Eveline was getting to like to so much in Chicago, she was really disappointed when the time came to leave for the year’s trip abroad that Dr. Hutchins had been planning for his family for so many years. But New York and getting on the Baltic and making out the tags for their baggage and the funny smell of the staterooms made her forget all about that. They had a rough trip and the boat rolled a good deal, but they sat at the captain’s table and the captain was a jovial Englishman and kept their spirits up so that they hardly missed a meal. They landed in Liverpool with twentythree pieces of baggage but lost the shawlstrap that had the medicinechest in it on the way down to London and had to spend their first morning getting it from the Lost and Found Office at St. Pancras. In London it was very foggy. George and Eveline went to see the Elgin marbles and the Tower of London and ate their lunches in A B C restaurants and had a fine time riding in the tube. Dr. Hutchins only let them stay ten days in Paris and most of that time they were making side trips to see cathedrals. Notre Dame and Rheims and Beauvais and Chartres with their bright glass and their smell of incense in cold stone and the tall grey longfaced statues nearly made Eveline a Catholic. They had a first class compartment reserved all the way to Florence and a hamper with cold chicken in it and many bottles of Saint Galmier mineral water and they made tea on a little alcohol lamp.
That winter it rained a lot and the villa was chilly and the girls squabbled among themselves a good deal and Florence seemed to be full of nothing but old English ladies; still Eveline drew from life and read Gordon Craig. She didn’t know any young men and she hated the young Italians with names out of Dante that hung around Adelaide and Margaret under the delusion that they were rich heiresses. On the whole she was glad to go home with mother a little earlier than the others who were going to take a trip to Greece. They sailed from Antwerp on the Kroonland. Eveline thought it was the happiest moment of her life when she felt the deck tremble under her feet as the steamer left the dock and the long rumble of the whistle in her ears.
Her mother didn’t go down to the diningsaloon the first night out so that Eveline was a little embarrassed going in to table all alone and had sat down and started eating her soup before she noticed that the young man opposite her was an American and goodlooking. He had blue eyes and crisp untidy tow hair. It was too wonderful when he turned out to be from Chicago. His name was Dirk McArthur. He’d been studying a year at Munich, but said he was getting out before they threw him out. He and Eveline got to be friends right away; they owned the boat after that. It was a balmy crossing for April. They played shuffleboard and decktennis and spent a lot of time in the bow watching the sleek Atlantic waves curl and break under the lunge of the ship.
One moonlight night when the moon was plunging westward through scudding spindrift the way the Kroonland was plunging through the uneasy swell, they climbed up to the crowsnest. This was an adventure; Eveline didn’t want to show she was scared. There was no watch and they were alone a little giddy in the snug canvas socket that smelt a little of sailors’ pipes. When Dirk put his arm around her shoulders Eveline’s head began to reel. She oughtn’t to let him. “Gee, you’re a good sport, Eveline,” he said in a breathless voice. “I never knew a nice girl who was a good sport before.” Without quite meaning to she turned her face towards his. Their cheeks touched and his mouth slid around and kissed her hard on the mouth. She pushed him away with a jerk.
“Hey, you’re not trying to throw me overboard, are you?” he said, laughing. “Look, Eveline, won’t you give me a little tiny kiss to show there’s no hard feeling. There’s just you and me tonight on the whole broad Atlantic.”
She kissed him scaredly on the chin. “Say, Eveline, I like you so much. You’re the swellest girl.” She smiled at him and suddenly he was hugging her tight, his legs hard and strong against her legs, his hands spread over her back, his lips trying to open her lips. She got her mouth away from him. “No, no, please don’t,” she could hear her little creaky voice saying.
“All right, I’m sorry…. No more caveman stuff, honest injun, Eveline. But you mustn’t forget that you’re the most attractive girl on the boat…. I mean in the world, you know how a feller feels.”
He started down first. Letting herself down through the opening in the bottom of the crowsnest she began to get dizzy. She was falling. His arms tightened around her.
“That’s all right, girly, your foot slipped,” he said gruffly in her ear. “I’ve got you.”
Her head was swimming, she couldn’t seem to make her arms and legs work; she could hear her little moaning voice, “Don’t drop me, Dirk, don’t drop me.”
When they finally got down the ladder to the deck Dirk leaned against the mast and let out a long breath, “Whee… you certainly give me a scare, young lady.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “It was silly of me to suddenly get girlish like that…. I must have fainted for a minute.”
“Gosh, I oughtn’t to have taken you up there.”
“I’m glad you did,” Eveline said; then she found herself blushing and hurried off down the main deck to the first class entrance and the stateroom, where she had made up a story to explain to mother how she’d torn her stocking.
She couldn’t sleep that night but lay awake in her bunk listening to the distant rhythm of the engines and the creaking of the ship and the seethe of churned seas that came in through the open porthole. She could still feel the soft brush of his cheek and the sudden tightening muscles of his arms around her shoulder. She knew now she was terribly in love with Dirk and wished he’d propose to her. But next morning she was really flattered when Judge Ganch, a tall whitehaired lawyer from Salt Lake City with a young red face and a breezy manner sat on the end of her deckchair and talked to her by the hour about his early life in the west and his unhappy marriage and politics and Teddy Roosevelt and the progressive party. She’d rather have been with Dirk, but it made her feel pretty and excited to see Dirk walk past with his nose out of joint while she listened to Judge Ganch’s stories. She wished the trip would never end.
Back in Chicago she saw a lot of Dirk McArthur. He always kissed her when he brought her home and he held her very tight when he danced with her and sometimes used to hold her hand and tell her what a nice girl she was, but he never would say anything about getting married. Once she met Sally Emerson at a dance she’d gone to with Dirk she had to admit that she wasn’t doing any painting, and Sally Emerson looked so disappointed that Eveline felt quite ashamed and started talking fast about Gordon Craig and an exhibition of Matisse she’d seen in Paris. Sally Emerson was just leaving. A young man was waiting to dance with Eveline. Sally Emerson took her hand and said: “But, Eveline, you mustn’t forget that we have high hopes of you.” And while she was dancing everything that Sally Emerson stood for and how wonderful she used to think her came sweeping through Eveline’s head; but driving home with Dirk all these thoughts were dazzled out of her in the glare of his headlights, the strong leap forward of the car on the pickup, the purr of the motor, his arm around her, the great force pressing her against him when they went around curves.
It was a hot night, he drove west through endless identical suburbs out into the prairie. Eveline knew that they ought to go home, everybody was back from Europe now and they’d notice how late she got in, but she didn’t say anything. It was only when he stopped the car that she noticed that he was very drunk. He took out a flask and offered her a drink. She shook her head. They’d stopped in front of a white barn. In the reflection of the headlights his shirtfront and his face and his mussed up hair all looked chalky white. “You don’t love me, Dirk,” she said. “Sure I do, love you better’n anybody… except myself… that’s a trouble with me… love myself best.” She rubbed her knuckles through his hair, “You’re pretty silly, do you know it?” “Ouch,” he said. It was starting to rain so he turned the car around and made for Chicago.