U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [234]
the English actor is speaking Only by the greatest
-127-control I kept muh temper the swine I'm terrible when I'm aroused terrible and the Turkish consul and his friend who were
there incog bel igerent nation Department of Justice Espionage hunting radicals proGermans slipped quietly out and the two of us ran down the stairs and walked fast downtown and crossed to Weehawken on the ferry it was a night of enormous fog through which moved
blunderingly the great blind shapes of steamboat sirens from the lower bay in the bow of the ferry we breathed the rancid river-breeze talking loud in a shouting laugh out of the quiet streets of Weehawken incredible
slanting viaducts lead up into the fog
EVELINE HUTCHINS
She felt half crazy until she got on the train to go back east. Mother and Dad didn't want her to go, but she showed them a telegram she'd wired Eleanor to send her offering her a high salary in her decorating business. She said it was an opening that wouldn't come again and she had to take it, and anyway, as George was coming home for a vacation, they wouldn't be entirely alone. The night she left she lay awake in her lower berth tremendously happy in the roar of the air and the swift pound of the wheels on the rails. But after St. Louis she began to worry: she'd decided she was pregnant. She was terribly frightened. The Grand Central Station
-128-seemed so immense, so ful of blank faces staring at her as she passed fol owing the redcap who carried her bag. She was afraid she'd faint before she got to the taxicab. Al the way downtown the jolting of the cab and the jangling throb of the traffic in her ears made her head swim with nausea. At the Brevoort she had some coffee. Ruddy sunlight was coming in the tal windows, the place had a warm restaurant smel ; she began to feel better. She went to the phone and cal ed Eleanor. A French maid answered that Mademoisel e was stil asleep, but that she would tel her who had cal ed as soon as she woke up. Then she cal ed Freddy who sounded very much
excited and said he'd be there as soon as he could get over from Brooklyn. When she saw Freddy it was just as if she hadn't been'
away at al . He almost had a backer for the Maya bal et and he was mixed up in a new musical show he wanted Eveline to do costumes for. But he was very gloomy about the prospects of war with Germany, said he was a pacifist and would probably have to go to jail, unless there was a revolution. Eveline told him about her talks with José
O'Riely and what a great painter he was, and said she thought maybe she was an anarchist. Freddy looked
worried and asked her if she was sure she hadn't fal en in love with him, and she blushed and smiled and said no, and Freddy said she was a hundred times better look-ing than last year. They went together to see Eleanor whose house in the east thirties was very elegant and expensivelooking. Elea-nor was sitting up in bed answering her mail. Her hair was careful y done and she had on a pink satin dressing gown with lace and ermine on it. They had coffee with her and hot rol s that the Martinique maid had baked herself. Eleanor was delighted to see Eveline and said how wel she looked and was ful of mysteries about her business and everything. She said she was on the edge of becoming
-129-a theatrical producer and spoke about "my financial ad-viser" this and that, until Eveline didn't know what to think; stil it was evident that things were going pretty wel with her. Eveline wanted to ask her what she knew about birthcontrol, but she never got around to it, and perhaps it was just as wel , as, when they got on the sub-ject of the war they quarrel ed at once. That afternoon Freddy took her to tea with him at the house of a middleaged lady who lived on West 8th Street and was an enthusiastic pacifist. The house was ful of people arguing and young men and young women wagging their heads together in important whispers. There she got to talking with a haggardlooking brighteyed young man named Don Stevens.