Kendall awoke refreshed, but with those sensations which a man
experiences after an exceedingly circumstantial and vivid dream. The
reality of last night’s events had vanished, to be remembered only as
something lived through in that subconscious land of dreams. The morning
was bright, cheerful, and he breakfasted with enthusiasm. Directly
afterward Jimmy was summoned to brigade headquarters, and Kendall,
having finished his work at that point, set out with his chauffeur to
walk back to Domptin.
On the way they paused on the road to watch the shelling out of a corner
of the woods by a German battery. The high-explosive shells fell with
beautiful precision and at regular intervals of about a minute. The
scream of the shells could be heard during an interval in which one
could count up to six slowly, and then would come the explosion. By
counting so and keeping his eyes on that wooded angle Kendall could
watch the work of the shells with exact timing of his vision. Somehow
the processes of the explosion reminded him of an enormously powerful
man heaving upward a weight with his shoulders. First would come a small
surge of smoke, as if the giant were testing his load, and then an
uprush of black smoke and debris in geyser form, regular until it had
spent its force, then breaking into irregular billows at the top and
dissipating through the air.... Shell after shell dropped precisely,
neatly, not varying in their placing by more than a couple of score of
feet.... About the corner was no sign of life, no hurrying figures
stumbling headlong away from the peril, and Kendall wondered if life
were present there, if life had been there, or if it had wholly ceased
to exist.
They walked on down the road to their car and returned to Montreuil,
where Kendall had business with the Assistant Provost Marshal, who
occupied a house on the edge of town, midway down the winding hill. As
Ken’s car drew up at the house a gray camion stopped at an adjoining
cottage, and Kendall saw a girl leap briskly down from the seat and run
up the bank. She wore the uniform of the Y. M. C. A.... He recognized
Maude Knox.
His first impulse was to hasten to her, for he was as much delighted as
astonished to see her in such a place, but something stopped him—call it
curiosity. He was conscious of wanting to see how she acted, what she
was doing, how she did it.... An American girl alone in a French hamlet
deserted by its civil population! A girl alone with an army! Here was
indeed a situation; here was romance; here was something to excite the
imagination! Kendall leaned forward eagerly and watched.
She entered the open door of the little cottage and looked within; then
she turned about in the most matter-of-fact way and called something to
the man who drove the truck. He dismounted and began unloading cases and
crates—and a cook-stove. These he carried up the bank and placed in the
house. Maude shook hands with the man; he climbed on his camion again
and drove away. She was alone!... She, an American girl, had been set
down casually in a matter-of-course manner here within range of hostile
guns, and abandoned to her own devices! She seemed not in the least
excited or disturbed. It was amazing. This sort of thing might have been
happening to her every day or so for years, and yet Kendall knew she had
never, probably, spent a night alone in a house before in her life....
And here she was more than alone in a house. There was not another woman
within miles.... He saw her attempting to fasten a sign to the wall
beside the door, and, failing, turn and look about her for the first
time.... Seventy-fives were being discharged every few minutes from
points not a quarter of a mile away from her. He saw that she was gazing
toward the sound.... He shook his head, for the thing was beyond his
comprehension. Did American girls do this sort of thing? Was this
expected of them? Were they all capable of such adaptations of
themselves, or was Maude Knox a remarkable exception? He wondered....
There was nothing more to be seen. Maude had gone inside, and Kendall
stepped from his car and walked up to her door, on whose threshold he
paused, not speaking, and peered inside. She was standing in the middle
of a rubbish-littered room, looking about her, not with bewilderment or
with uncertainty, but calculatingly. She seemed the embodiment of
capability.... She nodded her head as much as to say, “This will do
nicely,” and reached for a broom that was among the boxes that had
accompanied her.
“Good morning,” said Kendall.
She turned and looked at him, smiling even before she recognized him,
and then exclaimed, “Kendall Ware, of all people!”
“Of all people, indeed! How about yourself? I presume you are a natural
and normal part of the scenery.”
She nodded. “Of course. This is what I came to France to do.”
“To—to be set down on a pile of filth like this”—his arm swept the
room—“alone—in the middle of an army—within a couple of miles of No
Man’s Land?”
“Of course.... Why not?”
“Aren’t you—afraid?”
She was actually surprised; there was no pretense about it. “Of what?”
she asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll bet you never slept alone in a house
before in your life.”
“Never.”
“You wouldn’t do it at home.”
“I suppose not.”
He waggled his head. “You’d have been afraid to stay alone in a house in
a civilized town.... Now, wouldn’t you?”
“I—I guess I would. Yes, I would.”
“But here—with nothing to protect you, without even a decent lock—and
not a woman within half a dozen kilometers!... It isn’t right. They
hadn’t any business sending you to such a place.”
“Rubbish!... I’m safer than I would be in my own home with a policeman
standing in front of the door. Why, I’ve never even thought of being
nervous! Really.... I suppose it is queer.” She stopped a moment to
speculate on its queerness. “If I were back home and somebody should
describe this to me I couldn’t understand any girl doing it.... But I’m
here—and it’s all different.... I never felt so—so _safe_.”
“But an army—even our army—is made up of all sorts of men.”
She laughed with sincerity. “Fiddlesticks!... What do you suppose would
happen to a man who offended me? Why, Kendall”—it was the first time she
had used his given name, but it appeared perfectly natural—“I’ve got a
whole division to look after me.”
It was true. He knew it was true. These American boys—lonely for a
familiar American face, hungry for the sound of the voice and laughter
of an American woman—would idolize her. They would be her slaves.
Safe?... There never had been such safety as was hers—and yet he was
troubled. It was so unconventional—so off the beaten track of the
ordinary movement of life. He did not quite like it.... That was his
mother speaking in him. His mother would have declared such conduct to
be unwomanly, to be not nice, and she would have condemned Maude Knox
unheard.... Because Maude Knox was doing a thing _she_ had never done
and had never seen done by a respectable member of her sex!... Kendall
realized this to be absurd.
“We’re surely in a different world,” he said, tritely.
“The Epworth Sewing Circle wouldn’t approve,” she said, with a twinkle,
“but the Epworth Sewing Circle doesn’t count over here, does it?... I
wonder if it will ever count again anywhere—for us who have been here?”
Kendall wondered, too. What was going to become of the home conventions
when these young women, who had adventured to France to aid as they
found opportunity in the winning of the war, got home? What ideas would
they bring with them and disseminate? What would happen to America?...
America could never be the same, for, not only would these thousands of
girls return, having seen the world with opened eyes—and lived
undreamable lives—but two millions of young men would be going home,
too.... Each one of them would take something of France and of the war
to his home—and what would come of it?...
“You’re—you’re _bully_!” he said, with sudden conviction. “By Jove!
you’re _bully_!”
“Fiddlesticks!”
“What are you here for?... What do you expect to do?”
“Talk, mostly,” she said, merrily. “I guess that’s what I’m wanted for
more than anything else—to let the boys talk to me. Incidentally I’ll
make hot chocolate and sell cigarettes and safety razors and jam and
cookies.... I’ll just be here.”
“Just be here,” he repeated after her. “Just be here....” And in a flash
as of lightning he saw what her just being here would mean to those
men.... He saw what a lofty height they would set her upon, and how they
would worship her beauty, and how they would delight in her every
word.... It would be good for them, good for them as soldiers and good
for them as men!... What a war it was that produced this!...
“Look!” she said, and laughed aloud.
Kendall turned. The doorway was closed by a rapidly augmenting crowd of
boys in khaki, curious, eager, delighted, grinning.
“How do you do?” Maude said, with perfect calm. She walked toward them
and extended her hand, which boy after boy seized bashfully. “I’m Miss
Knox—and if you ever expect to get any hot chocolate, somebody’s got to
put up the stove. It isn’t much of a stove.”
“Say, miss,” blurted out a sergeant, “if you’ll—er—git out of here a
spell we’ll fix things up.... Say, was you calc’latin’ on stayin’?”
“I’m a permanent improvement,” she said.
From that instant Kendall had no doubts, conjured up no violated
proprieties. Maude Knox was _right_ to be there; there was no other spot
in the world where it was so right for her to be....
“I’ll clear out,” she said, and, pausing as she passed through the door,
“I could use some sort of a counter....”
“You bet, miss.”
“There,” said Maude to Kendall, presently.
“I see,” he said, soberly. “I’m seeing lots of things.”
“That weren’t visible in Detroit,” she added for him. Then, after a
pause, “And so am I.... There’s something in the air—here—in
Paris—wherever one goes in this country. It _gets_ you.... I could do
things. Yes, I could.... You have a feeling that nothing you do as an
individual counts—nothing matters. Everything we’ve ever been used to
seems so far away and insignificant. Don’t you feel that way?”
“Yes.”
“As if you could be very good or very, very bad—and it wouldn’t make a
cent’s worth of difference to anybody?”
“Yes.”
“Other girls are feeling it. I think they are all feeling it. There are
plenty of signs.... _C’est la guerre._ I suppose that’s it.... No, it
can’t be explained by a phrase of the streets; it’s deeper than that....
With one half of the world trying to slaughter the other half.... Every
little while I have a feeling that right and wrong have grown to be too
big to apply to individuals—they’re for _nations_. Does that express
what I mean? And then I’ve thought more than once that this is the end
of the world—the end of the old world and the starting-place of a new
one.... Temporarily we’re without a set of rules because the old ones
won’t do any more, and we’ve got to build up an altogether new code.”
“I’ve felt something like that, but I didn’t have a philosopher for a
father, so I didn’t know just what I was feeling or how to say it.”
“We’re being a sort of spiritual Bolsheviki, I suppose, going through a
transition period of confusion and lawlessness and wild thinking....
But, just as something better than the old Russian Empire with its czars
and grand dukes and Siberias and its—its _Rasputins_—is bound to follow
Bolsheviki-ism, so something better than the narrowness of the
sewing-circles and the Pilgrims and the viciousness of blindly accepted
conventions and codes.... This has turned into something bigger than a
World War—it is turning into a Greater Reformation.... Not the
reformation of a religion, but a reformation in the basic _thought_ of
the world—surely of America....”
“Whew!” exclaimed Kendall. “I follow you, I guess, but my feet are off
the bottom ... and I can’t swim.”
“You can think, can’t you?” she said, a trifle tartly.
“I guess I _feel_ more than I _think_,” he said.
“We all do.... We have to feel in order to think, and we have to feel in
order to understand. Cold logic isn’t worth a snap of the
fingers—really.... You’ve been getting something out of Paris, haven’t
you? Feeling something? I think you get it there more than any place
else.... I love Paris.”
“My mother wouldn’t love it,” he said, gravely.
“And you’re like her—sometimes—aren’t you?... But aren’t you growing
more tolerant—more able to see the other person’s point of view?”
“I—hang it all!—I can’t get away from the notion that good is good and
bad is bad.”
She shook her head. “But you are beginning to see that America hasn’t
the right to legislate for the world, and to define what is good and
what is evil.... I know you are.... Now don’t be shocked, please. I’m
American, of course, and the American code is for me—until it is
altered. Whatever I may think about it, still it is the code and
accepted by the majority. That binds me to a degree.... But I can still
believe we are narrow and prudish.... It doesn’t take much imagination
to understand that eating pork may be a sin to an orthodox Jew. It is a
sin because he believes it is a sin. It is no sin for you because you
think it is nonsense.... When you get down to essentials, the thing that
is a _sin_ is doing a thing you _think_ to be a sin. It isn’t the
_thing_, but the thinking....”
“I suppose that’s it.”
“Of course it is.... And that’s enough of this sort of talk, isn’t it? I
don’t always talk this way, really. I’m quite pleasant and frivolous
most of the time.... You’re not to be stationed here by any chance?”
“No such luck.”
She laughed. “I wouldn’t have time to bother with you, anyhow, if you
were meaning that as a compliment.... I’ve got at least a regiment of
young men, and I sha’n’t be partial.... Besides, there’s that pretty
little French girl.... I liked her looks.... Tell the truth, you’d be
heartbroken if you were sent away from Paris and her.”
Andree!... He had scarcely remembered her existence for twenty-four
hours. And only the night before last he had been telling her that he
loved her, and kissing her good-by! He felt ashamed of himself. He felt
ashamed because he felt that he was not being true to the love he
professed for her—in his thoughts and in the pleasure which he found in
the presence of Maude Knox.... He _was_ in love with Andree,
but—confound it all!—was it possible he could be falling in love with
Maude Knox, too? He had heard that people and books asserted a man could
be in love with two women at once.... If this were so, he said to
himself, it would create a devilish unpleasant situation ... and a
situation not without an element to cause laughter. If a man loved two
girls, he would have to choose one of them. In which case he would be,
at the same instant, in a state of bliss because he had won a sweetheart
and in a state of heartbreak because he had been thwarted in love!...
“I wish you could know Andree,” he said. “She—she’s educating me, I
guess. I don’t understand her, of course. She is constantly startling
me. I never knew anybody who in the least resembled her.”
“Of course not.... She’s French. She’s a war-time Parisienne.”
“But she’s good,” said Kendall, as if Maude had brought some charge
against Andree.
“Why not?” Maude smiled a trifle.
“You mustn’t think—” he began.
“I’m thinking nothing. It’s none of my business.” She paused. “Frankly,
I don’t care.... Now don’t misunderstand that. I like you, Kendall. I’m
interested in you. There was a time when, if I suspected of a man what
you seem to think I suspect of you, I would have cut him in a hurry....
And the girl—I would have been horrified.... But now—I don’t quite
understand myself—I wouldn’t in the least object to knowing your
Andree.”
“But I tell you—”
“Of course you do—and I don’t believe you. So there!”
Kendall was embarrassed and a trifle angry. “I don’t see why you should
suspect anything—just because Andree is French!”
“And because you are American? And because lots of things?” She shrugged
her shoulders.
“Would you marry a man you knew had been having an—an affair with a girl
like Andree?”
“It would depend. There are affairs and affairs.... Somehow I don’t
think I should marry a man who had an affair with an American woman, one
of these squalid, scandalous things we hear about in New York or
Detroit.... But in war conditions—with a girl like Andree, as you say,
why, if I loved the man of course I would marry him.... I think I
would—if I loved him.”
“Where is the difference?”
“I don’t know.... It gets back to a sin being a sin because you think it
is. It’s a feeling. I’ve seen these women in France, women I knew were
having affairs, and they were sweet and modest—and natural. An American
woman can’t seem to have an affair and still be sweet and modest—and
natural. She feels she is doing something wicked and degrading, and
consequently is degraded. She is being deliberately bad.... Don’t you
see?”
“I—I think so.... There’s something. I have the same notion about it as
you, but I couldn’t explain it. I guess you’re right.... Do you think a
man can be in love with two girls at once?” He asked the question
suddenly.
She laughed joyously. “Now, you aren’t going to tell me you are in love
with me, too?... Please don’t. I suppose a lot of these boys will fancy
they’re in love with me just because I happen to be moderately neat and
clean and good-looking and because I’m out here alone like this.... I’ll
stand to them for their sweethearts back home, and all that, but they
won’t be in love with me in the least—and neither are you.”
This frankness was truly American, modern American. Kendall could not
imagine Andree saying or thinking such things; he could not imagine his
mother saying or thinking such things. And why? To Andree love was
love—the great business of life. Everything else was subordinate to it.
To his mother love was—was just a little bit off color, because there
was sex in it. His mother could love her son frankly, but she could not
love her husband frankly nor talk with frankness about it.... Original
sin clung to love in her mind. It was the thing that had cast man out of
Paradise, and while one married and bore children, and marital relations
were necessary, nevertheless there was something squalid and indecent
about them. Andree saw nothing indecent in sex, as she saw nothing
indecent in eating her dinner.... Maude Knox was more like Andree than
like his mother, but even there there was a vast difference. There was
the difference of race and of racial philosophy.
Maude placed her hand on Kendall’s arm. “Be nice to that little girl,”
she said. “Don’t hurt her.... Be fair.”
“What do you mean?... Do you mean I should marry her?”
She hesitated. “I don’t know.... Marriage!...”
Her own inherited prejudices were lifting their heads now. Marriage!...
Marriage with a French girl with whom one was having relations! That was
different. She hesitated and did not give him a frank answer.
“Well?” he said.
“You mustn’t ask me.... I can’t answer that. It is a thing you’ll have
to decide.”
“I guess you have answered,” he said, gloomily.
“Perhaps—and perhaps I’m ashamed of myself for answering so.... But I
was born in America and brought up in a surrounding of sewing-circles.”
There was a pause. Then he said, almost as if to himself, “You’re the
sort of girl I’d like to be in love with.”
“That’s a very nice thing to say—but you’re not.”
“I don’t know.... I’m not sure. I could be very easily if I were to see
much of you.”
“And Andree?...”
He was really depressed, worried, and she perceived it with genuine
sympathy. She saw that this young man was facing a problem whose correct
solution would be vital to his happiness and to his future peace of
mind. She was able to realize that he was approaching one of those
climaxes of the soul which are infinitely more trying and infinitely
more potent to modify than could any climax in which the physical
predominated. She fancied she knew Kendall rather well and understood
him. She fancied he was not complex, but rather simple and
straightforward—just a young man—but she was wrong. There were such
elements of complexity in him as made for the sharpest of suffering,
which would have defied the analysis of the most expert psychologist.
She did not perceive the overwhelming importance of his inheritances
from mother and father, those beliefs and those sensations and those
reactions which were almost a physical part of him as his arms and legs
were a physical part of him. She could not know that his body was in
constant use as an arena in which Puritanism and dogmas and blind faiths
and intolerances of the unknown were battling with that mild toleration
derived from his father, that desire to see good in everything, that
sweetness which held fast to its faith in mankind, even when it could
not understand what mankind was about.... Nor could she know that
Kendall himself stood between these adversaries with a mind better
equipped than either to see and to appraise, striving with a great
hunger for the right, to be modified by the adversaries only as it was
right to be modified by them. Youth and the desires of youth for life
and pleasure and the knowledge that comes by experiencing was also there
with its immature carelessness of consequences.... There was no
simplicity here, rather such a complexity as seemed destined to defy
solution and to make a decent peace of the soul a thing possible to
attain....
A young captain ran down the bank to meet them. “You are Miss Knox?” he
asked, cordially.
“Yes.”
“I’m Captain Morris, A.P.M. here—and I’m mighty glad to see you. You
don’t mean you’re really going to stay?”
“Really.”
“_No!_... By Jove!... Say!...” He was inarticulate, but there was no
doubting of his delight.
“Captain Ware—Captain Morris,” said Maude, and the two young men shook
hands.
“I’ve got some business with you,” Kendall said, “as soon as we can get
Miss Ware settled.”
“What do you want? What do you need?...” This to Maude: “I’ll give you
details of men till the cows come home. Just ask for it, and—if it’s in
this sector—we’ll get it for you.... By Jove!... Think of it! Going to
stay!... Oh, say!”
Maude laughed. “You’ll have me thinking I’m doing something unusual in a
minute.”
“Unusual! Miss Knox, if you knew what it will mean to these boys to have
an American girl here—just to know she’s around! It’s wonderful, that’s
what it is! Do you realize that some of the men haven’t seen an American
woman in a year—haven’t talked to a woman?... By Jove!...” Every time he
thought about it he became boyishly inarticulate again.
“They’re fixing up my canteen for me,” she said.
“Good! I’ll run up and see they do it right.”
“I—I wouldn’t, if I were you,” said Maude, gently. “They seem to like
it—to want to do it themselves. They shooed me away. Don’t you think it
would be better to let them go ahead by themselves—if it pleases them?”
Kendall was conscious of a pride in her, in her understanding and her
beautiful tact. So was Captain Morris, who could only stare at her
unbelievingly and utter, “By Jove!...”
In half an hour they three walked back to the canteen.
“Here she comes!” yelled a boy in the door, and a sergeant with a smudge
on his nose, his sleeves rolled up, and a hammer in his hand, poked his
nose out of the door.
“Shoo her off ag’in,” he said, in a rumble that was distinctly audible,
though not intended for Maude’s ears. “We hain’t done yet.”
Maude turned away with a laugh. “I guess we’d better walk some more. If
you men are busy I can look after myself.”
“Busy!...” exclaimed Captain Morris. “By Jove!” And they all laughed,
even the captain, who had a faint perception of his own state of mind.
In another half-hour they returned again to the little cottage. This
time a dozen boys were standing about with a great pretense of
carelessness, but with an embarrassed eagerness which set her eyes to
twinkling.
“May I go in now?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am.... You bet!”
They crowded in after her to watch her every movement and expression and
to assure themselves that they had pleased her. There was a serviceable
counter. Behind it were rough shelves for her wares. The stove was set
up, and such utensils as she possessed hung precisely on nails. There
was a comfortable chair, rather dilapidated, but foraged at some expense
of trouble.... And the cleanliness of the place was nothing short of
amazing. It had been swept and dusted and scoured until not a trace of
its former filth remained.
“Oh, boys,” said Maude, after a moment’s silence, “isn’t it fine!...
Haven’t you made a nice place of it! I wouldn’t have thought it was
possible.... And the counter and shelving!... I don’t know how to thank
you.”
The soldiers were in a dreadful state of embarrassment, blushing and
giggling and nudging one another like schoolboys detected in a prank.
They seemed to have a feeling that something ought to be said, for they
kept jostling and pushing the sergeant, who growled back at them,
savagely. “Lemme be, doggone you!” Maude heard him mutter. But they
pushed him out into consciousness. “Go on, Hank.... Open up. Git it off
your chest,” he was abjured.
Hank scowled terribly at Maude, opened his mouth and closed it again,
hunched his broad shoulders and felt of his prominent Adam’s apple.
“Aw—” he began, and then, “Aw—hell!...” With which well-chosen remark he
burst through his comrades and fled headlong.
Maude again did the one tactful thing, the one thing that, in those
circumstances, not only saved the face of the vanished Hank, but raised
her to an elevation in the minds of the soldiers from which she would
never descend.... She simply sat down on that scoured floor and laughed
and laughed until her cheeks were wet with tears of mirth. So infectious
was her laugh that there was not a man but laughed with her.
“By Jove!...” exclaimed Captain Morris. “She’s a wonder.”
“She is,” said Kendall, soberly.
Maude looked up at them. “You officers go away,” she said, severely.
“I’m going to be very busy.... No, you boys needn’t go—just the
officers....”
“I may come back to say good-by?” Kendall asked. “I’ll be leaving in an
hour.”
“Of course.”
When Kendall finished his business with the Assistant Provost Marshal he
returned to the canteen.
“I’m going,” he said from the door.
Maude issued from behind her counter and made her way through a knot of
soldiers who had crowded about it.
“Good-by,” she said, extending her hand. “It’s been nice to see you.”
“It—it has been wonderful to see you,” he said. “I don’t think I shall
ever forget this.” He waved his hand around the room. “It isn’t
possible.” He smiled whimsically. “I know I’m dreaming the whole thing.
You’re really back in Ohio somewhere, probably playing bridge.”
“Not bridge—I don’t like bridge. Tennis, maybe.”
“And I’m going to wake up in a little while and tell folks what a queer
dream I’ve had.”
She pinched herself. “See, I’m awake—and you don’t know how glad I am
that I am awake—that I am here, seeing this, being a part of this....”
“But it isn’t done, you know. There’s nothing in the rules to cover
it.... No, Miss Knox, I’m dreaming it—and I’m glad I am dreaming it. If
it were real—” His face grew serious.
“Perhaps,” she said, “this is the first time you’ve ever seen anything
real ... since you came to France. That is it.... France is real, the
war is real, Andree is real, I am real.... The only things that aren’t
real are the habits and thoughts we were busy with sixty days ago....
Sixty days!...”
“Good-by—and don’t forget me.”
“I sha’n’t do that. I like you.... Good-by.”
Kendall leaned far back in his car and smoked and found his thoughts
disturbing company. He was not used to facing questions of big
importance, but he saw now that for weeks he had been drifting toward a
day when he would have to meet and reply to the first soul-modifying
question that had ever been propounded to him.... The thing was
inevitable. He was moving toward facts that could not be brushed
aside.... Strangely enough, though he was heavy with apprehension,
nevertheless there was a certain exultation.... This was living—living
not in a circumscribed area, but in the unbounded world. This was
_life_—this was _experience_—something big, worthy of the consideration
of a man. There were happiness and misery in it.... He was beginning to
see that he could not win through with happiness intact; it was his hope
to win through with happiness preponderant.... The day he landed in
France he had been a boy; less than two months had passed—and he had
become a man.... France had done that for him.