"Well, it was a great war while it lasted." Major Baldwin sat swinging his brightly polished puttees from the edge of Fanshaw's desk. "What are you going to do when you go home?" He turned towards Fanshaw a steaklike face from which emanated a distinct steam of cocktails.
Fanshaw looked up from the photographs of Red Cross activities he was sorting, let his eye roam across the golden and rusty roofs that stretched away under the window past domes and more domes towards St. Peter's and Janiculum, glanced at the blue reflected light on Major Baldwin's puttees, at his elegant whipcord breeches and Sam Browne belt, red and shiny as his puttees, until at last he found himself looking into his blue watery eyes.
"I suppose ... I guess there's nothing to it but to go back to teaching the young idea how to appreciate art."
"Why don't ye stay in relief work? ... There'll be jobs for years." Major Baldwin kicked his heels against the desk and threw back his head and laughed and laughed.
"Colonel Hopkins is in there," said Fanshaw, jerking his head back towards the mahogany doors behind his desk.
"I don't give a hoot in hell about Hopkins ... Listen here, I've got some dope, see? ..." He leaned over and whispered noisily in Fanshaw's ear. "Old Hopkins is going to get his ... They're starting an investigation of the organization from the ground up. A congressional investigation ... Goin' to be hell to pay. Let's get out and have a lil' drink."
Fanshaw looked at his watch.
"I can't go for half an hour yet ... I'm not supposed to leave my desk till five."
"Hell, up in my office we don't keep any hours at all."
"You aren't so near to centers of operation."
"You mean to that old fool?" Major Baldwin pointed with a stout forefinger at the mahogany doors. "The investigation'll fix him.... How soon are you packing up for home?"
"Probably in a couple of weeks ... I'm afraid I'll have to finish up this album of Child Relief, 1918-1919, first ... I'm bored to death with this work, aren't you?"
Major Baldwin got to his feet and went to the window. He stood a long while looking out, twirling his cane in one hand. Fanshaw continued sorting photographs of ragged Italian children.
"Gosh, I don't see it," said Major Baldwin suddenly.
"See what?" Fanshaw was poring over a group of a Red Cross captain and a nurse with soup ladles in their hands surrounded by ragged Neapolitan guttersnipes.
"Going home after this."
Fanshaw pushed his chair back silently and got up from the desk. They both leaned out of the window and hung over the city that seemed to sway in the great waves of honeycolored sunlight like jetsam in a harbor swell. They could smell gardens and scorched olive oil, and a drowsy afternoon murmur came up to them, punctuated occasionally by the screech of a tram round a corner or a shout or a distant church bell.
"That's true ... There have been many enjoyable ..."
"I tell you, Macdougan, it was a great war. ... Gosh, look at that girl in the garden there. ... No, just coming out from under the arbor. Look at that throat ... Isn't she a pippin?"
Fanshaw laughed.
"You're incorrigible, Baldwin."
"That's why I don't want to go home.... I'm afraid that if I go home they'll correct me."
"I don't know ... They say things are very gay in the States ... Flappers and all that."
"What's this about flappers?" came a cracked voice behind them. The voice broke into a wheezy laugh. "So this is how the publicity department does its work, is it?"
"Just about," said Fanshaw, turning round to face a small greyfaced man with shaggy eyebrows. "Are you shutting up shop, Petrie?"
"Yes, it's four minutes after five ... Look, does either of you men want to sail home from Palermo on the Canada next week?"
"Heavens, no, I'm staying on till they drive me away," shouted the Major.
"I'd like to go," Fanshaw said quietly. "I've been away two years. It's time I went to see what the university has to say about my job."
"Beginning to think of the girl I left behind me, are you?" asked the greyfaced man creakily.
"Ha, ha! that's it." Fanshaw laughed loud and lifted his hand as if to slap his thigh. He found himself looking with constraint at his lifted hand and put it stiffly into his pocket.
* * * *
Le Capitaine Eustache de la Potinière had a red scar on his left cheek that stretched from the lower rim of his monocle to the tip of his distended nostril. As he sat beside Fanshaw in the joggling cab the medals clinked together on the breast of his tight-waisted khaki uniform.
"The people on the street are looking at us as we drive by," he was saying. "They are telling each other: There go two of the bravest of our allies . . . The Italians like that sort of thing: medals and people riding by in cabs ... Captain Macdougan, never forget that there is a brotherhood among the Latin peoples." Thereupon he sat up stiffly in the cab, blonde moustaches bristling, and clicked his hand up to a salute. An Italian officer in a long blue cloak saluted ferociously from the curb. Fanshaw found himself also stiffening to salute ... Funny feeling, the victorious allies riding about in cabs, saluting one another to a clink of medals. America had done all that, won the war, and he had done his bit himself; after all, relief work ...
"Excuse me if I stop at this chemist's a moment," said the French captain. "There is something I must get before they close." And he poked the driver in the back with his cane, crying out: "Arretez ici, cré nom d'un chien!"
While le Capitaine Eustache de la Potinière was in the shop, Fanshaw lolled in the cab and stared down the grey Palermo street where the dust gave a shimmering outline to the patches of sun and shadow. Now and then he straightened up and answered the salute of some Italian soldier. His puttees were too tight and cut into his legs above the ankle. Never mind, this was the last day. Tomorrow, sailing for home a civilian, no more uniform, no more inspecting colonels to talk to. Strange and different it will be coming back from the war. The thought was elating. And Nan Taylor, what will have become of her? A year since he'd heard of her. Poor Nan must be getting quite an old maid by this time, and, as for me, if it hadn't been for the war, this curious life in Italy, relief work ...
Le Capitaine Eustache de la Potinière was coming out of the shop, red and spluttering.
"Did you get what you wanted?" asked Fanshaw.
"These dirty Sicilians don't seem to understand. We'll try another place. Alley oop! Continuez! ... We'll dine in the grand manner, won't we? ... Imagine, this is my first day of Europe after a year of Africa. If I had not chanced to meet you, Captain Macdougan, I should have bored myself to death."
"Then you weren't on the front for the victory?"
"I was in the battle that made the victory. The war was won in the first battle of the Marne ... That's where I almost lost my leg and picked up a medaille militaire ... Ah, there's another chemist ... Arretez donc. Bon ... Perhaps you could help me explain."
They got out of the cab and went into the shop.
"What I want is tincture of yohimbine ... a very useful product ... a slight aid, that's what it is."
The clerk was a small yellow man with a bald head who wore a stained pongee jacket. He looked up through slanting eyeglasses at the French captain who stood over him twirling the end of his moustache.
"Avez-vous de la teinture de yohimbine, monsieur?"
"Non comprendo, signore."
"Won't you explain to him what I want? ... It's a little help, a slight aid." Le Capitaine Eustache de la Potinière waved a tightly gloved hand under the druggist's nose.
Is this man crazy? Fanshaw was thinking. Why am I riding round in a cab with this man?
"Cré nom d'un chien, por l'amore!" shouted the French captain. "Teinture de yohimbine."
Fanshaw felt himself turn red.
"I don't imagine they have it," he said hastily and walked out of the shop. He had barely got into the cab when the French captain followed.
"Ce sale pays," he was muttering. As he climbed into the cab his usual bland smile crept back over his face. "Now we can dine," he said. "It takes more than a slight contrariety to ruffle old campaigners, eh, Captain Macdougan?"
"All right, let's have dinner," Fanshaw assented weakly.
How on earth did I get in with this ridiculous Frenchman, he was bitterly asking himself. Last day in Italy, too, that I had intended to be so pleasant. Intended to go up to Monreale to see the mosaics and the view.
"I cannot tell you, Captain Macdougan," his companion was saying, "how pleasant it is to spend an evening, after all those weary years of the war, frontier posts and that sort of thing, with a man of your culture and refinement, may I even say sophistication ... I said to myself when I met you this morning in the Red Cross office: There is a man of parts, an unusual person.... With me there are no half measures, I am a man of action.... So I immediately invited you to dinner. I am sure neither of us will regret it."
"Indeed, not for my part ..." stammered Fanshaw. They had driven up in front of a small empty restaurant. The hollow-eyed waiter at the door agitated his napkin in welcome.
Fanshaw and le Capitaine Eustache de la Potinière sat in a cavernous stage box at the opera, Fanshaw with his chin on his hand leaning across the plush rail and the Frenchman sitting straight upright in his chair with his bemedalled chest expanded, nodding his head solemnly in time to the music. On one side was a mottled horeshoe of faces, on the other the dustily lighted stage across which moved processions of monks, tenors in knee-breeches, baritones with false beards; below them out of the glint of brasses and the shiny curves of violins and the gleaming bald heads of musicians the orchestra boomed and crashed. Verdi's long, emphatic tunes throatily sung brought up to Fanshaw's mind his boyish dreams out of Walter Scott and Bulwer of hazardous enterprises and maidens' love hardily won. He felt as if he wanted to cry. How silly and dusty this all is, he kept saying to himself. And here I am after the war a Red Cross captain, and everything has happened that can happen, and Wenny's dead years ago, dead as this old opera, and Nan's an old maid, and here I am sitting next to this crazy Frenchman with his medals and his stories of native women ... Right after the opera I'll leave him and go back to the hotel, get a good night's rest, and run up to Monreale before the boat goes; twelve that is; plenty of time. A long lyric duet had reached its inevitable finale. The horseshoe was full of clapping hands, nodding heads. The French captain got to his feet and clapped, leaning out from the box. Wants to have them see his medals, said a voice savagely in Fanshaw's head.
In the intermission they sat drinking Marsala in the bar.
"I didn't tell you," le Capitaine Eustache de la Potinière was saying, "how I happened to be present at the battle of the Marne. It is a very funny story."
I'll say I have a headache and go home; I can't stand any more of this wretched man, Fanshaw was thinking.
"How did that happen?" he asked.
"It's very funny ... You know the little Moroccan ladies are charming. I had one at that time as a ... governess, to keep me out of mischief. I was sent from Casablanca to Marseilles on a little mission, so I got the idea of taking my little lady along and got a week's leave to go up to show her P............