U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [345]
"but I'm afraid he's losing his grip . . . as I look at it it's very demoralizing over here . . . for a man. How can anybody expect to get through their work in a place where they take three hours for lunch and sit around drinking in those miserable cafés the rest of the time?"
"You don't like Paris, Miss Wil iams."
"I should say not."
" Robbins does," said Dick maliciously. "Too wel ," said Miss Wil iams. "I thought if you were a friend of his you might help us straighten him out. We're very wor-ried 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'l break down under the strain .
. . And you can't get a reliable stenographer or an extra typewriter . . . I have to do al the typing beside my secretarial duties.""Oh, it's a busy time for al of us," said Dick.
"Goodby, Miss Wil iams." 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 stil at this desk job and so lonely. Try to come to Rome if you can. Some--384-thing 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 al over when he read the letter in the Brasserie Weber where he'd gone to have a beer with an artil ery 2nd lieutenant named Staunton Wil s 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. Wil s 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 umbrel as 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 wil . After they'd had their beer, he and Wil s went walking down the left bank of the Seine, looking at old books and engravings in the secondhand bookstal s 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 Wil s 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.
"Wel , then it's not that that's making you pul such a long face?"
"You know . . . some days you feel as if you were
-385-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 wil ing 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