Kendall stood a moment looking after Andree until the blackness of the
boulevard swallowed her up. He was exhilarated. The girl had had a tonic
effect upon him; the incident was not an incident, but an adventure, and
he tingled with it.... He wondered why. He wondered why he wanted to see
her again when he had not cared whether or not he saw again any of the
other girls he had talked to. He hoped she would appear next evening as
she had promised ... and then he felt a twinge of apprehension. The
twinge was not an inheritance from his father.
If he did see her again—then what? Would he see her again and still
again, and what were the meetings to lead to? What sort of affair was he
getting mixed into?... He felt a sense of naughtiness, and, when he
tried to discover why he should feel naughty, he was unable to say.
Certainly there had been nothing in the least to warrant it in any word
or action of the evening. But Andree was French—and she lived in the
Latin Quarter.... What _was_ he getting himself into, anyhow?
The part of his being inherited from his mother was in the ascendant.
She suspected anything she did not understand. Because she did not
understand it she believed something wicked must lurk in it
somewhere.... He remembered how he had once dug a cave in a vacant lot
next his home and how his mother had almost gone into one of her
“tantrums” over it. She could not understand why a boy should want to
burrow into the earth. It must be some squalid desire for wicked
concealment on her son’s part. She almost convinced him that it was a
sin for a boy to dig a cave, just as she had almost succeeded in making
him believe that so many of his other perfectly natural desires and
impulses and doings were wicked.... She had a way of connecting
everything with _sex_, and she suspected _sex_ above everything else in
the world. It was her nightmare. It was a squalid, wicked sort of a
thing, to be thought of only in terms of aversion. Always she had
hammered this into him, and though he could not quite believe her, he
never quite outgrew her point of view. In this moment he knew exactly
how she would regard his meeting with Andree.
Then his father came to his rescue—his father, whose dominant note was
tolerance and a sweet inability to see evil, or, if he saw it, to see
palliation of it, or even a vein of goodness running through it. His
father never suspected anything or anybody. His father had never
suspected _him_. Somehow that had always been very wonderful to him,
because his mother had impressed it upon him that he was a person always
under suspicion. He knew exactly how his father would regard Andree and
what he would say and do. He could hear his father saying it and see him
doing it. His father would have patted Andree on the shoulder and
smiled. He would have said, “She’s a pretty little thing, isn’t she?”
Then he would have proposed taking Andree and his son for an ice-cream
soda. His father always did that—for ice-cream soda or candy. And then
he would have whispered in Kendall’s ear: “Got enough money, son? ’Cause
if you hain’t—”
Kendall wondered if it were better to see wickedness in everything and
sometimes to be justified by finding it, or to see wickedness in nothing
at all, and sometimes to be disappointed by having it suddenly thrust
upon one.
He walked slowly toward the Place St.-Michel and there descended into
the Metro. His antagonistic inheritances struggled within him, and his
youth and his youthful desire for the joys of life took sides with his
father. In one moment he determined he would never see Andree again, and
then he would call himself an idiot and ask what harm could possibly
come from it.... If ever he had seen a “nice” girl, Andree was nice.
Well, then?... But he was disturbed, and had not been able to conquer
his disturbance when he entered the Union. There he found Bert Stanley
waiting for him.
“Here comes the wicked old man,” Bert saluted him. “What you been up to,
with me away? Have I got to keep my eye on you every minute?”
“Just walking around,” said Kendall. Some young men would have wanted to
tell about Andree and to discuss her, but not he.
“Let’s split a bottle of beer.... Say, I heard about an apartment to
let—up near the Étoile. What say to having a look at it to-morrow?”
“How much?”
“I heard it was three hundred francs—and we’re paying that much here for
one room with two beds.”
“Sounds good, but I don’t know. Anyhow, we can look it over.”
“’Tisn’t far from the office. We can walk over at noon.”
Kendall yawned. “Let’s go to bed,” he suggested.
“What’s the use? There’ll be an air raid to-night. Better to sit up than
just to get nicely asleep and have to roll out. I never get to sleep
again.”
Kendall persisted and walked up to his room, where he was soon in bed,
but not to sleep. He was excited and restless. He wanted to sleep, not
to think, but his mind persisted in its activity, and his thoughts
became incisive, whitely clear as one’s thoughts do of sleepless nights.
It was rather the sensation of being subjected to a blinding light which
hurt the brain.... It was not alone of Andree that he thought. He could
concentrate on nothing, but kept running down _cul-de-sacs_ of memories
and speculations and plans which overlapped and confused one another
maddeningly. He would shut his eyes and try to curtain off his mind so
that no thought could penetrate, but it was not to be done, so he tossed
and rolled and submitted.... Just around the corner of every avenue his
thoughts followed Andree, lay in wait. Before he knew it he was building
air-castles about her....
It was really a relief to him when the _alerte_ sounded. He said to
himself that he would not get up, and composed himself to wait. In a
quarter of an hour the barrage started, sporadically at first, then
worked itself up to a fury of sound such as he had never heard before.
It sounded nearer, more menacing. Really, cannon might have been going
off in the street below his window. So imminent did the sound become
that Kendall got out of bed, not frightened, exactly, but impressed. He
considered that there was nothing above his head but the roof. Half
determined to dress and go down, he fumbled for the light-button and
turned it before he remembered that there would be no light, that all
light was turned off at its source with the sounding of the _alerte_....
In his pajamas he went to the windows which opened out on the little
balcony which overlooked the Palais Royal, and stood there looking off
toward the east, where the firing was most furious.... Over his head he
could hear the angry humming of aeroplanes, and wondered uneasily if
they were defenders or hostile bombers. Tremendous detonations rattled
the windows and rocked the buildings, and these, he fancied, were
falling bombs. The sky was alight with up-leaping flares from the mouths
of the cannon and from shells bursting high above the city, searching
the heavens for flitting _Gothas_.... Then came a series of tremendous
upheavals which seemed to his tingling nerves to be almost at hand....
And then the sky was red with flames which uprose and spread and glanced
and billowed over the tops of the buildings. Metallic fragments rattled
on the roof of the Palais Royal, fifty feet away, and on the roof of his
hotel and in the streets below. Kendall ducked inside, for he knew this
was falling shrapnel from the defensive barrage.... For the first time
he was seeing a real air raid, a serious raid, and one that was meeting
with success. Already a tremendous fire had been started, and what might
not follow?... It was enough to shake one’s nerves, for the individual
is so helpless! All one can do at such a time is to hope and to argue
that Paris is large and a bomb small; that the chances of a bomb falling
where one happens to be are almost infinitesimal.
The sound came very near indeed. Kendall could not see what caused this,
but it was an anti-aircraft gun mounted on a truck which had come to a
stop at an open space at the mouth of the Avenue de l’Opéra and was
industriously blazing away at the moon.... Kendall wished he were
dressed and down-stairs with company at hand; he would even have
consented to descend into an _abri_, an experience which had not so far
been his. He wondered what an _abri_ looked like. At any rate, there
were plenty of them, for nearly every building in Paris was defaced by a
poster announcing, “_Abri, 30 places.... Abri, 60 places._”
The sound, the terrific crashings and retchings and tearing bursts of
tremendous potentiality, gradually ebbed, then surged up with renewed
vigor for a time, then subsided again, and, after a series of fitful
outbursts, ceased.... But the light which glowed and danced over the
roofs from the distant Faubourg St.-Antoine silhouetting the tangle of
chimney-pots on the Palais Royal did not subside. The fire burned on....
Kendall returned to bed—and slept.
If that raid had made Kendall Ware fearful, what had it done to the
teeming populations of the Faubourg St.-Antoine, to the closely packed
poor who massed about the Bastille, and to the eastward of this monument
to an event that owed its being to their own ancestors, to those who
used to dwell in St.-Antoine, mother of revolutions!
Next noon Bert Stanley and Kendall lunched at a table on the sidewalk of
a little café on the Place de Ternes and then walked down the Boulevard
de Courcelles a few hundred feet or so to the number that had been given
Bert as a place where a desirable furnished apartment was to let.
They entered through an archway and rang the bell of the _concierge’s_
apartment. A pleasant, motherly, smiling old woman came to the door and
bowed them in. It was not difficult to make her understand that they
were in search of an _appartement meublé_, whereupon she jangled a huge
bunch of keys and invited them to follow her up four flights of stairs,
and ushered them into the rooms that were for hire.... The apartment of
five rooms was to be had for three hundred francs a month, with twenty
francs extra for the _concierge_. Yes, a cook could be obtained, and
madame would undertake to have her on hand when needed. Her wages would
be seventy francs a month. Everything was very easy.
“Where is the bath?” asked Kendall.
“Oh, monsieur, we have a bath. Of a surety. It is but three blocks
away....”
So it was arranged. They were to move in when they desired, and they
left the building feeling quite like family men and proprietors. They
discussed the apartment from all angles and were exceedingly pleased
with themselves for accomplishing it....
“All France needs,” said Bert, quoting some epigrammatic American
friend, “is open plumbing to make it the greatest country in the world.”
On the broad stairs of that huge hotel which the United States
Expeditionary Force has taken over for its headquarters in Paris Bert
stopped suddenly.
“I can’t help you move in to-night,” he said. “But there isn’t much to
do. Get a taxi to take up our boxes and bedding-rolls. I’m going to be
busy.”
“So am I,” said Kendall, Andree recalled to his mind after she had been
absent from it since morning.
“Huh!” grunted Bert. “Same one you were with last night?”
“Go chase yourself,” said Kendall.
“If it is,” Bert continued, “we might make a mixed quartet of it. Dinner
and then _promenade avec_. Eh?”
Kendall hesitated. It sounded pleasant, but he was not sure Andree would
like it—and he was not sure about the sort of girl Bert might have
chosen for a companion. Andree, he had made up his mind, was not the
sort of girl who would take up with anybody.
“Nothing doing,” he said.
“Why?”
“Who’s your girl?” Kendall countered.
“Girl I’ve known quite awhile. Cashier in a shop.... Say, what you
getting at, anyhow? Madeleine’s a darn nice girl, I’m here to tell the
world. Looks it, too. I’d just as soon take her over to the Y. M. C. A.
and introduce her to the head guy—and she’d get past, too.”
“I don’t know.... I don’t know Andree very well. She might not like it.”
“Rats!” Bert said, scornfully. “They might as well get acquainted one
time as another.”
Kendall wasn’t so sure of that. He saw no reason why the girls should
ever get acquainted. In short, he didn’t follow Bert’s reasoning nor
comprehend the point he made.
“We can move in to-morrow,” Kendall said, and there was an end of it.
It was a long afternoon for Capt. Kendall Ware, but at last he found his
day’s work at an end and himself in the street. He went into a café for
a hurried meal and then took the Metro to the Place St.-Michel, arriving
there a good half-hour ahead of the appointed time. He took a seat at a
sidewalk table in a café from which he could watch the fountain, and
ordered a glass of coffee into which he squirted _saccharin_ from a
bottle with a nozzle like those used by American barbers to put bay rum
on one’s hair. At ten minutes past seven he was fearful Andree did not
mean to keep her appointment. At a quarter past he was sure of it....
And she was not due until half past. He was to learn that she was one of
those persons who are never ahead of time, who never hurry, but who may
always be depended upon to arrive eventually.
It was almost exactly seven-thirty when he saw her coming across the
Place. At first he did not recognize her, for he had been expecting that
white suit topped by its cunning tam-o-’shanter; but she was not in
white this evening. Her dress was of some light summer material and she
wore a dark tam. He never saw her wear anything but a tam.... She looked
more slender, younger, than before. Why, she seemed to be nothing but a
child! He knew she saw him, but she did not seem to see him, for she
came forward sedately, with those staid little steps of hers until she
was almost at arm’s-length. Then she looked up and smiled.
Again he found that difficulty in opening the conversation, in
organizing his French for action, and she—she seemed to have forgotten
her English. But each was glad to see the other. He tried to tell her he
was glad to see her, but made frightful work of his attempt to pronounce
the word _joyeux_. It necessitated resort to the dictionary—and
immediately awkwardness was dispelled.
“I have worked so—_so_—hard. All the day.”
“At what?”
She held out her book. It was a volume of Racine. “I have been
studying.” She opened it to show him. “Regard this so long part. It is
necessary for me to learn it. You do not know Racine.... You do not know
this play. Oh, it is very sad, very _tragique_. But it is very
beautiful....”
“What are you learning all that for?”
“I must.... I must learn many things. It is for the examination. I must
to enter into the _Académie_. First I must pass the examination. If I
can succeed to enter into the _Académie_, then I shall some day go onto
the stage of the Comédie Française and be a great actress and make much
money, and you shall sit and clap your hands. I shall then come to New
York like Madame Bernhardt, for there is much money, and you shall be
proud I am your friend. _N’est-ce pas?_ But it is very _difficile_ to
enter the _Académie_. One must know a famous actor or musician to
recommend one.... Do you know actors and musicians in Paris?”
“No.”
“You must to meet these actor, then, and know him well, so you will say
to him, ‘Recommend my friend to the _Académie_.’ It is very necessary.”
She looked up at him and smiled gaily at her little joke, which was
uttered half in seriousness.
“So you’re an actress, are you?” An actress! It rather startled him. He
had ideas about actresses—American actresses! But a French actress!...
“_Non.... Non.... Non...._ I am nothing. I am a young girl only, me. But
I must do something. I have to live, is it not? Yes.... Then to be the
actress in the Comédie Française is to be well.”
He was rather relieved. There is a difference between being an actress
and desiring to be one. He had an inspiration. “Maybe you would like to
go to the Comédie Française to-night,” he said.
She clapped her hands. “But yes—yes. Let us hurry. It is already late
and we shall miss something.”
They went to an adjacent bus-stand, where Andree tore two numbers from a
packet fastened to a post. The bus appeared, passengers alighted, and
the conductress began calling off numbers. Only those were allowed to
mount whose numbers were called, for overcrowding is not permitted. The
bus rolled away without them, but presently another appeared, their
numbers were called, and in ten minutes they were walking down the
Avenue de l’Opéra toward the theater.
Kendall bought seats, the most expensive in the house, and they entered,
mounting the broad stairway to the gallery, where they permitted
themselves to be shown into a species of box by an attendant. The play
was just commencing.
“Do you onderstan’ it?” Andree asked.
“Not enough to do any good.”
“Then I shall explain it to you.” And as the action progressed she
pattered on with explanations and observations very cunningly and
charmingly. “You see thees ol’ man? He is in love with thees yo’ng girl.
But she—she does not love him. It is ver’ sad. Thees yo’ng man who is
ver’ handsome, she loves him.” Suddenly she turned to him and asked:
“Are men in America—oh, how do you say—what is the word? _Fidèle._ Do
you know _fidèle_?”
“Faithful—constant—is that it?”
“Yes. Are American men so?”
“Why—generally, I guess.”
She shook her head somberly. “Frenchmen are not. They are most
_infidèle_. It is ver’ sad.”
“How about French girls?”
“Oh, some are _fidèle_ and some not. Some Frenchmen are _fidèle_. The
poor. _Oui._ It is the rich men and women who are not _fidèle_.”
“Are you rich?”
She laughed. “No, I am ver’ _fidèle_.”
“So the poor folks always marry and are faithful?” he asked, with real
curiosity.
“Oh, they are faithful. Not always do they marry. No. Sometimes they are
too poor, sometimes they do not want to, but they are _fidèle_. But yes.
Do young men and young girls in America always marry?”
“Yes.”
“It is very strange. Not so in France. No.”
“What then?”
“A young man love a young girl, and a young girl love a young man....
They marry, maybe. That is well. But maybe they do not marry. It is
expensive to marry. Then they see each other very often and he gives her
money so she can live.... That is well, because they are _fidèle_.”
Kendall gasped mentally. What would Detroit, what would his mother think
of such a theory of life as this? How would they regard a mode of living
which places fidelity over the solemn forms of marriage? Here was a
people who apparently valued love and fidelity more than marriage
licenses and wedding-rings!... It sounded very naughty to Kendall. Also
it made him think. His mother and his father tried to function in him
simultaneously and made a chaos of his thoughts....
The play continued. “Oh, you should onderstan’ French better. You must
speak it well, _well_!” she exclaimed. “Then I can read poems to you. Do
you know French poetry?”
He laughed. “I know one poem,” he said.
“Tell it to me.”
He recited:
“_Je vous aime,
Je vous adore,
Que voulez-vous encore?_”
She turned to look full in his face, her lovely, childish eyes alight
with mischief. “It is not a poem,” she said; “it is a declaration.”
“Exactly,” he said, half seriously.
“Oh no, no, no! You do not love me.... It ees not _possible_. No. You do
not know me enough yet.”
Without thought he made the leap. “Of course I do. How could I help
it?... Don’t you love me?” He talked to her as he would talk to a child.
“I do not know—yet. I have not known you. We shall see.”
She was perfectly serene and perfectly serious. It startled him. “By
Jove!” he said to himself, “things move rapidly in this country.” He was
right. France has a way of omitting unessentials and of disregarding
shams and subterfuges. If there is a destination to arrive at, France
does not walk around the block to reach it, but cuts straight across.
“You are sure you are not married?” she said. “You tell the truth?”
“I’m not, and I’m not going to be,” he said, decidedly. At least he
would put an end to any such speculations.
“_Pourquoi?_” There it was again, that direct, troublesome _why_.
“Because I don’t like it. I don’t want to be married.”
She nodded. Apparently the reason was perfectly good and sufficient to
her. She directed her attention to the play.
“Now,” she said, “thees ol’ man he has make love to thees yo’ng girl.
Also he has promise her much money, and she will love him.”
“I don’t like that,” he said. “I can see, maybe, why people should love
each other and all that, but the money part of it! I don’t like that at
all. That isn’t—good.”
“_Pourquoi?_ It is that a girl must live. She must eat. Because she
loves must she starve?”
There was practical France speaking, and France, in spite of
temperament, in spite of surface excitability and eccentricity, is
eminently practical—especially your France of the poorer sort. France
may jump, but she jumps with her eyes open, and with a pretty sure
knowledge of where she will fall.... The play moved on to its climax,
Andree translating, but little translation was necessary, for the
pantomime carried the story.
“It will be better for you to see a tragedy,” said Andree. “This is
_comédie_. The actors speak fast in _comédie_; in tragedy they speak
more slow.” She showed him how tragic actors speak, and it was
deliciously funny.
Then came the climax in which “thees ol’ man” took “thees yo’ng girl” to
the railway station and delivered her into the hands of her youthful
lover. Andree was in tears. The magnificent acting affected Kendall
himself, touched his emotions. He felt Andree’s hand move spontaneously
to touch his arm as though in sympathy with the bereaved and forsaken
old man, and Kendall took her little fingers in his palm and patted them
very much as he would have stroked the hand of a weeping child.... She
was so fragile, so childlike, so _nice_. He regarded her covertly,
wondering what was going on under that curly black hair ... assuring
himself that it was impossible for any one to think of anything but
sweetness in connection with her. Yet she was a mystery. He was
incapable of understanding her, and never came to understand her. A
mystery she always remained to him—but a sweet mystery, a dainty
mystery, a mystery never touched by unworthy things or thoughts.... And
that was another mystery which he might one day understand dimly. He
might come to a height from which his vision would be so clear that he
could understand that she was good with that natural goodness which
comes from God ... not with that conventional, rule-of-thumb goodness
which is a product of narrow beliefs and set dogmas. Kendall was good
himself, but he was not capable of attaining to a goodness such as
Andree’s, for he could never approach her naturalness, the instinct
which was in her for following always a path upon which God could smile,
even if men should frown.... Doubtless the frowns of men weigh but
little in the judgments of God....
They left the theater silently, the emotions evoked by the drama still
moving them and drawing them together. He felt a great tenderness for
her and almost fancied he was in love. It was a fair imitation. Whatever
it was, it was not bad, but good. He would not be the worse, but the
better, for having experienced it.
“My friend and I have rented an apartment,” he said, suddenly.
“Your friend? What is his name?”
“Bert Stanley.”
“You will live together?”
“Yes.”
“I will know him then.... You shall show him to me.”
“If you like.”
“Where is thees apartment?”
He told her.
“Is it very _grand_?” She used the word in the French, not the English
signification.
“Two bedrooms, dining-room, _salon_. It is very comfortable. We shall
move in to-morrow—and we’re going to have a cook.”
“Cook? What is cook?”
Again recourse must be had to the dictionary, and there followed a
lesson in pronouncing the rather difficult word _cuisinière_.
“Has thees friend, this Monsieur Stanley, a friend—like me?”
“I think so.”
“You do not know? You have not seen her?”
“No.”
“That is droll.... And thees cook?”
“I haven’t seen her.”
“I must come to see thees apartment and thees cook. I must know how much
you pay, and if it is too much.... Ah, you shall have a dinner and she
shall cook, and I shall be there, and your friend, thees Monsieur
Stanley, and _his_ friend. We shall know each other.”
“I don’t know,” he said, doubtfully, thinking of the proprieties and
wondering what the _concierge_ would say if he were to give a dinner
such as she suggested. His acquaintance with _concierges_ was limited.
Again they were walking up the dark Boulevard St.-Michel, and again she
would not permit him to accompany her to her door. “Good night.... It
was ver’ nice, and I think you are ver’ nice—perhaps.”
“But you don’t love me?” he asked, trifling with destiny without
intention, as young men will trifle.
“I do not know—yet.... I do not know you. And you do not love me. Oh no,
no! It is not possible. You make fun of me. I can see you make _grimace_
even in the dark.”
“When do we play together again?”
“Soon.... I cannot see you to-morrow, but the day after—yes.... It is
not a good place to meet, the Place St.-Michel. It is far. No, it shall
be the Metro, Place de la Concorde, at _sept heures_.”
“Seven o’clock.”
“Yes.... And you will not fail?”
“No.”
“Good night.”
He was of a mind to kiss her good night as he had kissed American girls
whom he had taken home from parties and with whom he had played about,
but he hesitated. He didn’t want to spoil things, to make her take
fright and disappear. She was becoming too much a delightful element in
his life for him to take a chance of losing her now.... And while he
hesitated she was gone.
As mysteriously as she appeared out of the mazes of the enormous city
she disappeared into them again, and Bert was apprehensive lest she fail
to reappear. He need not have been apprehensive. There is in life a
thread of fate, of destiny, which attaches one person to another, so
that, even though they separate to the ends of the earth, they will be
drawn together again at some spot in some hour.... Destiny had woven a
strand between Andree and Kendall....