U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [151]
The sight of the French flag excited her always or when a band played Tipperary; and one evening when they were going to see The Yellow Jacket for the third time, she had on a new fur coat that she was wondering how she was going to pay for, and she thought of al the bil s at her office and the house on Sutton Place she was remodeling on a speculation and wanted to ask J.W.
about a thousand he'd said he'd invested for her and won-dered if there'd been any turnover yet. They'd been talk-ing about the air raids and poison gas and the effect of the war news downtown and the Bowmen of Mons and
the Maid of Orleans and she said she believed in the supernatural, and J.W. was hinting something about re-verses on the Street and his face looked drawn and wor-ried; but they were crossing Times Square through the eighto'clock crowds and the skysigns flashing on and off. The fine little triangular men were doing exercises on the Wrigley sign and suddenly a grindorgah began to play The Marseillaise and it was too beautiful; she burst into tears and they talked about Sacrifice and Dedication and J.W. held her arm tight through the fur coat and gave the organgrinder man a dol ar. When they got to the theater Eleanor hurried down to the ladies' room to see if her eyes had got red. But when she looked in the mirror they weren't red at al and there was a flash of heartfelt feeling in her eyes, so she just freshened up her face and went back up to the lobby, where J.W. was waiting for her with the tickets in his hand; her gray eyes were flash-ing and had tears in them. Then one evening J.W. looked very worried indeed
and said when he was taking her home from the opera where they'd seen Manon that his wife didn't under-stand their relations and was making scenes and threaten-ing to divorce him. Eleanor was indignant and said she
-353-must have a very coarse nature not to understand that their relations were pure as driven snow. J.W. said she had and that he was very worried and he explained that most of the capital invested in his agency was his mother-in-law's and that she could bankrupt him if she wanted to, which was much worse than a divorce. At that Eleanor felt very cold and crisp and said that she would rather go out of his life entirely than break up his home and that he owed something to his lovely children. J.W. said she was his inspiration and he had to have her in his life and when they got back to Eighth Street they walked back and forth in Eleanor's white glittering drawing-room in the heavy smel of lilies wondering what could be done. They smoked many cigarettes but they couldn't seem to come to any decision. When J.W. left he said with a sigh, "She may have detectives shadowing me this very minute," and he went away very despondent. After he'd gone Eleanor walked back and forth in front of the long Venetian mirror between the windows. She didn't know what to do. The decorating business was barely breaking even. She had the amortization to pay off on the house on Sutton Place. The rent of her apart-ment was two months overdue and there was her fur coat to pay for. She'd counted on the thousand dol ars' worth of shares J.W. had said would be hers if he made the kil ing he expected in that Venezuela Oil stock. Something must have gone wrong or else he would have spoken of it. When Eleanor went to bed she didn't sleep. She felt very miserable and lonely. She'd have to go back to the drudgery of a department store. She was losing her looks and her friends and now if she had to give up J.W. it would be terrible. She thought of her colored maid
Augustine with her unfortunate loves that she always told Eleanor about and she wished she'd been like that. Maybe she'd been wrong from the start to want every-thing so justright and beautiful. She didn't cry but she
-354-lay al night with her eyes wide and smarting staring at the flowered molding round the ceiling that she could see in the light that filtered in from the street through her lavender tul e curtains.