U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [209]
house she was chil ed to the bone. She was ushered into a little dressing room with al kinds of brushes and combs and silver jars with powder and even rouge and toiletwaters in purple, green and pink bottles and left to take off her things. When she saw herself in the big mirror she almost screamed she looked so young and pie--111-faced and her dress was so horrid. The only thing that looked any good was the foxfur so she kept that on
when she went into the big upstairs lounge with its deep grey carpet soft underfoot and the sunlight pouring in through French windows onto bright colors and the black polished grandpiano. There were big bowls of freezias on every table and yel ow and pink French and German books of reproductions of paintings. Even the sootbitten blocks of Chicago houses flattened under the wind and the zero sunlight looked faintly exciting and foreign through the big pattern of the yel ow lace curtains. In the rich smel of the freezias there was a little expensive whisp of cigarette-smoke. Sal y Emerson came in smoking a cigarette and said,
"Excuse me, my dear," some wretched woman had had her impaled on the telephone like a butterfly on a pin for the-last halfhour. They ate lunch at a little table the el-derly colored man brought in al set and Eveline was treated just like a grownup woman and a glass of port poured out for her. She only dared take a sip but it was delicious and the lunch was al crispy and creamy with cheese grated on things and she would have eaten a lot if she hadn't felt so shy. Sal y Emerson talked about how clever Eveline's costumes had been for the show and said she must keep up her drawing and talked about how there were as many people with artistic ability in Chicago as any-where in the world and what was lacking was the milieu, the atmosphere my dear, and that the social leaders were al vicious numbskul s and that it was up to the few people who cared about art to stick together and create the rich beautiful milieu they needed, and about Paris, and about Mary Garden, and Debussy. Eveline went home with her head reeling with names and pictures, little snatches out of operas and in her nose the tickling smel of the freezias mixed with toasted cheese and cigarettesmoke. When she got home everything looked so cluttered and bare and ugly
-112-she burst out crying and wouldn't answer any of her sis-ters' questions; that made them madder than ever. That June after school was over, they al went out to Santa Fé to see her mother. She was awful y depressed out at Santa Fé, the sun was so hot and the eroded hil s were so dry and dusty and Mother had gotten so washedout looking and was reading theosophy and talking about God and the beauty of soul of the Indians and Mexicans in a way that made the children uncomfortable. Eveline read a great many books that summer and hated going out. She read Scott and Thackeray and W. J. Locke and Dumas and when she found an old copy of Trilby in the house she read it three times running. That started her seeing things in Du Maurier il ustrations instead of in knights and ladies. When she wasn't reading she was lying flat on her back dreaming out long stories about herself and Sal y Emer-son. She didn't feel wel most of the time and would drop into long successions of horrid thoughts about people's bodies that made her feel nauseated. Adelaide and Mar-garet told her what to do about her trouble every month but she didn't tel them how horrid it made her feel in-side. She read the Bible and looked up uterus and words like that in encyclopaedias and dictionaries. Then one night she decided she wouldn't stand it any more and went through the medicine chest in the bathroom til she found a bottle marked POISON that had some kind of laudanum compound in it. But she wanted to write a poem before she died, she felt so lovely musical y traurig about dying, but she couldn't seem to get the rhymes right and final y fel asleep with her head on the paper. When she woke up it was dawn and she was hunched up over the table by her window, stiff and chil y in her thin nightgown. She slipped into bed shivering. Anyway she promised herself that she'd keep the bottle and kil herself whenever things seemed too filthy and horrid. That made her feel better. That fal Margaret and Adelaide went to Vassar. Eve--113-line would have liked to go east too but everybody said she was too young though she'd passed most of her col ege board exams. She stayed in Chicago and went to artclasses and lectures of one sort or another and did churchwork. It was an unhappy winter. Sal y Emerson seemed to have forgotten her. The young people around the church were so stuffy and conventional. Eveline got to hate the eve-nings at Drexel Boulevard, and al the vague Emerson her father talked in his rich preacher's boom. What she liked best was the work she did at Hul House. Eric Eg-strom gave drawingclasses there in the evenings and she used to see him sometimes smoking a cigarette in the back passage, leaning against the wal , looking very Norse, she thought, in his grey smock ful of bright fresh dabs of paint. She'd sometimes smoke a cigarette with him ex-changing a few words about Manet or Claude Monet's in-numerable haystacks, al the time feeling uneasy because the conversation wasn't more interesting and clever and afraid somebody would come and find her smoking.