U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [215]
That summer was the Baltimore convention. Mr. Cooper had rented a house there and entertained a great deal. Dick's job was to stay in the outer office and be polite to
-84-everybody and take down people's names. He wore a blue serge suit and made a fine impression on everybody with his wavy black hair that Hilda used to tel him was like a raven's wing, his candid blue eyes and his pink and white complexion. What was going on was rather over his head, but he soon discovered what people Mr. Cooper real y wanted to see and what people were merely to be kidded along. Then when he and Mr. Cooper found them-selves alone, Mr. Cooper would get out a bottle of Amontil ado and pour them each a glass and sit in a big leather chair rubbing his forehead as if to rub the politics out of his mind and start talking about literature and the nineties and how he wished he was young again. It was understood that he was going to advance Dick the money to go through Harvard with.
Dick had hardly gotten back to school as a senior the next fal when he got a telegram from his mother: Come home at once darling your poor father is dead. He didn't feel sorry but kind of ashamed, afraid of meeting any of the masters or fel ows who might ask him questions. At the railway station it seemed as if the train would never come. It was Saturday and there were a couple of fel ows in his class at the station. Until the train came he thought of nothing else but dodging them. He sat stiff on his seat in the empty daycoach looking out at the russet October hil s, al keyed up for fear somebody would speak to him. It was a relief to hurry out of the Grand Central Station into the crowded New York streets where nobody knew him, where he knew nobody. Crossing on the ferry he felt happy and adventurous. He began to dread getting home and deliberately missed the first train to Trenton. He went into the old dining room of the Pennsylvania Station and ate fried oysters and sweet corn for lunch and ordered a glass of sherry, half afraid the colored waiter wouldn't serve him. He sat there a long time reading The Smart Set and drinking the sherry feeling like a man of the
-85-world, a travel er on his own, but underneath it al was the memory of that man's trembling white hurt face, the way held walked up the area steps that day. The restaurant gradual y emptied. The waiter must be thinking it was funny his sitting there that long. He paid his check, and before he wanted to found himself on the train for Trenton.
At Aunt Beatrice's house everything looked and smelt the same. His mother was lying on the bed with the shades down and a handkerchief soaked in eau de cologne on her forehead. She showed him a photograph that he'd sent from Havana, a withered man who looked too smal for. his palm beach suit and panama hat. He'd been working in the consulate as a clerk and had left a ten thousand dol ar life insurance in her favor. While they were talking Henry came in looking worried and sore. The two of them went out in the back yard and smoked cigarettes together. Henry said he was going to take Mother to live with him in Philadelphia, get her away from Aunt Beatrice's nagging and this damn boardinghouse. He wanted Dick to come too and go to the U. of P. Dick said no, he was going to Harvard. Henry asked him how he was going
to get the money. Dick said he'd make out al right, he didn't want any of the damned insurance. Henry said he wasn't going to touch it, that was Mother's, and they went back upstairs feeling about ready to sock each other in the jaw. Dick felt better though, he could tel the fel ows at school that his father had been consul at Havana and had died of a tropical fever.
That summer Dick worked for Mr. Cooper at $25 a
week getting up a prospectus for an art museum he