1919
When they got to her door she suddenly turned to him and said seriously, “Look, Dick, maybe we’ll put off the baby . . . I’ll try horseback riding. Everybody says that works. I’ll write you . . . honestly, I wouldn’t hamper your career in any way . . . and I know you ought to have time for your poetry . . . You’ve got a big future, boy, I know it . . . if we got married I’d work too.”
“Anne Elizabeth, you’re a wonderful girl, maybe if we didn’t have the baby we might wangle it somehow.” He took her by the shoulders and kissed her on the forehead. Suddenly she started jumping up and down, chanting like a child, “Goody, goody, goody, we’re going to get married.”
“Oh, do be serious, kid.”
“I am . . . unto death,” she said slowly. “Look, don’t come to see me tomorrow . . . I have a lot of supplies to check up. I’ll write you to Paris.”
Back at the hotel it gave him a curious feeling putting on his pyjamas and getting alone into the bed where he and Anne Elizabeth had been together that afternoon. There were bedbugs and the room smelt and he spent a miserable night.
All the way down to Paris on the train, Ed kept making him drink and talking about the revolution, saying he had it on good authority the syndicates were going to seize the factories in Italy the first of May. Hungary had gone red and Bavaria, next it would be Austria, then Italy, then Prussia and France; the American troops sent against the Russians in Archangel had mutinied: “It’s the world revolution, a goddam swell time to be alive, and we’ll be goddam lucky if we come out of it with whole skins.”
Dick said grumpily that he didn’t think so; the Allies had things well in hand. “But, Dick, I thought you were all for the revolution, it’s the only possible way to end this cockeyed war.” “The war’s over now and all these revolutions are just the war turned inside out . . . You can’t stop war by shooting all your opponents. That’s just more war.” They got sore and argued savagely. Dick was glad they were alone in the compartment. “But I thought you were a royalist, Ed.” “I was . . . but since seeing the King of Italy I’ve changed my mind . . . I guess I’m for a dictator, the man on the white horse.”
They settled to sleep on either side of the compartment, sore and drunk. In the morning they staggered out with headaches into the crisp air of a frontier station and drank steaming hot chocolate a freshfaced Frenchwoman poured out for them into big white cups. Everything was frosty. The sun was rising bright vermilion. Ed Schuyler talked about la belle, la douce France, and they began to get along better. By the time they reached the banlieue, they were talking about going to see Spinelli in Plus Ça Change that night.
After the office and details to attend to and the necessity of appearing stiff and military before the sergeants it was a relief to walk down the left bank of the Seine, where the buds were bursting pink and palest green on the trees, and the bouquinistes were closing up their stalls in the deepening lavender twilight, to the quai de la Tournelle where everything looked like two centuries ago, and to walk slowly up the chilly stone stairs to Eleanor’s and to find her sitting behind the teatable in an ivorycolored dress with big pearls around her neck pouring tea and retailing, in her malicious gentle voice, all the latest gossip of the Crillon and the Peace Conference. It gave Dick a funny feeling when she said as he was leaving that they wouldn’t see each other for a couple of weeks as she was going to Rome to do some work at the Red Cross office there. “What a shame we couldn’t have been there at the same time,” said Dick. “I’d have liked that too,” she said. “A revederdci, Richard.”
March was a miserable month for Dick. He didn’t seem to have any friends any more and he was sick to death of everybody around the despatch service. When he was off duty his hotel room was so cold that he’d have to go out to a café to read. He missed Eleanor and going to her cosy apartment in the afternoon. He kept getting worrying letters from Anne Elizabeth; he couldn’t make out from them what had happened; she made mysterious references to having met a charming friend of his at the Red Cross who had meant so much. Then too he was broke because he kept having to lend Henry money to buy off Olga with.
Early in April he got back from one of his everlasting trips to Coblenz and found a pneumatique from Eleanor for him at his hotel. She was inviting him to go on a picnic to Chantilly with her and J.W. the next Sunday.
They left at eleven from the Crillon in J.W.’s new Fiat. There was Eleanor in her grey tailored suit and a stately lady of a certain age named Mrs. Wilberforce, the wife of a vice-president of Standard Oil, and longfaced Mr. Rasmussen. It was a fine day and everybody felt the spring in the air. At Chantilly they went through the château and fed the big carp in the moat. They ate their lunch in the woods, sitting on rubber cushions. J.W. kept everybody laughing explaining how he hated picnics, asking everybody what it was that got into even the most intelligent women that they were always trying to make people go on picnics. After lunch they drove to Senlis to see the houses that the Uhlans had destroyed their in the battle of the Marne. Walking through the garden of the ruined château, Eleanor and Dick dropped behind the others. “You don’t know anything about when they’re going to sign peace, do you, Eleanor?” asked Dick.
“Why, it doesn’t look now as if anybody would ever sign . . . certainly the Italians won’t; have you seen what d’Annunzio said?”
“Because the day after peace is signed I take off Uncle Sam’s livery . . . The only time in my life time has ever dragged on my hands has been since I’ve been in the army.”
“I got to meet a friend of yours in Rome,” said Eleanor, looking at him sideways. Dick felt chilly all over. “Who was that?” he asked. It was an effort to keep his voice steady. “That little Texas girl . . . she’s a cute little thing. She said you were engaged!” Eleanor’s voice was cool and probing like a dentist’s tool.
“She exaggerated a little,” he gave a little dry laugh, “as Mark Twain said when they reported his death.” Dick felt that he was blushing furiously.
“I hope so . . . You see, Richard . . . I’m old enough to be, well at least your maiden aunt. She’s a cute little thing . . . but you oughtn’t to marry just yet, of course it’s none of my business . . . an unsuitable marriage has been the ruination of many a promising young fellow . . . I shouldn’t say this.”
“But I like your taking an interest like that, honestly it means a great deal to me . . . I understand all about marry in haste and repent at leisure. In fact I’m not very much interested in marriage anyway . . . but . . . I don’t know . . . Oh, the whole thing is very difficult.”
“Never do anything difficult . . . It’s never worth it,” said Eleanor severely. Dick didn’t say anything. She quickened her step to catch up with the others. Walking beside her he caught sight of her coldly chiselled profile jiggling a little from the jolt of her high heels on the cobbles. Suddenly she turned to him laughing, “Now I won’t scold you any more, Richard, ever again.”
A shower was coming up. They’d hardly got back into the car before it started to rain. Going home the gimcrack Paris suburbs looked grey and gloomy in the rain. When they parted in the lobby of the Crillon J.W. let Dick understand that there would be a job for him in his office as soon as he was out of the service. Dick went home and wrote his mother about it in high spirits:
. . . It’s not that everything isn’t intensely interesting here in Paris or that I haven’t gotten to know people quite close to what’s really going on, but wearing a uniform and always having to worry about army regulations and saluting and everything like that, seems to keep my mind from working. Inside I’ll be in the doldrums until I get a suit of civvies on again. I’ve been promised a position in J. Ward Moorehouse’s office here in Paris; he’s a dollar a year expert, but as soon as peace is signed he expects to start his business up again. He’s an adviser on public relations and publicity to big corporations like Standard Oil. It’s the type of work that will allow me to continue my real work on the side. Everybody tells me it’s the opportunity of
a lifetime. . . .
The next time he saw Miss Williams she smiled broadly and came right up to him holding our her hand. “Oh, I’m so glad, Captain Savage. J.W. says you’re gong to be with us . . . I’m sure it’ll be an enjoyable and profitable experience for all parties.”
“Well, I don’t suppose I ought to count my chickens before they’re hatched,” said Dick. “Oh, they’re hatched all right,” said Miss Williams, beaming at him.
In the middle of May Dick came back from Cologne with a hangover after a party with a couple of aviators and some German girls. Going out with German girls was strictly against orders from G.H.Q. and he was nervous for fear they might have been seen conducting themselves in a manner unbecoming to officers and gentlemen. He could still taste the sekt with peaches in it when he got off the train at the Gare du Nord. At the office Colonel Edgecombe noticed how pale and shaky he looked and kidded him about what a tremendous time they must be having in the occupied area. Then he sent him home to rest up. When he got to his hotel he found a pneumatique from Anne Elizabeth:
I’m staying at the Continental and must see you at once.
He took a hot bath and went to bed and slept for several hours. When he woke up it was already dark. It was some time before he remembered Anne Elizabeth’s letter. He was sitting on the edge of the bed sullenly buckling his puttees to go around and see her when there was a knock on his door. It was the elevatorman telling him a lady was waiting for him downstairs. The elevatorman had hardly said it before Anne Elizabeth came running down the hall. She was pale and had a red bruise on one side of her face. Something cantankerous in the way she ran immediately got on Dick’s nerves. “I told them I was your sister and ran up the stairs,” she said, kissing him breathlessly. Dick gave the elevatorman a couple of francs and whispered to her, “Come in. What’s the matter?” He left the room door half open.
“I’m in trouble . . . the N.E.R. is sending me home.”
“How’s that?”
“Played hookey once too often, I guess . . . I’m just as glad; they make me tired.”
“How did you hurt yourself?”
“Horse fell with me down at Ostia . . . I’ve been having the time of my life riding Italian cavalry horses . . . they’ll take anything.”
Dick was looking her hard in the face trying to make her out. “Well,” he said, “is it all right? . . . I’ve got to know . . . I’m worried sick about it.”
She threw herself face down on the bed. Dick tiptoed over and gently closed the door. She had her head stuck into her elbow and was sobbing. He sat on the edge of the bed and tried to get her to look at him. She suddenly got up and began walking around the room. “Nothing does any good . . . I’m going to have the baby . . . Oh, I’m so worried about Dad. I’m afraid it’ll kill him if he finds out . . . Oh, you’re so mean . . . you’re so mean.”
“But, Anne Elizabeth, do be reasonable . . . Can’t we go on being friends? I’ve just been offered a very fine position when I get out of the service, but I can’t take a wife and child at this stage of the game, you must understand that . . . and if you want to get married there are plenty of fellows who’d give their eyeteeth to marry you . . . You know how popular you are . . . I don’t think marriage means anything anyway.”
She sat down in a chair and immediately got up again. She was laughing: “If Dad or Buster was here it would be a shotgun wedding, I guess . . . but that wouldn’t help much.” Her hysterical laugh got on his nerves; he was shaking from the effort to control himself and talk reasonably.
“Why not G. H. Barrow? He’s a prominent man and has money . . . He’s crazy about you, told me so himself when I met him at the Crillon the other day . . . After all, we have to be sensible about things . . . It’s no more my fault than it is yours . . . if you’d taken proper precautions. . . .”
She took her hat off and smoothed her hair in the mirror. Then she poured some water out in his washbasin, washed her face and smoothed her hair again. Dick was hoping she’d go, everything she did drove him crazy. There were tears in her eyes when she came up to him. “Give me a kiss, Dick . . . don’t worry about me . . . I’ll work things out somehow.”
“I’m sure it’s not too late for an operation,” said Dick. “I’ll find out an address tomorrow and drop you a line to the Continental . . . Anne Elizabeth . . . it’s splendid of you to be so splendid about this.”
She shook her head, whispered goodby and hurried out of the room.
“Well, that’s that,” said Dick aloud to himself. He felt terribly sorry about Anne Elizabeth. Gee, I’m glad I’m not a girl, he kept thinking. He had a splitting headache. He locked his door, got undressed and put out the light. When he opened the window a gust of raw rainy air came into the room and made him feel better. It was just like Ed said, you couldn’t do anything without making other people miserable. A hell of a rotten world. The streets in front of the Gare St. Lazare shone like canals where the streetlamps were reflected in them. There were still people on the pavements, a man calling I’n TRANsigeant, twangy honk of taxicabs. He thought of Anne Elizabeth going home alone in a taxicab through the wet streets. He wished he had a great many lives so that he might have spent one of them with Anne Elizabeth. Might write a poem about that and send it to her. And the smell of the little cyclamens. In the café opposite the waiters were turning the chairs upside down and setting them on the tables. He wished he had a great many lives so that he might be a waiter in a café turning the chairs upside down. The iron shutters clanked as they came down. Now was the time the women came out on the streets, walking back and forth, stopping, loitering, walking back and forth, and those young toughs with skin the color of mushrooms. He began to shiver. He got into bed, the sheets had a clammy glaze on them. All the same Paris was no place to go to bed alone, no place to go home alone in a honking taxi, in the heartbreak of honking taxis. Poor Anne Elizabeth. Poor Dick. He lay shivering between the clammy sheets, his eyes were pinned open with safetypins.
Gradually he got warmer. Tomorrow. Seventhirty: shave, buckle puttees . . . café au lait, brioches, beurre. He’d be hungry, hadn’t had any supper . . . deux oeux sur le plat. Bonjour m’ssieurs mesdames. Jingling spurs to the office, Sergeant Ames at ease. Day dragged out in khaki; twilight tea at Eleanor’s, make her talk to Moorehouse to clinch job after the signing of the peace, tell her about the late General Ellsworth, they’ll laugh about it together. Dragged out khaki days until after the signing of the peace. Dun, drab, khaki. Poor Dick got to go to work after signing of the peace. Poor Tom’s cold. Poor Dickyboy . . . Richard . . . He brought his feet up to where he could rub them. Poor Richard’s feet. After the Signing of the Peace.
By the time his feet were warm he’d fallen asleep.
Newsreel XXXVII
SOVIET GUARDS DISPLACED
the American commander-in-chief paid tribute to the dead and wounded, urged the soldiers to thank God for the victory and declared that a new version of duty to God and Country had come to all. When the numbers were hoisted it was found that that of M. A. Aumont’s Zimzizimi was missing. The colt had been seized with a fit of coughing in the morning and was consequently withdrawn almost at the last moment
REPUBLICANS GETTING READY FOR THE
HECKLING OF WILSON
MOVE TO INDICT EXKAISER IN CHICAGO
Johnny get your gun
get your gun
get your gun
We’ve got em on the run
we face a great change in the social structure of this great country, declared Mr. Schwab, the man who becomes the aristocrat of the future will become so not because of birth or wealth but because he has done something for the good of the country
RUTHLESS WAR TO CRUSH REDS
on the run
on the run
at the same time several columns of soldiers and sailors appeared in front of the chancellor’s palace. The situation in Germany is developing into a neck and neck race between American food and Bolshevism. Find Lloyd G
eorge Taking Both Sides in Peace Disputes.
Oh that tattooed French Ladee
Tattooed from neck to knee
She was a sight to see
MACKAY OF POSTAL CALLS BURLESON BOLSHEVIK
popular demonstrations will mark the visits of the President and of the rulers of Great Britain and Belgium who will be entertained at a series of fêtes. The irony of the situation lies in the fact that the freedom of speech and the press for which the social democrats clamored is now proving the chief source of menace to the new government
Right across her jaw
Was the Royal Flying Corps
On her back was the Union Jack
Now could you ask for more?
the war department today decided to give out a guarded bulletin concerning a near mutiny of some of the American troops in the Archangel sector and their refusal to go to the front when ordered in spite of police orders comparative quiet prevailed, but as the procession moved along the various avenues, Malakoff, Henri Martin, Victor Hugo, and the Trocadèro and through the districts in the aristocratic quarter of Paris in which Jaurès lived there was a feeling of walking over mined roads where the merest incident might bring about an explosion