“Well, go out and read a book and I’ll get up…. Did you notice if the old woman across the way had coffee out?”
“Yare, she did,” called Paul from the salon to which he’d retreated when Eveline stuck her toes out from under the bedclothes. “Shall I go out and bring some in?”
“That’s a darling, do…. I’ve got brioches and butter here… take that enamelled milkcan out of the kitchen.”
Eveline looked at herself in the mirror before she started dressing. She had shadows under her eyes and faint beginnings of crowsfeet. Chillier than the damp Paris room came the thought of growing old. It was so horribly actual that she suddenly burst into tears. An old hag’s tearsmeared face looked at her bitterly out of the mirror. She pressed the palms of her hands hard over her eyes. “Oh, I lead such a silly life,” she whispered aloud.
Paul was back. She could hear him moving around awkwardly in the salon. “I forgot to tell you… Don says Anatole France is going to march with the mutilays ofla guerre…. I’ve got the cafay o lay whenever you’re ready.”
“Just a minute,” she called from the basin where she was splashing cold water on her face. “How old are you, Paul?” she asked him when she came out of her bedroom all dressed, smiling, feeling that she was looking her best.
“Free, white and twenty one… we’d better drink up this coffee before it gets cold.” “You don’t look as old as that.” “Oh, I’m old enough to know better,” said Paul, getting very red in the face. “I’m five years older than that,” said Eveline. “Oh, how I hate growing old.” “Five years don’t mean anything,” stammered Paul.
He was so nervous he spilt a lot of coffee over his trouserleg. “Oh, hell, that’s a dumb thing to do,” he growled. “I’ll get it out in a second,” said Eveline, running for a towel.
She made him sit in a chair and kneeled down in front of him and scrubbed at the inside of his thigh with the towel. Paul sat there stiff, red as a beet, with his lips pressed together. He jumped to his feet before she’d finished. “Well, let’s go out and see what’s happening. I wish I knew more about what it’s all about.”
“Well, you might at least say thank you,” said Eveline, looking up at him.
“Thanks, gosh, it’s awful nice of you, Eveline.”
Outside it was like Sunday. A few stores were open on the side streets but they had their iron shutters halfway down. It was a grey day; they walked up the Boulevard St. Germain, passing many people out strolling in their best clothes. It wasn’t until a squadron of the Guarde Republicaine clattered past them in their shiny helmets and their tricolor plumes that they had any inkling of tenseness in the air.
Over on the other side of the Seine there were more people and little groups of gendarmes standing around.
At the crossing of several streets they saw a cluster of old men in workclothes with a red flag and a sign, L’UNION DES TRAVAILLEURS FERA LA PAIX DU MONDE. A cordon of republican guards rode down on them with their sabres drawn, the sun flashing on their helmets. The old men ran or flattened themselves in doorways.
On the Grands Boulevards there were companies of poilus in tin hats and grimy blue uniforms standing round their stacked rifles. The crowds on the streets cheered them as they surged past, everything seemed goodnatured and jolly. Eveline and Paul began to get tired; they’d been walking all morning. They began to wonder where they’d get any lunch. Then too it was starting to rain.
Passing the Bourse they met Don Stevens, who had just come out of the telegraph office. He was sore and tired. He’d been up since five o’clock. “If they’re going to have a riot why the hell can’t they have it in time to make the cables… Well, I saw Anatole France dispersed on the Place d’Alma. Ought to be a story in that except for all this damned censorship. Things are pretty serious in Germany… I think something’s going to happen there.”
“Will anything happen here in Paris, Don?” asked Paul.
“Damned if I know… some kids busted up those gratings around the trees and threw them at the cops on the avenue Magenta…. Burnham in there says there are barricades at the end of the place de la Bastille, but I’m damned if I’m going over till I get something to eat… I don’t believe it anyway… I’m about foundered. What are you two bourgeois doing out a day like this?”
“Hey, fellowworker, don’t shoot,” said Paul, throwing up his hands. “Wait till we get something to eat,” Eveline laughed. She thought how much better she liked Paul than she liked Don.
They walked around a lot of back streets in the drizzling rain and at last found a little restaurant from which came voices and a smell of food. They ducked in under the iron shutter of the door. It was dark and crowded with taxidrivers and workingmen. They squeezed into the end of a marble table where two old men were playing chess. Eveline’s leg was pressed against Paul’s. She didn’t move; then he began to get red and moved his chair a little. “Excuse me,” he said.
They all ate liver and onions and Don got to talking with the old men in his fluent bad French. They said the youngsters weren’t good for anything nowadays, in the old days when they descended into the street they tore up the pavings and grabbed the cops by the legs and pulled them off their horses. Today was supposed to be a general strike and what had they done?… nothing… a few urchins had thrown some stones and one café window had been broken. It wasn’t like that that liberty defended itself and the dignity of labor. The old men went back to their chess. Don set them up to a bottle of wine.
Eveline was sitting back halflistening, wondering if she’d go around to see J.W. in the afternoon. She hadn’t seen him or Eleanor since that Sunday morning; she didn’t care anyway. She wondered if Paul would marry her, how it would be to have a lot of little babies that would have the same young coltish fuzzy look he had. She liked it in this little dark restaurant that smelt of food and wine and caporal ordinaire, sitting back and letting Don lay down the law to Paul about the revolution. “When I get back home I guess I’ll bum around the country a little, get a job as a harvest hand and stuff like that and find out about those things,” Paul said finally. “Now I don’t know a darn thing, just what I hear people say.”
After they had eaten they were sitting over some glasses of wine, when they heard an American voice. Two M.P.’s had come in and were having a drink at the zinc bar. “Don’t talk English,” whispered Paul. They sat there stiffly trying to look as French as possible until the two khaki uniforms disappeared, then Paul said, “Whee, I was scared… they’d picked me up sure as hell if they’d found me without my uniform…. Then it’d have been the Roo Saint Anne and goodby Paree.” “Why, you poor kid, they’d have shot you at sunrise,” said Eveline. “You go right home and change your clothes at once… I’m going to the Red Cross for a while anyway.”
Don walked over to the rue de Rivoli with her. Paul shot off down another street to go to his room and get his uniform. “I think Paul Johnson’s an awfully nice boy, where did you collect him, Don?” Eveline said in a casual tone. “He’s kinder simple… unlicked cub kind of a kid… I guess he’s all right… I got to know him when the transport section he was in was billeted near us up in the Marne… Then he got this cush job in the Post Despatch Service and now he’s studying at the Sorbonne…. By God, he needs it… no social ideas… Paul still thinks it was the stork.”
“He must come from near where you came from… back home, I mean.”
“Yare, his dad owns a grain elevator in some little tank town or other… petit bourgeois… bum environment… He’s not a bad kid in spite of it… Damn shame he hasn’t read Marx, something to stiffen his ideas up.” Don made a funny face. “That goes with you too, Eveline, but I gave you up as hopeless long ago. Ornamental but not useful.” They’d stopped and were talking on the streetcorner under the arcade. “Oh, Don, I think your ideas are just too tiresome,” she began. He interrupted, “Well, solong, here comes a bus… I oughtn’t to ride on a scab bus but it’s too damn far to walk all the way to the Bastille.” He gave her a kiss. “Don’t be sore at me.” Eveline waved her hand, “Have a good time in Vienna, Don.” He jumped on the platform of the bus as it rumbled past. The last Eveline saw the woman conductor was trying to push him off because the bus was complet.