1919 (41 page)

J.W. had sent the chauffeur to buy an extra rug and they wrapped themselves up tight under the little hood in the back of the car. J.W. put his arm around Eveline and tucked her in. “Now we're snug as a bug in a rug,” he said. They giggled cosily together.

The mistral got so strong the poplars were all bent double on the dusty plains before the car started to climb the winding road to Les Baux. Bucking the wind cut down their speed. It was dark when the got into the ruined town.

They were the only people in the hotel. It was cold there and the knots of olivewood burning in the grates didn't give any heat, only puffs of grey smoke when a gust of wind came down the chimney, but they had an excellent dinner and hot spiced wine that made them feel much better. They had to put on their overcoats to go up to their bedroom. Climbing the stairs J.W. kissed her under the ear and whispered, “Eveline, dear little girl, you make me feel like a boy again.”

Long after J.W. had gone to sleep Eveline lay awake beside him listening to the wind rattling the shutters, yelling around the corners of the roof, howling over the desert plain far below. The house smelt of dry dusty coldness. No matter how much she cuddled against him, she couldn't get to feel really warm. The same creaky carrousel of faces, plans, scraps of talk kept going round and round in her head, keeping her from thinking consecutively, keeping her from going to sleep.

Next morning when J.W. found he had to bathe out of a basin he made a face and said, “I hope you don't mind roughing it this way, dear little girl.”

They went over across the Rhone to Nîmes for lunch riding through Arles and Avignon on the way, then they turned back to the Rhone and got into Lyons late at night. They had supper sent up to their room in the hotel and took hot baths and drank hot wine again. When the waiter had taken away the tray Eveline threw herself on J.W.'s lap and began to kiss him. It was a long time before she'd let him go to sleep.

Next morning it was raining hard. They waited around a couple of hours hoping it would stop. J.W. was preoccupied and tried to get Paris on the phone, but without any luck. Eveline sat in the dreary hotel salon reading old copies of
l'Illustration.
She wished she was back in Paris too. Finally they decided to start.

The rain went down to a drizzle but the roads were in bad shape and by dark they hadn't gotten any further than Nevers. J.W. was getting the sniffles and started taking quinine to ward off a cold. He got adjoining rooms with a bath between in the hotel at Nevers, so that night they slept in separate beds. At supper Eveline tried to get him talking about the peace conference, but he said, “Why talk shop, we'll be back there soon enough, why not talk about ourselves and each other.”

When they got near Paris, J.W. began to get nervous. His nose had begun to run. At Fountainebleau they had a fine lunch. J.W. went in from there on the train, leaving the chauffeur to take Eveline home to the rue de Bussy and then deliver his baggage at the Crillon afterward. Eveline felt pretty forlorn riding in all alone through he suburbs of Paris. She was remembering how excited she'd been when they'd all been seeing her off at the Gare de Lyons a few days before and decided she was very unhappy indeed.

Next day she went around to the Crillon at about the usual time in the afternoon. There was nobody in J.W.'s anteroom but Miss Williams, his secretary. She stared Eveline right in the face with such cold hostile eyes that Eveline immediately thought she must know something. She said Mr. Moorehouse had a bad cold and fever and wasn't seeing anybody.

“Well, I'll write him a little note,” said Eveline. “No, I'll call him up later. Don't you think that's the idea, Miss Williams?” Miss Williams nodded her head dryly. “Very well,” she said.

Eveline lingered. “You see, I've just come back from leave . . . I came back a couple of days early because there was so much sightseeing I wanted to do near Paris. Isn't the weather miserable?”

Miss Williams puckered her forehead thoughtfully and took a step towards her. “Very . . . It's most unfortunate, Miss Hutchins, that Mr. Moorehouse should have gotten this cold at this moment. We have a number of important matters pending. And the way things are at the Peace Conference the situation changes every minute so that constant watchfulness is necessary . . . We think it is a very important moment from every point of view . . . Too bad Mr. Moorehouse should get laid up just now. We feel very badly about it, all of us. He feels just terribly about it.”

“I'm so sorry,” said Eveline, “I do hope he'll be better tomorrow.”

“The doctor says he will . . . but it's very unfortunate.”

Eveline stood hesitating. She didn't know what to say. Then she caught sight of a little gold star that Miss Williams wore on a brooch. Eveline wanted to make friends. “Oh, Miss Williams,” said, “I didn't know you lost anyone dear to you.” Miss Williams's face got more chilly and pinched than ever. She seemed to be fumbling for something to say. “Er . . . my brother was in the navy,” she said and walked over to her desk where she started typing very fast. Eveline stood where she was a second watching Miss Williams's fingers twinkling on the keyboard. Then she said weakly, “Oh, I'm so sorry,” and turned and went out.

When Eleanor got back, with a lot of old Italian damask in her trunk, J.W. was up and around again. It seemed to Eveline that Eleanor had something cold and sarcastic in her manner of speaking she'd never had before. When she went to the Crillon to tea Miss Williams would hardly speak to Eveline, but put herself out to be polite to Eleanor. Even Morton, the valet, seemed to make the same difference. J.W. from time to time gave her a furtive squeeze of the hand, but they never got to go out alone any more. Eveline began to think of going home to America, but the thought of going back to Santa Fé or to any kind of life she'd lived before was hideous to her. She wrote J.W. long uneasy notes every day telling him how unhappy she was, but he never mentioned them when she saw him. When she asked him once why he didn't ever write her a few words he said quickly, “I never write personal letters,” and changed the subject.

 

In the end of April Don Stevens turned up in Paris. He was in civilian clothes as he'd resigned from the reconstruction unit. He asked Eveline to put him up as he was broke. Eveline was afraid of the concièrge and of what Eleanor or J.W. might say if they found out, but she felt desperate and bitter and didn't care much what happened anyway; so she said all right, she'd put him up but he wasn't to tell anybody where he was staying. Don teased her about her bourgeois ideas, said those sorts of things wouldn't matter after the revolution, that the first test of strength was coming on the first of May. He made her read
L'Humanité
and took her up to the rue du Croissant to show her the little restaurant where Jaurès had been assassinated.

One day a tall longfaced young man in some kind of a uniform came into the office and turned out to be Freddy Seargeant, who had just got a job in the Near East Relief and was all excited about going out to Constantinople. Eveline was delighted to see him, but after she'd been with him all afternoon she began to feel that the old talk about the theater and decoration and pattern and color and form didn't mean much to her any more. Freddy was in ecstasy about being in Paris, and the little children sailing boats in the ponds in the Tuileries gardens, and the helmets of the Garde Republicaine turned out to salute the King and Queen of the Belgians who happened to be going up the rue de Rivoli when they passed. Eveline felt mean and teased him about not having gone through with it as a C.O.; he explained that a friend had gotten him into the camouflage service before he knew it and that he didn't care about politics anyway, and that before he could do anything the war was over and he was discharged. They tried to get Eleanor to go out to dinner with them, but she had a mysterious engagement to dine with J.W. and some people from the quai d'Orsay, and couldn't come. Eveline went with Freddy to the Opera Comique to see
Pélléas
but she felt fidgety all through it and almost slapped him when she saw he was crying at the end. Having an orange water ice at the Café Néapolitain afterwards, she upset Freddy terribly by saying Debussy was old hat, and he took her home glumly in a taxi. At the last minute she reflected and tried to be nice to him; she promised to go out to Chartres with him the next Sunday.

It was still dark when Freddy turned up Sunday morning. They went out and got some coffee sleepily from an old woman who had a little stand in the doorway opposite. They still had an hour before train time and Freddy suggested they go and get Eleanor up. He'd so looked forward to going to Chartres with both of them, he said; it would be old times all over again, he hated to think how life was drawing them all apart. So they got into a cab and went down to the quai de la Tournelle. The great question was how to get in the house as the street door was locked and there was no concièrge. Freddy rang and rang the bell until finally the Frenchman who lived on the lower floor came out indignant in his bathrobe and let them in.

They banged on Eleanor's door. Freddy kept shouting, “Eleanor Stoddard, you jump right up and come to Chartres with us.” After a while Eleanor's face appeared, cool and white and collected, in the crack of the door above a stunning blue negligée.

“Eleanor, we've got just a half an hour to catch the train for Chartres, the taxi has full steam up outside and if you don't come we'll all regret it to our dying day.”

“But I'm not dressed . . . it's so early.”

“You look charming enough to go just as you are.” Freddy pushed through the door and grabbed her in his arms. “Eleanor, you've got to come . . . I'm off for the Near East tomorrow night.”

Eveline followed them into the salon. Passing the half open door of the bedroom, she glanced in and found herself looking J.W. full in the face. He was sitting bolt upright in the bed, wearing pyjamas with a bright blue stripe. His blue eyes looked straight through her. Some impulse made Eveline pull the door to. Eleanor noticed her gesture. “Thank you, darling,” she said coolly, “it's so untidy in there.”

“Oh, do come, Eleanor . . . after all you can't have forgotten old times the way hardhearted Hannah there seems to have,” said Freddy in a cajoling whine.

“Let me think,” said Eleanor, tapping her chin with the sharp pointed nail of a white forefinger, “I'll tell you what we'll do, darlings, you two go out on the poky old train as you're ready and I'll run out as soon as I'm dressed and call up J.W. at the Crillon and see if he won't drive me out. Then we can all come back together. How's that?”

“That would be lovely, Eleanor dear,” said Eveline in a singsong voice. “Splendid, oh, I knew you'd come . . . well, we've got to be off. If we miss each other we'll be in front of the cathedral at noon . . . Is that all right?”

Eveline went downstairs in a daze. All the way out to Chartres Freddy was accusing her bitterly of being absentminded and not liking her old friends any more.

By the time they got to Chartres it was raining hard. They spent a gloomy day there. The stained glass that had been taken away for safety during the war hadn't been put back yet. The tall twelfth-century saints had a wet, slimy look in the driving rain. Freddy said that the sight of the black virgin surrounded by candles in the crypt was worth all the trouble of the trip for him, but it wasn't for Eveline. Eleanor and J.W. didn't turn up; “Of course not in this rain,” said Freddy. It was a kind of relief to Eveline to find that she'd caught cold and would have to go to bed as soon as she got home. Freddy took her to her door in a taxi but she wouldn't let him come up for fear he'd find Don there.

Don was there, and was very sympathetic about her cold and tucked her in bed and made her a hot lemonade with cognac in it. He had his pockets full of money, as he'd just sold some articles, and had gotten a job to go to Vienna for the
Daily Herald
of London. He was pulling out as soon after May 1 as he could . . .“unless something breaks here,” he said impressively. He went away that evening to a hotel, thanking her for putting him up like a good comrade even if she didn't love him any more. The place felt empty after he'd gone. She almost wished she'd made him stay. She lay in bed feeling feverishly miserable, and finally went to sleep feeling sick and scared and lonely.

 

The morning of the first of May, Paul Johnson came around before she was up. He was in civilian clothes and looked young and slender and nice and lighthaired and handsome. He said Don Stevens had gotten him all wrought up about what was going to happen what with the general strike and all that; he'd come to stick around if Eveline didn't mind. “I thought I'd better not be in uniform, so I borrowed this suit from a feller,” he said. “I think I'll strike too,” said Eveline. “I'm so sick of that Red Cross office I could scream.”

“Gee, that ud be wonderful, Eveline. We can walk around and see the excitement. . . . It'll be all right if you're with me . . . I mean I'll be easier in my mind if I know where you are if there's trouble . . . You're awful reckless, Eveline.”

“My, you look handsome in that suit, Paul . . . I never saw you in civilian clothes before.”

Paul blushed and put his hands uneasily into his pockets. “Lord, I'll be glad to get into civvies for keeps,” he said seriously. “Even through it'll mean me goin' back to work . . . I can't get a darn thing out of these Sorbonne lectures . . . everybody's too darn restless, I guess . . . and I'm sick of hearing what bums the boche are, that's all the frog profs seem to be able to talk about.”

“Well, go out and read a book and I'll get up. . . . Did you notice if the old woman across the way had coffee out?”

“Yare, she did,” called Paul from the salon to which he'd retreated when Eveline stuck her toes out from under the bedclothes. “Shall I go out and bring some in?”