In the morning Paris stopped in groups to whisper and to point off to
the northeastward. Paris was apprehensive. It had been awakened before
dawn by the distant rumble of cannon, such a rumble as had never before
come to its ears, and it wanted to know the reason for it. The guns had
never sounded so loudly. Was it that the _boches_ had made a fresh
advance and were by that much nearer to the defenses of the city? Or had
it been some huge air raid turned abortive before it reached its
objective?... It was the 15th of July.
Slowly, by devious channels, the news spread. The enemy had struck
again, had launched such a blow as warfare had not seen up to this
period.... And Paris waited for the outcome. Then dull explosions were
heard in various parts of the city at regular intervals.... Big Bertha
was at her work again; the long-range cannon was once more bombarding
Paris. As in the days past, one might see wagons loaded high with trunks
and personal belongings moving toward a gate of the city or toward a
railway station as the more apprehensive abandoned their homes for
places of greater security. These were days when it was impossible to
find tenants for the top floors of apartment-houses. There was a feeling
that one was safer from Bertha and the bomb with at least one _étage_
between him and the roof....
Papers were eagerly snatched from kiosks and from news-venders, who ran
through the crowds with such speed that it was almost impossible to buy
their wares—but the news was scanty. At least the guns were not heard
again. After that first tremendous artillery preparation there was no
sound from the direction of Château-Thierry and Reims. The silence, the
pall which the censorship threw over events, was portentous,
threatening. People recalled the inexorability of the last two German
attacks. If this one proceeded as its predecessors had done, Paris would
be made untenable. There would be a siege.... There was talk of complete
evacuation.
Then tidings of a more encouraging nature filtered in. The _boches_ had
advanced a little here and there, had been checked at this and that
point. There had been no breaking through, no headlong rush upon Paris,
no marching down roads in columns of four with guns over shoulders.
On the 16th the apprehension was less, but the tension was still
present. The 17th saw Paris again almost at the normal of war-times. It
was reassured. It was rumored that Foch had given his word that Paris
was safe. The magic of one man’s name was potent to reassure the
millions of citizens of the metropolis. If Foch said Paris was safe,
then Paris was safe.
Then came the 18th, which dawned as other days dawn, with the same sun
rising in the east, with the same blue skies above, and the same breezes
moving over the surface of the same earth. But it was a day not like
other days. History may well set it down as the Day of Days, for it
marked the beginning of the end, the first note of the finale of the
crashing, discordant Germanic opera.... The Allies had counterattacked,
and fear was dead. That was the significant thing. The 18th of July,
A.D., 1918, marked the death of fear in the heart of Paris. From that
date onward there would be no news but good news. Terror of the Hun had
become a thing which one remembered but would no more experience.
The Élysées Palace Hôtel knew by night that our First and Second
divisions had struck at the base of the German salient about Reims and
that our Twenty-sixth Division had battered the apex before
Château-Thierry—and at last the American Expeditionary Force was in the
war. The Americans had come! The Americans were ready! The Americans had
started! Number 10 rue Ste.-Anne knew these things, as did the American
censorship high up in the Bourse. It was a day of exultation for
Americans in Paris....
In spite of censorships, in spite of military secrecy, in spite of
minute precautions, rumors circulate through armies which have an
undeniable basis of fact. On the 4th of July Kendall heard the soldiers
of the First Division stating confidently that they would march through
Paris streets on Bastille Day. No one had told them. Nobody knew how the
rumor earned its life, but it was there, and the event proved its
reliability. So an army rumor receives a degree of belief which does not
seem to be warranted. Rumors were a plentiful harvest now; big rumors
and little rumors ... and among them, circulating through the officers
of the Intelligence Department in Paris, was the whisper that some
officer or officers were to be sent back to America either on a mission
or to undertake permanent work.
Ken heard this prophecy early in the morning, and it troubled him. He
had no cause for imagining that he would be selected, yet he might be
selected. The chances were, perhaps, minute, but, nevertheless, they
were present, and it was far from his desire to be returned to America
to run down German sympathizers in Hoboken or to take a desk in some
crowded bureau in Washington. While he was in France there always was
the hope that he might be transferred to active duty with some regiment
at the front. Like all men in the American Expeditionary Force, he
wanted to serve at the front, and he did not want to return to
America—at least until the work was done. Man after man Kendall had
heard to speak longingly of America, but to couple with his homesickness
the quick statement that he did not want to return until the job was
done. It was a sort of religion—the cleaning up of that job. Somehow
each man seemed to feel that the success of the army depended on his
presence, and that to be sent home before victory arrived would be to
deprive him of something precious which he had earned.... It was so with
Ken.
But he had a stronger motive than most for wishing to stay in France. It
was Andree....
Suddenly and very poignantly he realized what it would mean if he were
compelled to part from Andree. It seemed to him that she had become a
part of him, an essential part without which he could not continue. She
had brought an essence into his life which was sweet and desirable and
wonderful. He knew that no other woman could bring to him what Andree
had brought so unconsciously, yet so generously.... She was Andree!...
Andree! The world could show but one.
What was to be the outcome? It was a question he had evaded time and
again, well knowing that it must some day be faced. He did not face it
now, though it urged itself upon his attention. He did not believe the
world had seen a more precious thing than their love—and yet, because of
his training and the imprint of heredity, that love was questionable,
tainted with irregularity. It was good, sweet, pure, but it was
irregular as the Middle West and Plymouth Rock perceived irregularity.
He had never known Andree to utter an immodest word or to think a
thought that was not clean and good. He had wondered at a certain
diffident loftiness in her thoughts. She was a woman whose soul was to
be regarded with awe, as any virtuous soul is to be regarded with awe.
He did not believe he saw her falsely, nor that love blinded him to
defects which should be apparent. He knew he saw her truly, and that she
was worthy of all his love.... And yet his friends, his neighbors—above
all, his mother—would despise her as a woman of light virtue, as a thing
of evil.... He could see the seething among the gossips if Andree were
to be set down in their midst, and he despised them.... But—
Again he evaded. He had not the courage to ask himself what he would do
when the moment for doing arrived.... He could not give her up. That was
the thought that came now—that she was indispensable.... But would he
have the courage to face the vestibule of the Presbyterian church with
her? He did not ask.
One of those moods of depression to which he was liable when his
reflections were troubled settled upon him. He was acutely unhappy.
Those moods possessed a physical sensation, not a pain so much as a
consciousness of the existence of his body, which was very disturbing.
It was as if his arms and legs had suddenly become vivid. At such times
he did not want companionship, could not have answered conversational
advances. The life within him seemed to become as putty—a dead mass. The
only relief was to walk and walk and walk.
He left the office to trudge to the apartment, meaning to eat lightly
and to wander about Paris until the obsession was ejected.... At the
entrance to the building the concierge was standing, waiting for him.
“Oh, monsieur ... monsieur,” she said, and broke forth into weeping.
He was not surprised. Such scenes were to be expected in those days when
every mail brought word that some loved one had been demanded of his
country. He patted her shoulder awkwardly.
“You have had evil news, madame,” he said. “I am so sorry.”
Through her tears rage flared. “The _boches_,” she exclaimed. “Why is it
that the good God allows such creatures to be!... What good can it do
them? But they would laugh and be joyous. It is so. I have read....
These killers of babies!”
“What is it, madame? Your son? Have you had the news?”
“My son, monsieur, is gone these two years,” she said, not without a
lift of the shoulders. “It would not be that. When one is a soldier one
must march.... To kill the men—that is war. But the babies—the helpless
little babies!... They are not men, monsieur, but monsters....”
“Yes.... Yes,” he answered, not knowing what to say.
“And monsieur loved her, did he not? It was Arlette who declared it to
be so. Always she spoke of the fondness of monsieur for the _petite
fille_—the tiny Arlette.”
“Little Arlette! What do you mean, madame? What has happened to little
Arlette?”
“_La longue portée, monsieur._ Again it began to fire this day. It is
that you have heard its explosions.... This Big Bertha of the boche that
murders babies!... _La pauvre enfant!_ She is playing in the street
before her home. Out of the sky comes the shell of this so wicked
cannon. There is a noise of great frightfulness.” She covered her eyes.
“When the smoke makes to lift itself and one can see—there lies little
Arlette....”
“Killed!” Kendall felt something that was rage and grief clutch his
throat. “Have they killed that child?”
“She still lives, monsieur, and asks for you. It is so.... But she will
die. It is dreadful. Yes.... Both legs, monsieur, at the knee. They were
swept from beneath her as with a scythe ... and she still lives—asking
for monsieur.”
“Where?”
She told him the hospital, and without a word he turned, running, to
search for a taxicab. The thing was incredible. Little Arlette, that
mite from fairyland, maimed and bleeding and dying. Such things could
not be. This was not war.... He raged, though tears were wet upon his
cheeks.... As he rode, the dainty figure of the child stood before him,
chin upraised, mouth opened birdwise to sing. He saw her as if she were
real.... And then he saw that scene in the street: children playing, the
sun daring to shine.... A sudden rushing in the air above, a tremendous
detonation. He saw it all, even to the most minute happening. He saw
little Arlette standing erect, stricken with sudden fear, saw the burst
of the explosion, saw the child diminish suddenly in stature as her
little legs were flicked from under her and she dropped upon bleeding
stumps before toppling to the pavement.... He uttered a hoarse groan of
protest.... He cowered back into a corner of the taxicab and shut his
eyes, as if that could shut out the pictures of his imagination.
And she had called for him!
It seemed he was expected at the hospital, for he was escorted
immediately to the little bed upon which Arlette lay. He had dreaded to
see her, flinching from a sight which he apprehended might be horrible.
He forced himself to look ... and the horror passed. The little face
upon the pillow was bloodless, her eyes closed. She seemed not alive,
but a thing of fragile loveliness carved from some material brought into
being by the fairies for this very purpose.... There was no trace of
pain—only motionlessness, a mysterious gravity ... and peace. Old
Arlette sat with eyes fixed unwaveringly on the little face; the child’s
mother cowered with her face against Arlette’s ample shoulder.... Ken
stood in silence.
The nurse touched his arm. “Speak to her,” she whispered. “It will make
no difference. She has asked many times for you.”
“She is—alive?”
“And conscious.”
“It will not—harm her to arouse her?”
“Nothing can harm her.”
Kendall understood. Little Arlette was past hurt now, and he had been
brought there to give to the child her last little moment of
happiness.... He knelt by the cot.
“_Mignonne_,” he said, softly.
She opened her eyes and stared at him, and then smiled.
“He is come. Regard him. I said he would come.” Her voice was so faint
as to be almost no voice at all.
“Of a certainty I have come,” he said. “What could keep me away from my
little sweetheart?... Does—does it hurt?”
“Hurt?” She seemed vaguely surprised. “What should hurt, monsieur?” She
did not know what had happened to her.
“May I kiss you?” he asked.
“But yes. Is it not that I am to be your wife? I wish you to kiss me.”
“Do you love me very much, _mignonne_?”
“Oh, very much.... We shall be very happy, monsieur, in this America of
the North. I am too little to be married now, is it not? But it will not
be long.... My grandmother says I grow very fast.”
“I have seen it myself.”
She sighed. “I am glad. I had fear that you might grow tired of
waiting....”
“I would wait for you forever, _mignonne_.”
Again she smiled. “I shall sing for monsieur. One should stand up to
sing ... but grandmother says I must not stand up to-day.”
“Will it harm her?” Kendall asked, quickly, of the nurse.
“Nothing will harm her,” she repeated.
“Then sing, dear ... sing ‘Madelon.’”
The birdlike lips opened and the song came forth, faint as a morning
breeze, that song of the little barmaid who stands to the _poilu_ for
the wife or sweetheart at home, the little barmaid whom he kisses in his
loneliness, and in kissing her feels that he is touching the lips of one
far away.... It was a song which, to Middle-Western ears, sounded
strangely on the lips of a dying child, but it did not offend
Kendall.... It sprang from the soul of France.
There ceased to be any semblance of an air to the song; it became a
faint whisper, halting, coming now a word at a time. Arlette’s eyes were
closed.... Now her lips moved, but there was no sound.... Presently the
lips ceased to move....
Kendall turned to the nurse, who nodded. He arose suddenly, looked down
upon the child and then rushed from the room ... and as he traversed the
corridor he found himself repeating again and again: “With a song on her
lips.... With a song on her lips....”
For two months experiences had been jostling one another to enter
Kendall Ware’s life. It seemed as if there was a conspiracy among events
to modify him, to change the fiber of him, and to break down the
structure that had been himself when he landed in France. As compared
with these past sixty days the previous ten thousand days of his life
had been colorless and without life.... It had required twenty-seven
years of personal existence and more than one generation of predecessors
to make him what he was—and now a mere fraction of time, a handful of
minutes, were striving to undo all that had been accomplished and to
create a new being. The question to be answered was: Can the present
overcome the past? Can events master the fiber growth of heredity? It
seemed an experiment to determine if individuality is a fixed quantity
or if it is subject to revolution.... So far it might be asserted that
Kendall had been modified—but no more.
Little Arlette had been a bit of humor in his life—no more. He had been
unconscious that she was anything more. But now in her catastrophe she
loomed larger and assumed significance. His was a world of symbolisms, a
religion of symbolisms. As his mother saw the hand of God in every
event—the hand of God interposed with direct reference to herself—so
Kendall, in a minor degree, and perhaps with something of
unconsciousness, was subject to the same obsession. He looked for the
lessons of events. He was apprehensive of the warnings of events. An
implacable God regarded him under lowering brows and now and then caused
an event to occur for his guidance.... So he looked for the significance
of Arlette’s murder.
He had an uncomfortable feeling that innocence had been caused to perish
for his benefit—as a lesson to him. It made him a sort of accessory
after the fact. He rebelled in a vague way, feeling dimly that God had
no right to implicate him in such a crime. Old catch phrases came back
to him as he walked toward his home, phrases such as that one must
search for the divine purpose behind the event; that the ways of God
pass human understanding; that it is all for the best!... There was no
comfort in these. He could descry no divine purpose. For that matter, he
could find no divine purpose back of the war.... Yet God permitted it,
furthered it, as it were.... And because it was, because Divinity
permitted it to occur, it followed indisputably that it must be right
for it to occur.... He would not have dared to define his creed as
stating that his God was one who committed wholesale crime that a remote
benefit might accrue. Yet that was his creed and the creed of hundreds
of thousands of his fellow-countrymen.... It was strange that he should
remember Andree’s attitude toward God at that moment—her saying that the
eyes of the good God must be wet with tears to see a wickedness. But he
did remember, and was grateful to her.
He wandered in a maze of gloomy theorizings, a maze which was nothing
but a maze, which led to no desired center. It was the struggle between
present and past, and it was a drawn battle. It only left him bewildered
and gloomy, treading a bog and miring at every step.... Then he became
aware that he wanted Andree, that she was necessary to him, because
there was something simple and sure about her. She gave him a handhold
to cling to. He felt that she knew, and he wanted the security and
uplift of her knowledge. The universe was toppling, and Andree could
stabilize it again—but Andree was not coming.... He felt he would never
need her more than at this moment, but she was residing in her land of
mystery, and he had neither her name nor address....
The stark fact was that little Arlette was dead—and with a song on her
tiny lips. He would never again think of France without thinking of
Arlette ... without seeing Arlette as a symbol of something at once pure
and ruthless....