U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [216]
-128-seemed so immense, so ful of blank faces staring at her as she passed fol owing the redcap who carried her bag. She was afraid she'd faint before she got to the taxicab. Al 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 tal windows, the place had a warm restaurant smel ; she began to feel better. She went to the phone and cal ed Eleanor. A French maid answered that Mademoisel e was stil asleep, but that she would tel her who had cal ed as soon as she woke up. Then she cal ed 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 al . He almost had a backer for the Maya bal et 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 fal en in love with him, and she blushed and smiled and said no, and Freddy said she was a hundred times better look-ing than last year. They went together to see Eleanor whose house in the east thirties was very elegant and expensivelooking. Elea-nor was sitting up in bed answering her mail. Her hair was careful y done and she had on a pink satin dressing gown with lace and ermine on it. They had coffee with her and hot rol s that the Martinique maid had baked herself. Eleanor was delighted to see Eveline and said how wel she looked and was ful of mysteries about her business and everything. She said she was on the edge of becoming
-129-a theatrical producer and spoke about "my financial ad-viser" this and that, until Eveline didn't know what to think; stil it was evident that things were going pretty wel 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 wel , as, when they got on the sub-ject of the war they quarrel ed 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 ful 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 re-hearsal and she stayed there talking to Don Stevens. Then al 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 tire-some. 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'l get her over that." Don Stevens came from South Dakota and had worked
on smal 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 Metro- politan Magazine
-130-politan 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 al over Europe was on the edge of revolt, the revolution in Russia was the begin-ning 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."