Now began a phase of Kendall Ware’s life which was to continue for a
matter of six weeks, a period full of conflict between anomalies, of
indecisions, of procrastinations. There stood out high moments of
happiness, and there were dark descents into unlighted realms of
self-distrust. He questioned everything, doubted everything, and most
especially did he doubt his own ability to weigh events and to choose
between the better and the worse. He almost doubted if he had the power
of choice and felt a dour leaning toward predestination. Much of this
was self-deception, and conscious self-deception. He was becoming
increasingly aware of a day when he would have to make a choice and
reach a decision, but he was afraid of that day. He knew the choice was
his, and could belong to no other individual or force. _He_ must choose.
The event was in his keeping.
Three major questions presented themselves: First, what was he going to
do about Andree? Second, what was he going to do about Maude Knox? And,
third, which was interwoven with the first, what about the vestibule of
the Presbyterian church?
Ken had not the least doubt that he loved Andree. That was the one sure
fact in the whole confused mass. He loved Andree and Andree loved him.
To many young men, perhaps to most, this alone would have answered all
his questions. Perhaps the ordinary young man would have thought of
nothing else, but, perceiving that Andree was essential to him, he would
have taken her and made her his own in permanence with due forms of
marriage. This would have been the natural step for youth to
take—disregarding consequences and challenging the future. But Ken was
not an ordinary young man. He was a young man who was afraid of the
future, who had been brought up to know a lively fear of the opinion of
the community among which he lived. “What will folks say?” was a
question he had heard propounded from his earliest childhood, until the
thing that “they” would say had assumed a place of importance in his
affairs second to nothing. It had almost confused his perceptions of
right and wrong, for, even as a small boy, it had been made to appear to
him that his mother was not so much concerned with the righteousness of
any given act as she was by the effect of that act upon her circle of
neighbors. Undoubtedly this was a mistaken notion, but it had at least
the color of truth.
He recalled vividly how a certain prominent member of his church had
become an absconder and the coming of the news of it into his household.
He remembered how his father had said: “Mother, we don’t know all the
ins and outs of it. Maybe he’s more sinned against than sinning. We
don’t know....” His mother had rejected that view harshly. “Whatever
will people say about him? It’ll be terrible on his wife, and him so
prominent in the church.” She had not said, “What will God say about
him?” but, “What will people say?” His sin, so it had seemed to Ken’s
young mind, had not been so much in absconding with money as it had been
in creating adverse talk.... This attitude of mind had altered somewhat
with years, but never had his fear of clacking tongues diminished. It
stood for the supreme punishment of evil ... not hell, but gossip.
So his first and third questions stood together, and he dared not force
himself to answer them. The second question could not be answered until
he had satisfied the other two.... There came a fourth question, upon
which, ultimately, must hang the answers to all, and that was, “Can a
man marry a woman with whom he has had such a relation as I have had
with Andree?” In other words, could he, by his own act, unfit Andree to
become his own wife? This question did not present itself poignantly for
some time, but it was beginning to formulate in the back of his mind. As
yet he was considering only the expediency of matters; later he would
find trouble with their moral and sociological aspects.
Matters further complicated themselves when Maude Knox informed him that
she had been assigned permanently to an administrative position in
Paris. He would be compelled to see her frequently. He would want to see
her frequently. Somehow this seemed unfair to Andree, but he knew that
Maude could not remain in the city without his seeing a great deal of
her. Andree would discover this, and what would Andree do about it? With
Maude Knox absent her importance receded, was held in abeyance; if she
were here she would grow increasingly important—and what would come of
it?
“You don’t seem overjoyed,” she said.
“I’m glad you’re going to be here,” he said, “but just the same, I wish
you weren’t.”
“Why? You aren’t compelled to have anything to do with me if you don’t
want to.”
“That’s it. I am compelled, and I don’t know whether I want to or not.”
“Well!...” She drew the word out to its full value. “I must say you’re
frank.”
“Please don’t be offended. I don’t mean to be offensive, but things have
gotten so rottenly complicated with me that I’m afraid of another
complication.”
“And I’m a complication?”
He nodded. “You know it,” he said. “I think you know more about what a
complication you are than I do.”
“You are thinking Andree will be jealous.”
“I’m thinking she may have cause to be jealous.”
“And you don’t want her to have?”
“That’s just it. I don’t know.... I don’t want anything ever to happen
to make her unhappy. You and I have talked pretty frankly, haven’t we?
Somehow you seem to understand things over here, though you are as
American as I am—and you—well, you don’t make a fuss. But even at that,
you don’t know how I feel about her.... Maybe I’m going to be in love
with you, and maybe I’m in love with you already. I don’t know.... But I
do know that I love her.”
“If you are by way of making love to me you’ve invented a new method.”
“I’m not making love to you. I guess I’m trying to reason things out
aloud.”
“Using me as a wall to bounce your ball against.”
He smiled without mirth. “Something like that. I know I love Andree, but
yet I can see myself in love with you.... I’ve asked you before if a man
can be in love with two girls at the same time.”
“I don’t know. Not in the same way, anyhow.”
“It would be different. If I did love you I would be thinking about
marriage all the time. It would mean marriage. I would want you for my
wife.... But Andree—she doesn’t mean that. At least marriage doesn’t
figure in it. I can’t explain exactly, but it’s as if there never had
been such a thing in the world as marriage—only love.”
“I’m not sure but that is better. Even if I am American I don’t know but
I’d rather have that kind.”
“Andree isn’t just an adventure, an incident. She’s more important than
that—the most important thing that ever happened to me.... I can’t
explain. I can feel it, but I can’t express what it is. It isn’t that I
couldn’t marry her, nor that I wouldn’t be mighty lucky to have her for
a wife.... It seems, somehow, that marriage doesn’t signify—isn’t
necessary.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re trying to get at.”
“I don’t, either. I’m trying to find out.... But I do know that I don’t
want to hurt her or make her sorry she has loved me.”
“How about me?” she asked, suddenly.
“You?”
“How about hurting me?” she asked. “You’ve made a weird sort of love to
me. You’ve balanced on the fence and told me you might fall in love with
me. You’ve carried on a sort of rubber-elastic courtship—ready to snap
back out of reach if I seemed likely to catch you.... Have you thought
about me at all? Really, I’ve some right to be considered.”
She was right. Undoubtedly he had not been fair to her. He had thought
only of himself and of his sentiments toward her, but scarcely at all of
her sentiments toward him.
“Why,” he said, “I don’t believe I’ve thought of that side of it. It
never occurred to me that you—that you might be in love with me.”
“Well, I’m not.” She spoke sharply.
“Do you mean you never could be?”
“There! Of all things!... You want me to tell you that if you make up
your mind to condescend to love me I’ll be ready to drop into your
hands. You want to have your cake and eat it. I’d say you were the most
completely selfish person I’ve ever encountered.”
“Really I’m not. It isn’t selfishness.... It’s just that I am so
confused by the whole situation that I don’t know what to do.... You
don’t know how relieved and happy I would be if there was nobody but
you, and we were going to be married. You are just the kind of wife—”
“That your neighbors would approve of,” she interrupted. “I know. What I
don’t know is why I keep on talking to you like this. I ought to send
you about your business and tell you never to come near me again ... but
I’m not going to. You’ve told me in effect that you would be in love
with me if it weren’t for somebody else, and that the only reason you
are pleased to consider me as a candidate at all is because you are
afraid your family and your neighbors would make a fuss if you took the
other woman home. That’s the truth, and you know it is.”
“Well,” he said, ruefully, and not wisely, “so long as you don’t love
me, what does it matter?”
“So long as I don’t love you it doesn’t matter in the least.”
“But—”
She shook her head. “We sha’n’t talk about my loving you. I’m not going
to love you.”
“Do you mean that?”
“Decidedly.”
“You wouldn’t marry me?”
“Of course not.”
“Why?”
“Really, I think you’re out of your mind. Even if I loved you—which I
don’t—do you think I’d sit and wait for you to reason out that you had
better fall in love with me, and then grab you with wild eagerness—after
you make up your mind to chuck another woman whom you have assured me
that you do love?”
“But suppose I do love you? Would the fact of my—my affair with Andree
prevent you from marrying me?”
“If you loved me and I loved you nothing in the world would stop me from
marrying you.”
“Anyhow, I’ve got that question answered.”
“And much good may it do you.”
“Why?”
“Because the condition doesn’t exist. If it did exist I might answer
differently. I might think then that I could never marry a man who had
done such a thing.”
This conversation took place at noon in a little café on the rue
St.-Honoré not distant from the Y. M. C. A. headquarters. Kendall had
met Maude Knox as he was seeking a place to lunch, and they had gone
together. Now he wished he might sit and argue the question until his
status with her was definitely settled, if it could be definitely
settled, but she refused to pursue the subject.
“No, that’s all we talk about that. You can pick out any subject you
want to, but we are through talking about you and me.... And, besides,
I’ve got to get back to work.”
“When shall we have dinner together?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re angry with me.”
“No, but I’m disgusted with myself because I’m not. If I had a spark of
pride I’d never speak to you again.”
“Why?”
“Ken Ware, you are a miracle of denseness. Don’t you know that this
whole conversation has been impossible—that it couldn’t have happened? I
never imagined such cool effrontery! But I’m not offended, and I don’t
know why.... I’ll dine with you some evening soon—but not to touch this
subject again. Don’t ever mention it—never! I’ve got some rights to be
thought about, and I’m going to think about them. There are just two
things you may do: either propose to me out and out, so I can refuse
you, or else treat me as a friend, and no trimmings. I mean it!”
“But I don’t want to do either.”
“You’ll have to.” She laughed, and slid deftly from behind the table.
“Are you going to walk up the street with me?”
“Let me pay the check.”
He called a waiter and asked for _l’addition_ and then walked to the
corner of the rue d’Aguesseau with Maude. She did not permit him to
linger.
“Good-by,” she said, turning abruptly away. “Drop me a note when you
feel in a condescending mood.”
That evening when he got home he found Bert and Madeleine there ahead of
him.
“Andree’s coming, too,” said Bert. “I met her this afternoon and told
her there was going to be a party.... This is a farewell. See
Madeleine’s tears?”
“Farewell?”
“Yes. I’m going away for a couple of weeks—some buildings to look after.
I don’t mind, but Madeleine’s darn near heartbroken.”
“Oh yes,” said Madeleine, gaily. “My heart it break. I am so lonely....
You see, Monsieur Bert he is the on’y American _officier_ in France.
When he is gone, there is no other.”
“You don’t mean that,” said Ken.
“Of course she does,” Bert said, with a grin.
Ken shrugged his shoulders and went to his room to tidy up a bit for
dinner. He heard them laugh, and Bert’s voice said, “He thinks we are
very naughty.”
He did think so, but in spite of himself he liked Madeleine, indeed,
felt a real friendship for her. She was not like Andree, but she
possessed qualities which could not pass unnoticed. She was generous,
kind, always concerned for Bert’s comfort and financial welfare. There
was not a mercenary hair in her head, if there was not a serious hair.
Even though there was nothing deep and enduring and lofty in her
relations with Bert, there was nothing sordid. She was seeking her
little moments of happiness, seeking them lightly, gaily, carelessly....
Ken excused his own conduct because it was concerned with a great love
and a beautiful fidelity. There were no such matters between Bert and
Madeleine, yet Ken could not find it in his heart to denounce her as
bad. According to all his standards she was bad—a light creature. But,
somehow, he did not see her as a light woman nor as wicked.
It would have been difficult to find any one more different from
Andree.... Ken had become used to accepting Andree’s judgments in large
measure, and Andree did not declare Madeleine _méchante_. She, too,
liked the girl, accepted her as a friend and equal.... It was all a part
of this strange world with its upsetting standards....
The bell interrupted his moral reflections and he hurried to the door
with that thrill of anticipation which Andree’s arrival always
caused.... There she stood, very straight and still and grave, just as
he knew she would be. She raised her eyes to his exactly as he knew she
would raise them, and smiled appealingly. He drew her inside, into his
arms.
“I’ve been needing you, _mignonne_,” he said. “Everything goes wrong
when you’re not with me.”
“I am here,” she said, brightly. “Behol’! all is now well. I shall let
nothing trouble you.”
“Do you love me?”
“Yes.... And you?”
“You are very beautiful.”
“That is well.... No, I am not beautiful, but it is well you theenk it
is so. I am happy.”
She regarded him solicitously. “You are ver’ tired. Have you work’
_beaucoup_? It is not that you have an illness?”
“No.... No. Everything is all right now that you are here. You are the
only person who is _right_ in the whole world.”
“Oh!... Oh!... I am ver’ wonderful! I do not know thees till I meet you.
I theenk I am only a yo’ng girl, but behol’! I have ver’ suddenly
become—how do you say?—The _dictionnaire_—queek. The _dictionnaire_!”
Laughing gaily, she searched with ludicrous haste for the word and could
not find it. “Oh, it is terrible! W’at I am I cannot say. I am something
that ees not in the _dictionnaire_. To be a thing that is not in the
_dictionnaire_ is mos’ grand and étonnant—astonishing. I shall to be
ver’ vain.”
Her eyes were dancing with an impish light. She seemed very young, a
child, endowed with some magical quality which reassured him, dispelled
the heaviness which rested on him.
“Have Monsieur Bert and Mademoiselle Madeleine yet arrive’?”
“They’re in the _salon_.”
“Come. We shall see them—now.” Again that quaint gesture of poking
downward at the floor with a slender finger. “Thees minute.”
The girls shook hands formally and lapsed into an amazing splutter of
French. Ken looked from one to the other, from Andree, tiny, fragile,
dark, elfin, to Madeleine, tall, slender, fair of hair, always laughing.
Madeleine seemed nothing but embodied laughter; Andree seemed to him now
as she always seemed to him, a mystery, incomprehensible—a being come to
him out of a land of wonders.
“Bert is going away,” he said.
“For how long?”
“Three weeks.”
“Oh, it ees a lifetime. Mademoiselle will be ver’ sad.”
“She says not,” Ken said.
“It is not possible. She will be mos’ sad.”
“Not Madeleine,” said Bert. “She’s going to find another American
officer to keep her happy while I’m gone.”
“But she could not—_non, non!_ You do not theenk!”
Madeleine laughed gaily.
“What would you do if I went away for three weeks?” Ken asked.
“You do not go!... It ees not true.” Her eyes grew big and her lips
parted as she waited for his answer.
“No, I’m not going any place.... But if I should go, what would you do?”
“I should be ver’ _solitaire_. Ver’ often I should weep. And I should
work ver’ hard at all times—to make the days go more fast.”
“Would you find another American officer to help you pass the time?”
“You know,” she said, simply.
“_Oh, là là!_” exclaimed Madeleine. “Regard these children. It ees the
great love. _Toujours fidèle._ It ees mos’ beautiful.”
“It is ever’thing,” said Andree. “You, mademoiselle, love a ver’ little.
So you are happy a ver’ little. _N’est-ce pas?_ I love ver’ much, so I
am happy ver’ much. It is clear. You theenk you are mos’ happy, but you
do not know. It is not until you love, mademoiselle, until you love
weeth all the love there is that you have the great happiness.”
“It may be so.... But also the great sadness. Is it not so? Regard me. I
love thees Monsieur Bert a leetle. He makes to go away, so I am sad a
leetle. Yes? But, then, I love him so ver’, ver’ much and he makes to go
away. And then?...” She shrugged her shoulders. “Behol’—then I am in
despair. I theenk my way is more better. Not the great joy, but also not
the great sadness.”
“_Non!... Non!..._ It ees not so. There is the great sadness, it is
true. _Certainement!_ But even that, mademoiselle, is sweet. Bicause one
remembers the great love and the great joy. The so great happiness has
been. It will nevair die. No. For so long as one lives the happiness
will remain.... The grief—one must expect grief.... It is a part of the
worl’.”
“_Vous êtes un poète, mademoiselle...._ You write the poetry. Therefore
you are different. The poet makes of sadness a great thing, a wonderful
thing.... But I—I, mademoiselle, am cashier in a shop. I do not have the
so beautiful thoughts. No, I am jus’ a girl that loves to be happy
always. I cannot think the wonderful thoughts like the poet—_non_. To me
it seems that ver’ many leetle happinesses without a sorrow are more
better than one great, wonderful happiness of the poet—but also with the
terrible grief that makes to kill.... So I love a little and laugh all
the days and am ver’ content.”
“Would you not wish to love—to have forever one man and to love him
weeth the great love?”
“Ah, that is another matter. Always to have one lover, one husband! It
is different. Then I would love—yes. I would love as much as any one....
But it is not possible. Do I not know? Where do I get the husband?
_Pouf!_ There is no husband for me, and as for lovers—thees American
lovers—they come, and it is a little while when they go. So I do not
love. I make believe to love, and so I am happy.... But why,
mademoiselle, give to one of them the great love when one knows well it
is but for a day? It is to throw away the love, is it not?”
Andree was silent; all were silent. Madeleine had thrust the situation
before Kendall and Andree baldly. Ken drew Andree to him, but she did
not respond; she was cold, frightened.
“But for a day ...” she said.
“Monsieur Bert and I we do not deceive ourselves. We tell each other
that thees is not for always.... It is play—so there is no cloud between
us.... But you—oh, you are ver’ wrong, mademoiselle. In your heart you
know.... You love Monsieur Ken and he loves you—it is true. But—ask him
the question, mademoiselle—does he stay forever? Or, when the day comes
on which he mus’ depart, will he take you weeth him to thees America?...
Ask him, mademoiselle, and if he tell you you shall be weeth him always,
then I am wrong.” She looked at Ken. He was conscious that Andree was
looking at him appealingly, and that even Bert was demanding something
of him with his eyes.
He might have lied. He might have assured Andree that she should never
leave him, but with her eyes upon him he could not lie.... He did not
know. This was the thing that was making him miserable—the question of
whether he should take Andree to America with him.... He did not know.
Therefore he answered, lamely:
“I love you, _mignonne_.”
“It ees not an answer,” said Madeleine, inexorably.
“I can’t answer.... I can’t see the future.... I don’t know. All I know,
Andree, is that I do love you. Why can’t we be satisfied with that until
we have to decide?... The war will be long. I shall be here for years,
perhaps.... Oh, my dear, I cannot think of a life without you—but I do
not know....”
He was conscious that he was proving inadequate to the situation, that
he was not measuring up to what Andree had a right to expect of him, and
he was afraid of what she might do or say. Madeleine shrugged her
shoulders expressively. He looked at Andree apprehensively, saw her eyes
flash with anger, her little figure grow tense, her lips compress. It
was the first time he had ever seen her angry.... He had offended her.
She was in a rage with him, and rightly in a rage.... She stepped close
to him and clasped his arm with both hands, turning her face toward
Madeleine and Bert.
“See!” she exclaimed, and her black eyes flashed, “you have make him
unhappy weeth your questions.... I shall not have questions asked of
him.... _Non!_ He shall not be troubled. It is not the affair of any one
but himself and me.... I will not permit it.... What is it to you? It is
for us alone. If it is _nécessaire_ that he leave me one day—that is for
him to say. Is it that I have ask or demand anything? _Non, non,
non!..._ He is ver’ good, and I love him—jus’ like he love’ me.... I
know that and I am satisfy.... You shall not make him to be unhappy
weeth questions....”
She faced them, tense, breathing rapidly. Her hands clutched his arm and
pressed it to her breast....
“Andree ...” he said, hoarsely. “Andree ...”
She smiled up at him, her face softening, her eyes becoming big and
tender. “Ever’thing is well,” she said.
Bert drew a long breath. “By Jupiter!” he said, and there was admiration
in his eyes. “I’ll tell you what, Andree, if you’ll have me, if you can
put up with a roughneck like me, I’ll take you for keeps ... and to hell
with the consequences.”
Madeleine laughed and shook her head. “You see how _fidèle_ thees
Monsieur Bert is.... _Là là!_ But you shall not have heem, mademoiselle,
until I am through weeth him.... See, there is the head of Arlette....
Let us have the dinner and be gay!”