U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [296]
-273-she went up to him. Once they got on the overheated train he sneaked up the aisle and sat down next to her.
"I was afraid some dick ud recognize me at the station," he whispered. "Wel , what do you think of it?"
"I thought it was terrible . . . they're al so yal er
. . . the only people looked good to me were those boys guardin' the mil s, they looked like white men. . . . And as for you, Webb Cruthers, you ran like a deer."
"Don't talk so loud. . . . Do you think I ought to have waited and gotten arrested like Ben."
"Of course it's none of my business."
"You don't understand revolutionary tactics, Anne.'
Going over on the ferry they were both of them cold and hungry. Webb said he had the key to a room a friend of his had down on Eighth Street and that they'd better go there and warm their feet and make some tea before they went uptown. They had a long sul en walk, neither of them saying anything, from the ferry landing to the house. The room, that smelt of turpentine and was untidy, turned out to be a big studio heated by a gasburner. It was cold as Greenland, so they wrapped themselves in blankets and took off their shoes and stockings and toasted their feet in front of the gas. Daughter took her skirt off under the blanket and hung it up over the heater. "Wel , I declare," she said, "if your friend comes in we sure wil be compro-mised."
"He won't," said Webb, "he's up at Cold Spring for the weekend." Webb was moving around in his bare feet, putting on water to boil and making toast. "You'd better take your trousers off, Webb, I can see the water dripping off them from here." Webb blushed and pul ed them off, draping the blanket around himself like a Roman senator. For a long time they didn't say anything and al they could hear above the distant hum of traffic was the hiss of the gasflame and the intermittent purr of the kettle just beginning to boil. Then Webb suddenly began to talk in
-274-a nervous spluttering way. "So you think I'm yel ow, do you? Wel , you may be right, Anne . . . not that I give a damn . . . I mean, you see, there's times when a fel ow ought to be a coward and times when he ought to do the he-man stuff. Now don't talk for a minute, let me say something. . . . I'm hel ishly attracted to you . . . and it's been yel ow of me not to tel you about it before, see?
I don't believe in love or anything like that, al bourgeois nonsensei but I think when people are attracted to each other I think it's yel ow of them not to . . . you know what I mean."
"No, I doan', Webb," said Daughter after a pause. Webb looked at her in a puzzled way as he brought her a cup of tea and some buttered toast with a piece of cheese on it. They ate in silence for a while; it was so quiet they could hear each other gulping little swal ows of tea. "Now, what in Jesus Christ's name did you mean by that?" Webb suddenly shouted out.
Daughter felt warm and drowsy in her blanket, with the hot tea in her and the dry gasheat licking the soles of her feet. "Wel , what does anybody mean by anything," she mumbled dreamily.
Webb put down his teacup and began to walk up and
down the room trailing the blanket after him. "S --t," he suddenly said, as he stepped on a thumbtack. He stood on one leg looking at the sole of his foot that was