A week later Dick received a war department envelope addressed to Savage, Richard Ellsworth, 2nd Lieut. Ord. Dept., enclosing his commission and ordering him to proceed to Camp Merritt, N.J., within 24 hours. Dick found himself in charge of a casuals company at Camp Merritt and wouldn’t have known what on earth to do if it hadn’t been for the sergeant. Once they were on the transport it was better; he had what had been a first class cabin with two other 2nd Lieutenants and a Major; Dick had the drop on them all because he’d been at the front. The transport was the Leviathan; Dick began to feel himself again when he saw the last of Sandy Hook; he wrote Ned a long letter in doggerel that began:
His father was a jailbird and his mother had no kale
He was much too fond of cognac and he drank it by the pail
But now he’s a Second Lieut and supported by the State.
Sports a handsome uniform and a military gait
And this is the most terrific fate that ever can befall
A boy whose grandpa was a Major-General.
The other two shavetails in the cabin were nondescript youngsters from Leland Stanford, but Major Thompson was a Westpointer and stiff as a ramrod. He was a middleaged man with a yellow round face, thin lips and noseglasses. Dick thawed him out a little by getting him a pint of whiskey through his sergeant who’d gotten chummy with the stewards, when he got seasick two days out, and discovered that he was a passionate admirer of Kipling and had heard Copeland read Danny Deever and been very much impressed. Furthermore he was an expert on mules and horseflesh and the author of a monograph: The Spanish Horse. Dick admitted that he’d studied with Copeland and somehow it came out that he was the grandson of the late General Ellsworth. Major Thompson began to take an interest in him and to ask him questions about the donkeys the French used to carry ammunition in the trenches, Italian cavalry horses and the works of Rudyard Kipling. The night before they reached Brest when everybody was flustered and the decks were all dark and silent for the zone, Dick went into a toilet and reread the long kidding letter he’d written Ned first day out. He tore it up into small bits, dropped them in the can and then flushed it carefully: no more letters.
In Brest Dick took three majors downtown and ordered them a meal and good wine at the hotel; during the evening Major Thompson told stories about the Philippines and the Spanish war; after the fourth bottle Dick taught them all to sing Mademoiselle from Armentiéres. A few days later he was detached from his casuals company and set to Tours; Major Thompson, who felt he needed somebody to speak French for him and to talk about Kipling with, had gotten him transferred to his office. It was a relief to see the last of Brest, where everybody was in a continual grouch from the drizzle and the mud and the discipline and the saluting and the formations and the fear of getting in wrong with the brasshats.
Tours was full of lovely creamystone buildings buried in dense masses of bluegreen late summer foliage. Dick was on commutation of rations and boarded with an agreeable old woman who brought him up his café au lait in bed every morning. He got to know a fellow in the Personnel Department through whom he began to work to get Henry transferred out of the infantry. He and Major Thompson and old Colonel Edgecombe and several other offices dined together very often; they got so they couldn’t do without Dick who knew how to order a meal comme il 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 Ellsworth.
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, “Well, of all 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…. Hell, you can’t beat it. He lands with his nose in the butter every time…. Anyway I’m glad there’s one successful member of the family to carry on the name of the late General Ellsworth.”
“Have a disagreeable time in the Argonne?”
“Lousy… until they sent me back to officers’ school.”
“We had a swell time there in the ambulance service in ’17.”
“Oh, you would.”
Henry drank some more wine and mellowed up a little. Every now and then he’d look around the big room with its lace curtains and its scrubbed tile floor and it’s 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 called 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 kill 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 seagull. 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 terrible. 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 all he could do was just feel miserable so he went to bed. All night half thinking half dreaming he couldn’t 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 hellishly 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 calling his name down in the street outside; he tiptoed down the cold tiled stairs and let him in.
“Why the hell did you let me go with that girl, Dick? I feel like a louse… Oh Christ… mind if I have half this bed, Dick? I’ll get me a room in the morning.” Dick found him a pair of pyjamas and made himself small on his side of the bed. “The trouble with you, Henry,” he said, yawning, “is that you’re just an old Puritan… you ought to be more continental.”
“I notice you didn’t go with any of those bitches yourself.”