The Little Moment of Happiness

by Clarence Budington Kelland

“The folks won’t realize this war till they see boys on crutches....”

Before them the promenaders straggled, dim forms in the dusk, only to be distinguished when they passed within reach of the arm. There were parties of three or four girls of the working-class hurrying home with packages under their arms; there were other parties who dawdled and laughed and jostled one another and giggled—young shop or factory girls out to enjoy the evening. There were young men and young women who walked very close to each other, sometimes holding hands. There were single young men and young men in pairs out for walk and adventure. There were officers of all armies and a sprinkling of American doughboys ready for whatever might happen, often three or four of them with a single girl, all jolly and laughing and having the most enjoyable sort of time trying to make themselves understood to one another. At a little distance two neat-looking girls were seriously giving a French lesson to a group of American soldiers.... It was such a company of strollers and dawdlers as the concerns of the world had never brought together before, drawn from all habitable quarters of the globe because the Hun, in his ruthless ambition, had thought to spread his Kultur over the face of the planet....

There were long lapses in the conversation, for both Maude and Kendall found a gripping interest in the passers-by.

“Just think,” said Maude, presently, “almost every girl we see has lost a father or a brother or a sweetheart or a husband. Almost every one.... A waitress in our hotel told me this morning that eleven men of her family were dead.”

“Yes,” he said.

“But somehow the thing that—that frightens me most is not to think of the women who have lost fathers and brothers, or even husbands.... It is the girls who have lost sweethearts. It is the thought of the boys who are dead and who were to have been the husbands of these girls.... Think of the hundreds of them who have lost husbands whom, perhaps, they have never met ... whom they can never meet.... It’s awful to think of a million girls who have got to be old maids! They don’t want to be, but they’ve got to be.... War has taken from them the husbands they never had.”

“I’ve thought of that,” he said.

“It means these girls have lost more than life—they have had killed for them the possibility of living.... They can never have homes and families.... The future is nothing but a stretch of years for them—lonesome years without happiness and without sorrow.”

“I suppose it is as hard to be deprived of sorrow as it is of happiness,” said Kendall, slowly.

She paused before replying. “Yes,” she said, “I can understand that—if the sorrow is brought because you love. Sorrow is a necessary experience of life. Emerson’s essay on compensation is all about that....” She paused again and then broke out with a vehemence foreign to her. “I don’t blame them—I don’t blame them a bit. Everybody is entitled to live and to have the experiences of life. I never thought I should feel this way, but it is so.... If you can have a life full of living you are entitled to snatch your little moments of happiness—just as these French girls are doing. It is their right, because it is the best life has to offer them.... It isn’t France alone—it might happen in America. Suppose half the girls at home were deprived of the possibility of marriage.... It’s awful.”