1919
A week later Dick received a war department envelope addressed to Savage, Richard Ellsworth, 2nd Lieut. Ord. Dept., enclosing his commission and ordering him to proceed to Camp Merritt, N.J., within 24 hours. Dick found himself in charge of a casuals company at Camp Merritt and wouldn’t have known what on earth to do if it hadn’t been for the sergeant. Once they were on the transport it was better; he had what had been a first class cabin with two other 2nd Lieutenants and a Major; Dick had the drop on them all because he’d been at the front. The transport was the Leviathan; Dick began to feel himself again when he saw the last of Sandy Hook; he wrote Ned a long letter in doggerel that began:
His father was a jailbird and his mother had no kale
He was much too fond of cognac and he drank it by the pail
But now he’s a Second Lieut and supported by the State.
Sports a handsome uniform and a military gait
And this is the most terrific fate that ever can befall
A boy whose grandpa was a Major-General.
The other two shavetails in the cabin were nondescript youngsters from Leland Stanford, but Major Thompson was a Westpointer and stiff as a ramrod. He was a middleaged man with a yellow round face, thin lips and noseglasses. Dick thawed him out a little by getting him a pint of whiskey through his sergeant who’d gotten chummy with the stewards, when he got seasick two days out, and discovered that he was a passionate admirer of Kipling and had heard Copeland read Danny Deever and been very much impressed. Furthermore he was an expert on mules and horseflesh and the author of a monograph: The Spanish Horse. Dick admitted that he’d studied with Copeland and somehow it came out that he was the grandson of the late General Ellsworth. Major Thompson began to take an interest in him and to ask him questions about the donkeys the French used to carry ammunition in the trenches, Italian cavalry horses and the works of Rudyard Kipling. The night before they reached Brest when everybody was flustered and the decks were all dark and silent for the zone, Dick went into a toilet and reread the long kidding letter he’d written Ned first day out. He tore it up into small bits, dropped them in the can and then flushed it carefully: no more letters.
In Brest Dick took three majors downtown and ordered them a meal and good wine at the hotel; during the evening Major Thompson told stories about the Philippines and the Spanish war; after the fourth bottle Dick taught them all to sing Mademoiselle from Armentiéres. A few days later he was detached from his casuals company and set to Tours; Major Thompson, who felt he needed somebody to speak French for him and to talk about Kipling with, had gotten him transferred to his office. It was a relief to see the last of Brest, where everybody was in a continual grouch from the drizzle and the mud and the discipline and the saluting and the formations and the fear of getting in wrong with the brasshats.
Tours was full of lovely creamystone buildings buried in dense masses of bluegreen late summer foliage. Dick was on commutation of rations and boarded with an agreeable old woman who brought him up his café au lait in bed every morning. He got to know a fellow in the Personnel Department through whom he began to work to get Henry transferred out of the infantry. He and Major Thompson and old Colonel Edgecombe and several other offices dined together very often; they got so they couldn’t do without Dick who knew how to order a meal comme il faut, and the proper vintages of wines and could parleyvoo with the French girls and make up limericks and was the grandson of the late General Ellsworth.
When the Post Despatch Service was organized as a separate outfit, Colonel Edgecombe who headed it, got him away from Major Thompson and his horsedealers; Dick became one of his assistants with the rank of Captain. Immediately he managed to get Henry transferred from the officers’ school to Tours. It was too late though to get him more than a first lieutenancy.
When Lieutenant Savage reported to Captain Savage in his office he looked brown and skinny and sore. That evening they drank a bottle of white wine together in Dick’s room. The first thing Henry said when the door closed behind them was, “Well, of all the goddam lousy grafts . . . I don’t know whether to be proud of the little kid brother or to sock him in the eye.”
Dick poured him a drink. “It must have been Mother’s doing,” he said. “Honestly, I’d forgotten that granpa was a general.”
“If you knew what us guys at the front used to say about the S.O.S.”
“But somebody’s got to handle the supplies and the ordnance and . . .”
“And the mademosels and the vin blanc,” broke in Henry.
“Sure, but I’ve been very virtuous . . . Your little brother’s minding his p’s and q’s, and honestly I’ve been working like a nigger.”
“Writing loveletters for ordnance majors, I bet. . . . Hell, you can’t beat it. He lands with his nose in the butter every time. . . . Anyway I’m glad there’s one successful member of the family to carry on the name of the late General Ellsworth.”
“Have a disagreeable time in the Argonne?”
“Lousy . . . until they sent me back to officers’ school.”
“We had a swell time there in the ambulance service in ’17.”
“Oh, you would.”
Henry drank some more wine and mellowed up a little. Every now and then he’d look around the big room with its lace curtains and its scrubbed tile floor and it’s big fourposter bed and make a popping sound with his lips and mutter: “Pretty soft.” Dick took him out and set him up to a fine dinner at his favorite bistro and then went around and fixed him up with Minette, who was the bestlooking girl at Madame Patou’s.
After Henry had gone upstairs, Dick sat in the parlor a few minutes with a girl they called Dirty Gertie who had hair dyed red and a big floppy painted mouth, drinking the bad cognac and feeling blue. “Vous triste?” she said, and put her clammy hand on his forehead. He nodded. “Fièvre . . . trop penser . . . penser no good . . . moi aussi.” Then she said she’d kill herself but she was afraid, not that she believed in God, but that she was afraid of how quiet it would be after she was dead. Dick cheered her up, “Bientot guerre finee. Tout le monde content go back home.” The girl burst out crying and Madame Patou came running in screaming and clawing like a seagull. She was a heavy woman with an ugly jaw. She grabbed the girl by the hair and began shaking her. Dick was flustered. He managed to make the woman let the girl go back to her room, left some money and walked out. He felt terrible. When he got home he felt like writing some verse. He tried to recapture the sweet and heavy pulsing of feelings he used to have when he sat down to write a poem. But all he could do was just feel miserable so he went to bed. All night half thinking half dreaming he couldn’t get Dirty Gertie’s face out of his head. Then he began remembering the times he used to have with Hilda at Bay Head and had a long conversation with himself about love: Everything’s so hellishly sordid . . . I’m sick of whores and chastity, I want to have love affairs. He began planning what he’d do after the war, probably go home and get a political job in Jersey; a pretty sordid prospect.
He was lying on his back staring at the ceiling that was livid with dawn when he heard Henry’s voice calling his name down in the street outside; he tiptoed down the cold tiled stairs and let him in.
“Why the hell did you let me go with that girl, Dick? I feel like a louse . . . Oh Christ . . . mind if I have half this bed, Dick? I’ll get me a room in the morning.” Dick found him a pair of pyjamas and made himself small on his side of the bed. “The trouble with you, Henry,” he said, yawning, “is that you’re just an old Puritan . . . you ought to be more continental.”
“I notice you didn’t go with any of those bitches yourself.”
“I haven’t got any morals but I’m finnicky, my dear, Epicurus’ owne sonne,” Dick drawled sleepily.
“S—t, I feel like a dirty dishrag,” whispered Henry. Dick closed his eyes and went to sleep.
Early in October Dick was sent to Brest with a despatch case that the Colonel said was too important to entrust to an enlisted man. At Rennes he had t
o wait two hours for the train, and was sitting eating in the restaurant when a doughboy with his arm in a sling came up to him saying, “Hello, Dick, for crying out loud.” It was Skinny Murray. “By gosh, Skinny, I’m glad to see you . . . it must be five or six years . . . Gee, we’re getting old. Look, sit down . . . no, I can’t do that.”
“I suppose I ought to have saluted, sir,” said Skinny stiffly.
“Can that, Skinny . . . but we’ve got to find a place to talk . . . got any time before your train? You see it’s me the M.P.’s would arrest if they saw me eating and drinking with an enlisted man. . . . Wait around till I’ve finished my lunch and we’ll find a ginmill across from the station. I’ll risk it.” “I’ve got an hour . . . I’m going to the Grenoble leave area.”
“Lucky bastard . . . were you badly wounded, Skinny?” “Piece of shrapnel in the wing, captain,” said Skinny, coming to attention as a sergeant of M.P.’s stalked stiffly through the station restaurant. “Those birds gimme the willies.”
Dick hurried through his lunch, paid, and walked across the square outside the station. One of the cafés had a back room that looked dark and quiet. They were just settling down to chat over two beers when Dick remembered the despatch case. He’d left it at the table. Whispering breathlessly that he’d be back he ran across the square and into the station restaurant. Three French officers were at the table. “Pardon, messieurs.” It was still where he’d left it under the table. “If I’d lost that I’d have had to shoot myself,” he told Skinny. They chatted about Trenton and Philadelphia and Bay Head and Dr. Atwood. Skinny was married and had a good job in a Philadelphia bank. He had volunteered for the tanks and was winged by a bit of shrapnel before the attack started, damn lucky of him, because his gang had been wiped out by a black Maria. He was just out of hospital today and felt pretty weak on his pins. Dick took down his service data and said he’d get him transferred to Tours; just the kind of fellow they needed for a courier. Then Skinny had to run for his train, and Dick, with the despatch case tightly wedged under his arm, went out to stroll around the town daintily colored and faintly gay under the autumn drizzle.
The rumor of the fake armistice set Tours humming like a swarm of bees; there was a lot of drinking and backslapping and officers and enlisted men danced snakedances in and out of the officebuildings. When it turned out to be a false alarm Dick felt almost relieved. The days that followed everybody round the headquarters of the Despatch Service wore a mysterious expression of knowing more than they were willing to tell. The night of the real armistice Dick ate supper a little deliriously with Colonel Edgecombe and some other officers. After dinner Dick happened to meet the colonel in the courtyard out back. The colonel’s face was red and his moustache bristled. “Well, Savage, it’s a great day for the race,” he said, and laughed a great deal. “What race?” said Dick shyly. “The human race,” roared the colonel.
Then he drew Dick aside: “How would you like to go to Paris, my boy? It seems that there’s to be a peace conference in Paris and that President Wilson is going to attend it in person . . . seems incredible . . . and I’ve been ordered to put this outfit at the disposal of the American delegation that’s coming soon to dictate the peace, so we’ll be Peace Conference couriers. Of course I suppose if you feel you have to go home it could be arranged.”
“Oh, no, sir,” broke in Dick hurriedly. “I was just beginning to worry about having to go home and look for a job. . . . The Peace Conference will be a circus and any chance to travel around Europe suits me.” The colonel looked at him with narrowed eyes. “I wouldn’t put it just that way . . . service should be our first thought . . . naturally what I said is strictly confidential.” “Oh, strictly,” said Dick, but he couldn’t help wearing a grin on his face when he went back to join the others at the table.
Paris again; and this time in a new whipcord uniform with silver bars at his shoulders and with money in his pockets. One of the first things he did was to go back to look at the little street behind the Pantheon where he’d lived with Steve Warner the year before. The tall chalkgrey houses, the stores, the little bars, the bigeyed children in the black smocks, the youngsters in caps with silk handkerchiefs around their necks, the Parisian drawl of the argot; it all made him feel vaguely unhappy; he was wondering what had happened to Steve. It was a relief to get back to the office where the enlisted men were moving in newly arrived American rolltop desks and yellow varnished card index cases.
The hub of this Paris was the hôtel de Crillon on the place de la Concorde, its artery the rue Royale where arriving dignitaries, President Wilson, Lloyd George and the King and Queen of the Belgians were constantly parading escorted by the garde republicaine in their plumed helmets; Dick began living in a delirium of trips to Brussels on the night express, lobster cardinal washed down with Beaune on the red plush settees at Larue’s, champagne cocktails at the Ritz bar, talk full of the lowdown over a demie at the Café Weber; it was like the old days of the Baltimore convention, only he didn’t give a damn any more; it all hit him cockeyed funny.
One night soon after Christmas, Colonel Edgecombe took Dick to dinner at Voisin’s with a famous New York publicity man who was said to be very near to Colonel House. They stood a moment on the pavement outside the restaurant to look at the tubby domed church opposite. “You see, Savage, this fellow’s the husband of a relative of mine, one of the Pittsburgh Staples . . . smooth . . . it seems to me. You look him over. For a youngster you seem to have a keen eye for character.”
Mr. Moorehouse turned out to be a large quietspoken blueeyed jowly man with occasionally a touch of the southern senator in his way of talking. With him were a man named Robbins and a Miss Stoddard, a fraillooking woman with very transparent alabaster skin and a sharp chirpy voice; Dick noticed that she was stunningly welldressed. The restaurant was a little too much like an Episcopal church; Dick said very little, was very polite to Miss Stoddard and kept his eyes and ears open, eating the grandducal food and carefully tasting the mellow wine that nobody else seemed to pay any attention to. Miss Stoddard kept everybody talking, but nobody seemed to want to commit themselves to saying anything about the peace conference. Miss Stoddard told with considerable malice about the furnishings of the hôtel de Mûrat and the Wilsons’ colored maid and what kind of clothes the President’s wife, whom she insisted on calling Mrs. Galt, was wearing. It was a relief when they got to the cigars and liqueurs. After dinner Colonel Edgecombe offered to drop Mr. Moorehouse at the Crillon, as he staffcar had come for him. Dick and Mr. Robbins took Miss Stoddard home in a taxicab to her apartment opposite Nôtre Dâme on the left bank. They left her at her door. “Perhaps you’ll come around some afternoon to tea, Captain Savage,” she said.
The taximan refused to take them any further, said it was late and that he was bound home to Noisy-le-sec and drove off. Robbins took hold of Dick’s arm. “Now for crissake let’s go and have a decent drink. . . . Boy, I’m sick of the bigwigs.” “All right,” said Dick, “where’ll we go?” Walking along the foggy quay, past the shadowly bulk of Nôtre Dâme, they talked scatteringly about Paris and how cold it was. Robbins was a short man with an impudent bossy look on his red face. In the café it was only a little less chilly than in the street. “This climate’s going to be the death of me,” said Robbins, snuggling his chin down in his overcoat. “Woolly underwear’s the only answer, that’s one thing I’ve learned in the army,” said Dick laughing.
They settled on a plush bench near the stove at the end of the cigarsmoky giltornamented room. Robbins ordered a bottle of Scotch whiskey, glasses, lemon, sugar and a lot of hot water. It took a long time to get the hot water, so Robbins poured them each a quarter of a tumbler of the whiskey straight. When he’d drunk his, his face that had been sagging and tired, smoothed out so that he looked ten years younger. “Only way to keep warm in this goddam town’s to keep stewed.” “Still I’m glad to be back in little old Paree,” said Dick, smiling and stretching his legs out under the table. “Only
place in the world to be right at present,” said Robbins. “Paris is the hub of the world . . . unless it’s Moscow.”
At the word Moscow a Frenchman playing checkers at the next table brought his eyes up from the board and stared at the two Americans. Dick couldn’t make out what there was in his stare; it made him uneasy. The waiter came with the hot water. It wasn’t hot enough, so Robbins made a scene and sent it back. He poured out a couple of halftumblers of straight whiskey to drink while they were waiting. “Is the President going to recognize the soviets?” Dick found himself asking in a low voice.
“I’m betting on it . . . I believe he’s sending an unofficial mission. Depends a little on oil and manganese . . . it used to be King Coal, but now it’s Emperor Petroleum and Miss Manganese, queen consort of steel. That’s all in the pink republic of Georgia . . . I hope to get there soon, they say that they have the finest wine and the most beautiful women in the world. By God, I got to get there. . . . But the oil . . . God damn it, that’s what this damned idealist Wilson can’t understand, while they’re setting him up to big feeds at Buckingham palace the jolly old British army is occupying Mosul, the Karun River, Persia . . . now the latrine news has it that they’re in Baku . . . the future oil metropolis of the world.”