John Passos - The 42nd Parallel

When Eleanor walked back along the platform from seeing the Hutchinses all off for New York the next evening, and their bags all labelled for the steamship Baltic and their eyes all bright with the excitement of going East and going abroad and the smell of coalsmoke and the clang of engine bells and scurry of feet, she walked with her fists clenched and her sharppointed nails dug into the palms of her hands, saying to herself over and over again: “I’ll be going, too; it’s only a question of time; I’ll be going, too.”

she was a very fashionable lady and adored bullterriers and had a gentleman friend who was famous for his resemblance to King Edward

she was a very fashionable lady and there were white lilies in the hall No my dear I can’t bear the scent of them in the room and the bullterriers bit the tradespeople and the little newsy No my dear they never bit nice people and they’re quite topping with Billy and his friends

we all went coaching in a fourinhand and the man in the back blew a long horn and that’s where Dick Whittington stood with his cat and the bells there were hampers full of luncheon and she had gray eyes and was very kind to her friend’s little boy though she loathed simply loathed most children and her gentleman friend who was famous for his resemblance to King Edward couldn’t bear them or the bullterriers and she kept asking Why do you call him that?

and you thought of Dick Whittington and the big bells of Bow, three times Lord Mayor of London and looked into her gray eyes and said Maybe because I called him that the first time I saw him and I didn’t like her and I didn’t like the bullterriers and I didn’t like the fourinhand but I wished Dick Whittington three times Lord Mayor of London boomed the big bells of Bow and I wished Dick Whittington I wished I was home but I hadn’t any home and the man in the back blew a long horn

Working at Marshall Field’s was very different from working at Mrs. Lang’s. At Mrs. Lang’s she had only one boss but in the big store she seemed to have everybody in the department over her. Still she was so refined and cold and had such a bright definite little way of talking that although people didn’t like her much, she got along well. Even Mrs. Potter and Mr. Spotmann, the department heads, were a little afraid of her. News got around that she was a society girl and didn’t really have to earn a living at all. She was very sympathetic with the customers about their problems of homemaking and had a little humble-condescending way with Mrs. Potter and admired her clothes, so that at the end of a month Mrs. Potter said to Mr. Spotmann, “I think we have quite a find in the Stoddard girl,” and Mr. Spotmann without opening his white trap of an old woman’s mouth said, “I’ve thought so all along.”

When Eleanor stepped out on Randolph one sunny afternoon with her first week’s pay envelope in her hand she felt pretty happy. She had such a sharp little smile on her thin lips that a couple of people turned to look at her as she walked along ducking her head into the gusty wind to keep her hat from being blown off. She turned down Michigan Avenue towards the Auditorium looking at the bright shop windows and the verypale blue sky and the piles of dovegray fluffy clouds over the lake and the white blobs of steam from the locomotives. She went into the deep amberlit lobby of the Auditorium Annex, sat down all by herself at a wicker table in the corner of the lounge and sat there a long while all by herself drinking a cup of tea and eating buttered toast, ordering the waiter about with a crisp little refined monied voice.

Then she went to Moody House, packed her things and moved to the Eleanor Club, where she got a room for seven-fifty with board. But the room wasn’t much better and everything still had the gray smell of a charitable institution, so the next week she moved again to a small residential hotel on the North Side where she got room and board for fifteen a week. As that only left her a balance of three-fifty — it had turned out that the job only paid twenty, which actually only meant eighteen-fifty when insurance was taken off — she had to go to see her father again. She so impressed him with her rise in the world and the chances of a raise that he promised her five a week, although he was only making twenty himself and was planning to marry again, to a Mrs. O’Toole, a widow with five children who kept a boardinghouse out Elsdon way.

Eleanor refused to go to see her future stepmother, and made her father promise to send her the money in a moneyorder each week, as he couldn’t expect her to go all the way out to Elsdon to get it. When she left him she kissed him on the forehead and made him feel quite happy. All the time she was telling herself that this was the very last time.

Then she went back to the Hotel Ivanhoe and went up to her room and lay on her back on the comfortable brass bed looking round at her little room with its white woodwork and its pale yellow wallpaper with darker satiny stripes and the lace curtains in the window and the heavy hangings. There was a crack in the plaster of the ceiling and the carpet was worn, but the hotel was very refined, she could see that, full of old couples living on small incomes and the help were very elderly and polite and she felt at home for the first time in her life.

When Eveline Hutchins came back from Europe the next Spring wearing a broad hat with a plume on it, full of talk of the Salon des Tuileries and the Rue de la Paix and museums and art exhibitions and the opera, she found Eleanor a changed girl. She looked older than she was, dressed quietly and fashionably, had a new bitter sharp way of talking. She was thoroughly established in the interior decorating department at Marshall Field’s and expected a raise any day, but she wouldn’t talk about it. She had given up going to classes or haunting the Art Institute and spent a great deal of time with an old maiden lady who also lived at the Ivanhoe who was reputed to be very rich and very stingy, a Miss Eliza Perkins.

The first Sunday she was back Eleanor had Eveline to tea at the hotel and they sat in the stuffy lounge talking in refined whispers with the old lady. Eveline asked about Eric and Maurice, and Eleanor supposed that they were all right, but hadn’t seen them much since Eric had lost his job at Marshall Field’s. He wasn’t turning out so well as she had hoped, she said. He and Maurice had taken to drinking a great deal and going round with questionable companions, and Eleanor rarely got a chance to see them. She had dinner every evening with Miss Perkins and Miss Perkins thought a great deal of her and bought her clothes and took her with her driving in the park and sometimes to the theater when there was something really worth while on, Minnie Maddern Fiske or Guy Bates Post in an interesting play. Miss Perkins was the daughter of a wealthy saloon keeper and had been played false in her youth by a young lawyer whom she had trusted to invest some money for her and whom she had fallen in love with. He had run away with another girl and a number of cash certificates. Just how much she had left Eleanor hadn’t been able to find out, but as she always took the best seats at the theater and liked going to dinner at expensive hotels and restaurants and hired a carriage by the half day whenever she wanted one, she gathered that she must still be well off.

After they had left Miss Perkins to go to the Hutchinses for supper, Eveline said: “Well, I declare — I don’t see what you see in that… that little old maid… And here I was just bursting to tell you a million things and to ask you a million questions… I think it was mean of you.”

“I’m very devoted to her, Eveline. I thought you’d be interested in meeting any dear friend of mine.”