THE MAN IN THE BROOKS SHIRT
343
her gestures grew over-feminine and demonstrative; the lift of her eye–
brows was a shade too arch: like a passee belle, she was overplaying her–
aelf.
I must let go, she told herself; the train is pulling out; if I hang on,
I'll
be dragged along at its wheels.. She made him take her home early.
A little later she received a duck he had shot in Virginia. She did
not know how to cook it and it stayed in her icebox so long that the
neighbors complained of the smell.
When she got a letter from him that had been dictated to his stenog–
rapher, she knew that his splurge was over. After that, she saw him once
-for cocktails. He ordered double martinis and got a little drunk. Then
his
friendliness revived briefly, and he begged her with tears in his eyes
to "forget all this red nonsense and remember that you're just your
father's little girl at heart." Walking hoii).e alone, trying to decide whether
to
eat
in
a tea room or cook herself a chop, she felt flat and sad, but in
the end she was glad that she had never told him of her broken
engagement.
When her father died, the man must have read the account in the
papers, for she got a telegram that read: SINCEREST CONDOLENCES
YOU
HAVE LOST THE BEST FRIEND YOU WILL EVER HAVE. She
did
not file it away with the other messages, but tore it up carefully and
threw it in the wastebasket. It would have been dreadful if anyone had
aeen
it.
CONTRIBUTORS
RENE ETIEMBLE, author of a biography of Rimbaud and contributor
to
La
Nouvelle Revue Fram;aise
and other literary magazines, has
been in this country for several years. He has been teaching at the
University of Chicago.... W. H. AuDEN, the British poet, is now
living in Brooklyn, N. Y.... MARY McCARTHY, formerly an editor
of PARTISAN REVIEW, is bringing out a book of fiction next winter.
"The Man in the Brooks Brothers Shirt'' is a section from it. . . .
PAUL MATTICK is an editor of
Living Marxism.
He lives in Chicago.
. . . WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS, whose poetry is familiar to our
readers, lives in Rutherford, N.
J.,
where he has practiced medicine
for many years...• MARIANNE MooRE is bringing out a new book
of poems this fall.... GEORGE ORWELL is a British critic and novel–
ist who fought in the Republican Army in Spain and whose book of
essays,
Inside the Whale,
was recently published by New Directions.
