U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [267]
Next fal Dad took her north for a year in a finishing school in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She was excited on the trip up on the train and loved every minute of it, but Miss Tynge's was horrid and the girls were al northern girls and so mean and made fun of her clothes and talked about nothing but Newport, and Southampton, and matinée idols she'd never seen; she hated it. She cried every night,after she'd gone to bed thinking how she hated the school and how Joe Washburn would never like her now. When
Christmas vacation came and she had to stay on with the two Miss Tynges and some of the teachers who lived too far away to go home either, she just decided she wouldn't stand it any longer and one morning before anybody was up she got out of the house, walked down to the station, bought herself a ticket to Washington, and got on the first westbound train with nothing but a toothbrush and a night-gown in her handbag. She was scared al alone on the train at first but such a nice young Virginian who was a West Point Cadet got on at Havre de Grace where she had to change; they had the time of their lives together laughing and talking. In Washington he asked permission to be her escort in the nicest way and took her al around, to see the
-260-Capitol and the White House and the Smithsonian Insti-tute and set her up to lunch at the New Wil ard and put her on the train for St. Louis that night. His name was Paul English. She promised she'd write him every day of her life. She was so excited she couldn't sleep lying in her berth looking out of the window of the pul man at the trees and the circling hil s al in the faint glow of snow and now and then lights speeding by; she could remember exactly how he looked and how his hair was parted and the long confident grip of his hand when they said goodby. She'd been a little nervous at first, but they'd been like old friends right from the beginning and held been so cour-teous and gentlemanly. He'd been her first pickup. When she walked in on Dad and the boys at breakfast a sunny winter morning two days later, my, weren't they surprised; Dad tried to scold her, but Daughter could see that he was as pleased as she was. Anyway, she didn't care, it was so good to be home.
After Christmas she and Dad and the boys went for a week's hunting down near Corpus Christi and had the time of their lives and Daughter shot her first deer. When they got back to Dal as Daughter said she wasn't going back to be finished but that what she would like to do was go up to New York to stay with Ada Washburn, who was study-ing at Columbia, and to take courses where she'd real y learn something. Ada was Joe Washburn's sister, an old maid but bright as a dol ar and was working for her Ph.D
in Education. It took a lot of arguing because Dad had set his heart on having Daughter go to a finishing school but she final y convinced him and was off again to New York. She was reading Les Misérables al the way up on the train and looking out at the greyishbrownish winter land-scape that didn't seem to have any life to it after she left the broad hil s of Texas, pale green with winter wheat and alfalfa, feeling more and more excited and scared as hour by hour she got nearer New York. There was a stout
-261-motherly woman who'd lost her husband who got on the train at Little Rock and wouldn't stop talking about the dangers and pitfal s that beset a young woman's path in big cities. She kept such a strict watch on Daughter that she never got a chance to talk to the interesting looking young man with the intense black eyes who boarded the train at St. Louis and kept going over papers of some kind he had in a brown briefcase. She thought he looked a little like Joe Washburn. At last when they were crossing New Jersey and there got to be more and more factories and grimy industrial towns, Daughter's heart got to beating so fast she couldn't sit stil but kept having to go out and stamp around in the cold raw air of the vestibule. The fat greyheaded conductor asked her with a teasing laugh if her beau was going to be down at the station to meet her, she seemed so anxious to get in. They were going through Newark then. Only one more stop. The sky was lead color over wet streets ful of automobiles and a drizzly rain was pitting the patches of snow with grey. The train began to cross wide desolate saltmarshes, here and there broken by an uneven group of factory structures or a black river with steamboats on it. There didn't seem to be any people; it looked so cold over those marshes Daughter felt scared and lonely just looking at them and wished she was home. Then suddenly the train was in a tunnel, and the porter was piling al the bags in the front end of the car. She got into the fur coat Dad had bought her as a Christmas pres-ent and pul ed her gloves on over her hands cold with excitement for fear that maybe Ada Washburn hadn't got-ten her telegram or hadn't been able to come down to meet her. But there she was on the platform in noseglasses and raincoat looking as oldmaidish as ever and a slightly younger girl with her who turned out to be from Waco and studying art. They had a long ride in a taxi up crowded streets ful of slush with yel ow and grey snowpiles along