The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me | Page 7

Our closer view persuaded us
that she might be thirty-five but probably was forty, though one early
morning in a passage way we met her when she looked fifty, wan and

sad and weary, but still flashing her eyes. And then one fair day, she
turned her eyes from us for ever. This is what happened to me. But
Henry himself may have been the hero of the episode. Anyway, one of
us was walking the deck with the Countess investigating the kilowat
power of the eyes. He was talking of trivial things, possibly telling the
lady fair of the new ten-story Beacon Building or of Henry Ganse's golf
score on the Emporia Country Club links--anyway something of broad,
universal human interest. But those things seemed to pall on her. So he
tried her on the narrow interests that engage the women at home--the
suffrage question; the matter of the eight-hour day and the minimum
wage for women; and national prohibition. These things left her with
no temperature. She was cold; she even shivered, slightly, but grace
fully withal, as she went swinging along on her toes, her silk sweater
clinging like an outer skin to her slim lithe body, walking like a girl of
sixteen. And constantly she was at target practice with her eyes with all
her might and main. She managed to steer the conversation to a place
where she could bemoan the cruel war; and ask what the poor women
would do. Her Kansas partner suggested that life would be broader and
better for women after the war, because they would have so much more
important a part to do than before in the useful work of the world. "Ah,
yes," she said, "perhaps so. But with the men all gone what shall we do
when we want to be petted?" She made two sweet unaccented syllables
of petted in her ingenue French accent and added: "For you know
women were made to be pet-ted." There was a bewildered second under
the machine gun fire of the eyes when her companion considered
seriously her theory. He had never cherished such a theory before. But
he was seeing a new world, and this seemed to be one of the pleasant
new things in it--this theory of the woman requiring to be pet-ted!
Then the French Colonel hove in sight and she said: "Oh, yes--come on,
Col-o-nel"--making three unaccented syllables of the word--"and we
shall have une femme sandweech." She gave the Colonel her arm. The
miserable Kansan had not thought to take it, being busy with the
Beacon Building or the water hazard at the Emporia Country Club, and
then, as the Col-o-nel took her arm she lifted the Eyes to the stupid clod
of a Kansan and switched on all the joyous incandescence of her lamps
as she said, addressing the Frenchman but gazing sweetly at the

American, "Col-o-nel, will you please carry my books?" They must
have weighed six or eight ounces! And she shifted them to the
Col-o-nel as though they weighed a ton!
So the Kansan walked wearily to the smoking room to find his mate.
They two then and there discussed the woman proposition in detail and
drew up strong resolutions of respect for the Wichita and Emporia type,
the American type that carries its own books and burdens and does not
require of its men a silly and superficial chivalry and does not stimulate
it by the everlasting lure of sex! Men may die for the Princess and her
kind and enjoy death. We were willing that they should. We evinced no
desire to impose our kultur on others. But after that day on the deck the
Princess lost her lure for Henry and me! So we went to the front stoop
of the boat and watched the Armenians drill. A great company of them
was crowded in the steerage and ail day long, with a sergeant major,
they went through the drill. They were returning to Europe to fight with
the French army and avenge the wrongs of their people. When they
tired of drilling, they danced, and when they tired of dancing, they sang.
It was queer music for civilized ears, the Armenian songs they sang. It
was written on a barbarie scale with savage cadences and broken time;
but it was none the less sweet for being weird. It had the charm and
freedom of the desert in it, and was as foreign as the strange brown
faces that lifted toward us as they sang.
"What is that music?" asked the Kansans of a New England boy in
khaki who had been playing Greig that day for them on the piano.
"That," nodded the youth toward the Armenians. "Oh, that--why that's
the 'Old Oaken Bucket!'" His face did not relax