He has some weird notion that I do not know he is ever near me. I keep up the farce and I give him many anxious moments. Yesterday I wrote limericks and nonsense verses on letter paper and made little boats of them and sent them sailing on the lake in the park. If you could have seen this man's excitement. He called in an accomplice and they fished out the boats and carefully concealing them, they got hold of a third spy to take them to the chief. I wonder what they made of:

"The Window has Four little Panes: But One have I.

The Window Panes are in its Sash,-- I wonder why!"

or this:

"I wish that my Room had a Floor-- I don't so much care for a Door, But this walking around Without touching the ground Is getting to be quite a bore!"

I only wish I could see the translations of these foolish rhymes that must have been made before they could decide whether or not I had a bomb up my sleeve to put the Kaiser out with. Fancy this in German:

"The poor benighted Hindoo, He does the best he kindo; He sticks to caste From first to last; For pants he makes his skindo."

Some of the s.h.i.+ps sank and they had to get a boat hook and raise them.

My nonsense seems to have had its effect. I saw in this morning's paper that some of the foreigners held in Berlin have gone crazy. I believe they mean me. I must think up some more foolishness. I feel that the more I occupy this spy who has me in charge, the better it is for the Allies. I try to be neutral but my stomach is rebelling at German food, and who can be neutral with a prejudiced stomach?

We are trying to cook in our room. You know what a wonder your little mumsy is at knocking up an omelette and making coffee and what not, and we also find it is much more economical to eat there all we can. When we are there, we are out of sight of the spy, who, of course, can't help his job, but neither can I help wanting to kick his broad bean. He is such a block-head. He reminds me of the Mechanician Man, in our comic papers: "Brains he has nix." He is evidently doing just exactly what he has been wound up and set to do. I can't quite see why I should be such an important person that I should need a whole spy to myself. I can't get out of Berlin unless I fly out and I see no chance of that.

I have had my interview with the Amba.s.sador. He sent for me, and the wonderful thing was that it was because of the ball you had set rolling in Paris. When one Amba.s.sador gets in communication with another Amba.s.sador, even when it is about as unimportant a thing as I am, there is something doing immediately. You must have made a hit, honey, with the powers in France, they got busy so fast. It seems that the Imperial Government is very leary about me. My being an American is the only thing that keeps me out of prison. They are kind of scared to put me there, but they won't let me go. I had to wait an hour even after I got sent for, and I enjoyed it thoroughly because it was raining hard and blowing like blazes and I knew that my bodyguard was having to take it.

Indeed I could see him all the time across the stra.s.se looking anxiously at the door where he had seen me disappear. I also had the delight of reading a two weeks old American newspaper that a very nice young clerk slipped to me. I suppose the American Legation gets its newspaper, war or no.

Nothing can be done for me as yet. I have been very imprudent in my behaviour, reprehensible, in fact. The paper boats were most ill advised, especially the one that goes: "My Window has Four little Panes." That is something to do with maps and a signal, it seems. "The Window Panes are in its Sash," is most suggestive of information. Ah, well! They can't do more than just keep us here, and if our money gives out, it will be up to them to feed us. The time may come when I will be glad to get even blood pudding, but I can't think it.

Your poor little mumsy, in spite of the years she has spent with me roughing it, still has a dainty appet.i.te, and I believe she would as soon eat a live rat, as blood pudding or raw goose. She makes out with eggs and salad and coffee and toast. So far, provisions are plentiful.

It is only our small purse that makes us go easy on everything. But if the war goes on (which, G.o.d willing, it will do, as a short war will mean the Germans are victorious), I can't see how provisions will remain plentiful. What is England doing, anyhow? She must be doing something, but she is doing it very slowly.

Your being in Paris is a source of much uneasiness to us, but I can't say that I blame you. You are too much like me to want to get out of excitement. I feel sure you will take care of yourself and now that the French are waltzing in at such a rate, I have no idea that the Germans will ever reach Paris. After all, this letter is to be taken by a lady who is at the American Legation and mailed to Mrs. Edwin Green and through her sent to you. They could not get it directly to you in France, but no doubt it will finally reach you through your friend, Molly. I am trusting her to do it and I know she will do it if any one can, because she is certainly to be depended on to get her friends out of trouble. In the meantime, the Amba.s.sador here is to communicate formally with the Amba.s.sador in Paris, and he is to let you know that all is well with your innocent if imprudent parents. Of course, your mother could go home if she would, but you know her well enough to know she won't. In fact, there is some talk of making her go home, and she says if they start any such thing she is going to swear she can draw any map of Turkey that ever was known to man, and can do it with her eyes shut and her hands tied behind her.

We both of us wish you were safe in Kentucky with your friends. We spend many nights talking of you and reproaching ourselves that we have left you so much to yourself. I don't see how we could help it in a way, but maybe I should have given up engineering and taken up preaching or been a tailor or something. Then I might have made a settled habitation for all of us. Your mumsy is writing you a long letter, too, so I must stop.

She is quite disappointed not to use her clever scheme for getting the letter to you, and rather resents the lady at the Legation.

Yours, BOBBY.

CHAPTER VI.

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 Amba.s.sador 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 b.o.o.b! 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 sc.r.a.ps from her meager breakfast, her eyes swimming from lonesomeness, appet.i.te 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 cla.s.s, 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 a.s.sortment 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 s.h.i.+ning.

"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 Montparna.s.se.

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.