U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [575]
"I've got to be uptown today. I've got to have lunch with a woman who may give some money to the
miners. It's a horrible waste of time but I can't help it. She won't give a cent unless I listen to her sad story. How about meeting me in front of the Public Library at two thirty?"
"Better say inside. . . . It's about zero out today. I just got up out of bed from the flu." Mary hardly knew Ben he looked so much older. There was grey in the hair spil ing out untidily from under his cap. He stooped and peered into her face querulously through his thick glasses. He didn't shake hands. "Wel , I might as wel tel you. . . you'l know it soon enough if you don't know it already. . . I've been expel ed from the party. . . oppositionist . .
. exceptionalism. . . a lot of nonsense. . . . Wel , that doesn't matter, I'm stil a revolutionist
. . . I'l continue to work outside of the party."
"Oh, Ben, I'm so sorry," was al Mary could find to say.
"You know I don't know anything except what I read in the Daily. It al seems too terrible to me." "Let's go out, that guard's watching us." Outside Ben began to shiver from the cold. His wrists stuck out red from his frayed green overcoat with sleeves much too short for his long arms. "Oh, where can we go?" Mary kept saying. Final y they went down into a basement automat and
sat talking in low voices over a cup of coffee. "I didn't want to go to your place because I didn't want to meet Stevens. . . . Stevens and me have never been friends,
-539-you know that. . . . Now he's in with the comintern crowd. He'l make the centralcommittee when they've cleaned out al the brains."
"But, Ben, people can have differences of opinion and stil . . ."
"A party of yesmen . . . that'l be great. . . . But, Mary, I had to see you . . . I feel so lonely suddenly
. . . you know, cut off from everything. . . . You know if we hadn't been fools we'd have had that baby that time
. . . we'd stil love each other. . . . Mary, you were very lovely to me when I first got out of jail. . . . Say, where's your friend Ada, the musician who had that fancy apart-ment?
"Oh, she's as sil y as ever running around with some fool violinist or other."
"I've always liked music. . . . I ought to have kept you, Mary."
"A lot of water's run under the bridge since then?" said Mary coldly.
"Are you happy with Stevens? I haven't any right to ask."
"But, Ben, what's the use of raking al this old stuff up?"
"You see, often a young guy thinks, I'l sacrifice every-thing, and then when he is cut off al that side of his life, he's not as good as he was, do you see? For the first time in my life I have no contact. I thought maybe you could get me in on reliefwork somehow. The discipline isn't so strict in the relief organizations."
"I don't think they want any disrupting influences in the I.L.D.," said Mary.
"So I'm a disrupter to you too. Al right, in the end the workingclass wil judge between us."
"Let's not talk about it, Ben."
"I'd like you to put it up to Stevens and ask him to sound out the proper quarters . . . that's not much to ask, is it?"
-540-"But Don's not here at present." Before she could catch herself she'd blurted it out. Ben looked her in the eye with a sudden sharp look.
"He hasn't by any chance sailed for Moscow with cer-tain other comrades?"
"He's gone to Pittsburgh on secret partywork and for God's sake shut up about it. You just got hold of me to pump me." She got to her feet, her face flaming. "Wel , goodby, Mr. Compton. . . . You don't happen to be a stoolpigeon as wel as a disrupter, do you?" Ben Compton's face broke in pieces suddenly the way a child's face does when it is just going to bawl. He sat there staring at her, senselessly scraping the spoon round and round in the empty coffeemug. She was halfway up the stairs when on an impulse she went back and stood for a second looking down at his bowed head. "Ben," she said in a gentler voice, "I shouldn't have said that . . . with-out proof. . .