Molly Brown of Kentucky Part 26

"Dizzy?" asked Jo.

"No, but happy enough to die," gasped Judy. "If I wasn't going to be married, I'd be a bird man."

When the landing was finally made and Judy stepped out, the world seemed very stale, flat and unprofitable. She was glad Kent was there waiting for her. If she could not be a bird man, she could at least be a very happy war bride. The great leather coat she had worn in her flight was very ugly and unbecoming, and she was thankful for one thing that she did not have to wear such frightful looking clothes all the time.

On the way back to Paris she asked cousin Sally how she had recognized Jo Williams so readily.

"By her feet, of course! Why, no man on earth ever had such eternally feminine feet." That good lady promised to find out immediately something about Polly and let his s.p.u.n.ky wife know where and how he was.

"She will have the Cross of Honour before she gets through, Philippe says."

"You don't feel as though it were your duty to tell she is a woman, do you?" asked Judy.

"Duty to tell! Heavens, child! I feel it is my duty to help France in every way I can, and surely to get that girl out of the aviation corps would be a hindrance to _la Patrie_. I doubt even Philippe's thinking it his duty to tell, and," with a twinkle in her eye that the horrors of war could not altogether dim, "Philippe has a very stern idea of his duty. He felt maybe it was his duty to get in a flying machine and go after you and Mr. Williams so he could chaperone you. He felt that the dignity of the family was at stake,--so soon to be the bride of his cousin and flying with another man! Terrible!"

"Why, of course! I never thought of how it looked. There I went and hugged and kissed Jo right before everybody. I bet you a sou this minute Philippe and all the rest of them are feeling sorry for you, Kent."

"Well, they needn't be," declared that young man as he found Judy's hand under the robe. "I'm satisfied--but I did feel a little funny for half a minute when you went and kissed Jo so warmly. It took me a moment longer to recognize her. Why didn't you put me on?"

"Put you on? How could I, with all the people around?"

"You promised me once you wouldn't fly with anybody until you could fly with me. Don't you remember?"

"Of course I did, you goose! But I didn't say anybody--I said any man; so you see I didn't break my promise when I flew with Mrs. Polly Perkins!"

CHAPTER XXII.

THE WEDDING BREAKFAST.

When the Marquise d'Ochte said she would do something, she always did it and did it as well as it could be done. When she undertook to find out where and how Polly Perkins was for the benefit of his s.p.u.n.ky wife, she did it and did it immediately. And not only did she find him, but she got a little respite from duty for him and bore him back to Paris where she had already spirited Jo to be present at the wedding breakfast. She had asked a holiday for Jo, too, although the grizzled commander was loathe to let his best aviator off even for a day.

Jo was taken to the converted d'Ochte mansion and there dressed like a nice, feminine little woman, her hair curled by madame's maid. A tight velvet toque and a dotted veil completed the transformation and the commander himself would not have recognized his one time prize aviator.

All of this masquerade was for the sole purpose of fooling Philippe, who, also, was to be one of the guests at the Tricots'.

Polly was so happy to see his Jo again that it was pathetic to behold, and her pride in him and his bravery was beautiful. Polly was vastly improved. Kent, who had always liked the little man and had insisted that there was much more to him than the other members of the colony could see, was delighted to have his opinion of his friend verified.

The ceremony was a very simple one, performed, not by the magistrate as Mere Tricot had suggested, but at the Protestant Episcopal Church. Polly Perkins gave away the bride, and Jo looked as though she would burst with pride at this honour done her husband. Jim Castleman was best man, and Cousin Sally fell in love with him on the spot.

"He is like the young men of my youth," she declared, "the young men of Kentucky, I am not saying how many years ago."

The little living room at the Tricots' soon after the ceremony was full to overflowing, but every one squeezed in somehow. The old couple were very happy in dispensing hospitality. Their Jean came home for a few hours and their hearts were thankful for this glimpse of their son.

Marie beamed with joy and the rosy baby delighted them all by saying, "Pa-pa!" the first word it had ever uttered.

Philippe, looking so handsome that Judy, too, wondered that all the American girls pa.s.sed him by, fraternized with Jean, the peasant's son, with that simplicity which characterizes the military of France.

The party was very gay, so gay that it seemed impossible that the Germans were really not more than thirty miles from them. Of course they talked politics, men and women. Old Mere Tricot had her opinions and expressed them, and they listened with respect when she pooh-poohed and bah-bahed the notion that the Nations had gone to war from altruistic motives.

"Belgium might as well die fighting as die not fighting. The Germans had her any way she jumped. France had to fight, too, fight or be enslaved. As for Great Britain--she couldn't well stay out of it! When the Germans got Antwerp, why, where was England? Let us fight, I say--fight to a finish; but let's be honest about it and each country say she is fighting for herself."

"Do you think United States should come over and help?" asked Kent, much interested in the old woman's wisdom.

"Not unless she has wrongs of her own to right!" spoke the grenadier.

"But think how France helped us out in '76!" exclaimed Judy.

"Yes, and helped herself, no doubt. I am not very educated in history, but I'll be bound she had a crow of her own to pick with England."

"To be sure," laughed Philippe, "France did want to destroy the naval supremacy of Great Britain. Her alliance with Spain meant more to France than her alliance with America. She was not wholly disinterested when she helped the struggling states."

"Oh, Heavens, Philippe, please don't take from me the romantic pa.s.sion I have always had for Lafayette!" begged his mother. "I used to thrill with joy when tales were told of my great grandmother's dancing with him."

"Keep your pa.s.sion for Lafayette. He was at least brave and disinterested, but don't waste much feeling on the government that backed him. Vergennes, the minister of France at that time, prepared a map in which the United States figured as the same old colonial strip between the Alleghenies and the sea. They had no idea of helping United States to become a great nation."

"Yes, I remember reading a letter from Jay in which he said: 'This court is interested in separating us from Great Britain, but it is not their interest that we should become a great and formidable people.' But I feel deeply grateful to France for all she did," said Kent.

"Me, too!" cried Jim Castleman. "And I mean to do all I can to pay it back."

"Ah! My American Lafayette!" cried the Marquise. "A toast, a toast, to my American Lafayette!" And they stood up and drank a toast to the blus.h.i.+ng young giant.

"I didn't dream any one could have such a good time at her own wedding,"

said Judy when the last vestige of cake had disappeared. It was a wonderful cake with a tiny white sugar bride and a chocolate groom perched on top. There had been much holding of hands under the table.

Every other person seemed to be eating with his or her left hand, and Cousin Sally complained that she had no hand to eat with at all, as Philippe held one of her hands and the American Lafayette held the other.

The Marquis could not come, much to the regret of all the company, for his regiment expected to be called to the front any day and no leaves could be granted.

Judy put up a brave front when adieux were in order, but her heart was very sad. How many terrible things might happen to these kind friends she was leaving! The Tricots, good souls, might be bereft at any moment. Dear Cousin Sally, with two in the war, might be doubly visited by the hand of death. Polly and Jo Perkins were to part after this brief time of happiness, holding hands under the Tricots' hospitable board, one to return to his office of caring for the wounded, the other to her office of keeping the German ambulance drivers busy. The young Kentucky giant, Jim Castleman, was to join his regiment on the following day. His glee at having a chance to swat the Prussians was intense. He didn't look like a person who could ever die, but one bit of shrapnel might in the twinkling of an eye destroy that virile youth.

"Come to see me when you can, my American Lafayette," begged the Marquise, "and if you get so much as a tiny little wound, let me nurse you if you can get to me."

Jim had delighted the little party by translating into his execrable French football terms to describe his idea of how the war should be conducted. His left tackle was frankly: "_gauche palan_," and his centre rush was: "_cintre jonc_."

He and Kent were not very demonstrative in their parting, but both of them felt it deeply.

"Wuv e lul lul! Sus o lul o nun gug!" called Jim, as the cab bearing the bride and groom started.

"Gug o o dud lul u sank kuk!" was Kent's feeling rejoinder.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER.

No submarine warfare interrupted the peaceful pa.s.sage of our honeymooners. The voyage was delightful to both of them after all the trials they had been through. Judy was as much at home on the water as on land, literally a born sailor, as she had been born at sea. Kent loved a s.h.i.+p and all the many aspects of the ocean. The lazy days on deck, with their chairs drawn as close together as chairs could be, their hands clasped under the steamer rug, seemed like a beautiful dream, only a dream that was going to last for a lifetime, not the lazy days on deck but the being together and never talking out. Being lazy was not the idea of eternal bliss common to either of these young persons. Kent felt there were worlds to conquer in the architectural universe and he meant to do his share towards conquering them; and with Judy by his side, he gloried in the task before him. As for Judy, she meant to paint like mad and to work up many ideas she had teeming in her head. She was thankful for the reels of undeveloped snapshots she had in her trunk, as she was going to use them as a jog to her memory for the numerous ill.u.s.trations she meant to make in an article she was thinking of writing on Paris at the outbreak of the war.