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.