The Little Moment of Happiness

by Clarence Budington Kelland

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.