U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [236]
Relief. Freddy announced a new decision every day, but final y said he wouldn't decide what to do til he was cal ed for the draft. Adelaide's husband had a job in Washington in the new Shipping Board. Dad was writing her every few days that Wilson was the greatest president since
-132-Lincoln. Some days she felt that she must be losing her mind, people around her seemed so cracked. When she began talking about it to Eleanor, Eleanor smiled in a superior way and said she'd already asked to have her as assistant in her office in Paris.
"Your office in Paris, darling?" Eleanor nodded. "I don't care what kind of work it is, I'l do it gladly," said Eveline. Eleanor sailed one Saturday on the Rochambeau, and two weeks later Eveline herself sailed on the Touraine. It was a hazy summer evening. She'd been almost rude cutting short the goodbys of Margaret and Adelaide and Margaret's husband Bil who was a Major by this time and teaching sharpshooting out on Long Island, she was so anxious to cut loose from this America she felt was just too tiresome. The boat was two hours late in sailing. The band kept playing Tipperary and Auprès de ma Blonde and La Madelon. There were a great many young men around in various uniforms, al rather drunk. The little French sailors with their red pompons and baby faces yel ed back and forth in rol ing twangy bordelais. Eveline walked up and down the deck until her feet were tired. It seemed as if the boat would never sail. And Freddy, who had turned up late, kept waving to her from the dock and she was afraid Don Stevens would come and she was sick of al her life in these last years.
She went down to her cabin and started reading Bar-busse's Le Feu that Don had sent her. She fel asleep, and when the greyhaired skinny woman who was her cabinmate woke her up bustling around, the first thing she felt was the trembling pound of the ship's engines.
"Wel , you missed dinner," said the greyhaired woman. Her name was Miss Eliza Felton and she was an
il ustrator of children's books. She was going to France to drive a truck. At first Eveline thought she was just too tiresome, but as the warm quiet days of the crossing wore on she got to like her. Miss Felton had a great crush on
-133-Eveline and was a nuisance, but she was fond of wine and knew a great deal about France, where she'd lived for many years. In fact she'd studied painting at Fontainebleau in the old days of the impressionists. She was bitter against the Huns on account of Rheims and Louvain and the poor little Belgian babies with their hands cut off, but she didn't have much use for any male government, cal ed Wilson a coward, Clemenceau a bul y and Lloyd George a sneak. She laughed at the precautions against submarine attack and said she knew the French line was perfectly safe because al the German spies travel ed by it. When they landed in Bordeaux she was a great help to Eveline. They stayed over a day to see the town instead of going up to Paris with al the other Red Cross people and Re-lief workers. The rows of grey eighteenth century houses were too lovely in the endless rosy summer twilight, and the flowers for sale and the polite people in the shops and the delicate patterns of the ironwork, and the fine dinner they had