An Officer and a Lady Read Online Free PDF Page A

go around talking about freedom, especially when she’s pretty.
    “I hate to be personal,” she went on presently, “but can you see anything in this car, for instance, that is apt to make a girl long for a plain gold band and a six foot veil?”
    I turned and looked straight at her, and found her laughing at me. “Miss Robinson,” I said, “your uncle told me you were innocent and timid. If he could only—”
    “I am ,” she interrupted. “I didn’t say a word till I discovered you were harmless.”
    Good God! I—Frank Keeler—harmless! And it was true. That was the worst of it. It was true. I turned away from her with a bitter smile, and began to wonder if she had any idea of my pace under an empty saddle. Then I went to the smoking car and sat there talking to myself clear to Grand Central Station.
    Her cousin lived up on Washington Heights, so it would have been quicker to get off at 125th Street, but I was too busy with my reflections to think about it. I managed to steer her through about four miles of scaffoldings and boardwalks, and I noticed it was just half-past two as we boarded a subway express for uptown. I counted on getting home by four.
    By the time we got off at 168th Street I was pretty well calmed down. Although it made me unhappy to realize that I’d just been forced to swallow a gross insult to my long training and unquestioned ability, and that all the rest of my life I’d be helpless in the face of the strongest provocation, I could yet remember with pride the day when “Frank” was a household word in a hundred towns. And I felt a kind of pity come over me as I looked at the niece and reflected that she’d never know what she’d missed.
    Consequently, I was feeling almost sad as we turned in a marble entrance on 168th Street, and told the elevator boy to take us to Robinson’s apartment.
    “They ain’t in,” said he, as if he was glad of it. “Gone out of town for a week.”
    They’d left four days before. He didn’t know where they’d gone. The niece and I sat down in the hall to talk it over.
    “Didn’t they know you were coming?” I asked.
    “No,” she said. “I was going to surprise them.”
    I remembered that I had planned a surprise too, so I couldn’t very well blame her. She said she didn’t want to go back to Poughkeepsie unless she had to, but she didn’t want to cause me any more bother. Of course I said she was anything but that. Then she said she had another cousin in New York, and she might go there.
    “Just the thing!” I cried. “Where does she live?”
    “Bath Beach,” replied the niece calmly, just as though she was stating a pleasant fact instead of a horrible dream.
    Well, there was only one thing to do. I didn’t stop to explain what I was about to suffer for her sake, nor what she was up against herself. I thought she’d find out soon enough.
    We took a subway express downtown again, got off at Brooklyn Bridge and with the help of three policemen and a cripple found an L train for Bath Beach. As we started out from the terminal I wondered if I would ever get back. Even a Harlem flat looks like a real home, sweet home to a man when he gets lost in the wilderness.
    We’d been under way about twenty minutes when the niece turned to me looking puzzled.
    “What place is this?” she asked. “It’s so—funny. It seems that I’ve seen it in a dream.”
    “It must have been a nightmare,” said I. “Don’t talk so loud. This is Brooklyn.”
    For miles and miles, and it seemed hours and hours, we sat there in silence, waiting for the end. Finally the guard called out “Bath Beach!” and we jumped off onto a pile of ashes and tin cans. Then, after waiting a quarter of an hour for a trolley car that didn’t come, we started off down the street.
    I gave a sigh of relief as I went up the steps of a brown and green two-story house and rang the bell. Almost immediately the door opened, and the niece started forward, then fell back again as