U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [208]
The Maiden Evelina used to go into Miss Mathilda's
room when she was out and look at herself for a long time in the lookingglass. Her hair wasn't mousy, it was quite fair if only they would let her have it curly instead of in pigtails and even if her eyes weren't blue like George's they had little green specks in them. Her forehead was noble. Miss Mathilda caught her staring like that into the mirror one day.
"Look at yourself too much and you'l find you're look-ing at the devil," said Miss Mathilda in her nasty stiff German way.
When Eveline was twelve years old they moved to a
bigger house over on Drexel Boulevard. Adelaide and Margaret went east to boardingschool at New Hope and Mother had to go spend the winter with friends at Santa Fé on account of her health. It was fun eating breakfast every morning with just Dad and George and Miss Ma-thilda, who was getting elderly and paid more attention to running the house and to reading Sir Gilbert Parker's nov-els than to the children. Eveline didn't like school but she liked having Dad help her with her Latin evenings and do algebra equations for her. She thought he was wonder-ful when he preached so kind and good from the pulpit
-109-and was proud of being the minister's daughter at Sunday afternoon bibleclass. She thought a great deal about the fatherhood of God and the woman of Samaria and Joseph of Arimathea and Baldur the beautiful and the Brother-hood of Man and the apostle that Jesus loved. That Christ-mas she took around a lot of baskets to poor people's houses. Poverty was dreadful and the poor were so scary and why didn't God do something about the problems and evils of Chicago, and the conditions, she'd ask her father. He'd smile and say she was too young to worry about those things yet. She cal ed him Dad now and was his Pal. On her birthday Mother sent her a beautiful il ustrated book of the Blessed Damosel by Dante Gabriel Rossetti with colored il ustrations from his paintings and those of Burne Jones. She used to say the name Dante Gabriel Ros-setti over and over to herself like traurig she loved it so. She started painting and writing little verses about choirs of angels and little poor children at Christmastime. The first picture she did in oils was a portrait of Elaine, the Fair, that she sent her mother for Christmas. Everybody said it showed great talent. When friends of Dad's came to dinner they'd say when they were introduced to her,
"So this is the talented one, is it?"
Adelaide and Margaret were pretty scornful about al that when they came home from school. They said the house looked dowdy and nothing had any style to it in Chicago, and wasn't it awful being ministers' daughters, but of course Dad wasn't like an ordinary minister in a white tie, he was a Unitarian and very broad and more like a prominent author or scientist. George was getting to be a sulky little boy with dirty fingernails who never could keep his necktie straight and was always breaking his glasses. Eveline was working on a portrait of him the way he had been when he was little with blue eyes and gam-boge curls. She used to cry over her paints she loved him
-110-so and little poor children she saw on the street. Every-body said she ought to study art. It was Adelaide who first met Sal y Emerson. One Eas-ter they were going to put on Aglavaine and Selizette at the church for charity. Miss Rodgers the French teacher at Dr. Grant's school was going to coach them and said that they oughi to ask Mrs. Philip Payne Emerson, who had seen the original production abroad, about the scenery and costumes; and that besides her interest would be in-valuable to make it go; everything that Sal y Emerson was interested in went. The Hutchins girls were al excited when Dr. Hutchins cal ed up Mrs. Emerson on the tele-phone and asked if Adelaide might come over some morn-ing and ask her advice about some amateur theatricals. They'd already sat down to lunch when Adelaide came back, her eyes shining. She wouldn't say much except that Mrs. Philip Payne Emerson knew Matterlink intimately and that she was coming to tea, but kept declaring, "She's the most stylish woman I ever met." A glavaine and Selizette didn't turn out quite as the Hutchins girls and Miss Rodgers had hoped, though every-body said the scenery and costumes Eveline designed showed real ability, but the week after the performance, Eveline got a message one morning that Mrs. Emerson had asked her to lunch that day and only her. Adelaide and Margaret were so mad they wouldn't speak to her. She felt pretty shaky when she set off into the icybright dusty day. At the last minute Adelaide had lent her a hat and Margaret her fur neckpiece, so that she wouldn't disgrace them they said. By the time she got to the Emer-sons'