John Passos - 1919

“Why too late?”

Eveline sat looking at him with her lips a little apart, her cheeks blazing. “Maybe it’s taken the war to teach us how to live,” he said. “We’ve been too much interested in money and material things, it’s taken the French to show us how to live. Where back home in the States could you find a beautiful atmosphere like this?” J.W. waved his arm to include in a sweeping gesture the sea, the tables crowded with women dressed in bright colors and men in their best uniforms, the bright glint of blue light on glasses and cutlery. The waiter mistook his gesture and slyly substituted a full bottle for the empty bottle in the champagnepail.

“By golly, Eveline, you’ve been so charming, you’ve made me forget the time and going back to Paris and everything. This is the sort of thing I’ve missed all my life until I met you and Eleanor… of course with Eleanor it’s been all on the higher plane… Let’s take a drink to Eleanor… beautiful talented Eleanor… Eveline, women have been a great inspiration to me all my life, lovely charming delicate women. Many of my best ideas have come from women, not directly, you understand, but through the mental stimulation… People don’t understand me, Eveline, some of the newspaper boys particularly have written some very hard things about me… why, I’m an old newspaper man myself… Eveline, permit me to say that you look so charming and understanding… this illness of my wife… poor Gertrude… I’m afraid she’ll never be herself again…. You see, it’s put me in a most disagreeable position, if some member of her family is appointed guardian it might mean that the considerable sum of money invested by the Staple family in my business, would be withdrawn… that would leave me with very grave embarrassments… then I’ve had to abandon my Mexican affairs… what the oil business down there needs is just somebody to explain its point of view to the Mexican public, to the American public, my aim was to get the big interests to take the public in…” Eveline filled his glass. Her head was swimming a little, but she felt wonderful. She wanted to lean over and kiss him, to make him feel how she admired and understood him. He went on talking with the glass in his hand, almost as if he were speaking to a whole rotary club. “… to take the public into its confidence… I had to throw overboard all that… when I felt the government of my country needed me. My position is very difficult in Paris, Eveline…. They’ve got the President surrounded by a Chinese wall… I fear that his advisers don’t realize the importance of publicity, of taking the public into their confidence at every move. This is a great historical moment, America stands at the parting of the ways… without us the war would have ended in a German victory or a negotiated peace… And now our very allies are trying to monopolize the natural resources of the world behind our backs…. You remember what Rasmussen said… well, he’s quite right. The President is surrounded by sinister intrigues. Why, even the presidents of the great corporations don’t realize that now is the time to spend money, to spend it like water. I could have the French press in my pocket in a week with the proper resources, even in England I have a hunch that something could be done if it was handled the right way. And then the people are fully behind us everywhere, they are sick of autocracy and secret diplomacy, they are ready to greet American democracy, American democratic business methods with open arms. The only way for you to secure the benefits of the peace to the world is for us to dominate it. Mr. Wilson doesn’t realize the power of a modern campaign of scientific publicity… Why, for three weeks I’ve been trying to get an interview with him, and back in Washington I was calling him Woodrow, almost… It was at his personal request that I dropped everything in New York at great personal sacrifice, brought over a large part of my office staff… and now… but Eveline, my dear girl, I’m afraid I’m talking you to death.”

Eveline leaned over and patted his hand that lay on the edge of the table. Her eyes were shining, “Oh, it’s wonderful,” she said. “Isn’t this fun, J.W.?”

“Ah, Eveline, I wish I was free to fall in love with you.”

“Aren’t we pretty free, J.W.? and it’s wartime… I think all the conventional rubbish about marriage and everything is just too tiresome, don’t you?”

“Ah, Eveline, if I was only free… let’s go out and take a little air… Why, we’ve been here all afternoon.”

Eveline insisted on paying for the lunch although it took all the money she had on her. They both staggered a little as they left the restaurant, Eveline felt giddy and leaned against J.W.’s shoulder. He kept patting her hand and saying, “There, there, we’ll take a little ride.”

Towards sunset they were riding around the end of the bay into Cannes. “Well, well, we must pull ourselves together,” said J.W. “You don’t want to stay down here all alone, do you, little girl? Suppose you drive back to Paris with me, we’ll stop off in some picturesque villages, make a trip of it. Too likely to meet people we know around here. I’ll send back the staff car and hire a French car… take no chances.” “All right, I think Nice is just too tiresome anyway.”

J.W. called to the chauffeur to go back to Nice. He dropped her at her hotel and saying he’d call for her at ninethirty in the morning and that she must get a good night’s sleep. She felt terribly let down after he’d gone; had a cup of tea that was cold and tasted of soap sent to her room; and went to bed. She lay in bed thinking that she was acting like a nasty little bitch; but it was too late to go back now. She couldn’t sleep, her whole body felt jangled and twitching. This way she’d look like a wreck tomorrow, she got up and rustled around in her bag until she found some aspirin. She took a lot of the aspirin and got back in bed again and lay perfectly still but she kept seeing faces that would grow clear out of the blur of a halfdream and then fade again, and her ears buzzed with long cadences of senseless talk. Sometimes it was Jerry Burnham’s face that would bud out of the mists changing slowly into Mr. Rasmussen’s or Edgar Robbins’ or Paul Johnson’s or Freddy Seargeant’s. She got up and walked shivering up and down the room for a long time. Then she got into bed again and fell asleep and didn’t wake up until the chambermaid knocked on the door saying that a gentleman was waiting for her.

When she got down J.W. was pacing up and down in the sun outside the hotel door. A long lowslung Italian car was standing under the palms beside the geranium bed. They had coffee together without saying much at a little iron table outside the hotel. J.W. said he’d had a miserable room in a hotel where the service was poor.

As soon as Eveline got her bag down they started off at sixty miles an hour. The chauffeur drove like a fiend through a howling north wind that increased as they went down the coast. They were in Marseilles stiff and dustcaked in time for a late lunch at a fish restaurant on the edge of the old harbor. Eveline’s head was whirling again, with speed and lashing wind and dust and vines and olivetrees and grey rock mountains whirling past and now and then a piece of slateblue sea cut out with a jigsaw.

“After all, J.W., the war was terrible,” said Eveline. “But it’s a great time to be alive. Things are happening at last.” J.W. muttered something about a surge of idealism between his teeth and went on eating his bouillabaisse. He didn’t seem to be very talkative today. “Now at home,” he said, “they wouldn’t have left all the bones in the fish this way.” “Well, what do you think is going to happen about the oil situation?” Eveline started again. “Blamed if I know,” said J.W. “We’d better be starting if we’re going to make that place before nightfall.”