U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [376]
She walked back and forth. He went on sitting there at the table she'd fixed so careful y with flowers and a white cloth, drinking little sips of wine and putting first a little butter on the corner of a cracker and then a piece of Roque-fort cheese and then biting it off and then another bit of butter and another piece of cheese, munching slowly al the time. She could feel his bulging eyes traveling over her body. "We're just laborfakers," she yel ed in his face, and ran into the bedroom.
He stood over her stil chewing on the cheese and
crackers as he nervously patted the back of her shoulder.
-146-"What a spiteful thing to say. . . . My child, you mustn't be so hysterical. . . . This isn't the first strike that's ever come out badly. . . . Even this time there's a gain. Fair-minded people al over the country have been horrified by the ruthless violence of the steelbarons. It wil influence legislation. . . . Sit up and have a glass of wine. . . . Now, Mary, why don't we get married? It's too sil y liv-ing like this. I have some smal investments. I saw a nice little house for sale in Georgetown just the other day. This is just the time now to buy a house when prices are dropping . . . personnel being cut out of al the depart-ments. . . . After al I've reached an age when I have a right to settle down and have a wife and kids. . . . I don't want to wait til it's too late." Mary sat up sniveling. "Oh, George, you've got plenty of time. . . . I don't know why I've got a horror of get-ting married. . . . Everything gives me the horrors to-night.""Poor little girl, it's probably the curse coming on," said George and kissed her on the forehead. After he'd gone home to his hotel she decided she'd go back to Colorado Springs to visit her mother for a while. Then she'd try to get some kind of newspaper job. Before she could get off for the West she found that a month had gone by. Fear of having a baby began to obsess her. She didn't want to tel George about it because she knew he'd insist on their getting married. She couldn't wait. She didn't know any doctor she could go to. Late one night she went into the kitchenette to stick her head in the oven and tried to turn on the gas, but it seemed so inconvenient somehow and her feet felt so cold on the linoleum that she went back to bed.
Next day she got a letter from Ada Cohn al about what a wonderful time Ada was having in New York where she had the loveliest apartment and was working so hard on her violin and hoped to give a concert in Carnegie Hal next season. Without finishing reading the letter Mary
-147-French started packing her things. She got to the station in time to get the ten o'clock to New York. From the station she sent George a wire: FRIEND SICK CALLED
TO NEW YORK
WRITING.
She'd wired Ada and Ada met her at the Pennsylvania station in New York looking very handsome and rich. In the taxicab Mary told her that she had to lend her the money to have an abortion. Ada had a crying fit and said of course she'd lend her the money but who on earth could she go to? Honestly she wouldn't dare ask Dr. Kirstein about it because he was such a friend of her father's and mother's that he'd be dreadful y upset. "I won't have a baby. I won't have a baby," Mary was muttering. Ada had a fine threeroom apartment in the back of a building on Madison Avenue with a light tancolored car-pet and a huge grandpiano and lots of plants in pots and flowers in vases. They ate their supper there and strode up and down the livingroom al evening trying to think. Ada sat at the piano and played Bach preludes to calm her nerves, she said, but she was so upset she couldn't fol ow her music. At last Mary wrote George a specialdelivery letter asking him what to do. Next evening she got a reply. George was brokenhearted, but he enclosed the address of a doctor. Mary gave the letter to Ada to read. "What a lovely letter. I don't blame him at al . He sounds like a fine sensitive beautiful nature.""I hate him," said Mary, driving her nails into the palms of her hands. "I hate him." Next morning she went down al alone to the doctor's and had the operation. After it she went home in a taxicab and Ada put her to bed. Ada got on her nerves terribly tiptoeing in and out of the bedroom with her face wrinkled up. After about a week Mary French got up. She seemed to be al right, and started to go around New York looking for a job.