_ XXXII
Oliver, in the middle of a painfully vivid dream in which he has just received in the lounge of a Yale Club crowded with whispering, pointing spectators the news that Miss Nancy Ellicott of St. Louis has eloped with the Prince of Wales, wakes, to hear someone stumbling around the room in the dark.
"That you, Ted?"
"Yes. Go to bed."
"Can't--I'm there. What's time?"
"'Bout five, I guess." Ted doesn't seem to want to be very communicative.
"Um." A pause while Oliver remembers what it was he wanted to ask Ted about and Ted undresses silently.
"Well--congratulations?"
Ted's voice is very even, very controlled.
"Sorry, Ollie. Not even with all your good advice."
"
Honestly?"
"Uh-huh." "Well, look here--better luck next time, anyway. It's all--"
"It's all over, Ollie. I'm getting out of here tomorrow before most of them are up. Special breakfast and everything--called back to town by urgent legal affairs." He laughs, rather too barkingly for Oliver to like it.
"Oh, Hell!"
"Correct."
"Well, she's--"
"She's an angel, Ollie. But I had to tell her--about France. That broke it. D'you wonder?"
"Oh, you poor, damn, honorable, simple-minded, blessed, blasted fool!
Before you'd really begun?"
Ted hesitates. "Y-yes."
"Oh, hell!"
"Well, if all you can do is to lie back in bed there and call on your Redeemer when---Sorry, Ollie. But I'm not feeling too pleasant tonight."
"Well, I ought to know--"
"Forgot. You ought. Well--you do."
"But I don't see anything yet that--"
"She does."
"But--"
"Oh, Ollie, what's the use? We can both of us play Job's comforter to the other because we're pretty good friends. But you can see how my telling her would--oh well there isn't much percentage in hashing it over. I've done what I've done. If I'd known I'd have to pay for it this way, I wouldn't have--but there, we're all made like that. There's one thing I can't do--and that is get away with a thing like that on false pretences--I'd rather shoot the works on one roll and crap than use the sort of dice that behave. I went into the thing with my eyes open--now I've got to pay for it--well, what of it? It wouldn't make all the difference to a lot of girls, perhaps--a lot of the best--but it does to Elinor and she's the only person I want. If I can't have her, I don't want anything--but if I've made what all the Y.M.C.A. Christians that ever sold nickel bars of chocolate for a quarter would call a swine out of myself--well, I'm going to be a first-class swine. So put on my glad rags, Josie, I'm going to Rector's and hell!"
All this has been light enough toward the end but the lightness is not far from a very real desperation, all the same.
"Meaning by which?" Oliver queries uneasily.
"Meaning by which that some of my address for the next two-three weeks will be care of Mrs. Rose Severance, 4th floor, the Nineveh, Riverside Drive, New York--you know the place, I showed it to you once from a bus-top when we were talking the mysterious lady over. And that I don't think Mr. Theodore Billett will graduate
cum laude from Columbia Law School. In fact, I think it very possible that Mr. Billett will join Mr. Oliver Crowe, the celebrated unpublished novelist on a pilgrimage to Paris for to cure their broken hearts and go to the devil like gentlemen. Eh, Ollie?"
"Well, that's all right for
me," says Oliver combatively. "And I always imagined we'd find each other in hell. I'm not trying to be inhospitable with my own pet red-hot gridiron, but all the same--"
"Now, Crowe, for Pete's sake, it's five o'clock in the morning and I'm catching the 7.12--"
And Oliver is too sleepy to argue the point. Besides he knows quite well that any arguments he can use will only drive Ted, in his present state of mind, a good deal farther and faster along the road he has so dramatically picked out for himself. So, between trying to think of some means of putting either sense or the fear of God into Elinor Piper, whatever Ted may say about it, and wondering how the latter would take a suggestion to come over to Melgrove for a while instead of starting an immoral existence with that beautiful but possessive friend of Louise's, he drops off to sleep. _