Part 24 (1/2)
”Well, let us see them!” begged Marie and her belle mere.
They were dying of curiosity to peep into the great box, so Judy unpacked for their benefit, and their eyes opened wide at her stack of s.h.i.+rt waists and lingerie and her many shoes.
”Two more suits and a great coat, silk dresses--at least three of them--and skirts and s.h.i.+rts of duck and linen!” exclaimed Marie. ”And hats and gloves--and blouses enough for three! Not many war brides will boast such a trousseau.”
So our bride began to feel that in comparison to the little Marie, she had so much that she must not worry about wedding clothes. Instead, she divided her store of riches, and making up a bundle with a silk dress and some blouses and lingerie, a suit and a hat, she hid it in Mere Tricot's linen press for Marie to find when she, Judy, was married and gone over the seas.
She well knew that the French girl would not accept the present unless it were given to her in a very tactful way, and just to find it in the linen press with her name on it and the donor out of reach seemed to Judy the most diplomatic method.
Madame le Marquise d'Ochte must be looked up again. Not only were Kent and Judy very fond of her, but they knew they could not show their faces to Mrs. Brown unless they had seen her dear Sally Bolling. This time they found her in the old home in the Faubourg. She had been to the front and come back to get her house in readiness for the wounded.
Could this be the gay and volatile Marquise, this sad looking, middle-aged woman? She had grown almost thin during those few months of the war. Her beautiful t.i.tian hair was now streaked with grey. Judy remembered with a choking feeling the first time she had come to the Ochte home on that night soon after Molly and her mother had arrived in Paris, when they had dined in the Faubourg and then gone to hear _Louise_ at the Opera. The Marquise had been radiant in black velvet and diamonds, a beautiful, gay woman that one could hardly believe to be the mother of Philippe. She had looked so young, so sparkling. She had said at one time that she allowed no grey hairs to stay in her head, but had her maid pull them out no matter how it hurt. Now it would take all a maid's time to keep down the grey hairs in that head, and would leave but a scant supply for a coiffure could they be extracted.
Kent thought she looked more like his mother and loved her for it. Her greeting was very warm and her interest great in what Judy and Kent had been doing and what they meant to do. She received them in the great salon that had been converted into a hospital ward. All of the Louis Quinze furniture had been stored away in an upper chamber and now in its place were long rows of cots. The floor was bare of the handsome rugs which had been the delight and envy of Judy on former visits, and now the parquetted boards were frotted to a point of cleanliness that no germ would have dared to violate.
”I left the pictures for the poor fellows to look at--that is, those who are spared their eyesight,” she said sadly. ”My hospital opens to-morrow, but I want the privilege of giving a wedding breakfast to you young people. I can well manage it in the small _salle a manger_. That is left as it was.”
”Oh, you are so kind, but dear old Mere Tricot is making a great cake for us and she would be sad indeed if she could not give the breakfast,”
explained Judy.
”That is as it should be,” said the Marquise kindly, ”but am I invited?”
”Invited! Of course you are invited, and the Marquis and Philippe if they can be got hold of.”
”They are still in camp and have not gone to the fore, so I will manage to reach them. Jean is very busy, drilling all the time, but a family wedding must be attended. Philippe is learning to fly,” and she closed her eyes a moment as though to shut out the remembrance of accidents that happen all the time to the daring aviators.
Judy wondered if he had come in contact with Josephine Perkins, but said nothing as it was a deep secret that Jo was pa.s.sing off as a man and a word might give her away.
”There are many Americans in the aviation camp, and very clever and apt they are, Philippe says. I am proud of my countrymen for coming forward as they are.”
”Yes, I think it is great for them to. I--I--think I ought not to marry Kent and go off and leave so much work to be done. I ought to help.
Don't you think so, Cousin Sally?” asked Judy.
The Marquise smiled at Judy's calling her cousin, smiled and liked it.
Kent looked uneasy and a little sullen. Suppose his Judy should balk at the last minute and refuse to leave the stirring scenes of war! What then? He had sworn not to return to United States without her, and unless he did return in a very short time, the very good job he had picked up in New York would be filled by some more fortunate and less in love young architect.
”Why, my dear, it is not the duty of all American girls to stay on this side and nurse any more than it is the duty of all American men to stay here and fight. Only those must do it who are called, as it were, by the spirit. You must marry my young cousin and go back to United States, and there your duty will begin, not only to make him the brave, fine wife that I know it is in you to make, but also to remember suffering France and Belgium. There is much work waiting for you. This war will last for years, thanks to that same Belgium who threw herself in the breach and stopped the tide of Prussians flowing into France. If it had not been for Belgium, the war would have been over now--yes, over--but France would have been under the heel of the tyrant and Belgium off of the map.
Thank G.o.d for that brave little country!” and Judy and Kent bowed their heads as at a benediction.
Kent kissed the Marquise for her sensible advice. He very well knew that Judy would have been a great acquisition to his cousin's hospital, and that workers were not numerous (not so plentiful at the beginning of the war as they were later). Her advice was certainly unselfish. He thanked her, also, for realizing that it was not up to all American men to stay and fight. He had no desire to fight any one unless his own country was at war, and then he felt he would do his duty as his ancestors had done before him.
”I tell you what we'll do, you children and I: I'll order out the car--I still keep one and a chauffeur so that with it I can bring the wounded back to Paris--and we will go out to the aviation camp and see Philippe and ask him to the wedding. You would like to see the camp, eh?”
”Above all things!” exclaimed Kent and Judy in chorus.
The broad gra.s.sy field, bordered by houses, sheds and workshops, presented a busy scene as the Ochte car drove up. Biplanes were parked to one side like so many automobiles at a reception in a city, or buggies at a county seat on court day in an American town. The field was swarming with men, all eagerly watching a tiny speck off in the blue sky in the direction of the trenches where the French had called a halt on the Germans' insolent and triumphant march to Paris.
No more attempt was made to stop the car of Madame the Marquise from coming into the aviation camp than there would have been had she been Joffre himself.