Women's Barracks Read Online Free Page A

corporal cried out.
    The first to offer herself was tall, husky Ann. With ease she lifted a table onto her back, carrying it as though it were a feather. The rest of us were immediately assigned to clean the house.
    Another corporal, dark and dry, with a face like a prune, meted out our tasks. Dainty Jacqueline and little Ursula were ordered to scrub the large entrance hall of the ancient mansion. I was to work on the main stairway that circled upward to our dormitories.
    Jacqueline donned a huge beige-colored smock, rolled the sleeves up to her elbows, got down on her knees, and began to scrub. Ursula stood there staring at Jacqueline, as though she didn't know where to begin. She looked at the pail of grayish water, the wet brush, and the blackened rag. I suppose she had never been faced with such a disgusting task, and there was a dismay about her, as though she had no idea how to go about scrubbing a floor, as though she might just as well have been suddenly commanded to run a locomotive.
    Jacqueline was scrubbing energetically. It seemed all the more aristocratic of her not to be upset by the most menial of tasks. But suddenly she gasped and put her hand to her back.
    The prune-faced corporal, passing by, cried out, "Well, my little one, so you've already got a sore back after two minutes of work! This is a barracks, not a drawing room!" And seeing Ursula standing there confused and inactive, she was overcome with sudden rage. All these daughters of the idle rich! She poured out her anger upon Ursula. "You! You will do me the pleasure of scrubbing the hall, and after that, I've got work for you in the kitchen."
    "There's no need for you to shout," Ursula murmured, red with shame and dismay. Whereupon she received a look that announced more clearly than words that this girl was already on the corporal's black list.
    Jacqueline raised herself on one foot, with her hand still to her back. A lock of hair had fallen over her forehead, giving her a slightly melodramatic look. She looked a bit as though she were acting in a film, playing the part of the poor and beautiful orphan, forced to slave under the command of an ill-tempered mistress. To everyone's astonishment, Jacqueline talked back to the corporal, defending Ursula.
    "Can't you give that sort of work to the stronger girls? I don't care what I do, but she's too little, she's much too frail. Why don't you find something else for her to do?"
    "If she's too frail, then she's got no business joining the Army. She'll scrub the hall, and you've got no business interfering!"
    The tension was eased by Ann. From the height of a ladder, on which she stood washing the high hall windows, she called out in her deep, easy voice, "Come, come, children, don't argue! It'll give the little girl some muscle to work a bit. The corporal is right."
    I couldn't tell if big Ann were making fun of the corporal, or trying to help out Ursula by appeasing the corporal's anger. In any case, the result was good, for Pruneface softened a little; she even squeezed out a smile for Ann, and went off without saying any more.
    Ursula got down to work near the stairs. She was furious with Jacqueline for having come to her defense. "Now the corporal hates me," she whispered.
    She watched Jacqueline, who kept at her scrubbing, pausing from time to time to gasp. Mickey, who was working beside me, waxing the stairs, was also intrigued by Jacqueline's behavior. "It's an act," she said. But Ursula called to our distinguished-looking scrub lady, "Is something wrong with your back? Does it hurt all the time?"
    With a resigned and rather mysterious air, Jacqueline replied, "It's nothing. Don't worry." And at the same moment the brush fell from her hand, and she toppled unconscious on the stone floor.
    At our outcry, the corporal came hurrying back, with an air of supreme annoyance. She stood over us as we tried to revive Jacqueline. After all, the girl's collapse might be considered her fault.
    Ursula slapped