Cherbourg it is noticeably rare. The first-class passengers specialize in sophistication and the steerage passengers go in for disillusion (which is much the same thing) but the young woman by the rail was going in for hope raised to the ultimate power. It was not her own life she was beginning over, but someone else’s, and this is a much more dangerous thing to do.
Milly was a frail, dark, appealing girl with the spiritual, haunted eyes that so frequently accompany South European beauty. By birth her mother and father had been respectively Czech and Roumanian, but Milly had missed the overshort upper lip and the pendulous, pointed nose that disfigure the type; her features were regular and her skin was young and olive-white and clear.
The good-looking, pimply young man with eyes of a bright marbly blue who was asleep on a dunnage bag a few feet away was her husband—it was his life that Milly was beginning over. Through the six months of their marriage he had shown himself to be shiftless and dissipated, but now they were getting off to a new start. Jim Cooley deserved a new start, for he had been a hero in the war. There was a thing called “shell shock” which justified anything unpleasant in a war hero’s behavior—Jim Cooley had explained that to her on the second day of their honeymoon when he had gotten abominably drunk and knocked her down with his open hand.
“I get crazy,” he said emphatically next morning, and his marbly eyes rolled back and forth realistically in his head. “I get started, thinkin’ I’m fightin’ the war, an’ I take a poke at whatever’s in front of me, see?”
He was a Brooklyn boy, and he had joined the marines. And on a June twilight he had crawled fifty yards out of his lines to search the body of a Bavarian captain that lay out in plain sight. He found a copy of German regimental orders, and in consequence his own brigade attacked much sooner than would otherwise have been possible, and perhaps the war was shortened by so much as a quarter of an hour. The fact was appreciated by the French and American races in the form of engraved slugs of precious metal which Jim showed around for four years before it occurred to him how nice it would be to have a permanent audience. Milly’s mother was impressed with his martial achievement, and a marriage was arranged. Milly didn’t realize her mistake until twenty-four hours after it was too late.
At the end of several months Milly’s mother died and left her daughter two hundred and fifty dollars. The event had a marked effect on Jim. He sobered up and one night came home from work with a plan for turning over a new leaf, for beginning life over. By the aid of his war record he had obtained a job with a bureau that took care of American soldier graves in France. The pay was small but then, as everyone knew, living was dirt cheap over there. Hadn’t the forty a month that he drew in the war looked good to the girls and the wine-sellers of Paris? Especially when you figured it in French money.
Milly listened to his tales of the land where grapes were full of champagne and then thought it all over carefully. Perhaps the best use for her money would be in giving Jim his chance, the chance that he had never had since the war. In a little cottage in the outskirts of Paris they could forget this last six months and find peace and happiness and perhaps even love as well.
“Are you going to try?” she asked simply.
“Of course I’m going to try, Milly.”
“You’re going to make me think I didn’t make a mistake?”
“Sure I am, Milly; it’ll make a different person out of me. Don’t you believe it?”
She looked at him. His eyes were bright with enthusiasm, with determination. A warm glow had spread over him at the prospect—he had never really had his chance before.
“All right,” she said finally. “We’ll go.”
They were there. The Cherbourg breakwater, a white stone snake, glittered along the sea at dawn; behind it red roofs and steeples and then small, neat hills traced with a warm, orderly pattern of toy farms. “Do you like this French arrangement?” it seemed to say. “It’s considered very charming, but if you don’t agree just shift it about—set this road here, this steeple there. It’s been done before, and it always comes out lovely in the end!”
It was Sunday morning, and Cherbourg was in flaring collars and high lace hats. Donkey carts and diminutive automobiles moved to the sound of incessant bells. Jim and Milly went ashore on a tugboat and were inspected by customs officials and immigration authorities. Then they were free with an hour before the Paris train, and they moved out into the bright thrilling world of French blue. At a point of vantage, a pleasant square that continually throbbed with soldiers and innumerable dogs and the clack of wooden shoes, they sat down at a cafe.
“Du vaah,” said Jim to the waiter. He was a little disappointed when the answer came in English. After the man went for the wine he took out his two war medals and pinned them to his coat. The waiter returned with the wine, seemed not to notice the medals, made no remark. Milly wished Jim hadn’t put them on—she felt vaguely ashamed.
After another glass of wine it was time for the train. They got into the strange little third-class carriage, an engine that was out of some boy’s playroom began to puff and, in a pleasant, informal way, jogged them leisurely south through the friendly lived-over land.
“What are we going to do first when we get there?” asked Milly.
“First?” Jim looked at her abstractedly and frowned. “Why, first I got to see about the job, see?” The exhilaration of the wine had passed and left him surly. “What do you want to ask so many questions for? Buy yourself a guidebook, why don’t you?”
Milly felt a slight sinking of the heart; he hadn’t grumbled at her like this since the trip was first proposed.
“It didn’t cost as much as we thought, anyhow,” she said cheerfully. “We must have over a hundred dollars left anyway.”
He grunted. Outside the window Milly’s eyes were caught by the sight of a dog drawing a legless man.
“Look!” she exclaimed, “how funny!”
“Aw, dry up. I’ve seen it all before.”
An encouraging idea occurred to her: it was in France that Jim’s nerves had gone to pieces, it was natural that he should be cross and uneasy for a few hours.
Westward through Caen, Lisieux and the rich green plains of Calvados. When they reached the third stop Jim got up and stretched himself.
“Going out on the platform,” he said gloomily. “I need to get a breath of air; hot in here.”
It was hot, but Milly didn’t mind. Her eyes were excited with all she saw—a pair of little boys in black smocks began to stare at her curiously through the windows of the carriage.
“American?” cried one of them suddenly.
“Hello,” said Milly, “what place is this?”
“Pardon?”
They came closer.
“What’s the name of this place?”
Suddenly the two boys poked each other in the stomach and went off into roars of laughter. Milly didn’t see that she had said anything funny.
There was an abrupt jerk as the train started. Milly jumped up in alarm and put her head out the carriage window.
“Jim!”
