Eva turned sharply and encountered her own saleswoman returning hat-laden."Not today," she gasped."I'm feeling ill.Suddenly." And almost ran from the room.
That evening she told Stell, relating her news in that telephone pidgin English devised by every family of married sisters as protection against the neighbors.Translated, it ran thus:
"He looked straight at me.My dear, I thought I'd die! But at least he had sense enough not to speak.She was one of those limp, willowy creatures with the greediest eyes that she tried to keep softened to a baby stare, and couldn't, she was so crazy to get her hands on those hats.I saw it all in one awful minute.You know the way I do.I suppose some people would call her pretty.I don't.And her color.Well! And the most expensive- looking hats.Not one of them under seventy-five.Isn't it disgusting! At his age! Suppose Ethel had been with me!"The next time it was Stell who saw them.In a restaurant.She said it spoiled her evening.And the third time it was Ethel.She was one of the guests at a theater party given by Nicky Overton II.The North Shore Overtons.Lake Forest.They came in late, and occupied the entire third row at the opening performance of Believe Me! And Ethel was Nicky's partner.She was glowing like a rose.When the lights went up after the first act Ethel saw that her uncle Jo was seated just ahead of her with what she afterward described as a blonde.Then her uncle had turned around, and seeing her, had been surprised into a smile that spread genially all over his plump and rubicund face.Then he had turned to face forward again, quickly.
"Who's the old bird?" Nicky had asked.Ethel had pretended not to hear, so he had asked again.
"My uncle," Ethel answered, and flushed all over her delicate face, and down to her throat.Nicky had looked at the blonde, and his eyebrows had gone up ever so slightly.
It spoiled Ethel's evening.More than that, as she told her mother of it later, weeping, she declared it had spoiled her life.
Eva talked it over with her husband in that intimate hour that precedes bedtime.She gesticulated heatedly with her hairbrush.
"It's disgusting, that's what it is.Perfectly disgusting.There's no fool like an old fool.Imagine! A creature like that.At his time of life.""Well, I don't know," Ben said, and even grinned a little."I suppose a boy's got to sow his wild oats sometime.""Don't be any more vulgar than you can help," Eva retorted."And I think you know, as well as I, what it means to have that Overton boy interested in Ethel.""If he's interested in her," Ben blundered, "I guess the fact that Ethel's uncle went to the theater with someone who isn't Ethel's aunt won't cause a shudder to run up and down his frail young frame, will it?""All right," Eva had retorted."If you're not man enough to stop it, I'll have to, that's all.I'm going up there with Stell this week."They did not notify Jo of their coming.Eva telephoned his apartment when she knew he would be out, and asked his man if he expected his master home to dinner that evening.The man had said yes.Eva arranged to meet Stell in town.They would drive to Jo's apartment together, and wait for him there.
When she reached the city Eva found turmoil there.The first of the American troops to be sent to France were leaving.Michigan Boulevard was a billowing, surging mass: flags, pennants, banners, crowds.All the elements that make for demonstration.And over the whole-quiet.No holiday crowd, this.A solid, determined mass of people waiting patient hours to see the khaki-clads go by.Three years had brought them to a clear knowledge of what these boys were going to.
"Isn't it dreadful!" Stell gasped.
"Nicky Overton's too young, thank goodness."Their car was caught in the jam.When they moved at all, it was by inches.When at last they reached Jo's apartment they were flushed, nervous, apprehensive.But he had not yet come in.So they waited.
No, they were not staying to dinner with their brother, they told the relieved houseman.
Stell and Eva, sunk in rose-colored cushions, viewed the place with disgust and some mirth.They rather avoided each other's eyes.
"Carrie ought to be here," Eva said.They both smiled at the thought of the austere Carrie in the midst of those rosy cushions, and hangings, and lamps.Stell rose and began to walk about restlessly.She picked upa vase and laid it down; straightened a picture.Eva got up, too, and wandered into the hall.She stood there a moment, listening.Then she turned and passed into Jo's bedroom, Stell following.And there you knew Jo for what he was.
This room was as bare as the other had been ornate.It was Jo, the clean-minded and simplehearted, in revolt against the cloying luxury with which he had surrounded himself.The bedroom, of all rooms in any house, reflects the personality of its occupant.True, the actual furniture was paneled, cupid-surmounted, and ridiculous.It had been the fruit of Jo's first orgy of the senses.But now it stood out in that stark little room with an air as incongruous and ashamed as that of a pink tarlatan danseuse who finds herself in a monk's cell.None of those wall pictures with which bachelor bedrooms are reputed to be hung.No satin slippers.No scented notes.Two plain-backed military brushes on the chiffonier (and he so nearly hairless!).A little orderly stack of books on the table near the bed.Eva fingered their titles and gave a little gasp.One of them was on gardening.
