Chapter 7

“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.”

Oliver found them on the desk, looked them over, once, twice. A letter from Peter Piper. Two advertisements. A letter with a French stamp. Nothing from Nancy.

He went out on the porch again to read his letters, to the accompaniment of Jane Ellen's untirable chant. “The Choolies are mad” buzzed in his ears, “The Choolies, the Choolies are mad.” For a moment he saw the Choolies; they were all women like Mrs. Ellicott but they stood up in front of him taller than the sky and one of them had hidden Nancy away in her black silk pocket--put her somewhere, where he never would see her again.

“Ollie, you look at me sternaly--_don't_ look at me so sternaly, Ollie--the Choolies aren't mad at you--” said Jane Ellen anxiously. “Fy do you look at me so sternaly?”

He grinned his best at her. “Sorry, Jane Ellen. But my girl's chucked me and I've chucked my job--and consequently all _my_ choolies are mad--”

XXV

That night was distinguished by four uneasy meals in different localities. The first was Oliver's and he ate it as if he were consuming sawdust while the Crowes talked all around him in the suppressed voices of people watching a military funeral pass to its muffled drums. Mrs. Crowe was too wise to try and comfort him in public except by silence and even Dickie was still too surprised at Oliver's peevish “Oh _get_ out, kid” when he tried to drag him into their usual evening boxing match to do anything but confide despondently to his mother that he doesn't see why Oliver has to act so _queer_ about any girl.

The second meal was infinitely gayer on the surface though a certain kind of strainedness a little like the strainedness in the pauses of a perfectly friendly football game when both sides are too evenly matched to score ran through it. Still, whatever strainedness there was could hardly have been Mrs. Severance's fault.

The impeccable Elizabeth showed no surprise at being told she could have the day and needn't be back till breakfast tomorrow. She might have thought that there seemed to be a good deal of rather perishable food in the icebox to be wasted, if Mrs. Severance were going to have dinner out. But Elizabeth had always been one of the rare people who took pride in “knowing when they were suited” and the apartment on Riverside Drive had suited her perfectly for four years. She was also a great deal too clever to abstract any of those fragile viands to take to her widowed sister on Long Island--Mrs. Severance is so good at finding uses for all sorts of odd things--Elizabeth felt quite sure she would find some use or other for these too.

Ted Billett certainly found a good deal of use for some of it, thought Mrs. Severance whimsically. It had hardly been a Paolo and Francesca _diner-a-deux_--both had been much too frankly hungry when they came to it and Ted's most romantic remarks so far had been devoted to a vivid appreciation of Mrs. Severance's housekeeping. But all men are very much like hungry little boys every so often, Mrs. Severance reflected.

Ted really began to wonder around nine-thirty. At first there had been only coming in and finding Rose just through setting the table and then they had been too busy with dinner and their usual fence of talk to allow for any unfortunate calculations as to how Mrs. Severance could do it on her salary. But what a perfect little apartment--and even supposing all the furniture and so forth were family inheritances, and they fitted each other much too smoothly for that, the mere upkeep of the place must run a good deal beyond any “Mode” salary. Mr. Severance? Ted wasn't sure. Oh, well he was too comfortable at the moment to look gift horses of any description too sternly in the mouth.

Rose _was_ beautiful--it was Ted and Rose by now. He would like to see someone paint her sometime as Summer, drowsy and golden, passing through fields of August, holding close to her rich warm body the tall sheaves of her fruitful corn. And again the firelight crept close to him, and under its touch all his senses stirred like leaves in light wind, glad to be hurt with firelight and then left soothed and heavy and warm.

Only now he had a charm against what the firelight meant--what it had been meaning more and more these last few weeks with Rose Severance. It was not a very powerful-looking charm--a dozen lines of a letter from Elinor Piper asking him to come to Southampton, but it began “Dear Ted” and ended “Elinor” and he thought it would serve.

That ought to be enough--that small thing only magical from what you made it mean against what it really was--that wish that nobody could even nickname hope--to keep you cool against the waves of firelight that rose over you like the scent of a harvest meadow. It was, almost.

Rose had been telling him how unhappy she was all evening. Not whiningly--and not, as he remembered later, with any specific details--but in a way that made him feel as if he, as part of the world that had hurt her, were partly responsible. And to want exceedingly to help. And then the only way he could think of helping was to put himself like kindling into the firelight, and he mustn't do that. “Elinor” he said under his breath like an exorcism, but Rose was very breathing and good to look at and in the next chair.

His fingers took a long time getting his watch.

“I've _got_ to go Rose, really.”

“Must you? What's the time--eleven?--why heavens, I've kept you here ages, haven't I, and done nothing but moan about my troubles all the time.”

“You know I liked it.” Ted's voice was curiously boyishly honest in a way he hated but a way that was one of Rose's reasons why he was here with her.

“Well, come again,” she said frankly. “It was fun. I loved it.” “I will--Lord knows I thank you enough--after 252A Madison Avenue it was simply perfect. And Rose--”

“Well?”

“I'm awful damn sorry. I wish I could help.”

He thought she was going to laugh. Instead she turned perfectly grave.

“I wish you could, Ted.”

They shook hands--it seemed to Ted with a good deal of effort to do only that. Then they stood looking at each other.

There was so little between them--only a charm that nobody could say was even partly real--but somewhere in Ted's brain it said “Elinor” and he managed to shake hands again and get out of the door.

Mrs. Severance waited several minutes, listening, a faint smile curling her mouth with intentness and satisfaction. No, this time he wouldn't come back--nor next time, maybe--but there would be other times---

Then she went into the pantry and started heating water for the dishes that she had explained reassuringly to Ted they were leaving for Elizabeth. There was no need at all of Elizabeth's knowing any more than was absolutely necessary.

XXVI

Mr. Severance--the courtesy title at least is due him--seems to be a man with quite a number of costly possessions. At least here he is with another house, a dinner-table, servants, guests, another Mrs. Severance or somebody who seems to fill her place very adequately at the opposite end of the table, all as if Rose and the Riverside Drive apartment and reading Dickens aloud were only parts of a doll-house kept in one locked drawer of his desk.

The dinner is flawless, the guests importantly jeweled or stomached, depending on their sex, the other Mrs. Severance an admirable hostess--and yet in spite of it all, Mr. Severance does not seem to be enjoying himself as he should. But this may be due to a sort of minstrel give-and-take of dialogue that keeps going on between what he says for publication and what he thinks.

“Well, Frazee, I'll be ready to go into that loan matter with you inside a month,” says his voice, and his mind “Frazee, you slippery old burglar, it won't be a month before you'll be spreading the news that my disappearance means suicide and that the Commercial is rotten, lock, stock and barrel.”

“Yes, dear,” in answer to a relayed query from the other Mrs. Severance. “The children took the small car to go to the dance.” “And, Mary, if they'd ever been our children instead of your keeping them always yours, there wouldn't be that little surprise in store for you that I've arranged.”

“Cigar, Winthrop?” “Better take two, my friend--they won't be as good after Mary has charge of that end of the house.”

So it goes--until Mr. Severance has dined very well indeed. And yet Winthrop, chatting with Frazee, just before they go out of the door, finds it necessary to whisper to him for some reason--half a dozen words under cover of a discussion of what the Shipping Board's new move will mean to the mercantile marine. “I told you so, George. See his hands? The old boy's failing.”

XXVII