The Little Moment of HappinessKelland, Clarence Budington
General
The Little Moment of Happiness
Kelland, Clarence Budington
Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
Andree was very prim and quiet with that quaint attractive quietness
that always made Kendall wonder, because he had never seen anything like
it. It was a sort of waiting quietness, a kind of recess that Andree
retired into to await events, and from which she would emerge impish or
girlish or serious, like a child or like a weary woman. One felt she was
not present bodily, but was staring at one expectantly to read one’s
mood, or, possibly, to read one into the future and to foretell if good
or ill were to come out of it. Now she watched Monsieur Robert when he
was not looking at her, but the instant his eyes turned toward her her
own eyes would hide behind their lashes diffidently.
“What shall we eat?” Monsieur Robert asked, in French. “_Potage? Poulet
rôti, cresson? Haricots verts? Salade?..._ Eh?”
“Sounds good,” said Kendall, but monsieur was looking expectantly to
Andree.
“That is well,” she said.
“Pommard?... The _vin ordinaire_ is not for us to-night?”
She was not interested in the wine, and Kendall trusted to the young
actor’s judgment. So they gave their order, and were only commencing on
the soup when a commotion at the door apprised Kendall that Jacques was
coming. Andree had started at the noise.
“It is Jacques,” he said to her. “I told you about him.”
“Yes,” she said, but did not turn her head.
In a moment Jacques paused at the table and stared, drew himself to his
full height, threw back his hair from his brow with a flamboyant
gesture, and shouted: “A-ah!... A-ah!...”
Kendall was embarrassed. There was no telling what Jacques might say or
do, for the man had a rather terrible, if delicious, frankness, and
discussed with openness and noise what Kendall was accustomed to hear
spoken of in whispers by men alone—and by them in corners.... He had
heard Jacques one evening going from table to table—demanding of friends
and strangers alike their judgment on a certain phase of the art of
making love. Kendall had really been shocked and had looked for somebody
to stand up and smite Jacques mightily, but everybody had laughed and
answered according to their kind with a frankness equal to Jacques’s....
So now Kendall was apprehensive.
“A-ah!...” said Jacques again, and pointed at Andree. “I ask you if I
should not find for you a girl, and you say _no_. Now I know why....
A-ah!...” He frowned at Andree and waggled his head. “She is nice,” he
said, approvingly. Then he appeared to notice Monsieur Robert for the
first time and glared at him, glared and poked a long finger under his
nose. “_He_ dines with you,” he said, tragically. “You—you make
introduce your girl to him.... _Oh, là là!_ What is this? Do you not
know that this man steals little girls?... He is ver’ bad. Look you out
or he will steal her from you. It is I, Jacques, your friend, who make
the warning.” Then suddenly he turned away and flew across the room to
kiss a young woman who had just entered with the elderly critic.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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