The Little Moment of Happiness

by Clarence Budington Kelland

“And so I have not fear that you go.... I have only fear that something happen bifore our little moment of happiness is done—never to come back again. Do you onderstan’? One day, for all, thees love it begins to fade and be less lovely. It becomes less strong and not weeth such wonderfulness.... I have seen. At las’ it is but a friendship and a memory. But it is a great and a fine friendship bicause of the memory. Is it not so?... And that is marriage, my friend ... that friendship. It is but a good regard of each for the other which comes like the bread after the beautiful growing wheat.... Am I ver’ foolish?”

“No.... No....”

“Bicause of thees that I believe, then I am not sad, but ver’ happy, and I do not fear. I have what is worth all other theengs—thees leetle moment of happiness which is love.... I would pay for it weeth ever’thing. It is worth to pay for weeth much sorrow and weeth much loneliness.... If you mus’ go—well, dear friend, let it be bifore thees leetle moment fades.... But we mus’ pretend it shall never fade and that we are together always as thees.... It is more better so.”

She drew his lips down to hers, and he knew that blind, throbbing, winged happiness which has no language, no symbols, no words of description, which can never be remembered except as a mysterious, haunting ecstasy which once was living and real, which leaves behind but the dim outline of its spirit and an elusive something as of a sweet scent that once tingled the nostrils for an instant, to be wafted away forever....

CHAPTER XVIII

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....”