U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [348]
-390-about la bel e, la douce France, and they began to get along better. By the time they reached the banlieue, they were talking about going to see Spinel i 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 stal s in the deepening lavender twilight, to the quai de la Tournel e where everything looked like two centuries ago, and to walk slowly up the chil y 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, al the latest gossip of the Cril on 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
-391-for him at his hotel. She was inviting him to go on a picnic to Chantil y with her and J.W. the next Sunday.
They left at eleven from the Cril on 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 Chantil y 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 intel igent 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 chil y al 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
-392-enough to be, wel 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