Eveline was thrilled to death but they got Eric Egstrom to come along too, on account of Frenchmen having such a bad reputation. The Frenchman was very late and they began to be afraid he wasn’t coming or that they’d missed him in the crowd but at last Eleanor saw him coming up the big staircase. His name was Maurice Millet — no, no relation of the painter’s — and he shocked them all very much by refusing to look at any paintings in the Art Institute and saying that he thought it ought to be burned down and used a lot of words like cubism and futurism that Eleanor had never heard before. But she could see at once that he had made a great hit with Eveline and Eric; in fact, they hung on his every word and all through tea neither of them paid any attention to Eleanor. Eveline invited Maurice to the house and they all went to supper to Drexel Boulevard where Maurice was very polite to Dr. and Mrs. Hutchins, and on to the Shusters afterwards. They left the Shusters together and Maurice said that the Shusters were impossible and had very bad paintings on their walls, “Tout ça c’est affreusement pompier,” he said. Eleanor was puzzled but Eveline and Eric said that they understood perfectly that he meant they knew as little about art as a firemen’s convention, and they laughed a great deal.
The next time she saw Eveline, Eveline confessed that she was madly in love with Maurice and they both cried a good deal and decided that after all their beautiful friendship could stand even that. It was up in Eveline’s room at Drexel Boulevard. On the mantel was a portrait Eveline was trying to do of him in pastels from memory. They sat side by side on the bed, very close, with their arms round each other and talked solemnly about each other and Eleanor told about how she felt about men; Eveline didn’t feel quite that way but nothing could ever break up their beautiful friendship and they’d always tell each other everything.
About that time Eric Egstrom got a job in the interior decorating department at Marshall Field’s that paid him fifty a week. He got a fine studio with a northlight in an alley off North Clark Street and Maurice went to live with him there. The girls were there a great deal and they had many friends in and tea in glasses Russian style and sometimes a little Virginia Dare wine, so they didn’t have to go to the Shusters any more. Eleanor was always trying to get in a word alone with Eveline; and the fact that Maurice didn’t like Eveline the way Eveline liked him made Eveline very unhappy, but Maurice and Eric seemed to be thoroughly happy. They slept in the same bed and were always together. Eleanor used to wonder about them sometimes but it was so nice to know boys who weren’t horrid about women. They all went to the opera together and to concerts and art exhibitions — it was Eveline or Eric who usually bought the tickets and paid when they ate in restaurants — and Eleanor had a better time those few months than she’d ever had in her life before. She never went out to Pullman any more and she and Eveline talked about getting a studio together when the Hutchinses came back from their trip abroad. The thought that every day brought June nearer and that then she would lose Eveline and have to face the horrid gritty dusty sweaty Chicago Summer alone made Eleanor a little miserable sometimes, but Eric was trying to get her a job in his department at Marshall Field’s, and she and Eveline were following a course of lectures on interior decorating at the University evenings, and that gave her something to look forward to.
Maurice painted the loveliest pictures in pale buffs and violets of longfaced boys with big luminous eyes and long lashes, and longfaced girls that looked like boys, and Russian wolfhounds with big luminous eyes, and always in the back there were a few girders or a white skyscraper and a big puff of white clouds and Eveline and Eleanor thought it was such a shame that he had to go on teaching at the Berlitz School.
The day before Eveline sailed for Europe they had a little party at Egstrom’s place. Maurice’s pictures were around the walls and they were all glad and sorry and excited and tittered a great deal. Then Egstrom came in with the news that he had told his boss about Eleanor and how she knew French and had studied art and was so goodlooking and everything and Mr. Spotmann had said to bring her around at noon tomorrow, and that the job, if she could hold it down, would pay at least twentyfive a week. There had been an old lady in to see Maurice’s paintings and she was thinking of buying one; they all felt very gay and drank quite a lot of wine, so that in the end when it was time for goodbyes it was Eveline who felt lonesome at going away from them all, instead of Eleanor feeling lonesome at being left behind as she had expected.
When Eleanor walked back along the platform from seeing the Hutchinses all off for New York the next evening, and their bags all labelled for the steamship Baltic and their eyes all bright with the excitement of going East and going abroad and the smell of coalsmoke and the clang of engine bells and scurry of feet, she walked with her fists clenched and her sharppointed nails dug into the palms of her hands, saying to herself over and over again: “I’ll be going, too; it’s only a question of time; I’ll be going, too.”
The Camera Eye (18)
she was a very fashionable lady and adored bullterriers and had a gentleman friend who was famous for his resemblance to King Edward
she was a very fashionable lady and there were white lilies in the hall No my dear I can’t bear the scent of them in the room and the bullterriers bit the tradespeople and the little newsy No my dear they never bit nice people and they’re quite topping with Billy and his friends
we all went coaching in a fourinhand and the man in the back blew a long horn and that’s where Dick Whittington stood with his cat and the bells there were hampers full of luncheon and she had gray eyes and was very kind to her friend’s little boy though she loathed simply loathed most children and her gentleman friend who was famous for his resemblance to King Edward couldn’t bear them or the bullterriers and she kept asking Why do you call him that?
and you thought of Dick Whittington and the big bells of Bow, three times Lord Mayor of London and looked into her gray eyes and said Maybe because I called him that the first time I saw him and I didn’t like her and I didn’t like the bullterriers and I didn’t like the fourinhand but I wished Dick Whittington three times Lord Mayor of London boomed the big bells of Bow and I wished Dick Whittington I wished I was home but I hadn’t any home and the man in the back blew a long horn
Eleanor Stoddard
Working at Marshall Field’s was very different from working at Mrs. Lang’s. At Mrs. Lang’s she had only one boss but in the big store she seemed to have everybody in the department over her. Still she was so refined and cold and had such a bright definite little way of talking that although people didn’t like her much, she got along well. Even Mrs. Potter and Mr. Spotmann, the department heads, were a little afraid of her. News got around that she was a society girl and didn’t really have to earn a living at all. She was very sympathetic with the customers about their problems of homemaking and had a little humble-condescending way with Mrs. Potter and admired her clothes, so that at the end of a month Mrs. Potter said to Mr. Spotmann, “I think we have quite a find in the Stoddard girl,” and Mr. Spotmann without opening his white trap of an old woman’s mouth said, “I’ve thought so all along.”