U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [152]
A couple of days later at the office she was looking at some antique Spanish chairs an old furniture dealer was trying to sel her when a telegram came: DISAGREEABLE
DEVELOPMENTS MUST SEE YOU INADVISABLE USE TELEPHONE MEET ME TEA FIVE OCLOCK
PRINCE GEORGE HOTEL
It wasn't signed. She told the man to leave the chairs and when he'd gone stood a long time looking down at a pot of lavender crocuses with yel ow pistils she had on her desk. She was wondering if it would do any good if she went out to Great Neck and talked to Gertrude Moore-house. She cal ed Miss Lee who was making up some cur-tains in the other room and asked her to take charge of the office and that she'd phone during the afternoon. She got into a taxi and went up to the Pennsylvania Station. It was a premature Spring day. People were walk-ing along the street with their overcoats unbuttoned. The sky was a soft mauve with frail clouds like milkweed floss. In the smel of furs and overcoats and exhausts and bundledup bodies came an unexpected scent of birchbark. Eleanor sat bolt upright in the back of the taxi driving her sharp nails into the palms of her graygloved hands. She hated these treacherous days when winter felt like Spring. They made the lines come out on her face, made everything seem to crumble about her, there seemed to be no firm footing any more. She'd go out and talk to Gertrude Moorehouse as one woman to another. A scandal would ruin everything. If she talked to her a while she'd make her realize that there had never been anything between her and J.W. A divorce scandal would ruin
everything. She'd lose her clients and have to go into bankruptcy and the only thing to do would be to go back to Pul man to live with her uncle and aunt.
-355-She paid the taximan and went down the stairs to the Long Island Railroad. Her knees were shaky and she felt desperately tired as she pushed her way through the crowd to the information desk. No, she couldn't get a train to Great Neck til 2:13. She stood in line a long time for a ticket. A man stepped on her foot. The line of people moved maddeningly slowly past the ticketwindow. When she got to the window it was several seconds before she could remember the name of the place she wanted a ticket for. The man looked at her through the window, with peevish shoebutton eyes. He wore a green eyeshade and his lips were too red for his pale face. The people behind were getting impatient. A man with a tweed coat and a heavy suitcase was already trying to brush past her. "Great Neck and return." As soon as she'd bought the ticket the thought came to her that she wouldn't have time to get out there and back by five o'clock. She put the ticket in her gray silk purse that had a little design in jet on it. She thought of kil ing herself. She would take the subway downtown and go up in the elevator to the top of the Woolworth Building and throw herself off.
Instead she went out to the taxistation. Russet sunlight was pouring through the gray colonnade, the blue smoke of exhausts rose into it crinkled like watered silk. She got into a taxi and told the driver to take her round Central Park. Some of the twigs were red and there was a glint on the long buds of beeches but the grass was stil brown and there were piles of dirty snow in the gutters. A shivery raw wind blew across the ponds. The taximan kept talking to her. She couldn't catch what he said and got tired of making random answers and told him to leave her at the Metropolitan Art Museum. While she was pay-ing him a newsboy ran by crying "Extra!" Eleanor bought a paper for a nickel and the taximan bought a paper. "I'l be a sonova . . ." she heard the taximan exclaim, but she ran up the steps fast for fear she'd have to talk to him.
-356-When she got in the quiet silvery light of the musuem she opened up the paper. A rancid smel of printer's ink came from it; the ink was stil sticky and came off on her gloves.
DECLARATION OF WAR
A matter of hours now Washington Observers declare. German note thoroughly unsatisfactory.
She left the newspaper on a bench and went to