Fred Seargeant

Fred Seargeant is a former conscientious-objector aspirant, a singer and guitar player, and an affectionate friend whose stay in Paris becomes a test of whether old artistic and personal bonds can survive the war. His delight in French songs, his longing to gather old friends, and his imminent departure for Near East Relief stand in sharp contrast to Eveline Hutchins’s growing restlessness and emotional distance. He does not force their friendship back into its former shape; instead, his last outing with Eveline and Eleanor Stoddard makes visible how far their lives have already diverged.

Identity and Wartime Experience

Fred Seargeant appears in Paris as a tall, long-faced young man wearing a kind of uniform. He has just secured a position with Near East Relief and is excited about going to Constantinople. The prospect gives his reappearance a forward direction: while the group he once knew is becoming more scattered, he is preparing for another journey and a new job.

His wartime service had not followed the course Eveline expected. She teases him for failing to see through his conscientious-objector position. Fred explains that a friend got him into the camouflage service before he understood what was happening; he says he was not interested in politics, and that the war ended before he could do anything more, after which he was discharged. The account complicates Eveline’s reproach: his departure from the C.O. path is not presented as a political conversion so much as a consequence of events and of his own lack of political commitment.

Songs, Art, and the Paris Circle

Before this office encounter, Fred is associated with a smoky, crowded Montmartre haunt where he plays guitar and sings old French songs. He has a large white beard compared to Walt Whitman’s, and he makes a fuss when Eveline and her companions arrive, welcoming them as beautiful American women. The evenings have their own communal ritual: people recite poems or sing songs such as Les Filles de Nantes, and the company claps in unison when a performance wins its approval. Fred sometimes becomes drunk and buys drinks for everyone, prompting his wife to come out of the back room and curse and scream at him.

This is a convivial but unruly world, far from the official business of the Peace Conference. Edgar Robbins brings the group there and uses the setting to make bitter remarks about the day’s political events; Fred, by contrast, is absorbed by the songs. J.W. Moorehouse also visits and is enchanted by the old French music, though he says the place makes him feel itchy and suspects it has fleas. These different reactions establish Fred as a host and performer in a social space where song, drinking, argument, and shared applause coexist. The scene also locates him within a circle of Americans whose companionship depends on gathering together even as their private ties are shifting.

Eveline’s Changing Response

When Fred comes into Eveline’s office, she is delighted to see him. Yet spending the afternoon together reveals that something in her has altered: the old conversations about theatre, decoration, pattern, colour, and form no longer mean as much to her. Fred remains exhilarated by Paris itself, from children sailing boats in the Tuileries gardens to the Garde Republicaine saluting the King and Queen of the Belgians as they pass along the rue de Rivoli. His capacity to find pleasure in these scenes persists; Eveline’s former artistic interests no longer answer her as they once did.

They try to include Eleanor in an evening out, but she has an engagement with J.W. Moorehouse and people from the Quai d’Orsay. Eveline goes with Fred to the Opéra-Comique to see Pélléas. She fidgets through the performance and nearly slaps him when she sees him crying at the end. Afterwards, over orange water ice at the Café Néapolitain, she says Debussy is old hat, upsetting him badly. The sequence turns an evening meant to renew their artistic companionship into evidence of its breakdown: Fred is moved by the work, while Eveline dismisses it. At the last moment she tries to soften the hurt and promises to go to Chartres with him the following Sunday.

The Chartres Journey and Parting

Fred arrives before dawn on Sunday, and the two get coffee from an old woman’s stand while they wait for the train. He has hoped to go to Chartres with both Eveline and Eleanor, and says he hates to think that life is drawing them all apart. They take a cab to Eleanor’s home, only to find the street door locked and no concierge. Fred rings repeatedly until a French resident downstairs comes out in a bathrobe, indignant, and lets them in. Then Fred bangs on Eleanor’s door and calls for her to get up and come with them. When she appears, he presses the invitation, telling her she looks charming enough to go as she is and reminding her that he is leaving for the Near East the next night.

The attempt to restore the old trio falters almost immediately. Eveline glimpses J.W. Moorehouse in Eleanor’s bedroom and, dazed, follows Fred downstairs. On the train Fred accuses her of being absent-minded and of no longer liking her old friends. At Chartres the rain turns the excursion into a gloomy day. The stained glass, removed for safety during the war, has not yet been restored, and the tall twelfth-century saints look wet and slimy in the downpour. Fred finds the black Virgin surrounded by candles in the crypt worth the difficult trip; Eveline does not share his response. Eleanor and J.W. never arrive, and Fred attributes their absence to the rain.

Eveline is relieved when she catches a cold and can go straight to bed on returning to Paris. Fred takes her to her door in a taxi, but she will not let him come upstairs because Don Stevens is staying there secretly. Fred does not know that Don is inside. Instead, the journey ends with the old friend excluded from Eveline’s home just as he is preparing to leave the city. Don makes Eveline hot lemonade with cognac and cares for her; Fred has gone away to a hotel after thanking her for putting him up. She feels the place is empty after his departure and almost wishes she had asked him to stay, but she falls asleep sick, scared, and lonely.

Narrative Role and Significance

Fred’s episodes give the novel a concrete measure of social change: songs and performances that once bound Eveline’s artistic circle together no longer produce a shared response. His disappointment on the way to Chartres and his insistence on bringing Eleanor along express a hope for continuity, while the locked door, the absent couple, the rain, and Eveline’s hidden guest successively frustrate that hope. His own plans remain comparatively clear—he has work and is leaving for the Near East—but his affection cannot keep the Paris group intact. The ending does not make him a villain or resolve the separation; it leaves his generous effort to gather his friends alongside Eveline’s private, unsettled sense of loss.