U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [86]
-218-fal en for him even when she was a kid, he looked so middleaged and pasty and oldmaidish in his stained blue uniform. His large eyes with their girlish long lashes had heavy violet rings under them. Eleanor evidently thought he was wonderful stil , and drank up his talk about l'élan suprème du sacrifice and l'harmonie mysterieuse de la mort. He was a stretcherbearer in a basehospital at Nancy, had become very religious and had almost forgotten his English. When they asked him about his painting he shrugged his shoulders and wouldn't answer. At supper he ate very little and drank only water. He stayed til late in the evening tel ing them about miraculous conversions of unbelievers, extreme unction on the firing line, a vision of the young Christ he'd seen walking among the wounded in a dressingstation during a gasattack. Après la guerre he was going into a monastery. Trappist perhaps. After he left Eleanor said it had been the most inspiring evening she'd ever had in her life; Eveline didn't argue with her. Maurice came back one other afternoon before his perme expired bringing a young writer who was working at the Quai d'Orsay, a tal young Frenchman with pink cheeks who looked like an English publicschool boy, whose name was Raoul Lemonnier. He seemed to prefer to speak
English than French. He'd been at the front for two years in the Chasseurs Alpins and had been reformé on account of his lungs or his uncle who was a minister he couldn't say which. It was al very boring, he said. He thought tennis was ripping, though, and went out to St. Cloud to row every afternoon. Eleanor discovered that what she'd been wanting al fal had been a game of tennis. He said he liked English and American women because they liked sport. Here every woman thought you wanted to go to bed with her right away;
"Love is very boring," he said. He and Eveline stood in the window talking about cocktails (he adored American drinks) and looked out at the last purple shreds of dusk settling over Nôtre Dâme and
-219-the Seine, while Eleanor and Maurice sat in the dark in the little salon talking about St. Francis of Assisi. She asked him to dinner.
The next morning Eleanor said she thought she was
going to become a Catholic. On their way to the office she made Eveline stop into Nôtre Dâme with her to hear
mass and they both lit candles for Maurice's safety at the front before what Eveline thought was a just too tiresome-looking virgin near the main door. But it was impressive al the same, the priests moaning and the lights and the smel of chil ed incense. She certainly hoped poor Maurice wouldn't be kil ed.
For dinner that night Eveline invited Jerry Burnham, Miss Felton who was back from Amiens and Major
Appleton who was in Paris doing something about tanks. It was a fine dinner, duck roasted with oranges, although Jerry, who was sore about how much Eveline talked to Lemonnier, had to get drunk and use a lot of bad language and tel about the retreat at Caporetto and say that the Al ies were in a bad way. Major Appleton said he oughtn't to say it even if it was true and got quite red in the face. Eleanor was pretty indignant and said he ought to be arrested for making such a statement, and after everybody had left she and Eveline had quite a quarrel.
"What wil that young Frenchman be thinking of us?
You're a darling, Eveline dear, but you have the vulgarest friends. I don't know where you pick them up, and that Felton woman drank four cocktails, a quart of beaujolais and three cognacs, I kept tabs on her myself;" Eveline started to laugh and they both got to laughing. But Eleanor said that their life was getting much too bohe-mian and that it wasn't right with the war on and things going so dreadful y in Italy and Russia and the poor boys in the trenches and al that.
That winter Paris gradual y fil ed up with Americans in uniform, and staffcars, and groceries from the Red
-220-Cross supply store; and Major Moorehouse who, it turned out, was an old friend of Eleanor's, arrived straight from Washington to take charge of the Red Cross publicity. Everybody was talking about him before he came because he'd been one of the best known publicity experts in New York before the war. There was no one who hadn't heard of J. Ward Moorehouse. There was a lot of scurry around the office when word came around that he'd actual y landed in Brest and everybody was nervous worrying where the axe was going to fal .