1919

Eveline Hutchins

She felt half crazy until she got on the train to go back east. Mother and Dad didn’t want her to go, but she showed them a telegram she’d wired Eleanor to send her offering her a high salary in her decorating business. She said it was an opening that wouldn’t come again and she had to take it, and anyway, as George was coming home for a vacation, they wouldn’t be entirely alone. The night she left she lay awake in her lower berth tremendously happy in the roar of the air and the swift pound of the wheels on the rails. But after St. Louis she began to worry: she’d decided she was pregnant.

She was terribly frightened. The Grand Central Station seemed so immense, so full of blank faces staring at her as she passed following the redcap who carried her bag. She was afraid she’d faint before she got to the taxicab. All the way downtown the jolting of the cab and the jangling throb of the traffic in her ears made her head swim with nausea. At the Brevoort she had some coffee. Ruddy sunlight was coming in the tall windows, the place had a warm restaurant smell; she began to feel better. She went to the phone and called Eleanor. A French maid answered that Mademoiselle was still asleep, but that she would tell her who had called as soon as she woke up. The she called Freddy who sounded very much excited and said he’d be there as soon as he could get over from Brooklyn.

When she saw Freddy it was just as if she hadn’t been away at all. He almost had a backer for the Maya ballet and he was mixed up in a new musical show he wanted Eveline to do costumes for. But he was very gloomy about the prospects of war with Germany, said he was a pacifist and would probably have to go to jail, unless there was a revolution. Eveline told him about her talks with José O’Riely and what a great painter he was, and said she thought maybe she was an anarchist. Freddy looked worried and asked her if she was sure she hadn’t fallen in love with him, and she blushed and smiled and said no, and Freddy said she was a hundred times better looking than last year.

They went together to see Eleanor whose house in the east thirties was very elegant and expensivelooking. Eleanor was sitting up in bed answering her mail. Her hair was carefully done and she had on a pink satin dressing gown with lace and ermine on it. They had coffee with her and hot rolls that the Martinique maid had baked herself. Eleanor was delighted to see Eveline and said how well she looked and was full of mysteries about her business and everything. She said she was on the edge of becoming a theatrical producer and spoke about “my financial adviser” this and that, until Eveline didn’t know what to think; still it was evident that things were going pretty well with her. Eveline wanted to ask her what she knew about birthcontrol, but she never got around to it, and perhaps it was just as well, as, when they got on the subject of the war they quarrelled at once.

That afternoon Freddy took her to tea with him at the house of a middleaged lady who lived on West 8th Street and was an enthusiastic pacifist. The house was full of people arguing and young men and young women wagging their heads together in important whispers. There she got to talking with a haggardlooking brighteyed young man named Don Stevens. Freddy had to go off to a rehearsal and she stayed there talking to Don Stevens. Then all of a sudden they found that everybody had gone and that they were alone with the hostess, who was a stout puffy eager woman that Eveline decided was just too tiresome. She said Goodnight and left. She had hardly gotten down the front steps to the street when Stevens was after her with his lanky stride dragging his overcoat behind him; “Where are you going to eat supper, Eveline Hutchins?” Eveline said she hadn’t thought and before she knew it was eating with him in an Italian restaurant on 3rd Street. He ate a lot of spaghetti very fast and drank a lot of red wine and introduced her to the waiter, whose name was Giovanni. “He’s a maximalist and so am I,” he said. “This young woman seems to be a philosophic anarchist, but we’ll get her over that.”

Don Stevens came from South Dakota and had worked on small town papers ever since his highschool days. He’d also worked as a harvest hand back home and been in on several I.W.W. scraps. He showed Eveline his red card with considerable pride. He’d come to New York to work on The Call, but had just resigned because they were too damn lilylivered, he said. He also wrote for the Metropolitan Magazine and the Masses, and spoke at antiwar meetings. He said that there wasn’t a chinaman’s chance that the U.S. would keep out of the war; the Germans were winning, the working class all over Europe was on the edge of revolt, the revolution in Russia was the beginning of the worldwide social revolution and the bankers knew it and Wilson knew it; the only question was whether the industrial workers in the east and the farmers and casual laborers in the middle west and west would stand for war. The entire press was bought and muzzled. The Morgans had to fight or go bankrupt. “It’s the greatest conspiracy in history.”

Giovanni and Eveline listened holding their breath. Giovanni occasionally looking nervously around the room to see if any of the customers at the other tables looked like detectives. “God damn it, Giovanni, let’s have another bottle of wine,” Don would cry out in the middle of a long analysis of Kuhn, Loeb and Company’s foreign holdings. Then suddenly he’d turn to Eveline filling up her glass, “Where have you been all these years? I’ve so needed a lovely girl like you. Let’s have a splendid time tonight, may be the last good meal we ever get, we may be in jail or shot against a wall a month from now, isn’t that so, Giovanni?”

Giovanni forgot to wait on his other tables and was bawled out by the proprietor. Eveline kept laughing. When Don asked her why, she said she didn’t know except that he was so funny.

“But it really is Armageddon, God damn it.” Then he shook his head: “What’s the use, there never was a woman living who could understand political ideas.”

“Of course I can… I think it’s terrible. I don’t know what to do.”

“I don’t know what to do,” he said savagely, “I don’t know whether to fight the war and got to jail, or to get a job as a war correspondent and see the goddam mess. If you could rely on anybody to back you up it ud be another thing… Oh, hell, let’s get out of here.”

He charged the cheque, and asked Eveline to lend him half a dollar to leave for Giovanni, said he didn’t have a cent in his jeans. She found herself drinking a last glass of wine with him in a chilly littered room up three flights of dirty wooden stairs in Patchin Place. He began to make love to her and when she objected that she’d just known him for seven hours he said that was another stupid bourgeois idea she ought to get rid of. When she asked him about birthcontrol, he sat down beside her and talked for half an hour about what a great woman Margaret Sanger was and how birthcontrol was the greatest single blessing to mankind since the invention of fire. When he started to make love to her again in a businesslike way she laughing and blushing let him take off her clothes. It was three o’clock when feeling weak and guilty and bedraggled she got back to her room at the Brevoort. She took a huge dose of castor oil and went to bed where she lay awake till daylight wondering what she could say to Freddy. She’d had a date to meet him at eleven for a bite of supper after his rehearsal. Her fear of being pregnant had disappeared, like waking up from a nightmare.

That spring was full of plans for shows and decorating houses with Eleanor and Freddy, but nothing came of them, and after a while Eveline couldn’t keep her mind on New York, what with war declared, and the streets filling with flags and uniforms, and everybody going patriotic crazy around her and seeing spies and pacifists under every bed. Eleanor was getting herself a job in the Red Cross. Don Stevens had signed up with the Friends’ Relief. Freddy announced a new decision every day, but finally said he wouldn’t decide what to do till he was called for the draft. Adelaide’s husband had a job in Washington in the new Shipping Board. Dad was writing her every few days that Wilson was the greatest president since Lincoln. Some days she felt that she must be losing her mind, people around her seemed so cracked. When she began talking about it to Eleanor, Eleanor smiled in a superior way and said she’d already asked to have her as assistant in her office in Paris.

“Your office in Paris, darling?” Eleanor nodded. “I don’t care what kind of work it is, I’ll do it gladly,” said Eveline. Eleanor sailed one Saturday on the Rochambeau, and two weeks later Eveline herself sailed on the Touraine.

It was a hazy summer evening. She’d been almost rude cutting short the goodby of Margaret and Adelaide and Margaret’s husband Bill who was a Major by this time and teaching sharpshooting out on Long Island, she was so anxious to cut loose from this America she felt was just too tiresome. The boat was two hours late in sailing. The band kept playing Tipperary and Auprès de ma Blonde and La Madelon. There were a great many young men around in various uniforms, all rather drunk. The little French sailors with their red pompons and baby faces yelled back and forth in rolling twangy bordelais. Eveline walked up and down the deck until her feet were tired. It seemed as if the boat would never sail. And Freddy, who had turned up late, kept waving to her from the dock and she was afraid Don Stevens would come and she was sick of all her life in these last years.

She went down to her cabin and started reading Barbusse’s Le Feu that Don had sent her. She fell asleep, and when the greyhaired skinny woman who was her cabinmate woke her up bustling around, the first thing she felt was the trembling pound of the ship’s engines. “Well, you missed dinner,” said the greyhaired woman.

Her name was Miss Eliza Felton and she was an illustrator of children’s books. She was going to France to drive a truck. At first Eveline thought she was just too tiresome, but as the warm quiet days of the crossing wore on she got to like her. Miss Felton had a great crush on Eveline and was a nuisance, but she was fond of wine and knew a great deal about France, where she’d lived for many years. In fact she’d studied painting at Fontainebleau in the old days of the impressionists. She was bitter against the Huns on account of Rheims and Louvain and the poor little Belgian babies with their hands cut off, but she didn’t have much use for any male government, called Wilson a coward, Clemenceau a bully and Lloyd George a sneak. She laughed at the precautions against submarine attack and said she knew the French line was perfectly safe because all the German spies travelled by it. When they landed in Bordeaux she was a great help to Eveline.

They stayed over a day to see the town instead of going up to Paris with all the other Red Cross people and Relief workers. The rows of grey eighteenth century houses were too lovely in the endless rosy summer twilight, and the flowers for sale and the polite people in the shops and the delicate patterns of the ironwork, and the fine dinner they had at the Chapon Fin.

The only trouble with going around with Eliza Felton was that she kept all the men away. They went up to Paris on the day train next day and Eveline could hardly keep from tears at the beauty of the country and the houses and the vines and the tall ranks of poplars. There were little soldiers in pale blue at every station and the elderly and deferential conductor looked like a collegeprofessor. When the train finally slid smoothly through the tunnel and into the Orleans station her throat was so tight she could hardly speak. It was as if she’d never been to Paris before.

“Now where are you going, dear? You see we have to carry our own traps,” said Eliza Felton in a businesslike way.

“Well, I suppose I should go to the Red Cross and report.”

“Too late for tonight, I can tell you that.”

“Well, I might try to call up Eleanor.”

“Might as well try to wake the dead as try to use the Paris telephone in wartime… what you’d better do, dear, is come with me to a little hotel I know on the Quai and sign up with the Red Cross in the morning; that’s what I’m going to do.”

“I’d hate to get sent back home.”

“They won’t know you’re here for weeks…. I know those dumbbells.”

So Eveline waited with their traps while Eliza Felton fetched a little truck. They piled their bags on it and rolled them out of the station and through the empty streets in the last faint mauve of twilight to the hotel. There were very few lights and they were blue and hooded with tin hats so that they couldn’t be seen from above. The Seine, the old bridges, and the long bulk of the Louvre opposite looked faint and unreal; it was life walking through a Whistler.

“We must hurry and get something to eat before everything closes up…. I’ll take you to Adrienne’s,” said Miss Felton.

They left their bags to be taken up to their rooms at the hôtel du Quai Voltaire and walked fast through a lot of narrow crisscross fastdarkening streets. They ducked into the door of the little restaurant just as some one was starting to pull the heavy iron shutter down, “Tiens, c’est Madmoiselle Elise,” cried a woman’s voice from the back of the heavily upholstered little room. A short Frenchwoman with a very large head and very large popeyes ran forward and hugged Miss Felton and kissed her a number of times. “This is Miss Hutchins,” said Miss Felton in her dry voice. “Verry plised… she is so prretty… beautiful eyes, hein?” It made Eveline uncomfortable the way the woman looked at her, the way her big powdered face was set like an egg in a cup in the frilly highnecked blouse. She brought out some soup and cold veal and bread, with many apologies on account of not having butter or sugar, complaining in a singsong voice about how severe the police were and how the profiteers were hoarding food and how bad the military situation was. Then she suddenly stopped talking; all their eyes lit at the same moment on the sign on the wall:

MEFIEZ VOUS LES OREILLES ENEMIES

VOUS ECOUTENT

“Enfin c’est la guerre,” Adrienne said. She was sitting beside Miss Felton, patting Miss Felton’s thin hand with her pudgy hand all covered with paste rings. She had made them coffee. They were drinking little glasses of Cointreau. She leaned over and patted Eveline on the neck. “Faut pas’s’en faire, hein?” Then she threw back her head and let out a shrill hysterical laugh. She kept pouring out more little glasses of Cointreau and Miss Felton seemed to be getting a little tipsy. Adrienne kept patting her hand. Eveline felt her own head swimming in the stuffy dark closedup little room. She got to her feet and said she was going back to the hotel, that she had a headache and was sleepy. They tried to coax her to stay but she ducked out under the shutter.

Half the street outside was lit up by moonlight, the other half was in pitchblack shadow. All at once Eveline remembered that she didn’t know the way back to the hotel, still she couldn’t go into that restaurant again and that woman gave her the horrors, so she walked along fast, keeping in the moonlight, scared of the silence and the few shadowy people and the old gaunt houses with their wide inky doorways. She came out on a boulevard at last where there were men and women strolling, voices and an occasional automobile with blue lights running silently over the asphalt. Suddenly the nightmare scream of a siren started up in the distance, then another and another. Somewhere lost in the sky was a faint humming like a bee, louder then fainter, then louder again. Eveline looked at the people around her. Nobody seemed alarmed or to hurry their strolling pace.

“Les avions… les boches…” she heard people saying in unstartled tones. She found herself standing at the curb staring up into the milky sky that was fast becoming rayed with searchlights. Next to her was a fatherlylooking French officer with all kinds of lace on his kepi and drooping moustaches. The sky overhead began to sparkle like with mica; it was beautiful and far away like fireworks seen across the lake on the Fourth. Involuntarily she said aloud, “What’s that?” “C’est le shrapnel, mademoiselle. It is ourr ahnt-aircrahft cannons,” he said carefully in English, and then gave her his arm and offered to take her home. She noticed that he smelt rather strongly of cognac but he was very nice and paternal in his manner and made funny gestures of things coming down on their heads and said they must get under cover. She said please to go to the hôtel du Quai Voltaire as she’d lost her way.

“Ah charmant, charmant,” said the elderly French officer. While they had stood there talking everybody else on the street had melted out of sight. Guns were barking in every direction now. They were going down through the narrow streets again, keeping close to the wall. Once her pulled her suddenly into a doorway and something landed whang on the pavement opposite. “It is the fragments of shrapnel, not good,” he said, tapping himself on the top of the kepi. He laughed and Eveline laughed and they got along famously. They had come out on the riverbank. It seemed safe for some reason under the thickfoliaged trees. From the door of the hotel he suddenly pointed to the sky, “Look, c’est les fokkers, ils’s’en fichent de nous.” As he spoke the Boche planes wheeled overhead so that their wings caught the moonlight. For a second they were like seven tiny silver dragonflies, then they’d vanished. At the same moment came the rending snort of a bomb from somewhere across the river. “Permettez, mademoiselle.” They went into the pitchblack hall of the hotel and felt their way down into the cellar. As he handed Eveline down the last step of the dusty wooden stairs the officer gravely saluted the mixed group of people in bathrobes or overcoats over their nightclothes who were grouped around a couple of candles. There was a waiter there and the officer tried to order a drink, but the waiter said, “Ah, mon colonel, s’est defendu,” and the colonel made a wry face. Eveline sat up on a sort of table. She was so excited looking at the people and listening to the distant snort of the bombs that she hardly noticed that colonel was squeezing her knee a little more than was necessary. The colonel’s hands became a problem. When the airraid was over something went by on the street making a funny seesaw noise between the quacking of a duck and a burro’s bray. It struck Eveline so funny she laughed and laughed so that the colonel didn’t seem to know what to make of her. When she tried to say goodnight to him to go up to her room and get some sleep, he wanted to go up too. She didn’t know what to do. He’d been so nice and polite she didn’t want to be rude to him, but she couldn’t seem to make him understand that she wanted to go to bed and to sleep; he’d answer that so did he. When she tried to explain that she had a friend with her, he asked if the friend was as charming as mademoiselle, in that case he’d be delighted. Eveline’s French broke down entirely. She wished to heavens Miss Felton would turn up, she couldn’t make the concièrge understand that she wanted the key to her room and that mon colonel wasn’t coming up and was ready to break down and cry when a young American in civilian clothes with a red face and a turnedup nose appeared from somewhere out of the shadows and said with a flourish in very bad French, “Monsieur, moi frère de madmosel, can’t you see that the little girl is fatiguee and wants to say bon-soir?” He linked his arm in the colonel’s and said, “Vive la France…. Come up to my room and have a drink.” The colonel drew himself up and looked very angry. Without waiting to see what happened Eveline ran up the stairs to her room, rushed in and doublelocked the door.