One of Ours - Willa Cather (great book club books .TXT) 📗

perfect condition. I’ve got several good photographic outfits from time to time, but the lenses are always cracked by heat⁠—the things usually come down on fire. This one I got out of a plane I brought down up at Bar-le-Duc, and there’s not a scratch on it; simply a miracle.”

“You get all the loot when you bring down a machine, do you?” Claude asked encouragingly.

“Of course. I’ve a good collection; altimeters and compasses and glasses. This lens I always carry with me, because I’m afraid to leave it anywhere.”

“I suppose it makes a fellow feel pretty fine to bring down one of those German planes.”

“Sometimes. I brought down one too many, though; it was very unpleasant.” Victor paused, frowning. But Claude’s open, credulous face was too much for his reserve. “I brought down a woman once. She was a plucky devil, flew a scouting machine and had bothered us a bit, going over our lines. Naturally, we didn’t know it was a woman until she came down. She was crushed underneath things. She lived a few hours and dictated a letter to her people. I went out and dropped it inside their lines. It was nasty business. I was quite knocked out. I got a fortnight’s leave in London, though. Wheeler,” he broke out suddenly, “I wish I knew we were going there now!”

“I’d like it well enough if we were.”

Victor shrugged. “I should hope so!” He turned his chin in Claude’s direction. “See here, if you like, I’ll show you London! It’s a promise. Americans never see it, you know. They sit in a Y hut and write to their Pollyannas, or they go round hunting for the Tower. I’ll show you a city that’s alive; that is, unless you’ve a preference for museums.”

His listener laughed. “No, I want to see life, as they say.”

“Umph! I’d like to set you down in some places I can think of. Very well, I invite you to dine with me at the Savoy, the first night we’re in London. The curtain will rise on this world for you. Nobody admitted who isn’t in evening dress. The jewels will dazzle you. Actresses, duchesses, all the handsomest women in Europe.”

“But I thought London was dark and gloomy since the war.”

Victor smiled and teased his small straw-coloured moustache with his thumb and middle finger. “There are a few bright spots left, thank you!” He began to explain to a novice what life at the front was really like. Nobody who had seen service talked about the war, or thought about it; it was merely a condition under which they lived. Men talked about the particular regiment they were jealous of, or the favoured division that was put in for all the show fighting. Everybody thought about his own game, his personal life that he managed to keep going in spite of discipline; his next leave, how to get champagne without paying for it, dodging the guard, getting into scrapes with women and getting out again. “Are you quick with your French?” he asked.

Claude grinned. “Not especially.”

“You’d better brush up on it if you want to do anything with French girls. I hear your M.P.’s are very strict. You must be able to toss the word the minute you see a skirt, and make your date before the guard gets onto you.”

“I suppose French girls haven’t any scruples?” Claude remarked carelessly.

Victor shrugged his narrow shoulders. “I haven’t found that girls have many, anywhere. When we Canadians were training in England, we all had our weekend wives. I believe the girls in Crystal Lake used to be more or less fussy⁠—but that’s long ago and far away. You won’t have any difficulty.”

When Victor was in the middle of a tale of amorous adventure, a little different from any Claude had ever heard, Tod Fanning joined them. The aviator did not acknowledge the presence of a new listener, but when he had finished his story, walked away with his special swagger, his eyes fixed upon the distance.

Fanning looked after him with disgust. “Do you believe him? I don’t think he’s any such heart-smasher. I like his nerve, calling you ‘Leftenant’! When he speaks to me he’ll have to say Lootenant, or I’ll spoil his beauty.”

That day the men remembered long afterward, for it was the end of the fine weather, and of those first long, carefree days at sea. In the afternoon Claude and the young Marine, the Virginian and Fanning, sat together in the sun watching the water scoop itself out in hollows and pile itself up in blue, rolling hills. Usher was telling his companions a long story about the landing of the Marines at Vera Cruz.

“It’s a great old town,” he concluded. “One thing there I’ll never forget. Some of the natives took a few of us out to the old prison that stands on a rock in the sea. We put in the whole day there, and it wasn’t any tourist show, believe me! We went down into dungeons underneath the water where they used to keep State prisoners, kept them buried alive for years. We saw all the old instruments of torture; rusty iron cages where a man couldn’t lie down or stand up, but had to sit bent over till he grew crooked. It made you feel queer when you came up, to think how people had been left to rot away down there, when there was so much sun and water outside. Seems like something used to be the matter with the world.” He said no more, but Claude thought from his serious look that he believed he and his countrymen who were pouring overseas would help to change all that; the old dungeons and cages would be broken open forever. The image of a black prison, lying out in a blue Gulf, lingered in his mind, and he felt as if he had been there.

V

That night the Virginian, who berthed under Victor Morse, had an