Kendall was awakened next morning by the sound of some one shuffling
about his room. It was a woman, and she was moving toward the door with
his shoes in her hand, and for an instant he wondered if he were in the
presence of some new sort of burglar. The woman was short and very fat,
with a large head scantily covered by that colored hair which does not
turn white at sixty. Her face was broad, her nose was broad and had a
peculiar and laughable up-tilt, her mouth was broad, and her eyes were
very large and kindly. She had one generous double chin and a quite
respectable growth of whiskers. Her eyes and her nose were the most
notable features. One liked her eyes and one could not help laughing at
her nose. As a complete figure she was droll.
She saw that he was awake and grinned timidly.
“_Bon jour, monsieur_,” she said, and then, waggling his shoes, followed
her greeting by a torrent of French in which the word “_chaussers_”
occurred frequently. She spoke very rapidly and was unintelligible to
Kendall.
“Arlette?” he asked.
“_Oui, je suis Arlette_,” she said, with a broad grin of delight, and
then scudded through the door suddenly, as if she had been overtaken by
a fit of embarrassment.
Kendall got out of bed and called Bert, who was still asleep.
“Hey, somebody’s swiped my shoes!” came presently in a voice of
complaint.
“Shut up!” said Kendall, going into his friend’s room. “It’s Arlette. I
saw her sneaking out with mine when I woke up.”
“Arlette? ... Oh, _she’s_ here, eh? What’s she want with my shoes? I’ve
heard these French cooks could—”
But just then Arlette pushed the door open, regardless of the state of
her young employers’ toilets, and deposited the shoes on the floor,
carefully cleaned and polished.
The boys looked at each other, weighing this event in the light of their
experience with American domestics. It was so surprising as to be
upsetting.
“Seventy francs a month—including shines,” said Bert.
“And seventy francs is fourteen dollars.”
“And my mother pays her cook twelve a week—and hires another girl to
wait on the cook! ... Come to France to solve the domestic-servant
problem! ... I wonder if she bathes us.”
They hurried into their clothes and went to the dining-room, where a
great pitcher of chocolate stood in the center of the table, flanked by
a pot of jam and a basket of rolls. On each plate was a bowl—not a cup.
Arlette entered and stood with her stomach against the table’s edge,
whence she looked first at the food and then at her employers. She
pointed accusingly at the confiture and said, “_Abricot!_”
“Apricot, eh? _Très-bien._”
“_Mais non, messieurs.... Mais non._ It is not well.... Oh, the price—it
is terrific, it is wicked. Of a surety, you are robbed. We shall have no
more. _Messieurs les officiers_ shall not so be robbed. I shall see well
to it. But I was directed to procure confiture!” She crossed her pudgy
hands on her ample stomach and rolled her eyes to heaven, calling upon
Divinity to witness that apricot jam at four francs a jar was a thing to
excite horror in any well-regulated and economical mind.
Kendall strove to comfort her, but it was impossible. No quantity of
assurances that it was _très-bien_ could remove her mind from the
enormity of the cost of that delicacy, and she went out shaking her head
and muttering and sniffling a trifle. In a moment she re-entered to ask
what was desired for dinner. It was the first and the last time she made
such an inquiry. In the future she made suggestions herself, but never
did she ask outright what these strange young savages would have to eat.
“_Poulet_,” said Bert. “Chicken.”
Arlette rested her hands on her hips and stared at him aghast. She
repeated the word after him as if unwilling to believe such a thing had
been mentioned in her presence. “_Poulet? ... Poulet? ... Non, non,
non._ But no. It is too dear. The cost, consider the cost! Veal,
perhaps, but never pullet.”
“Young ladies are coming and we wish a suitable dinner,” said Bert.
“But pullet—oh no. There shall be a suitable dinner, but there shall not
be pullet. It is a thing unthinkable—at the price. Before the war—yes,
but now! _Mon Dieu!_ do the American officers consider what price is
demanded for pullet?”
The American officers did not, nor did Arlette enlighten them, but she
continued stubbornly to refuse to procure it.
Ken shrugged his shoulders. “It looks as if we were going to be
henpecked,” he said, ruefully.
Bert laughed. “Anyhow we get no chicken. I wonder if we can have a
salad?”
Yes, a salad was thinkable, and even string-beans or cauliflower or
peas—but pullet! Arlette’s mind refused to be diverted from pullet.
“Very well, then,” Bert said. “Whatever you want, Arlette. You’re the
boss. But get enough for four.”
Arlette turned around and made for the door again, but paused on the
threshold to turn and stare at them unbelievingly and to utter in a
voice of anguish the word, “_Poulet_.” She said it as one might say
bubonic plague.
As Kendall left the dining-room and went for his cap he saw a tiny,
big-eyed face suddenly whisk out of sight around the corner of the hall
which led to the kitchen. It had been the merest glimpse, such as a
believing mortal might hope some day to catch of a fairy.
“Hey, there!” he called in English, for he had a way with children and
children had a way with him. There was no response, so he gave chase.
The fairy had scudded into the kitchen, and was standing close to
Arlette, concealing herself in the old woman’s ample skirts. Arlette
gazed at him with some apprehension as he came into the little kitchen,
wondering, doubtless, what these barbarians would do to her for bringing
a child into their lair, but a sight of his face reassured her, and she
smiled a bit dubiously and placed her pudgy hand on the little girl’s
head.
Kendall got down on one knee and held out his hand gravely. “_Bon jour,
mademoiselle_,” he said.
“_Bon jour, monsieur_,” she said, with the cunningest little lisp, her
face very sober and a little frightened, and she shook hands with him
primly.
“How is your husband and all the family?” Ken asked.
Her eyes opened wide—blue and sweet they were—and she looked up at
Arlette before replying. “But, monsieur, I have not yet a husband.”
“No.... That is bad. You must find a husband. What, at your age? Oh _là,
là, là, là!_ And what is mademoiselle’s age?”
“Eight years, monsieur.”
He shook his head. “And no husband.... Would you like an American
husband, mademoiselle?”
“Oh yes, monsieur. The Americans they are very nice.”
She was the tiniest of mites with such a creamy-pink complexion as Ken
had never seen. Her face was oval and beautiful, with a fairy-like
childish beauty that deserved to be immortalized by some master of the
brush and canvas. He looked from her to Arlette and was unwilling to
admit a relationship between them or the possibility that this sprite
could ever grow with the weight of years and labor to resemble the old
woman. He wanted to kiss her; he wanted to kiss her on those little
lips, parted a trifle now in her interest, but usually resting so
lightly the one upon the other with the merest pursing which seemed to
say they were made for kisses. He drew her to him, and she came
diffidently, but not bashfully, and he lifted her to his knee. She
seemed almost to be without weight.
“How do you name yourself?” he asked.
“Arlette,” she said.
“My granddaughter,” Arlette explained. “Her father is a prisoner of war
in Germany—in consequence of which her mother is dead....”
“_Pauvre Mignonne_,” he said, and drew her close to him.
She looked up into his face briefly, and then, for the first time, she
smiled.
“You will come often to see me,” he said. “We must be friends—and then,
who knows, but I may have to take you to America with me. You have no
husband; I have no wife. I shall, perhaps, ask your grandmother for your
hand.”
“Yes, monsieur, I shall come often if monsieur permits.... And I shall
sing for monsieur.”
“I shall like that. And now let me see your hand. Something is the
matter with it.” He examined her palm gravely, then placed a franc upon
it and closed her fingers tightly. “There, that will cure it, I
think.... And you will not forget me—and you will think about going back
to America with me?”
“Yes, monsieur,” she said, very gravely.
Kendall rejoined Bert and they walked together to the Étoile and down
the Champs Élysées to the hotel which sheltered the huge office staff of
the American Expeditionary Force in Paris.
“I hope everything goes off right to-night,” said Kendall, who was still
a trifle dubious despite Andree’s expressed desire to meet Bert and his
friend.
“Sure. We’ll make it a regular party,” Bert said, confidently. “What’s
worrying you?”
“You never can tell how strange girls will get on together.”
“Fiddlesticks!... Madeleine will get on with anybody. See you at the
house at seven.”
Promptly at seven Kendall was awaiting Andree at the entrance to the
Metro in the Place de la Concorde, and promptly at the hour she
appeared, walking leisurely, as she always seemed to do, and with an air
of not seeing him at all until she was very close to him, an air which
he came to associate with their meetings. There was something diffident
about it, something modest and maidenly that he liked.... Then she would
pause, always hesitatingly, as if she rather doubted her welcome, and
look up into his face without the vestige of a smile, expecting him to
extend his hand, and then she would shake hands very gravely. It was
always so.
“You have made much work to-day?... You are _fatigué_?” she asked.
“But, no.... And you?”
“I have been—what do you say?—_ennuyée_?”
“Bored.”
“Yes, yes, bored.... Have you thought of me?”
He had intended to be most circumspect, to make no repetitions of his
half-joking declaration of their last meeting, but with her delightful
presence beside him, with that half-veiled, appealing glance from her
darkly shadowed eyes, good resolutions were forgotten.
“I’ve thought of nothing else,” he said, and was near to the truth.
“But no”—she shook her head childishly—“you have not thought of me at
all. It is not possible.”
“I thought of you when I got up, I thought of you all the morning, I
thought of you at noon and all the afternoon—and I am thinking of you
now.”
She laughed quietly. The drollery of his protestation pleased her and
made her gay. Thereafter it became a formula, a sort of ritual. She
would ask him if he had thought of her, and he would recite, “When I got
up, all the morning, at noon, all the afternoon,” and always she would
laugh as if it were very new and very funny and very delightful.
“Where do we go?” she said, as he took his place by her side.
“To dine with Arlette.”
“With Arlette!... Who is thees Arlette?”
“My cook,” he said.
“At your apartment?”
“Yes.”
“I do not know....”
“Bert and Madeleine are coming, too. You said you wanted to know them.”
“Yes.... Yes.... I will know them. And this yo’ng girl, this Madeleine,
does your friend love her?”
He spread his hands and shrugged his shoulders. “How should I know?”
“He has not told you?... He is your friend and he has not told you?”
“No.”
“Have you told him about me?”
“A little; not much.”
“_Pourquoi?_”
“Mademoiselle Pourquoi!... Oh, because you were none of his business.”
“Oh, I do not onderstan’, I do not onderstan’.” She clasped hands
together with mock despair, and with the cunningest expression of
bafflement on her face. “I do not onderstan’.... It ees ver’ difficult,
ver’ difficult.”
“Shall we take the Metro or a taxi?”
“The Metro, of a certainty. It arrives, does it not? And the taxi—oh, it
is very dear.”
“You’re a great little economist,” he said, laughingly, but nevertheless
wonderingly. American girls had never been so careful to choose the less
expensive of two methods.
As they were descending into the Metro they came suddenly face to face
with Maude Knox, and Kendall felt himself blushing hotly, and was
ashamed of himself for it, so he blushed even more hotly than before. He
stopped determinedly, and held Andree’s arm.
“Miss Knox,” he said, “I want you to meet Mademoiselle—” He hesitated,
for he did not know Andree’s family name. This piece of ignorance had
never presented itself to him before. She had been Andree to him, and
nothing more. She had needed no other name. “I want you to meet
Mademoiselle Andree,” he finished, rather defiantly.
The girls looked at each other, Miss Knox with a humorous twinkle in her
eye, but nevertheless with a glint of keen appraisal; Andree rather
timidly, as if she would like to hide behind Kendall as little Arlette
had hidden behind her grandmother’s skirts that morning, and peer out
big-eyed at this woman of another race.
Maude Knox extended her hand. “Delighted,” she said, and smiled.
“Mademoiselle is very agreeable,” said Andree, but she did not smile;
instead she studied Miss Knox’s face intently and very gravely.
“There’s our train,” said Kendall, at a loss how otherwise to proceed
with the conversation, and he snatched Andree away before another word
could be exchanged. Maude Knox stood looking after them with a smile
that had in it a hint of something that was not humor, that mingled
curiosity with pique.
Andree and Kendall alighted from the Metro at the Étoile and walked to
the apartment. He was rather taken aback to see the _concierge_ sweeping
the walk in front of the entrance, for he had hoped subconsciously to
smuggle Andree in without being seen. He could hardly have explained
this had he been asked. But he need not have been apprehensive. The
_concierge_ stopped, peered at Andree keenly for a second, then smiled
and bade them good day. Kendall did not know it, but Andree had been
inspected and had passed the inspection handsomely. Andree, however, was
well aware of it.
Bert and Madeleine had not arrived, and Kendall showed Andree into their
_salon_ with something of a flourish. She stood looking about her at the
massive gilt furniture, at the large bronze statue of Diana with a bent
arrow in her hand which stood on a pedestal in a corner, and at a bronze
monstrosity depicting Ceres which, half life size, overweighted the
mantel. Her little nose was curling.
“Oh,” she said in disappointment, “thees is not good. No, no. It is ver’
bad.”
“It is sort of fussy,” said Kendall, more than half afraid that she
would take fright at so much wretched taste on exhibition and refuse to
remain. She seemed of a mind to beat a retreat. “But don’t blame me for
it,” he hastened to say. “It isn’t my furniture, you know. This is a
furnished apartment—_meublé_, you know. I don’t like these gimcracks any
better than you do, but I couldn’t help it.”
She continued to shake her head dolefully; then her eyes spied a sort of
throne between the windows, a fearful example of what a piece of
furniture can be, and clapped her hands with childish delight. “Oh, it
ees for me. See!” She ran to it and seated herself on the threadbare
seat, her tiny feet dangling above the floor. “Behold!... Regard me!...
I am a queen, is it not? You have not the manners. It is that you should
kneel. Here ... at once.”
Laughingly he humored her whim and, dropping on one knee, he lifted her
hand to his lips. She laughed delightedly. Then she stepped down. “Come.
I shall see the rest. You shall show me.” And she insisted upon being
shown over the apartment, making little sounds of approval or
disapproval as she went, and finally they reached the kitchen where
Arlette was busy over the stove.
“_Bon soir, madame_,” said Andree.
“_Bon soir, mademoiselle_,” Arlette replied, and swiftly scrutinized
this young woman whom her master was bringing into his home. It was a
frank appraisal, for Arlette felt a sort of responsibility for these
strange, rather boisterous, difficult-to-understand, but kindly young
savages of whom she had taken charge. Then she smiled and released a
flood of French upon Andree, who smiled and chattered back at her.
Kendall caught only a word here and there, so rapidly did they speak,
but it was evident to him that they approved of each other, and there
was something very pleasing to him in that. He felt that Arlette would
not have approved of everybody.
Presently they returned to the _salon_ and Andree said, seriously: “She
is well. I am satisfied. She is of a trustworthiness. Yes....”
“I don’t know what I’d do if she hadn’t suited you,” said Kendall, with
a chuckle.
“Oh, I do not onderstan’.... I do not onderstan’. And why does your left
eye laugh when your right does not? It ees ver’ fonny.” She pointed.
“Oh, see! It is laugh! It is laugh!”
He wrinkled his nose at her, so bold and familiar had he become, and she
pretended anger.
“You make _grimace_ at me. It is not good. Why do you make _grimace?_”
Then her mood changed. “Thees American girl—she is your friend?”
“An acquaintance.”
“You love _her_. I know it.... You love her.”
“Nonsense!”
“You see her often—and you love her.”
“I didn’t know she was in Paris until last night, and I certainly don’t
love her.” She had withdrawn into herself and become a stranger to him.
It startled him, frightened him, not so much because she had withdrawn
herself from him, for he guessed that it was mostly pretense, but
because he had a glimpse of what it would mean to him if she should
withdraw herself utterly. “I don’t love anybody but you,” he said, and
he said it without wishing or intending to say it.
“No,” she said, decidedly. “It ees not possible. You mock me.”
Before he could enter upon protestations Bert opened the outer door and
handed a young woman into the apartment. Kendall could see that she was
tall and rather slight, but that was all. He was anxious for her to
appear, first out of curiosity, but principally to be reassured as to
Andree’s reception of the stranger.
In a moment Bert appeared in the door with the girl at his side, both
laughing as at some joke which had just been uttered.
“Hello, children!” Bert said, a trifle noisily. “Mademoiselle Andree, is
it not?” He advanced and took the hand which she held out to him primly
while she studied his face with a calm, inscrutable expression.
“Mademoiselle Andree, Monsieur Ken, this is Mademoiselle Madeleine.”
Both shook hands with the laughing girl, Andree still with that
restraint which was always hers at a first meeting, Kendall with relief,
for he liked Madeleine’s looks. She was taller than Andree by inches,
and not at all beautiful as Andree was beautiful. The key-note of her
character at first glance seemed to be joyousness, a lightness of heart,
good nature. Her mouth was rather broad, but not displeasingly so, for
it was always showing her white teeth through a smile that seemed to be
the commencement of a laugh. She was always laughing, always moving her
body or her hands as if the young life that was in her could not be
still.... And yet there was a shrewd look about her eyes which
advertised that here was no empty head, but a capable young person
indeed.... She was a distinct blonde, with hair which seemed always just
on the point of being disordered, yet which never seemed to lose control
of itself and become disordered. Later Kendall wondered if Madeleine and
her hair were not very much alike in character.
“All right, eh?” said Bert, proudly, patting Madeleine’s shoulder.
She threw him a laughing, affectionate glance, and in another instant
she and Andree were chattering to each other with a rapidity which was
not only astonishing, but utterly unintelligible to the boys. If Andree
spoke with bewildering rapidity, what could one say of Madeleine?
Kendall laughed.
“Mademoiselle Mitrailleuse,” he said, and it was a name that clung, for
it was so apt. She was a veritable machine-gun, shooting out words with
a rapidity almost incredible.
Arlette appeared in the door of the dining-room and announced that
dinner was served. The quartet of young people took their places at
table, and Kendall began serving a wonderful pea soup from a big bowl
while Arlette stood in the door with hands folded across her stomach,
watching anxiously and shooting quick glances at Madeleine.
“It is soup,” she said, suddenly, and then darted out of sight with
startling abruptness.
The soup was followed by meat, which Arlette placed on the table with
something like a flourish, then stepped back and addressed Andree.
“Veal,” she said. “Oh, mademoiselle, the meats are too dear. It is not
my fault.... Perhaps this will be tough. Who knows?” She paused
anxiously to look first at Bert and then at Ken, who was carving.
“It’s all right, Arlette,” he assured her, but she was not satisfied,
remaining as close to the table as she could press and watching with an
expression of the most comical anxiety while Ken cut off a morsel and
put it in his mouth. She then, apparently, calculated the difficulty he
encountered in mastication, her jaws working a trifle as if to aid in
the process, and presently uttered a deep sigh of relief. According to
her judgment, Ken had not chewed too laboriously and the meat was
satisfactory. Only then did she retreat to the kitchen.
“She is very droll,” said Madeleine, restraining her laughter with
difficulty.
“She is very _well_,” said Andree, nodding her head prettily, “but also
she is droll.”
“Monsieur Bert also is droll,” said Madeleine, reaching out to bestow a
little pat upon Bert’s hand.
“All Americans are droll,” said Andree, solemnly.
“_Tous les Américains sont fous_,” said Ken, quoting a saying of Paris,
which adored Americans at the moment and delighted in their
peculiarities and their absurdities, and laughed at them as one laughs
at the antics of children, deciding, as its dictum had it, that all the
Americans were mad.
The _viande_ was served alone, as is the French custom, without a
vegetable, but with a delicious sauce which the girls, disdaining
butter, sopped from their plates with their bread—not at all a
manifestation of ill-breeding, but the proper and natural and habitual
method of eating.
Ken turned to Andree. “I met your actor for you last night,” he said.
“You have known an actor?... What actor?”
“Monsieur Robert, of the Comédie Française. Do you know him?”
“I have seen him. He is a very good actor—and very handsome, _n’est-ce
pas_? Have you spoke of me?”
“No, my dear. Give a fellow time.”
“But you must, you must.... It is ver’ _nécessaire_—oh, you do not know
how ver’ _nécessaire_. It is my need to enter into the _Académie_, and
he must help me. You will know him better.” It was a command. “You will
then make me to know him.”
“I should say _not_.... He’s too handsome. I’m not going to take any
such chance as that—I should say _not_.”
“_Pourquoi?_”
“Because I should be jealous,” he said.
“_Non, non, non!_... You do not care. You only _say_....”
“How am I going to convince you?”
“I do not know. It is not possible.... I will not believe.”
Ken turned despairingly to Madeleine. “She refuses to believe that I
love her. How shall I make her believe?”
Madeleine laughed at him. “How should I know?... It is for you to do. It
is a thing easy of accomplishment.”
“Is it easy to make her love me, too?”
“French girls are not cold,” she said, in the most matter-of-fact way
imaginable.
“He loves an American girl.... I have seen her this night—yes. She is
not beautiful. American girls do not know how to dress.” Andree shook
her head and frowned at Ken.
Arlette appeared presently with the vegetable, which she named and
waited to see approved, and afterward with the salad and a like
procedure. When the fruit appeared she made no observation, but asked,
calmly, as if it were the most natural question in the world, “_Petit
déjeuner_ for four?”
Breakfast for four! It was dropping a thunderbolt on Kendall’s plate. He
was shocked. He was frightened, and shot a quick glance at Andree and
Madeleine. Andree was sipping her wine and appeared not to have heard;
if she had heard she was not disturbed nor shocked nor angered.
Madeleine was laughing.
“_Arlette est très-méchante_—Arlette is very naughty,” she said.
Bert shouted with laughter as at some superlative witticism, and both
the girls looked at him rather surprised. Then Madeleine laughed a bit,
as one laughs who does not quite see the point. Kendall watched Andree
in consternation. What would she do? What would she say? What would she
think?... She did nothing, said nothing, apparently thought nothing, but
pared a banana with quaint intensity as if a banana were a strange and
interesting fruit. She seemed always to be interested in her food with a
sort of naïve curiosity and a very real appetite. Her appetite seemed to
Kendall to be the only material thing about her. The rest was mystery,
dainty, rather elfin, mystery.... And here was a new mystery—her
attitude of unconcern in face of Arlette’s _faux pas_. Why, the question
had not touched her at all! It might as well not have been asked.... Or,
in this strange country, was it possible that the _cuisinière_ always
expected her master’s feminine guests to remain for breakfast as well as
dinner? He wondered....
“Will they take Paris—the _boches_?” Andree asked, suddenly.
The Germans had broken across the Chemin des Dames and were rushing
headlong toward the Marne. News was filtering through only in driblets.
Paris was uneasy. One saw nondescript vehicles, piled with trunks and
hampers, making haste for the railroad stations, as frightened
inhabitants betook themselves to the country. Nobody knew what would
happen, but for months the fortune had been bad—and Paris was asking if
it had reached its worst.
“Of course not,” said Bert, dogmatically.
“But they are very strong—they have great numbers.”
“There are the Americans,” said Madeleine.
“To be sure—the Americans. But they are in Lorraine. The journals say
they are in Lorraine.”
“You will see,” said Madeleine, for she had more than her share of
Paris’s enthusiasm for its newest ally.
“Don’t you worry. The _boches_ are going to get themselves thrashed....
Paris!...” Bert shrugged his shoulders disdainfully.
“You really think they can be beaten?”
“Just wait.”
“And the war will end?... When will it end?”
“In a year.” Bert was very confident.
“Oh, a year—so long.... Monsieur Bert, it is terrible, this war. One
hardly remembers when it was not. We are so tired of it. The women are
so tired of it.... It makes me sad—sad. Everybody suffers.” Andree’s
eyes grew bigger and blacker, and her wistful mouth became more wistful.
“It is true,” said Madeleine. “I have an aunt who lives in the
country—in a very little village. Before the war were thirty families
and fifty men. I was there two years ago. The men were all at the
front—all.... But the fields were planted and the harvests reaped. It
was the women. They labored for the men.... I was there again—it was a
month ago.... The fields were not planted. Matters were bad. It was not
beautiful, and all was neglected.... The women no longer worked. And
why? Ah, it was because there was no longer a reason for them to
work.... There were no men to come home to those fields.... Of the fifty
who went to the war, fifty were dead.... Forever it will be a village
without men!...”
There was a silence. Every one was feeling the weight of the calamities
of war.... Then Madeleine laughed, but it was a laugh without her
customary gay, careless ring. “This is the last generation of the
French,” she said, half mockingly. “Our men are gone.... You shall see.
The next generation will be what? Look you. It will be English, Belgian,
Italian, American, Moroccan, Chinese....”
“For example!” exclaimed Andree.
“It is so,” affirmed Madeleine.
“Already the government offers one five hundred francs for a son.... I
think the government is satisfied if it is half French, is it not?”
“A son is a son,” said Andree.
“To become a soldier when he is a man—and fight the _boches_!”
“There will be no more wars,” said Bert. “When we are through with this
one nobody will ever have to fight the _boches_ again.”
“If one could believe,” Andree said, in a low voice.
Kendall was disturbed. It was within his power to be sympathetic, to
feel deeply, to know pain because another was suffering pain. He wished
this subject had not arisen and he wanted to have it changed ... because
the plight of the women—especially the young women, the marriageable
girls of France—was making itself apparent to him. Millions of them, and
no men to marry them! It was appalling. It was appalling that they
should realize it, and the consequences of their realization were
appalling.... Life was denied them; the fullness and beauty and the joys
and sufferings of womanhood were denied them. He wondered, with his
Middle-Western conscience, if one could really blame them for snatching
what little minutes of living came in their way. He wondered if the
conventional—in these terrible circumstances—could be the _right_. Would
the morals of Plymouth Rock answer in this emergency?... And then came
the inevitable question, What are morals?... His mother could not answer
this question for him to his satisfaction, nor could his father—with all
his father’s leniency. One had to see the thing to comprehend it, and
neither of his parents had seen. For the first time he asked himself if
the conventions, the cut-and-dried rules of living under which he had
grown to manhood, really sprang, full-armed, from the will of Deity, or
if they were evolved by expediency.... It was deep speculation for one
of his equipment, and dangerous speculation for a young man set down as
he was set down among manners strange and customs so divergent—and in
such an emergency.
He moved back his chair. “Let’s go in the other room,” he said, “and—and
suppose we talk about something besides the war.”
“It makes you sad?” Andree said, and looked at him with a strange
expression of sympathy, of understanding—of—of something that made her
seem nearer to him, less mysterious, more human than she had ever seemed
before. “Come ... we shall talk awhile and then I must go to my house,
because it is ver’ _nécessaire_ for me to lift up at an early hour.”
Kendall laughed. “Lift up?...” The literal translation uttered so
soberly was exquisitely funny, made more so by Andree’s solemn little
face.
“It is fonnee? For example! And what should one say?”
“Get up,” said Ken.
“It is not well.... I shall say lift up.”
“You may say whatever you want to—_mignonne_,” he said, with a sudden
access of tenderness.
“_Mignonne!..._” She looked up at him and smiled timidly. “It is ver’
pretty—for you to call me so. It is ver’ well.”
Madeleine was singing now. She always sang, Kendall discovered, mostly
popular _chansons_. And Andree joined. It was that song dear to the
_poilu_—“_Madelon_”—with its catchy air, its characteristic Frenchness.
Madeleine sang gaily, carelessly, Andree seriously and without a
smile.... Then the girls chattered with each other, becoming acquainted,
while the young men smoked and tried to edge into the conversation, or
to catch a stray word here and there. At last Andree rose.
“You must take me to my house.” she said.
“So early?”
“It is ver’ _nécessaire_.”
“Coming?” Ken said to Bert, who cast a sidewise glance at Madeleine, and
said: “No. We don’t go your way, anyhow.... See you later.”
So Kendall and Andree said good night and went down the stairs, counting
the flights gaily, he offering to become an elevator to carry her down
if she became tired, and she demanding that he do so at once, without
delay. “Your friend, he is a high yo’ng man,” she said, suddenly.
And that became a joke between them. Ever after that they referred to
Bert, not by name, but as the “high yo’ng man.” When people begin to
have private jokes between just themselves they are getting on very well
indeed....
Once more he took her to the Place St.-Michel and a little way up the
Boulevard. There she dismissed him, but they lingered with their good
nights. She seemed very gentle, very desirable, very sweet.... He was
not afraid of her as he had been before. Some sort of message had
traveled between them.... Kendall took the hand she extended, then he
drew her to him and kissed her. She submitted, but did not return his
kiss.
“When?” he asked.
“The day following to-morrow. Place de la Concorde. Metro. _Sept
heures._”
It was becoming a part of their ritual. And then she disappeared into
the darkness—whither, he did not know; back into that mystery which was
her life, from which she emerged from time to time as mysteriously as
she disappeared.... He was impressed by this mystery tonight. He did not
know her name—only Andree. She was a sort of apparition that manifested
itself daintily, primly, conducted itself bewitchingly, and withdrew
itself into the unknown....
He took the Metro back to the Étoile and walked home. The light was
burning in the hall. When he hung his hat on the hall tree he found it
still encumbered by Madeleine’s hat and jacket....
Kendall went to bed in a frame of mind.... Madeleine had seemed such a
_nice_ girl. She _was_ a nice girl. Why, Andree had liked her.... His
mother in him was shocked, affronted. Yet, somehow, Kendall was not so
shocked as he expected himself to be. He didn’t know how he felt ... his
thoughts were a turmoil, and he kept repeating to himself, “She _is_ a
nice girl ... she is a nice girl,...” as one who is bewildered in the
presence of some incomprehensible phenomenon....