U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [116]
For the Peace Conference, J.W. had a suite at the
Cril on, with his blonde secretary Miss Wil iams at a desk in a little anteroom, and Morton his English valet serving tea in the late afternoon. Eveline liked dropping into the Cril on late in the afternoon after walking up the arcades of the rue de Rivoli from her office. The antiquated cor-ridors of the hotel were crowded with Americans coming and going. In J.W.'s big salon there'd be Morton stealthily handing around tea, and people in uniform and in frock
-295-coats and the cigarettesmoky air would be ful of halftold anecdotes. J.W. fascinated her, dressed in grey Scotch tweeds that always had a crease on the trousers (he'd given up wearing his Red Cross major's uniform), with such an aloof agreeable m Anner, tempered by the pre-occupied look of a very busy man always being cal ed up on the phone, receiving telegrams or notes from his secre-tary, disappearing into the embrasure of one of the win-dows that looked out on the place de la Concorde with someone for a whispered conversation, or being asked to step in to see Colonel House for a moment; and stil when he handed her a champagne cocktail just before they al went out to dinner on nights he didn't have to go to some official function, or asked if she wanted another cup of tea, she'd feel for a second in her eyes the direct glance of two boyish blue eyes with a funny candid partly hu-morous look that teased her. She wanted to know him better; Eleanor, she felt, watched them like a cat watching a mouse. After al , Eveline kept saying to herself, she hadn't any right. It wasn't as if there was anything real y between them.
When J.W. was busy they often went out with Edgar
Robbins who seemed to be a sort of assistant of J.W.'s. Eleanor couldn't abide him, said there was something in-sulting in his cynicism, but Eveline liked to hear him talk. He said the peace was going to be ghastlier than the war, said it was a good thing nobody ever asked his opinion about anything because he'd certainly land in jail if he gave it. Robbins'
favorite hangout was Freddy's up back of Montmartre. They'd sit there al evening in the smal smokycrowded rooms while Freddy, who had a big white beard like Walt Whitman, would play on the guitar and sing. Sometimes he'd get drunk and set the company up to drinks on the house. Then his wife, a cross woman who looked like a gypsy, would come out of the back room and curse and scream at him. People at the tables would
-296-get up and recite long poems about La Grand' route, La Misère, L'Assassinat or sing old French songs like Les Fil es de Nantes. If it went over everybody present would clap hands in unison. They cal ed that giving a bon. Freddy got to know them and would make a great fuss when they arrived, "Ah, les bel es Amèricaines." Robbins would sit there moodily drinking calvados after calvados, now and then letting out a crack about the day's happen-ings at the peace conference. He said that the place was a fake that the calvados was wretched and that Freddy was a dirty old bum, but for some reason he always wanted to go back.
J.W. went there a couple of times, and occasional y they'd take some delegate from the peace conference who'd be mightily impressed by their knowledge of the inner life of Paris. J.W. was enchanted by the old French songs, but he said the place made him feel itchy and that he thought there were fleas there. Eveline liked to watch him when he was listening to a song with his eyes half closed and his head thrown back. She felt that Robbins didn't appreciate the rich potentialities of his nature and always shut him up when he started to say something sarcastic about the big cheese, as he cal ed him. She thought it was disagreeable of Eleanor to laugh at things like that, espe-cial y when J.W. seemed so devoted to her. When Jerry Burnham came back from Armenia and found that Eveline was going around with J. Ward
Moorehouse al the time he was terribly upset. He took her out to lunch at the Medicis Gril on the left bank and talked and talked about it.
"Why, Eveline, I thought of you as a person who wouldn't be taken in by a big bluff like that. The guy's nothing but a goddam megaphone. . . . Honestly, Eve-line, it's not that I expect you to fal for me, I know very wel you don't give a damn about me and why should you? . . . But Christ, a damn publicity agent."