Chapter 10

“And--oh it's just being silly and tired I suppose, but all of them together--”

“I know,” said Oliver and hoped his voice had sounded appropriately bitter. “No reflections on you or Peter, El, you both understand and you've both been too nice for words--but some of the others sometimes--”

“Oh I'm _sorry_,” said Elinor contritely, and Oliver felt somewhat as if he were swindling her out of sympathy she probably needed for herself by deliberately calling attention to his own cut finger. But it had to be done--there wasn't any sense in both of them, he and Ted, walking crippled when one of them might be able to doctor the other up by just giving up a little pride. He went on.

“So I thought--I'd just stay around here with a book or something--get some tea from your mother, later, if she were here--”

“Why, I can do that much for you, Ollie, anyway. Let's have it now.”

“But look here, if you were going to do anything--” knowing that after that she could hardly say so, even if she were.

“Oh no. And besides, with both of us here and both of us blue it would be silly if we went and were melancholy at each other from opposite sides of the house.” She tried to be enthusiastic. “And there's strawberry jam and muffins somewhere--the kind that Peter makes himself such a pig about--”

“Well, Elinor, you certainly are a friend--”

A little later, in a quiet corner of the porch with the tea-steam floating pleasantly from the silver nose of its pot and a decorous scarlet and yellow still-life of muffins and jam between them, Oliver felt that so far things had slid along as well as could be expected. Elinor's manners in the first place and her genuine liking for him in the second had come to his help as he knew they would--she was too concerned now with trying to comfort him in small unobtrusive ways to be on her guard herself about her own troubles. All he had to do, he knew, was to sit there and look ostentatiously brokenhearted to have the conversation move in just the directions he wished and that, though it made him feel shameless was not exactly difficult--all he required was a single thought of the last three weeks to make his acting sour perfection itself. “Greater love hath no man than this,” he thought with a grotesque humor--he wondered if any of the celebrated story-book patterns of friendship from Damon and Jonathan on would have found things quite so easy if they had had to take not their lives but most of their most secret and painful inwards and put them down on a tea-table like a new species of currant bun under the eyes of a friendly acquaintance to help their real friends.

“I can't tell you how awfully decent it was of you and Peter,” he began finally after regarding a buttered muffin for several minutes as if it were part of the funeral decorations for dead young love. “Asking me out here, just now. Oh I'll write you a charming bread-and-butter letter of course--but I wanted to tell you really--” He stopped and let the sentence hang with malice aforethought. Elinor's move. Trust Elinor. And the trust was justified for she answered as he wanted her to, and at once.

“Why Ollie, as if it was anything--when we've all of us more or less grown up together, haven't we--and you and Peter--” She stopped--oh what was the use of being tactful! “I suppose it sounds--put on--and--sentimental and all that--saying it,” she laughed nervously, “but we--all of us--Peter and myself--we're so really _sorry_--if you'll believe us--only it was hard to know if you wanted to have us say so--how awfully sorry we were. And then asking you out here with this howling mob doesn't seem much like it, does it? but Peter was going to be here--and Ted--and I knew what friends you'd been in college--I thought maybe--but I just didn't want you to think it was because we didn't care--”

“I know--and--and--thanks--and I do appreciate, Elinor.” Oliver noticed with some slight terror that his own voice seemed to be getting a little out of control. But what she had just said took away his last doubt as to whether she was really the kind of person Ted ought to marry--and in spite of feeling as if he were trapping her into a surgical operation she knew nothing about, he kept on.

“It gets pretty bad, sometimes,” he said simply and waited. Last night--if things came out right later--will have been just what Elinor needed most, he decided privately. She had always struck him as being a little too aloof to be quite human--but she was changing under his eyes to a very human variety of worried young girl.

“Well, isn't there something we can really _do_?” she said diffidently, then changing,

“Oh I mean it--if you don't think it's only--probing--asking that?” as she changed again.

“Not a thing I'm afraid, Elinor, though I really do thank you.” He hated his voice--it sounded so brave. “It's just finished, that's all. Can't kick very well. Oh no,” as she started to speak, “it doesn't hurt to talk about, really. Helps, more. And Peter and Ted help too--especially Ted.”

He watched her narrowly--changing color like that must mean a good deal with Elinor.

Then “Why Ted?” she said, almost as if she were talking to herself and then started to try and make him see that that didn't matter--a spectacle to which he remained gratifiedly blind. He addressed his next remarks at the dish of jam so that she wouldn't be able to catch his eye.

“Oh, I'm not slamming Peter's sympathetic soul, El, you know I'm not--but Ted and I just happened to go through such a lot of the war and after it together--and then Ted saw a good deal more of Nancy. Peter's delightful. And kind. But he does assume that because lots of people get engaged and disengaged again all over the lot these days as if they were cutting for bridge-partners there isn't anything particularly serious in things like that. Nothing to really make you make faces and bust, that is. Well, ours happened to be one of the other kind--that's the difference. And Peter, well, Peter isn't exactly the soul of constancy when it comes to such matters--”

“Peter--oh Peter--if you knew the millions of girls that Peter's kept pictures of--”

“Well, I've heard all about the last hundred thousand or so, I think. But there's perfect safety in thousands. It's when you start being so stalwart and sure and manly about one--”

Oliver spread out his hands. Elinor's color--the way it fluctuated at least--was most encouraging. So was the fact that she had tried to butter her last muffin with the handle of her knife. “But I don't see _how_ if a girl really cared about a man she could let anything--” she said and then stopped with a burning flush. And now Oliver knew that he had to be very careful. He looked over his tools and decided that infantile bitterness was best.

“Girls are girls,” he said shortly, stabbing a muffin. “They tell you they do and then they tell you they don't--that's them.”

“Oliver Crowe, I never heard such a nasty, childish seventeen-year-old idea from you in my whole life!” Oh what would calm Mrs. Piper say if she could see Elinor, eyes cloudy with anger, leaning across the tea-wagon and emphasizing her points by waves of a jammy knife as she defends constancy and romance! “They do _not_! When a girl cares for a man--and she knows he cares for her--she doesn't care about _anything_ else, she--”

“That's what Nancy said,” remarked Oliver placidly out of his muffin. “And then--”

“Well, you know I'm sorry for you--you know I'm just as sorry for you as I can be,” went on Elinor excitedly. “But all the same, my dear Ollie, you have no right in the least to say that just because one girl has broken her engagement with you, all girls are the same. I know dozens of girls--” “So do I,” from Oliver, quietly. “Dozens. And they're just the same.”

“They _aren't_. And I haven't the slightest wish to suggest that it was _your_ fault, Oliver--but no girl as sweet and friendly and darling as Nancy Ellicott, the little I knew of her that is, but other girls can tell, and she certainly thought you were the person that made all the stars come out in the sky and twinkle, would go and break her engagement _entirely_ of her own accord--you _must_ have--”

And now Oliver looked at her with a good deal of sorrowful pity--she had delivered herself so completely into his hands.

“I never said it was her fault, Elinor,” he said gently, keeping the laughter back by a superb effort of will. “It was mine, I am sure,” and then he added most sorrowfully, “All mine.”

“_Well!_”

For a moment he forgot that he was there playing checkers with himself and Elinor for Ted.

“You've never been through it, have you?” he said rather fiercely. “You can't have--you couldn't talk like that if you had. When you've put everything you've got in mind or body or soul completely in one person's hands and then, just because of a silly misunderstanding we neither of us meant--they drop it--and you drop with it and the next thing you know you're nothing but a _mess_ and all you can wonder is if even the littlest part of you will ever feel whole again--” He realized that he was very nearly shouting, and then, suddenly, that if he kept on this way the game was over and lost. He must think about Ted, not Nancy. Ted, Ted. Mr. Theodore Billett, Jr.

“She'd forgiven me such a lot,” he ended rather lamely. “I thought she'd keep on.”

But his outburst had only made Elinor feel the sorrier for him--he felt like a burglar as he saw the kindness in her eyes.

“I don't imagine she ever had such an awful lot to forgive, Ollie,” she said gently.

Then the lie he had been leading up to all the way came at last, magnificently hesitant.

“She had, Elinor. I was in France you know.”

He was afraid when he had said it--it sounded so much like a title out of a movie--but he looked steadily at her and saw all the color go out of her face and then return to it burningly.

“Well, that wasn't anything to be--forgiven about exactly--was it?” she said unsteadily.

He spoke carefully, in broken sentences, only the knowledge that this was the only way he could think of to help things nerving his mind. “It wasn't being in France, Elinor. It was--the adjuncts. I don't suppose I was any worse than most of my outfit--but that didn't make it any easier when I had to tell her I hadn't been any better. I felt,” his voice rose, his literary trick of mind had come to his rescue now and made him know just how he would have felt if it had really happened, “I felt as if I were in hell. Really. But I had to tell her. And when she'd forgiven me that--and said that it was all right--that it didn't make any real difference now--I thought she was about the finest person in the world--for telling me such nice lies. And after that--I was so sure that it was all right--that because of her knowing and still being able to care--it would last--oh well--”

He stopped, waiting for Elinor but Elinor for a person so voluble a little while ago seemed curiously unwilling to speak.

“Lord knows why I'm telling you this--except that we started arguing and you're nice enough to listen. It's not tea-table conversation, or it wouldn't have been ten years ago--and if I've shocked you, I'm sorry. But after that, as I said--I didn't think there was anything that could separate us--really I didn't--and then just one little time when we didn't quite understand each other and--over. Sorry to spoil your illusions, Elinor, but that's the way people do.”

“But how could she?” and this time there was nothing but pure hurt questioning in Elinor's voice and the words seemed to hurt her as if she were talking needles. “Why Ollie--she couldn't possibly--if she really cared--”

All he wondered was which of them would break first.

“She could,” he said steadily, in spite of the fact that everything in his mind kept saying “No. No. No.” “Any girl could--easily. Even you, Elinor--if you'll excuse my being rude--”

For a moment he thought that his carefully plotted scenario was going to break up into melodrama with the reticent, composed and sympathetic Elinor's suddenly rising and slapping his face. Then he heard her say in a voice of utter anger,

“How can you say anything like that, how can you? You are being the most hateful person that ever lived. Why if I really cared for anyone--if I ever really cared--” and then she began to cry most steadily and whole-heartedly into her napkin and Oliver in spite of all the generous plaudits he was receiving from various parts of his mind for having carried delicate business successfully to a most dramatic conclusion, wondered what in the name of Hymen his cue was now. Some remnants of diplomacy however kept him from doing anything particularly obtrusive and, after he had received an official explanation of nervous headache with official detachment, the end of tea found them being quite cheerful together. Neither alluded directly to what both thought about most but in spite of that each seemed inwardly convinced of being completely if cryptically understood by the other and when the noise of the first returning motor brought a friendly plotter's “You talk to them--they mustn't see me this way,” from Elinor and a casual remark from Oliver that he felt sure he would have to run into town for dinner--family had forwarded a letter from an editor this morning--so if she wanted anything done--they seemed to comprehend each other very thoroughly.

He babbled with the returning jazzers for a quarter of an hour or so, tactfully circumvented Peter into offering him the loan of a car since he had to go into New York, and intimated that he would drop back and in at the Rackstraws' dance as soon as possible, after many apologies for daring to leave at all. Then he went slowly upstairs, humming loudly as he did so. Elinor met him outside his door.

“Ollie--as long as you're going in--I wonder if you'd mind--” Her tone was elaborately careless but her eyes were dancing as she gave him a letter, firmly addressed but unstamped.

“No, glad to--” And then he grinned. “You'll be at the Rackstraws'.”

“Yes, Ollie.”

“Well--we'll be back by ten thirty or try to. Maybe earlier,” he said at her back and she turned and smiled once at him. Then he went into his room.

“Mr. Theodore Billett,” said the address on the letter, “252A Madison Ave., N. Y. C.,” and down in the lower corner, “Kindness of Mr. Oliver Crowe.”

He thought he might very well ask for the latter phrase on Ted's and Elinor's wedding invitations. He passed a hand over his forehead--that had been harder than walking a tight-rope with your head in a sack--but the chasm had been crossed and nothing was left now but the fireworks on the other side. How easy it was to tinker other people's love-affairs for them--for oneself the difficulties were somehow a little harder to manage, he thought. And then he began considering how long it would take from Southampton to New York in the two-seater and just where Ted would most likely be.

XXXIV

A long-distance telephone conversation about six o'clock in the afternoon between two voices usually so even and composed that the little pulse of excitement beating through both as they speak now seems perilous, unnatural. One is Mr. Severance's thin cool speech and the other--most curious, that--seems by every obsequious without being servile, trained and impassive turn and phrase to be that of that treasure among household treasures, Elizabeth.

“My instructions were that I was to call you, sir, whenever I was next given an evening out.”

“Yes, Elizabeth. Well?”

“I have been given an evening out tonight, sir.”

“Yes.”

“Mrs. Severance has told me that I am on no account to return till tomorrow morning, sir.”

“Yes. Go on.”

“There are the materials of a small but quite sufficient meal for two persons in the refrigerator, sir. Mrs. Severance is dining out, sir--she said.” “Yes. Any further information?”

“Mrs. Severance received a telephone call this morning, sir, before she went out. It was after that that she told me I was to have the evening.”

“You did not happen to--overhear--the conversation, did you, Elizabeth?”

“Oh no, sir. Mrs. Severance spoke very low. The only words that I could catch were 'You' at the beginning and 'Please come' near the end. The words 'please come' were rather--affectionately--spoken if I might make so bold, sir.”

“You have done very well, Elizabeth.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“There is nothing else?”

“No, sir. Should you wish me to 'phone you again before tomorrow morning, sir?”

“No, Elizabeth.”

“Thank you, sir. Good-by, sir.”

“Good-by, Elizabeth.”

XXXV

The rest of the party has scattered to the gardens or the porch--Oliver has wandered into the library alone to wait for Peter who is bringing around the two-seater himself. It is a big dim room with books all the way up to the ceiling and a comfortable leather lounge upon which he sinks, picks up a magazine from a little table beside it and starts ruffling the pages idly. The chirrup of a telephone bell that seems to come out of the wall beside him makes him jump.

Then he remembers--that must be Mr. Piper's office through the closed door there. He remembers, as well, Peter joking with his father once about his never getting away from business even in the country and pointing at the half dozen telephones on top of the big flat desk with a derisive gesture while detailing to Oliver the fondness that Sargent Piper has for secretive private wires and the absurd precautions he takes to keep them intensely private. “Why he went and had all his special numbers here changed once just because I found out one of them by mistake and called him up on it for a joke--the cryptic old person!” Peter had said with mocking affection.

The telephone chirrups again and Oliver gets up and goes toward the door of the office with a vague idea of answering it since there seem to be no servants about. Then he remembers something else--Peter's telling him that nothing irritates his father more than having anyone else answer one of his private wires--and stops with his hand on the door that has swung inward an inch or so already under his casual pressure. It doesn't matter anyhow--there--somebody has answered it--Mr. Piper probably, as there is another door to the office and both of them are generally kept locked. Mr. Piper like all great business men has his petty idiosyncrasies.

Oliver is just starting to turn away when a whisper of sound that seems oddly like “Mrs. Severance” comes to his ear by some trick of acoustics through the door. He hesitates--and stays where he is, wondering all the time why he is doing anything so silly and unguest-like--and also what on earth he could say if Mr. Piper suddenly flung open the door. But Ted has told him a good deal at various times of the more mysterious aspects of Mrs. Severance, and her name jumping out at him this way from the middle of Mr. Piper's private office makes it rather hard to act like a copybook gentleman--especially with his last conversation with Ted still plain in his mind.

The voices are too low for him to hear anything distinctly but again one of the speakers says “Mrs. Severance”--of that he is entirely sure. The receiver clicks back and Oliver regains the lounge in three long soft strides, thanking his carelessness that he is still wearing rubber-soled sport-shoes. He is very much absorbed in an article on “Fishing for Tuna” when Peter comes in.

“Well, Oliver, everything ready for you. Awfully sorry you have to rush in this way--”

“Yes, nuisance all right, but it's my one best editor and that may mean something real--terribly cheeky thing for me to do, Pete--bumming your car like this--”

“Oh rats, you know you're welcome--and anyhow I'm lending it to you because you'll have to bring it back, and that means you'll come back yourself--”

“Well look, Pete, _please_ make all the excuses you can for me to your mother. And I'll run back here and change and then go over to the Rackstraws', as soon as I can--Elinor told you about Ted?”

“Yes. Sounds sort of simple to me asking him back tonight for that beach picnic tomorrow when he absolutely had to leave this morning--but I never could keep all Elinor's social arrangements straight. Certainly hope he can get off.”

“So do I,” says Oliver non-committally and then the door of Mr. Piper's office opens and Mr. Piper comes out looking as well-brushed and courteous as usual but with a face that seems as if it had been touched all over lightly with a grey painful stain.

“Hello, Father? Anything up from Secret Headquarters?”

“No, boy,” and Oliver is surprised at the effort with which Mr. Piper smiles. “Winthrop called up a few minutes ago about those Hungarian bonds but it wasn't anything important--” and again Oliver is very much surprised indeed, though he does not show it.

“Is your mother here, Peter?”

“Upstairs dressing, I think, Father.”

Mr. Piper hesitates.

“Well, you might tell her--it's nothing of consequence but I must go in to town for a few hours--I shall have them give me a sandwich or so now and catch the 7.03, I think.”

“But look, Father, Oliver has to go in too, for dinner--he's taking the two-seater now. Why don't you let him take you too--that would save time--” “Perfectly delighted to, Mr. Piper, of course, and--”

Mr. Piper looks full at Oliver--a little strangely, Oliver thinks.

“That would be--” Mr. Piper begins, and then seems to change his mind for no apparent reason. “No, I think the train would be better, I do not wish to get in too early, though I thank you, Oliver,” he says with an old-fashioned bob of his head. “And now I must really--a little food perhaps”--and he escapes before either Oliver or Peter has time to argue the question. Oliver turns to Peter.

“Look here, Pete, if I'm--”

“You're not. Oh _I'd_ think it'd be a lot more sensible of Father to let you take him in, but you never can tell about Father. Something must be up, though, in spite of what he says--he's supposed to be on a vacation and I haven't seen him look the way he does tonight since some of the tight squeezes in the war.”

XXXVI

It all started by having too much Mrs. Winters at a time, Nancy decided later. Mrs. Winters went down with comparative painlessness in homeopathic doses but Mrs. Winters day in and day out was too much like being forcibly fed with thick raspberry syrup. And then there had been walking up the Avenue from the Library alone the evening before--and remembering walks with Oliver--and coming across that copy of the “Shropshire Lad” in Mrs. Winters' bookcase and thinking just how Oliver's voice had sounded when he read it aloud to her--a process of some difficulty, she recalled, because he had tried to read with an arm around her. And then all the next day as she tried to work nothing but Oliver, Oliver, running through her mind softshoed like a light and tireless runner, crumbling all proper dignity and good resolutions away from her, little hard pebble by little hard pebble, till she had finally given up altogether, called up Vanamee and Company on the telephone and asked, with her heart in her mouth, if Mr. Oliver Crowe were there. The reply that came seemed unreal somehow--she had been so sure he would be and every nerve in her body had been so strung to wonder at what she was going to say or do when he finally answered, that the news that he had left three weeks before brought her down to earth as suddenly as if she had been tripped. All she could think of was that it must be because of her that Oliver had left the company--and illogically picture a starving Oliver painfully wandering the streets of New York and gazing at the food displayed in restaurant windows with lost and hopeless eyes.