And this time he was forced to pay internal high compliment to Mr. Piper
as well as to Mrs. Severance. The pitiful grey image, its knees rumpled
from the floor, its features streaked like a cheap paper mask with
ludicrous dreadful tears, had turned back into the President of the
Commercial Bank with branches in Bombay and Melbourne and all the
business-capitals of the world. Not that Mr. Piper was at ease again,
exactly--to be at ease under the circumstances would merely have proved
him brightly inhuman--but he looked as Oliver thought he might have
on one of the Street's Black Mondays when only complete firmness and
complete audacity in one could keep even the Commercial afloat at a time
when the Stock Exchange had turned into a floor-full of well-dressed
maniacs and houses that everyone had thought as solid as granite went to
pieces like sand castles.
Oliver set down the bottles and opened them with a feeling both that
he had never known Mr. Piper at all before, only Peter's father, and,
spookily, that neither Peter's father nor the terrible old man who
had wept on the floor beside Mrs. Severance could have any real
existence--this was such a complete and unemotional Mr. Piper he had
before him, a Mr. Piper, too, in spite of all the oddities of the
present situation, so obviously at home in his own house.
None of them said anything in particular until the mixture in the
glasses had sunk about half-way down. Then Mr. Piper remarked in a
pleasant voice, “I don't often permit myself--seldom even before the
country adopted prohibition--but the present circumstances seem to
be--er--unusual enough--to warrant--” smiled cheerfully and lifted his
glass again. When he had set it down he looked at Mrs. Severance, then
at Oliver, and then started to speak.
Oliver listened with some tenseness, knowing only that whatever he might
possibly have imagined might happen, what would happen, to judge from
the previous events of the evening, would be undoubtedly so entirely
different that prophecy was no use at all. But, even so, he was not
entirely prepared for the unexpectedness of Mr. Piper's first sentence.
“I feel that I owe you very considerable apologies, Oliver,” the
President of the Commercial began with a good deal of stateliness. “In
fact I really owe you so many that it leaves me at rather a loss 'as to
just how to begin.” He smiled a little shyly.
“Rose has explained everything,” he said, and Oliver looked at Mrs.
Severance with stupefied wonder--_how?_
“But even so, there remains the difficulty--of my putting myself into
words.”
“Silly boy,” said Mrs. Severance easily, and Oliver noted with fresh
amazement that the term seemed to come from her as naturally and almost
conventionally as if she had every legal American right to use it. “Let
me, dear.” And Oliver felt his head begin to go round like a pinwheel.
But then--but she really _couldn't_ be married to Mr. Piper--and yet
somehow she seemed so much more married to him than Mrs. Piper ever had
been--Oliver's thoughts played fantastically for an instant over the
proposition that she and Mr. Piper had been secretly converted to
Mohammedanism together and he looked at Mr. Piper's grey head almost as
if he expected to see a large red fez suddenly drop down upon it from
the ceiling.
“No, Rose,” and again Mr. Piper's voice was stately. “This is
my--difficulty. No matter how hard it may be.”
“Of course I did not understand--how could I?--that Rose--was such a
very good friend of your sister's and all your family's. Rose had
told me something about it, I believe--but I was so--foolishly
disturbed--when I came in--that really, I--well I must admit that even
if I had seen you when I first came in that would hardly have been the
thought uppermost in my mind at the time.” He spoke in the same tone
of kindly reproof toward himself that he would have used if business
worries had made him commit a small but definite act of inhospitality
toward one of his guests.
“And naturally--you will think me very ignorant indeed of my son's
affairs--and those of his friends--but while I had heard from Peter--of
the breaking of your engagement--you will pardon me, I hope, if I touch
upon a subject that must be so painful to you--I had no idea of the fact
that you were--intending to leave the country--and knowing Rose thought
that with her present position on 'Mode'--” he paused.
“It was very kind indeed of Mrs. Severance to offer to do what she could
for me,” said Oliver non-committally. He thought he got the drift of
the story now--a sheer one enough but with Mr. Piper's present reaction
toward abasement and his obvious wish to believe whatever he could, it
had evidently sufficed.
“I know it was silly of me having Oliver to dinner here alone--” said
Mrs. Severance with the air of one ready to apologize for a very minor
impropriety. “Silly and wrong--but Louise was coming too until she
telephoned about Jane Ellen's little upset--and I thought we could have
such fun getting supper together with Elizabeth away. I get a little
tired of _always_ entertaining my friends in restaurants, Sargent,
especially when I want to talk to them without having to shout. And
_really_ I never _imagined_--”
She looked steadily at Mr. Piper and he seemed to shrink a little under
her gaze.
“As for Elizabeth,” he said with hurried vindictiveness, “Elizabeth
shall leave tomorrow morning. She--”
“Oh, we might as well keep her, Sargent,” said Mrs. Severance placidly.
“You will have to pay her blackmail, of course--but after all that's
really your fault a little, isn't it?--and it seems as if that was more
or less what you had to do with any kind of passable servant nowadays.
And Elizabeth is perfection--as a servant. As police--” she smiled a
little cruelly. “Well, we shan't go into that, but I think it would be
so much better to keep her. Then we'll be getting something out of her
in return for our blackmail, don't you see?”
“Perhaps. Still we have no need of discussing that now. I can only
say that if Elizabeth is to stay, she will have to--” “Reform? My
dear Sargent! When everything she did was from the most rigidly moral
motives? I had no idea she was such a _clever_ cat, though--”
“She will have ample opportunities of exercising her cleverness in
jail if I can find any means of getting her there, and I think I can.
Really,” said Mr. Piper reflectively, “really when I think--”
Then he stopped.
“But you're still waiting for an--explanation--aren't you, Oliver?”
“Having been very nearly assassinated because of Elizabeth's abilities
in telephone conversation, I should think he might very well be
interested in knowing what is going to happen to her. However--”
“Yes,” and Mr. Piper's face became very sober. He looked at his glass as
if he would be willing to resign the Presidency of the Commercial in its
favor if it would only explain to Oliver for him.
“You were saying, Sargent?” said Mrs. Severance implacably.
“I was. Well, I,” he began, and then “You,” and stopped, and then he
began again.
“I said that it would be--difficult--for me to explain matters to you
fully, Oliver; I find it to be--even more difficult than I had supposed.
I--it is rather hard for a man of my age to defend his manner of life
to one of your age, even when he himself is wholly convinced that that
manner is not---unrighteous. And in this particular case, to one of his
son's best friends.”
He twisted his fingers around the rim of his glass. Oliver started to
speak but Mr. Piper put up his hand. “No--please--it will be so much
easier if I finish what I have to say first,” he said rather pleadingly.
“Well--the situation here between Rose and myself--must be plain to you
now.” Oliver nodded, he hoped in not too knowing a way. “Plain. How that
situation arose--is another matter. And a matter that would take a good
deal too long to tell. Except that, given the premises from which we
set forth--what followed was perhaps as inevitable as most things are in
life.
“That situation has been known to no other person on earth but
ourselves--all these years. And now it is known. Well, Oliver, there you
have it. And you happen to have us also--entirely in your hands. Because
of a spying, greedy servant--and my own stupidity and distrust--we have
been completely found out. And by one of my son's best friends.
“I wish that I could apologize for--all the scene before this. Better.
I hope that you will believe that I am trying to do so now. But I seldom
make apologies, Oliver, even when I am evidently in the wrong--and this
hasn't been one of my easiest to make. And now.”
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!”