Molly Brown of Kentucky Part 22

"Ah, Monsieur Brune!" she exclaimed, grasping his hand. "Did you know that a dirty Prussian had sent a bomb right down through the skylight of the good Bents' and now all their things are wrecked?"

"The Bents'!" gasped Kent. "Was any one hurt?"

"And that we can't say. The young lady has not been sleeping there lately but yesterday she came and got the key and did not return it, so I thought she must have slept there last night! This morning we can find no trace of her. The bomb did much damage, but surely it could not have destroyed her completely."

"Destroyed her! What young lady?"

"Why, Mademoiselle Kean, of course."

Kent was glad of the strong arm of Jim Castleman. He certainly needed a support but only for a moment. He pushed through the crowd and made his way to the shattered wall of the studio. The bomb had not done so much damage as might have been expected. The front wall was fallen and the skylight was broken all over the floor. The chairs and easels were piled up like jackstraws at the beginning of a game. The bedrooms were uninjured but the balcony where Judy and Molly had slept that happy winter in Paris had fallen.

Would Judy have slept up on the roost just for auld lang syne or would she have occupied a more comfortable bedroom? If she had been blown into such small bits that there was nothing to tell the tale, why should these other things have escaped? There were the blue tea cups in the china closet uninjured, although most of them were turned over, showing that the shock had reached them, too. What was that blue thing lying on the divan in the corner under untold debris?

Kent pulled off the timbers and broken gla.s.s and unearthed Judy's blue serge dress, which was waiting to be dyed a dismal black. He clasped it in his arms in an agony of apprehension. Letters fell out of the pocket.

He recognized his mother's handwriting, also Molly's. So, Judy had heard from Kentucky! He stuffed them back in the jacket.

"Jim, I simply don't believe she was here. I couldn't have slept all night like such a lummux if she--if she----"

"Yes, old fellow! I know! I don't believe she was here, either."

"I just know I would have had some premonition of it! I would have been conscious of it if anything had been happening to Judy," which showed that Kent Brown was his mother's own son. He was not going to mourn the loss of a loved one until he was sure the loved one was gone, and he had her own unfailing faith that something could not have happened to one he cared for without his being aware of it.

"Sure you would!" declared Jim, not at all sure but relieved that his friend was taking that view of the matter.

"I know something that will be a positive proof whether she was here or not last night." Kent walked firmly to the bath room, which was behind the bed rooms and out of the path of the bomb. He threw open the door and looked eagerly on the little gla.s.s shelf for a tooth brush.

"Not a sign of one. I know and you know that if Judy had been here last night her tooth brush would have been here, too. I am sure now! Come on, and let's look somewhere else."

Kent went out with Judy's serge dress over his arm. The concierge looked sadly after him: "Her dress is all he has to cherish now. The poor young man! I used to see he was in love with her when Mrs. Brune was in the Bents' studio and her son occupied the one to the right with Mr.

Kinsella. Oh, la la! _Mais la vie est amer!_"

The crowd dispersed, since there was nothing more to see and the hour for _dejeuner a la fourchette_ was approaching. The concierge went off to visit her daughter who was ill. The studios were all empty now and her duties were light. Her husband was to see that no one entered the court to carry off the Bents' things, which were exposed pitifully to the gaze of the public until the authorities could do something. He, good man, waited a little while and then made his way to a neighbouring _bra.s.serie_ to get his tumbler of absinthe, and one tumbler led to another and forgetfulness followed soon, and the Bents' studio properties were but dreams to his befuddled brain.

Judy had spent a busy morning. Marie had gone to carry tarts to "the regiment" and all of the waiting in the shop fell on her. She did it gladly, thankful that she was so busy she could not think. She measured soup and weighed spinach and potato salad and wrapped up tarts until her back ached. Finally Mere Tricot came in from the baking of more tarts.

"My child, go out for a while. You need the air. I am here now to feed these gourmands."

"All right, Mother! I want to get my dress at the studio. Marie says she will dye it for me."

"Certainly! Certainly! We can save many a sou by doing it ourselves. Go, child!"

Judy put on her little mourning bonnet and sadly found her way to the Rue Brea.

"I wonder where the bomb hit last night. Pere Tricot said near the Luxembourg."

What was her amazement to find the poor studio in ruins. No concierge to tell her a thing about it, for her lodge was locked tight and no one near. Judy picked her way sadly over the fallen front wall.

"I'll get my dress, anyhow." But although she was sure it had been on the divan in the studio, no dress was to be found.

"Well, I'll have to have something to wear besides this thin waist. I am cold now, and what will I do when winter, real winter comes? I shall have to send to Giverny for my trunk, and no telling what it will cost to get it here. Oh, oh, how am I to go on? I wish to G.o.d I had been sleeping on that balcony when the bomb struck. Then I would have been at peace."

Judy gave herself up to the despair that was in her heart. She made a thorough search for the suit through the poor wrecked apartment but no sign of it could she see. She went sadly back to the delicatessen shop and stepped behind the counter, her hat still on, to a.s.sist the good Mother Tricot, who was being besieged with customers.

"Take off your hat, child. Here is a fresh cap of Marie's and an ap.r.o.n.

Did you get your dress?"

Judy told her kind friend of the bomb-wrecked studio and her lost suit.

"Oh, the vandals! The wretches! There must be a Prussian in our midst who would be so low as to steal your suit. No Frenchman would have done it. Before the war,--yes, but now there is not one who would do such a dastardly trick. We are all of one family now, high and low, rich and poor,--and we do not prey on one another."

"Well, it makes very little difference," said Judy resignedly. "I'll send for my trunk. I have other suits in it."

"Other suits! Oh, what riches!" but then the old woman considered that the friend of the Marquise d'Ochte perhaps had many other suits.

Judy donned the cap and ap.r.o.n and went on with the shop keeping. No one could have told her from a poor little bereaved French girl. The cap was becoming, as was also the organdy collar. Her face was pale and her eyes full of unshed tears, but the sorrow had given to Judy's face something that her enemies might have said it had lacked: a softness and depth of feeling. Her friends knew that her heart was warm and true and that the feeling was there, but her life had been care free with no troubles except the sc.r.a.pes that she had been as clever getting out of as she had been adroit getting in. She had many times considered herself miserable before but now she realized that all other troubles had been nothing--this was something she had had no conception of--this tightening of the heart strings, this hopeless feeling of the bottom having dropped out of the universe.

She felt absolutely friendless, except for her dear Tricots. The Browns could never see her again. They must blame her, as it was all her fault that Kent had come for her. If she had not been so full of her own conceit, she would certainly have sailed for America when all the others did at the breaking out of the war. Her mother and father seemed as remote as though they were on another planet. The war might last for years and there seemed no chance of their leaving Berlin.

"I'll just stay on here and earn my board and keep," she sighed. "The Tricots find me useful and they want me."

In the meantime, Kent and Jim Castleman went and sat down in the Garden of the Luxembourg to smoke and talk it over, Kent still fondly clasping the serge dress.

"I'll find her all right before night," declared Kent. "She'll be sure to go to the Bents' studio sometime to-day. I'll write a note and leave it with the concierge. I'll also leave a note at the American Club. She must go there twice a week at least. I'd like to know where the poor little thing is," and Kent heaved a sigh.

"I bet she is all right, wherever she is," comforted Jim. "Say, Brown, I don't like to mention it, but I am starved to death."

"Not mention it! Why not?"

"Well, you see when a pal is in trouble it seems so low to go get hungry."

"But I'm not in trouble. Now if I thought that Judy had been in that place last night there would be something to be troubled about, but as it is, I just can't find her for a few hours, or maybe minutes. Where shall we eat?"

"That's up to you. I'm getting mighty low in funds, so let's do it cheap but do it a plenty," and Jim looked rather ruefully at his few remaining francs.

"I am still in funds but I shall have to go it mighty easy, too, to get Judy and me home. I tell you what we might do. Let's go to a shop where they have ready cooked food and bring it out here and eat it. They say you can live on half what it costs to eat in a restaurant. When I was studying over here I knew lots of fellows who lived that way. Of course, they had studios where they could take the stuff and eat it, but the Luxembourg Garden is good enough. I know a place where the Perkinses used to deal. They are the funny lot I told you about, the long-haired man and the short-haired woman. He is driving an ambulance now and goodness knows where she is."

"Well, let's go to it. I am so hungry I can hardly waddle. These Continental breakfasts with nothing but bread and coffee don't fill me up half way."

Kent smiled, remembering the two full orders and the four eggs his friend had tucked away, but he said nothing. Having a good appet.i.te of his own, he had naught but sympathy for his famished friend.

They left the garden and made for the shop where Jo and Polly Perkins had bought their ready cooked provisions.

"These people make some little pies that are mighty good, too. We might get half a dozen or so of them as a top off," suggested Kent.

"Fine! I've got a mouth for pie, all right."

Judy had gone to the kitchen for a moment to bring to the fore the smoked tongue that Pere Tricot had been slicing in those paper-thin slices that he alone knew how to accomplish. She bore aloft a great platter of the viand, the even slices arranged like a wreath of autumn leaves. While she was still in the living room behind the shop, two strangers entered. Their backs being to the light, Judy only saw their silhouettes as they bent over the show cases eagerly discussing what selection of meats and vegetables they should make, while Mere Tricot, accustomed to slim-pocketed customers, patiently waited. Suddenly she leaned over the counter and touched something which one of the young men had thrown over his arm.