U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [293]
When she got in the apartment, Ada, who was reading in the livingroom, scolded her a little for being so late, but she pleaded that she was too tired and sleepy to be scolded.
"What do you think of Edwin Vinal, Ada?"
"Why, my dear, I think he's a splendid young fel ow, a little restless maybe, but he'l settle down. . . . Why?"
"Oh, I dunno," said Daughter, yawning, "Good night, Ada darlin'." he took a hot bath and put a lot of perfume on and went to bed, but she couldn't go to sleep. Her legs ached from the greasy pavements and she could feel the wal s of the tenements sweating lust and filth and the smel of crowded bodies closing in on her, in spite of the perfume she stil had the rank garbagy smel in her nose, and the dazzle of street lights and faces pricked her eyes. When she went to sleep she dreamed she had rouged her lips and was walking up and down, up and down with a gun in her handbag; Joe Washburn walked by and she kept catching at his arm to try to make him stop but he kept walking by without looking at her and so did Dad and they wouldn't look when a big Jew with a beard kept getting closer to her and he smelt horrid of the East Side and garlic and waterclosets and she tried to get the gun out of her bag to shoot him and he had his arms around her and was pul -ing her face close to his. She couldn't get the gun out of the handbag and behind the roaring clatter of the subway in her ears was Edwin Vinal's voice saying, "You're a
-267-Christian, aren't you? You're entirely wrong . . . a Chris-tian, aren't you? Have you ever thought that Christ would have been just like them if he hadn't been lucky enough to have been born of decent people . . . a Christian, aren't you. . . ." Ada, standing over her in a nightgown, woke her up,
"What can be the matter, child?" "I was having a night-mare . . . isn't that sil y?" said Daughter and sat bolt-upright in bed. "Did I yel bloody murder?" "I bet you children were out eating Welsh Rabbit, that's why you were so late," said Ada, and went back to her room laughing.
That spring Daughter coached a girls' basketbal team at a Y.W.C.A. in the Bronx, and got engaged to Edwin Vinal. She told him she didn't want to marry anybody for a couple of years yet, and he said he didn't care about car-nal marriage but that the important thing was for them to plan a life of service together. Sunday evenings, when the weather got good, they would go and cook a steak together in Palisades Park and sit there looking through the trees at the lights coming on in the great toothed rockrim of the city and talk about what was good and evil and what real love was. Coming back they'd stand hand in hand in the bow of the ferry boat among the crowd of boyscouts and hikers and picnickers and look at the great sweep of lighted buildings fading away into the ruddy haze down the North River and talk about al the terrible conditions in the city. Edwin would kiss her on the forehead when he said Goodnight and she'd go up in the elevator feeling that the kiss was a dedication.
At the end of June she went home to spend three months on the ranch, but she was very unhappy there that summer. Somehow she couldn't get around to tel ing Dad about her engagement. When Joe Washburn came out to spend a
week the boys made her furious teasing her about him and tel ing her that he was engaged to a girl in Oklahoma City,
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and she got so mad she wouldn't speak to them and was barely civil to Joe. She insisted on riding a mean little pinto that bucked and threw her once or twice. She drove the car right through a gate one night and busted both lamps to smithereens. When Dad scolded her about her recklessness she'd tel him he oughtn't to care because she was going back east to earn her own living and he'd be rid of her. Joe Washburn treated her with the same grave kindness as always, and sometimes when she was acting crazy she'd catch a funny understanding kidding gleam in his keen eyes that would make her feel suddenly al weak and sil y inside. The night before he left the boys cornered