The Martial Adventures of Henry and MeWhite, William Allen
History
The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me
White, William Allen
World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
It must have been after two in the morning, when we saw the Eager
Soul and the Gilded Youth walking around the court as they used to
pace the deck together. Once or twice they passed our window, and
we heard their voices. They were having some sort of a tall talk
on philosophical matters, which annoyed Henry. The ocean and onion
soup and philosophical theorizing never seemed reasonable, normal
expressions of anything properly in the cosmos to Henry; he professed
to believe that persons who tolerated these things would sooner
or later be caught using the words "group" and "reaction" and
"hypothesis," and he would have none of them. But for all that she
used the word group and once confessed that she was a subscriber
to the New Republic, Henry did like the Eager Soul; so he waked me
up from a doze to say: "Bill, she's putting him through the eye of
the needle all right. And he's sliding through slick as goose-grease. I
heard him telling her a minute ago that the war isn't for boundaries
and geography; but for a restatement of human creeds. Then she said
that steam and electricity have over-capitalized the world; that
we are paying too highly for superintendence and that the price
of superintendence must come down, and wages must come up. Then
he said that he and his class will go in the fires burning out
there--melted like wax. And she told him that they both had a lot
of stolen goods on them--bodies and minds, and hearts cultivated at
the expense of their fellow creatures whose lives had been narrowed
that theirs might be broadened. And you should have heard her talk
about the Young Doctor--a self-made man, who had earned his way through
college and medical school, and made his own place professionally.
She said he was the Herald of the New Day. Bill," sighed Henry,
"what would you give if you could talk like that--again?" But from
me, drowsily, came this: "Henry--do you suppose she will get around
to that slapping tonight she promised him on the boat? That would
be worth staying up to see!"
"She'll never slap him. He'll never need it. She's talked him clear
out of the mood!"
"Yes, she has--yes, she has," came from me. And Henry insisted:
"She may have to slap the Doctor; but she has steered this boy out
of the danger zone into the open sea of friendship."
"Oh, yes, she has; oh, yes, she has," came the echo from the other
bed! And Henry subsided.
But the buzzing about the hospital would not let us sleep. At three
o'clock evidently they were serving tea to the nurses, or lunch of
some kind. The moon was shining straight down into the court; the
Gilded Youth and the Eager Soul had gone in, and another couple,
a stenographer and a hospital orderly were using it as a parlour.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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