Part 14

“Excuse me,” said Oliver, and he walked over to the table and poured himself what he thought as he looked at it was very like the father and mother of all drinks.

“You might--do something like that for me--” said Mrs. Severance helplessly. “If you did--I think--I might be able to think--oh, _well_!”

“Well,” repeated Oliver like a toast as he tipped the bottle and the drink which he poured for Mrs. Severance was so like unto his drink that it would have taken a fine millimeter-gauge to measure the difference between them.

Mrs. Severance went back to her chair and Oliver sank into the chair that had been previously occupied by Mr. Piper. As he stretched back luxuriously something small and hard and bulging made him aware of itself in his pocket. “Oh Lord, I forgot I still had that gun of Mr. Piper's!” said Oliver inconsequentially.

“Have you?” said Mrs. Severance. The fact did not seem to strike her as being of any particular importance. They both drank long and frankly and thirstily, as if they were drinking well-water after having just come in from a hot mountain trail. And again, and for a considerable time, neither spoke.

“I suppose,” said Mrs. Severance finally, with a blur of delicate scorn, “I suppose our friend Mr. Billett--got away safely?”

Her words brought up a picture of Ted to Oliver,--Ted netted like a fish out there on the fire-escape, swaddled up like a great papoose in all the towels and dish-cloths Oliver had been able to find. The release was too sudden, too great--the laughter came--the extreme laughter--the laughter like a giant. He swayed in his chair, choking and beating his knees and making strange lion-like sounds.

“Ted,” he gasped. “Ted! Oh, no, Mrs. Severance, Ted didn't get away! He didn't get away at all--Ted didn't! He didn't because you see he _couldn't_. He's out on the fire-escape now--oh, wait till you see him, oh Ted, oh Glory, oh what a night, what a night, what a night!”

XLII

It took a good deal of explaining, however, to make Ted understand. He was still tightly bound, though very angrily conscious when they found him and his language when Oliver removed the improvised gag was at first of such an army variety that Oliver wondered doubtfully if he hadn't better replace it until he got Ted alone. Also Oliver was forced to curse himself rather admiringly for the large number of unnecessary knots he had used, when he started to unravel his captive.

When they finally got him completely untangled Ted's first remarks were hardly those of gratitude. He declared sulkily that his head felt as if it were going to split open, that he must have a bump on the back of it as big as a squash and that it wasn't Oliver's fault if he hadn't caught pneumonia out on that fire-escape--the air, believe him, was _cold_!

Mrs. Severance, however, and as usual, rose to the occasion and produced a bottle of witch-hazel from the bathroom with which she insisted on bathing the bump till Ted remarked disgruntledly that he smelt like a hospital. Oliver watched the domestic scene with frantic laughter tearing at his vitals--this was so entirely different and unromantic an end to the evening from that from which Oliver had set out to rescue Ted like a spectacled Mr. Grundy and which Ted in his gust of madness had so bitterly and grandiosely planned.

Then they moved back into the living-room and the story was related consecutively, by Oliver with fanciful adornments, by Mrs. Severance with a chill self-satisfaction that Oliver noticed with pleasure was like touching icicles to Ted. Ted gave his version--which only amounted to waking up on the fire-escape, trying to shout and succeeding merely in getting mouthfuls of towels--Oliver preened himself a little there--and lying there stoically and getting more and more furious until he was rescued. And while he told it he kept looking everywhere in the room but at Rose. And then Oliver remembered Mr. Piper and looked at his watch--11.04. He rose and gazed at Mrs. Severance.

“Well,” he said, and then caught her eye. It was chilly, doubtless, and even by Oliver's unconventional standards he could not think of her as anything but a highly dangerous and disreputable woman--but that eye was alive with an irony and humor that seemed to him for a moment more perfect than those in any person he had ever seen. “_Must_ you go?” she said sweetly. “It's been _such_ an interesting party--so _original_,” she hesitated. “Isn't that the word? Of course,” she shrugged, “I can see that you're simply dying to get away and yet you can hardly complain that I haven't been an entertaining hostess, can you?”

“Hardly,” said Oliver meekly, and Ted said nothing--he merely looked down as if his eyes were augers and his only concern in life was screwing them into the floor.

“_Must_ you go?” she repeated with merciless mocking. “When it _has_ been fun--and I don't suppose we'll ever see each other again in all our lives? For I can hardly come out to Melgrove now, can I, Oliver? And after you've had a quiet brotherly talk with her, I suppose I'll even have to give up lunching with Louise. And as for Ted--poor Ted--poor Mr. Billett with all his decorations of the Roller Towel, First Class--Mr. Billett must be a child that has been far too well burnt this evening, not, in any imaginable future to dread the fire?”

Both flushed, Ted deeper perhaps than Oliver, but neither answered. There really did not seem to be anything for them to say. She moved gently toward the door--the ideal hostess. And as she moved she talked and every word she said was a light little feathered barb that fell on them softly as snowflakes and stuck like tar.

“I hope you won't mind if I send you wedding presents--both of you--oh, of course I'll be quite anonymous but it will be such a pleasure--if you'll both of you only marry nice homey girls!” Ted started at this as if he had been walking barefoot and had stepped on a wasp and she caught him instantly.

“Dear, dear, so Mr. Billett has serious intentions also--and I thought a little while ago that I was really in Mr. Billett's confidence--it only shows how little one can tell. As for Oliver, he of course is blighted--at present--but I'm sure that that will not last very long--one always finds most adequate consolation sooner or later though possibly not in the way in which one originally supposed.” She sighed elfinly as Oliver muttered under his breath.

“What was that, Oliver? Oh, no, I am not at all the sort of person that writes anonymous letters to one's wife--or family--or sister,” a spaced little pause between each noun. “And besides it wouldn't be much use in me, would it? for of course you young gentlemen will tell the young ladies you marry _everything_ about yourselves--all honorable young people do. And then too,” she spread out her hands, “to be frank. We've all been so beautifully frank about ourselves tonight--that's one thing I _have_ liked so much about the evening--well, it would hardly be worth my while to take lessons in blackmailing from Elizabeth if the only subjects on which I could apply them were two impecunious young men. And, oh, I realize most perfectly--and please don't misunderstand me!--that we're all of us thieves together so to speak and only getting along on each other's sufferance. But then, if one of us ever starts telling, even a little, he or she can hardly do so in any way that will redound to anything but his or her discredit and social obliteration--how nicely I've put that!--so I don't think any of us will be very anxious to tell.

“_Good_-by, Mr. Billett--and when you do marry, please send me an invitation--oh I shan't come, I've been far too well brought-up--but I must send--appreciations--and so must have the address. We have had a pleasant acquaintanceship together, haven't we?--perhaps a little more pleasant on my side than on yours--but even so it's _so_ nice to think that nothing has ever happened that either of us could really regret.

“Just remember that the only person I could incriminate you to would be Mr. Piper, and not even there very much, due to Sargent's melodramatic appearance in the middle of dinner. But I shan't even there--it would mean incriminating myself a little too much too, don't you know? and even if the apartment here does get a trifle lonely one evening and another, I have got to be extraordinarily fond of it and I couldn't have nearly as nice a one--or as competent an Elizabeth--on what they pay me on 'Mode.' So I'll keep it, I think, if you don't mind.

“But that may make you a little more comfortable when you think things over--and I'm sure we all deserve to be very comfortable indeed for quite a long while after the very trying time we've just been through.

“_Good_-by, and I assure you that even if I shall never be able to think of you in the future except as all wrapped up in the middle of those absurd towels, I shall think of you quite kindly though rather ridiculously nevertheless. And now if you will just run away a minute and wait down in that car of Sargent's that Oliver--borrowed--so effectively--because I must have one motherly word with Oliver alone before we part forever! Thank you so _much_! _Good_-by!”

XLIII

So Oliver was left alone with her, he didn't know why. He noticed, however, that when she came to talk to him, though it was still with lightness, she was at no particular effort any longer to make the lightness anything but a method of dealing with wounds.

“Mr. Billett does not seem quite to appreciate exactly how much your timely pugilistics did for him,” she observed. “Or exactly how they might have affected you.”

Oliver set his jaw, rather. He was hardly going to discuss what Ted might or might not owe him with Mrs. Severance. Hardly.

“No, I suppose you wouldn't,” she said uncannily. Then she spoke again and this time if the tone was airy it was with the airiness of a defeated swordsman apologizing for having been killed by such a clumsy stroke of fence.

“But I have some--comprehension--of just what you did. And besides--I seem to have a queer foible for telling the truth just now. Odd, isn't it, when I've been lying so successfully all evening?”

“Very successfully,” said Oliver, and, to his astonishment, saw her wince.

“Yes--well. Well, I don't know quite why I'm keeping you here--though there was something I wanted to say to you, I believe--in a most serious and grandmotherly manner too--the way of a grown woman as Sargent would put it--poor Sargent--” She laughed.

“Oh yes, I remember now. It was only that I don't think you need--worry--about Mr. Billett any more. You see?”

“I think so,” said Oliver with some incomprehension.

“Seeing him done up that way in towels,” she mused with a flicker of mirth. “And the way he looked at me when I was telling about things afterwards--oh it wouldn't do, you know, Oliver, it wouldn't do! Your friend is--essentially--a--highly--Puritan--young man,” she added slowly. Oliver started--that was one of the things so few people knew about Ted.

“Oh yes--wholly. Even in the way he'd go to the devil. He'd do it with such a religious conviction--take it so _hard_. It would eat him up. Completely. And it isn't--amusing--to go to the devil with anybody whose diabolism would be so efficiently pious--a reversed kind of Presbyterianism. We wouldn't do that, you know--you or myself,” and for an instant as she spoke Oliver felt what he characterized as a most damnable feeling of kinship with her.

It was true. Oliver had been struck with that during his army experiences--things somehow had never seemed to stick to him the way they had seemed to with Ted.

“Which is one reason that I feel so sure Mr. Billett will get on very well with Sargent's daughter--if his Puritan principles don't make him feel too much as if he were linking her for life to a lost soul,” went on Mrs. Severance.

“_Wha-a-at!_”

“My dear Oliver, whatever my failings may be, I have some penetration. Mr. Billett was garrulous at times, I fear--young men are so apt to be with older women. Oh _no_--he was beautifully sure that he was not betraying himself--the dear ostrich. And that letter--really that was clumsy of both of you, Oliver--when I could see the handwriting--all modern and well-bred girls seem to write the same curly kind of hand somehow--and then Sargent's address in embossed blue letters on the back. And I _couldn't_ have suspected him of carrying on an intrigue with Mrs. Piper!” and Oliver was forced to smile at her tinkle of laughter. Then she grew a little earnest.

“I don't suppose it was--Mr. Billett--I wanted so--exactly,” she mused. “It was more--Mr. Billett's age--Mr. Billett's undeniable freshness--if you see. I'm not quite a Kipling vampire--no--a vampire that wants to crunch the bones--or do vampires crunch bones? I believe they only act like babies with bottles--nasty of them, isn't it?--But one gets to a definite age--and Sargent's a dear but he has all the defects of a husband--and things begin slipping away, slipping away--”

She made a motion of sifting between her hands, letting fall light grains of a precious substance that the hands were no longer young enough to keep.

“And life goes so queerly and keeps moving on like a tramp in front of a policeman till you've started being gray and taking off your corset every time you're alone because you like being comfortable better than having a waist-line--and you've never had anything to settle you,” her face twitched, “not children--nor even the security of marriage--nothing but work that only interests part of you--and this--”

She spread her hands at the apartment.

“Well--what a lot of nonsense I'm talking--and keeping Mr. Billett out in the car when he's sure he has pneumonia already--how unkind of me. You must think me a very immoral old woman, don't you, Oliver?”

“I think you're very sporting,” said Oliver, truthfully.

“Not very. If I really _wanted_ Mr. Billett, you see.” Her eyes sparkled. “I'm afraid you wouldn't think me sporting at all--in that case. But then I don't think you'd have been able to--save--anybody I really wanted as you did Mr. Billett.” She spoke slowly. “Even with that very capable looking right hand. But in case you're still worried--”

“I'm not, really.”

She paid no attention.

“In case you're still worried--what I told Mr. Billett was true. In the first place, Sargent would never believe me, anyway. In the second place it would mean breaking with Sargent--and do you know I'm rather fond of Sargent in my own way?--and a thing like that--well, you saw how he was tonight--it would mean more things like revolvers and I _hate_ revolvers. And hurting Sargent--and ruining Mr. Billett who is a genuinely nice boy and can't help being a Puritan, though I never shall forget the way he looked in those towels. Still, I'm rather fond of him too--oh, I'm perfectly unashamed about it, it's quite in an aunty way now and he'll never see me again if he can help it.

“And making Sargent's daughter--who must be charming from what I hear of her--but charming or not, she happens to be a woman and I have a feeling that, being a woman, life will hurt her quite sufficiently without my adding my wholly vicarious share. Oh, I'm perfectly harmless now, Oliver,” she made a pretty gesture with her hands. “You and Sargent and the fire-escape between you have drawn my fangs.”

“I can't exactly--thank you,” said Oliver, “but I do repeat--you're sporting.”

“Never repeat a compliment to a woman over twenty and seldom then.” She looked at him reflectively. “The same woman, that is. There is such a great deal I could teach you though, really,” she said. “You're much more teachable than Mr. Billett, for instance,” and Oliver felt a little shudder of terror go through him for a moment at the way she said it. But she laughed again.

“I shouldn't worry. And besides, you're blighted, aren't you?--and they're unteachable till they recover. Well.

“Oh, yes, there was something else I meant to be serious about. Sargent said something about our--disappearing, and all that. Well, Sargent has always been enamored of puttering around a garden somewhere in an alias and old trousers with me to make him lemonade when he gets overheated--and so far I've humored him--but I've really never thought very much of the idea. That would be--for me--a particularly stupid way of going to seed.” She was wholly in earnest now. “And I haven't the slightest intention of going to seed with Sargent or anybody else for a very long time yet. If it ever comes definitely to that I shall break with Sargent; you can depend on my selfishness--arrogance--anything you like for that. Quite depend.

“Tonight,” she hesitated. “Tonight has really made a good many things--clear to me. Things that were moving around in my mind, though I didn't know quite what to call them. For one thing, it has made me--realize,” her eyes darkened, “that my time for really being--a woman--not in the copybook sense--is diminishing. Getting short. Oh, you and Mr. Billett will have to reconcile your knowledge of Sargent's and my situation with whatever moral ideas you may happen to have on fathers-in-law and friends' fathers for some time yet--I'm sure I don't know how you're going to do it, especially Mr. Billett, and I can't honestly say that I particularly care. But that will not be--permanent, I imagine. You understand?” She put her hand on the door-knob to imply that the audience was over.

“I shall miss Louise, though,” she said, frankly.

“Louise will miss you.” Oliver saw no need for being politic now. He added hesitatingly, “After all--”

“Oh, no. No,” she said lightly but very firmly. “I couldn't very well, now, could I?” and Oliver, in spite of all the broadmindedness upon which he prided himself, was left rather dumb.

“Oh, it won't be--difficult,” she added. “We can keep up--in the office--yes?”

“Yes,” said Oliver hastily. He might be signing a compact with all the powers of darkness, but even so.

“For the rest, I am--used to things like that,” she added, and once again her face grew suddenly bright with pain. Then she recovered herself.

“Well--our next merry meeting and so forth,” she said airily. “Because when it happens, if it does, I may be so stodgily respectable you'll be very glad to ask me to dinner, you know. Or I may be--completely disreputable--one never knows. But in any case,” and she gave her hand.

“Mr. Billett must be freezing to death in that car,” she murmured. “Good-by, Oliver, and my best if wholly unrespectable good wishes.” “Thanks and--good luck to you.”

She turned on him swiftly.

“Oh, no. All the happiness in the world and _no_ luck---that's better, isn't it? _Good_-by.”

“Good-by.”

And then Oliver was out in the hall, pressing the button that would summon a sleepy, disgruntled elevator-boy to take him down to Ted and the car. He decided as he waited that few conversations he had ever had made him feel quite so inescapably, irritatingly young; that he saw to the last inch of exactitude just why Mr. Piper completely and Ted very nearly had fallen in love with Mrs. Severance; that she was one of the most remarkable individuals he had ever met; and that he hoped from the bottom of his heart he never, never saw her again.

XLIV

Ted and he had little conversation going back in the car. The most important part of it occurred when they had left New York behind and were rushing along cool moon-strewn roads to Southampton. Then--

“Thanks,” said Ted suddenly and fervently and did not seem to be able to say anything more.

The events of the evening had come too close, at moments, to grotesque tragedy for Oliver to pretend to misunderstand him.

“Oh, that's all right. And anyhow I owed you one for that time with the gendarmes in Brest.”

“Maybe,” but Ted didn't seem to be convinced. “That was jocose though. Even at the worst.” The words came with effort. “This was--serious. I owe you about everything, I guess.”

“Oh, go take a flying leap at a galloping goose!”

“Go do it yourself. Oh, Oliver, you ass, I _will_ be pretty and polite about your saving my life.” And both laughed and felt easier. “Saved a good deal more than that as a matter of fact--or what counts for more with me,” Ted added soberly. “Then the letter I brought _was_ satisfactory?”

“Satisfactory? Gee!” said Ted intensely, and again they fell silent.

Some miles later Oliver added casually

“You won't have any trouble with our late hostess, by the way. Though she knows all about it.”

“She knows?”

Oliver couldn't resist.

“And quite approves. But she's--a sport.” Then for Ted's sake, “Besides, you see, it would crab her game completely.”

“I'll tell Elinor, though,” said Ted, stubbornly.

“About her father? You can't.”

“Oh, Lord, no. About myself. Don't have to give names and addresses.”

“Afterwards.”

“Well, yes--afterwards. Though it makes me feel like a swine.”

“Nobody our age who hasn't been one or felt like one--some of the time--except Christers and the dead,” said Oliver, and they proceeded for several minutes on the profundity of that aphorism. The silence was broken by Ted's saying violently,

“I _will_ marry her! I don't give a damn what's happened.”

“Good egg. Of course you will.” Oliver chuckled.

Ted turned to him anxiously after another silence.

“Look Ollie, that bump on my head--you've seen the size it is. Well, is it going to just show up like _thunder_ at this silly dance?”

XLV

Half-past five in the morning and Oliver undressing wearily by the light of a pale pink dawn.

Now and then he looks at his bed with a gloating expression that almost reaches the proportions of a lust--he is so tired he can hardly get off his clothes. The affairs of the last twenty-four hours mix in his mind like a jumble of colored postcards, all loose and disconnected and brightly unreal. Ted--Elinor--Mrs. Severance--Mr. Piper--the dance he has just left--sleep--oh--sleep!

Where is Ted? Somewhere with Elinor of course--it doesn't matter--both were looking suspiciously starry when he last saw them across the room--engagements--marriages--sleep--Mr. Piper's revolver--sleep. How will he return Mr. Piper's revolver? Can't do it tactfully--can't leave it around to be lost, the servants are too efficient--send it to Ted and Elinor as a wedding present--no, that's not tactful either--what silly thoughts--might have been dead by this time--rather better, being alive--and in bed--and asleep--and asleep. Oh, _bed!_ and he falls into it as if he were diving into butter and though he murmurs “Nancy” once to himself before his head sinks into pillows, in two seconds he is drugged with such utter slumber that it is only the blind stupefied face of a man under ether that he is able to lift from his haven when Ted comes in half an hour later and announces, in the voice of one proclaiming a new revelation, that Elinor is the finest person that ever lived and that everything is most wholly and completely all right.

XLVI

“A letter for you, dear Nancy.”

Mrs. Winters gestures at it refinedly--she never points--as Nancy comes in to breakfast looking as if whatever sleep she had had not done her very much good.

“From your dear, dear mother, I should imagine,” she adds in sugared watery tones.