Kendall dressed and went in to breakfast feeling no slight awkwardness.
He was apprehensive, too, apprehensive of the _concierge_. The affair
had upset him in a complex sort of way. It had startled him, yet it had
not shocked him especially, and he was inclined to take himself to task
for not being shocked. He was disappointed, and yet he was not
disappointed in Madeleine. Anyhow, he was reluctant to meet her, for
fear that the meeting would set him against her irrevocably and so cause
trouble between himself and Bert.... And yet he was enjoying the
experience as an experience, though he did not quite appreciate that he
was enjoying it. Half a dozen times he said to himself, as if carrying
on a subconscious argument: “But she’s a _nice_ girl.... Darn it all,
she’s a nice girl....” He was afraid a meeting with her would dispel
this impression of her niceness.
Bert and Madeleine were already at table, waiting for him. Bert said
good morning nonchalantly, and Madeleine smiled brightly and wished him
“_bon jour_” without the least hint of embarrassment or
self-consciousness. He was conscious of a feeling of relief. “By Jove!
she is a nice girl,” he said to himself, and took the hand which she
arose and offered.
Then Arlette came in with the pitcher of chocolate, and Kendall
scrutinized her and then shook his head rather bewildered. Arlette might
have been serving breakfast to the most circumspect of families. The
only thing one could say of Arlette was that she served breakfast. She
was normal, everything was normal. Kendall’s bewilderment increased.
“Mademoiselle Andree? Where is she?” Madeleine asked, presently.
“At home,” said Kendall.
“Ah....” Madeleine’s eyes twinkled.
“Now listen here,” Kendall said, “Andree and I are friends, just
friends. We—how do you say it?—_camarades_. That is all.”
“And you do not love thees Mademoiselle Andree? Not at all?”
“I—” Kendall hesitated and did not answer, and Madeleine’s eyes twinkled
as she went on with her cross-examination.
“And thees Mademoiselle Andree—she do not love you?”
“I tell you we are just friends....”
“For example!... I understand. You are just friends. Oh yes. It is
possible, because the French girl she is so col’.”
Kendall applied himself to his chocolate and confiture industriously,
while Madeleine looked at him with twinkling eyes. If he failed to
understand her or her system of life and philosophy, she was equally
unable to understand him. If he found the present situation bewildering,
she, for her part, regarded him as a strange phenomenon that bordered on
the impossible. As a final conclusion she did not believe him in the
least, but thought of him as absurdly discreet. No other solution was
possible to her.
They finished breakfast and went down the four flights of stairs, Bert
and Madeleine chatting gaily, Kendall following apprehensively, for they
must pass the omniscient eye of the _concierge_. He was inclined to make
an excuse to go back to the apartment so that he would not be compelled
to take part in the scene he feared.
Bert and Madeleine passed out of the big doors into the concrete-floored
passageway that led to the street, and Kendall drew himself together as
he saw the _concierge_ busily sweeping between them and the outer doors.
She looked up and nodded and smiled. Madeleine stopped and they chatted!
Actually chatted as if—why, as if there was no reason why they should
not chat. And that _concierge_ was a gray-haired, motherly soul who in
Detroit would have gone to foreign missionary meetings! Kendall could
not follow the conversation, but he caught fragments of it. It was just
casual chatter, with here and there a question dropped in to make for a
better acquaintance. Then they bade each other good-by in the most
friendly way imaginable and the trio went out to the street.
Kendall was suspended in mid-air, feet off the ground, nothing solid
within reach. He was in an element that was not his, in a universe where
two solids could occupy the same place at the same time, or where the
shortest distance between two points was a curve. All his rules and
axioms were useless.... He began to realize that the years he had lived
were more or less useless to him, and that if he wished to judge his
present life and the people among whom he lived he must start at the
beginning with an open mind. As an American he could never comprehend
them; he could not think their thoughts nor understand their mental
language. The part of him inherited from his mother could never get into
_rapport_ with France; the part inherited from his father never could
quite comprehend, though it might tolerate with a kindly toleration, and
say: “Well, I don’t understand this way of doing things at all.... But
maybe it’s all right—for the French.”
He kept glancing at Madeleine. Every glance reassured him. She was a
_nice_ girl. He liked her. There was nothing reprehensible about her,
but, on the contrary, she was charming as he liked to see a girl
charming, and modest, and _good_. He felt instinctively that she was
good, just as he had felt that Andree was good.... Somewhere there must
be an explanation. Somehow the thing was reconcilable.
They left Madeleine at the Metro and walked to their offices. Neither
boy referred to the situation; Bert, because he saw no reason for it;
Kendall, because he dared not. Strangely, it was not Madeleine and Bert
that troubled him; it was himself. He was not accustomed to studying
himself, but he was doing so now. He had rather fancied himself a man
capable of thought and understanding, a man who could look at the world
and comprehend it. He had regarded himself as wise in his generation,
not blatantly so, but with a certainty born of inherited dogmas and
local dogmas. For the first time he saw dimly that one may understand
the world from the Detroit point of view and be utterly at a loss in New
York; that he may understand life from the American point of view and be
grossly ignorant of the French. He even asked himself this question:
“Is one who lives up to his code of ethics, his moral conceptions, good
and moral, even if those ethics and conceptions are utterly at variance
with some other code of behavior?”
Could it be that a thing abominable in America because America’s code
was set against it could be perfectly proper in Persia because Persia’s
code permitted it? That there was an abstract _good_ he believed, and
that there was an abstract _evil_. But could a definite act be made
universally evil by legislation or by the custom of only a part of the
world? It was deeper reasoning than he had ever essayed before, and he
limped sadly as he traveled toward no conclusion at all. The result was
multiplied bewilderment....
One conclusion he reached: If Madeleine had been an American girl he
would have been shocked, outraged.... This led him to think of Maude
Knox, and suddenly he wanted to see her, to talk to her, to be with her
because she was American as he was American. He wanted to get his feet
on solid earth and to tread accustomed paths for a while. He determined
he would see her.
At noon he told Bert he would not be at home for dinner, and then at six
o’clock he hurried to the Hôtel Wagram and telephoned Miss Knox’s room.
She was in, and would be delighted to dine with him if he would wait
twenty minutes. He sat down in the spacious lobby and smoked and waited.
She came down the stairs very trim and American and pleasing to the eye.
He noted the little swagger—the rather charming swagger—to her walk. It
was accentuated by the fact that she carried her hands in the side
pockets of her coat. She was not in uniform; had left it off for the
evening as the women in the various services love to do. He arose and
walked to the stairway to meet her, and they shook hands in the frank
American way.
“Well?” she said, with a humorous twinkle in her eye.
“I got to wanting to see you this morning,” he said, “and it grew. So I
just came along and took a chance.”
“To-morrow would be too late. I’ve got a job with a combat division and
I’m going out to-morrow. Maybe I’ll get close to the front.”
“Congratulations. You’re luckier than I.... We’ll make this a
celebration. Where would you like to eat?”
“Any place.... I don’t care—somewhere where we won’t see an American....
Have you seen the papers?”
“No. I’ve been grubbing all day, but a hint of the news has dribbled in
to me.”
“Then you’ve heard that the Hun is stopped! And that we did it. Isn’t
that glorious? We—Americans—saved Paris. I wonder if it can be true.”
They bought a _Herald_ from a kiosk and found a brief, unsatisfactory,
much-censored story, but it was a confirmation. The marines had been in
it. Apparently they had been thrown in to stop a gap, and had stopped it
effectively. Kendall knew that this meant the second division,
comprising two regiments of marines and some of the old Regular Army.
They had been thrown across the Paris-Metz road—and the _boches_ had
been halted abruptly. It was glorious, thrilling news.
“How would you like to go to a little restaurant where I eat once in a
while? It’s very Parisian. There will be no Americans there, and while
it doesn’t look much, the food is bully and the crowd amusing.”
“Fine!” she said, and he stopped a passing taxicab. By dint of many
repetitions he was able to make the chauffeur comprehend that he wanted
to be driven to Marty’s on the rue de Richelieu.
They were a trifle early. Few of the regular _habitués de maison_ were
present yet, and they had their choice of tables. Ken selected the one
at which he had sat the other evening. One by one the regulars appeared
and, recognizing Kendall, smiled and nodded. Monsieur Robert appeared
with the Spanish tragedian, and Monsieur Robert came over to shake hands
and be very cordial. Ken presented him to Maude and watched her face
with amusement when the handsome young actor bent over her hand and
kissed it. Then entered the elderly critic with the pointed white beard
who was invariably accompanied by a beautiful girl—a new beautiful girl
every evening. And then appeared Monsieur Jacques, swinging his
artificial leg hilariously, waving his cane, and with his hat awry, as
was its custom. He shouted greetings to all, then, espying Kendall, he
rushed to his chair, clapped the captain on the back, and, turning,
harangued the room. His subject was Americans. The Americans were
heroic. They had appeared in France’s hour of need. They were shedding
their blood in France’s quarrel, and France should proclaim her
gratitude. Had not these so-much-to-be-loved Americans saved Paris from
the _boche_. But certainly! That very day.... _Vive l’Amérique!..._
Suddenly, in a transport of enthusiasm, he threw his arm about Kendall’s
neck and kissed him resoundingly on both cheeks....
Kendall was frightfully embarrassed, especially when he heard the room
laugh until the dishes rocked. He was angry, but before he could give
vent to his anger his eye encountered Maude Knox, mirthful tears rolling
down her cheeks. Then he himself laughed, if a bit ruefully. Jacques
threw himself into a seat across the table and began talking in his wild
way to Maude Knox, who spoke French very well indeed. There was no need
for introductions here. Jacques never thought of such a thing and Maude
appeared perfectly willing to forgo the ceremony. Kendall was rather out
of it temporarily. He looked across at Monsieur Robert, who was bobbing
his head and laughing and writing on the back of a _carte de jour_....
Then he arose and handed it to Kendall.
Monsieur had a trifle of English of which he was very proud, and this
communication, relating to Jacques, was couched in that language. Ken
read it and then laughed in real earnest, for it made this rather
amazing announcement:
“It is not a bad boy, but he is a few mad!”
What more could one ask of a single sentence?
“If you are looking for something un-American you get it here,” he said
to Maude.
“I like it.... I’m enjoying every second of it,” she said, delightedly.
“They’re just like children.”
“But Jacques here has an artificial leg, a silver plate in the crown of
his head, the Médaille Militaire and the Croix de Guerre,” he said.
Jacques, meantime, had possessed himself of Monsieur Robert’s note and,
leaping to his feet, was heaping scorn and derision on the young actor’s
head, while Monsieur Robert feigned terror and made as though he would
hide under the table.
“Are they always like this,” Maude asked, “or is it relief—now that
Paris seems to be safe?”
“They are always so,” he said.
“I envy them.... But it couldn’t happen in America, could it? Imagine
this in Cleveland or Detroit. Why, everybody would be put out by the
management, or the police would be called in! And why?... I’m learning a
lot since I came to France.... There’s something in the very air here.
One could do things never dreamed of at home.... I don’t know what it
is, but that’s the way I feel. Maybe it is the freedom from restraint,
maybe it’s the example, maybe it is that the war is so tremendous that
nothing a single individual can do is of the least importance.... But
the feeling is there. Other girls have told me the same thing.”
“Paris does get you,” said Ken.
“Things don’t seem to matter,” she said, thoughtfully. “It’s like being
in a different world where none of the old rules hold good.... I can’t
imagine myself talking like this or feeling like this. I couldn’t have a
month ago.... I think,” she said, with a little laugh, “that I shall
have to keep my head very level.”
Ken was astonished. So the thing was getting Maude Knox, too! She saw a
difference, felt a difference, felt the challenge of a difference! “It
gets you.... It gets you,” he said, helplessly.
“Sometimes I have a feeling that I’d like to throw up the whole show and
live here forever—be a lotus-eater,” she said, with more seriousness.
“If I were a man—”
“Yes?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “What’s the use?... But I’ll say this—I’m
never going to see things with the same eyes again. I think I’ll be able
to understand that there are two sides to a story.”
This was the same Maude Knox he had known on the vessel crossing the
ocean—a Maude Knox who quite typified his ideas of the _nice_ American
girl, the sheltered, protected, almost prudish creature of his
experience! She had traveled far—and yet she was not less nice because
she had seen more of the life that inhabits the planet, nor because she
had acquired a certain tolerance for manners and customs that were
impossible for herself. It seemed as if she were passing through much
the same mental conflict as himself. Perhaps it was not so pronounced
with her because her experiences had not been so pronounced. But she
seemed to have reached a surer conclusion than he. However, she had
never had his mother. Her inheritances were different, and her
upbringing by her philosopher father had, perhaps, made it possible for
her to progress more rapidly in understanding and clear seeing than
himself.
“For instance,” she said, “if I had met you with that little French girl
a month ago I should probably have cut you.... Especially when you wore
such a guilty look....”
“It wasn’t a guilty look. I—Andree is a mighty nice girl. I introduced
her to you, didn’t I?... Well?”
Her eyes twinkled. He could not decide whether it were derision or
unbelief, and he felt very uncomfortable in consequence. “Just because
she’s French ...” he commenced.
“The young man doth protest too much,” she said. “But what I was going
to say was that it didn’t seem to matter in the least. I suppose it
ought to, but it didn’t.... She looked like such a nice, sweet little
thing.”
“She is.”
“And that’s why the life here in Paris is so bewildering. It upsets all
one’s preconceived notions. It makes one wonder....”
“It does,” he said, emphatically.
“I presume I should be just as intolerant back home as I ever was.”
“It’s different back home.”
“Extremely,” she said, dryly.
Jacques turned suddenly to Maude as the male dressmaker came in with his
pink-cheeked companion of the other night. “You see her,” he said, as
one about to make a statement of distinct interest to the one addressed.
“She ees his girl—yes.... I theenk she look for anozzer boy. Bicause
thees dressmaker, he is ver’ selfish. He make mooch money, but he theenk
only of himself. It ees so.... For example!... He make that yo’ng girl
do _so_—how you say?” He went through the pantomime of shining his
shoes. “That ees not pleasant. _N’est-ce pas?..._ So I theenk she look
about for anozzer boy....”
Kendall felt his ears growing hot, and was on the point of committing an
indiscretion when Maude answered with a quaver of mirth in her voice,
and not the least of the anger and shocked indignation Kendall expected.
“I should think she would....”
Presently Kendall called for the check and they went out, Jacques
insisting on shaking hands with both of them, and appearing to be on the
point of kissing Ken all over again.
“How shall we keep up the celebration?” Ken asked when they were out on
the dark, narrow street.
“Let’s walk,” she said. “Paris fascinates me at night. I love to stroll
about, but usually I have to go in so early. Are you too tired to walk
up the Champs Élysées and possibly on to the Bois de Boulogne?”
“Indeed not!” he said, and they started off with good American strides,
dodging taxicabs that came charging down upon them out of the darkness
with lights so dim as to be scarcely visible, and almost bumping into
pedestrians who loomed up suddenly out of the blackness ahead. In a few
moments they emerged upon the broader thoroughfares where visibility was
higher, and presently were walking up the rue de Rivoli toward the
Étoile.
Kendall was feeling a new and different interest in Maude Knox. He had
been attracted to her casually on the boat, for she had been very
pleasant to look at, and a charming companion. But she had not impressed
him other than with a mild pleasantness, calling forth a temporary
friendliness. To-night he felt that he really _liked_ her; that there
was something to her. She had disclosed that there was a certain kinship
between their mental processes and their reactions to the new life that
surrounded them, but most of all she had shown herself adaptable and
_sensible_. Sensible covered a multitude of meanings for Ken. His idea
of girls was that they were creatures full of peculiar concealments and
inhibitions who had a habit of looking at facts obliquely and
interpreting them without frankness. Somehow they never seemed exactly
sincere to him, but rather as if they felt compelled to certain
pretenses as a measure of self-protection. His impression was that
American girls were always conscious of the necessity for protecting
themselves, and this destroyed comradeship and good understanding.... It
was his notion that they were constantly on their guard against a danger
which they rather feared did not exist....
But to-night Maude Knox seemed very different from all this; she seemed
frank and fearless. She had seen more than her sisters back home, and it
had not shocked her especially. She was capable of entering into the
spirit of the life—at least theoretically—and she treated him, Kendall,
as an equal and a friend rather than as a male to be kept in his place
lest he pounce upon her with dire consequences.... He liked it. He liked
the way she talked, and he liked the air with which she carried herself.
Half an hour later they were seated on uncomfortable iron chairs beside
the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, watching a string of American ambulances
whiz by from the hospital beyond, on their way to one of the stations to
meet a train bearing wounded from the front.
“It makes one realize that we’re in it,” Maude said, gravely. “It hardly
seems possible that those ambulances will be back in an hour filled with
American boys—wounded in France by the Germans. There’s something unreal
about it.... To think that those boys have crossed the ocean to be
wounded and mutilated over here!... I wonder if they are sending any of
the wounded home.”
“I don’t know.”
“The folks won’t realize this war till they see boys on crutches....”
Before them the promenaders straggled, dim forms in the dusk, only to be
distinguished when they passed within reach of the arm. There were
parties of three or four girls of the working-class hurrying home with
packages under their arms; there were other parties who dawdled and
laughed and jostled one another and giggled—young shop or factory girls
out to enjoy the evening. There were young men and young women who
walked very close to each other, sometimes holding hands. There were
single young men and young men in pairs out for walk and adventure.
There were officers of all armies and a sprinkling of American doughboys
ready for whatever might happen, often three or four of them with a
single girl, all jolly and laughing and having the most enjoyable sort
of time trying to make themselves understood to one another. At a little
distance two neat-looking girls were seriously giving a French lesson to
a group of American soldiers.... It was such a company of strollers and
dawdlers as the concerns of the world had never brought together before,
drawn from all habitable quarters of the globe because the Hun, in his
ruthless ambition, had thought to spread his _Kultur_ over the face of
the planet....
There were long lapses in the conversation, for both Maude and Kendall
found a gripping interest in the passers-by.
“Just think,” said Maude, presently, “almost every girl we see has lost
a father or a brother or a sweetheart or a husband. Almost every one....
A waitress in our hotel told me this morning that eleven men of her
family were dead.”
“Yes,” he said.
“But somehow the thing that—that _frightens_ me most is not to think of
the women who have lost fathers and brothers, or even husbands.... It is
the girls who have lost sweethearts. It is the thought of the boys who
are dead and who were to have been the husbands of these girls.... Think
of the hundreds of them who have lost husbands whom, perhaps, they have
never met ... whom they can never meet.... It’s awful to think of a
million girls who have _got_ to be old maids! They don’t want to be, but
they’ve _got_ to be.... War has taken from them the husbands they never
had.”
“I’ve thought of that,” he said.
“It means these girls have lost more than life—they have had killed for
them the possibility of living.... They can never have homes and
families.... The future is nothing but a stretch of years for
them—lonesome years without happiness and without sorrow.”
“I suppose it is as hard to be deprived of sorrow as it is of
happiness,” said Kendall, slowly.
She paused before replying. “Yes,” she said, “I can understand that—if
the sorrow is brought because you love. Sorrow is a necessary experience
of life. Emerson’s essay on compensation is all about that....” She
paused again and then broke out with a vehemence foreign to her. “I
don’t blame them—I don’t blame them a bit. Everybody is entitled to live
and to have the experiences of life. I never thought I should feel this
way, but it is _so_.... If you can have a life full of living you are
entitled to snatch your little moments of happiness—just as these French
girls are doing. It is their right, because it is the best life has to
offer them.... It isn’t France alone—it might happen in America. Suppose
half the girls at home were deprived of the possibility of marriage....
It’s awful.”
The little moments of happiness! Kendall’s mind seized on that phrase
and held it.... It was the essence of the whole matter. These women,
shut out from the Banquet of Life, were seizing hungrily the crumbs of
happiness that were brushed from the table.
In the pause that followed an American soldier and a French girl sat
down in the chairs at the right of Maude and Kendall and talked jerkily,
half in French, half in English. They tried so hard to talk to each
other, because each was lonesome.... And then, as Kendall and Maude
eavesdropped shamelessly, the siren sounded—the _Gothas_ were coming!
People started to their feet and began scurrying away to seek for
shelter, but Maude and Kendall did not move, nor did the boy and girl
next them. Presently Kendall heard the boy ask, “Ain’t you afraid of the
bombs, mademoiselle?”
“_Non.... Non...._” She shrugged her shoulders and then said, in a
hopeless voice, a pitiful voice: “I have not the fear, because what does
it matter?... There is nothing in life for me. If I am kill—_pouf!...
So...._ There is an end, and it will be well....”
Kendall felt Maude’s fingers on his arm, felt their sudden pressure.
“There,” she whispered. “There it is.... She _knows_. They all know....
Who has a right to say they sha’n’t have their little moments?...”
Kendall stood up. It seemed as if movement were necessary, any sort of
movement, of physical action. This sudden, close contact with terrible
reality had seared through to his consciousness with a terrible, burning
depression.... The thing was unbearable.... And this, he thought, is
what war means!...
“Come,” he said, almost roughly.
She arose obediently and they walked rapidly toward the Étoile.
“We have fifteen minutes,” he said. “If we walk fast we can almost make
your hotel.”
As they walked the now almost deserted streets, deserted except for
stragglers and for taxicabs which went scurrying about as they always
do, not oblivious to bomb raids, but in defiance of them, they saw huge,
mysterious bodies arising from the shrubbery, great grub-shapes that
appeared from nowhere and mounted high into the heavens—the sausage
balloons which in time of raid stretch in interminable line across the
sky down the path of the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne and the Champs
Élysées and the Jardin des Tuileries. They were so silent, so
mysterious, such ghostly-gray blots against the sky!
They reached the Place de la Concorde before the first gun of the
barrage sounded, and in a moment were safely under the arches of the
buildings that face the rue de Rivoli.... And then the storm broke in
all its fury.
Kendall waited for Maude’s reactions. It was a sort of test. There was
danger, real danger, even under those huge stone arches—if a bomb should
strike directly above them or in the street without. He wanted to see
how she would behave in presence of danger.
She satisfied him. She exhibited, not fear, but curiosity and a
childlike interest, as if it were some sort of spectacle, and she were
disappointed at not having a better seat. It was impossible to keep her
back from the curb, for she insisted on standing in the very mouth of
the arch to see all that was to be seen.... She had courage as well as
frankness and understanding. His admiration for her grew amazingly.
In an hour the raid was over and they continued their way to the Hôtel
Wagram.
“Good night,” she said, extending her hand and giving him a pressure of
real friendship. “I’ve enjoyed this evening—more than any other since
I’ve been here.”
“It has been bully,” he said. “I feel as if I were just getting
acquainted with you.... It’s hard luck you’re going so soon—but you’ll
be back.”
She laughed. “You won’t be lonesome,” she said, gaily. “There’s that
cunning little French girl of yours—who doesn’t seem to have any last
name.... Mademoiselle Andree.” She laughed again. “What is her last
name? You know it isn’t usual to introduce strangers by their given
names, as you did.”
He laughed ruefully. “I’m darned if I know,” he said. “I always forget
to ask her.” It was a reply that would have been impossible for him to
make to Maude Knox six hours before.
Her face grew serious and she touched his arm with her fingers lightly.
“She had a sweet face,” Maude said. “Don’t be unkind to her.... Now good
night. To-morrow I’ll be where I can hear the guns.”
“Good night,” he said, and turned away.
He was repeating to himself what Maude had said: “Don’t be unkind to
her.... Don’t be unkind to her.” What was he to do? How was he to deal
with that quaint little person who appeared out of mystery to assume
such an important place in his life?... Was not merely knowing her being
unkind to her?... Or was he giving her her little moment of
happiness?...