John Passos - 1919

Her house was one of the few in Paris that didn’t have a concièrge. She unlocked the door and they climbed shivering together up the cold stone stairs. She whispered to him to be quiet, because of her maid. “It is very boring,” he whispered; his lips brushed warm against her ear. “I hope you won’t think it’s too boring.”

While he was combing his hair at her dressingtable, taking little connoisseur’s sniffs at her bottles of perfume, preening himself in the mirror without haste and embarrassment, he said, “Charmante Eveline, would you like to be my wife? It could be arranged, don’t you know. My uncle who is the head of the family is very fond of Americans. Of course it would be very boring, the contract and all that.” “Oh, no, that wouldn’t be my idea at all,” she whispered giggling and shivering from the bed. Raoul gave her a furious offended look, said good night very formally and left.

When the trees began to bud outside her window and the flower-women in the markets began to sell narcissuses and daffodils, the feeling that it was spring made her long months alone in Paris seem drearier than ever. Jerry Burnham had gone to Palestine; Raoul Lemonnier had never come to see her again; whenever he was in town Major Appleton came around and paid her rather elaborate attentions, but he was just too tiresome. Eliza Felton was driving an ambulance attached to a U.S. basehospital on the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne and would come around those Sundays when she was off duty and make Eveline’s life miserable with her complaints that Eveline was not the free pagan soul she’d thought at first. She said that nobody loved her and that she was praying for the Bertha with her number on it that would end it all. It got so bad that Eveline wasn’t able to stay in the house at all on Sunday and often spent the afternoon in her office reading Anatole France.

Then Yvonne’s crotchets were pretty trying; she tried to run Eveline’s life with her tightlipped comments. When Don Stevens turned up for a leave, looking more haggard than ever in the grey uniform of the Quaker outfit, it was a godsend, and Eveline decided maybe she’d been in love with him after all. She told Yvonne he was her cousin and that they’d been brought up like brother and sister and put him up in Eleanor’s room.

Don was in a tremendous state of excitement about the success of the Bolsheviki in Russia, ate enormously, drank all the wine in the house, and was full of mysterious references to underground forces he was in touch with. He said all the armies were mutinous and that what had happened at Caporetto would happen on the whole front, the German soldiers were ready for revolt too and that would be the beginning of the world revolution. He told her about the mutinies at Verdun, about long trainloads of soldiers he’d seen going up to an attack crying, “A bas la guerre,” and shooting at the gendarmes as they went.

“Eveline, we’re on the edge of gigantic events…. The working classes of the world won’t stand for this nonsense any longer… damn it, the war will have been almost worth while if we get a new socialist civilization out of it.” He leaned across the table and kissed her right under the thin nose of Yvonne who was bringing in pancakes with burning brandy on them. He wagged his finger at Yvonne and almost got a smile out of her by the way he said, “Après la guerre finie.”

That spring and summer things certainly did seem shaky, almost as if Don were right. At night she could hear the gigantic surf of the guns in continuous barrage on the crumbling front. The office was full of crazy rumors: the British Fifth army had turned and run, the Canadians had mutinied and seized Amiens, spies were disabling all the American planes, the Austrians were breaking through in Italy again. Three times the Red Cross office had orders to pack up their records and be ready to move out of Paris. In the face of all that it was hard for the publicity department to keep up the proper cheerful attitude in their releases, but Paris kept on filling up reassuringly with American faces, American M.P.s, Sam Browne belts and canned goods; and in July Major Moorehouse, who had just arrived back from the States, came into the office with a firsthand account of Château Thierry and announced that the war would be over in a year.

The same evening he asked Eveline to dine with him at the Café de la Paix and to do it she broke a date she had with Jerry Burnham who had gotten back from the Near East and the Balkans and was full of stories of cholera and calamity. J.W. ordered a magnificent dinner, he said Eleanor had told him to see if Eveline didn’t need a little cheering up. He talked about the gigantic era of expansion that would dawn for America after the war. America the good samaritan healing the wounds of wartorn Europe. It was as if he was rehearsing a speech, when he got to the end of it he looked at Eveline with a funny deprecatory smile and said, “And the joke of it is, it’s true,” and Eveline laughed and suddenly found that she liked J.W. very much indeed.

She had on a new dress she’d bought at Paquin’s with some money her father had sent her for her birthday, and it was a relief after the uniform. They were through eating before they had really gotten started talking. Eveline wanted to try to get him to talk about himself. After dinner they went to Maxim’s, but that was full up with brawling drunken aviators, and the rumpus seemed to scare J.W. so that Eveline suggested to him that they go down to her place and have a glass of wine. When they got to the quai de la Tournelle, just as they were stepping out of J.W.’s staffcar she caught sight of Don Stevens walking down the street. For a second she hoped he wouldn’t see them, but he turned around and ran back. He had a young fellow with him in a private’s uniform whose name was Johnson. They all went up and sat around glumly in her parlor. She and J.W. couldn’t seem to talk about anything but Eleanor, and the other two sat glumly in their chairs looking embarrassed until J.W. got to his feet, went down to his staffcar, and left.

“God damn it, if there’s anything I hate it’s a Cross Red Major,” broke out Don as soon as the door closed behind J.W.

Eveline was angry. “Well, it’s no worse than being a fake Quaker,” she said icily.

“You must forgive our intruding, Miss Hutchins,” mumbled the doughboy who had a blonde Swedish look.

“We wanted to get you to come out to a café or something, but it’s too late now,” started Don crossly. The doughboy interrupted him, “I hope, Miss Hutchins, you don’t mind our intruding, I mean my intruding… I begged Don to bring me along. He’s talked so much about you and it’s a year since I’ve seen a real nice American girl.”

He had a deferential way of talking and a whiny Minnesota accent that Eveline hated at first, but by the time he excused himself and left she liked him and stood up for him when Don said, “He’s an awful sweet guy but there’s something sappy about him. I was afraid you wouldn’t like him.” She wouldn’t let Don spend the night with her as he’d expected and he went away looking very sullen.

In October Eleanor came back with a lot of antique Italian painted panels she’d picked up for a song. In the Red Cross office there were more people than were needed for the work and she and Eleanor and J.W. took a tour of the Red Cross canteens in the east of France in a staffcar. It was a wonderful trip, the weather was good for a wonder, almost like American October, they had lunch and dinner at regimental headquarters and army corps headquarters and divisional headquarters everywhere, and all the young officers were so nice to them, and J.W. was in such a good humor and kept them laughing all the time, and they saw field batteries firing and an airplane duel and sausage balloons and heard the shriek of an arrivé. It was during that trip that Eveline began to notice for the first time something cool in Eleanor’s manner that hurt her; they’d been such good friends the first week Eleanor had gotten back from Rome.