HUNIS HAND SEEN IN PLOTS 4 страница

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
about 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 tea-
cups. 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

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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 Edge-
combe says he can get me released 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 ridicu-
lous 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 tea-
table.

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, Dickyboy, I've been so lone-
some for you."

Dick's throat was tight. "We can have supper together,

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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, tell-
ing 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 nudg-
ing Dick's knee with hers under the table and wanting
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

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night. After he'd gone Anne Elizabeth threw her arms
around Dick: "Give me one kiss, Dickyboy, and then you
must take me 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 treads of the corner of the Spanish Stairs
he could see between the houses. She came and rested her
head on his shoulder:

"What you tinking 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 forget 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

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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 to-
gether." She was kissing him all around his neck above
the stiff collar of the tunic. "But, darling, can't you un-
derstand 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 sud-
denly 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 kitten-
ish," 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."

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"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 mak-
ing 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

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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 Ckange
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 re-
tailing, 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 revederci, 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. His missed Eleanor and going to
her cosy apartment in the afternoon. He kept getting wor-
rying letters from Anne Elizabeth; he couldn't make out
from them what had happened; she made mysterious ref-
erences to having met a charming friend of his at the Red
Cross who had meant so much. Then too he was broke be-
cause 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

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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 vicepresident 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, ask-
ing 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 there
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

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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 mar-
riage 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 quick-
ened 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 salut-
ing 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 rela-
tions and publicity to big corporations like Standard Oil.

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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 out her hand.
"Oh, I'm so glad, Captain Savage. J.W. says you're going
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 them-
selves 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 sev-
eral hours. When he woke up it was already dark. It was
some time before he remembered Anne Elizabeth's let-
ter. He was sitting on the edge of the bed sullenly buck-
ling 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

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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 mat-
ter?" 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 hav-
ing 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 under-
stand 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

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much." Her hysterical laugh got on his nerves; he was
shaking from the effort to control himself and talk rea-
sonably.

"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 pre-
cautions. . . ."

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 che 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 splen-
did 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 peo-
ple on the pavements, a man calling I'nTRANsigeant,
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

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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 Eliza-
beth. 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 Moore-
house 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 the 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.

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