1919 (50 page)

A
NNE
E
LIZABETH
.

 

Dick went cold all over when he read the letter in the Brasserie Weber where he'd gone to have a beer with an artillery 2nd lieutenant named Staunton Wills who was studying at the Sorbonne. Then he read a letter from his mother complaining about her lonely old age and one from Mr. Cooper offering him a job. Wills was talking bout a girl he'd seen at the Theatre Caumartin he wanted to get to know, and was asking Dick in his capacity of an expert in these matters, how he ought to go about it. Dick tried to keep talking about how he could certainly get to see her by sending her a note through the ouvreuse, tried to keep looking at the people with umbrellas passing up and down the rue Royale and the wet taxis and shiny staffcars, but his mind was in a panic; she was going to have a baby; she expected him to marry her; I'm damned if I will. After they'd had their beer, he and Wills went walking down the left bank of the Seine, looking at old books and engravings in the secondhand bookstalls and ended up having tea with Eleanor Stoddard.

“Why are you looking so doleful, Richard?” asked Eleanor. They had gone into the window with their teacups. At the table Wills was sitting talking with Eveline Hutchins and a newspaper man. Dick took a gulp of tea. “Talking to you's a great pleasure to me, Eleanor,” he said.

“Well, then it's not that that's making you pull such a long face?”

“You know . . . some days you feel as if you were stagnating . . . I guess I'm tired of wearing a uniform . . . I want to be a private individual for a change.”

“You don't want to go home, do you?”

“Oh, no, I've got to go, I guess, to do something about mother, that is if Henry doesn't go . . . Colonel Edgecombe says he can get me re-leased from the service over here, that is, if I waive my right to transportation home. God knows I'm willing to do that.”

“Why don't you stay over here . . . We might get J.W. to fix up something for you . . . How would you like to be one of his bright young men?”

“It ud be better than ward politics in Joisey . . . I'd like to get a job that sent me traveling . . . It's ridiculous because I spend my life on the train in this service, but I'm not fed up with it yet.”

She patted the back of his hand: “That's what I like about you, Richard, the appetite you have for everything . . . J.W. spoke several times about that keen look you have . . . he's like that, he's never lost his appetite, that's why he's getting to be a power in the world . . . you know Colonel House consults him all the time . . . You see, I've lost my appetite.” They went back to the teatable.

Next day orders came around to send a man to Rome; Dick jumped at the job. When he heard Anne Elizabeth's voice over the phone, chilly panic went through him again, but he made his voice as agreeable as he could. “Oh, you were a darling to come, Dicky boy,” she was saying. He met her at a café at the corner of the Piazza Venezia. It made him feel embarrassed the uncontrolled way she ran up to him and threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. “It's all right,” she said laughing, “they'll just think we're a couple of crazy Americans . . . Oh, Dick, lemme look at you . . . Oh, Dickybody, I've been so lonesome for you.”

Dick's throat was tight. “We can have supper together, can't we?” he managed to say. “I thought we might get hold of Ed Schuyler.”

She'd picked out a small hotel on a back street for them to go to. Dick let himself be carried away by her; after all, she was quite pretty today with her cheeks so flushed and the smell of her hair made him think of the smell of the little cyclamens on the hill above Tivoli; but all the time he was making love to her, sweating and straining in her arms, wheels were going round in his head: what can I do, can I do, can I do?

They were so late getting to Ed's place that he had given them up. He was all packed up to leave Rome for Paris and home the next day. “That's fine,” said Dick, “we'll go on the same train.” “This is my last night in Rome, ladies and gentlemen,” said Ed, “let's go and have a bangup supper and to hell with the Red Cross.”

They ate an elaborate supper with first class wines, at a place in front of Trajan's column, but Dick couldn't taste anything. His own voice sounded tinnily in his ears. He could see that Ed was making mighty efforts to cheer things up, ordering fresh bottles, kidding the waiter, telling funny stories about his misadventures with Roman ladies. Anne Elizabeth drank a lot of wine, said that the N.E.R. dragons weren't as bad as she had painted them, that they'd given her a latchkey when she'd told them her fiancé was in Rome for just that evening. She kept nudging Dick's knee with hers under the table and wanted them to sing
Auld Lang Syne.
After dinner they rode around in a cab and stopped to drop coins in the Trevi fountain. They ended up at Ed's place sitting on packing boxes, finishing up a bottle of champagne Ed suddenly remembered and singing
Auprès de ma blonde.

All the time Dick felt sober and cold inside. It was a relief when Ed announced drunkenly that he was going to visit some lovely Roman ladies of his acquaintance for the last time and leave his flat to I promessi sposi for the night. After he'd gone Anne Elizabeth threw her arms around Dick: “Give me one kiss, Dickyboy, and then you must take be back to the Methodist Board of Temperance and Public Morals . . . after all, it's private morals that count. Oh, I love our private morals.” Dick kissed her, then he went and looked out of the window. It had started to rain again. Frail ribbons of light from a streetlamp shot along the stone threads of the corner of the Spanish Stairs he could see between the houses. She came and rested her head on his shoulder:

“What you thinking about, Dickyboy?”

“Look, Anne Elizabeth, I've been wanting to talk about it . . . do you really think that. . . ?”

“It's more than two months now . . . It couldn't be anything else, and I have a little morning sickness now and then. I'd been feeling terrible today, only I declare seeing you's made me forgot all about it.”

“But you must realize . . . it worries me terribly. There must be something you can do about it.”

“I tried castor oil and quinine . . . that's all I know . . . you see I'm just a simple country girl.”

“Oh, do be serious . . . you've got to do something. There are plenty of doctors would attend to it . . . I can raise the money somehow . . . It's hellish, I've got to go back tomorrow . . . I wish I was out of this goddam uniform.”

“But I declare I think I'd kinda like a husband and a baby . . . if you were the husband and the baby was yours.”

“I can't do it . . . I couldn't afford it . . . They won't let you get married in the army.”

“That's not so, Dick,” she said slowly.

They stood a long time side by side without looking at each other, looking at the rain over the dark roofs and the faint phosphorescent streaks of the streets. She spoke in a trembly frail voice, “You mean you don't love me anymore.”

“Of course I do, I don't know what love is . . . I suppose I love any lovely girl . . . and especially you, sweetheart.” Dick heard his own voice, like somebody else's voice in his ears. “We've had some fine times together.” She was kissing him all around his neck above the stiff collar of the tunic. “But, darling, can't you understand I can't support a child until I have some definite career, and I've got my mother to support; Henry's so irresponsible I can't expect anything from him. But I've got to take you home; it's getting late.”

When they got down into the street the rain had let up again. All the waterspouts were gurgling and water glinted in the gutters under the street lamps. She suddenly slapped him, shouted you're it, and ran down the street. He had to chase her, swearing under his breath. He lost her in a small square and was getting ready to give her up and go home when she jumped out at him from behind a stone phoenix on the edge of a fountain. He grabbed her by the arm, “Don't be so damn kittenish,” he said nastily. “Can't you see I'm worried sick.” She began to cry.

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.”