One of Ours
Book IV: The Voyage of the Anchises
Chapter VII
B Company's first officer, Captain Maxey, was so seasick throughout the
voyage that he was of no help to his men in the epidemic. It must have been a
frightful blow to his pride, for nobody was ever more anxious to do an officer's
whole duty.
Claude had known Harris Maxey slightly in Lincoln; had met him at the
Erlichs' and afterward kept up a campus acquaintance with him. He hadn't liked
Maxey then, and he didn't like him now, but he thought him a good officer.
Maxey's family were poor folk from Mississippi, who had settled in Nemaha
county, and he was very ambitious, not only to get on in the world, but, as he
said, to "be somebody." His life at the University was a feverish pursuit of
social advantages and useful acquaintances. His feeling for the "right people"
amounted to veneration. After his graduation, Maxey served on the Mexican
Border. He was a tireless drill master, and threw himself into his duties with
all the energy of which his frail physique was capable. He was slight and
fair-skinned; a rigid jaw threw his lower teeth out beyond the upper ones and
made his face look stiff. His whole manner, tense and nervous, was the
expression of a passionate desire to excel.
Claude seemed to himself to be leading a double life these days. When he was
working over Fanning, or was down in the hold helping to take care of the sick
soldiers, he had no time to think,—did mechanically the next thing that came to
hand. But when he had an hour to himself on deck, the tingling sense of
ever-widening freedom flashed up in him again. The weather was a continual
adventure; he had never known any like it before. The fog, and rain, the grey
sky and the lonely grey stretches of the ocean were like something he had
imagined long ago—memories of old sea stories read in childhood, perhaps—and
they kindled a warm spot in his heart. Here on the Anchises he seemed to begin
where childhood had left off. The ugly hiatus between had closed up. Years of
his life were blotted out in the fog. This fog which had been at first
depressing had become a shelter; a tent moving through space, hiding one from
all that had been before, giving one a chance to correct one's ideas about life
and to plan the future. The past was physically shut off; that was his illusion.
He had already travelled a great many more miles than were told off by the
ship's log. When Bandmaster Fred Max asked him to play chess, he had to stop a
moment and think why it was that game had such disagreeable associations for
him. Enid's pale, deceptive face seldom rose before him unless some such
accident brought it up. If he happened to come upon a group of boys talking
about their sweethearts and war-brides, he listened a moment and then moved away
with the happy feeling that he was the least married man on the boat.
There was plenty of deck room, now that so many men were ill either from
seasickness or the epidemic, and sometimes he and Albert Usher had the stormy
side of the boat almost to themselves. The Marine was the best sort of companion
for these gloomy days; steady, quiet, self-reliant. And he, too, was always
looking forward. As for Victor Morse, Claude was growing positively fond of him.
Victor had tea in a special corner of the officers' smoking-room every
afternoon—he would have perished without it—and the steward always produced
some special garnishes of toast and jam or sweet biscuit for him. Claude usually
managed to join him at that hour.
On the day of Tannhauser's funeral he went into the smoking-room at four.
Victor beckoned the steward and told him to bring a couple of hot whiskeys with
the tea. "You're very wet, you know, Wheeler, and you really should. There," he
said as he put down his glass, "don't you feel better with a drink?"
"Very much. I think I'll have another. It's agreeable to be warm inside."
"Two more, steward, and bring me some fresh lemon." The occupants of the room
were either reading or talking in low tones. One of the Swedish boys was playing
softly on the old piano. Victor began to pour the tea. He had a neat way of
doing it, and today he was especially solicitous. "This Scotch mist gets into
one's bones, doesn't it? I thought you were looking rather seedy when I passed
you on deck."
"I was up with Tannhauser last night. Didn't get more than an hour's sleep,"
Claude murmured, yawning.
"Yes, I heard you lost your big corporal. I'm sorry. I've had bad news, too.
It's out now that we're to make a French port. That dashes all my plans.
However, c'est la guerre!" He pushed back his cup with a shrug. "Take a turn
outside?"
Claude had often wondered why Victor liked him, since he was so little
Victor's kind. "If it isn't a secret," he said, "I'd like to know how you ever
got into the British army, anyway."
As they walked up and down in the rain, Victor told his story briefly. When
he had finished High School, he had gone into his father's bank at Crystal Lake
as bookkeeper. After banking hours he skated, played tennis, or worked 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 ado, 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 air-man'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, 'A 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. every-day 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!"