Chapter 13

He sat back and waited, his fingers curled round his glass. And, as he looked at him, Oliver felt a little sickish, for, on the whole, he respected Mr. Piper a good deal more than his irreverent habit of mind permitted him to respect most older people, and at the same time felt pitifully sorry for him--it must be intensely humiliating to have to explain this way--and yet the only thing Oliver could do was to take the largest advantage possible of his very humiliation and straightforwardness--the truth could still do nothing at all but wreck everybody concerned.

“I give you my word of honor, Mr. Piper, to keep everything I know entirely and completely secret,” said Oliver, slowly, trying to make the large words seem as little magniloquent as possible. “That's all I can say, I guess--but it's true--you can really depend on it.”

“Thank you,” said Mr. Piper quite simply. “I believe you, Oliver,” and again Oliver felt that little burn of shame in his mind.

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Severance, copying Mr. Piper finished his drink and rose. “And now, I do not wish you to misunderstand me,” he said. “I have not come to my age without realizing that there are certain services that cannot be paid for. But you have done me a very great service, Oliver--a service for which I should have been glad to give nearly everything material that I possess. I merely wish you to know that in case you should ever need--assistance--from an older man---in any way--that is clumsily put, but I can think of no other suitable word at the moment--I am entirely at your disposal. Entirely so.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Oliver a little stiffly. Mr. Piper was certainly heaping coals of fire. Then he wondered for an instant just what Mrs. Ellicott would think if she could have heard the President of the Commercial say that to him--

Mr. Piper was moving slowly toward the door, and the politeness that had been his at the beginning of the conversation was nothing to his supreme politeness now.

“And now,” he said, as if he were asking everybody's pardon for an entirely unintentional intrusion, “I really must be getting back to Southampton--and you and Rose I imagine have still quite a bit to talk over--”

“But--” said Oliver clumsily, “but Mr. Piper--” and “Must you really, dear?” said Mrs. Severance in the softest tones of conventional wifely reproach.

Her manner was ideal but Oliver somehow and suddenly felt all the admiration he had ever had for her calm power blow away from him like smoke. He could not help extremest appreciation of her utter poise--he never would be able to, he supposed--but from now on it would be the somewhat shivery appreciation that anyone with sensitive nerves might give to the smooth mechanical efficiency of a perfectly-appointed electric-chair.

“No,” said Mr. Piper perfectly, “I insist. You certainly could not have finished your discussion before I came and for the present--well--it seems to me that I have intruded quite long enough. I wish it,” he added and Oliver understood.

“You are staying with us, over tomorrow, Oliver, are you not?” said Mr. Piper calmly, and Oliver assented. “I suppose we shall see each other at breakfast then?”

“Oh yes, sir.” And then Oliver tried to rise to Mr. Piper's magnificence of conventionality in remark. “By the way, sir, I'm driving back in Peter's car--as soon as Mrs. Severance and I have finished our talk--I couldn't pick you up anywhere, sir, could I?”

Mr. Piper smiled, consulting his watch. “There is an excellent train at 10.33--an excellent one--” he said, and again Oliver was dumfounded to realize that the whole march of events in the apartment had taken scarcely two hours.

“Thank you, Oliver, but I think I had better take that. Not that I distrust your driving in the least, but it will be fairly slow going, I imagine, over some of those roads at night--and this was one evening on which I had really intended to get a good night's sleep.”

He smiled again very quaintly.

“You'll be dancing as soon as you get back, I suppose? I understand there is to be a dance this evening?”

“Yes, sir--at least, I guess so. Told Peter I'd show up.”

“Youth,” said Mr. Piper. “Youth.” There was a certain accent of dolefulness in the way he said it.

“And now I shall call a taxi,” he said briskly.

“Can't I take you down--?” Oliver began, but

“No, no. I insist,” said Mr. Piper a little irritatedly, and then Oliver understood that though he might be quixotic on occasion, he was both human and--Oliver hesitated over the words, they seemed so odd to his youth to be using of a man who was certainly old enough to be his father--really in love with Mrs. Severance after all. So, until Mr. Piper's taxi came they chatted of indifferent matters much as they might have while watching people splashing about in the water from the porch of the swimming pool at Bar Harbor--and Oliver felt exceedingly in the way. These last dozen minutes were the hardest to get through of the whole evening, he thought rather dizzily; up till now he had almost forgotten about Ted, but it would be quite in keeping with everything else that had happened if just as Mr. Piper were leaving, a formal farewell on his lips and everything straightened out to everyone's conspiratorial or generously befooled satisfaction, Ted should stagger into the room like the galvanized corpse of a Pharoah wrapped in towels instead of mummy-cloth and everything from revolver-shots to a baring of inmost heart-histories would have to be gone through with again.

So when Oliver heard the telephone ring again he knew it was too good to be true, and, even when Mr. Piper started to answer it, was struck chilly with a hopeless fear that it might be police. But Fate had obviously got a trifle bored of her sport with them, or very possibly tired out by the intricacy of her previous combinations--for it was only the taxi after all and Mr. Piper was at the door.

“No use saying good-by to you now, is there, Oliver?” he said quietly, but held out his hand nevertheless.

“Well, good-by, Rose,” as he scrupulously shook hands with Mrs. Severance.

“Good-by, Sargent,” and then the door he had had such difficulty in opening two hours before had shut behind him and Oliver and Mrs. Severance were left looking at each other.

“Well,” said Mrs. Severance with a small gasp.

“Well,” said Oliver. “Well, well!”

“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.