An Officer and a Lady Read Online Free PDF Page B

It was my wife, her mother and her brother.
    If you expected to hear a good story, of course you’re disappointed. There isn’t even any use explaining to you that I’ve spent five months trying to explain it to my wife, and she won’t listen.
    I’ve been a Secret Sorrow, I’ve been a Faithful Husband, and I’ve been a Fool. As I hinted before, if you want to make me believe that Carrie Nation smashed a joint, you’ve got to show me the hole in the window.
    I’m going to give my wife just one more chance. I’m going to write it all out, have it typewritten, and maybe have it printed in a magazine. Then if she don’t believe it—well, the niece is still at Poughkeepsie, and as I said before, no man who has any self-respect can allow a pretty woman to go around talking about freedom.

Annuncio’s Violin
    A NNUNCIO LAY PEACEFULLY SLEEPING in the shade of a scrub mesquite. Now and again a curious, errant mud dauber, adventure-bent, explored the mazes of his wavy, ebony hair, or viewed from the vantage point of nose or chin the offerings of the surrounding country. Anon, a giant, home-returning ant, holding aloft a world of stolen grain for winter use, crawled across the bare, hemp-sandaled feet. But Annuncio still dreamed on. In easy reach of his brown-fingered hand, which yet retained half-lovingly the aged bow lay, dusty on the earth, an old violin, whose gracious curves and simple elegance of form revealed the master workman’s craft. Annuncio’s grandsire himself knew little of its history or of how the instrument had come to them, save only that his own father had played him to sleep in childhood with the selfsame bow. And now Annuncio played and dreamed, and waked to play again upon its ancient strings the lullabies and love songs of his people.
    Within the low, thatch-roofed adobe house nearby, Eulalia began at last the preparation of their evening meal, humming low to herself as she ground the maize in the stone bowl and formed the cakes for baking. Eulalia was not as happy with her ardent wooing lover as she had thought to be. No poet she. To her, life meant more than dreaming through the sunny day and playing half-forgotten love songs to the tropic stars at night. Hers was the daily task of managing the little household cares, buying their scant supplies, and bargaining for all their simple, homely wrought apparel. And so it was that the wife had come to be the real ruler of the home, whom Annuncio indulged in every whim if only he might be allowed to dream and play. But poor Eulalia was not content with all this homage. She loved the bright mantillas of her richer sisters in the town, and gazed with longing that was not wholly free from envy at the coche and four white, prancing horses of Las Esperanzes’ mayor whenever that dignitary passed by on a visit to some neighboring ranch.
    The first cool evening breeze came wandering down from the mountain and wakened Annuncio. Sitting up, he raised the violin for an ante-supper melody. And while he played, slowly, unnoticed along the road approached a man, at once a gringo and a vaga-bundo. Attracted as much, perhaps, by the sweetness of the melody he heard as by the savory odor of tortillas coming from the house, the stranger left the highway and drew near the spot where Annuncio was sitting. With a single glance he appraised the ordinary surroundings of the peon’s home, but when his eyes, furtive and shifting, rested on the native’s violin, a new interest dawned in them.
    The tune ended, Annuncio rose, aware for the first time of the stranger’s presence. The latter showed a small coin and asked for supper and a place to sleep. Annuncio, eyeing with distrust the American’s ragged clothes and unkempt exterior, began to refuse his hospitality, when Eulalia, coming out to fetch her man, caught sight of the real and bade the gringo enter.
    The tortillas and frijoles eaten, Annuncio again took up his violin to play away the evening. The gringo listened for