U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [274]
"Even at this moment, my friends, we are under fire,ready to make the supreme sacrifice that civilization shal
not perish from the earth."
-221-ready to make the supreme sacrifice that civilization shal not perish from the earth." Major Wood leaned back in his swivelchair and it let out a squeak that made everybody look up with a start and several people looked out of the window as if they expected to see a shel from big Bertha hurtling right in on them. "You see," said Major Moore-house eagerly, his blue eyes snapping, "that is what we must make people feel . .
. the catch in the throat, the wrench to steady the nerves, the determination to carry on." Eveline felt stirred in spite of herself. She looked a quick sideways look at Eleanor, who looked cool and lily-like as she had when she was listening to Maurice tel about the young Christ of the gasattack. Can't ever tel what she's thinking, though, said Eveline to herself. That afternoon when J. W., as Eleanor cal ed Major
Moorehouse, came down to have a cup of tea with them, Eveline felt that she was being narrowly watched and minded her P's and Q's as wel as she could; it is the financial adviser; she was giggling about it inside. He looked a little haggard and didn't say much, and winced noticeably when they talked about airraids moonlight nights, and how President Poincaré went around in per-son every morning to visit the ruins and condole with the survivors. He didn't stay long and went off someplace in a staffcar to confer with some high official or other. Eveline thought he looked nervous and uneasy and would rather have stayed with them. Eleanor went out on the landing of the stairs with him and was gone some time. Eveline watched her narrowly when she came back into the room but her face had its accustomed look of finely chisel ed calm. It was on the tip of Eveline's tongue to ask her if Major Moorehouse was her . . . her . . . but she couldn't think of a way of putting it.
Eleanor didn't say anything for some time; then she shook her head and said, "Poor Gertrude.""Who's that?"
-222-Eleanor's voice was just a shade tinny, "J. W.'s wife . . . she's in a sanitarium with a nervous breakdown . . . the strain, darling, this terrible war." Major Moorehouse went down to Italy to reorganize
the publicity of the American Red Cross there, and a couple of weeks later Eleanor got orders from Washing-ton to join the Rome office. That left Eveline alone with Yvonne in the apartment.
It was a chil y, lonely winter and working with al these relievers was just too tiresome, but Eveline managed to hold her job and to have some fun sometimes in the eve-ning with Raoul, who would come around and take her out to some petite boite or other that he'd always say was very boring. He took her to the Noctambules where you could sometimes get drinks after the legal hour; or up to a little restaurant on the Butte of Montmartre where one cold moonlit January night they stood on the porch of the Sacré Coeur and saw the Zeppelins come over. Paris stretched out cold and dead as if al the tiers of roofs and domes were carved out of snow and the shrapnel
sparkled frostily overhead and the searchlights were an-tennae of great insects moving through the milky dark-ness. At intervals came red snorting flares of the incen-diary bombs. Just once they caught sight of two tiny silver cigars overhead. They looked higher than the moon. Eveline found that Raoul's arm that had been around her waist had slipped up and that he had his hand over her breast. "C'est fou tu sais . . . c'est fou tu sais," he was saying in a singsong voice, he seemed to have forgot-ten his English. After that they talked French and Eveline thought she loved him terribly much. After the breloque had gone through the streets they walked home across dark silent Paris. At one corner a gendarme came up and asked Lemonnier for his papers. He read them through