John Passos - 1919

“You don’t like Paris, Miss Williams.”

“I should say not.”

“Robbins does,” said Dick maliciously. “Too well,” said Miss Williams. “I thought if you were a friend of his you might help us straighten him out. We’re very worried over him. He hasn’t been here for two days at a most important time, very important contacts to be made. J.W.’s working himself to the bone. I’m so afraid he’ll break down under the strain… And you can’t get a reliable stenographer or an extra typewriter… I have to do all the typing beside my secretarial duties.” “Oh, it’s a busy time for all of us,” said Dick. “Goodby, Miss Williams.” She gave him a smile as he left.

In late February he came back from a long dismal run to Vienna to find another letter from Anne Elizabeth:

DICK DARLING:

Thanks for the fine postcards. I’m still at this desk job and so lonely. Try to come to Rome if you can. Something is happening that is going to make a great change in our lives. I’m terribly worried about it but I have every confidence in you. I know you’re straight, Dicky boy. Oh, I’ve got to see you. If you don’t come in a day or two I may throw up everything and come to Paris. Your girl,

ANNE ELIZABETH.

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.”