The Little Moment of Happiness

by Clarence Budington Kelland

“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....