The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me | Page 6

she told us why: "He's patronizing me. I
mean he doesn't know it, and he thinks I don't know it; but that's what
he's doing. I interest him as a social specimen. I mean--I'm a bug and he
likes to take me up and examine me. I think I'm the first 'Co-ed' he ever
has seen; the first girl who voted and didn't let her skirts sag and still
loved good candy! I mean that when he found in one half hour that I
knew he wore nine dollar neckties and that I was for Roosevelt, the
man nearly expired; he was that puzzled! I'm not quite the type of
working girl whom Heaven protects and he chases, but--I mean I think
he is wondering just how far Heaven really will protect my kind! When
he decides," she confided in a final burst of laughter, and tucking away
her overflowing red hair, "I may have to slap him--I mean don't you
know--"
And we did know. And being in his late forties Henry began tantalizing
me with odds on the Gilded Youth. He certainly was a beautiful
boy--tall, chestnut haired, clean cut, and altogether charming. He
played Brahms and Irving Berlin with equal grace on the piano in the
women's lounge on the ship and an amazing game of stud poker with
the San Francisco boys in the smoking room. And it was clear that he
regarded the Eager Soul as a social adventure somewhat higher than his
mother's social secretary--but of the same class. He was returning from
a furlough, to drive his ambulance in France, and the Doctor was going
out to join his unit somewhere in France down near the Joan of Arc
country. He told us shyly one day, as we watched the wake of the ship
together, that he was to be stationed at an old chateau upon whose front
is carved in stone, "I serve because I am served!" When he did not
repeat the motto we knew that it had caught him. He had been at home
working on a germ problem connected with army life, hardly to be
mentioned in the presence of Mrs. Boffin, and he was forever casually
discussing his difficulties with the Eager Soul; and a stenographer, who
came upon the two at their tete-a-tete one day, ran to the girls in the
lounge and gasped, "My Lord, Net, if you'd a heard it, you'd a jumped

off the boat!"
[Illustration with caption: She often paced the rounds of the deck
between us]
As the passenger list began to resolve itself into familiar faces and
figures and friends we became gradually aware of a pair of eyes--a pair
of snappy black, female, French eyes. Speaking broadly and allowing
for certain Emporia and Wichita exceptions, eyes were no treat to us.
Yet we fell to talking blithely of those eyes. Henry said if he had to
douse his cigar on deck at night, the captain should make the Princess
wear dimmers at night or stay indoors. We were not always sure she
was a Princess. At times she seemed more like a Duchess or a Countess,
according to her clothes. We never had seen such clothes! And
millinery! We were used to Broadway; Michigan Avenue did not make
us shy, and Henry had been in the South. But these clothes and the hats
and the eyes--all full dress--were too many for us. And we fell to
speculating upon exactly what would happen on Main Street and
Commercial Street in Wichita and Emporia if the Duchess could sail
down there in full regalia. Henry's place at table was where he got the
full voltage of the eyes every time the Princess switched them on. And
whenever he reached for the water and gulped it down, one could know
he had been jolted behind his ordinary resisting power. And he drank
enough to float a ship! As we wended our weary way over the decks
during the long lonely hours of the voyage, we fell to theorizing about
those eyes and we concluded that they were Latin--Latin chiefly
engaged in the business of being female eyes. It was a new show to us.
Our wives and mothers had voted at city elections for over thirty years
and had been engaged for a generation in the business of taming their
husbands; saving the meat from dinner for the hash for breakfast, and
betimes for diversion, working in their clubs for the good of their towns;
and their eyes had visions in them, not sex. So these female eyes
showed us a mystery! And each of us in his heart decided to investigate
the phenomena. And on the seventh day we laid off from our work and
called it good. We had met the Princess.