John Passos - 1919

The next morning Eleanor said she thought she was going to become a Catholic. On their way to the office she made Eveline stop into Nôtre Dâme with her to hear mass and they both lit candles for Maurice’s safety at the front before what Eveline thought was a just too tiresomelooking virgin near the main door. But it was impressive all the same, the priests moaning and the lights and the smell of chilled incense. She certainly hoped poor Maurice wouldn’t be killed.

For dinner that night Eveline invited Jerry Burnham, Miss Felton who was back from Amiens and Major Appleton who was in Paris doing something about tanks. It was a fine dinner, duck roasted with oranges, although Jerry, who was sore about how much Eveline talked to Lemonnier, had to get drunk and use a lot of bad language and tell about the retreat at Caporetto and say that the Allies were in a bad way. Major Appleton said he oughtn’t to say it even if it was true and got quite red in the face. Eleanor was pretty indignant and said he ought to be arrested for making such a statement, and after everybody had left she and Eveline had quite a quarrel. “What will that young Frenchman be thinking of us? You’re a darling, Eveline dear, but you have the vulgarest friends. I don’t know where you pick them up, and that Felton woman drank four cocktails, a quart of beaujolais and three cognacs, I kept tabs on her myself;” Eveline started to laugh and they both got to laughing. But Eleanor said that their life was getting much too bohemian and that it wasn’t right with the war on and things going so dreadfully in Italy and Russia and the poor boys in the trenches and all that.

That winter Paris gradually filled up with Americans in uniform, and staffcars, and groceries from the Red Cross supply store; and Major Moorehouse who, it turned out, was an old friend of Eleanor’s, arrived straight from Washington to take charge of the Red Cross publicity. Everybody was talking about him before he came because he’d been one of the best known publicity experts in New York before the war. There was no one who hadn’t heard of J. Ward Moorehouse. There was a lot of scurry around the office when word came around that he’d actually landed in Brest and everybody was nervous worrying where there axe was going to fall.

The morning he arrived the first thing Eveline noticed was that Eleanor had had her hair curled. Then just before noon the whole publicity department was asked into Major Wood’s office to meet Major Moorehouse. He was a biggish man with blue eyes and hair so light it was almost white. His uniform fitted well and his Sam Browne belt and his puttees shone like glass. Eveline thought at once that there was something sincere and appealing about him, like about her father, that she liked. He looked young too, in spite of the thick jowl, and he had a slight southern accent when he talked. He made a little speech about the importance of the work the Red Cross was doing to keep up the morale of civilians and combatants, and that their publicity ought to have two aims, to stimulate giving among the folks back home and to keep people informed of the progress of the work. The trouble now was that people didn’t know enough about what a valuable effort the Red Cross workers were making and were too prone to listen to the criticisms of proGermans working under the mask of pacifism and knockers and slackers always ready to carp and criticize; and that the American people and the warwracked populations of the Allied countries must be made to know the splendid sacrifice the Red Cross workers were making, as splendid in its way as the sacrifice of the dear boys in the trenches.

“Even at this moment, my friends, we are under fire, ready to make the supreme sacrifice that civilization shall not perish from the earth.” Major Wood leaned back in his swivelchair and it let out a squeak that made everybody look up with a start and several people looked out of the window as if they expected to see a shell from big Bertha hurtling right in on them. “You see,” said Major Moorehouse eagerly, his blue eyes snapping, “that is what we must make people feel… the catch in the throat, the wrench to steady the nerves, the determination to carry on.”

Eveline felt stirred in spite of herself. She looked a quick sideways look at Eleanor, who looked cool and lilylike as she had when she was listening to Maurice tell about the young Christ of the gasattack. Can’t ever tell what she’s thinking, though, said Eveline to herself.

That afternoon when J.W., as Eleanor called Major Moorehouse, came down to have a cup of tea with them, Eveline felt that she was being narrowly watched and minded her P’s and Q’s as well as she could; it is the financial adviser; she was giggling about inside. He looked a little haggard and didn’t say much, and winced noticeably when they talked about airraids moonlight nights, and how President Poincaré went around in person every morning to visit the ruins and condole with the survivors. He didn’t stay long and went off someplace in a staffcar to confer with some high official or other. Eveline thought he looked nervous and uneasy and would rather have stayed with them. Eleanor went out on the landing of the stairs with him and was gone some time. Eveline watched her narrowly when she came back into the room but her face had its accustomed look of finely chiselled calm. It was on the tip of Eveline’s tongue to ask her if Major Moorehouse was her… her… but she couldn’t think of a way of putting it.

Eleanor didn’t say anything for some time; then she shook her head and said, “Poor Gertrude.” “Who’s that?” Eleanor’s voice was just a shade tinny, “J.W.’s wife… she’s in a sanitarium with a nervous breakdown… the strain, darling, this terrible war.”

Major Moorehouse went down to Italy to reorganize the publicity of the American Red Cross there, and a couple of weeks later Eleanor got orders from Washington to join the Rome office. That left Eveline alone with Yvonne in the apartment.

It was a chilly, lonely winter and working with all these relievers was just too tiresome, but Eveline managed to hold her job and to have some fun sometimes in the evening with Raoul, who would come around and take her out to some petite boite or other that he’d always say was very boring. He took her to the Noctambules where you could sometimes get drinks after the legal hour; or up to a little restaurant on the Butte of Montmartre where one cold moonlit January night they stood on the porch of the Sacré Coeur and saw the Zeppelins come over. Paris stretched out cold and dead as if all the tiers of roofs and domes were carved out of snow and the shrapnel sparkled frostily overhead and the searchlights were antennae of great insects moving through the milky darkness. At intervals came red snorting flares of the incendiary bombs. Just once they caught sight of two tiny silver cigars overhead. They looked higher than the moon.

Eveline found that Raoul’s arm that had been around her waist had slipped up and that he had his hand over her breast. “C’est fou tu sais… c’est fou tu sais,” he was saying in a singsong voice, he seemed to have forgotten his English. After that they talked French and Eveline thought she loved him terribly much. After the breloque had gone through the streets they walked home across dark silent Paris. At one corner a gendarme came up and asked Lemonnier for his papers. He read them through painfully in the faint blue glow of a corner light, while Eveline stood by breathless, feeling her heart pound. The gendarme handed back the papers, saluted, apologized profusely and walked off. Neither of them said anything about it, but Raoul seemed to be taking it for granted he was going to sleep with her at her apartment. They walked home briskly through the cold black streets, their footsteps clacking sharply on the cobbles. She hung on his arm; there was something tight and electric and uncomfortable in the way their hips occasionally touched as they walked.