Now commenced a brief period which was, perhaps, to be the happiest of
Kendall Ware’s whole life. It was happy because it was free from doubts
and questionings. From the depths he had mounted to the heights from
which he looked upon a world bathed in sunshine, rich in harvest,
beautiful as a world could be beautiful only when it was freed from all
evil. He saw everything as good, and it contented him. He ate of the
lotus of inexperienced youth, flavored with the pungent spice of
sophistry, and the taste of it was sweet in his mouth. Plymouth Rock had
sunk beneath its sands, the vestibule of the Presbyterian church had
vanished behind the mists of an intervening ocean. He did not think; he
only felt and acted—and was happy.
His work was interesting, and he could recognize its value, so he became
less dissatisfied with the necessity that held him far behind the
battle-line. Not that he was content, rather that he was resigned....
And at the end of the day there was Andree....
There were few evenings which they did not spend together, either by
themselves or with Bert and Madeleine, dining at home, at Poccardi’s, at
Marty’s, or in interesting, homelike little cafés across the river where
excellent food could be had very cheaply. Sometimes they went to the
theater or to the music-halls. Sometimes they strolled up and down the
Avenue du Bois de Boulogne until they were tired and then sat and talked
contentedly on springy iron chairs along the promenade. Once they walked
out that street, so crowded of evenings—that street of the ever-changing
names—Montmartre, Poissonnière, Nouvelle, St.-Denis, St.-Martin—as far
as the Place de la République. It was interesting, if tiresome. More
than once Kendall was impressed with the fact that Parisians of a
certain class take their pleasures simply and childishly. More than one
glaring palace, open at the front, showed rows upon rows of those
devices, long extinct in America, before which one could sit or stand
with the ends of a rubber tube in one’s ears and listen to such tunes as
found favor with him played by phonograph. The popularity of these
places surprised him. They were always crowded.... It seemed to him that
this was the most crowded thoroughfare in Paris, as well as one of the
most questionable. The crowds impressed him as being questionable and
bent on questionable errands.... And yet he did not know; he only
guessed. So far as his knowledge went, these folk might be the most
respectable in all France—all save the numerous soft-voice girls who
threaded their way in and out.... And for a mere child, a girl who
seemed hardly in her teens, who bit and struggled in the hands of two
gendarmes, shrieking in a voice that remained long in Kendall’s ears, “I
have the age!... I have the age!... I have the age!...” over and over
again....
Madeleine had laughed and shrugged her shoulders with some flippant word
of comment, but Kendall looked down at Andree to see her eyes moist and
big with pity.
“_Pauvre p’tite!... Pauvre p’tite!..._ It is not she who should be
punish’. She have made no wrong.... I theenk it is the crime of poverty.
_N’est-ce pas?_ Oh, to be _pauvre_—it is not well....”
“Yet _le bon Dieu_ permits it,” said Madeleine.
“_Non!... Non!..._ It is not of God, ma’m’selle; it is of man—thees
poverty and thees awful theengs.... It mus’ be that tears come often to
the eyes of the good God....”
Kendall was affected deeply. She spoke of the good God with such
simplicity, with the sort of intimacy which children use. He felt almost
a reverence for her.... There was a _rightness_ about her, a simple,
unaffected, unconscious _goodness_, that set her apart and made her
different, to him, from all mankind.
“_Mignonne!_” he whispered, and pressed her arm, and she, looking up
shyly into his face, gave answering pressure, and, perhaps, wondered a
little.
She was always so, never changing, yet always possessed of that infinite
variety of which Shakespeare speaks. But it was a variety which was
always Andree. In no mood, in no manifestation, could she be anything
but Andree. If she were sad, it was with a sadness peculiar to her, and
very lovable; if she were gay, it was with her own gaiety; if she were
mischievous, it was with a charming impishness which no other being
could have managed. And always she was natural—as natural as the rain
that falls or the sun that shines or the breezes that blow.... She was
Andree.
“To-morrow is the great fête,” said Andree. “There will be much to see.”
“And I can’t show it to you. I must work in the morning, and in the
afternoon I am ordered to go to the front.”
“How long?” she said, quickly.
“But one day. I shall be here again Sunday—and we shall play, eh? We
shall have _déjeuner_ together and do something in the afternoon, and
find a place to dine....”
“It is well—but you mus’ be ver’ careful. You mus’ not let the _boche_
keel you.... Oh, I should be sad, sad.”
Already Paris was dressing for the American fête-day, the Fourth of
July, which, by methods of law, had been made her own national holiday
this year. Everywhere were American flags. There was no house in Paris
too poor to show some small copy of the Stars and Stripes, for just now
Paris was mad about America and Americans ... as it had had its day of
madness over the Belgians and then the English. Paris is given to such
enthusiasms, and at the moment there were men in the service of the
great god Propaganda who labored to bring it about that this latest
passion should not die and become sudden ashes as the others had done,
but rather to persuade it to subside slowly, unnoticeably, leaving a
pleasant memory behind....
“The _boches_ will pull something off to-morrow,” said Bert. “You see.
They’ll do something to bust up the celebration.”
This was the opinion of the Paris streets—that the Hun would, by some
ingenious and disagreeable means, make the fête memorable in the history
of the city.
“Maybe it’s just as well I’m going away,” laughed Ken. “So you,
Ma’m’selle Pourquoi—you look out for yourself. Don’t you let anything
hurt you.”
“Me—_pouf_!... It could not be. While there is you nothing can happen to
me—nothing. I am ver’ safe.”
They tried in vain to persuade a _voiture_ or a taxicab to take them
home, but, with that perversity which belongs to the Paris cabby alone,
none of them would go. One reason or another was given—the horse was
tired, the gasolene supply was depleted, it was the wrong quarter of the
city. A large volume, serious or comic, might be written on the habits
and moods of these public conveyances of the most charming city in the
world. Paris would not be the same without them. While they are one of
the irritations, none the less they are of the quaint and pleasant
memories of the city, and Kendall could often see himself, as he sat at
some future day, retailing to audiences of less traveled Americans than
he his adventures with the war-time taxi.
Finally they were obliged to descend to the Metro, which carried them to
the Place de l’Opéra, to change there for the short ride to the Palais
Royal, where another change was necessary to carry them to the Étoile.
It was late and they were tired.
“Oh, we have make the _beaucoup travail_—the so great labor thees day,”
said Andree, shaking her head. “I have the _fatigue_.... But it is well
to be weary. Are you weary, Monsieur Ken?”
“I am happy,” he said.
“Yes.... Yes.... That is bes’ of all—to be happy. Tell me, when you have
gone to the front—will you theenk of me?”
“In the morning, at noon, in the afternoon—”
“Oh, oh!... It is not possible. But sometimes. Once, twice? For I shall
be theenking of you always.”
“Do you love me?”
“Yes,” she nodded emphatically, and then—he would have missed it had she
omitted it—“and you?”
“More than anybody in the world.”
“More than thees yo’ng American girl?... I have seen her thees day. She
is in Paris. Do you know?”
“You must be mistaken, _mignonne_. Miss Knox is out at the front.”
“It is so.... It is so. I have seen her—thees day. Oh, do you theenk I
do not know her? I am ver’ _jalouse_—mos’ _jalouse_. She come for take
you away from me.”
“Don’t you let her do it,” said Ken happily. “Don’t you dare let her do
it.”
“I do not know,” she said, becoming suddenly grave. “You are
American—she is American.... Some day...” Then she laughed gaily,
impishly. “_Mais_ these American girl, they do not know how to dress.
Oh, it is terrible!”
“You mustn’t judge all American women by these uniforms you see in
France,” said Bert. “Just now it is the style in America for women to
get into something they think are uniforms. I wonder who designed these
Y. M. C. A. uniforms, anyhow?... But really, Mademoiselle Andree, our
women do know how to dress.”
“I have never seen,” she said, stubbornly. “Also they do not always wear
uniforms, but always they wear their feet. Their feet they cannot take
off. _Mais non._ It is too bad. If only they could leave at home their
feet.”
Kendall suspected that American women were suffering for the sins of
Maude Knox, so he did not rush to their defense. He did not want to
think about Maude Knox to-night—he wanted to think of no woman but
Andree.
“_Méchante!_” he whispered.
“It is so—what I say,” she said, severely. “I do not like American
women.... I do not like thees girl. She ees ver’ wicked, for she wish to
steal you from me.”
The street was very dark. Kendall made youth’s answer to youth’s
jealousy. He lifted her slight form in his arms and kissed her until she
returned his kisses.
“There,” he said, “you are punished.”
“It ees ver’ nice to be wicked,” she said. “Thees punishment is ver’
well.”
Maude Knox was banished. They two found themselves the sole inhabitants
of a brightly glowing world....
Next morning Kendall made his way through early assembling crowds to his
office, where he was much occupied until noon, making preparations for
his trip to the front. Then he was driven through the holiday-making
streets crowded with a populace in holiday humor to the _barrière_, and
thence into the country. On every building waved an American flag, in
every buttonhole was a tiny American flag, and the appearance of an
American military automobile was the signal for applause and lifting of
hats. Small boys shouted as small boys of all countries shout; friendly
old gentlemen waved their canes; young women smiled broadly or demurely,
invitingly or shyly. Kendall felt as if he were enjoying some sort of a
triumph, as if this celebration were for him. The frankness and
open-heartedness and courtesy of it were delightful.
They drove rapidly through little villages, between rolling fields
cultivated as only the French agriculturist seems to be able to
cultivate. The villages, too, were in gala dress and the people in
holiday attire. In one place a brief stop was made. Immediately the car
was surrounded by children who shouted eagerly for “penny,” for “gu-um,”
for “cigarette.” So it was all over France. Let but an American soldier
appear and the children of the neighborhood formed a group about him
demanding tribute.
Soon the civil inhabitants disappeared. Whole villages were occupied by
billeted troops, _poilus_ and colonials, black-skinned men wearing red
fezzes and speaking strange tongues who gave to the picture an exotic
tint. The countryside swarmed with soldiers _en repos_, a zone miles
deep crowded with the guardians of Paris and of the Channel ports....
Now came forests in whose depths could be caught fleeting glimpses of
huge ammunition-dumps, skilfully camouflaged, then a wonderful woods,
clean as the floor of a kitchen, a forest of magnificent trees, but as
well kept as a Michigan peach-orchard.... Dusk descended, then darkness.
The car seemed to be running into a black curtain upon a thread of white
cloud. Kendall could not see the length of his nose to one side or the
other, but ahead could be discerned that pale cloud avenue, a sort of
milky way that disappeared itself into blackness a hundred feet away. He
was now upon one of those roads of white chalk, deep with dust which
arose in clouds and nestled in the hair and eyebrows and penetrated the
very pores of the skin, giving to men the singular appearance of having
been carved out of bronze.
Presently the horizon glowed for an instant, as with heat lightning, and
glowed again and again. There was a mutter and a grumble ahead which was
the distant voice of the guns.... Something burst into flower in the sky
far ahead, a vivid rose-blossom, then another and another. It was
shrapnel, either our own demanding toll of a prowling German aeroplane
or the enemy searching the air for an Allied machine.... The heat
lightning became continuous, the roar of the guns a rumble without
break, almost a single, sustained note.
Ken was riding in the depths of a sea of blackness. To right and left
the eyes encountered an _impasse_; ahead was only that dim milky way of
road and those upsurging lights as the guns answered one another across
the desert of No Man’s Land. The car was traveling at breakneck speed.
Suddenly came a tremendous snap almost in Ken’s ears, a snap as of a
mountain being cracked in twain by giant hands. There was a blinding
flash across the road ahead and the air was usurped by the scream of a
departing shell. A battery by the roadside had taken up its work of the
night. Kendall was in the midst of it now. Guns on both sides cracked
and roared; projectiles screamed over his head, and now and then would
come that easily distinguishable sound, the bursting of a German
shell....
Presently the road sank below the level of the fields. The car was
running between irregular rows of barely discernible lights which
appeared to issue from the ground—as indeed they did—glowing from the
dugouts of French artillerymen who had burrowed into the banks at the
side of the road. The moon began to climb so that objects became dimly
visible. The scene was like that of some village of prehistoric
cave-dwellers, save for those breaks in the line of dugouts, cunningly
covered with nets of camouflage, under which lurked the cannon, muzzles
directed toward the foe.
Now they stopped in a battered, deserted village which was headquarters
of our Twenty-eighth Infantry, a component of that First Division made
up of our old regulars—a body of troops whose name will be famous as
long as the history of America shall endure. And there, in an enormous
dugout entered through a narrow tunnel some fifty feet in length, Ken
found shelter for the night. He traversed the tunnel, descended steps
carved out of the stone to a level twenty feet below, and found himself
in a warren. Here, notwithstanding the hour of the night, were bustle
and activity. Here were offices where sounded the click of typewriters
and the staccato of the telephone; here were passages, bedrooms, a
dining-room—a veritable maze hewn out of the chalk formation. It was as
if Ali Baba’s forty thieves had turned systematic and were carrying on
their trade according to modern business methods. Yet men worked here as
casually and nonchalantly, accustomed by long habit, as they would have
worked in their New York offices....
Kendall was provided with a cot, and, despite the sounds that penetrated
here, the sounds of the Fourth of July celebration of the First
Division, he slept....
Early in the morning he awoke, then, after some hours spent with the
regimental intelligence officer, he walked abroad to see this historic
countryside. Far off to the left the glasses showed him that spot which
had been Montdidier; almost straight ahead was the grisly, silent
crumble known now to the world by the name of Cantigny.
The day was beautiful. It seemed strange, unnatural that the country
should be so beautiful as well. Even the gun-pits among which Kendall
quickly found himself did not detract from the beauty, for they were
almost invisible even at a distance of a few yards, only appearing as
low mounds, scarcely differing in color from the surrounding fields. Yet
the guns were there under their tents of chicken-wire covered with
stained burlap and grasses. Everywhere he looked were these mounds which
during the night that had just passed had been uncovered to the sky
while shells filled with deadly gas had screamed through intervening
miles of air to fall with deadly effect in the German lines.... It had
been mustard gas, six thousand rounds of it, he had been told. He was
also told it was the first time American gunners had been supplied with
that devilishness of war—to celebrate the Fourth.... Now the gun-pits
were neat as a New England parlor, guns were brightly polished. Nothing
seemed to have happened there.
He stood above and looked down the slope of the valley, a valley of
golden fields, a valley which was a miracle of color. Never had Kendall
seen such color, acres upon acres of it, nor such a profusion of
flowers. Gold and red and white and blue ... and _peace_! That valley
had been spread there for some painter—not for a battle-field. It
impressed the inherited mysticism in him—he saw a symbolism in it all.
The fields blazed with gorgeous tints; rectangles acres in extent were
red with poppies, not with a sprinkling of poppies here and there, but
as with a snowfall of vivid red. Segregated in an adjoining field were
cornflowers, a carpet of blue; and then another field glaring white with
some flower that Kendall did not know.... Other fields there were in
which the three flowers mingled. The panorama spoke of peace and
beauty.... It was as if the war irritated God until He spread this, His
own camouflage of peace, to hide the horrors from His down-gazing
eyes.... Or perhaps, as of olden times He had set His rainbow in the sky
as a promise to the sons of Noah, so now He planted this living rainbow
in the fields as a new and more wonderful promise to all the sons of men
... a promise that His purposes should nevermore demand another war to
devastate the earth....
Before him, knee-deep in poppies, moved half a dozen figures in khaki.
“The boys are gathering flowers for the funeral,” he was told.
“The funeral?...”
“Of the men killed last night....”
Presently, his business completed, he was driving toward Paris, reached
Paris in the darkness with a feeling of home-coming and pleasure.... But
he was thoughtful, troubled. His sternly believing mother was awake in
him, asserting that he had seen with his own eyes a movement of the
finger of God—that he had read a sign from Omnipotence. It weighed him
down, filled him not with joyous faith, but with Calvinistic gloom to
have this assurance that God was actually taking an active interest in
His world.... The weight of the knowledge of the existence of a Deity
was upon him as it had been upon his stern forebears—the knowledge of
the existence of a Deity, stern, forbidding, cruel in his revenges and
implacable in his demands ... not of such a God as Andree knew—whose
eyes might be wet with tears caused by the sufferings of His puppets to
whom He had vouchsaved the dubious boon of freedom of action....
He awoke in the morning as one awakes from an impressive dream, with a
feeling of heaviness upon him, a consciousness of his personal existence
that made him dull company at breakfast. This humor did not pass away,
it was rather laid aside for further reference and obscured by the
events and anticipations of the day.
“Good trip?” asked Bert.
“Fine! Saw a lot.”
“Wish I could get a crack at it sometime. I haven’t heard a gun go off
yet—except in an air raid.... Was anything stirring up there?”
Ken described his experiences of the day and night, and, strangely, from
a different viewpoint than that from which he had beheld them. Yesterday
the thing had been subjective, symbolical; to-day it was objective. He
described the war he had seen as a tourist might describe some
interesting scene in a foreign country—and he rather wondered at himself
that he could think of it in that manner.
“When do you meet Andree?” Bert asked.
“Eleven o’clock—at the Place de la Concorde. You and Madeleine are
coming along?”
“Sure! We’ll pick you up there at eleven.”
“Anything happen here yesterday?”
“Not a thing. The _boches_ disappointed everybody. I went to one of
those dinners the crowd at the Union are always piloting a fellow
to—this Society of French Homes, or whatever they call it.... Four of us
dined with a Madame Lefebvre.”
“Good time?”
“Interesting. Played bridge with three French people, a deputy and two
women. None of them spoke a word of English, but we made out pretty
well. I won thirty francs.... They were rather upper crust in this town,
I guess. Fine house and that sort of thing.”
“I must go to one of those some day,” said Ken, reflectively. “I’ve
wondered if we were really seeing Paris—the way the French live.”
“Not if that dinner last night was a sample. I had to lug out all my
manners. And the women—they sort of made me feel uncomfortable.
Dignified, you know, but very friendly. It was all the family. Old
grandmother and her sons and daughters and a few grandchildren.
Patriarchal affair.”
“I want to see that sort of thing. People have told me that French
family life is beautiful.... One wouldn’t think it to judge from what
we’ve seen.”
“I don’t know about the beautiful,” said Bert, and Ken registered a
thought that Bert would not be likely to notice domestic beauties, “but
there was something fine about it. I liked it.... That old grandmother
was bully. They were all so doggone respectful.... And there was a young
lieutenant, a grandson—had his face shot away. Nothing left but his
mouth and one eye. Wore a big triangular patch over his face. He must
have been quite a fellow, though. Had the Croix de Guerre and the Legion
of Honor and the Médaille Militaire. Just been married, too—to a mighty
nice little girl—one of these home bodies, looked as though. And, by
Jove! she acted like she was a heap in love with him. It sort of got
me—especially when everybody in the room took the opportunity at some
time during the evening to tell me that she never met him until after he
was mutilated.... I don’t believe that sort of girl would pick up with a
fellow, somehow. And I know mighty well her mother and grandmother never
would have. I guess there are all kinds of French people, just the same
as there are Americans....”
“Of course,” said Ken, out of his abysmal ignorance. Then, defensively,
“Maybe these aristocrats are different from the girls we know, but, I
don’t care how they live or how straitlaced they are, they’re no better
than Andree.... Andree’s _good_.”
“Sure,” said Bert, “and you’re dotty.... Meet you at eleven.”
Ken wrote a few letters home, one to his mother in which he went rather
to descriptions and very little to personal matters. He spoke little of
France and the French, but rather made it appear that he was living in a
Paris inhabited exclusively by American soldiers who were all so busy
with the war that they had no time to do anything else but work and
sleep. He did mention seeing Notre Dame ... which was a church, and of
undoubted historic interest. It was a very circumspect letter, and not
at all confidential.... But it is an undoubted fact that mothers and
fathers have to earn by their conduct toward their children those
confidences which they seem to fancy are theirs by right. Ken could have
told his father anything—everything. But his mother—somehow it was
difficult for him to compel himself to make the most trivial disclosure
to her. Her attitude toward him and toward the world had created that
difficulty. The young are naturally confidential....
Then he went to meet Andree.
One of the delights of Ken’s acquaintance with Andree was that each
meeting with her seemed a fresh adventure; there was a sameness about
these meetings. Andree always appeared just so, and conducted herself
just so. He could foretell with exactitude what her every movement and
gesture and word would be when she did appear. But somehow, probably
unconsciously, she was able to impart to every rendezvous a freshness,
an air of mystery, something elusive and elfin that made them, no matter
how often repeated, always alluring, exciting, delightful. Her sudden
appearances out of a life of which he knew nothing and her
disappearances back into that life lifted this affair above the level of
all other affairs, imparting to it something of the occult, giving play
to the imagination.... Ken cherished this illusion and, therefore,
though often tempted, he asked no questions. Even now he did not know
her name—only Andree.
Presently she appeared, just as he knew she would appear, walking very
erect, with little steps that seemed almost stiff, her eyes cast
downward or staring straight before her and seeming to see nothing
whatever. He knew that she would approach within reach of his hand
before she gave sign of recognition, and then she would regard him with
grave query as if to ascertain if it were really he, and if, as she
feared, she was not welcome. And then she would smile timidly, without
taking her eyes from his, and shake hands with quaint formality, and ask
how he carried himself. If she had changed any particular of it he would
have been alarmed, would have felt a sense of loss.
“Bert and Madeleine will meet us here,” he said.
“It is well.” She smiled and nodded. “You have been at the front?”
“Yes.”
“You are ver’ _fatigué_ perhaps?”
“No. I had a bully night’s sleep, and I’m ready for anything. We must
have a regular party to-day. We’ll paint the town and all the suburbs.”
“Oh, so ver’ fast. I do not onderstan’.... I do not onderstan’. You mus’
speak more slow.... Give me the _dictionnaire_.”
“It was nothing.... Are you happy?”
“Are you not here?” she said, gravely.
There was something so timid, yet so confident about her, so gentle, so
child-womanly, that the realization of it struck Kendall almost with the
force of an accusation.... It was the forerunner of self-accusation
which might have come then and there, had not Bert and Madeleine turned
the corner and waved to them. Immediately the girls were chattering
French, after their inevitable formal handshake.
“Where to, children?” asked Bert.
They turned to the girls. “Where are we going?” Ken asked.
“Oh, out of the city. Let us go to the Bois—for the long day.”
“_Oui_,” agreed Madeleine. “The Bois—every one—_tout le monde_—make
themselves to go to the Bois.”
So, after some difficulty, they persuaded the driver of a _voiture_ to
drive them up the Champs Élysées and the length of the Avenue du Bois de
Boulogne to the gates of the park. There the _cocher_ drew up to the
curb inexorably and stopped without paying the least attention to the
protests of the Americans.
“We must get down,” said Andree. “He cannot go inside.”
“But there are _voitures_ inside—lots of them. Why can’t he go in?”
She shrugged her shoulders, but arose, and Madeleine followed her. They
knew the way of the Paris coachmen—or it may have been a rule, or an
agreement for the division of patronage. At any rate, they got down and
paid the absurdly low fare. Then, walking two by two, they entered the
famous park.
The walks near the entrance were crowded, but as they penetrated the
city’s playground the congestion became less dense. But it did seem as
if Madeleine were right, that all the world had come to the Bois that
day. Every seat, and they were scattered about generously, was occupied.
Back among the trees family parties had preempted shady glades and were
spreading lunches. Buxom young women played battledore with _poilus_ on
permission, or engaged in what they seriously believed to be tennis with
the most profound earnestness. This tennis delighted Bert, who insisted
upon stopping to watch more than one game. The players had no nets—only
rackets and a ball. With these they placed themselves sometimes as much
as twenty feet apart and then lobbed the ball back and forth with such a
seriousness and intensity that it seemed they were playing for life
itself.... Children were everywhere, and stout old ladies who drowsed
and lean old men who had taken off their coats and were tormented by
insects.... Out on the pavements men and women and children rode
furiously by on bicycles, all crouching apprehensively over their
handlebars and pedaling for dear life.... Youths in French uniforms made
vigorous and unashamed love to their sweethearts.... It was very hot.
A few minutes’ walk brought them to the lake, steaming with the heat of
the day, its surface churned by the unskilled oars of pleasure-seekers.
On the opposite shore was a dense crowd packed about a booth, awaiting
their turns to go upon the water and suffer. Two or three huge _bateaux_
capable of seating a score of people made little voyages up and down,
each propelled by one sweating, coatless individual who pulled the
enormous weight at such terrific speed that a circuit of the pond might
have been made in an hour. The passengers sat packed together in
blissful enjoyment.... Those who took rowboats seemed to have a positive
genius for loading them in such a way as to make them unmanageable. In
the middle was an elderly man, very stout, with two young girls. One
girl rowed while her companions sat as far into the bow as possible,
lifting the stern high in the air, and making any progress except a sort
of whirligig motion impossible. There were collisions, shouts, laughter,
screams—and an intolerable heat. But the crowd was happy as only a
Parisian crowd can be happy. They had not the least fear of making
themselves appear absurd; they went about their pleasure in a
determined, do-or-die spirit, and everybody was so satisfied, so happy,
so charming that Ken was delighted and tried to tell Andree how pleased
he was by aid of French, English, and the dictionary, but only
succeeding in bewildering the young lady utterly.... He had a suspicion
that both Andree and Madeleine looked at those boats longingly, but with
characteristic American terror of making himself look ridiculous he
would not have gone upon that water if they had fallen on their knees to
plead with him....
After a time they managed by bribery and cajolery to persuade a _cocher_
to drive them about the park and an hour or two later got down near to a
toy railroad with a tiny engine which pulled crowded trains along a
child’s track. Bert, whose inhibitions were less pronounced than Ken’s,
insisted upon riding. The girls boarded the train as a matter of course,
with no trace of self-consciousness, but as they bowled along past
crowds that waved and pointed and laughed, Ken felt like the father of
all idiots.... Finally they arrived at the zoo, which Andree insisted
upon inspecting.
The cages in the zoo which attracted the crowds contained dogs! Indeed,
dogs were the backbone and almost the sum total of the animals to be
seen. They were caged like bears and ran around and around behind their
iron bars with the ceaseless gait of wolves. It rather revolted Kendall,
especially to see a beautiful English setter in such an environment.
There were setters, Danes, bulls, fox-terriers—and the crowds stood and
stared and gasped and exclaimed as if they gazed at the behemoth of Holy
Writ....
But it was all fascinating to Ken, all different and strange. Here was
France again! He was seeing something foreign, not of the Middle West,
and it was droll and incomprehensible to him. He did not speculate on
what your Frenchman might have thought of a Sunday crowd at Coney Island
or the Bronx Zoo or in Belle Isle Park in his own Detroit.... He reveled
in it, drinking in eagerly the sensation that he was in another world
peopled by incomprehensible beings who functioned in an incomprehensible
manner.
Here at least was none of the depression and woe of war.... Had it not
been for the presence of uniforms, one would have forgotten war. Ken
wondered if these people had been able to forget it—and then reflected
that some of these that he saw might be killed before another dawn by
bombs dropped upon their sleeping homes from ruthless German
aeroplanes.... All was lightness and joyousness now; in a few hours
every individual here might be cowering in a cellar, damp with the sweat
of fear of imminent slaughter....
They dined expensively at a table under the trees and near to a
fountain, and Andree exclaimed at the extravagance of it and declared
that for days to come they must satisfy their hunger on bread and
water.... They were very gay and very young. For that one day all cares
and apprehensions had taken flight; they simply did what occurred to
them, and the word _responsibility_ was scratched from their
vocabularies.
After a time they found a pleasant spot among the trees and sat down to
rest, for such a day is very tiring.
“Thees day has been ver’ well,” said Andree, nodding her head three
times by way of punctuation.
“I wish all days were like it,” Madeleine said in French.
Andree regarded her gravely a moment, then shook her head emphatically.
“No. It would not be well. The days like thees day are ver’ nice bicause
they are seldom. To-day is for nothing but only happiness—yes. But it is
not possible to be so happy to-day if we are not ver’ unhappy some other
day.”
“Do you think that unhappiness makes happiness?” said Bert, with a
laugh.
“But yes, monsieur. If there is not sadness there is no joy. It is of a
truthfulness. _Certainement._ How do you know you are happy? It is
bicause you theenk of days when you are ver’ miserable, and thees day is
so different from that day. If all days shall be like to-day, then we
shall be—how do you say?—we shall be bored.”
“But if one is very miserable after he has been happy?” said Ken.
Andree looked at him quickly as if trying to penetrate to the thought
that prompted the question.
“It is well,” she said, softly. “On the unhappy day you theenk often of
the happy day—it makes the unhappiness to be less. After many, many days
one may forget the unhappiness. The good God has made it a law. The
sorrow it becomes not so sharp. Even the ver’ greatest grief becomes
jus’ a theeng to be remembered. But a happiness! Oh, my friend, that
live forever. A happiness cannot be made to fade. Always it live and
always it is ver’ beautiful and makes itself to give other happiness....
That is why,” she said, softly, to Ken, “that I have not great fear to
love you. Do you see?... W’en it is ended, thees love of ours, it will
be ver’ sad, but the sadness it will become soft and make itself to fade
after many year. The happiness, such happiness as thees ver’ day, it
will be always....”
“But,” said Ken, suddenly depressed and thoughtful, “isn’t there a
sorrow so great that it cannot be endured?”
“Oh yes, yes! But that is terrible. I have thought many times of such a
sorrow. There is only one like that. It is to love ver’ much and trust
ver’ much and be ver’ much happy, and then, one day, to know that one
has been deceive’ entirely. To know that the friend one love’ was on’y
making to pretend and did not himself love.... That one could not
bear.... Then all the little moments of happiness with him would make
themselves to be black and wicked ... and one must die....”
Kendall lifted her hand and touched it with his lips and looked into her
eyes. “I do not know what will come, _mignonne_ ... but whatever does
come, it must not be that.... See, I am speaking the truth so that you
may remember it always.... I love you.”
For a moment she returned his gaze gravely, then into her dark-shadowed
eyes came a glow that was real happiness, her lips smiled and she leaned
a little toward him.
“I believe,” she said, softly, “and it is ver’ well....”