THE GARDENS OF HELÊNE
"Is there not any saint of the kitchen, at all?" asked the serious-eyed little demoiselle sorting herbs under the pear-tree. Old Jacqueline, gathering the tiny fagots into her capacious apron, chuckled wisely.
"There should be, if there isn't. Perhaps the good God thinks that the men will take care that there are kitchens, without His help." She hobbled briskly into the house. Helêne sat for a few minutes with hands folded, her small nose alert as a rabbit's to the marvelous blend of odors in the hot sunshiny air.
It was a very agreeable place, that old French garden. There had been a kitchen-garden on that very spot for more than five hundred years; at least, so said Monsieur Lescarbot the lawyer, and he knew all about the history of the world. A part of the old wall had been there in the days of the First Crusade, and the rest looked as if it had. When Henry of Navarre dined at the Guildhall, before Ivry, they had come to Jacqueline for poultry and seasoning. She could show you exactly where she gathered the parsley, the thyme, the marjoram, the carrots and the onion for the stuffing, and from which tree the selected chestnuts came. A white hen proudly promenading the yard at this moment was the direct descendant of the fowl chosen for the King's favorite dish of poulet en casserole.
But the common herbs were far from being all that this garden held. Besides the dozen or more herbs and as many vegetables which all cooks used, there were artichokes, cucumbers, peppers of several kinds, marigolds, rhubarb, and even two plants of that curious Peruvian vegetable with the golden-centered creamy white flowers, called po-té-to. Jacqueline's husband, who had been a sea-captain, had brought those roots from Brazil, and she,—Helêne,—who was very little then, had disgraced herself by gathering the flowers for a nosegay. It was after that that Jacqueline had begun to teach her what each plant was good for, and how it must be fed and tended. Helêne had grown to feel that every plant, shrub or seedling was alive and had thoughts. In the delightful fairy tales that Monsieur Marc Lescarbot told her they were alive, and talked of her when they left their places at night and held moonlight dances.
Lescarbot's thin keen face with the bald forehead and humorous eyes appeared now at the grille in the green door. He swept off his béret and made a deep bow. "Mademoiselle la bien-aimée de la bonne Sainte Marthe," he said gravely, "may I come in?"
He had a new name for her every time he came, usually a long one. "But why Sainte Marthe?" she asked, running to let him in.
"She is the patron saint of cooks and housewives, petite. A good cook can do anything. Sainte Marthe entertained the blessed Lord in her own home, and was the first nun of the sisterhood she founded. Moreover when she was preaching at Aix a fearful dragon by the name of Tarasque inhabited the river Rhone, and came out each night to devastate the country until Sainte Marthe was the means of his—conversion."
"Oh, go on!" cried Helêne, and Lescarbot sat down on the old bench under the pear-tree and began to help with the herbs.
"Sainte Marthe was an excellent cook, and the first thing she did when she founded her convent was to plant a kitchen-garden. On Saint John's Eve she went into the garden and watered each plant with holy water, blessing it in the use of God. People came from miles around to get roots and seeds from the garden and to ask for Sainte Marthe's recipes for broths and cordials for the sick. Often they brought roots of such plants as rhubarb and—er—marigold, which had been imported from heathen countries, to be blessed and made wholesome." Lescarbot's eye rested on the potato plant, which he distrusted.