The Darts of Cupid: Stories Read Free Page A

office. I’m a surgeon. Damned office job."
    "But isn’t it interesting—for you, I mean?" I asked.
    "It is interesting," he said, "but in the wrong way. For instance, we’d like the tabulators to throw up results like two hundred men sprained their ankles when getting out of landing barges. Then we’d know there’s something wrong with the design of the boats. Instead, we get saddled with statistics of how many troops in Africa got jaundice after the yellow-fever vaccine, but the hell of it is that it’s nearly all officers and no enlisted men. Now, why? And the Germans have exactly the same problem."
    "Drink," I said.
    "No," he said. "Among the fighting corps out there, there’s no difference with the booze. They all live the same way. It’s a mystery." And as I gazed at him silently he added, "That took your speech away, all right. I didn’t know it could be done."
    I nodded.
    "Now, tell me, since we are getting on so famously, that Colonel before me—light colonel, wasn’t he?"
    "Yes," I said, "he was a lieutenant colonel."
    "Where are the light colonels of yesteryear?" And he laughed loudly. "Now, tell me. What was so good about him, a quitter like that? No fight in him."
    "There was some fight in him, but not enough," I said.
    "Was he a choleric? Did he rave and rant at you when you went to sharpen your pencils?"
    "He never did," I said. "He never interfered. But I know he would have liked to have power, too, only he couldn’t get it. But he’d never admit it, of course."
    "Then what the hell—how do you know?" asked the Major.
    "Once I had to go to his office with some papers," I said. "And you know the War Office rule—no door must ever be closed. He was standing with his back to me; he didn’t see me. He had a—it’s quite sickening—a fly, with a thread tied round its middle, and he let it fly away from him at arm’s length and then he’d pull it back by the string."
    "And what did he say when you interrupted his idyll?" asked the Major.
    "I didn’t," I said. "I never went in at all. I sent the Sergeant."
    "Pity you didn’t go in, Miss P.," said the Major. "He might have tied a string around your waist."
    "I’m not a flirt, you know," I said.
    "I know you are not. But you are giving a very good imitation of one." And he laughed so loudly that when I left, Claudia said to me, "How do you do it, Prescott-Clark? You seem to be getting on with the Major like a house on fire."
    "I don’t, Carter," I said. "Besides, one has to get used to his what-the-helling."
    On the following day, the Major was absent during the morning and looked in at the office for some ten minutes in the late afternoon. On the next day, Sergeant Parsons said to me, "I thought you’d like to know, ma’am. The Major won’t come in today at all. But he’ll want me to report about the work. He said I should keep a special eye on you. Now, I wonder why."
    "So do I," I said.
    "I told him you’d been very, very good yesterday, which is true," said the Sergeant. "I told him you are like the little girl with the little curl in the middle of her forehead. And do you know what he said? He said, ‘That suits me fine. And when she is horrid, I’ll be horrid, too.’ "
    "Charmed, I’m sure. Much obliged," I said.
    "I thought you’d like to know," said the Sergeant.
    "That’s big of you," I said.
    I continued "very, very good" during the Major’s absence. When I saw him entering the office the following morning, I decided that I was not going to expose myself to any more of his taunts. By working diligently during his absence I had proved myself to be the opposite of a maidservant. This praiseworthy state of mind did not last long, however, and I grew steadily more enraged at the sight of the Major, who was also playing the game of not being a servant and sat tilted back in his chair, reading the
Times.
I rose and left the office and went to the lavatory, where I dawdled for a while. On my way back, I met the Major in the