Part 7

“I'd played a big game, you know. When my father died we hadn't much left but position--and that was going. I don't blame my father--he wasn't a business man--he should have been a literary critic--that little book of essays of his still sells, you know; not much but there's a demand for a dozen copies every year and that's a good deal for an American who's been dead for thirty. Well, that's where the children get their liking for things like that--I've got it too, a little--I could have done something there if I'd had time. But I never had time.

“I could have done it when I got out of Harvard--drifted along like half a dozen people I know, played at law, played at writing, played always and forever at being a gentleman--ended up as an officer of the Century Club with what little money I had in an annuity. But I couldn't stand the idea of just scraping along. And for nearly ten years I put those things aside.

“You know about my going West and the way I lived there. It wasn't easy when I'd been at Harvard and gone everywhere in New York and Boston--starting in so far below the bottom that you couldn't even see the bottom unless you squinted your eyes. But I never took a job with more money if I thought I could learn anything in a job with less--and every place I went I stayed until I could handle the job of the man two places ahead of me--and if I didn't get his job when I asked for it I went somewhere else. I don't think I read a book except a technical one for the first five years. And after that, when the chain-stores started going they asked me back to New York--a big offer too--but it wasn't the kind I wanted and I threw it down. I knew just how I wanted to come back to New York and that's the way I came.

“I don't suppose my morals were too edifying those years. But they were as good as the men I went with and I kept myself in hand. I saw men go to pieces with drink--and I didn't drink. I saw men go to pieces over women--and I kept away from that kind of woman. A man has to have women in his life no matter how much you talk about it--but I took the kind with the price-tag because when you paid them you were through. I could have married a dozen times if I'd wanted but I didn't want--that old hocus-pocus of tradition was still with me, stronger than death--I thought I knew the kind of wife I wanted and she was in the East.

“Then the partnership with Jessup came and I took it. And after a year I was made. I wasn't the last of one of the penniless old families that give each other dinners once a month and pretend they're the real society because they haven't money enough to trail in the present society game--even by then I was--what did that last newspaper story say? 'a figure of nation-wide importance.' Then it must be just about time, I thought, that this figure of nation-wide importance began to look around a little and married the wife he'd been waiting for and started to pick up all the things he hadn't had for twelve years.

“Well--Mary. And I was so careful about Mary,” his lips twisted, half whimsically, half painfully. “I was so damn sure. I was so damn sure I knew everything about women.

“She had the qualities I'd said to myself I wanted--beauty, position, breeding, a good enough mind, some common sense. She hadn't money, but there I thought I could help her--the way she ran things for her father on what they had showed what she could do with more. We weren't in love with each other--oh dear no--but that I considered on the whole an advantage--she attracted me and it's fair enough to say that beside most of the men she'd been seeing my combination of having been Old New York and being one of the young big coming men from the West dazzled her rather. And anyhow I didn't want--passion--exactly. I thought it would take too much time when I was only in the middle of my game and getting as much real solid fun out of it as a kid gets out of cooking his own dinner in camp. I wanted a partner and a home and children and somebody to sit at the head of my table when I wanted to be--public--and yet somebody you could be at home with when you wanted to be at home. And I thought I had them all in Mary--I thought I was being about the most sensible man in the world.

“Well, up till after both children were born I think I tried pretty hard. I gave her all I could think of--materially at least. And then I found out in spite of myself that you can't be married to a woman--even bearably--and neither be lovers nor friends with her. And Mary and I never got beyond the social acquaintance stage.

“It wasn't all Mary's fault either--I can see that now. A good deal was in the way she'd been brought up--they weren't modern about the blisses of ignorance in the nineties. But the rest of it was Mary and she couldn't have changed it any more than she could have been rude to a servant or raised her voice more than usual when she really wanted something done.

“She'd been brought up never to be demonstrative--that was one thing. But that wasn't the main trouble--the main trouble was her most curious, most frigid self-sufficiency. Until her children came she was the most wholly self-sufficient person I've ever known. She was really only happy when she was entirely alone, always. It wasn't egotism exactly--she's always had a very-well-mannered conviction of her own relative unimportance--it was just that in spite of the fact that she seemed so perfectly healthy and calm and composed whenever she was with other people they'd be sure to hurt her a little somehow or other without meaning to--the only person she could genuinely depend on never to hurt her was herself.

“As for men, she'd formed one crystallized opinion of men in the first weeks of our marriage and she's kept it ever since. She looks at them as if they were a kind of tame wolf about the house--something you must never show you're afraid of, something you must feed and look after and be publicly amiable to because you must be just--but something you never never would bring in the house of your own accord or touch without feeling that you, that you had to preserve so jealously against all the things that could possibly hurt it, start to shrink and be pained inside.

“Then the children came--she did and does love them. She lives for them. But they're part of herself too, you see, an essential part, and as she can't give herself to anybody but herself, she can't give them to me even in the easiest kind of partnership, really. You don't leave small children alone with even the tamest kind of wolf--and she's the kind of woman whose children are always six to her. And she's their mother--and so she has her way.

“That's the way it got worse. Right up to six years ago.

“I'd done my job--I was President of the Commercial. And I'd made my money, and the money still kept coming in as if it didn't make any difference what I did with it. I'd won my game. And what was there in it for me?

“I didn't have a home--I had a place where I ate and slept. I didn't have a wife--I had an acquaintance who kept house for me. I had children--at school and college. I didn't have real hobbies--I hadn't had time for them. And I was forty-nine. All I could do was go on making money till I died.

“Well, you changed that,” his voice shook a little.

“You came and I saw and knew and took you. And I'm not sorry. Because you've made me alive again. And I'm going to be alive now till I die.

“Funny--I was never so anxious about anything happening as I have been about--our approaching mutual disappearance. Especially the last six months when I've been planning. But now that's settled.

“Mary will have more than enough and the children are grown. They won't know--I still have brains enough to settle that and money will do nearly everything. It'll be a nine days' wonder. 'Sudden Disappearance of Prominent Financier--Foul Play Suspected' and that'll be all.

“As for the Commercial--I haven't come to my age without finding out that nobody in the world is indispensable. If a taxi ran over me tomorrow they'd have to do without me--and Harris and the young men can handle things.

“But you know where there'll be an elderly gentleman retired from business with a country house and a garden he can putter around in all his worst clothes. And a wife that reads Dickens to him in the evening--oh yes, Rose, we'll take Dickens along. And he'll be pretty contented as things go--that retired old gentleman.”

The darkness had passed from his eyes--he was smiling now.

“Be nice--eh Rose?”

He took her hand--the warm touch was still strong, still reassuring. Only the eyes that he was not looking at now seemed singularly unsure, as if they had seen something they had pondered over lightly, as a mere possibility, years ago, take on sudden impatient body and demand to be heard.

She let her hand lie lightly in his for a moment. Then she rose.

“Half past twelve” she said a little stiffly. “Time for two such genuine antiques as we are to think of being put away in our cases for the night.”

XXII

It was three in the afternoon before Oliver walked into the Hotel Rosario again and when he did it was with the feeling that the house detective might come up at any moment, touch him quietly on the shoulder and remark that his bag _might_ be sent down to the station after him if he paid his bill and left quietly and at once. An appearance before a hoarse judge who fined him ten dollars in as many seconds had not helped his self-confidence though he kept wondering if there was a sliding scale of penalties for improper language applied to the police of St. Louis and just what would have happened if he had called the large blue policeman anything out of his A.E.F. vocabulary. Also the desk, when he called there for his key, reminded him twingingly of the dock, and the clerk behind it looked at him so knowingly as he made the request that Oliver began to construct a hasty moral defence of his whole life from the time he had stolen sugar at eight, when he was reassured by the clerk's merely saying in a voice like a wink. “Telephone call for you last night, Mr. Crowe.”

_Nancy!_

With a horrible effort to keep impassive, “Yes? Who was it?”

“Party didn't leave a name.”

“Oh. When?”

“'Bout 'leven o'clock.”

“And she didn't leave any message?” Then Oliver turned pink at having betrayed himself so easily.

“No-o--_she_ didn't.” The clerk's eyelid drooped a trifle. Those collegy looking boys were certainly hell with women.

“Oh, well--” with a vast attempt to seem careless. “Thanks. Where's the 'phone?”

“Over there” and Oliver followed the direction of the jerked thumb to shut himself up in a booth with his heart, apparently, bent upon doing queer interpretative dances and his mind full of all the most apologetic words in or out of the dictionary. “Hello. Hello. _Is this Nancy_?”

“This is Mrs. S. R. Ellicott.” The voice seems extremely detached.

“Oh, good morning, Mrs. Ellicott. This is Oliver--Oliver Crowe, you know. Is Nancy there?”

Nor does it appear inclined toward lengthy conversation--the voice at the other end. “No.”

“Well, when will she be in? I've got to take the five o'clock train Mrs. Ellicott--I've simply got to--I may lose my job if I don't--but I've got to talk to her first--I've got to explain--”

“There can be very little good, I think, in your talking to her Mr. Crowe. She has told me that you both consider the engagement at an end.”

“But that's impossible, Mrs. Ellicott--that's too absurd” Oliver felt too much as if he were fighting for life against something invisible to be careful about his words. “I know we quarrelled last night--but it was all my fault, I didn't mean anything--I was going to call her up the first thing this morning but you see, they wouldn't let me out--”

Then he stopped with a grim realization of just what it was that he had said. There was a long fateful pause from the other end of the wire.

“I'm afraid I don't quite understand, Mr. Crowe.”

“They wouldn't let me out. I was--er--detained--ah--kept in.”

“Detained?” The inflection is politely inquisitive.

“Yes, detained. You see--I--you--oh dammit, I was in jail.” This time the pause that follows had to Oliver much of the quality of that little deadly hush that will silence all earth and sky in the moment before Last Judgment. Then--

“_In jail_,” said the voice with an accent of utter finality.

“Yes--yes--oh it wasn't anything--I could explain in five seconds if I saw her--it was all a misunderstanding--I called the policeman a boob but I didn't mean it--I don't see yet why he took offence--it was just--”

He was stifling inside the airless booth--he trickled all over. This was worse than being court-martialled. And still the voice did not speak.

“Can't you understand?” he yelled at last with more strength of lung than politeness.

“I quite understand, Mr. Crowe. You were in jail. No doubt we shall read all about it in tomorrow's papers.”

“No you won't--I gave somebody else's name.”

“Oh.” Mrs. Ellicott was ticking off the data gathered so far on her fingers. The brutal quarrel with Nancy. The rush to the nearest blind-tiger. The debauch. The insult to Law. The drunken struggle. The prison. The alias. And now the attempt to pretend that nothing had happened--when the criminal in question was doubtless swigging from a pocket-flask at this very moment for the courage to support his flagrant impudence in trying to see Nancy again. All this passed through Mrs. Ellicott's mind like a series of colored pictures in a Prohibition _brochure_.

“But I can explain that too. I can explain everything. Please, Mrs. Ellicott--”

“Mr. Crowe, this conversation has become a very painful one. Would it not be wiser to close it?”

Oliver felt as if Mrs. Ellicott had told him to open his bag and when he did so had pointed sternly at a complete set of burglar's tools on top of his dress-shirts.

“Can-I-see-Nancy?” he ended desperately, the words all run together:

But the voice that answered was very firm with rectitude.

“Nancy has not the slightest desire to see you, Mr. Crowe. Now or ever.” Mrs. Ellicott asked pardon inwardly for the lie with a false humility--if Nancy will not save herself from this young man whom she has always disliked and who has just admitted to being a jailbird in fact and a drunkard by implication, she will.

“I should think you would find it easier hearing this from me than you would from her. She has found it easier to say.” “But, Mrs. Ellicott--”

“There are things that take a little too much explaining to explain, Mr. Crowe.” The meaning seemed vague but the tone was doomlike enough. “And in any case” the voice ended with a note of flat triumph, “Nancy will not be home until dinnertime so you could not possibly telephone her before the departure of your train.”

“Oh.”

“Good-by, Mr. Crowe,” and a click at the other end showed that Mrs. Ellicott had hung up the receiver, leaving him to shriek “But listen--” pitiably into the little black mouthpiece in front of him until Central cut in on him angrily with “Say, whatcha tryin' to do, fella? Break my ear?”

XXIII

After cindery hours in a day coach--the fine and the loss of his Pullman reservation have left him with less than three dollars in cash--Oliver crawls into Vanamee and Company's about four in the afternoon. Everybody but Mrs. Wimple and Mr. Tickler is out of Copy for the moment and the former greets him with coy wit.

“Been taking your vacation at Newport, Crowie? Or didja sneak the Frisco account away from Brugger's Service when you were out West?”

“Oh, no, got jugged--that was all,” says Oliver quite truthfully if tiredly and Mrs. Wimple crows at the jest with high laughter. Oliver marvels at the fact that everybody should seem to think it so humorous to be jailed.

“Why, Crowie, you naughty little boy! Oh mischief, mischief!” and she scrapes one index finger over the other at him in a try for errant childishness. Then she and her perfume come closer and this time she looks around before she speaks and there is some little real concern in her voice.

“Listen, Crowie--you better watch your step, boy--I'm telling you straight. Old Man Alley was real sore when you didn't blow in yesterday--it was one of Vanamee's bad days when his eye gets twitchy and he was rearing around cursing everybody out and giving an oration on office discipline that'd a made a goat go laugh itself ill. And then Alley got hold of Délier and they are both talking about you--I know because Délier said 'Oh give him another chance' and Alley said 'What's the use, Deller--he's been here eight months and he doesn't seem to really get the hang of things,' in that snippy little way and then 'I can't stand breaches of discipline like this.' You know how nervous it gets him if as much as a fastener is out of place on his desk--and Winslow's got a kid cousin he wants to put in here and if you don't act like mama's darling for a while--”

She is ready to go on indefinitely, but Oliver thanks her abstractedly--it is decent of the old girl after all--grunts “Guess I better start in looking busy now, Mrs. Wimple!” and sits down at his desk.

A note from Deller with five pencil sketches attached of the new trade figures for Brittlekin--two bloated looking children with inkblot eyes looking greedily at an enormous bar of peanut candy. “Dear Crowe: Will you give me copy on these as soon as possible--something snappy this time.--E. B. D.” A memorandum, “Mr. Piper called you 4 P.M. Monday. Wishes you to call him as soon as possible.” The United Steel Frame Pulley layouts and another note from Deller, “This is LATE. DO something.” Back to pulleys again and the crowded sweat-box of the copy room and twenty-five dollars a week with the raise gone glimmering now--

And Nancy is lost.

Oliver sits looking at the layouts for United Steel Frame Pulleys for half-an-hour without really doing anything but sharpen and resharpen a pencil. Mrs. Wimple wonders if he's sick--he ain't white or anything but he looks just like Poppa did the time he came back and told Momma, “Momma the bank has bust and our funds has went.” She watches him eagerly--gee, it'd be exciting if he fainted or did anything queer! He said he'd been in jail too--Mrs. Wimple shivers--but he's so comical you never can tell what he really means--that way he looks may be just what she saw in a movie once about “the pallid touch of the prison.” If it's indigestion, though, he ought to try Pepsolax--that certainly eases you up right--

Finally Oliver stacks all the layouts together in a careful pile and goes in to see Mr. Alley. That precise and toothy little sub-deity does not seem extremely enthusiastic over his return.

“Well, Mr. Crowe, so you got back? What detained you?”

“Police” says Oliver with a faint smile and Mr. Alley laughs dutifully enough though rather in a “here, here, we must get down to business” way. Then he fusses with his pencil a little.

“I'm glad you came in, Crowe. I wanted to see you about that matter. It is not so much that we begrudge--but in a place like this where everyone must work shoulder to shoulder--and purely as a point of office discipline--Mr. Vanamee is rather rigid in regard to that and your work so far has really hardly justified--”

“Oh that's all right, Mr. Alley” breaks in Oliver, though not rudely, he is much too fagged to be rude, “I'm leaving at the end of the week if it's convenient to you.”

“Well, _really_, Mr. Crowe.” But in spite of his diplomatic surprise he hardly seems distressfully perturbed. “I hope it is not because you feel we have treated you unfairly--” he begins again a little anxiously--under all his feathers of fussiness he is essentially kindly.

“Oh no, I'm just leaving.”

There are more diplomatic exchanges but when they have ended Oliver goes back to Copy, remarks “Quitting Saturday, Mrs. Wimple,” gets his hat and goes off a quarter of an hour earlier than he ever has before, leaving the rest of Copy to match pennies and opinions till closing time on the question as to whether he fired himself or was fired.

XXIV

Jane Ellen swayed back and forth in the porch hammock, hugging herself with fat arms. All her dolls lay spread out wretchedly on the floor beneath her, she had stripped them of every rag and they had the dejected appearance of victims ready for sacrifice to Baal. “The Choolies are mad!” she sang to herself, “The Choolies are mad!”

It had been a perfectly sensible idea to try and water the flowers on the parlor carpet with her doll's watering pot--those flowers hadn't had any water for an awful long time. But Mother had punished her in the Third Degree which was by hairbrush and Aunt Elsie had taken the watering-pot away and Rosalind and Dickie had put on such offensively virtuous expressions as soon as they heard her being punished that she was mad at them all. And not ordinarily mad--not mad just by herself--the Choolies were divinely incensed as well.

“The Choolies are mad!” she hummed again like a battle-cry “Choolies are dolls and all the Choolies are mad!”

The Choolies were only mad on rare occasions. It took something genuinely out of the ordinary to turn an inoffensive pink celluloid doll with one of its legs off into an angry Choolie. But when they were mad the family had discovered by painful experience that the only thing to do was to leave Jane Ellen quite entirely alone.

“The Choolies are mad, mad, mad!” she chanted end chanted, her plump legs swinging, her mouth set like a prophet's calling down lightnings on Babylon the splendid.

Then she stopped swinging. Somebody was coming up the path--any of the people she was mad at?--no--only Uncle Ollie. Were the Choolies mad at Uncle Ollie? She considered a moment.

“Hello, Jane Ellen, how goes it?”

The small mouth was full of rebellion.

“Um mad!”

“Oh--sorry. What about?”

Defiantly

“Um _mad_. And the Choolies are mad--they're mad--they're mad--”

Oliver looked at her a moment but was much too wise to smile.

“They aren't mad at you, but they're mad at Motha and Aunt Elsie and Ro and Dickie and oh--evvabody!” Jane Ellen stated graciously.

“Well, as long as they aren't mad at me--Any letters for me, Jane Ellen?” “Yash.”