U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [349]
"Wel , I don't exactly find the time hanging on my hands. . . but I'l stay and greet the happy pair. In the army I'd forgotten about work." He got to his feet and walked back into the room to light a cigarette.
"Wel , you needn't be so mournful about it."
"I don't see you dancing in the streets yourself."
"I think Eveline's made a very grave mistake. . .
-461-Americans are just too incredibly frivolous about marriage." Dick's throat got tight. He found himself noticing how stiffly he put the cigarette to his mouth, inhaled the smoke and blew it out. Eleanor's eyes were on his face, cool and searching. Dick didn't say anything, he tried to keep his face stiff.
"Were you in love with that poor girl, Richard?" Dick blushed and shook his head.
"Wel , you needn't pretend to be so hard about it. . . it's just young to pretend to be hard about things."
"Jilted by army officer, Texas bel e kil ed in plane wreck. . . but most of the correspondents know me and did their best to kil that story. . . . What did you expect me to do, jump into the grave like Hamlet? The Hon. Mr. Barrow did al of that that was necessary. It was a frightful y tough break. . ." He let himself drop into a chair. "I wish I was hard enough so that I didn't give a damn about anything. When history's walking on al our faces is no time for pretty sentiments." He made a funny face and started talking out of the corner of his mouth. "Al I ask sister is to see de woild with Uncle Woodrow. . . le beau monde sans blague tu sais." Eleanor was laughing her little shril laugh when they heard Eveline's and Paul Johnson's voices outside on the landing.
Eleanor had bought them a pair of little blue parakeets in a cage. They drank Montracher and ate roast duck cooked with oranges. In the middle of the meal Dick had to go up to the Cril on. It was a relief to be out in the air, sitting in an open taxi, running past the Louvre made enormous by the late twilight under which the Paris streets seemed empty and very long ago like the Roman forum. Al the way up past the Tuileries he played with an im-pulse to tel the taxidriver to take him to the opera, to the circus, to the fortifications, anywhere to hel and gone.
-462-He set his pokerface as he walked past the doorman at the Cril on. Miss Wil iams gave him a relieved smile when he
appeared in the door. "Oh, I was afraid you'd be late, Captain Savage." Dick shook his head and grinned. "Any-body come?" "Oh, they're coming in swarms. It'l make the front pages," she whispered. Then she had to answer the phone.
The big room was already fil ing up with newspaper
men. Jerry Burnham whispered as he shook hands, "Say, Dick, if it's a typewritten statement you won't leave the room alive.""Don't worry," said Dick with a grin. "Say, where's Robbins?""He's out of the picture," said Dick dryly, "I think he's in Nice drinking up the last of his liver."
J.W. had come in by the other door and was moving
around the room shaking hands with men he knew, being introduced to others. A young fel ow with untidy hair and his necktie crooked put a paper in Dick's hand. "Say, ask him if he'd answer some of these questions." "Is he going home to campaign for the League of Nations?" somebody asked in his other ear.
Everybody was settled in chairs; J.W. leaned over the back of his and said that this was going to be an informal chat, after al , he was an old newspaper man himself. There was a pause. Dick glanced around at J.W.'s pale slightly jowly face just in time to catch a flash of his blue eyes around the faces of the correspondents. An elderly man asked in a grave voice if Mr. Moorehouse cared to say anything about the differences of opinion between the President and Colonel House. Dick settled himself back to be bored. J.W. answered with a cool smile that they'd better ask Colonel House himself about that. When somebody spoke the word oil everybody sat up in their chairs. Yes, he could say definitely an accord, a working agree-ment had been reached between certain American oil
-463-producers and perhaps the Royal Dutch-Shel , oh, no, of course not to set prices but a proof of a new era of inter-national cooperation that was dawning in which great aggregations of capital would work together for peace and democracy, against reactionaries and militarists on the one hand and against the bloody forces of bolshevism on the other. And what about the League of Nations? "A new era," went on J.W. in a confidential tone, "is dawning." Chairs scraped and squeaked, pencils scratched on pads, everybody was very attentive. Everybody got it down that J.W. was sailing for New York on the Rochambeau in