The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me | Page 5

armed to the teeth with healing lotions to massage the
wrinkled front of war, Henry kept picking at the ocean. It was his first
transatlantic voyage; for like most American men, he kept his European
experiences in his wife's name. So the ocean bothered him. He
understood a desert or a drouth, but here was a tremendous amount of
unnecessary and unaccountable water. It was a calm, smooth, painted
ocean, and as he looked at it for a long time one day, Henry remarked
wearily: "The town boosters who secured this ocean for this part of the
country rather overdid the job!"
One evening, looking back at the level floor of the ocean stretching
illimitably into the golden sunset, he mused: "They have a fine country
here. You kind of like the lay of it, and there is plenty of nice sightly
real estate about--it's a gently rolling country, uneven and something
like College Hill in Wichita, but there's got to be a lot of money spent
draining it; you can tell that at a glance, if the fellow gets anywhere
with his proposition!"
[Illustration with caption: "You'll have to put out that cigar, sir."]
A time always comes in a voyage, when men and women begin to step
out as individuals from the mass. With us it was the Red Cross
stenographers and the American Ambulance boys who first ceased
being ladyships and lordships and took their proper places in the
cosmos. They were a gay lot--and young. And human nature is human
nature. So the decks began to clutter up with boys and girls intensely
interested in exploring each other's lives. It is after all the most
wonderful game in the world. And while the chaperon fluttered about

more or less, trying to shoo the girls off the dark decks at night, and
while public opinion on the boat made eminently proper rules against
young women in the smoking room, still young blood did have its way,
which really is a good way; better than we think, perhaps, who look
back in cold blood and old blood. And by the token of our years it was
brought to us that war is the game of youth. We were two middle-aged
old coots--though still in our forties and not altogether blind to a pretty
face--and yet the oldest people on the boat. Even the altruistic side of
war is the game of youth.
Perhaps it is the other way around, and maybe youth is the only game
in the world worth playing and that the gains of youth, service and
success and follies and failures, are only the chips and counters. We
were brought to these conclusions more or less by a young person, a
certain Miss Ingersoll, or perhaps her name only sounded like that; for
we called her the Eager Soul. And she was a pretty girl, too--American
pretty: Red hair--lots of blowy, crinkly red hair that was always
threatening to souse her face and ears; blue eyes of the serious kind and
a colour that gave us the impression that she did exercises and could
jab a punching bag. Indeed before we met her, we began betting on the
number of hours it would take her to tell us that she took a cold plunge
every morning. Henry expected the statement on the second day; as a
matter of fact it came late on the first day! She was that kind. But there
was no foolishness about her. She was a nurse--a Red Cross nurse, and
she made it clear that she had no illusions about men; we suspected that
she had seen them cut up and knew their innermost secrets!
Nevertheless she was tremendously interesting, and because she, too,
was from the middle west, and possibly because she realized that we
accepted her for what she was, she often paced the rounds of the deck
between us. We teased her more or less about a young doctor of the
Johns Hopkins unit who sometimes hovered over her deck chair and a
certain Gilded Youth--every boat-load has its Gilded Youth--whose
father was president of so many industrial concerns, and the
vice-president of so many banks and trust companies that it was hard to
look at the boy without blinking at his gilding. Henry was betting on
the Gilded Youth; so the young doctor fell to me. For the first three or
four days during which we kept fairly close tab on their time, the

Doctor had the Gilded Youth beaten two hours to one. Henry bought
enough lemonade for me and smoking room swill of one sort and
another to start his little old Wichita ocean But it was plain that the
Gilded Youth interested her. And in a confidential moment filled with
laughter and chaff and chatter