A Maid and a Million Men

The Candid Confessions of Leona

Canwick + Censored Indiscreetly by

James G. Dunton

GROSSET & DUNLAP

Publishers New York

A MAID AND A MILLION MEN

COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY

J. H. SEARS & CO., INCORPORATED

Second Printing, November, 1928

Third Printing, December, 1928

Fourth Printing, February, 1929

Fifth Printing, June, 1929

Sixth Printing, September, 1929

United States of America

To

The Bull of the Boulevards

Because

“There weren’t enough medals to go ’round!”

CONTENTS

A MAID AND A MILLION MEN

CHAPTER 1
The Maiden’s Prayer

There was a party up in Heaven the night that I was born and my mother’s Guardian Angel was playing one of those now-you-see-it-and-now-you-don’t shell games with the Court Jester while the Head-Man so far forgot himself, under the influence of the chorus of angelic yessers, as to do sleight-of-hand tricks with the Vital Statistics and the Orders of the Day. The whole court laughed to see such sport and even my mother’s Guardian Angel must have thought it was a good joke on my father.

I heard the angels laughing as I came into the world and I cried out, as soon as I could, that it certainly didn’t take much to entertain some people. Angels have no sense of humor, anyway; I’ve since discovered that you have to go in the other direction if you want to appreciate good jokes. Why, up there in Heaven, the whole court thought this was a wow, judging by the celestial thunder-peals of glee which accompanied the parlor tricks, but if you can see anything funny in playing a trick like that on an unsuspecting couple of innocent young lovers who thought Birth Control was a pullman porter, then I hope you go to hell where red-hot jokes are the devil’s own sport!

Furthermore, the joke was not only on my parents, but also on us—for, you see, it happened that not only was I twins but also the other half of the consignment was a boy who should have been a girl while I was a girl who should have been a boy. The Head-Man certainly proved himself a magician; he scrambled our souls and temperaments and everything else so thoroughly that it would have required a better man than the Court Physician to put us together again as the Creator intended us to be, before that weak moment of kittenishness.

Even so, you’d think the Shipping Clerk would have hesitated at sending out a boy in a girl’s body and vice versa. Of course, the two bodies did look very much alike, but we were unashamedly naked at the time and you’d think that even a government clerk would notice something funny in such a parcel. Perhaps my Guardian Angel matched pennies or shot craps with the Clerk, and the latter may have rolled a natural for my brother and an even number for me. After seeing some of the other shipments that went out on my birthday, I’ll believe anything’s possible. I recently met a man, born on that same day, who sniffs like a rabbit, eats like a pig, walks like a woman and brays like an ass; and I know a woman who would be a cat if she had a tail. The Clerk must have been on the party, too, and maybe had a little too much nectar besides. Anyway, the Head-Man scrambled everything from frogs to elephants and nobody else unscrambled them, so if your birthday was mine you probably decided long ago that Heaven isn’t the most efficiently operated production plant that can be imagined. Even on good days, the service is rotten: nine times out of ten when you place an order for a boy you get a girl or vice versa—no wonder a lot of the circus freaks were born on my birthday!

My brother and I looked exactly alike. Indeed we were quite a biological achievement, because we even had identical moles in identical positions on our left cheeks. Father was actually quite proud of us and I think the burden of having twins was really responsible for his economic success, for he proceeded to accumulate more than enough money after we made our début in 1899. In fact, he became so successful that he never stayed long enough in any one city for us to become conspicuously familiar to even our nearest neighbors. He was always on the move, organizing new projects, developing new enterprises, rescuing his own and others’ investments and turning everything to profit. He was a hard-working man and he loved to keep busy, but I think that all that hustling around year after year had a lot to do with mother’s untimely death when we were only ten years old. She succumbed to typhoid fever, but that was only the last straw, for she had never really had a chance to get strong and healthy after we appeared on the scene.

After her death, the head of the house didn’t know what to do with us, it being obvious that he could not give us any care or attention and still keep up his program of industry; but he finally settled the problem by arranging a plan with our Aunt Elinor Canwick, his spinster sister, under the terms of which he provided liberally for us and for her on condition that she take charge of us and supervise our education. He gave Aunt Elinor carte blanche in all matters except one: he stipulated that we must receive, aside from whatever cultural finish she might provide, a thorough training in some practical occupation, in order that we might be able to earn a respectable living should our going to work become necessary through unfortunate circumstances. More specifically, he strongly advised that “they be trained in secretarial work, because such work will give them the best opportunities for improving their positions and for keeping in touch with the better class of people.”

So we went to live in Wakeham with Aunt Elinor and I had even less chance to be as boyish as I felt because our dear Aunt had certain rather definite ideas about the limits of a young lady’s sphere of activity. Also she was a confirmed art enthusiast and just as soon as she saw any signs of talent in either of us, she promptly did everything in her power to encourage us in the direction of artistic careers. We went to the best schools and had the best tutors obtainable; we traveled abroad and absorbed culture in many lands; we developed a certain amount of artistic creativeness and appreciativeness. And yet Aunt Elinor did not neglect the kind of training which Dad advised: indeed, I think he was rather proud of us, for we really did become quite proficient after studying stenography, typewriting, business English, commercial law, filing, and lots of other purely commercial subjects and had made them still more valuable by having mastered three foreign languages; so that at the age when most American boys and girls are completing high school with a smattering knowledge of half a hundred subjects, we were both capable of speaking and writing French, Italian or German, and taking dictation in any of them or in English. Aunt Elinor was proud of us, too. The last time I saw our father, before his accidental death in 1916, he and Aunt Elinor were indulging in mutual admiration exercises, congratulating each other on the results obtained. And we twins were the nicest, meekest, most harmless and un-regular kids that ever existed—at least, so we must have seemed.

But from the day of Dad’s funeral, Aunt Elinor made a radical about-face and bent all her energies toward cultivating our artistic talents. No more commercial stuff now. She thought that Leon had distinctive poetic ability, so she saw to it that he became acquainted with all the literature and literary people that could possibly help him develop, while Leona, the big “I,” being somewhat of a dancer and having been remarked upon by some really competent theatrical people, was promptly given over to the best dancing master available, after which my life was just one pirouette and kick after another—which really wasn’t so bad because it was physical work and that was what I needed to keep me happy. We lived in Wakeham, one of the Big City’s most fashionable suburbs, and moved in a very exclusive, art-loving and -fostering circle.

Life rolled away in its customary monotony and gradually the curtains of our horizon were drawn back to reveal new interests and new hopes. Leon and I seemed to grow more similar in appearance and more dissimilar in nature as we grew up. Aunt Elinor used to say that our sexes were all mixed up, that our natures were diametrically opposite to our respective physiques, and for once she was really near the truth, since I was very much of a tomboy while Leon was an ethereal-spirited, effeminate, poetic soul who cringed from all physical matters and even resented having to be near my dog Esky, who worshiped the very ground I walked on and evinced not uncertainly his suspicions of people who were too nasty nice to play with a pup now and then. Leon wasted no love on Esky and once declared that the pup’s mother must have been promiscuous. Well, Esky was nothing but a mongrel, to be sure, although Aunt Elinor said his mother was a thoroughbred Eskimo dog, but even thoroughbreds have been known to have cuckold husbands; mongrel or not, a dog instinctively attaches himself to the man of the house—but not so with Esky. He hadn’t any use for Leon at all, probably because Leon high-hatted him, whereas I liked nothing better than a chance to romp and wrestle with him.

You can readily understand how I looked upon my sweet brother. He did none of the things that regular boys do. Sports and games and any kind of exercise that was the least bit rough did not appeal to him at all. I even suspected that he was too damned nice to be interested in girls—but on this point I was mistaken, for I discovered that Vyvy Martin, one of Wakeham’s deep-eyed débutante beauties, was more or less Leon’s soul mate. One was about as dizzy as the other, so they made a perfect couple, entirely sufficient unto themselves—a condition which must, I suppose, be called Love. But you can imagine how I looked upon Leon when every impulse in me was toward the very kind of living which he shunned. It seemed that not a day went by without my wishing I were in his shoes so that I could chase off and enjoy myself as he should enjoy himself. Truly in mental and emotional equipment, we were as dissimilar as Tom Thumb and the Fat Lady.

The more fed up I became with our “cultured” friends and interests, the more Leon became absorbed in them. He was a thorough-going æsthete and the more æsthetic he grew, the more discontented I became, until it seemed that life held absolutely nothing of interest for me. For days and weeks at a time I carried a grouch and consoled myself by making the aforementioned complaints to the Creator. Every time Aunt Elinor entertained, I had to perform for the benefit of the guests, and afterwards everyone would feed her a lot of slush about my “remarkable talent for the dance.” You might have thought I was some kind of thoroughbred dog, the way they studied me and passed comments on my body and brains. My Aunt should have known long before that time that her niece had a beautiful body and enough brains to know how to use it, but she continued to gather in the same old line of flattery and flowery compliments until you’d have thought it was her own body people were talking about.

Of course, not all of her parties were utter bores. Now and then a few genuine people appeared on the scene and once in a while someone actually interesting would be present. It was at one of her soirées that I met Jay-Jay Marfield, the rather attractively ebullient son of one of Broadway’s most successful producers. Jay-Jay (from his initials, J. J.) was about twenty-six when I first met him and rather handsome in a sort of romantic fashion. My Aunt fell in love with him at first sight—principally because she thought that if I cultivated his friendship he could help me along in my career. My Aunt was not exactly a hand-shaker; she just had rather continental ideas about matrimony: marriage was a material affair to her. She would have been in ecstasies if I had married Jay-Jay and she used to tell him the most awful lies about my habits and disposition, et cetera. She tried all the traditional tricks of the match-maker, but I had my doubts about Jay-Jay’s falling for her ensnaring line. As for me, I was willing enough to let him show me a good time—the which he certainly tried to do, with everything from the Russian Ballet to opium dens thrown in. He knew all the celebrities of the stage and was always on the verge of introducing me to So-and-So sometime—while in the meantime he introduced me to a crowd of artistic flat tires who indulged in attic art and garret orgies which were more asinine than sinful.

Jay-Jay and I got along famously, but from the start of our friendship I felt that I would never want to trust him very far. Perhaps I am naturally suspicious, but this Jay-Jay was one of the kind that you immediately suspect. Free and easy about everything, always immaculate, always flush and always conniving something that was neither good for himself nor good for me, he made me feel that I had always to be on guard or he would promptly connive against me.

Yet I enjoyed myself in his company—as who wouldn’t if her only friends were so sappy they could be guilty of thinking a cockade was a kind of chicken broth! There are only two kinds of aristocratic boys: the devil-may-care variety like Jay-Jay and the sweet God-fearing innocents who make worms look like express trains. When the son sinks in the best of regulated families, he’s usually reverting to the type of his pioneer ancestors who had to take both life and love in their two fists. Most blue blood was originally red of flaming hue, and when families begin to forget that fact, you can lay odds that the deep old roots of the family maple aren’t sending sap enough up to supply the high and mighty branches of to-day. When family trees get too high they wither at the top, and such dry sticks are only useful as fertilizer for younger trees. That’s why the worst high-hats are invariably worn by people who are really low-brow.

Naturally, I enjoyed Jay-Jay’s company at that time and not the least of the reasons for this lay in the fact that he kept me on edge and on the defensive most of the time. When a girl suspects that a man is about to assault her on the least provocation, she naturally gets a thrill out of the dare, and I was normal in that respect even though all the rigmarole of infatuation and love were utterly foreign to my nature. Jay-Jay knew I was a tomboy at heart and he played his cards accordingly. I fell headlong into the trap by responding to his dare.

Please don’t imagine for a moment that anything melodramatic happened so soon as this. Jay-Jay was a perfectly nice young man—for quite a while. He could usually be depended upon to get intoxicated and he always took advantage of every opportunity for making love to me, but all this was direct and above the board—like romantic gestures, as it were. He didn’t resort to underhand violence until quite some time later in our affair.

A few incidents that I recall off-hand will serve to indicate how we behaved ourselves during this more or less casual, but always threatening, romance. On one occasion he took us—Leon, Vyvy and me—to a masquerade in the Big Town, a huge affair that was given annually for the benefit of indigent members of the theatrical profession. It was Aunt Elinor’s suggestion that Leon and I dress in identical costumes, therefore it was really her fault that Jay-Jay and Vyvy had a difficult time distinguishing us from each other, because my hair was tucked up and completely concealed under a grotesque hat so that Leon and I looked exactly alike. When Aunt Elinor inspected us before we set off, she exclaimed prophetically, “You’ll catch your escort courting your brother!” And her laughter at this thought is sufficient evidence of her atrocious sense of humor.

The party proved to be a riotous success from my point of view, in spite of a few embarrassing moments, as when Vyvy saw Jay-Jay take possession of one of us and immediately assumed that the one he chose was I. She promptly pounced upon the other—and it really was I. Before I could quite recover from the shock, she had swirled me into the crowd of dancers and I decided I might as well play up to my rôle. It was really funny, so funny that I dared not trust my voice. Anyway, she did enough talking for the two of us.

And what things she said! It was a revelation to me—a revelation, I mean, of my sweet and innocent brother’s poetic nature. She just poured sweet nothings into my ear and clung to me as if she were hanging from the gates of paradise and feared to let go for even a second. It was “O Leon, love!” or “O Leon, darling!” or “You exquisite thing!” or something equally romantic and foolishly sentimental, every step we took. I was congenially amused at first, particularly because my mind kept wandering to Jay-Jay and wondering how he, in his semi-intoxication, was managing my dear twin.

Before the dance was half done, I began to feel acutely uncomfortable. I began to realize that it’s one thing to have a man whispering sweet nothings in your ear, but quite another to have another girl do the whispering even though she doesn’t know you are a girl, too. However, I fought a good fight and was carrying on like a good trooper when suddenly the strain was broken by Jay-Jay pouncing unceremoniously upon us, with Leon trailing in the rear. Both were rather fussed up over the incident, although Leon appeared to feel that the joke was really on Jay-Jay. We all laughed over it, but Jay-Jay didn’t think it was so funny. At first he claimed that he knew it was Leon from the start, but I could tell from the look on my brother’s face that this was not so—or rather, that Jay-Jay hadn’t acted as if he knew his dancing partner was a boy. And incidentally I never did learn just exactly how Jay-Jay happened to discover his mistake; knowing that he was capable of doing almost anything when half set, I neglected to ask for specific details even from my twin brother.

Throughout the remainder of the evening, Jay-Jay took no chances of being fooled again and even on the way home when there was nothing much to do but be friendly, he continued to be safely cool and distant—which suited me well enough, but didn’t have the same effect upon Vyvy and Leon. I thought the two love birds had had a tiff about something, they were so chilly, but I soon discovered that Vyvy wasn’t any more certain than Jay-Jay as to which of us was which. The discovery came when Jay-Jay suddenly declared, “If I pull off your hat and you’ve got short hair, you’re not the one I think you are,” and he promptly jerked Leon’s hat from his head.... That settled that. He turned to me and I couldn’t very well object to his attentions, as long as they remained mild, particularly since Leon and Vyvy immediately fell into a clinch that must have made their hearts beat as one for a couple of seconds at least.

By the time we reached Wakeham, Jay-Jay’s accumulation of liquor was getting the better of his head and he ceased to remain mild in his love-making. I remember distinctly that the change was a terrible shock to me at the time and resulted in a wrestling match which assumed such proportions that the chauffeur so far forgot himself as to imitate Lot’s wife. We weren’t on speaking terms when we reached our house, and I didn’t hear his apologies (nor any word from him at all) for a fortnight or more. I was momentarily furious—I couldn’t imagine what the man expected of a girl like me.

Parties of this sort were a regular feature of the program for a year or more, but there were other features, also. We attended Bohemian studio parties which were more usually than not complete washouts from my point of view and led me to ask Jay-Jay why, with so many well-known and interesting people on his list of acquaintances, he persisted in messing himself up by associating with this deluded drivel of humanity. He just laughed and replied that “variety is still the spice of life—there’s a time and place for everything, including dizzy artists.”

After one of these garret endurance contests, I told him that he should have brought Leon instead of me, “because Leon would have reveled in this stuff.” I had heard so much utter blah about “expressing one’s soul” that I contemplated resolving never to dance again except on a ballroom floor. All this divine artistry stuff always has given me anatomical discomfort and there never was anyone interesting in those crowds of hairy-jawed winebibbers. They all talked and acted as if they knew better but preferred to be asinine, and to increase my disgust Jay-Jay invariably went to such places when he was in a drinking mood, which meant that I was in for a scrap before we got home.

If there’s one thing I couldn’t relish it was a man forever putting on a whisky flush, but I refrained from objecting too strenuously, because, after all, I was only seventeen and I had an idea that perhaps that was the way you were supposed to act when you’re twenty-seven. I know that I frequently consoled myself with the thought that if I were a man, just for a night, I’d go out and deliberately drink Jay-Jay under the table, or even a chair. I used to imagine how enjoyable such a feat would be, and also how much good it might have done my gay courtier. I knew it would do my heart immense good.

You can see that there were at least nine out of ten traits of Jay-Jay’s character of which I disapproved. He was everything that I didn’t desire in a man. He was terribly vain. He acted as if, just because his father was prominent in the show business, he himself was something very special and deserved respect from everyone. He was neither brilliant nor exceptional in any way and I doubt if he had ever done a single thing worth mentioning, except play around with a telephone directory full of girls. Still he thought the world was his private oyster and that every girl was receptive.

Of course, you can easily see how he got that way. He was used to having girls make a lot of him because they thought he could and would help them to a stage career. However, that phase of the matter meant absolutely nothing to me. I refused to make a hand-shaker of myself, even for Art’s sake—which refusal prompted Aunt Elinor to observe, “I sometimes wonder whether you and Art are really suited, Leona.” And I replied that the wondering was mutual.

But in spite of all his faults and his damnable self-assurance in regard to my capitulation (“eventually, why not now”) I continued to play around with Jay-Jay. With all his shortcomings, he continued to be ardent and attentive—and a virtue like that naturally takes precedence in the mind of any girl in my position. As long as he wanted to keep up the chase, I was willing to be chased. There was a very clear distinction, according to my precocious maidenly philosophy, between girls who let themselves be pursued and those who allowed themselves to be apprehended: the same distinction, I have since learned, exists in every young girl’s head, with certain slight concessions to individual circumstances. I was at that age: the age when you think you have living and loving figured out on a blue print.

My education went forward by leaps and bounds under the guidance of Jay-Jay and his friends and I must have changed considerably in a very short time, because Aunt Elinor soon got into the habit of remarking upon the fact that my language wasn’t all that it should be and that I used it to express ideas which I certainly never thought up under her roof. I must admit that Jay-Jay had a broadening influence upon me: he introduced me to risqué anecdotes and bedroom ballads; I heard all the conventional off-color jokes that are in existence and a few that were quite unconventionally original; I became sophisticated in a certain way, after discovering that when some man tried to tell you that “every bowlegged girl is pleasure bent” or some other such bit of drivel, he was not necessarily insulting you by the very act of telling you such things; I became so wise that I could listen unblushingly to even such a story as the one about the good wife who assaulted the minister for saying, “There is no balm in Gilead” and explained her resentment by declaring, “’Tain’t Gil’s fault nohow. Nuther of us wants brats to bother with!”

I was still a tomboy at heart but my outlook had changed considerably; or rather, I had begun to be resigned to the fate of being a girl. I had the feeling most of the time that I might as well make the best of it—and Jay-Jay happened to be the best at the moment.

But to show what influence will do to a person: I even harbored hopes of taking Aunt Elinor on one of our parties for the sole purpose of getting her plastered—just for something to do that would be different. The only thing that kept me from doing it was the certainty that if she ever saw how disgustingly unsteady her “choice” could be, that would be the end of my affair with Jay-Jay, because her Puritan prudishness would override any momentary ambitions as a matchmaker.

So I contented myself by getting Jay-Jay to take Leon with us to one of his studio jamborees. I hoped the twin would drink more than he could handle. I wanted to see him completely piffed—I figured that if he once got utterly pickled it might cure him of being so obnoxiously poetic. Of the two—being pickled or being poetic—I much preferred the briny state.

But the attic party was a fizzle for me. I didn’t have the pleasure of seeing Leon take even one too many. Furthermore my disappointment was increased by the fact that all those imitation artists actually went wild over Leon’s poetry and the more they praised him the more he read to them. He didn’t have time to take a drink. It was a terrible evening for me. I wouldn’t have minded being proud of him, if the facts warranted it; but how anyone could feel other than ashamed of a brother who would read the stuff he read—and then boasted of writing—was beyond me. The only good thing he read to them they immediately squelched because they said it sounded too conventional, too formalized. Just because it made sense and was almost rhythmic!... I think my complete loss of hopes for my dear brother dated from that evening with those asses of the arts.

Furthermore I was beginning to be depressed again, because Jay-Jay was not the sort of fellow one could put up with forever. I mean, he was the kind you either had to submit to or fight with; there could be no happy medium of friendship for very long. I remember that we went to a Christmas blow-out in town and the entire party was well ossified, so naturally Jay-Jay was in his element, the more so because all the people were of the theater and knew him as his father’s son. That one evening convinced me that show people are worse handshakers than politicians and my escort gave me acute shooting pains with his self-satisfied manner. He simply exuded manly confidence. He looked and acted as if he could take any girl he wanted, and then on the way home he was deeply grieved and insulted, not to say dumfounded, because I wouldn’t let him manhandle me. Said I, “It would take a better man than you, I’m sure.” To which the simple fool merely said, “Keep on hoping, honey; I’m improving all the time!”

A week later, at a New Year’s affair, he changed his tactics completely and made really decent and ardent love to me, just like a movie hero. He did everything except ask me to marry him. I was so surprised at his change of attack that I almost forgot myself. But then I remembered that you have to fight for anything you want to keep and it also occurred to me to wonder why he never had asked me to marry him.... Thinking it over afterwards, I concluded that it was his idea that one marries only as a last resort, after all other attempts have failed.... And I concluded also that the chief reason he was so eager in pursuit of me lay in the fact that he was beginning to doubt that he would ever have me. You’d have thought, with all the women in New York available for him, that he wouldn’t have bothered with me. But I suspected then, and have since confirmed my suspicions, that the old wheeze about denial engendering desire may be a chestnut but at least its kernel is good....

As I said before, my education was going forward in spasms. Not long after that New Year’s party, he threw caution to the winds, forgot his new plan of attack and resorted to the well-known cave-man methods. It was a veritable trial by combat. I wasn’t mad—I just simply knew that I couldn’t possibly give up anything to him. I wanted to be chased, but I’d be damned before I’d be caught. When I got home I looked as if I had been through a wringer, and that devil actually laughed at me and had the nerve to observe, “Now, I know you’re the real thing, Leona!”... I stayed awake all night trying to figure out what he meant and I must admit that it was a year or so before I realized the exact meaning.

However, I was disgusted with him and didn’t care if I never saw him again. At least I felt that way for several days. Then when I happened to overhear Leon and Vyvy discussing their future love nest, with Leon saying that his idea of heaven would be to work hard all day thinking up beautiful verses to read to a pajamaed Vyvy in bed at night, the whole business of love and love-making struck me so funny that I could laugh at my own little difficulties and regain some of my customary indifference. A few days later when Jay-Jay called again, I let him apologize—even let him get away with exclaiming, “My God, Leona, you can’t expect a man to love you forever without any encouragement! Your devilish coolness is exasperating!”... Well, little children love to play with fire and no girl ever expects to burn her fingers. I agreed to go with him once more, if he promised to behave himself.

This party turned out to be more or less interesting, although Jay-Jay didn’t keep his promise and most of the crowd were washouts. But there was a Canadian war veteran there who had just returned from France where he served with an aviation unit. It was thrilling to listen to his descriptions of the War. He couldn’t dance because of a game leg, so I gladly did my bit by sitting out with him and letting him talk. He positively stirred me all up inside and I think that if we had been alone somewhere, I would have fallen into his arms. That’s how he affected me—which was mighty strange, considering how I felt toward other men. This chap seemed different somehow—like a real he-man in comparison with such papier-mâché imitations as Jay-Jay and Leon and others of my acquaintance. However, the impulse was but momentary and my heart only pounded for a few minutes; during which I felt more panicky than thrilled.

That man left an indelible impression on my mind. I went home that night disgusted with Jay-Jay and disgusted with Leon. Jay-Jay said that if the United States went into the War, he’d be glad he could help his father run the show business (in which case there would have been a deluge of rotten shows on Broadway) and Leon suffered the tortures of hell every time the World War was mentioned. They both seemed like worms to me. I couldn’t understand their attitude at all. And I once more cried out against the fate which had made me a girl instead of a boy. I sent up prayer after prayer and called on the Lord to do something about it all. It seemed to me that if Leon were more of a man I would automatically become more of a girl and I told the Lord as much, but I also suggested that if he couldn’t do anything about Leon he could at least make something happen that would give me a chance to break out and get a little of the adventurous poison out of my system.

Well, all of a sudden it appeared that a couple of Yankees had finally got into Heaven: my prayers were answered!

CHAPTER 2
Correspondence from Heaven

It never rains but it pours. Here I had worried through seventeen years without any answers at all to my prayers and now in a few short months there were more answers than there were prayers—I mean, it was just like having your mail lost somewhere and then getting it all in a bunch. It seemed to me that the Lord must have just returned from a holiday playing golf with the planets and found all my pleas and prayers awaiting his attention, so he set about clearing his desk immediately and thoroughly. Things came so thick that the year 1917 remains in my mind a jumbled nightmare.

Not that everything happened as quickly at all that: the sequence was spread over several months but I had become so accustomed to monotony and so resigned to my fate, that so many things in even so many months was a terrific shock to my nervous system.

The first thing that happened was not strictly my own private affair. The United States went to war when Germany added insult to injury. I was overjoyed, because it seemed to me that surely here was an opportunity for excitement and adventure.... And again I was disappointed. Girls of eighteen are good for only one thing in a war, and you don’t get medals and service stripes for that kind of duty!

Jay-Jay went to work for his father, hoping to get out of going, and then when he saw he would be caught in the draft he managed to secure a soft job supervising the entertainment provisions of the eastern training camps. My hero! A man’s man!

Then I went on the stage, because Jay-Jay offered to get me a place in a new show that was being thrown together up in Connecticut, and because I suspected that he was entertaining the hope that the atmosphere of the show business would help to break down my Puritanical resistance to his Satanic charms. I had to dance almost naked to get the job, but I made a bull’s-eye from the start. The only trouble was that I had to keep thinking that Jay-Jay had practically dared me to join this show and I was so afraid I’d be contaminated by the traditional immorality of show people that I scarcely drew a normal breath while the show lasted. And every time I saw Jay-Jay the old battle was revived. He said he’d do anything to get me—and I believed him implicitly. I wouldn’t have put anything beyond him. He’d try any possible way of skinning the cat, and my part in Love Lights was just another possibility. He was very circumspect in his love-making at the time, probably trying to induce a calm to precede the storm: as he said, “My love for you is so intensely hot that even an iceberg would melt sooner or later!”

Love Lights lasted three months, but I was ready to quit long before that. I had proved that I could stand the gaff and Jay-Jay had given up hopes of skinning the cat by that method. Now he wanted to marry me! Said he’d even marry me if that was the only way he could get me! Can you imagine such a proposal?

But I couldn’t be bothered with it then, so he broached the subject to Aunt Elinor and I found her putting bugs in my ears every time I got near her. However, I stalled for time. I was in no mood to make any entangling alliances.

Also there was something far more important to think about. A miracle was happening before my very eyes! Vyvy contracted a severe case of heroitis and fell in love with the color of khaki, with the logical result that Leon was miserable. He actually lost weight trying to figure out some way of satisfying her demands that he make a hero of himself. The poor fellow hated the thought of war and fighting, loathed the idea of being thrown in with an uncouth gang of comparatively indelicate men, but he couldn’t stand the sight of Vyvy going out with men in uniform and he suspected that a man with a Sam Browne belt could do most anything with her. He talked with her, remonstrated and pleaded, called her hysterical and a lot of worse things—but Vyvy was adamant. “I won’t have a man I can’t be proud of!” she told him, at the height of their last argument on the subject.

Something had to give. It was a real crisis to them. And the next thing I knew Leon was making inquiries at recruiting stations as to the various branches of the service in which he could enlist. It was all very painful for him, but he was between the frying pan and a very hot fire; he had to make a decision of some kind—and he did, although I suspect that somebody dragged him in for examination and made him sign a paper before he realized what he was doing. Anyway, he enlisted—which proves something or other about girls like Vyvy. He came home actually proud of himself over the fact that he had passed the initial physical examination, but I noticed that he didn’t eat much for dinner that evening. And Vyvy very promptly indicated that she would throw over all her soldier friends, now that he had done the trick like a hero. She was not dizzy, after all; she knew that jealousy is a woman’s best weapon.

But poor Leon! He was suffering the torments of hell just thinking about being a soldier. I wished we could exchange places. I knew I would love it all—the coarseness, the roughness, the absolute hellishness of being a soldier appealed to me.... Instead of such a prospect, what I got was another, more importunate proposal of marriage from my hound. I thought this life was certainly a mixture of sweets and bitters, but I guess I was happy enough over the streak of manhood showing in my previously impossible twin.

I was so happy, indeed, that I agreed to dance for “the nice people” whom Aunt Elinor invited for a farewell party to Leon. She was all upset over her favorite relative’s impending departure for the War and she wanted to send him away in an unforgettable blaze of glory, so she planned this lavish entertainment at the house the night before he was to leave. And to make certain that people would remember the occasion she conceived the idea of my dancing in the nude behind a shadow screen to the accompaniment of Leon’s readings from his own verses.... It is apparent that I must have been happy over his enlistment to agree to any such thing: not the nudity but the poetic accompaniment—that, I knew, would be terrible!

And it was—so terrible that in the very midst of it poor Esky exploded in a howl that made everyone jump and almost disrupted the performance; and someone laughed rather equinely, which was still worse from my point of view. But we finally got through with it and I rushed into the house to dress and later to accept the usual bread-and-butter compliments from the assembled guests. There was nothing to do but dance the evening away and I proceeded to do this with whoever came my way, which was chiefly Jay-Jay, until Aunt Elinor sneaked up behind me and said she had a young man in tow who wanted to apologize to me. From that point on, life became steadily more interesting and Jay-Jay didn’t get all the dances, for the young man was the handsomest thing I had ever seen and his broad grin was just broad enough and yet refined enough to be infectious. My whole body underwent a quiver of excitement as soon as my eyes rested upon him. I smiled inside as well as out and was unconscious of everything except a mumbling from my aunt to the effect that “Captain Winstead has had me pursuing you for ages....”

He didn’t say anything and I couldn’t, so we just danced away and I felt as if I belonged nowhere else in the world so surely as there in his arms. That dance was unforgettable, a marvelous experience which thrills me even to this day. I was actually serenely blissfully ignorant of time and surroundings. I know such a statement sounds foolish and affected, but I certainly should know how I felt. Heaven knows, I never have felt like that more than once, so I surely should remember it.

We even danced two numbers in silence before the spell was broken by his making a belated apology for laughing so rudely during my dance. And he ended it by saying, “Of course, it was utterly damn foolish on my part!”

The way he said “damn” was to other men’s damns as a soothing melody is to a baby squawker’s music. From that point on, we were acquainted; it was just as if we had known each other for ages; he said that my dancing was just like a dream, that ... oh, I couldn’t begin to reproduce that evening in print: he was just wonderful and he told me the most enchanting things ... we went into the garden and I learned for the first time how short a time it requires to become intimately acquainted with a man, if you like him.... I never was the kind to believe in this love-at-first-sight stuff, but I know that I felt at once that Captain Clark Winstead meant all the world to me—and this in spite of the fact that I hadn’t completely lost my head; I had a sneaking suspicion that he might not mean all the wonderful things he said to me.... Yet even with such suspicions, I simply reveled in his presence. Say what you will about being made love to—it certainly is an indescribably delicious experience if you have the right man, and I did.

But, of course, there had to be a joker, and it finally appeared when he began to tell me how sorry he was that we had not met sooner, “For I’m leaving for Washington in the morning and probably will be sent to England immediately.”

Well, the best we could do was exchange addresses and since he didn’t know where he would be, he wrote mine on a scrap of paper and stuck it in his tunic, saying that I could write to him after I heard from him. Then he kissed my hands and naturally he didn’t have to use force to get me into his arms.... In fact, I was clinging to him fearfully when everything went smash with the sudden appearance of Jay-Jay, looking daggers and so mad that all he could do was stutter.

I remembered then that I had told Jay-Jay we’d dance together again before the finale, so I escaped from the very embarrassing situation by squeezing the Captain’s arm significantly and joining my pursuer, but not before the Captain said, “I hope we can have another before I go.”

Jay-Jay danced as if this were a painful duty that had to be performed. I mean, he danced ferociously and in a silence which was broken only by a grunt now and then. Oh, but he was mad! And the madder he seemed, the better I felt, because this was really the first time I had ever seen him at all off guard or off poise and it does give a girl a thrill of satisfaction to see a proud and self-assured man take a tumble into jealousy.

When he finally did speak, he said the obvious things about cheating and not playing fair and ended with a sarcastic, “You know how I’ve wanted you, and all the time you’ve tried to make me believe that you loathed having a man touch you, not to mention kissing and caressing you. And now——”

“And now is there any law against a woman changing her mind?” I demanded.

“But why treat me as if I were black, if you’ve changed your mind about such things? That’s what I mean! Am I black?”

Well, since he had come down to earth, I relented and told him, “No, I guess your ancestors were Caucasians. In fact, I was almost ready to accept your proposal, but——”

“But this fly-by-night interloper comes along and you act like a grammar school kid over him!” he exclaimed in disgust.

The argument continued through another dance and I gathered from his remarks that he wanted me to consider his proposal as still intended. He was, I think, really baffled: the incident had hurt his pride so that now he was more determined than ever to win me at all costs. And so it was that when Captain Winstead appeared to claim a last dance before he left, Jay-Jay didn’t confine his voice to a polite whisper when he observed, “Thank God, he’s going!”

The Captain and I said nothing at all while we danced. It was so divine that words would merely have bothered and when it had ended we both breathed a deep sigh of regret and somehow or other found ourselves on the veranda. His friends were already in their car waiting for him, but he didn’t hurry. We stood there, my hand in his; his other arm went around my shoulders, and I tried to put into that last kiss all the tremulous fearful affection, all the sickening despair and exalting hope, all the really heart-breaking infatuation that was at once smothering and exhilarating me. No other kiss could ever be like that. I knew it and I think he did, because he didn’t linger for another—just mumbled some sweet nothing and was gone.

Jay-Jay found me there staring out across the moonlit drive, feeling all weak and sad and utterly miserable, trying to convince myself that this knight of the night had really meant everything he said and that I honestly did mean something more than a passing fancy to him. I couldn’t banish the thought that perhaps I was just a foolish school kid, had been just another night and another girl in the Captain’s crowded life. It was such a feeling that makes anyone feel sad and understanding: when you know you love someone and can’t tell whether your love is returned or merely accepted—why, it’s a terrible feeling. It made me understand how Jay-Jay must have felt all along, and I honestly tried to be nice to him the rest of the evening.

Jay-Jay blustered and fussed at first, then indulged in sarcastic remarks about the other man and prophesied that I would never hear from him again. Then when he saw that I wouldn’t argue with him about anything at all, he quieted down and returned to the attack with his eternal proposals.

The fact was that I didn’t pay any attention to his arguments; I couldn’t even spare the time to think up answers to them: all I could think of was the Captain. I knew I should never experience such a feeling again if I lived to be a thousand: there isn’t room in one lifetime to feel like that twice. And I kept telling myself that no man could have a woman thinking of him and dreaming of him every minute without trying to do something about it—or if he would, he’d be an awful fool. And I was sure that I had communicated to him some idea of how he affected me—or again he’d be a fool. And I knew he wasn’t that.

However, the days passed and I heard just nothing at all from him. Jay-Jay had a few more days of leave and he hung around like a carrion crow with an I-told-you-so look in his eyes every time we met. And the night before he left to return to Washington, he popped a novel proposal that I could have an interesting job entertaining in the camps, if I would marry him. “I’ll do anything for you,” he declared, “provided I know you belong to me.”

“But why not get me that job anyway?” I asked.

He just laughed at that suggestion. “Do you think I’d be instrumental in turning you loose like that?” he demanded. “Not unless you were mine—then I’d know you’d behave!”

Just like that! Well, you had to admit that Mr. Marfield was persistent and persevering and I had to take his proposal seriously, because I hadn’t heard from the Captain, and that hurt tremendously, and after all it occurred to me that I really might be quite happy as Mrs. Marfield, even though I knew I could never love him as storybook heroines are supposed to love their husbands. I guess my Aunt’s continental ideas had begun to sink into my mind, for I was beginning to admit to myself that marriages are seldom one long-drawn-out love affair and that I was probably childishly optimistic when I thought that mine would be one of the exceptional cases.

I told him I would think it over, and for the next few weeks I did little else but that. All I did was think—about these two men: the one who wanted me and the one I wanted, and whom I hadn’t seen or heard from since the night we met. There didn’t seem to be any excuse for his silence and yet I kept thinking up reasons for it and hoping against hope that each next mail would bring at least a post card.

That’s what love does to you: makes you go crazy with hopes and wants and at the same time makes you capable of callously letting another go crazy wanting you. The whole triangular affair had me dizzy and I couldn’t sleep nights for thinking about it.

So that’s what I mean when I say that it never rains but it pours, even in the matter of having prayers answered. I prayed that the Lord would do something to change conditions and what did he do but bring in a man who made me change into a thoroughly girlish girl in one short evening! My prayers were answered, even in the matter of making Leon more of a man—but here I was more miserable than ever and I didn’t know whether to thank the Almighty or send up another complaint.

CHAPTER 3
Apple-sauce for the Gander

The only thing that kept me from going crazy or doing something rash during this time was the problem of the would-be hero of the family, my dear twin. From the first day in camp all he did was complain and not a week passed without a long letter full of nothing but kicks and regrets and weeping words. Even his letters to Vyvy, who was walking around with her head in the clouds of pride, carried an obvious undercurrent of pessimism and dejection, which he tried to explain away to her by saying that it was caused by his being away from her “beautiful presence.”

For a kid of his nature, it must have been a terrible experience from the beginning, which was a thorough physical examination in a roomful of naked men, not one of whom would ever suffer from inability to perspire, and during which poor Leon would have fainted dead away if the man next to him hadn’t noticed his deathly pallor and pushed him to the one and only window in the room. He didn’t actually pass out, but it seemed to him that from that moment on he was a marked weakling in the camp and there was none to give him a shred of sympathy.

When he went to get his uniform and equipment, the clerk took one look at him and threw a complete assortment of everything from underwear to blankets at him and when he came to array himself in these duds, he couldn’t bear to look at himself, because the uniform billowed about him like the costume of a Turkish dancer with the sleeves of the blouse inches too short and the neckband two sizes too large. There must have been tears lurking behind his gentle eyes when he approached his sergeant and asked meekly, “Would it be possible to exchange these things for others of my size?”

And imagine how he felt when that hard-boiled individual rapped back, “Listen, Pretty Boy, who in hell do you think you are? In this man’s army you take what they give ya and keep yer trap damn well shut! You ain’t goin’ to no swell tea party at the Waldorf-Astoria, ya know—ya’re goin’ to a first-class war, sweetie, so make up yer mind to it and don’t bother me again with any damfool complaints about it. I ain’t runnin’ this war!” And he smiled sourly as if he had conferred a favor on the cringing recruit. Everyone else in the barracks laughed with the sergeant, as common soldiers naturally would do until the sergeant’s back was turned, so Leon felt pretty small.... But he fooled them on the suit. He discovered there was a tailor shop in the camp and he was the first in his barracks to put himself in the tailor’s hands. He really looked quite military when he finally got fitted correctly, but that didn’t make him feel much better.

Then there was an obnoxious bunkmate by the name of Lowery who did his bit toward making life miserable for Leon. The very first night, when the twin was feeling blue anyway, this Lowery began to perform certain exceedingly unpleasant operations upon his feet, and when he noticed the look of anguish on Leon’s face, he said, “I’ve walked so damn far in my time, buddy, that I got some kind o’ trench foot. I get a new crop o’ skin on my toes every bloody day and when it’s hot they damn near drive me nuts.” And to one toe he gave a yank that looked vicious enough to amputate it. “They itch like hell, believe me, fellow!”

Leon harbored thoughts of murder every time he saw Lowery start his nightly ceremony of rubbing and pinching, and there wasn’t any way of avoiding it, because the afflicted man never turned in until last call and the sergeant would have blasted Leon’s soul to seven vari-colored hells if he weren’t in his blankets when the lights went out. “It’s a terrible thing, young feller!” Lowery informed him after they had slept side by side for some days, but the information didn’t make Leon feel any more sympathetic nor less sickened.

Yet Lowery’s toes were nothing in comparison with the sergeant, who seemed from the first to have his evil eye on Leon. “Canwick,” he would begin, as if he were about to confer a great honor, “somebody has got to go an’ help take care o’ the bathhouse to-day, and seein’ the drillin’ wears ya out so, I guess you’d better take to-day off and report over there. Ya see, we try to make everything as easy as possible fer everybody and also we try to teach every man somethin’ worth while so that when ya get out ya can get a decent livin’. Now this bathhouse detail will teach ya so you can get a job in a Turkish bath when ya get out o’ the army.... You’d go big in a Turkish bath fer women—ya know, they gotta have somebody’s perfectly safe and harmless.”

Everyone laughed at the insinuation and Leon hurried away to the new assignment, thinking that perhaps after all this work would be a little easier, only to discover that his duties were anything but pleasant for a tender-spirited person, what with having to scour pipes and scrub the concrete, pick up dirty discarded towels and other unclean things, distribute soap and collect slimy cakes, and watch the conglomerate mass of male humanity perform its ablutions amid a veritable barrage of dirty language and foul wit.... He was glad to be relieved and to let his legs ache the next day when an apparently indefatigable officer drilled them for hours and hours. His back and legs groaned in agony at every step and when he went to bed at night he wasn’t at all sure he would be able to get up in the morning.

He had another honor conferred on him when the humorous sergeant extended a polite invitation to him to join the Kitchen Police for a few days o’ rest. Leon told us that until that day he never had the least conception of how many potatoes there were in the world. He peeled and peeled and peeled until he felt certain there couldn’t be any more potatoes in the country—but the next morning there was a brand-new batch even larger than the one he had done. His fingers got so numb that he couldn’t feel the thousand and one cuts and scratches, and his wrists ached unmercifully while his back had a kink that seemed irremovable. After two days of this he returned to his bunk to find Lowery working on his toes and he prayed, not for Lowery’s toes, but that he might be lucky enough to draw the dishwashing detail on the morrow.

He said he must have had a clear line to Heaven, for sure enough the next morning he moved to the tubs and spent the day keeping the water clean and washing out the serving pans. After looking at the refuse in some thousands of mess kits three times a day, he was unable to eat anything himself. That night he didn’t know what to pray for and before he could make up his mind he went to sleep.

A few days later he was promoted to the garbage detail, the sergeant telling him, “You’ll never make a real soldier anyway, so you might as well get some kind of training and be earnin’ yer thirty bucks a month.” On the garbage wagon he did less but more nauseating work, emptying huge G.I. cans of vari-odored swill, cleaning the cans, and then riding to the disposal plant on the cargo, where the wagon had to be swept and washed with infinite care against possible inspections. He didn’t eat much that day either, nor the day after; and when he was returned to the mess hall, he was glad enough to tend the tubs. He managed to serve out the week, but he swore he lost ten pounds during that time, just from inability to eat.

The sergeant welcomed him back to the company and for two weeks appeared to have forgotten his existence. Then one morning he delegated him a special emissary to the latrines, and the poor kid, just recovering his appetite, lost it in the course of a single day’s work with mop and broom and disinfectant can. Nor could he see anything humorous in the song which the other members of the detail persisted in singing to cheer them at their tasks, for it was a very dirty ditty, an ode to Latrina, the patron saint of that particular place. Leon said he knew the words by heart but had never sung the song because the words wouldn’t pass his lips. The Ode to Latrina must have been a ghastly thing—but I wanted to hear it as soon as I heard it existed. Some such things are funny because they are so foul; there is such a thing as “shocking” humor.

However, Leon thought he had endured about as much agony and misery as was possible without passing out and he was just wondering if there could be anything worse befall him when an opportunity to escape presented itself. The sergeant called for volunteers who could “parley-voo frog,” and Leon couldn’t report to him fast enough. About a dozen others also declared they could speak French. Leon went them all one better by adding, “I can read and write German and Italian, too.”

“Who in hell cares if ya can talk Wop?” demanded the sergeant. “Pretty soon you’ll be tellin’ me you invented the laundry checks the Chinks use. What I ask was, ‘Can ya parley the Frog’?”

“Yes—fluently,” replied Leon stubbornly.

The non-com laughed. “That’s a good word—maybe if ya pull that on them, you’ll get the job, Grace. And it’s a damn sight better job than a fly-weight like you deserves in this man’s army.” Whereupon he sallied forth for regimental headquarters, with all who had answered satisfactorily, in tow. Arrived there he reported to a Captain who took the men in charge and after a lot of hemming and hawing and crazy questioning, Leon found himself chosen for the job—whatever it might prove to be.

He discovered that he now had the laugh on his former comrades, who had made him the butt of their jokes, for while they were laboriously attending to latrines, garbage cans, kitchen work and drilling, he was in comparative comfort attending the clerical wants of a Colonel who was farsighted enough to equip himself with a French-speaking clerk before the necessity arose for one. When Lowery heard of the nature of the new job, he frankly observed, “Dog-robbin’ is a hell of a good job fer an ole woman like you.” But dog-robbing or not, Leon knew a good thing when he saw it and he determined to make himself indispensable to his Colonel.

It was just after his promotion that Aunt Elinor, Vyvy and I dropped in for a week-end visit and made him show us everything in and about the camp. He took us to his “office” and even pointed out the Colonel who was getting into a car just as we came up, which made it possible for Leon to take us in and show us all about his work. It really wasn’t very intricate. I told him, afterwards, that as far as I could see, I could do his work as well if not better than he, and he retorted, “You’d probably make a better soldier than I am, anyway.”

But he didn’t feel so badly that day, what with Vyvy there and this new work so comparatively easy. The only fly in his ointment was that he feared this Colonel would be going overseas soon and that meant he’d go along. Leon was seriously worried about this. As he said, “Colonels have been known to get killed and anyone that’s with one might more easily get hit. Now Generals hardly ever get up in the lines, so I’m looking around for a convenient General to attach myself to.” His idea of unadulterated bliss (if such were possible in the army) was to be dog-robber to General Pershing. And he was so shameless about admitting it! However, I was glad he was making some kind of progress because the ordinary soldiers looked like a pretty dumb lot of cattle, not half so intelligent as the officers. Yet I would have been glad to be even a dumb private if I only could, which shows that my experience with Captain Winstead hadn’t really changed me completely inside for I was still interested in men’s affairs more than women’s.

I thought we had cheered the twin by our visit, but if we did its effects disappeared as soon as we left him, for his letters continued to be full of complaints and regrets. He wasn’t satisfied at all and his letters betrayed a yellow streak the width of his back. Apparently every moment he wasn’t busy, his mind was filled with gory imaginings and horrible visions of shell-torn bodies, stinking carcasses, burning flesh, blood, muck and god-awful corruption; and at night his dreams contained more gruesome details of his fate than fancies about his Vyvy. Each such night of mental anguish served to spur him on to work for promotion. His one consuming desire at the time was to go up, because he thought that safety lay in getting way up in the organization.... I was acutely ashamed of him because I realized that his ambition was prompted solely by cowardly fear. Such a man surely couldn’t get very far in the army.

Another thing which disturbed him considerably was the dirty army songs and rank stories. He thought it was incredible that officers who looked like gentlemen could enjoy passing along a rotten joke or a shady anecdote. He couldn’t possibly see that a little dirt now and then is relished by the best of men. He thought it was all very unnecessary and depressing, almost as bad as the foul ditties about the mademoiselles and their odd ways of loving or the legend of the Alsatian maiden who welcomed the invading Germans with the remark, “Well, officer, when do the atrocities begin?”

I really began to hate the thought of his going overseas because no one could tell what he might do in a pinch. He was scared to death already and although he had to act interested when his Colonel talked about going across, he actually was shivering in his boots and praying that something would happen to delay them.

But weeks passed and in doing so rather induced a lull in my worries about him because it seemed that they were never really going. Vyvy planned a big party for Leon, to take place whenever he could get away, and he made inquiries and told her to go ahead and plan on a certain week-end, at which time he felt sure he could get a leave. So Vyvy sent out invitations and had all her arrangements made—when on the Friday before the day of the affair, a letter came from him carrying the awful news that his outfit had received waiting orders and all leaves had been canceled. What a monkey wrench that was! And I had a note from Jay-Jay saying that he wasn’t sure whether or not he could be present but asking me again if I would marry him on any condition at all. I answered immediately to the effect that I wouldn’t even consider it unless he made an effort to go overseas. Now that Leon was going, poor specimen that he was, I had no patience with such a patriotic flat tire as Jay-Jay, in his soft and easy berth supervising “entertainments for the soldiers.”

By this time I had lost all hopes of hearing from the Captain. I often thought of him and worried my poor brains trying to imagine what had happened to him; I kicked myself for not telling him flatly that night how much I loved him, because then I would have known by his silence that he wasn’t interested at all. But this ignorant suspense was bewildering and devastating and I escaped from it all by reverting to my previous type—I projected myself into Leon’s place and revived my never-dead tomboyish attitude and its interests.

That was the frame of mind I was nourishing when the news of Leon’s confinement to camp arrived. I sympathized with Vyvy and tried to cheer up Auntie, who thought that going to France meant going to certain death, and my efforts were helped considerably that night when a second letter came from Leon, saying that he couldn’t possibly get away because “orders are orders in this damnable place, although we surely won’t go for a good many days yet and I’ll be lying around here all the week-end doing nothing at all when I could just as easily be enjoying myself in Wakeham!”

You see, as soon as we learned that he probably wouldn’t be going overseas yet, we all began to wonder how his getting away could possibly be arranged, if only for a few hours. I felt sorry for the poor kid, and for Vyvy, with her party all planned for the next night and both of them so eager for this last farewell meeting. It didn’t seem reasonable to me that he could be only a hundred miles away and still be unable to spend just one evening in Wakeham with his Vyvy. She had got him into the War and now he couldn’t even get away long enough to collect a farewell kiss in reward. I decided that there had to be some way out.... Leon had to get to that party, if someone had to die for it!

The next morning I drove down to the camp, carrying a suitcase containing one of his suits of civies, with cap, socks, shoes, shirts and everything. I planned to get there by noontime, find out what could be done and if worst came to worst, put my brilliant “last resort” idea into action, at the cost of my curly locks and perhaps my personal freedom. I would have had the haircut in Wakeham, but I decided that it would be bad luck: if I had it cut, Leon would manage to get a pass of some kind just to make my sacrifice in vain, for that was my luck. Not that I really wanted to carry out my great idea—I just entertained sneaking hopes. And besides I had to work very circumspectly in order that Aunt Elinor wouldn’t get suspicious, for I figured that although she could be depended upon after the deed was done, she wouldn’t approve of it beforehand. As it was, she thought I was insane to drive down there in a snowstorm on what had every indication of being a wild-goose chase.

I said prayers again as Esky and I sped along the snow-covered roads—and the prayers had nothing to do with the snow, nor were they exactly complaints this time. I prayed for a sporting chance, for just a “break,” and I was in such excitement that I quite forgot about Captain Winstead as well as Jay-Jay Marfield and his proposals, for I was on the threshold of adventure—an adventure that would beat anything the fiction writers could offer for a heroine.

I was confident that, if my sneaking hopes materialized, I would learn to my own satisfaction that what was apple-sauce for the gander could still be sauce for the goose.

CHAPTER 4
A Mask of Khaki

Esky and I left Wakeham at eight o’clock that morning and arrived at the Camp at eleven thirty to find Leon in the slough of despond because he couldn’t get a pass for love nor money. We talked over the situation and every other remark of his had to do with how much he wanted to see Vyvy “just once more.” Well, I got sick of hearing it, and, although the sight of this vast military establishment had rather weakened my desire to go through with my last resort plans, I did finally suggest it to him.

“You’re insane!” was his first comment, and then he added, rather huffily, too, “This is no time for jokes.”

“I’m not joking at all,” I told him. “I mean it. Isn’t it perfectly possible? I’ve got a suit of your civies in the car; we can go outside and exchange clothes; you take Esky and go home, and I’ll come in here and make myself at home until you get back. What’s wrong with that? You said yourself that there’s never anything to do on Saturday and Sunday, and you can be back here to-morrow afternoon. So what’s wrong with that picture?”

Still he didn’t seem to take me seriously. “I’d as leave go A.W.O.L.,” he said.

“Yes? And maybe get caught and sent to Atlanta because you ducked out when the outfit was expecting travel orders? And you wouldn’t want to throw up a chance to go overseas anyway. God, I should think you’d be so excited you couldn’t think straight.”

I could see that he was beginning to weaken, but he promptly thought of another objection. “What about your hair? You don’t suppose anyone would be foolish enough to think I had grown hair that long, do you?” He thought that objection was insurmountable.

But I jumped it at once. “I’d just as leave have my hair cut boy fashion,” I told him. “Can get it done somewhere in a few minutes’ time. What do you say?”

Well, he didn’t know what to say. He always was a slower thinker than I and it took him several minutes to digest the whole idea.

“There isn’t anything that might come up during your absence, is there? I mean, anything that I couldn’t do?” I asked, before he had time to answer.

He considered the possibilities for a moment and answered a rather dumb “No—I guess not. I could show you where everything is anyway.”

“Well—” I said. “Then it’s all settled. Let’s start.”

“But your hair!” he objected again, as if he were reaching for straws of argument for support, “Aunt Elinor will throw a fit when she sees you minus your hair.”

“Pooh—what do I care for Aunt Elinor? And anyway, it’ll grow out again. I can have typhoid fever or something for an excuse. Come on!”

“But, gosh, Leona—you don’t know what you’re getting into.” He was just arguing for the sake of having something to say. “There’s an awful gang in that headquarters barracks—swearing all the time, smoking and chewing, telling dirty rotten stories that’ll make your stomach turn somersaults. Really, we’d better not——”

“Oh—hush!” I exclaimed. “My stomach’s stronger than yours, old dear, so if you can stand it, I guess I can for a couple of days anyway. Besides, I think it will be kinda fun, hearing a lot of things a girl never has a chance to hear when she’s in dresses.”

He capitulated. “Well, I would like to see Vyvy, and it does sound fool-proof.”

“Come on, then!”

“Well, you’re making the bed, remember!”

So we set off for his barracks, where he showed me his bunk and explained about the rules. Then we proceeded to his Colonel’s office where he obtained a two-hour pass to leave the camp. It was while he was getting this that I had my first worry. And I didn’t know just how to ask about it, either, since it’s one of those things that even brother and sister wouldn’t ordinarily discuss. Finally, however, I said, “You’re sure there’s nothing that could embarrass me?”

“Not a thing, as long as you use your head and stay out of trouble.”

That didn’t satisfy my curiosity, so I had to blurt out exactly what I meant. “How about those ‘inspections’ you have to go through every now and then?”

“What inspections?” he wanted to know. Which convinced me that he is dumber than I am.

“Why—don’t you have some kind of physical exam every few weeks?” I insisted.

I was really surprised that he could laugh at such a thing, but he did. He thought it was a huge joke and kept on smiling about it even after he told me that there was nothing to worry about from that quarter as they had just had one of those intimate inspections two days before. I was very much relieved—and the idea is rather funny, at that, when you stop to think of it: just imagine me standing in line with a bunch of men and stepping up to let a doctor look me over! And imagine the look on the doctor’s face when he saw before him a woman instead of a man! I guess Leon has a sense of humor after all.

Anyway, we went out to the car then and left the camp, driving way over to the other side of town to find a little barber shop where no one’s suspicions might be aroused. I went in, and I admit that I felt rather foolish for a moment. But there was only one barber there and he was an Italian that could only understand English when it was accompanied by very clear gestures. And I told him I had had typhoid fever and therefore wanted my hair cut short like a boy’s.

He was dumfounded, and acted as if he wouldn’t believe me, so I plopped into the chair and explained with my hands just how I wanted it cut, so it would resemble Leon’s as much as possible. Leon, being poetic, never had his hair cut awfully short anyway, so it really didn’t seem so strange.

From there we went to a hotel, Leon driving while I tried to make my hat and the collar of my coat combine to offset the odd effect of the haircut. Just as we were getting out of the car, another hitch presented itself to my mind, and I said to Leon, “We can’t change clothes in there!”

“Why not?” he demanded, his voice sounding as if I had scared the life out of him.

“Now, wouldn’t it look funny to anyone who noticed us going in—a man and a girl—and then saw two men come out? If there happened to be anyone about who recognizes you, he’d smell a mouse immediately.”

I can see now that my fears were practically groundless, but at the time it seemed as if someone would appear at any moment to divine our purpose, and Leon finally agreed that perhaps we’d better make our quick change somewhere else. “But where?”

I had to think hard. We couldn’t go to a private house, for then whoever saw us would naturally wonder how a man and woman could change to two men all at once, and particularly a soldier and a girl to begin with. We couldn’t go anywhere where there would be people. That was apparent at once, so I finally suggested, “Let’s ride out into the country and find a nice secluded forest.”

We did this, but didn’t find a woods that could be used for a dressing room until we had driven more than fifteen miles from the camp. Finally we spied one, a sort of brush-covered little hill, and Leon went in first to change into his civies. When he returned, I took his clothes and came back a few minutes later with my dress, undies, shoes, hat and coat, in the suit case which I had used to bring down his clothes. We looked each other over and decided that everything checked. I complained about the army underwear—I must say that it isn’t any too comfortable on a girl—but that was a small matter, in view of the fun it was to be.

Then back to camp and in to the Colonel’s office, so that Leon could show me where all the different “forms” and papers are kept, and what each was for. That took about half an hour, and just as we were coming out of the building Leon gave a start of fear and whispered, “Here comes the Sergeant Major!”

I began to shiver all over. I hadn’t the least idea what I was supposed to do to a Sergeant Major. I started to salute but for once Leon thought faster than I; when he jammed his elbow into my ribs, I managed a foolish grin.

But the Sergeant Major was staring at us and before we had passed him, he said, in a very friendly tone of voice, “Sorry as hell about the pass, Canwick. I know you wanted it pretty badly.”

I waited for Leon to say something, then suddenly—realized that it was I he was addressing, so I spoke up, saying with a grin of thanks, “Oh—that’s all right, Sergeant. Guess I’ll live through it.” I stopped and looked at Leon, who had turned his face away. “By the way, Sergeant,” I offered, “I’d like to introduce you to my twin brother.”

“Surely—glad to meet you.” And he shook hands with Leon before the other could realize what was going on. Then he added with a laugh, “I thought you looked a lot alike.”

We all smiled then and I finally tore us away after remarking that my twin had come down to drive me home, not knowing that I couldn’t get away. The sergeant-major said “Sorry” again and we separated—I, with a huge sigh of relief and not a little pride in my ability as a mime.

Well, we didn’t lose any more time, but hurried to the car and out of the camp. About a quarter of a mile away, I got out, said good-by to Esky, told Leon not to fail to get back by to-morrow evening, and waved after them as they rolled away toward Wakeham. Esky acted as if he were going crazy. He barked and squirmed and yapped, and I guess he had Leon about crazy by the time they got home.

While walking back to the camp gate, I tried every kind of mental exercise to make myself think and act like Private Canwick, U.S.A. By the time I got to the man who took my pass, I was stepping along like a regular soldier, although my heart skipped about a dozen beats when the guard looked me up and down as he took my pass.

Once within, however, my self-confidence came back and I wandered aimlessly around the camp for an hour or more, familiarizing myself with the location of the main buildings. I visited the Camp Headquarters and stopped at the Y.M.C.A. Hut, where I purchased some of the stationery for a souvenir of this unusual adventure. I enjoyed my tour of inspection immensely and took real delight in saluting every officer I met. This was certainly a pleasure; every time I saluted, I looked straight at the officer and said, under my breath, “O Mister, if you only knew!” It was great fun.

The whole situation struck me as being exceedingly comical—and exceedingly unique. I have heard and read of many kinds of disguises, of royalty incognito, of masked heroes and heroines in many kinds of romance and adventure. I’ve read somewhere, in French and Italian literature, about lovers who carried on their amours in disguise, and about men and women who figured prominently in war and politics under assumed names and behind disguised faces. Medieval legends come to mind, fanciful tales of heroism by knights in deceiving armor, and of fair ladies who entertained paramours behind mysterious masks. Joan of Arc slept with an army, but she was known as a girl by all her soldier comrades. They say that there was a fighting outfit composed of Russian women and known as The Battalion of Death, but these soldiers were known as women also. There have been any number of modern stories and plays with plots depending upon the use of masks, veils, disguises and aliases; duels have been fought by women in men’s clothing; and there was a famous duelist named Chevalier d’Eon, who dressed as a woman every time he appeared in Paris—because the King had banished him from Paris—and he had been the recipient of love favors from many courtiers, who thought he really was a woman. There has from time immemorial been something very alluring and intriguing about masks and disguises. They have been used for every conceivable purpose.

Yet I can’t think of a single situation similar to the one in which I found myself. It is one thing for a man to dress as a woman—nothing very dangerous in that. It’s not unusual for women to join with men in the army, as long as they remain women and are known as women. But it’s quite another thing, a very different and very unusual thing for a girl to be in the United States Army without anyone knowing about it. In this particular case, of course, there wasn’t any real danger; but the situation remained very intriguing. On the face of it, my position was far more perilous than that of a woman soldier who is known as a woman—but, at the same time, far more enjoyable, for to be a woman among men without the men’s knowing it is decidedly interesting, and has many intriguing possibilities. I thought this about the nearest I’d ever come to being able to enjoy the liberties and privileges of men, and I tried to exercise my mind appreciatively.

I had thought of all this during my walk around the camp and was still smiling inwardly when I returned to the barracks. Several men were lounging about the door; they offered a matter-of-fact greeting and I returned their perfunctory hellos with a smile and a nod. I wasn’t quite sure of my voice. But no one paid particular attention to me, so I walked on down to my bunk and began a casual investigation of the assortment of odds and ends that Leon had collected.

Hung at the rear end of the bunk, with his slicker, haversack and embroidered ditty bag, I found his ukulele and, since I couldn’t think of anything else to do, I flopped on the bed and began strumming the uke as accompaniment to my idle dreams about the oddity of the situation. It occurred to me that if anything should happen to cause my discovery, the newspapers would make a front-page story of it. The “yellow sheets” would pay almost any price for my story of the affair, giving all the lurid details of what I heard and did during these two days of soldiering. I could visualize the headlines, in big black letters, carrying to all parts of the country the story of the daring girl who took her brother’s place in the army so that he could attend a farewell party with his beloved. After which, wouldn’t it be nice to have golden offers from half a dozen theatrical producers; it’d be a marvelous way to break into the lime-lit ranks. What a publicity stunt!

When my thoughts arrived at this point, my fingers were strumming the uke rather excitedly—sort of muscular sympathy, I guess. Anyway, my reverie was abruptly ended at this point, for I heard a voice behind me call “Canwick!” And I rolled out with a start to stare dumbly at a soldier who appeared to be no higher nor lower than myself. He didn’t wait for me to say anything, just rattled out his message and disappeared. He said—I recall it distinctly because I said it over and over about a dozen times before I could decide what to do about it—“Canwick, Colonel Davison is at Regimental Headquarters. You’re to report to him there at once.”

Those words marked the end of my brief spell of dreamy pleasure. The hitherto comic lark promptly developed into a very serious series of disturbing developments. After digesting the orderly’s message, I decided that there was nothing to do but report to Colonel Davison—the which I proceeded to do, and came into his presence with my heart in my throat and my knees feeling rather unstable. It was lucky that I knew where the headquarters were and what the Colonel looked like; but I wasn’t counting any blessings or naming them one by one at that moment when I wavered into his presence, and offered a weak “Yes, sir,” after a comic opera salute.

“Canwick,” the Colonel said abruptly, “I’ve praised you so much that now I have to pay for the praise by losing your services.”

“Oh, no, sir!” I exclaimed, entirely at sea.

“Yes,” he insisted. “General Backett has decided that he needs your services more than I do, so you and I must part. You’ve worked yourself into an enviable place, and I’m sure you will like General Backett.” He stopped, looked at me a moment then added, “Are you sorry?”

Well, he didn’t sound any more like a hard-boiled regular army officer than nothing at all and when he asked me that question, I was still so dumfounded that all I could manage was, “Uh-h—yes, sir, I am, sir.”

At that he laughed and continued, “Well, I’m sorry to lose you. You were the ideal man for my work.... But then I wouldn’t want to hold you back on that account. Doubtless General Backett will show his appreciation by a promotion.”

“Is this—is this effective at once?” I inquired, hoping that he would say “Monday.”

But he didn’t. He said, “Yes, to-day. It happens that General Backett’s special clerk has been down with blood poisoning for a week and that none of the men who have been tried as substitutes have satisfied the General. It seems now that the special clerk will not be able to go overseas with the organization and General Backett has taken my word for the fact that you can fill the bill. So you report to him at once and then come back to my office and straighten up the papers for your successor.” He arose then and extended his hand, “And if I don’t see you again, be assured of my best wishes, Canwick.”

I shook hands and stumbled out of the place. I was sorry to leave him. I mean, it seemed a shame to leave such a nice officer on such short notice.

Upon inquiry of an orderly I learned that General Backett’s office was in the next building and I proceeded there at once, despite my chills and shivers of apprehension. I didn’t know whether Leon was supposed to have met this General man before or not, but since introductions don’t count for much in the army anyway, I decided to act very stiff and formal and see which way the wind bloweth. So I waltzed in and told the orderly what I wanted and who I was and who sent me, and a few minutes later I was escorted into the General’s sanctum sanctorum. I took one good look at him and would have beat a retreat because he looked so gruff and hard, but when he spoke his voice showed that he wasn’t that way at all.

“You’re Canwick, eh?” he asked, in a tone that made me like him at once.

“Yes, sir,” said I, smiling a little, because at the moment I noticed how big and awkward he seemed for a man who had spent his life in the army.

“Well, Canwick, you’ve been invited to accompany me on a long hard journey, and the work begins at once. My man is down with blood poisoning and I must leave before he can get out of the hospital. I’ve tried a dozen clerks, but none have satisfied me and I’m taking Colonel Davison’s word for it that you will. So you see you have a reputation to uphold.” He smiled encouragingly.

I was shaking inside but I managed to say, “I’ll do my best, sir.”

He smiled again and continued, “In taking you, I am looking to the future, to a certain extent, because I believe I will need someone who is able to interpret French and at the same time take dictation and help in compiling reports. None of that will come now, of course, but will probably come sometime after we arrive in France. For the time being there are merely routine forms and letters to be done, and since there are about a million of these to be cleaned up before we go, you’d better do whatever you have to do and come back ready for work.”

Well, I didn’t have anything to do that I knew of, and I intimated as much, whereupon he said, “Your transfer papers—get your personnel officer to see to that. Also get your equipment and replace everything that can’t stand inspection. By the time you return, I’ll have these matters in order and we’ll go to work.”

So I said “Yes, sir” and left. It seemed to me he was in a terrible hurry and I hadn’t the least idea who this “personnel officer” might be. I started to think the thing out, but then I remembered that everyone always said that a private wasn’t supposed to think, so I just proceeded to do the only thing I could do—namely, find the Sergeant Major and tell him what was what and ask how.

I found him in the Y.M.C.A. listening to a phonograph record of the Marine Band, but when I told him what had happened, he promptly came along with me to the headquarters, spoke to an officer about me and told me he’d have the transfer fixed up at once. I asked him what I should do next and he laughed and told me to pack up my junk and have it ready to move to the Divisional Headquarters barracks when he came back. So I did and he finally came back, and I then moved—wondering, as I did so, what Leon would do if he returned to his old bunk before seeing me and learning about the change.

Then I reported back to the Colonel and told him what the General had told me. He was very nice about it—I guess all Colonels are always nice about anything a General wants—and he told me not to bother about his records, that he would get them straightened out without trouble. I guess he, too, wanted this fellow Canwick for future rather than present work.

Back to the General’s office. And when he said he had a million things to do, he minimized matters by about that number, for he kept me going for three hours, and left more to be done in the morning. He dictated at least a million letters—and poor me just by luck seeing an old letter with the form FROM: TO: SUBJECT: on it, which just saved me from addressing the first letter to “My dear Secretary of War.” There was another million of blank forms to be filled out and half the things I didn’t know beans about, but he was awfully nice about everything and seemed to think it was perfectly natural that I should be ignorant about some of them. Anyway, I worked until I was dizzy. And the General smoked the vilest cigars I ever smelled. I bought a package of cigarettes—I just had to practice up smoking—in self-defense.

I wrote to Leon by Special Delivery. He’d have to get back by next afternoon, because from the way this General man talked, they were leaving that night, and I’d have to see Leon for long enough to explain about some of those things. And he’d have to know this General on sight.

Well, he ought to be happy: he’d wanted to get in with a General. Whew—if it were me, I’d rather be a real soldier, than have to work this hard all the time. I was actually dizzy.

I hoped Leon didn’t tell Vyvy about me. I didn’t want her blabbing it all over the place. It didn’t seem like such a grand experience just now. And I hoped he was enjoying her party; if all this were in vain, I’d swoon like an olden heroine. I knew Auntie was having all kinds of fits about now!

Oho, for the life of a soldier!... I know I haven’t mentioned every detail of interest in this adventure—and especially some of the funniest ones, like the cave-manly form of the man in the next bunk and the discussion of social diseases which was going on up in the other end of the barracks, not to mention certain problems of nature which had to be solved at the expense of distinct concessions on the part of a maiden’s modesty. But then, I can remember these things, if I think hard enough. I certainly had never experienced anything like this before, nor probably ever would again. I only hoped nothing would happen to make me regret this escapade, for it was fun to be in with a crowd of men and have them think you’re a man, too. My education went forward by leaps and bounds that day!

Never again would I pity myself for being tired: I was so all in by night that I could giggle into hysterics without the slightest provocation. For safety’s sake I turned in but you can rest assured that I didn’t remove as much of my clothes as the man in the next bunk did. This was a case of the proverbial shoe: it makes all the difference in the world which foot it’s on.

CHAPTER 5
A Maiden Sleeps with an Army

—1—

If there’s one kind of scenery I like more than anything, it’s a winter landscape of rolling hills and evergreen trees laden with snow. Usually the sight of a snowy outdoors is very comforting—but not so that day. Every time I noticed the snow—and it had been falling thick and fast since early Sunday morning—it reminded me that Leon had to get back here that afternoon, and between Vyvy and the snowstorm, there was absolutely no telling whether he’d show up or not. So there was nothing very comfy about that snowstorm. Of course, it would do something like this at just this time. My luck again!

I was on the go all morning. General Backett certainly did believe in keeping busy. I discovered that morning that he was too old for regular duty and no doubt that was why he worked so hard: he evidently wanted to demonstrate his ability to stand the wear and tear, in the hope that he would get some kind of an active command after we reached France. “We,” did I say? Which just goes to prove how easy it is to lose one’s identity: I kept thinking that I was going with the General, instead of Leon. It seemed perfectly natural, as if I had been expecting it for months.

Well, I wasn’t going, so what was the sense of these foolish visions? And yet, it did seem perfectly natural for me to be chasing around getting my equipment checked and replenished and then leaving it spread out for inspection. Even that morning at first call, I rolled out as pretty as you please, grabbed a towel and rushed for the water-trough, scrubbed my teeth, washed my face in the cold water, emitted a few curses just to keep up with the other fellows, rushed back, combed my hair (that was rather awkward, I imagine) and ran out with the rest of them to the mess hall. That much was good fun, even though I already had noticed the snowstorm.

From breakfast on, however, my worries piled up just about as fast as the snow heaped up outside. On the go every minute, doing a lot of things that I knew nothing whatever about, chasing errands, reporting this to that officer and that to this officer and running all over the place like a chicken sans head. All of which I would have enjoyed, if it weren’t for this doubt about Leon.

This doubt increased steadily, for some inexplicable reason. I could just see him at home there with Vyvy, hating like the very devil to think of going back. He probably watched that snowstorm with fascination, and kept putting off and putting off the moment of his departure. I could understand how he felt: he hated the camp and he hated to leave his Vyvy, and I knew he spent all morning trying to decide whether the outfit really would leave that night. I finally decided to telephone him, if he hadn’t come by noon, but when noon came I found that I couldn’t get out until later and had to put off that project.

Meanwhile, I had the shock of my life, for who should appear but Jay-Jay himself. I tried to duck—it was just my damned luck to bump into him anyway, for he didn’t know where Leon was supposed to be in this camp—but he spied me and called, so I had to face him. Believe me, I did some tall trembling at that moment, although I realized that if worse came to worst and he did recognize me, I could make him see the joke of it and keep his mouth shut about me. I just waited to see what he would do.

“How are you, Leon?” he asked, sticking out his hand to be shaken. “Thought you would be in Wakeham this week-end.”

Well, what was I to say? I thought fast, believe me. I couldn’t say I hadn’t gone, because then later he would go home and perhaps run into Vyvy or Auntie or someone else who was at Vyvy’s party and then he’d probably learn that Leon was there. While I pondered frantically, my eye fell on his wrist watch and noted that it was just a little before two o’clock.

“Why—,” I stammered, “I did go home—just got back about half an hour ago.”

He looked at me kinda funny. “Your voice has changed, hasn’t it?” he inquired abruptly.

I laughed. “God, yes—everything about me’s changed,” I declared. “This damned army life changes you so you hardly recognize yourself.” I grimaced as if disgusted with the whole business.

“You must have had a skiddy trip down,” he observed then. “Rather rotten for driving, eh?”

“Don’t mention it!” I exclaimed. “It was one hell of a trip! Leona came with me, in spite of Aunt Elinor’s objections, and she started right back. God only knows when or how she’ll get there in this weather.”

“She did?” he repeated. “Dammit, I wish I had known that. I’d like to have seen her. Don’t know when I’ll get to New York again. This is the nearest I’ve been for several weeks.”

“Been transferred, or something?” I asked, and offered him a cigarette, which he accepted before replying. “Got a match?” I certainly did try my best to sound matter-of-fact, despite the fact that this was the first time in my life I ever asked a man for a match.

“Sure—” And he produced a box, gave me a light, served himself, and continued, “Why, no, no transfer—just a rearrangement of the work we’re doing. Means a lot of jumping around for me. Been down South the past three weeks, came over here from Washington yesterday and will be here until the middle of the week, when I move again.”

“Interesting work?” I inquired.

“Not very—I’m getting fed up on it. I’m even considering applying for a transfer so I can go over. After all, a man might as well be in the middle of this business.”

I nodded, and smiled—this didn’t sound like Jay-Jay. I wondered if my ultimatum to him had had this effect.

“I say,” he suddenly interrupted. “Why don’t we have dinner together this evening, or to-morrow evening?”

I almost blurted out “I’d love to”—which was the natural thing to say—but I caught myself and said instead, “Gosh, I’d like to, but it can’t be done to-night because I’m so busy I don’t know when I’ll be free, and it can’t be done to-morrow because we’re leaving, I think, to-night. Thanks a lot, though.”

“You’re leaving? Really?” he seemed completely astounded at this, but he came back quickly, “Well—” He extended his hand again, “Good luck, Leon. Be careful what you do with those mademoiselles and don’t drink too much cognac on an empty stomach!”

“Don’t worry about the mademoiselles!” I replied with a laugh. “And good luck to you. Hope we’ll meet over there.”

We parted and I breathed a mile-long sigh of relief. But after I reached the office, I could smile at the thought of this odd meeting, and particularly at the idea of Jay-Jay’s being so utterly dumb. I was sure that if I saw my Captain in dresses and black paint, I’d recognize him without any trouble at all—and I only saw him once in my life. Jay-Jay certainly must have been stupid.

About fifteen minutes after this meeting, luck came my way for once. The General decided suddenly that I could do some purchasing for him in town. “Get a pass for an hour and pick up these things for me,” he said, handing me a list of half a dozen things. I needed no urging; got the pass from the non-com in charge, and departed at once.

You can guess what the first thing I did was: hunt up a telephone booth that was secluded enough to allow me to say all I wanted to say. I found one in a lunch room and put in a rush call to Wakeham.

I spent fifteen hectic minutes waiting for the call to come through and when it did, I almost died of shock, for who answered the phone but my dear darling twin!

I was speechless for a moment. Adequate words for my feelings could not be spoken over the telephone, but I did try to give him a general idea of what I really thought of him for not leaving very early that morning.

“But your Special Delivery just came, about five minutes ago,” he declared. “I’ll leave in another five minutes.... But how am I going to get in there again? How are we going to change back?”

“How the devil do I know? You get here! The rest can wait. I’ll wait for you at the headquarters building.”

Aunt Elinor got on the line long enough to hear my voice. She sounded rather shaky when she said, “I feel better after hearing your voice, Leona dear.”

“I’ll see you in the morning, Auntie. Don’t worry.” And that was the end of that.

And this was the end of this. I’d been gone much more than an hour and my General was having forty fits by this time.

—2—

Several hours elapsed and my little adventure ceased to be interesting; even though I talked to Auntie by phone again it didn’t make me feel any brighter. Somehow or other, I felt damned pessimistic. I wished I had kept my bright idea to myself, instead of getting into this nerve-racking mess. Leon should have been there by this time, but he wasn’t, and no one knew where he was. Auntie said he left before three o’clock and had chains on the car, and he surely should be able to make it in six hours, even in a snowstorm.

Auntie was on the verge of hysterics, I guess. “What can you do? What can you do?” she kept asking.

“Why, I can’t do anything unless and until he gets here,” I told her. “What do you expect me to do, go out hunting for him?” It struck me that probably he had headed in the opposite direction. I suppose I really shouldn’t say such rotten things about my brother, but I just couldn’t help thinking things, knowing him as I did.

And then Auntie said something that gave me more to worry about. “Leon couldn’t find Esky anywhere,” she declared weakly. “We haven’t seen him since last night.”

I supposed the poor pup stayed out all night and would probably be down with distemper when I got home. Of course, no one would think of looking for him!

Auntie was enough to give anyone the willies when she got excited. “But, Leona, you must do something! What if Leon has an accident and can’t get there this evening? What will you do?”

As if there was anything I could do!

“You listen to me, Leona! If he doesn’t come pretty soon, you go right up to that General and confess the whole business! I’m not going to be worried like this!”

I had to laugh at that. She wasn’t going to be worried like this! And I should tell the General! Why, they’d probably crucify me and send Leon to Atlanta for life! I told her to sit tight and not to worry—everything would straighten out sooner or later. “And I’m all right, anyway,” I added for good measure. “Nothing to worry about.”

“Well—you call me the minute he arrives,” she insisted.

“Surely,” I agreed. “And if he doesn’t arrive—I mean if he calls you and says he can’t get here, tell him to lie low until you hear from me. If he doesn’t show up in time, I’ll send a letter to you for him. He’ll have to stay out of sight if he doesn’t show up here.”

Well, I finally got away from that phone and back to my bunk. We were going to Hoboken that night, as sure as my name was Leona Canwick. That is, somebody was going—was it me?

But I couldn’t help wondering what I’d do if Leon didn’t arrive. I couldn’t think of a thing to do except do what he would do if he were here. I’d be in for one sweet time! If I got caught in this thing, thank God I wouldn’t have to worry about one of those inspections for probably a month. Perhaps I could figure out some way of evading it by that time. But, oh, I did wish Leon would come! And I went back to the headquarters building again to wait for him.

Something told me that he wasn’t anywhere near the camp! Any other man would have got there, if he had to break both legs and a couple of ribs. But not my dear sweet concaveman of a brother!

But as long as I was there, there was hope. When I left this camp, sometime before midnight—or rather, if I had not left it before that—the die would be cast, and there would certainly be hell to pay in more ways than one.

What a wonderful adventure this had turned out to be!!!

—3—

It was late Sunday night. Leon had not arrived. It was what you might call the eleventh hour and the fifty-ninth minute of this affair, and I was taking it for granted that I was in the soup up to my ears. The die apparently was cast. The Canwick blood seemed to have turned a sour yellow in at least one spot. I didn’t know where Leon was, but I should have assumed hours ago that he would not be there. I don’t know what I could have done about it anyway, except confess and get us both in a stew, but it got my goat to think that I forced myself into this martyrdom. But I was in it—and that’s all there was to it.

O Leon, thou personification of courage, thou dear brave considerate brother, I really felt more sorry for you than for myself. A man as yellow as you was a fit object for the world’s pity! I offered to help you with no idea that such consequences could be possible and with, I now realized, a mistaken conception of my brother’s love and gratitude. This situation ceased to be funny a long time ago and if I did not pity him more than I hated him, I’d have given the whole show away before this. And the joke of it was that no doubt he felt confident that I would never do that.

And he was quite right: I would go through with my end of this thing in spite of him and his yellow streak. No future day in this man’s army could be any worse than the one I had just put in—and which was not ended yet, so I felt sure that, barring accidents and given any lucky breaks at all, I’d be better able to stand what was coming than he would. If things ever got too bad, I’d throw up my part and let him take the consequences. After all, if I got caught in this, he was the one that would suffer. I doubt if he realized that!

However, being a generous and loving sister, I continued to give him the benefit of every possible doubt; I continued to hope that he hadn’t deliberately deserted me in this predicament. And I took it for granted that he would at least be willing to do everything he could to protect me, and later get me out of it. If he did as I told him in my letter, without regard to his petty prejudices and silly comforts, he probably would save me from all sorts of embarrassment and himself from any amount of trouble and worry—for I could get along safely, if I was at all lucky. I’d made up my mind to get along—to lick this game if I had to kill off the general staff man by man.

I didn’t know where he was now, but he’d surely get in touch with Auntie sometime soon, no matter where he was, and then she’d tell him what he must do—unless she passed out from the shock before that. Leon must stay away from Wakeham; even Vyvy must think he’d gone overseas. In my letter to him I promised to send her a few lines of love and kisses now and then to keep her happy.

I told him I’d write to him at Booneville—that was far enough away from home and far enough back in the woods to be a safe place for him to rusticate and hide for a while, until he could do something about me. He could lose himself in New York easily enough, but then he might get picked up somehow and made to enlist or do something. I suggested that he take the name of Leonard Lane, and stay at Booneville for a while.

Auntie would have to let it leak out that I was down South or out West, doing war work of some kind, like entertaining in the camps. Anyone who knew me would accept that story easily. My letters to her would, of course, be censored—unless I could manage to get them okayed by the General. If censored, I’d have to send instructions to Leon in onion juice: write a letter and interline it with other sentences written in onion juice, then when he or she held it near heat, the invisible onion-juice letters would be made visible. I knew it worked: we used to do it when we were kids.

So far so good: but how was I going to get out of this? There was the big problem, and the only answer I could see from here was for Leon to get a passport, if necessary, and get over to France by hook or crook, even if he had to work on a cattle boat or an oil tanker—anyway to get there. The rest would be easy: we would switch and I’d come back in his place.... Sounds reasonable in theory; I only hoped it would work out in practice. It depended, of course, upon how eager Leon was to get there—but—oh, hell, when that factor entered in, I might as well give up, for he never was eager to do anything that might be hard work or uncomfortable.

As far as I could see now, with everyone all packed up and waiting for the C. O. to appear with the final word, my fate was lying helpless in the lap of the gods. Which reminds me that I just by grace of God remembered what Mark Twain or somebody like him said about telling the difference between a girl and a boy: the General tossed a packet of papers to me and I instinctively spread my legs to catch it in my lap—and there wasn’t any lap there; but I saved the day by catching it with my hand instead. I don’t suppose the General would have noticed such a thing anyway. No reason why he should—but then I couldn’t be too careful. I certainly had to watch my step.

I tried all evening to get away long enough so I could step out to a hotel and have a decent bath. Those army clothes were kinda itchy and uncomfortable when you were not used to them, and a bath would feel fine—but how could I take a bath in camp? Or on the boat. Or when I got to France? This was getting serious! And there were certain other things that were bound to happen in due time, and from time to time, and would have to be taken care of, regardless of soldiers, sailors, marines, nurses and generals and in spite of war and hell. I could see from here that I was going to have some very unpleasant moments in this man’s army. I was certainly in a no-maid’s land!

Well—such is war! For Leon’s sake, as well as my own, I sincerely hoped that he wasn’t foolish enough to appear there in the morning looking for me: that would certainly be fatal. However, I wasn’t going to worry about that—there was little or no danger of him being near there even to-morrow. I told Auntie to tell him to stay away from there if he couldn’t make it that night. And also for him to send me some money, addressed to Divisional Headquarters. I didn’t have much more than the price of a bath, and there was a lot of things I’d got to have before many days elapsed.

All packed up, from tooth brush to absorbent cotton. Bring on your damned old war!

No sooner said than done: came the C.O. His voice was like the bell that summoned me to heaven or to hell.

And, my God, what was this I saw before me?

—4—

I had a moment of renewed hope when Esky appeared just as the C. O., a pussyfooting lieutenant named Blaines, was giving the final instructions. I thought for the moment that perhaps the pup’s presence meant that Leon was about. But I recalled, next moment, that Auntie had said the dog was nowhere to be found when Leon left, so apparently Esky had padded along through all that snow and hadn’t seen Leon at all.

The poor pup was all in. He dragged himself up on the bunk and put his head in my lap, perfectly happy to be there and have me rub his ears. I tried to get him off the bunk before the Lieutenant saw him, but Esky could be stubborn when he wanted to be, and refused to move, with the result that a few moments later this Lieutenant Blaines came along and spied him.

“Whose dog is that?” he demanded of me.

“Mine, sir,” I replied. The very tone of his voice grated on my nerves. I had met him before: he was some kind of an aide to General Backett, and he was in and out several times the day before. His full name was Chilton Blaines, and I didn’t think the General had a great deal of use for either his intelligence or his personality.

So I didn’t attempt any evasion about Esky, knowing at once what to expect from this snippy little shave-tail. He fulfilled my expectations at once. “Get rid of him, and immediately. You know as well as I, Canwick, that no pets or mascots are to be taken aboard. This is no old ladies’ home.” And he strode pompously down the line.

After he had disappeared and we settled down for another quarter hour wait, a big homely man across the aisle spoke up in a voice that carried to all corners of the shed. “Dat’s why dat bird don’t belong here—dis ain’t no old ladies’ home.”

“You mean the dog?” I asked stupidly, fascinated by his booming voice and his ugliness.

The big fellow grinned toothily. “Naw—dat Chilblaines, the God damn little sawed-off piece of punk.”

Whew! What an earful! But I managed to laugh at his description of the shrimp louie, and in a moment the big fellow and I became fast friends, for he promptly offered his assistance in the matter of Esky’s disposal. I gathered from his conversation that he not only liked dogs but that he loathed the sight of this snoopy “Chilblaines” as he called him, and that he would like nothing better than to slip one over on the aforesaid Chilblaines.

“We’ll trim de little squirt!” he declared. “Say, buddy, ain’t you workin’ fer de Gen?”

“General Backett,” I replied.

“Sure thing! Just the racket!” he exclaimed. “Nothin’ to it atall!” And he proceeded to enlarge upon his brilliant idea. “I been waitin’ fer a chance to get dat guy alone somewhere, and when I do, I’m gonna put his knees in his face so fast they’ll have to blast to get ’em out!”

“Well—I wish you luck,” I told him, although I didn’t want to encourage him too much because I figured this Chilblaines was just the sort of a fellow who’d go out of his way to make life miserable for anyone he suspected of being antagonistic to him. However, I hadn’t the least idea as to what could be done with Esky and I did hate to leave him for someone to ship home.

The big fellow, I later learned, knew some things that I didn’t, one thing in particular: namely that, as clerical dog-robber to General Backett, I could get away with a great many little sins of commission and omission that no common soldier could dare contemplate with impunity. This fellow had been in the army long enough to know the necessity of humility on his part, and he therefore got that much more pleasure from the idea of my slipping one over on his pet superior. Indeed, he was all wrapped up in the idea of getting Esky through the gangplank inspection and on board our transport.

“All we gotta do,” he repeated, “is get that pup into somethin’ ’at looks official. The top-kicker’ll probably be the only man ’at can suspect anything funny and he’s too damned scared of his job to say anythin’ if you tell ’im it’s somethin’ of the Gen’s.”

“But what if someone should insist on investigating?” I objected, hopeful but still in doubt as to the feasibility of the scheme.

“Aw hell, buddy!” he exclaimed impatiently. “Don’t you know there ain’t no river so wide it can’t be crossed somehow or other? It’s a million to one that we can walk right through without a hitch—why, there’s a whole g—— damned army got to get on that boat and they ain’t gonna lose no time over nobody.” His reasoning convinced himself but not me.

“And what happens after we’re on board? What if the dog gets loose? What if we’re caught in an inspection on the ship?” I was convinced that it was too risky. “I’d rather arrange to have someone here ship him home to-morrow than take a chance on his being put out of the way in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.”

“Fergit it! Fergit it! Act yer age, buddy!” His booming voice was certainly persuasive. He sounded as if the scheme were all worked out and carried to successful conclusion. “Why, after we once get on that old scow, we can’t get off, even if we want to. And nobody’s gonna say anything anyway as long as we keep outa that dirty rotten little stinker’s way.”

At this point he demonstrated that he was chewing tobacco. When he spit, you expected the building to shake. It was really a fascinating sight: I never had seen anything quite like it: he gave his face a twist, aimed at a sawdust box about ten yards away, heaved a huge sigh and let fly in a long arch that usually ended in the sawdust box. The feat fascinated my sleepy mind so that I followed his argument in a sort of daze of admiration.

“Why, buddy,” he continued, “there ain’t nothin’ to it atall! Not a worry! Not a wrinkle! If we get caught, your Gen’ll fix it up—and anyway, what can anyone do out in the middle of the ocean? If Chilblaines threatened to throw de pup overboard, you know damn well the Gen’d put a stop to that! So what’d they do? Huh? Turn round and come back to let de dog off?... Why, buddy [Spit. Spit.] it’s a set-up!”

I was convinced, or rather I let him go ahead with his plans. He procured a barracks bag and cut a little hole in the bottom of it. Then we tried various ways of carrying Esky in it. The poor pup didn’t know what it was all about but I patted his head and told him it was all right, and the way he behaved proved to me that dogs have intelligence just like human beings. First we put the dog in head first; then we decided that he’d probably wriggle less if we put his head up so he could see and smell me and thus know he was all right. We tried this and I tried lifting it—it was no go. I couldn’t have lugged it any distance at all.

“Let me have him,” ordered my co-conspirator. And he took the bag, put a piece of board in it, stuck Esky in so his nose came at the drawstring, and picked up the bundle to carry it under his arm instead of over his shoulder as is the customary way of carrying a barracks bag. “You see, buddy, you’ll be behind me and he can see ya and know it’s all right. See?”

Just then the top-kicker’s whistle blew and I had to submit to the plan. We started off, with the big fellow carrying Esky, besides all his own kit. Thank God we didn’t have to walk far. We rode to the train in trucks. Nobody molested us and Esky behaved admirably, aside from a little stretching and wiggling which ceased as soon as I began to pet him.