Лучшие истории о любви / Best love stories - стр. 11
“But it’s true,” I assured her, suddenly knowing it wasn’t. “She told me herself.”
“Ailie Calhoun! Oh, my heavens! Why, last year at the Tech spring house party – ”
This was in September. We were going overseas any week now, and to bring us up to full strength a last batch of officers from the fourth training camp arrived. The fourth camp wasn’t like the first three – the candidates were from the ranks; even from the drafted divisions.[36] The addition to our company was Lieutenant Earl Schoen from New Bedford, Massachusetts; as fine a physical specimen as I have ever seen. He was six-foot-three, with black hair, high color and glossy dark-brown eyes. He wasn’t very smart and he was definitely illiterate, yet he was a good officer, high-tempered and commanding, and with that becoming touch of vanity that sits well on the military.
We were doubled up in living quarters and he came into my hut. After a week there was a photograph of some Tarleton girl nailed brutally to the wall.
“She’s no jane or anything like that.[37] She’s a society girl; goes with all the best people here.”
The following Sunday afternoon I met the lady at a semiprivate swimming pool in the country. When Ailie and I arrived, there was Schoen’s muscular body rippling out of a bathing suit at the far end of the pool.
“Hey, lieutenant!”
When I waved back at him he grinned and winked, jerking his head toward the girl at his side. Then, digging her in the ribs,[38] he jerked his head at me. It was a form of introduction.
“Who’s that with Kitty Preston?” Ailie asked, and when I told her she said he looked like a street-car conductor, and pretended to look for her transfer.[39]
A moment later he crawled[40] powerfully and gracefully down the pool and pulled himself up at our side. I introduced him to Ailie.
“How do you like my girl, lieutenant?” he demanded. “I told you she was all right, didn’t I?” He jerked his head toward Ailie; this time to indicate that his girl and Ailie moved in the same circles. “How about us all having dinner together down at the hotel some night?”
I left them in a moment, amused as I saw Ailie visibly making up her mind that here, anyhow, was not the ideal. But Lieutenant Earl Schoen was not to be dismissed so lightly. He ran his eyes cheerfully and inoffensively over her cute, slight figure, and decided that she would do even better than the other.
While the afternoon passed he remained at her side. Finally Ailie came over to me and whispered, with a laugh: “He’s following me around. He thinks I haven’t paid my carfare.”