_ XXX
The dance is at the Piper's this time--the last Piper dance of the Southampton season and the biggest--other people may give dances after it but everybody who knows will only think of them as relatively pleasant or useless addenda. The last Piper Dance has been the official period to the Southampton summer ever since Elinor's
debut--and this time the period is sure to be bigger and rounder than ever since it closes the most successful season Southampton has ever had.
Nothing very original about its being a masquerade, from Mr. Piper a courteously grey-haired mandarin in jade-green robes beside Mrs. Piper--lovely Mary Embree that was--in the silks of a Chinese empress, heavy and shining and crusted as the wings of a jeweler's butterfly, her reticent eyes watching the bright broken patterns of the dancing as impassively as if she were viewing men being tortured or invested with honor from the Dragon Throne, to Oliver, a diffident Pierrot who has discovered no even bearably comfortable way of combining spectacles and a mask, and Peter who [Illustration: THE LAST PIPER DANCE HAS BEEN THE OFFICIAL PERIOD TO THE SOUTHAMPTON SUMMER] is gradually turning purple under the furs of a dancing bear. Nothing much out of the ordinary in the tunes and the three orchestras and the fact that a dozen gentlemen dressed as the Devil are finding their tails very inconvenient as regards the shimmy and a dozen Joans of Arc are eying each other with looks of dumb hatred whenever they pass. Nothing singular about the light-heart throb of the music, the smell of powder and scent and heat and flowers, the whole loose drifting garland of the dancers, blowing over and around the floor in the idle designs of sand, floating like scraps of colored paper through a smooth wind heavy with music as the hours run away like light water through the fingers. But outside the house the Italian gardens are open, little lanterns spot them like elf-lights, shining on hedge-green, pale marble; the night is pallid with near and crowded stars, the air warm as Summer water, sweet as dear youth.
The unmasking is to take place at midnight and it is past eleven when Oliver drops back into the stag line after being stuck for a dance and a half with a leaden-footed human flower-basket who devoted the entire time to nervous giggles and the single coy statement that she just knew he never could guess who she was but she recognized him perfectly. He starts looking around for Ted. There he is, scanning the clown's parade with the eyes of an anxious hawk, disgruntled nervousness plain in every line of his body. Then Oliver remembers that he saw a slim Chinese girl in loose blue silks go off the floor ten minutes or so ago with a tall musketeer. He goes over and touches Ted on a particolored arm--the latter is dressed as a red and gilt harlequin--and feels the muscles he touches twitch under his hand.
"Cigarette? It's getting hotter than cotton in here--they'll have to open more windows--"
"What?" Then recognizing voice and glasses "Oh yeah--guess so--awful mob, isn't it?" and they thread their way out into the cool.
They wander down from the porch and into the gardens, past benches where the talk that is going on seems to be chiefly in throaty undertones and halts nervously as their steps crunch past.
"The beautiful and damned!" says Oliver amusedly, then a little louder
"Amusez vous bien, mes enfants" at a small and carefully modulated shriek that comes from the other side of the low hedge, "The night's still young. But Good Lord, isn't there
any place in the whole works where two respectable people can sit without feeling like chaperones?"
They find one finally--it is at the far end of the gardens--a seat the only reason for whose obvious desertion seems to be, comments Oliver, that some untactful person has strung a dim but still visible lantern directly above it--and relapses upon it silently. It is not until the first cigarettes of both are little red dying stars on the grass beside them that either really starts to talk.
"Cool," says Oliver, stretching his arms. The night lies over them light as spray--a great swimming bath and quietness of soft black, hushed silver--above them the whole radiant helmet of heaven is white with its stars. From the house they have left, glowing yellow in all its windows, unreal against the night as if it were only a huge flat toy made out of paper with a candle burning behind it, comes music, blurred but insistent, faint as if heard over water, dull and throbbing like horse-hoofs muffled with leather treading a lonely road.
"Um. Good party."
"Real Piper party, Ted. And, speaking of Pipers, friend Peter certainly seems to be enjoying himself--"
"Really?"
"Third bench on the left as we came down. Never go to a costume-party dressed as a dancing-bear if you want to get any quiet work in on the side. Rule One of Crowe's Social Code for Our Own First Families."
Ted chuckles uneasily and there is silence for another while as they smoke. Both are in very real need of talking to each other but must feel their way a little carefully because they are friends. Then--
"I," says Ted and--
"You," says Oliver, simultaneously. Both laugh and the little tension that has grown up between them snaps at once.
"I suppose you know that Nancy's and my engagement went bust about three weeks ago," begins Oliver with elaborate calm, his eyes fixed on his shoes.
Ted clears his throat.
"Didn't
know. Afraid it was something like that though--way you were looking," he says, putting his words one after the other, as slowly as if he were building with children's blocks. "What was it? Don't tell me unless you want to, of course--
you know---"
"Want to, rather." Ted knows that he is smiling, and how, though he is not looking at his face. "After all--old friends, all that. My dear old College chum," but the mockery breaks down. "My fault, I guess," he says in a voice like metal.
"It was, Ted. Acted like a fool. And then, this waiting business--not much use going over that, now. But it's broken. Got my--property--such as it was all back in a neat little parcel two weeks ago. That's why I quit friend Vanamee--you ought to have known from that."
"Did, I suppose, only I hoped it wasn't. I'm damn sorry, Ollie.
"Thanks, Ted."
They shake hands, but not theatrically.
"Oh well--oh hell--oh dammit, you know how blasted sorry I am. That's all I can say, I guess--"
"Well, so am I. And it was my fault, chiefly. And that's all I can say."
"Look here, though." Ted's voice is doing its best to be logical in spite of the fact that two things, the fact that he is unutterably sorry for Oliver and the fact that he mustn't show it in silly ways, are fighting in him like wrestlers. "Are you sure it's as bad as all that? I mean girls---" Ted flounders hopelessly between his eagerness to help and his knowledge that it will take ungodly tact. "I mean, Nancy's different all right--but they change their minds--and they come around--and--"
Oliver spreads out his hands. It is somehow queerly comforting not to let himself be comforted in any degree. "What's the use? Tried to explain--got her mother--Nancy was out but she certainly left a message--easier if we never saw each other again--well--Then she sent back everything--she knew I'd tried to phone her--tried to explain--never a word since then except my name and address on the package--oh it's over, Ted. Feenee. But it's pretty well smashed me. For the present, at least."
"But if you started it," Ted says stubbornly.
"Oh I did, of course--gentlemanly supposition anyhow--that's why--don't you see?"
"Can't say I do exactly."
"Well?"
"Well?"
"We're both of us too proud, Ted. And too poor. And starting again--can't you--visualize--it wouldn't be the way it was--only both of us thinking about
that all the time--and
still we couldn't get married. I've got less right than ever, now--oh, but how
could we after what we've said--" and this time his voice has lost all the attitudes of youth, it is singularly older and seems to come from the center of a place full of pain.
"I wish I could help, though, Ollie. You know," says Ted.
"Wish you could." Then later, "Thanks." "Welcome."
Both smoke and are silent for a time, remembering small things out of the last eight years.
"But what are you going to do, Ollie, now you've kissed the great god Advertising a fond good-by?"
Ollie stirs uneasily.
"Dunno--exactly. I told you about those two short stories Easten wanted me to take out of my novel? Well, I've done it and sent 'em in--and he'll buy 'em all right."
"That's fine!"
"It's a little money, anyhow. And then--remember Dick Lamoureux?"
"Yes."
"Got a letter from him right after--I came back from St. Louis. Well, he's got a big job with the American Express in Paris--European Advertising Manager or something like that--he's been crazy to have either of us come over ever since that idea of the three of us getting an apartment on the
Rive Gauche fell through. Well, he says, if I can come over, he'll get me some sort of a job--not much to go on at first but they want people who are willing to stay--enough to live on anyway--I want to get out of the country, Ted."
"Should think you would. Good Lord--Paris! Why you lucky, lucky Indian!" says Ted affectionately. "When'll you leave?" "Don't know. He said cable him if I really decided--think I will. They need men and I can get a fair enough letter from Vanamee. I've been thinking it over ever since the letter came--wondering if I'd take it. Think I will now. Well."
"Well, I wish I was going along, Crowe."
And this time Oliver is really able to smile.
"No, you don't."
"Oh well--but, honestly--well, no, I suppose I don't. And I suppose
that's something you know all about, too, you--private detective!"
"Private detective! Why, you poor ass, if you haven't noticed how I've been playing godmother to you all the way through this house-party--"
"I have. I suppose I'd thank anybody else. Coming from you, though, I can only say that such was both my hope and my expectation."
"Oh, you
perfect ass!" Both laugh, a little unsteadily.
"Well, Ollie, what think?" says Ted, finding some difficulty with his words for some reason or other.
"Think? Can't tell, my amorous child. Coldly considered, I think you've got a good show--and I'm very strong for it, needless to say--and if you don't go and put it over pretty soon I'll be intensely annoyed--one of the pleasures I've promised myself for years and years has been getting most disgracefully fried at your wedding, Ted."
"Well, tonight is going to be zero hour, I think." Ted proceeds with a try at being flippant and Oliver cackles with mirth.
"I knew it. I knew it. Old Uncle Ollie, the Young Proposer's Guide and Pocket Companion." Then his voice changes. "Luck," he says briefly.
"Thanks. Need it."
"Of course I'm not worthy," Ted begins diffidently but Oliver stops him.
"They never are. I wasn't. But that doesn't make any difference. You've got to--
n'est-ce pas? "
"You old bum! Yes. But when I think of it---"
"Don't"
"But leaving out everything else--it seems so damned
cheeky! When Elinor's got everything, including all the money in the world, and I--"
"We talked that over a long time ago, remember? And remember what we decided--that it didn't matter, in this year and world at least. Of course I'm assuming that you're really in love with her--"
"I am," from Ted very soberly. "Oh I am, all right."
"Well then, go ahead. And, Theodore, I shall watch your antic motions with the greatest sarcastic delight, both now and in the future--either way it breaks. Moreover I'll take anybody out of the action that you don't want around--and if there were anything else I could do--"
"Got to win off my own service," says Ted. "You know. But thanks all the same. Only when I think of--some incidents of Paris--and how awful near I've come to making a complete fool of myself with that Severance woman in the last month--well--"
"Look here, Ted." Oliver is really worried. "You're not going to let that--interfere--are you? Right now?"
"I've got to tell her." Ted's smile is a trifle painful. "Got to, you know. Oh not that. But France. The whole business."
"But good heavens, man, you aren't going to make it the start of the conversation?"
"Well--maybe not. But it's all got to be--explained. Only way I'll ever feel decent--and I don't suppose I'll feel too decent then."
"But Ted--oh it's your game, of course. Only I don't think it's being--fair--to either of you to tell her just now."
"Can't help it, Ollie." Ted's face sets into what Oliver once christened his "mule-look." "I've thought it over backwards and sideways and all around the block--and I can't squirm out of it because it'll be incredibly hard to do. As a matter of fact," he pauses, "it'll tell itself, you know, probably," he ends, more prophetically than he would probably care to know.
"Well, I simply
don't see--"
"
Must," and after that Oliver knows there is very little good of arguing the point much further. He has known Ted for eight years without finding out that a certain bitter and Calvinistic penchant for self-crucifixion is one of his ruling forces--and one of those least easily deduced from his externals. Still he makes a last effort.
"Now don't start getting all tied up about that. Keep your mind on Elinor."
"That's not--hard."
"Good--I see that you have all the proper reactions. And you'll excuse me for saying that
I don't think she's too good for you--and even if she were she'd have to marry somebody, you know--and when you put it, put it straight, and let Paris and everything else you're worrying about go plumb to hell! And that's good advice."
"I know it. I'll tell you of course."
"Well, I should
think you would!"
Oliver looks at his watch. "Great Scott--they'll be unmasking in twenty minutes. And I've got to go back and cut Juliet out of the herd and take her to supper--"
They rise and look at each other. Then
"Hope this is the last time, Ted, old fel--which isn't any reflection on the last eight years odd," says Oliver slowly, and their hands grip once and hard. Then they both start talking fast as they walk back to the house to cover the unworthy emotion. But just as they are going in the door, Oliver hisses into Ted's ear, an advisory whisper,
"Now go and eat all the supper you can, you idiot--it always helps." _