John Passos - 1919

She couldn’t sleep that night but lay awake in her bunk listening to the distant rhythm of the engines and the creaking of the ship and the seethe of churned seas that came in through the open porthole. She could still feel the soft brush of his cheek and the sudden tightening muscles of his arms around her shoulder. She knew now she was terribly in love with Dirk and wished he’d propose to her. But next morning she was really flattered when Judge Ganch, a tall whitehaired lawyer from Salt Lake City with a young red face and a breezy manner sat on the end of her deckchair and talked to her by the hour about his early life in the west and his unhappy marriage and politics and Teddy Roosevelt and the progressive party. She’d rather have been with Dirk, but it made her feel pretty and excited to see Dirk walk past with his nose out of joint while she listened to Judge Ganch’s stories. She wished the trip would never end.

Back in Chicago she saw a lot of Dirk McArthur. He always kissed her when he brought her home and he held her very tight when he danced with her and sometimes used to hold her hand and tell her what a nice girl she was, but he never would say anything about getting married. Once she met Sally Emerson at a dance she’d gone to with Dirk she had to admit that she wasn’t doing any painting, and Sally Emerson looked so disappointed that Eveline felt quite ashamed and started talking fast about Gordon Craig and an exhibition of Matisse she’d seen in Paris. Sally Emerson was just leaving. A young man was waiting to dance with Eveline. Sally Emerson took her hand and said: “But, Eveline, you mustn’t forget that we have high hopes of you.” And while she was dancing everything that Sally Emerson stood for and how wonderful she used to think her came sweeping through Eveline’s head; but driving home with Dirk all these thoughts were dazzled out of her in the glare of his headlights, the strong leap forward of the car on the pickup, the purr of the motor, his arm around her, the great force pressing her against him when they went around curves.

It was a hot night, he drove west through endless identical suburbs out into the prairie. Eveline knew that they ought to go home, everybody was back from Europe now and they’d notice how late she got in, but she didn’t say anything. It was only when he stopped the car that she noticed that he was very drunk. He took out a flask and offered her a drink. She shook her head. They’d stopped in front of a white barn. In the reflection of the headlights his shirtfront and his face and his mussed up hair all looked chalky white. “You don’t love me, Dirk,” she said. “Sure I do, love you better’n anybody… except myself… that’s a trouble with me… love myself best.” She rubbed her knuckles through his hair, “You’re pretty silly, do you know it?” “Ouch,” he said. It was starting to rain so he turned the car around and made for Chicago.

Eveline never knew exactly where it was they smashed up, only that she was crawling out from under the seat and that her dress was ruined and she wasn’t hurt only the rain was streaking the headlights of the cars that stopped along the road on either side of them. Dirk was sitting on the mudguard of the first car that had stopped. “Are you all right, Eveline?” he called shakily. “It’s only my dress,” she said. He was bleeding from a gash in his forehead and he was holding his arm against his body as if he were cold. Then it was all nightmare, telephoning Dad, getting Dirk to the hospital, dodging the reporters, calling up Mr. McArthur to get him to set to work to keep it out of the morning papers. It was eight o’clock of a hot spring morning when she got home wearing a raincoat one of the nurses had lent her over her ruined evening dress.

The family was all at breakfast. Nobody said anything. Then Dad got to his feet and came forward, with his napkin in his hand, “My dear, I shan’t speak of your behavior now, to say nothing of the pain and mortification you have caused all of us…. I can only say it would have served you right if you had sustained serious injuries in such an escapade. Go up and rest if you can.” Eveline went upstairs, doublelocked her door and threw herself sobbing on the bed.

As soon as they could, her mother and sisters hurried her off to Santa Fé. It was hot and dusty there and she hated it. She couldn’t stop thinking of Dirk. She began telling people she believed in free love and lay for hours on the bed in her room reading Swinburne and Laurence Hope and dreaming Dirk was there. She got so she could almost feel the insistent fingers of his hands spread over the small of her back and his mouth like that night in the crowsnest on the Kroonland. It was a kind of relief when she came down with scarlet fever and had to lie in bed for eight weeks in the isolation wing of the hospital. Everybody sent her flowers and she read a lot of books on design and interior decorating and did watercolors.

When she went up to Chicago for Adelaide’s wedding in October she had a pale mature look. Eleanor cried out when she kissed her, “My dear, you’ve grown stunningly handsome.” She had one thing on her mind, to see Dirk and get it over with. It was several days before they could arrange to meet because Dad had called him up and forbidden him to come to the house and they had a scene over the telephone. They met in the lobby of The Drake. She could see at a glance that Dirk had been hitting it up since she’d seem him. He was a little drunk now. He had a sheepish boyish look that made her feel like crying. “Well, how’s Barney Oldfield?” she said, laughing. “Rotten, gee you look stunning, Eveline…. Say The Follies of 1914 are in town, a big New York hit…. I got tickets, do you mind if we go?” “No, it’ll be bully.”

He ordered everything most expensive he could find on the bill of fare, and champagne. She had something in her throat that kept her from swallowing. She had to say it before he got too drunk.

“Dirk… this doesn’t sound very ladylike, but like this it’s too tiresome…. The way you acted last spring I thought you liked me… well, how much do you? I want to know?”

Dirk put his glass down and turned red. Then he took a deep breath and said, “Eveline, you know I’m not the marrying kind… love ’em and leave ’em’s more like it. I can’t help how I am.”

“I don’t mean I want you to marry me,” her voice rose shrilly out of control. She began to giggle. “I don’t mean I want to be made an honest woman. Anyway, there’s no reason.” She was able to laugh more naturally. “Let’s forget it…. I won’t tease you anymore.”

“You’re a good sport, Eveline. I always knew you were a good sport.”

Going down the aisle of the theatre he was so drunk she had to put her hand under his elbow to keep him from staggering. The music and cheap colors and jiggling bodies of the chorus girls all seemed to hit on some raw place inside her, so that everything she saw hurt like sweet on a jumpy tooth. Dirk kept talking all through, “See that girl… second from the left on the back row, that’s Queenie Frothingham…. You understand, Eveline. But I’ll tell you one thing, I never made a girl take the first misstep…. I haven’t got that to reproach myself with.” The usher came down and asked him to quit talking so loud, he was spoiling others’ enjoyment of the show. He gave her a dollar and said he’d be quiet as a mouse, as a little dumb mouse and suddenly went to sleep.

At the end of the first act Eveline said she had to go home, said the doctor had told her she’d have to have plenty of sleep. He insisted on taking her to her door in a taxicab and then went off to go back to the show and to Queenie. Eveline lay awake all night staring at her window. Next morning she was the first one down to breakfast. When Dad came down she told him she’d have to go to work and asked him to lend her a thousand dollars to start an interior decorating business.