Kendall Ware had been two weeks in Paris; he had learned many things,
absorbed many things, but as his observations grew he discovered depths
to his ignorance that were not apparent to him on the day of his
arrival. The greatest advance he made in those first weeks was in
arriving at a knowledge of how little he understood or was equipped to
understand of France—and when he said _France_ he did not mean a
country, but the people who inhabited the country. Continually he was
amused by superficialities; daily he was impressed by profundities.
Gradually he came to perceive that one cannot know France by looking at
the surface any more than one can gather a knowledge of what is
transpiring in the ocean by sailing a little boat over its waves.
A people which can produce Joan of Arc and Robespierre, a St. Louis and
a Louis the Eleventh, a Madame Roland and a Madame du Barry, a
Clemenceau and a Calliaux; which is capable of an 1870 and of a 1914, of
the Terror and of Verdun—is not one whose complexities can be solved by
a twenty-six-year-old American in fourteen days.... The American will
make no impression on France, but France will make a profound impression
on the American.
From being interested in a city, in its buildings and its beauties,
Kendall became interested in its people.
His first reaction to the people was rather romantic. He saw romance in
every one. Hotel porters with one arm, wearing the Croix de Guerre and
the Légion d’Honneur, and perhaps the Médaille Militaire excited him.
Each one was, in truth, a hero. These men had seen and done. Now they
worked at menial tasks, still wearing uniforms, and with those medals on
the breast which raised them into the aristocracy of manhood. It was
strange to him that a man could be at once an honored hero and a
porter.... _Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité_ were inscribed on every public
building. This was one of the manifestations of Liberty, Equality,
Brotherhood. These things really existed, and so a porter could be a
decorated hero.
If one addressed a taxi-driver one called him _Monsieur_, just as if one
were addressing the President of the Republic itself. One addressed the
_gendarmes_ as _Monsieur_. One addressed even the turbaned and besashed
and betrousered Moroccan street-sweepers as _Monsieur_ if one addressed
them at all. Monsieur Poincaré or Monsieur Clemenceau would have given
them the same salutation. It was not an affectation; it was not what
strangers have called French politeness. It was but a manifestation of
Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood. At first it had seemed rather absurd to
Kendall, American and republican though he was, but he grew to like it,
and somewhat to understand it.
Everywhere he saw heroes wearing medals. It made him feel insignificant
and somehow lacking. One could not walk a block without passing officer
or _poilu_ with the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor, or the rarer,
even more precious, broad yellow stripe of the Military Medal. The
narrow green stripe of the ribbon of the War Cross was everywhere.
Sometimes the ribbons were elongated to give space to two or three, or,
as was the case with one boyish officer, to eight palms.... And every
palm the token that its bearer had fought back out of the clutch of
Death, performing some act of valor which raised him above the level of
an army of heroes....
These soldiers were the first to command Kendall’s interest, but it
expanded to cover every one. Ancient drivers of _voitures_ whose horses
were always too tired to take him where he wanted to go; the chauffeurs
of taxi-cabs who could never understand his French, and who, when he had
made them understand, told him they could not take him to his
destination because they happened to be heading the other way; the
crowds who occupied the tables under the awnings on the sidewalks of the
rue de la Paix or the rue Royale; the old women who came to collect two
sous if one took a seat along the Champs Élysées or the Avenue du Bois
de Boulogne; the soldiers, French, Belgian, Italian, Austrian, Canadian,
English, Moroccan, American, who promenaded of evenings and Sundays from
the Place de la Concorde to Rond-Point, and the girls with whom they
promenaded—all these interested him, and each, as he studied them with
boyish _naïveté_, added something to his education.
He worked hard by day, and often far into the night, but for the most
part his evenings were free to investigate life with Bert Stanley, whose
investigations were merely of the surface and were rather questings for
an hour of amusement.... Sometimes he played bridge with three other
Americans at the Union, but he liked best to stroll about the darkened
streets, without object or destination.
Little by little he added to his meager store of the language. When he
spoke to friends about securing an instructor they laughed at him. “Pick
it up.... Talk to people,” they told him. “Sit down on a bench along the
Champs Élysées and talk to a girl. They’re as eager to learn English as
you are French.... It’s better than a teacher—and a darned sight more
pleasant.”
He voiced his distaste for this suggestion. He had been but two weeks in
Paris, and very mistakenly had classified all the girls who promenade
the Champs Élysées in the evening as women of the streets. His natural
decency revolted at any contact, no matter how slight, with these.
“Nine out of ten of those little girls work in shops or offices,” Bert
told him. “You haven’t got ’em right, son.”
But Kendall was suspicious. He continued in that attitude until one
evening a little girl—she appeared not more than seventeen—sat rather
diffidently on the other end of his bench.
“Good night, monsieur,” she said, with quaint pronunciation.
He did not answer, but turned his back with a gesture of repulse.
“Oh, monsieur, please,” she said, timidly. “I am not a bad girl....
See.” She turned her face so that the dim light shone upon it and
pointed to her cheeks. “There is not paint. You see. No.... I am a good
girl, but monsieur, I am—how do you say _solitaire_? I learn English....
It will not harm monsieur if I talk with him a little and learn
English.”
Kendall regarded her. She was a little thing with clear eyes and a
rather pretty face, whose cheeks, as she pointed out, were guiltless of
paint. She was not well dressed, though she was neat, _chic_. And she
was so young.... It was apparent to him that she told the truth, and his
manner changed toward her.
They talked. It was a conversation which would have aroused the mirth of
a listener ... but it was remarkable how well each made the other
understand; she with slowly pronounced French and a few words of quaint
English—he with his small stock of atrociously articulated French....
She worked in a chocolate-shop. She was a refugee from Soissons and an
orphan. Her two brothers had been killed at Verdun and her mother and
father had died of the war.
“Now I must make to work,” she said, simply. “But I am very _solitaire,
monsieur.... Oui, je suis trés-solitaire—trés-solitaire_.”
“Poor kid!” said Kendall.
She shrugged her shoulders and said, with that calm resignation which is
so much to be met with, “_C’est la guerre...._ It is the war.” That is a
phrase which explains everything, excuses anything in France to-day.
“_C’est la guerre._” One offers it to explain the lateness of trains,
the price of cheese, poverty, the lack of sugar, morale, everything
great or small. “_C’est la guerre_” is the countersign of the epoch. It
embraces everything.
After an hour she arose, offered her hand charmingly, and said good
night and “_Merci_.” Kendall sat looking after her, feeling the first
life movements of a comprehension of the womankind of France. From that
moment they assumed a higher place in his thoughts, not yet so high as
they deserved, but one rung nearer to the truth. He did not even begin
to understand them—not their philosophy of life nor their conception of
the relations between the sexes; but he began to ask himself questions
to which his education and prejudices and narrownesses could provide no
answer. He began to wonder if all he had heard were true; he began to
consider, if it were true, was it then necessarily evil. He had been
brought up to regard the drinking of any beverage containing alcohol as
inherently wicked and as something to be done surreptitiously and with a
sort of “devilish” feeling. Here everybody drank wine, and wine
contained alcohol, and they did it with no concealment and with no
thought that it could be other than normal and perfectly respectable. He
considered that, and from it attempted to form a judgment of other
things which to him seemed not as they should be. Apparently drinking in
France was not a thing of moral turpitude, done as it was done by the
French.... Perhaps, then, other matters were the same: evil in Detroit
because custom and inherited moral conceptions had made them so; right
in Paris because custom and inherited moral conceptions had made them
so.... Dimly he was feeling for the conception that an act in itself is
not a sin, but the manner of the performance of that act.... This may
have been sophistry; it may have been alarmingly faulty moral
philosophy, but it marked a step ahead for a young man come of such
parentage as Kendall came of. It marked a willingness to listen to
argument and to maintain an open mind. His mother, he considered, had
never maintained an open mind. She had been dogmatic. To inquire into
things was a sin to her. Nothing had been so quick to arouse her anger
as an impulse on his part to look for the reasons of things,
particularly religious things.... His father had not been like this.
True, he had not been of an inquiring turn of mind, but he had seen no
especial reason why somebody who wanted to inquire should not be allowed
to do so. There was a certain sweetness about his father, a tolerant
attitude toward life in general and toward transgressions in particular,
that came nearer to the attitude of Jesus Christ than did the hard,
unbending, dogmatic almost cruel religion of his mother.... He had
inherited from both parents; each had given him something distinctly
traceable to each, and both had joined to give him other qualities which
were a strange composite of both of them. He was inclined to judge at
first sight like his mother, harshly and dogmatically; he was inclined,
on second thought, to look for excuses and to forgive what must be
judged as evil, like his father. It was a quality composite of the
characters of his parents that he placed the abstraction of _goodness_
on a lofty throne, but was inclined to apply its laws with gentleness
and mercy rather than with narrowness and hardness.... There were days
when he was inclined to narrowness and dogmatism; there were days when
he bent quite in the other direction and became over-indulgent.
Following his first experience in conversation with a casually
encountered girl, and finding himself to have come off none the worse
for it, he repeated the experience several times, and enjoyed it, and
came to look forward to the evenings because of the possibility of a
pleasant and instructive talk with some girl he would never see again,
but from whom he would learn some French and considerable of France....
It was rarely that his sense of propriety was offended or that the
attitude of one of his chance companions was other than “nice.” He made
no effort to follow up any of these casual meetings, or to centralize
his attention upon a single girl. He preferred matters as they were. But
he was learning that the ordinary French girl did not resent being
accosted by an American, and that when he was lonely he might find
charming company without fear of being rebuffed.
On his third Sunday in Paris he was sitting among the trees that border
the Champs Élysées. He was lonesome, for Bert Stanley had been absent on
a mission for several days. He and Bert were sharing a room at the Union
now, a room with two beds, which cost them jointly ten francs a day—and
he missed Bert. He had lunched alone that noon and now did not know what
to do with himself. It was the first time he had been really homesick,
but now he was homesick and uneasy and rather at loose ends. He wished
something would happen; that some friend would appear with an
entertaining suggestion. So he sat and smoked and watched the passage of
the colorful crowd.
Presently he stiffened to interest. In the distance he saw approaching a
girl dressed in white. It was the white tam-o’-shanter that had caught
his eye. It was familiar. For a moment he could not remember where he
had seen it, or why it stirred him to interest, and then he recalled the
little girl of the Café Poccardi. He even remembered her name—“Andree.”
She came abreast of him and he identified her certainly. It was she, and
really more attractive than he had remembered her to be. She walked
along with little steps, her body very straight, her bearing very staid.
As she walked her eyes remained straight in front of her, as though her
mind were on some interest at her destination.... Her profile was
prettier than his first picture of her full face had been; there was a
daintiness about her lips and her straight little nose, and about the
whole of her. If one had been compelled to limit himself to a single
word in describing her, he would have been forced to use that word
“dainty.”
She passed, and his eyes followed her. Suddenly he stood up with a
resolution half formed, a resolution to speak to her. Then he hesitated.
She did not look like a person one speaks to without permission or
presentation. But it was a chance.... He was lonely and this was rather
an adventure, and, besides, he had learned that one is not often
rebuffed when making a casual advance. Still Kendall was a bit
apprehensive. He walked along behind her irresolute, wondering if he
dared, and keying up his courage to dare. At any rate, he would wait
until they were out of the crowd; he did not wish the embarrassment of
being rebuffed too publicly.
The girl tripped along, almost birdlike in the carriage of her head and
in the _ensemble_ of her daintiness. At the Place de la Concorde she
turned to her left up the rue Boissy d’Anglas, on one corner of which is
the Hôtel Crillon and on the other a high, blank wall of brick. The
street was deserted.
Kendall summoned his resolution and overtook her as she entered the
shadow of the brick wall. He was rather excited and apprehensive, and
stammered a bit as he lifted his hat and said in his best French, “_Bon
jour, mademoiselle_.”
She stopped suddenly and slowly raised her eyes to his face. She was not
startled, not frightened, not thrown from her poise in the least.
“_Bon jour, monsieur_,” she said, with a rising inflection, as one who
expresses surprise and inquiry.
Kendall was at a loss. He did not know how to proceed or how to make
plausible his action. What little French he knew departed from him, and
he stood awkwardly by her side, feeling very idiotic indeed. She waited
gravely, with no twinkle in her eye at the rather absurd figure he must
have presented.
“_Voulez-vous promenade avec moi?_” he managed to articulate, at last.
“_Pourquoi?_” she asked.
Why? Why should she promenade with him? He felt his face reddening, and
it was his impulse to clap on his cap and beat a hasty retreat. What
answer was there to that _why?_ He could think of nothing whatever to
say, and the pause became awkward.
“_Parlez-vous anglais?_” he asked, desperately.
“_Non._”
In sheer desperation he touched her arm and began walking. She walked
with him, the merest hint of an amused smile at the corners of her
mouth.... At any rate, she was walking with him. That much was
accomplished, but, now that he had progressed to this point, what was he
to do with her? She was difficult, and not inclined to help him in the
least.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, desperately, “I speak very little French. I am
very lonesome.” Then, of necessity, he lapsed into his own tongue. “Why
in thunder don’t you speak English!” he said, testily.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“With you—if you permit,” he replied.
Again that appalling why. He was to come to know that she used it often;
that she shot it at one like an unexpected little arrow when one least
looked for it, and rather upset one with it. There came a time when he
called her Mademoiselle Pourquoi because of this. “Because—” he
answered. “Because— Oh, confound it! I don’t know why. I haven’t any
idea. No reason at all. I just want to.... Now if you could only
understand that we might get somewhere.”
She was amused—a little. She regarded him gravely, and it was apparent
that she was appraising him, satisfying herself as to what sort of a
barbarian he was, and possibly as to what he had in mind.
“Will you dine with me?” he asked. That was a phrase he had by heart.
“Why?”
“Same reason,” he said, ruefully, in English. “I’ve got to dine, you’ve
got to dine, we’ve got to dine.... _Pourquoi, pourquoi,
pourquoi—toujours vous dit pourquoi._” This was not remarkably excellent
French, but she comprehended, and for the first time she uttered a
little laugh. He amused her. From that moment they got along better,
for, apparently, she had appraised him as not dangerous.
She began to ask questions, not idly, he judged, but the better to
satisfy herself about him.
“Where do you live?”
He told her.
“You are an American?”
“Yes.”
“From what city?”
“Detroit.”
“I do not know it.... What is your grade?” She meant his military rank.
“Captain.”
“Are you married?”
He had rather been expecting that question, for it had been put to him
by almost every girl he had talked to. Apparently it was an important
question.... In a land where so many, many young men have been
sacrificed to war an unmarried man is an important personage. He offers
possibilities. Suppose that one million, two millions of men of
marriageable age have been slaughtered, there remain at home one or two
millions of young women who have no one to marry. This, in France, is
not a theory, but a condition, a very real and very terrible condition.
A million girls of an age for marriage and no men!...
“No,” he said.
She was silent while they walked the greater part of a block. He
repeated again his well-learned phrase, “Will you dine with me?”
“Yes,” she said, in the tone of one making a decision of some moment.
“Where?”
“Anywhere you wish.”
They were just passing a little café not distant from the Madeleine, and
she stopped hesitatingly, rather speculatively, and there was a subdued
twinkle in her eye.
“Here?” she asked.
She was looking for information about this young American, and this was
an experiment. The cafe was one of the most expensive in Paris, and
doubtless Andree wanted to see how he would act at her suggestion, for
reckless spending of money is a thing which your Parisian does not
indulge in. Possibly she wanted to find out just how much she attracted
him, and one way to do it was to discover if he was willing to spend
money on her. It is not impossible that she wondered a bit if he had
lots of money, as all Americans are said to do. Your Frenchwoman is not
mercenary, but she is practical—and lots of money is an excellent thing
to have.
“All right,” he said, in perfect innocence, for he had never seen the
place before. It looked rather dingy and not especially attractive. It
was very small. So they went in. There was a passage down the middle of
the room, with tables on either side, set in solid rows. The waiter
moved a table out to admit Andree to the leather bench which ran along
the wall. Kendall waited for the table to be replaced so that he could
sit across from her, American fashion, but she motioned for him to sit
by her side. Young women and men in France sit side by side, not
_vis-a-vis_—and it is a custom not without its advantages.
Ordering was a difficult matter, first because of lack of the language,
and second because he was beginning to be very anxious to please this
girl and to make a favorable impression on her. With characteristic
American generosity or love of displaying his willingness to spend, he
would have ordered more than four could have eaten, but she interfered
and took the ordering into her own hands—a thing for which he was
grateful when the check was presented.... Even when she was making an
experiment she could not bear to see money actually wasted.
Kendall studied her covertly. She impressed him as being a grave, very
self-possessed young person. The word demure conceals in its meaning
something of the provocative. If it were possible to remove that shade
of meaning from it, then it would have described Andree exactly. She was
demure without being provocative.... And how pretty she was. She grew on
one. Those heavily shadowed eyes were really beautiful, and her lips
delicately sweet. He made up his mind that she was what he had been
accustomed to designate as a lady, which was but another way of saying
“nice.”
Out of the corner of his eye he watched her eat. She was very dainty
about it, but also very interested. Indeed, she ate in a thoroughly
business-like manner, giving her attention fully to her plate. He
thought of a bird. Indeed, there was something birdlike about her, but
what bird she resembled Kendall could not determine. Possibly it was a
composite resemblance.... He liked her very much, but was puzzled by
her. She was something quite outside his experience. Her manner puzzled
him. She was not what he would have called “offish.” She did not seem
wholly at her ease, yet she was much more so than he. She was gravely
expectant; concealing herself, perhaps, while she waited for
self-disclosure on the part of Kendall.
She would drink but a fraction of a glass of wine and declined a
cigarette at the end of the meal.... Then he called for the check and
discovered that the rather light repast was to cost him seventy francs.
He wondered if Andree were accustomed to eating seventy-franc meals, not
knowing that this was the first experience of the kind she had ever had.
Seventy francs would have sufficed nearly for her food for a month....
On the whole, she was a mystery to him, and as long as he knew her she
continued to remain something of a mystery. He was incapable of solving
her.
“Now what shall we do?” he asked.
“We shall walk,” she replied, in quaintly stilted and accented English.
The effect was charming.
“Eh?” said Kendall. “You—why, you said you didn’t speak English!”
“Yes,” she said, and smiled, but offered no explanation. But the
explanation was clear, even to Kendall. It was because she was making no
admission whatever about herself in those first few minutes. It was
because she was on the brink of a new experience, was meeting her first
American, and because she wanted to find out as much as she could about
him without permitting him to learn anything whatever of her—until she
was ready to permit it.... He was pleased. Evidently her judgment was
favoring him.
“That’s fine,” he said. “Now you can teach me French and I can teach you
English.”
“Maybe,” she said, with her reserved smile. “We shall see.”
“Let’s take a taxi out to the Bois de Boulogne,” he suggested.
“It is very expensive.... It is not _nécessaire_. No, we shall walk.”
They retraced their steps to the Place de la Concorde and walked slowly
up the Champs Élysées to the Étoile, and then diagonally to the left and
so along the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, that wonderful promenade so
dear to Parisians. There they found chairs beside the broad graveled
walk and seated themselves. They had progressed very well
conversationally, for, though Andree’s English was but little more
extensive than Kendall’s French, the two supplemented each other
splendidly. A little pocket dictionary which Kendall always carried
worked wonders. The little dictionary was a splendid thing, anyway. It
grew to be a little joke between them and they laughed over it gaily;
Andree became less restrained.
Kendall would start a sentence in French and arrive at a point
impassable. Neither English nor French could supply his meaning.
“_Attendez_,” he would say, with mock solemnity, and then would produce
the little book, and with heads close together in the dusk they would
search it for the word. When they found it Andree would laugh at
Kendall’s pronunciation of it.... The dictionary was a great promoter of
acquaintance.
He was more and more curious about her. He wanted to know who she was,
and what she did, and if she worked for her living, and where she lived,
but he could not screw up his courage to direct questions, and she
volunteered nothing.
Finally she said, “I must be at my home, for every day I have very much
work.”
“What do you work at?” he asked, brashly.
“I must study. Many, many hours every day I must study.”
“What are you studying?”
“Many things.... I must study much, much, for the time is not long....
So I must be at my home _now_.” She pointed down at the ground with a
pretty gesture, a childish gesture, the first manifestation of the sort
she had shown him. “I must be at my home _now_—at this minute. Make me
to be there—instantly.” Then she laughed gleefully.
What a charming little thing she was, he thought, and was enchanted by
her.
“_Nous cherchons un taxi_,” he said, trying out his French. Apparently
he did reasonably well, for she shook her head.
“It is not _nécessaire_. No, I shall go on the Metro.... Good-by.”
“But—oh, now listen. I’m to go home with you, of course. And we must see
each other often—to learn French and English, you know.... You’re not
going to send me away now.”
She considered a moment.
“You may come with me—_some_.... When I say, then you shall tell me good
night. Do you promise?”
“Yes,” he said, “but—”
She arose and he accompanied her to the nearest station of the
Metropolitan, into which they descended, he very curious to know where
they were proceeding, and entered a passageway labeled “_Direction
Châtelet_.” The train was crowded and there was little opportunity for
speech until they changed to take another subterranean train which
discharged them at Place St.-Michel—the heart of the Quartier Latin.
So, Kendall thought, she is a student and she lives in the Latin
Quarter! There was magic in that thought, romance in it; the very fact
of her residence in that fascinating quarter of the city gave her a
higher valuation.
They entered the big lift which should have carried them to the street,
but the lift declined to rise. They waited amid bursts of laughter from
the crowd, and then everybody marched off again in perfect good
nature—indeed, rather delighted at a little adventure, for the old
soldier who operated the elevator had dined too well that Sunday
evening, and in his abounding good spirits had forgotten how to operate
his machine. The crowd trudged up-stairs, laughing, not at all peevish
as an American crowd in like circumstances would have been; indeed, they
were rather in sympathy with the old fellow. Just as they arrived at the
top of the stairs the elevator came slowly into view, the conductor
stepped off with the air of one who had done a noteworthy thing. He
removed his hat and bowed low to the company.
“_Regardez!_” he said, magnificently. “_Voilà.... Voilà!_”
Andree laughed prettily and Kendall laughed, and they were advanced
another step in their acquaintance by the little incident.
The streets were black as they emerged, and Andree took his arm, leading
him diagonally across the Place, past the fountain, and up the Boulevard
St.-Michel—the “Boul’ Miche” of fable and story. She permitted him to
accompany her for a few blocks, then she halted.
“It is here you must go,” she said. “You must go now.”
“But—”
“Your promise!”
He acquiesced. “I shall see you again?” He essayed the thing in French,
“_Voulez-vous donnez moi un rendez-vous, mademoiselle?_”
“No, no, no, no. It is not so. Écoutez. The right way to say is this,
_Voulez-vous me donnerai un rendez-vous?_ It is the future time, do you
onderstan’?... You wish to see me again?”
“Yes.”
“_Pourquoi?_”
“Mademoiselle Pourquoi.” It was the first time he called her so.
It was a liberty, perhaps, but it pleased her, for she gave a little
laugh. “You really wish to see me again?”
“Yes, really.... I want to see you—to beat the band.”
“To beat the band?... What is that, monsieur? I do not onderstan’, oh, I
do not onderstan’.” She had a way of failing to understand with despair
in her voice and her gestures that was very charming.
“_L’argot américain_,” he explained. “American slang. It means I want to
see you very much.”
“It is well.”
“When?... To-morrow? _Demain?_”
“I cannot to see you to-morrow, for I must work, as I said. _Mais_ in
the evening, yes. _Sept heure et demi._ Do you onderstan’? In the Place
St.-Michel, _près de la fontaine_.”
“At half past seven near the St.-Michel fountain.... And you will be
there—_certainement_?”
“_Oui—et vous?_”
“_Certainement_—surely—you bet,” he said, with increasing emphasis.
She held out her hand. “_Bonne nuit, monsieur._”
“Good night, mademoiselle.... To-morrow evening at half past seven.”
“Yes,” she said, and disappeared into the darkness.