Dick Savage and Eleanor Stoddard

Dick Savage and Eleanor Stoddard form a relationship that joins private confidence to practical opportunity: she offers him a welcoming place outside military life, takes his ambitions seriously, and helps connect him to J. Ward Moorehouse’s professional circle. Their closeness is marked by an ease of conversation and frank counsel, but it does not resolve into a declared romance. Eleanor’s affectionate interest instead becomes one of the forces guiding Dick toward a civilian future, even as she warns him against binding himself to a marriage he may not want.

An Easy Connection in Paris

Their acquaintance takes shape in Eleanor Stoddard’s Paris drawing room, where Dick arrives with Colonel Edgecombe for tea. The setting is stately but lived in: Italian wall panels, yellow and orange damask, and a view through heavy lace toward the trees along the Quai and the Seine River, with the apse of Notre-Dame de Paris beyond. Eleanor explains that the old rooms needed only to be given a chance. That attention to what can be made from an inherited setting quietly suits the kind of conversation she and Dick will have: she recognizes possibilities in him that his present uniform and duties seem to contain.

Eleanor has already heard Edgar Robbins praise Dick as a bright young man and asks what happened over supper to make such an impression. Dick answers modestly that they shared good Scotch afterward. Her amused suspicion that she will have to keep an eye on him establishes a teasing, alert tone between them. Dick is not simply another officer being entertained; he is someone whose quickness Eleanor has noticed and wants to understand.

When Eleanor draws him aside to the window, she asks about his recent time in Rome and invites him to tell her what he saw. They discuss Tivoli, which Dick regards as rather too much of a tourist destination, and he recounts the fight at the Apollo without naming Ed Schuyler. The conversation holds his interest, and the two get along so naturally that he finds himself wondering how old she is. His attention to her age registers a possible attraction, but the scene chiefly shows their mutual ease: she prompts him to tell stories, while he can speak without performing the stiffness expected of an officer.

The meeting changes Dick’s sense of what his life might become. He leaves the tea unexpectedly elated, despite having anticipated boredom, and begins considering how to leave the service in France. When he asks Colonel Edgecombe about the process, the Colonel points out that J. Ward Moorehouse may be able to place him in publicity work for Standard Oil. Eleanor’s circle has brought Dick within reach of that possibility, making the social visit consequential beyond its immediate pleasure.

Confidence, Restlessness, and Work

A later meeting deepens the personal side of the relationship. After reading Anne Elizabeth Trent’s letter and learning that she is pregnant and expects him to marry her, Dick is inwardly panicked. He nonetheless goes walking along the Left Bank, looking at old books and engravings in the stalls, before ending up at tea with Eleanor. In the window, she notices his doleful expression and asks what is wrong. Dick tells her that he feels he is stagnating, is tired of wearing a uniform, and wants to be a private individual for a change.

Eleanor listens without pushing him toward a return home. Dick explains that he may need to go back because of his mother, but that Colonel Edgecombe can arrange his release from service in France if he gives up his right to transportation home. Eleanor suggests that he remain in Paris and that J. Ward Moorehouse might find a place for him among his bright young associates. The suggestion answers Dick’s immediate wish to escape military routine while giving his restlessness a direction. He says he would prefer work that sent him traveling; although he spends his life on trains in the service, he is not yet tired of travel itself.

Eleanor’s response makes clear that she values this appetite for experience. She tells him that J. Ward Moorehouse has noticed his keen look and describes Moorehouse as a man who has never lost his appetite, a quality she associates with his growing influence and his consultations with Colonel House. She contrasts Dick’s energy with her own sense that she has lost hers. The exchange is more than career advice: Eleanor names a quality in Dick that he may not have known how to present as an asset, and connects it to a form of worldly effectiveness.

Their recurring tea meetings offer Dick a refuge from the despatch service. After the office and its military formalities, he walks along the Left Bank to the Quai de la Tournelle, passing budding trees and the bouquinistes closing their stalls, then climbs the chilly stone stairs to Eleanor’s apartment. She sits behind the tea table in an ivory-colored dress and pearls, sharing gossip about the Hôtel de Crillon and the Peace Conference. The habitual visit gives shape to his Paris life: work and uniform on one side, a warm room and an unforced conversation on the other. When Eleanor tells him she will be away in Rome for a couple of weeks on American Red Cross work, Dick says he wishes they could have been there at the same time; she answers that she would have liked that too. Their farewell is affectionate, but it remains within the restraint of their established friendship.

The Question of Anne Elizabeth

Eleanor’s absence sharpens Dick’s awareness of how much he has come to rely on her company. March is miserable for him: he feels friendless, dislikes the people around the despatch service, and has to leave his cold hotel room to read in a café. He misses Eleanor and the comfort of her apartment. At the same time, Anne Elizabeth’s letters trouble him with obscure references to having met a charming friend at the American Red Cross. The separation from Eleanor therefore intersects with the unresolved question of Dick’s obligation to Anne Elizabeth, rather than simply interrupting a pleasant social routine.

When Eleanor invites Dick on a picnic to Chantilly with J. Ward Moorehouse, the outing gives them a more private opportunity to address the issue. The party visits the château, feeds carp in the moat, and eats in the woods; afterward, in the garden of a ruined château at Senlis, Dick and Eleanor fall behind the others. He asks whether she knows when peace will be signed and says that, once it is, he intends to take off Uncle Sam’s livery. The prospect of leaving the service remains central to his plans, but Eleanor’s report that she met the little Texas girl in Rome turns the conversation toward his engagement.

Eleanor tells Dick that Anne Elizabeth said they were engaged. Dick replies that she exaggerated, laughing dryly, but he blushes. Eleanor probes the answer rather than accepting it at face value. She says she hopes the engagement has been overstated and cautions that, although it is not her business, Dick should not marry yet; she considers an unsuitable marriage capable of ruining a promising young man. Her warning exposes the tension between his private panic and the account he gives others. It also shows that Eleanor’s concern is not merely professional: she takes an interest in the choices that could shape his life beyond his job.

Dick tells her that her interest means a great deal to him and admits that the whole matter is difficult, while insisting that he is not very interested in marriage. Eleanor’s answer is severe: she advises him never to do anything difficult because it is never worth it. She then quickens her step to rejoin the others, before turning back with laughter to promise that she will not scold him again. The movement from admonition to joking retreat prevents the exchange from becoming a declaration or an ultimatum. Eleanor gives him her judgment, but she does not claim authority over his decision.

A Professional Bridge, Not a Resolution

The picnic ends in rain, and the Paris suburbs look grey on the drive home. At the Hôtel de Crillon, J. Ward Moorehouse lets Dick know that a position will be available in his office once Dick leaves the service. Dick writes to his mother in high spirits: he explains that the uniform, regulations, and saluting seem to keep his mind from working, and that the promised position will allow him to continue his own work on the side. He understands the role as public-relations and publicity advising for large corporations such as Standard Oil, and reports that people around him regard it as the opportunity of a lifetime.

Eleanor is important to this change because she has repeatedly encouraged Dick to imagine a civilian career, suggested that J. Ward Moorehouse could help, and brought him into the social setting where the offer becomes concrete. The evidence does not establish that she alone secures the position, or that Dick has yet left the service; the offer remains conditional on his release. Her part is nonetheless substantial: she recognizes his impatience with military life, interprets his appetite for travel and experience as a strength, and helps him see a possible route from uniformed service to work in Paris.

The relationship thus holds together emotional understanding and access to opportunity without settling into a conventional romantic outcome. Eleanor gives Dick companionship, attention, and candid advice, while Dick responds with trust and openly values her interest. Their meetings recur through tea, walks, and the Chantilly outing, but the surviving exchanges end with his prospective job rather than a promise between them. What Eleanor helps make possible is not a defined partnership but a next life: one in which Dick might exchange the constraints of the uniform for independent work, while carrying forward the appetite she has recognized in him.