U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [330]
faut, and the proper vintages of wines and could parleyvoo with the French girls and make up limericks and was the grandson of the late General El sworth. When the Post Despatch Service was organized as a
separate outfit, Colonel Edgecombe who headed it, got him away from. Major Thompson and his horsedealers; Dick became one of his assistants with the rank of Captain. Immediately he managed to get Henry transferred from the officers' school to Tours. It was too late though to get him more than a first lieutenancy. When Lieutenant Savage reported to Captain Savage
in his office he looked brown and skinny and sore. That evening they drank a bottle of white wine together in Dick's room. The first thing Henry said when the door closed behind them was, "Wel , of al the goddam lousy grafts . . . I don't know whether to be proud of the little kid brother or to sock him in the eye." Dick poured him a drink. "It must have been Mother's doing," he said. "Honestly, I'd forgotten that granpa was a general."
"If you knew what us guys at the front used to say about the S.O.S."
"But somebody's got to handle the supplies and the ordnance and . . ."
"And the mademosels and the vin blanc," broke in Henry.
"Sure, but I've been very virtuous. . . . Your little brother's minding his p's and q's, and honestly I've been working like a nigger."
"Writing loveletters for ordnance majors, I bet. . . . Hel , you can't beat it. He lands with his nose in the but-ter every time. . . . Anyway I'm glad there's one suc--352-cessful member of the family to carry on the name of the late General El sworth."
"Have a disagreeable time in the Argonne?"
" Lousy . . . until they sent me back to officers' school."
"We had a swel time there in the ambulance service in
'17."
"Oh, you would."
Henry drank some more wine and mel owed up a little. Every now and then he'd look around the big room with its lace curtains and its scrubbed tile floor and its big fourposter bed and make a popping sound with his lips and mutter: "Pretty soft." Dick took him out and set him up to a fine dinner at his favorite bistro and then went around and fixed him up with Minette, who was the bestlooking girl at Madame Patou's. After Henry had gone upstairs, Dick sat in the parlor a few minutes with a girl they cal ed Dirty Gertie who had hair dyed red and a big floppy painted mouth, drinking the bad cognac and feeling blue. "Vous triste?" she said, and put her clammy hand on his forehead. He nodded.
"Fièvre . . . trop penser . . . penser no good . . . moi aussi." Then she said she'd kil herself but she was afraid, not that she believed in God, but that she was afraid of how quiet it would be after she was dead. Dick cheered her up, "Bientot guerre finee. Tout le monde content go back home." The girl burst out crying and Madame Patou came running in screaming and clawing like a seagul . She was a heavy woman with an ugly jaw. She grabbed the girl by the hair and began shaking her. Dick was flustered. He managed to make the woman let the girl go back to her room, left some money and walked out. He felt ter-rible. When he got home he felt like writing some verse. He tried to recapture the sweet and heavy pulsing of feelings he used to have when he sat down to write a poem. But al he could do was just feel miserable so he went to bed. Al night half thinking half dreaming he couldn't
-353-get Dirty Gertie's face out of his head. Then he began remembering the times he used to have with Hilda at Bay Head and had a long conversation with himself about love: Everything's so hel ishly sordid . . . I'm sick of whores and chastity, I want to have love affairs. He began planning what he'd do after the war, probably go home and get a political job in Jersey; a pretty sordid prospect. He was lying on his back staring at the ceiling that was livid with dawn when he heard Henry's voice cal ing his name down in the