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

in the strawberry-bed, according to the season. He bought two pairs of white pants every summer and ordered his shirts from Chicago and thought he was a swell, he said. He got himself engaged to the preacher’s daughter. Two years ago, the summer he was twenty, his father wanted him to see Niagara Falls; so he wrote a modest check, warned his son against saloons⁠—Victor had never been inside one⁠—against expensive hotels and women who came up to ask the time without an introduction, and sent him off, telling him it wasn’t necessary to fee porters or waiters. At Niagara Falls, Victor fell in with some young Canadian officers who opened his eyes to a great many things. He went over to Toronto with them. Enlistment was going strong, and he saw an avenue of escape from the bank and the strawberry bed. The air force seemed the most brilliant and attractive branch of the service. They accepted him, and here he was.

“You’ll never go home again,” Claude said with conviction. “I don’t see you settling down in any little Iowa town.”

“In the air service,” said Victor carelessly, “we don’t concern ourselves about the future. It’s not worth while.” He took out a dull gold cigarette case which Claude had noticed before.

“Let me see that a minute, will you? I’ve often admired it. A present from somebody you like, isn’t it?”

A twitch of feeling, something quite genuine, passed over the airman’s boyish face, and his rather small red mouth compressed sharply. “Yes, a woman I want you to meet. Here,” twitching his chin over his high collar, “I’ll write Maisie’s address on my card: ‘Introducing Lieutenant Wheeler, A.E.F.’ That’s all you’ll need. If you should get to London before I do, don’t hesitate. Call on her at once. Present this card, and she’ll receive you.”

Claude thanked him and put the card in his pocketbook, while Victor lit a cigarette. “I haven’t forgotten that you’re dining with us at the Savoy, if we happen in London together. If I’m there, you can always find me. Her address is mine. It will really be a great thing for you to meet a woman like Maisie. She’ll be nice to you, because you’re my friend.” He went on to say that she had done everything in the world for him; had left her husband and given up her friends on his account. She now had a studio flat in Chelsea, where she simply waited his coming and dreaded his going. It was an awful life for her. She entertained other officers, of course, old acquaintances; but it was all camouflage. He was the man.

Victor went so far as to produce her picture, and Claude gazed without knowing what to say at a large moon-shaped face with heavy-lidded, weary eyes⁠—the neck clasped by a pearl collar, the shoulders bare to the matronly swell of the bosom. There was not a line or wrinkle in that smooth expanse of flesh, but from the heavy mouth and chin, from the very shape of the face, it was easy to see that she was quite old enough to be Victor’s mother. Across the photograph was written in a large splashy hand, À mon aigle! Had Victor been delicate enough to leave him in any doubt, Claude would have preferred to believe that his relations with this lady were wholly of a filial nature.

“Women like her simply don’t exist in your part of the world,” the aviator murmured, as he snapped the photograph case. “She’s a linguist and musician and all that. With her, everyday living is a fine art. Life, as she says, is what one makes it. In itself, it’s nothing. Where you came from it’s nothing⁠—a sleeping sickness.”

Claude laughed. “I don’t know that I agree with you, but I like to hear you talk.”

“Well; in that part of France that’s all shot to pieces, you’ll find more life going on in the cellars than in your home town, wherever that is. I’d rather be a stevedore in the London docks than a banker-king in one of your prairie States. In London, if you’re lucky enough to have a shilling, you can get something for it.”

“Yes, things are pretty tame at home,” the other admitted.

“Tame? My God, it’s death in life! What’s left of men if you take all the fire out of them? They’re afraid of everything. I know them; Sunday-school sneaks, prowling around those little towns after dark!” Victor abruptly dismissed the subject. “By the way, you’re pals with the doctor, aren’t you? I’m needing some medicine that is somewhere in my lost trunk. Would you mind asking him if he can put up this prescription? I don’t want to go to him myself. All these medicos blab, and he might report me. I’ve been lucky dodging medical inspections. You see, I don’t want to get held up anywhere. Tell him it’s not for you, of course.”

When Claude presented the piece of blue paper to Doctor Trueman, he smiled contemptuously. “I see; this has been filled by a London chemist. No, we have nothing of this sort.” He handed it back. “Those things are only palliatives. If your friend wants that, he needs treatment⁠—and he knows where he can get it.”

Claude returned the slip of paper to Victor as they left the dining-room after supper, telling him he hadn’t been able to get any.

“Sorry,” said Victor, flushing haughtily. “Thank you so much!”

VIII

Tod Fanning held out better than many of the stronger men; his vitality surprised the doctor. The death list was steadily growing; and the worst of it was that patients died who were not very sick. Vigorous, clean-blooded young fellows of nineteen and twenty turned over and died because they had lost their courage, because other people were dying⁠—because death was in the air. The corridors of the vessel had the smell of death about them. Doctor Trueman said it was always so in an epidemic;