LENINE REPORTED ALIVE 5 страница

out of the quiet streets of Weehawken incredible
slanting viaducts lead up into the fog

EVELINE HUTCHINS

She felt half crazy until she got on the train to go back
east. Mother and Dad didn't want her to go, but she
showed them a telegram she'd wired Eleanor to send her
offering her a high salary in her decorating business. She
said it was an opening that wouldn't come again and she
had to take it, and anyway, as George was coming home
for a vacation, they wouldn't be entirely alone. The night
she left she lay awake in her lower berth tremendously
happy in the roar of the air and the swift pound of the
wheels on the rails. But after St. Louis she began to worry:
she'd decided she was pregnant.

She was terribly frightened. The Grand Central Station

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seemed so immense, so full of blank faces staring at her
as she passed following the redcap who carried her bag.
She was afraid she'd faint before she got to the taxicab.
All 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 tall windows, the place
had a warm restaurant smell; she began to feel better. She
went to the phone and called Eleanor. A French maid
answered that Mademoiselle was still asleep, but that
she would tell her who had called as soon as she woke
up. Then she called 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 all. He almost had a backer for the Maya ballet
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 fallen
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 carefully done and she had on a pink satin dressing
gown with lace and ermine on it. They had coffee with her
and hot rolls that the Martinique maid had baked herself.
Eleanor was delighted to see Eveline and said how well
she looked and was full of mysteries about her business
and everything. She said she was on the edge of becoming

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a theatrical producer and spoke about "my financial ad-
viser" this and that, until Eveline didn't know what to
think; still it was evident that things were going pretty
well 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 well, as, when they got on the sub-
ject of the war they quarrelled 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 full
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
all 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'll get her over that."

Don Stevens came from South Dakota and had worked
on small 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

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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 all 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."

Giovanni and Eveline listened holding their breath,
Giovanni occasionally looking nervously around the room
to see if any of the customers at the other tables looked
like detectives. "God damn it, Giovanni, let's have an-
other bottle of wine," Don would cry out in the middle of
a long analysis of Kuhn, Loeb and Company's foreign
holdings. Then suddenly he'd turn to Eveline filling up
her glass, "Where have you been all these years? I've
so needed a lovely girl like you. Let's have a splendid time
tonight, may be the last good meal we ever get, we may
be in jail or shot against a wall a month from now, isn't
that so, Giovanni?"

Giovanni forgot to wait on his other tables and was
bawled out by the proprietor. Eveline kept laughing.
When Don asked her why, she said she didn't know ex-
cept that he was so funny.

"But it really is Armageddon, God damn it." Then he
shook his head: "What's the use, there never was a
woman living who could understand political ideas."

"Of course I can . . . I think it's terrible. I don't know
what to do."

"I don't know what to do," he said savagely, "I don't
know whether to fight the war and go to jail, or to get a
job as a war correspondent and see the goddam mess. If

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you could rely on anybody to back you up it ud be another
thing . . . Oh, hell, let's get out of here."

He charged the cheque, and asked Eveline to lend him
half a dollar to leave for Giovanni, said he didn't have a
cent in his jeans. She found herself drinking a last glass
of wine with him in a chilly littered room up three flights
of dirty wooden stairs in Patchin Place. He began to make
love to her and when she objected that she'd just known
him for seven hours he said that was another stupid bour-
geois idea she ought to get rid of. When she asked him
about birthcontrol, he sat down beside her and talked for
half an hour about what a great woman Margaret Sanger
was and how birthcontrol was the greatest single blessing
to mankind since the invention of fire. When he started to
make love to her again in a businesslike way she laughing
and blushing let him take off her clothes. It was three
o'clock when feeling weak and guilty and bedraggled she
got back to her room at the Brevoort. She took a huge
dose of castor oil and went to bed where she lay awake
till daylight wondering what she could say to Freddy.
She'd had a date to meet him at eleven for a bite of supper
after his rehearsal. Her fear of being pregnant had dis-
appeared, like waking up from a nightmare.

That spring was full of plans for shows and decorating
houses with Eleanor and Freddy, but nothing came of
them, and after a while Eveline couldn't keep her mind on
New York, what with war declared, and the streets filling
with flags and uniforms, and everybody going patriotic
crazy around her and seeing spies and pacifists under
every bed. Eleanor was getting herself a job in the Red
Cross. Don Stevens had signed up with the Friends'
Relief. Freddy announced a new decision every day, but
finally said he wouldn't decide what to do till he was called
for the draft. Adelaide's husband had a job in Washington
in the new Shipping Board. Dad was writing her every
few days that Wilson was the greatest president since

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Lincoln. Some days she felt that she must be losing her
mind, people around her seemed so cracked. When she
began talking about it to Eleanor, Eleanor smiled in a
superior way and said she'd already asked to have her
as assistant in her office in Paris.

"Your office in Paris, darling?" Eleanor nodded. "I
don't care what kind of work it is, I'll do it gladly," said
Eveline. Eleanor sailed one Saturday on the Rochambeau,
and two weeks later Eveline herself sailed on the Touraine.

It was a hazy summer evening. She'd been almost rude
cutting short the goodbys of Margaret and Adelaide and
Margaret's husband Bill who was a Major by this time and
teaching sharpshooting out on Long Island, she was so
anxious to cut loose from this America she felt was just
too tiresome. The boat was two hours late in sailing. The
band kept playing Tipperary and Auprès de ma Blonde
and La Madelon. There were a great many young men
around in various uniforms, all rather drunk. The little
French sailors with their red pompons and baby faces
yelled back and forth in rolling twangy bordelais. Eveline
walked up and down the deck until her feet were tired.
It seemed as if the boat would never sail. And Freddy,
who had turned up late, kept waving to her from the
dock and she was afraid Don Stevens would come and she
was sick of all her life in these last years.

She went down to her cabin and started reading Bar-
busse's Le Feu that Don had sent her. She fell asleep,
and when the greyhaired skinny woman who was her
cabinmate woke her up bustling around, the first thing
she felt was the trembling pound of the ship's engines.
"Well, you missed dinner," said the greyhaired woman.

Her name was Miss Eliza Felton and she was an
illustrator of children's books. She was going to France
to drive a truck. At first Eveline thought she was just too
tiresome, but as the warm quiet days of the crossing wore
on she got to like her. Miss Felton had a great crush on

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Eveline and was a nuisance, but she was fond of wine and
knew a great deal about France, where she'd lived for
many years. In fact she'd studied painting at Fontaine-
bleau in the old days of the impressionists. She was bitter
against the Huns on account of Rheims and Louvain and
the poor little Belgian babies with their hands cut off, but
she didn't have much use for any male government, called
Wilson a coward, Clemenceau a bully and Lloyd George a
sneak. She laughed at the precautions against submarine
attack and said she knew the French line was perfectly safe
because all the German spies travelled by it. When they
landed in Bordeaux she was a great help to Eveline.

They stayed over a day to see the town instead of going
up to Paris with all the other Red Cross people and Re-
lief workers. The rows of grey eighteenth century houses
were too lovely in the endless rosy summer twilight, and
the flowers for sale and the polite people in the shops and
the delicate patterns of the ironwork, and the fine dinner
they had at the Chapon Fin.

The only trouble with going around with Eliza Felton
was that she kept all the men away. They went up to Paris
on the day train next day and Eveline could hardly keep
from tears at the beauty of the country and the houses
and the vines and the tall ranks of poplars. There were
little soldiers in pale blue at every station and the elderly
and deferential conductor looked like a collegeprofessor.
When the train finally slid smoothly through the tunnel
and into the Orleans station her throat was so tight she
could hardly speak. It was as if she'd never been to Paris
before.

"Now where are you going, dear? You see we have to
carry our own traps," said Eliza Felton in a businesslike
way.

"Well, I suppose I should go to the Red Cross and
report."

"Too late for tonight, I can tell you that."

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"Well, I might try to call up Eleanor."

"Might as well try to wake the dead as try to use the
Paris telephone in wartime . . . what you'd better do,
dear, is come with me to a little hotel I know on the Quai
and sign up with the Red Cross in the morning; that's
what I'm going to do."

"I'd hate to get sent back home."

"They won't know you're here for weeks. . . . I know
those dumbbells."

So Eveline waited with their traps while Eliza Felton
fetched a little truck. They piled their bags on it and
rolled them out of the station and through the empty
streets in the last faint mauve of twilight to the hotel.
There were very few lights and they were blue and
hooded with tin hats so that they couldn't be seen from
above. The Seine, the old bridges, and the long bulk of
the Louvre opposite looked faint and unreal; it was like
walking through a Whistler.

"We must hurry and get something to eat before every-
thing closes up. . . . I'll take you to Adrienne's," said
Miss Felton.

They left their bags to be taken up to their rooms at
the hôtel du Quai Voltaire and walked fast through a lot
of narrow crisscross fastdarkening streets. They ducked
into the door of the little restaurant just as some one was
starting to pull the heavy iron shutter down. "Tiens, c'est
Mademoiselle Elise," cried a woman's voice from the back
of the heavily upholstered little room. A short French-
woman with a very large head and very large popeyes ran
forward and hugged Miss Felton and kissed her a number
of times. "This is Miss Hutchins," said Miss Felton in
her dry voice. "Verry plised . . . she is so prretty . . .
beautiful eyes, hem?" It made Eveline uncomfortable the
way the woman looked at her, the way her big powdered
face was set like an egg in a cup in the frilly highnecked
blouse. She brought out some soup and cold veal and

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bread, with many apologies on account of not having butter
or sugar, complaining in a singsong voice about how severe
the police were and how the profiteers were hoarding food
and how bad the military situation was. Then she suddenly
stopped talking; all their eyes lit at the same moment on
the sign on the wall:

MEFIEZ VOUS LES OREILLES ENEMIES
VOUS ECOUTENT

"Enfin c'est la guerre," Adrienne said. She was sitting
beside Miss Felton, patting Miss Felton's thin hand with
her pudgy hand all covered with paste rings. She had
made them coffee. They were drinking little glasses of
Cointreau. She leaned over and patted Eveline on the
neck. "Faut pas s'en faire, hein?" Then she threw back
her head and let out a shrill hysterical laugh. She kept
pouring out more little glasses of Cointreau and Miss
Felton seemed to be getting a little tipsy. Adrienne kept
patting her hand. Eveline felt her own head swimming
in the stuffy dark closedup little room. She got to her feet
and said she was going back to the hotel, that she had a
headache and was sleepy. They tried to coax her to stay
but she ducked out under the shutter.

Half the street outside was lit up by moonlight, the
other half was in pitchblack shadow. All at once Eveline
remembered that she didn't know the way back to the
hotel, still she couldn't go into that restaurant again and
that woman gave her the horrors, so she walked along fast,
keeping in the moonlight, scared of the silence and the few
shadowy people and the old gaunt houses with their wide
inky doorways. She came out on a boulevard at last where
there were men and women strolling, voices and an occa-
sional automobile with blue lights running silently over
the asphalt. Suddenly the nightmare scream of a siren
started up in the distance, then another and another. Some-
where lost in the sky was a faint humming like a bee,

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louder then fainter, then louder again. Eveline looked at
the people around her. Nobody seemed alarmed or to
hurry their strolling pace.

"Les avions . . . les boches . . . "she heard people
saying in unstartled tones. She found herself standing at
the curb staring up into the milky sky that was fast be-
coming rayed with searchlights. Next to her was a fatherly-
looking French officer with all kinds of lace on his kepi
and drooping moustaches. The sky overhead began to
sparkle like with mica; it was beautiful and far away like
fireworks seen across the lake on the Fourth. Involuntarily
she said aloud, "What's that?" "C'est le shrapnel,
mademoiselle. It is ourr ahnt-aircrahft cannons," he said
carefully in English, and then gave her his arm and
offered to take her home. She noticed that he smelt rather
strongly of cognac but he was very nice and paternal in
his manner and made funny gestures of things coming
down on their heads and said they must get under cover.
She said please to go to the hôtel du Quai Voltaire as she'd
lost her way.

"Ah charmant, charmant," said the elderly French
officer. While they had stood there talking everybody else
on the street had melted out of sight. Guns were barking
in every direction now. They were going down through the
narrow streets again, keeping close to the wall. Once he
pulled her suddenly into a doorway and something landed
whang on the pavement opposite. "It is the fragments of
shrapnel, not good," he said, tapping himself on the top
of the kepi. He laughed and Eveline laughed and they
got along famously. They had come out on the riverbank.
It seemed safe for some reason under the thickfoliaged
trees. From the door of the hotel he suddenly pointed into
the sky, "Look, c'est les fokkers, ils s'en fichent de nous."
As he spoke the Boche planes wheeled overhead so that
their wings caught the moonlight. For a second they were
like seven tiny silver dragonflies, then they'd vanished.

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At the same moment came the rending snort of a bomb
from somewhere across the river. "Permettez, mademoi-
selle." They went into the pitchblack hall of the hotel
and felt their way down into the cellar. As he handed
Eveline down the last step of the dusty wooden stairs the
officer gravely saluted the mixed group of people in bath-
robes or overcoats over their nightclothes who were
grouped around a couple of candles. There was a waiter
there and the officer tried to order a drink, but the waiter
said, "Ah, mon colonel, s'est defendu," and the colonel
made a wry face. Eveline sat up on a sort of table. She
was so excited looking at the people and listening to the
distant snort of the bombs that she hardly noticed that
colonel was squeezing her knee a little more than was
necessary. The colonel's hands became a problem. When
the airraid was over something went by on the street mak-
ing a funny seesaw noise between the quacking of a duck
and a burro's bray. It struck Eveline so funny she laughed
and laughed so that the colonel didn't seem to know what
to make of her. When she tried to say goodnight to him to
go up to her room and get some sleep, he wanted to go up
too. She didn't know what to do. He'd been so nice and
polite she didn't want to be rude to him, but she couldn't
seem to make him understand that she wanted to go to
bed and to sleep; he'd answer that so did he. When she
tried to explain that she had a friend with her, he asked
if the friend was as charming as mademoiselle, in that case
he'd be delighted. Eveline's French broke down entirely.
She wished to heavens Miss Felton would turn up, she
couldn't make the concièrge understand that she wanted
the key to her room and that mon colonel wasn't coming
up and was ready to break down and cry when a young
American in civilian clothes with a red face and a turned-
up nose appeared from somewhere out of the shadows and
said with a flourish in very bad French, "Monsieur, moi
frère de madmosel, can't you see that the little girl is

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fatiguee and wants to say bon-soir?" He linked his arm in
the colonel's and said, "Vive la France. . . . Come up to
my room and have a drink." The colonel drew himself up
and looked very angry. Without waiting to see what hap-
pened Eveline ran up the stairs to her room, rushed in and
doublelocked the door.

NEWSREEL XXIV

it is difficult to realize the colossal scale upon which Eu-
rope will have to borrow in order to make good the destruc-
tion of war

BAGS 28 HUNS SINGLEHANDED

Peace Talk Beginning To Have Its Effect On Southern
Iron Market

LOCAL BOY CAPTURES OFFICER

ONE THIRD WAR ALLOTMENTS FRAUDULENT

There are smiles that make us happy
There are smiles that make us blue

again let us examine into the matter of rates; let it be
assumed that the United States is operating fleets aggregating
3000 freight and passenger vessels between U.S. and foreign
ports

GANG LEADER SLAIN IN STREET

There are smiles that wipe away the teardrops
Like the sunbeams dry away the dew
There are smiles that have a tender meaning
That the eyes of love alone can see.

SOLDIER VOTE CARRIED ELECTION

suppose now that into this delicate medium of economic
law there is thrust the controlling factor of an owner of a

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third of the world's tonnage, who regards with equanimity
both profit and loss, who does not count as a factor in the cost
of operation the interest on capital investment, who builds
vessels whether they, may be profitably operated or not and
who charges rates commensurate in no certain measure with
the laws of supply and demand; how long would it be before
the ocean transport of the whole world had broken down
completely?

CROWN PRINCE ON THE RUN

But the smiles that fill my heart with sunshine
Are
the
smiles
you
give
to
me
persistent talk of peace is an unsettling factor and the
epidemic of influenza has deterred country buyers from visiting
the larger centers

THE CAMERA EYE (32)

à quatorze heures precisement the Boche diurnally
shelled that bridge with their wellknown precision as to
time and place à quatorze heures precisement Dick Nor-
ton with his monocle in his eye lined up his section at a
little distance from the bridge to turn it over to the Amer-
ican Red Cross

the Red Cross majors looked pudgy and white under
their new uniforms in their shined Sam Browne belts in

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their shined tight leather puttees so this was overseas
so this was the front well well

Dick Norton adjusted his monocle and began to talk
about how as gentlemen volunteers he had signed us up
and as gentlemen volunteers he bade us farewell Wham
the first arrivé the smell of almonds the sunday feeling of
no traffic on the road not a poilu in sight Dick Norton
adjusted his monocle the Red Cross majors felt the
showering mud sniffed the lyddite swift whiff of
latrines and of huddled troops

Wham Wham Wham like the Fourth of July the
shellfragments sing our ears ring

the bridge is standing and Dick Norton adjusting his
monocle is standing talking at length about gentlemen
volunteers and ambulance service and la belle France

The empty staffcar is standing

but where are the majors taking over command

who were to make a speech in the name of the Red
Cross? The slowest and pudgiest and whitest of the
majors is still to be seen on his hands and knees with mud
all over his puttees crawling into the abris and that's the
last we saw of the Red Cross Majors

and the last we heard of gentlemen

or volunteers

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