John Passos - 1919

When he came he wore a sporty grey flannel suit and a grey fedora hat. She felt very drab beside him in the darkgray uniform she hated so. “Why, my dearest little girl… you’ve saved my life,” he said. “Susu-spring makes me think of suicide unless I’m in lu-lu-love… I was feeling… er… er… elderly and not in love. We must change all that.” “I was feeling like that too.” “What’s the matter?” “Well, maybe I’ll tell you and maybe I won’t.” She almost liked his long nose and his long jaw today. “Anyway, I’m too starved to talk.” “I’ll do all the talking…” he said laughing. “Alwawaways do anywawaway… and I’ll set you up to the bububest meal you ever ate.”

He talked boisterously all the way out in the cab about the Peace Conference and the terrible fight the President had had to keep his principles intact. “Hemmed in by every sinister intrigue, by all the poisonous ghosts of secret treaties, with two of the cleverest and most unscrupulous manipulators out of oldworld statecraft as his opponents… He fought on… we are all of us fighting on… It’s the greatest crusade in history; if we win, the world will be a better place to live in, if we lose, it will be given up to Bolshevism and despair… you can imagine, Anne Elizabeth, how charming it was to have your pretty little voice suddenly tickle my ear over the telephone and call me away if only for a brief space from all this worry and responsibility… why, there’s even a rumor that an attempt has been made to poison the President at the hôtel Mûrat… it’s the President alone with a few backers and wellwishers and devoted adherents who is standing out for decency, fairplay and good sense, never forget that for an instant….” He talked on and on as if he was rehearsing a speech. Daughter heard him faintly like through a faulty telephone connection. The day too, the little pagodas of bloom on the horsechestnuts, the crowds, the overdressed children, the flags against the blue sky, the streets of handsome houses behind trees with their carved stonework and their iron balconies and their polished windows shining in the May sunshine; Paris was all little and bright and far away like a picture seen through the wrong end of a field glass. When the luncheon came on at the big glittery outdoor restaurant it was the same thing, she couldn’t taste what she was eating.

He made her drink quite a lot of wine and after a while she heard herself talking to him. She’d never talked like this to a man before. He seemed so understanding and kind. She found herself talking to him about Dad and how hard it had been giving up Joe Washburn, and how going over on the boat her life had suddenly seemed all new… “Somethin’ funny’s happened to me, I declare… I always used to get along with everybody fine and now I can’t seem to. In the N.E.R. office in Rome I couldn’t get along with any of those old cats, and I got to be good friends with an Italian boy, used to take me horseback riding an’ I couldn’t get along with him, and you know Captain Savage on the train to Italy who let us ride in his compartment, we went out to Tivoli with him,” her ears began to roar when she spoke of Dick. She was going to tell Mr. Barrow everything. “We got along so well we got engaged and now I’ve quarreled with him.”

She saw Mr. Barrow’s long knobbly face leaning towards her across the table. The gap was very wide between his front teeth when he smiled. “Do you think, Annie girl, you could get along with me a little?” He put his skinny puffyveined hand towards her across the table. She laughed and threw her head to one side, “We seem to be gettin’ along all right right now.”

“It would make me very happy if you could… you make me very happy, anyway, just to look at you… I’m happier at this moment than I’ve been for years, except perhaps for the mumumoment when the Covenant for the League of Nations was signed.”

She laughed again, “Well, I don’t feel like any Peace Treaty, the fact is I’m in terrible trouble.” She found herself watching his face carefully; the upper lip thinned, he wasn’t smiling any more.

“Why, what’s the mamamatter… if there was any wawaway I could… er… be of assistance… I’d be the happiest fellow in the world.”

“Oh, no… I hate losing my job though and having to go home in disgrace… that’s about the size of it… it’s all my fault for running around like a little nitwit.” She was going to break down and cry, but suddenly the nausea came on again and she had to hurry to the ladies’ room of the restaurant. She got there just in time to throw up. The shapeless leatherfaced woman there was very kind and sympathetic; it scared Daughter how she immediately seemed to know what was the matter. She didn’t know much French but she could see that the woman was asking if it was Madame’s first child, how many months, congratulating her. Suddenly she decided she’d kill herself. When she got back Barrow had paid the bill and was walking back and forth on the gravel path in front of the tables.

“You poor little girl,” he said. “What can be the matter? You suddenly turned deathly pale.”

“It’s nothing… I think I’ll go home and lie down… I don’t think all that spaghetti and garlic agreed with me in Italy… maybe it’s that wine.”

“But perhaps I could do something about finding you a job in Paris. Are you a typist or stenographer?”

“Might make a stab at it,” said Daughter bitterly. She hated Mr. Barrow. All the way back in the taxi she couldn’t get to say anything. Mr. Barrow talked and talked. When she got back to the hotel she lay down on the bed and gave herself up to thinking about Dick.

She decided she’d go home. She stayed in her room and although Mr. Barrow kept calling up asking her out and making suggestions about possible jobs she wouldn’t see him. She said she was having a bilious attack and would stay in bed. The night before she was to sail he asked her to dine with him and some friends and before she knew it she said she’d go along. He called for her at six and took her for cocktails at the Ritz Bar. She’d gone out and bought herself an evening dress at the Galleries Lafayette and was feeling fine, she was telling herself as she sat drinking the champagne cocktail, that if Dick should come in now she wouldn’t bat an eyelash. Mr. Barrow was talking about the Fiume situation and the difficulties the President was having with Congress and how he feared that the whole great work of the League of Nations was in danger, when Dick came in looking very handsome in his uniform with a pale older woman in grey and a tall stoutish lighthaired man, whom Mr. Barrow pointed out as J. Ward Moorehouse. Dick must have seen her but he wouldn’t look at her. She didn’t care anymore about anything. They drank down their cocktails and went out. On the way up to Montmartre she let Mr. Barrow give her a long kiss on the mouth that put him in fine spirits. She didn’t care; she had decided she’d kill herself.

Waiting for them at the table at the Hermitage Mr. Barrow had reserved, was a newspaper correspondent named Burnham and a Miss Hutchins who was a Red Cross worker. They were very much excited about a man named Stevens who had been arrested by the Army of Occupation, they thought accused of Bolshevik propaganda; he’d been courtmartialed and they were afraid he was going to be shot. Miss Hutchins was very upset and said Mr. Barrow ought to go to the President about it as soon as Mr. Wilson got back to Paris. In the meantime they had to get the execution stayed. She said Don Stevens was a newspaper man and although a radical not connected with any kind of propaganda and anyway it was horrible to shoot a man for wanting a better world. Mr. Barrow was very embarrassed and stuttered and hemmed and hawed and said that Stevens was a very silly young man who talked too much about things he didn’t understand, but that he supposed he’d have to do the best he could to try to get him out but that after all, he hadn’t shown the proper spirit…. That made Miss Hutchins very angry, “But they’re going to shoot him… suppose it had happened to you…” she kept saying. “Can’t you understand that we’ve got to save his life?”