1919 (42 page)

“That's a darling, do. . . . I've got brioches and butter here . . . take that enamelled milkcan out of the kitchen.”

Eveline looked at herself in the mirror before she started dressing. She had shadows under her eyes and faint beginnings of crowsfeet. Chillier than the damp Paris room came the thought of growing old. It was so horribly actual that she suddenly burst into tears. An old hag's tearsmeared face looked at her bitterly out of the mirror. She pressed the palms of her hands hard over her eyes. “Oh, I lead such a silly life,” she whispered aloud.

Paul was back. She could hear him moving around awkwardly in the salon. “I forgot to tell you . . . Don says Anatole France is going to march with the mutilays ofla guerre. . . . I've got the cafay o lay whenever you're ready.”

“Just a minute,” she called from the basin where she was splashing cold water on her face. “How old are you, Paul?” she asked him when she came out of her bedroom all dressed, smiling, feeling that she was looking her best.

“Free, white and twenty one . . . we'd better drink up this coffee before it gets cold.” “You don't look as old as that.” “Oh, I'm old enough to know better,” said Paul, getting very red in the face. “I'm five years older than that,” said Eveline. “Oh, how I hate growing old.” “Five years don't mean anything,” stammered Paul.

He was so nervous he spilt a lot of coffee over his trouserleg. “Oh, hell, that's a dumb thing to do,” he growled. “I'll get it out in a second,” said Eveline, running for a towel.

She made him sit in a chair and kneeled down in front of him and scrubbed at the inside of his thigh with the towel. Paul sat there stiff, red as a beet, with his lips pressed together. He jumped to his feet before she'd finished. “Well, let's go out and see what's happening. I wish I knew more about what it's all about.”

“Well, you might at least say thank you,” said Eveline, looking up at him.

“Thanks, gosh, it's awful nice of you, Eveline.”

Outside it was like Sunday. A few stores were open on the side streets but they had their iron shutters halfway down. It was a grey day; they walked up the Boulevard St. Germain, passing many people out strolling in their best clothes. It wasn't until a squadron of the Guarde Republicaine clattered past them in their shiny helmets and their tricolor plumes that they had any inkling of tenseness in the air.

Over on the other side of the Seine there were more people and little groups of gendarmes standing around.

At the crossing of several streets they saw a cluster of old men in workclothes with a red flag and a sign,
L'UNION DES TRAVAILLEURS FERA LA PAIX DU MONDE
. A cordon of republican guards rode down on them with their sabres drawn, the sun flashing on their helmets. The old men ran or flattened themselves in doorways.

On the Grands Boulevards there were companies of poilus in tin hats and grimy blue uniforms standing round their stacked rifles. The crowds on the streets cheered them as they surged past, everything seemed goodnatured and jolly. Eveline and Paul began to get tired; they'd been walking all morning. They began to wonder where they'd get any lunch. Then too it was starting to rain.

Passing the Bourse they met Don Stevens, who had just come out of the telegraph office. He was sore and tired. He'd been up since five o'clock. “If they're going to have a riot why the hell can't they have it in time to make the cables . . . Well, I saw Anatole France dispersed on the Place d'Alma. Ought to be a story in that except for all this damned censorship. Things are pretty serious in Germany . . . I think something's going to happen there.”

“Will anything happen here in Paris, Don?” asked Paul.

“Damned if I know . . . some kids busted up those gratings around the trees and threw them at the cops on the avenue Magenta. . . . Burnham in there says there are barricades at the end of the place de la Bastille, but I'm damned if I'm going over till I get something to eat . . . I don't believe it anyway . . . I'm about foundered. What are you two bourgeois doing out a day like this?”

“Hey, fellowworker, don't shoot,” said Paul, throwing up his hands. “Wait till we get something to eat,” Eveline laughed. She thought how much better she liked Paul than she liked Don.

They walked around a lot of back streets in the drizzling rain and at last found a little restaurant from which came voices and a smell of food. They ducked in under the iron shutter of the door. It was dark and crowded with taxidrivers and workingmen. They squeezed into the end of a marble table where two old men were playing chess. Eveline's leg was pressed against Paul's. She didn't move; then he began to get red and moved his chair a little. “Excuse me,” he said.

They all ate liver and onions and Don got to talking with the old men in his fluent bad French. They said the youngsters weren't good for anything nowadays, in the old days when they descended into the street they tore up the pavings and grabbed the cops by the legs and pulled them off their horses. Today was supposed to be a general strike and what had they done? . . . nothing . . . a few urchins had thrown some stones and one café window had been broken. It wasn't like that that liberty defended itself and the dignity of labor. The old men went back to their chess. Don set them up to a bottle of wine.

Eveline was sitting back halflistening, wondering if she'd go around to see J.W. in the afternoon. She hadn't seen him or Eleanor since that Sunday morning; she didn't care anyway. She wondered if Paul would marry her, how it would be to have a lot of little babies that would have the same young coltish fuzzy look he had. She liked it in this little dark restaurant that smelt of food and wine and caporal ordinaire, sitting back and letting Don lay down the law to Paul about the revolution. “When I get back home I guess I'll bum around the country a little, get a job as a harvest hand and stuff like that and find out about those things,” Paul said finally. “Now I don't know a darn thing, just what I hear people say.”

After they had eaten they were sitting over some glasses of wine, when they heard an American voice. Two M.P.'s had come in and were having a drink at the zinc bar. “Don't talk English,” whispered Paul. They sat there stiffly trying to look as French as possible until the two khaki uniforms disappeared, then Paul said, “Whee, I was scared . . . they'd picked me up sure as hell if they'd found me without my uniform. . . . Then it'd have been the Roo Saint Anne and goodby Paree.” “Why, you poor kid, they'd have shot you at sunrise,” said Eveline. “You go right home and change your clothes at once . . . I'm going to the Red Cross for a while anyway.”

Don walked over to the rue de Rivoli with her. Paul shot off down another street to go to his room and get his uniform. “I think Paul Johnson's an awfully nice boy, where did you collect him, Don?” Eveline said in a casual tone. “He's kinder simple . . . unlicked cub kind of a kid . . . I guess he's all right . . . I got to know him when the transport section he was in was billeted near us up in the Marne . . . Then he got this cush job in the Post Despatch Service and now he's studying at the Sorbonne. . . . By God, he needs it . . . no social ideas . . . Paul still thinks it was the stork.”

“He must come from near where you came from . . . back home, I mean.”

“Yare, his dad owns a grain elevator in some little tank town or other . . . petit bourgeois . . . bum environment . . . He's not a bad kid in spite of it . . . Damn shame he hasn't read Marx, something to stiffen his ideas up.” Don made a funny face. “That goes with you too, Eveline, but I gave you up as hopeless long ago. Ornamental but not useful.” They'd stopped and were talking on the streetcorner under the arcade. “Oh, Don, I think your ideas are just too tiresome,” she began. He interrupted, “Well, solong, here comes a bus . . . I oughtn't to ride on a scab bus but it's too damn far to walk all the way to the Bastille.” He gave her a kiss. “Don't be sore at me.” Eveline waved her hand, “Have a good time in Vienna, Don.” He jumped on the platform of the bus as it rumbled past. The last Eveline saw the woman conductor was trying to push him off because the bus was complet.

She went up to her office and tried to look as if she'd been there all day. At a little before six she walked up the street to the Crillon and went up to see J.W. Everything was as usual there, Miss Williams looking chilly and yellowhaired at her desk, Morton stealthily handing around tea and petit fours, J.W. deep in talk with a personage in a cutaway in the embrasure of the window, halfhidden by the heavy champagnecolored drapes, Eleanor in a pearlgrey afternoon dress Eveline had never seen before, chatting chirpily with three young staffofficers in front of the fireplace. Eveline had a cup of tea and talked about something or other with Eleanor for a moment, then she said she had an engagement and left.

In the anteroom she caught Miss Williams' eye as she passed. She stopped by her desk a moment: “Busy as ever, Miss Williams,” she said.

“It's better to be busy,” she said. “It keeps a person out of mischief . . . It seems to me that in Paris they waste a great deal of time . . . I never imagined that there could be a place where people could sit around idle so much of the time.”

“The French value their leisure more than anything.”

“Leisure's all right if you have something to do with it . . . but this social life wastes so much of our time . . . People come to lunch and stay all afternoon, I don't know what we can do about it . . . it makes a very difficult situation.” Miss Williams looked hard at Eveline. “I don't suppose you have much to do down at the Red Cross any more, do you, Miss Hutchins?”

Eveline smiled sweetly. “No, we just live for our leisure like the French.”

She walked across the wide asphalt spaces of the place de la Concorde, without knowing quite what to do with herself, and turned up the Champs Elysées where the horsechestnuts were just coming into flower. The general strike seemed to be about over, because there were a few cabs on the streets. She sat down on a bench and a cadaverous looking individual in a frock coat sat down beside her and tried to pick her up. She got up and walked as fast as she could. At the Rond Point she had to stop to wait for a bunch of French mounted artillery and two seventyfives to go past before she could cross the street. The cadaverous man was beside her; he turned and held out his hand, tipping his hat as he did so, as if he was an old friend. She muttered, “Oh, it's just too tiresome,” and got into a horsecab that was standing by the curb. She almost thought the man was going to get in too, but he just stood looking after her scowling as the cab drove off following the guns as if she was part of the regiment. Once at home she made herself some cocoa on the gasstove and went lonely to bed with a book.

Next evening when she got back to her apartment Paul was waiting for her, wearing a new uniform and with a resplendent shine on his knobtoed shoes. “Why, Paul, you look as if you'd been through a washing machine.” “A friend of mine's a sergeant in the quartermaster's stores . . . coughed up a new outfit.” “You look too beautiful for words.” “You mean you do, Eveline.”

They went over to the boulevards and had dinner on the salmon-colored plush seats among the Pompeian columns at Noël Peters' to the accompaniment of slithery violinmusic. Paul had his month's pay and commutation of rations in his pocket and felt fine. They talked about what they'd do when they got back to America. Paul said his dad wanted him to go into a grain broker's office in Minneapolis, but he wanted to try his luck in New York. He thought a young feller ought to try a lot of things before he settled down at a business so that he could find out what he was fitted for. Eveline said she didn't know what she wanted to do. She didn't want to do anything she'd done before, she knew that, maybe she'd like to live in Paris.

“I didn't like it much in Paris before,” Paul said, “but like this, goin' out with you, I like it fine.” Eveline teased him, “Oh, I don't think you like me much, you never act as if you did.” “But jeeze, Eveline, you know so much and you've been around so much. It's mighty nice of you to let me come around at all, honestly I'll appreciate it all my life.”

“Oh, I wish you wouldn't be like that . . . I hate people to be humble,” Eveline broke out angrily.

They went on eating in silence. They were eating asparagus with grated cheese on it. Paul took several gulps of wine and looked at her in a hurt dumb way she hated. “Oh, I feel like a party tonight,” she said a little later. “I've been so miserable all day, Paul . . . I'll tell you about it sometime . . . you know the kind of feeling when everything you've wanted crumbles in your fingers as you grasp it.” “All right, Eveline,” Paul said, banging with his fist on the table, “let's cheer up and have a big time.”

When they were drinking coffee the orchestra began to play polkas and people began to dance among the table encouraged by cries of Ah Polkaah aaah from the violinist. It was a fine sight to see the middleaged diners whirling around under the beaming eyes of the stout Italian headwaiter who seemed to feel that la gaité was coming back to Paree at last. Paul and Eveline forgot themselves and tried to dance it too. Paul was very awkward, but having his arms around her made her feel better somehow, made her forget the scaring loneliness she felt.

When the polka had subsided a little Paul paid the fat check and they went out arm in arm, pressing close against each other like all the Paris lovers, to stroll on the boulevards in the May evening that smelt of wine and hot rolls and wild strawberries. They felt lightheaded. Eveline kept smiling. “Come on, let's have a big time,” whispered Paul occasionally as if to keep his courage up. “I was just thinking what my friends ud think if they saw me walking up the boulevard arm in arm with a drunken doughboy,” Eveline said. “No, honest, I'm not drunk,” said Paul. “I can drink a lot more than you think. And I won't be in the army much longer, not if this peace treaty goes through.” “Oh, I don't care,” said Eveline, “I don't care what happens.”