Boston (Mass.) -- Fiction; Interpersonal relations -- Fiction
"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 ..."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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