“Johnny's strong for realism, aren't you, Johnny?”
“Well, yes, Ted, I am. I think 'Main Street' and 'Three Soldiers' are
two of the best things that ever happened to America. You can say it's
propaganda--maybe it is, but at any rate it's real. Honestly, I've
gotten so tired, we all have, of all this stuff about the small Middle
Western Town being the backbone of the country--”
“Backbone? Last vertebra!”
“As for 'Main Street,' it's--”
“It's the hardest book to read through without fallin' asleep where you
sit, though, that I've struck since the time I had to repeat Geology.”
Peter smiles. “But, there, Johnny, I guess I'm the bone-head part of the
readin' public--”
“That's why you're just the kind of person that ought to read books like
that, Peter. The reading public in general likes candy laxatives, I'll
admit--Old Nest stuff--but you--”
“'Nobody else will ever have to write the description of a small Middle
Western Town'” quotes Oliver, discontentedly. “Well, who ever wanted to
write the description of a small Middle Western Town?” and from Ricky
French, selecting his words like flowers for a _boutonniere_.
“The trouble with 'Main Street' is not that it isn't the truth but that
it isn't nearly the whole truth. Now Sherwood Anderson--”
“Tennyson. Who _was_ Tennyson? He died young.”
“Well, if _that_ is Clara Stratton's idea of how to play a woman who
did.”
The two sentences seem to come from no one and arrive nowhere. They are
batted out of the conversation like toy balloons.
“Bunny Andrews sailed for Paris Thursday,” says Ted Billett longingly.
“Two years at the Beaux Arts,” and for an instant the splintering of
lances stops, like the hush in a tournament when the marshal throws down
the warder, at the shine of that single word.
“All the same, New York is the best place to be right now if you're
going to do anything big,” says Johnny uncomfortably, too much as if he
felt he just had to believe in it, but the rest are silent, seeing the
Seine wind under its bridges, cool as satin, grey-blue with evening,
or the sawdust of a restaurant near the quais where one can eat
Rabelaisiantly for six francs with wine and talk about anything at all
without having to pose or explain or be defensive, or the chimneypots of
La Cité branch-black against winter sky that is pallor of crimson when
the smell of roast chestnuts drifts idly as a student along Boulevard
St. Germain, or none of these, or all, but for each one nostalgic aspect
of the city where good Americans go when they die and bad ones while
they live--to Montmartre.
“New York _is_ twice as romantic, really,” says Johnny firmly.
“If you can't get out of it,” adds Oliver with a twisted grin.
Ted Billett turns to Ricky French as if each had no other friend in the
world.
“You were over, weren't you?” he says, a little diffidently, but his
voice is that of Rachel weeping for her children.
“Well, there was a little café on the Rue Bonaparte--I suppose you
wouldn't know--”