Part 15

Nancy opens it without much interest--Mother, oh, yes, Mother. Six crossed pages of St. Louis gossip and wanderingly fluent advice. She sets herself to read it, though, dutifully enough--she is under Mrs. Winters' eyes.

Father's usual September cold. The evil ways of friends' servants. Good wishes to Mrs. Winters. “Heart's Gold--such a really _inspiring_ moving-picture.” Advice. Advice. Then, half-way down the next to last page Nancy stops puzzledly. She doesn't quite understand.

“And hope, my daughter, that now you are really cured though you may have passed through bitter waters but all such things are but God's divine will to chasten us. And when the young man told me of his _escapade_ I felt that even over the telephone he might have”

She sets herself wearily to decode some sort of definite meaning out of Mother's elliptic style. An escapade. Of Oliver? and over the telephone--what was that? Mother hadn't said anything--

She finishes the letter and then rereads all the parts of it that seem to have any bearing on the cryptogram, and finally near the end, and evidently connected with the “telephone,” she comes upon the phrase “that day.”

There is only one day that Mother alludes to as “That Day” now. Before her broken engagement “That Day” was when Father failed.

But Oliver _hadn't_ telephoned--she'd asked Mother _particularly_ if he had, and he hadn't. But surely if he had telephoned, surely, surely, Mother would have told her about it--Mother would have known that there were a few things where she really hadn't any right to interfere.

Mother had never liked Oliver, though she'd pretended. Never.

Nancy remembers back and with fatally clear vision. It is fortunate that Mrs. Ellicott cannot turn over with Nancy that little shelf-full of memories--all the small places where she was not quite truthful with Nancy, where she was not quite fair, where she “kept things from her”--Mrs. Ellicott has always been the kind of woman who believes in “keeping things from” people as long as possible and then “breaking them gently.” Almost any sort of things.

It is still more fortunate that Mrs. Ellicott cannot see Nancy's eyes as she reviews all the tiny deceptions, all the petty affairs about which she was never told or trusted--and all for her own best interests, my dear, Mrs. Ellicott would most believingly assure her--but when parents stand so much in Loco Dei to nearly all children--and when the children have long ago found out that their God is not only a jealous God but one that must be wheedled and propitiated like an early Jehovah because that is the only thing to be done with Gods you can't trust--

Nancy doesn't _want_ to believe. She keeps telling herself that she won't, she absolutely won't unless she absolutely has to. But she is lucky or unlucky enough to be a person of some intuition--she knows Oliver, and, also, she knows her mother--though now she is beginning to think with an empty feeling that she really doesn't know the latter at all.

What facts there are are rather like Mrs. Ellicott's handwriting--vague and crossed and illegibly hard to read. But Nancy stares at them all the time that she is eating her breakfast and responding mechanically to Mrs. Winters' questions. And then, suddenly, she _knows_.

Mrs. Ellicott like many inexperienced criminals, has committed the deadly error of letting her mind dwell too long on the _mise-en-scene_ of her crime. And her pen--that tell-tale pen that all her life she has taken a delight almost sensual in letting run on from unwieldy sentence to pious formless sentence, has at last betrayed her completely. There is genuine tragedy in store for Mrs. Ellicott--Nancy in spite of being modern, is Nancy and will forgive her--but Nancy, for all her trying, will never quite be able to respect her again.

Nancy doesn't finish her breakfast as neatly as Mrs. Winters would have wished. She goes into the next room to telephone.

“Business, dear?” says Mrs. Winters brightly from the midst of a last piece of toast and “Yes--something Mother wants me to do” from Nancy, unfairly.

Then she gives the number--it is still the same number she and Oliver used when they used to talk after he had caught the last train back to Melgrove and both by all principles that make for the Life Efficient should have gone to bed--though to Nancy's mind that seems a great while ago. “Can I speak to Mrs. Crowe, please?” The explaining can be as awful as it likes, Nancy doesn't care any more. An agitated rustle comes to her ears--that must be Mrs. Winters listening.

“Mrs. Crowe? This--is--Nancy--Ellicott.”

She says it very loudly and distinctly and for Mrs. Winters to hear.

XLVII

Oliver wakes around one o'clock with a dim consciousness that noisy crowds of people have been talking very loudly at him a good many too many times during the past few hours, but that he has managed to fool them, many or few, by always acting as much like a Body as possible. His chief wish is to turn over on the other side and sleep for another seven hours or so, but one of those people is standing respectfully beside his bed and though Oliver blinks eyes at him reproachfully, he will not vanish back into his proper nonentity--he remains standing there--obsequious words come out of his mouth.

“Ten minutes to one, sir. Lunch is at one, sir.”

Oliver stares at the blue waistcoat gloomily. “What's that?”

“Ten minutes to one, sir. Lunch is at one, sir.”

“Lunch?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then I'd better get up, I suppose. Ow-_ooh!_” as he stretches.

“Yes, sir. A bath, sir?” “Bath?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, yes, bath. No--don't bother--I mean, I'll take it myself. You needn't watch me.”

“Certainly _not_, sir. Thank you, sir. There have been several telephone calls for you, sir.”

Oliver sighs--he is really awake now--it will be less trouble to get up than to try and go back to sleep. Besides, if he tries, that brass-buttoned automaton in front of him will probably start shaking him gently in its well-trained English way.

“Telephone calls? Who telephone-called?”

“The name was Crowe, sir. The lady who was calling said she would call again around lunch time. She said you were to be sure to wait until she called, sir.”

“Oh, yes, certainly.” Politely, “And now I think I'll get up, if you don't mind?”

“Oh, no, sir,” rather scandalizedly. “You are in need of nothing, sir?”

Oliver thinks of replying, “Oh, just bring me a little more sleep if you have it in the house,” but then thinks better of it.

“No, thanks.”

“Very good, sir,” and the automaton pussyfoots away.

Oliver still half asleep manages to rise and find slippers and a wrapper and then pads over to an empty bathroom where he disports himself like a whale. To his surprise he discovers himself whistling--true, the sunlight has an excellent shine to it this morning and the air and the sky outside seem blue and crisp with first fall--but even so.

“Nancy,” he murmurs and frowns and finishes his bath rather gloomily--a gloom which is in no wise diminished when he goes downstairs to find everybody nearly through lunch and Ted and Elinor, as far away from each other at the table as possible, quite sure that they are behaving exactly as usual while the remnants of the house-party do their best to seem tactfully unconcerned.

Oliver, while managing to get through a copious and excellent lunch in spite of his sorrows, regards them with the morose pity of a dyspeptic octogenarian for healthy children. It is all very well and beautiful for them now, he supposes grimly, but sooner or later even such babes as they will have to Face Life--Come Up Against Facts--

He is having a second piece of blueberry pie when he is summoned to the telephone. Rather tiresome of Mother, really, he thinks as he goes out of the dining-room--something about his laundry again most probably--or when he is coming back.

“Hello, Oliver?” “Hello, dear. Anything important?”

Mrs. Crowe's voice has a tiny chuckle in it--a chuckle that only comes when Mrs. Crowe is being very pleased indeed.

“Well, Oliver, that depends--”

“Well, Mother, _honestly_! I'm right in the middle of lunch--”

“Oh, I'll call up again, if you'd rather, Oliver dear.” But Mrs. Crowe for private reasons doesn't seem to be at all ashamed of taking up so much of her son's very valuable time.

“Only I _did_ think it would interest you--that you'd like to know as soon as possible.”

Impatiently, “Yes. Well?”

“Well--a friend of yours is coming to see you on the three o'clock. A _rather_ good friend. We thought you'd be back by then, you see, and so--”

Oliver's heart jumps queerly for an instant.

“_Who_?”

But the imp of the perverse has taken complete charge of Mrs. Crowe.

“Oh--a friend. Not a childhood one--oh, no--but a--good--one, though you haven't seen each other for--more than three weeks now, isn't it? You should just be able to make it, I should think, if somebody brought you over in a car, but of course, if you're so busy--” “_Mother_!”

Then Oliver jangles the little hook of the telephone frantically up and down.

“Mother! Listen! Listen! Who is it? Is it--honestly?”

But Mrs. Crowe has hung up. Shall he get the connection again? But that means waiting--and Mother said he would just be able to make it--and Mother isn't at all the kind that would fool him over a thing like this no matter how much she wanted to tease. Oliver bounds back toward the dining-room and nearly runs into Elinor Piper. He grabs her by the shoulders.

“Listen, El!” he says feverishly. “Oh, I'll congratulate you properly and all that some time but this is utterly everything--I've got to go home right away--this minute--toot sweet--and no, by gum, I won't apologize _this_ time for asking you to get somebody to take me over in a car!”

XLVIII

She was sitting on the porch of the house--a small figure in the close blue hat he knew, a figure that seemed as if it had come tired from a long journey. She had been talking with his mother, but as soon as the car drew up, Mrs. Crowe rose quickly and went into the house.

Then they were together again.

The instant paid them for all. For the last weeks' bitterness and the human doubt, the human misunderstandings that had made it. And even as it opened before them a path some corners and resting-places of which seemed almost too proud with living for them to dare to be alive on it--both knew that that fidelity which is intense and of the soul had ended between them forever an emptier arrogance that both had once delighted in like bright colors--a brittle pride that lives only by the falser things in being young.

They had thought they were sure of each other in their first weeks together--they had said many words about it and some of them clever enough. But their surety now had no need of any words at all--it had been too well tempered by desolation to find any obligation for speech or the calling of itself secure.

They kissed--not as a pleasant gesture, and no fear of looking publicly ridiculous stopped them.

The screen door behind Nancy pushed open. Jane Ellen appeared, Jane Ellen, by the look of her, intent upon secret and doubtful business, a large moth-eaten bear dangling by its leg from one of her plump hands. She was too concerned with getting her charge through the door to notice what was happening at first but as soon as she was fairly out on the porch she looked about her. The bear dropped from her fingers--her eyes grew rounder than buttons and very large.

“Why it's Oliver and he's kissing Aunt _Nancy_!” she squeaked in a small voice of reproachful surprise.

XLIX

Whatever the number was of the second-class stateroom on the _Citric_, it was rather too far down in the belly of that leviathan to have suited fashionable people. But Oliver and Nancy had stopped being fashionable some time before and they told each other that it was _much_ nicer than first-class on one of the small liners with apparent conviction and never got tired of rejoicing at their luck in its being an outside. It was true that the port-hole might most of the time have been wholly ornamental for all the good it did them, for it was generally splashed with grey October sea, but, at least, as Nancy lucently explained, you could see things--once there had actually been a porpoise--and that neither of them, in their present condition, would have worried very much about it if their cabin had been an aquarium was a fact beyond dispute.

“Time to get up, dear!” This is Oliver a little sternly from the upper berth. “That was your bath that came in a minute ago and said something in Cockney. At least I _think_ it was--mine's voice is a good deal more like one of Peter's butlers--” “But, Ollie, I'm so _comfortable_!”

“So am I. But think of breakfast.”

“Well--breakfast is a point.” Then she chuckles, “Oh, Ollie, wouldn't it have been _awful_ if we'd either of us been bad sailors!”

“We couldn't have been,” says Oliver placidly. “We have too much luck.”

“I know but--that awful woman with the face like a green pea--oh, Ollie, you'd have hated me--we are lucky, darling.”

Oliver has thought seriously enough about getting up to be dangling his legs over the edge of his shelf by now.

“Aren't we?” he says soberly. “I mean I am.”

“_I_ am. And everybody's being so nice about giving us checks we can use instead of a lot of silly things we wouldn't know what to do with.” She smiles. “Those are your feet,” she announces gravely.

“Yes. Well?”

“Oh, nothing. Only I'm going to tickle them.”

“You're not? Ouch--Nancy, you _little devil_!” and Oliver slides hastily to the floor. Then he goes over to the port-hole.

“A very nice day!” he announces in the face of a bull's eye view of dull skies and oily dripping sea.

“Is it? How kind of it! Ollie, I must get up.” “Nancy, you must.” He goes over and kneels awkwardly by the side of her berth--an absurd figure enough no doubt in tortoise-shell spectacles and striped pajamas, but Nancy doesn't think so. As for him he simply knows he never will get used to having her with him this way all the time; he takes his breath delicately whenever he thinks of it, as if, if he weren't very careful always about being quiet she might disappear any instant like a fairy back into a book.

He kisses her.

“Good morning, Nancy.”

Her arms go round him.

“Good morning, dearest.”

“It isn't that I don't want to get up, really,” she explains presently. “It's only that I like lying here and thinking about all the things that are going to happen.”

“We are lucky, you know. Lordy bless the American Express.”

“And my job.” She smiles and he winces.

“Oh, Ollie, _dear_.”

“I was so damn silly,” says Oliver muffledly.

“Both of us. But now it doesn't matter. And we're both of us going to work and be very efficient at it--only now we'll have time and together and Paris to do all the things we really wanted to do. You _are_ going to be a great novelist, Oliver, you know--”

“Well, you're going to be the foremost etcher--or etcheress--since Whistler--there. But, oh, Nancy, I don't care if I write great novels--or any novels--or anything else--just now.”

She mocks him pleasantly. “Why, Ollie, Ollie, Your Art?”

“Oh, _damn_ my art--I mean--well, I don't quite mean that. But this is life.”

“Just as large and twice as natural,” says Nancy quoting, but for once Oliver is too interested with living to be literary.

“Life,” he says, with an odd shakiness, an odd triumph, “Life,” and his arms go round her shoulders.

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's Young People's Pride, by Stephen Vincent Benet