The Little Moment of Happiness

by Clarence Budington Kelland

Kendall walked on, turning now toward home. He felt that he could not sleep unless he walked himself to exhaustion, so he continued on and on and on. His consciousness was the ground of a battle between the inheritances that came from his mother and those which came from his gentle father—in which his own individual, peculiar reason sought to intervene.

“Look out,” said his mother. “She’s French, and she must be bad. She’s getting you into her clutches....”

“Now, now,” said his father, “she’s a sweet little thing, perty as a picture. I don’t see how there can be harm in her, and if there should be, it wouldn’t be wilful harm.”

“She’s nice,” said Kendall himself. “She’s a nice girl, and nothing’s going to happen. Why—I tell you, she’s a nice girl!”

And so it went, suspicion, accusation, argument, defense, until his brain whirled and he was miserable, but always his intelligence, lighted by meager experience, emerged triumphant with the declaration that she was a nice girl, and no harm could come of it....

Kendall forgot that he was a guest in a strange world; that his mode of thought, his code of ethics, his purview of life and of the affairs of life were foreign, were not of the currency of this land. It was more than a mere difference between races; it was a difference between those elements which make life.... But one thing he was given to see, and that was, that whatever came to Andree and himself could not be evil, could not be mean or squalid or wicked—and, in his limited vocabulary, it all came back to the comforting assertion, “But she’s a nice girl.” That persisted, no matter what other paths of speculation his thoughts might follow. Andree was good. There was something about her that proclaimed that she would continue to be good, and it was comforting to him.... And he believed he loved her....

He went to bed and fell asleep with the remembrance of Andree’s kiss upon his lips....

CHAPTER IX

In the morning Kendall was given orders to leave that night for the headquarters of the Second Division, which lay not distant from Meaux—that splendid body of old Regulars and Marines who had but a few weeks before proved the worth of the American soldier to the Hun and to the Allied armies by its splendidly achieved defense of the Paris-Metz highway—and there to gather certain information on shoes and ships and sealing-wax and cabbages and cooties and morale and crops and transport. He was to acquire this information with all possible despatch and accuracy, and to return to Paris with his report. An army automobile, carrying certain other officers, would leave 10 rue Ste.-Anne at nine o’clock that evening.

So he was going to the front. He was actually to penetrate to those not distant battle-lines and to hear the sound of guns and himself to come under hostile fire.... He was not, then, to rest safely in Paris for the duration of the war; was not to return to America a veteran of the roll-top desk and the ink-well! It was only for a space of days, but he would actually have been there, actually have set his feet in a trench—to be a part of a combat division. He was delighted.... He hoped something would happen, that his days at the front might not be uneventful, that he might see and take part in some manifestation of real war. His sentiments were very boyish. Why, he might actually be wounded, and so entitled to wear on his sleeve a golden wound chevron! He found himself close to hoping it would be so, and, with a sudden assertion of common sense, laughed at himself when he discovered he was actually selecting the part of his anatomy in which he preferred to receive his wound. He had decided on a leg, the fleshy part of the leg. That would not be serious, would not incapacitate him for more than a few days or weeks. It was really a glowing prospect.... And it would make him a veteran!