U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [226]
"So this is the talented one, is it?"
Adelaide and Margaret were pretty scornful about al that when they came home from school. They said the house looked dowdy and nothing had any style to it in Chicago, and wasn't it awful being ministers' daughters, but of course Dad wasn't like an ordinary minister in a white tie, he was a Unitarian and very broad and more like a prominent author or scientist. George was getting to be a sulky little boy with dirty fingernails who never could keep his necktie straight and was always breaking his glasses. Eveline was working on a portrait of him the way he had been when he was little with blue eyes and gam-boge curls. She used to cry over her paints she loved him
-110-so and little poor children she saw on the street. Every-body said she ought to study art. It was Adelaide who first met Sal y Emerson. One Eas-ter they were going to put on Aglavaine and Selizette at the church for charity. Miss Rodgers the French teacher at Dr. Grant's school was going to coach them and said that they oughi to ask Mrs. Philip Payne Emerson, who had seen the original production abroad, about the scenery and costumes; and that besides her interest would be in-valuable to make it go; everything that Sal y Emerson was interested in went. The Hutchins girls were al excited when Dr. Hutchins cal ed up Mrs. Emerson on the tele-phone and asked if Adelaide might come over some morn-ing and ask her advice about some amateur theatricals. They'd already sat down to lunch when Adelaide came back, her eyes shining. She wouldn't say much except that Mrs. Philip Payne Emerson knew Matterlink intimately and that she was coming to tea, but kept declaring, "She's the most stylish woman I ever met." A glavaine and Selizette didn't turn out quite as the Hutchins girls and Miss Rodgers had hoped, though every-body said the scenery and costumes Eveline designed showed real ability, but the week after the performance, Eveline got a message one morning that Mrs. Emerson had asked her to lunch that day and only her. Adelaide and Margaret were so mad they wouldn't speak to her. She felt pretty shaky when she set off into the icybright dusty day. At the last minute Adelaide had lent her a hat and Margaret her fur neckpiece, so that she wouldn't disgrace them they said. By the time she got to the Emer-sons'
house she was chil ed to the bone. She was ushered into a little dressing room with al kinds of brushes and combs and silver jars with powder and even rouge and toiletwaters in purple, green and pink bottles and left to take off her things. When she saw herself in the big mirror she almost screamed she looked so young and pie--111-faced and her dress was so horrid. The only thing that looked any good was the foxfur so she kept that on
when she went into the big upstairs lounge with its deep grey carpet soft underfoot and the sunlight pouring in through French windows onto bright colors and the black polished grandpiano. There were big bowls of freezias on every table and yel ow and pink French and German books of reproductions of paintings. Even the sootbitten blocks of Chicago houses flattened under the wind and the zero sunlight looked faintly exciting and foreign through the big pattern of the yel ow lace curtains. In the rich smel of the freezias there was a little expensive whisp of cigarette-smoke. Sal y Emerson came in smoking a cigarette and said,
"Excuse me, my dear," some wretched woman had had her impaled on the telephone like a butterfly on a pin for the-last halfhour. They ate lunch at a little table the el-derly colored man brought in al set and Eveline was treated just like a grownup woman and a glass of port poured out for her. She only dared take a sip but it was delicious and the lunch was al crispy and creamy with cheese grated on things and she would have eaten a lot if she hadn't felt so shy. Sal y Emerson talked about how clever Eveline's costumes had been for the show and said she must keep up her drawing and talked about how there were as many people with artistic ability in