So Oliver was left alone with her, he didn't know why. He noticed,
however, that when she came to talk to him, though it was still with
lightness, she was at no particular effort any longer to make the
lightness anything but a method of dealing with wounds.
“Mr. Billett does not seem quite to appreciate exactly how much your
timely pugilistics did for him,” she observed. “Or exactly how they
might have affected you.”
Oliver set his jaw, rather. He was hardly going to discuss what Ted
might or might not owe him with Mrs. Severance. Hardly.
“No, I suppose you wouldn't,” she said uncannily. Then she spoke
again and this time if the tone was airy it was with the airiness of a
defeated swordsman apologizing for having been killed by such a clumsy
stroke of fence.
“But I have some--comprehension--of just what you did. And besides--I
seem to have a queer foible for telling the truth just now. Odd, isn't
it, when I've been lying so successfully all evening?”
“Very successfully,” said Oliver, and, to his astonishment, saw her
wince.
“Yes--well. Well, I don't know quite why I'm keeping you here--though
there was something I wanted to say to you, I believe--in a most serious
and grandmotherly manner too--the way of a grown woman as Sargent would
put it--poor Sargent--” She laughed.
“Oh yes, I remember now. It was only that I don't think you
need--worry--about Mr. Billett any more. You see?”
“I think so,” said Oliver with some incomprehension.
“Seeing him done up that way in towels,” she mused with a flicker of
mirth. “And the way he looked at me when I was telling about things
afterwards--oh it wouldn't do, you know, Oliver, it wouldn't do! Your
friend is--essentially--a--highly--Puritan--young man,” she added
slowly. Oliver started--that was one of the things so few people knew
about Ted.
“Oh yes--wholly. Even in the way he'd go to the devil. He'd do it with
such a religious conviction--take it so _hard_. It would eat him up.
Completely. And it isn't--amusing--to go to the devil with anybody
whose diabolism would be so efficiently pious--a reversed kind of
Presbyterianism. We wouldn't do that, you know--you or myself,” and
for an instant as she spoke Oliver felt what he characterized as a most
damnable feeling of kinship with her.
It was true. Oliver had been struck with that during his army
experiences--things somehow had never seemed to stick to him the way
they had seemed to with Ted.
“Which is one reason that I feel so sure Mr. Billett will get on very
well with Sargent's daughter--if his Puritan principles don't make him
feel too much as if he were linking her for life to a lost soul,” went
on Mrs. Severance.
“_Wha-a-at!_”
“My dear Oliver, whatever my failings may be, I have some penetration.
Mr. Billett was garrulous at times, I fear--young men are so apt to
be with older women. Oh _no_--he was beautifully sure that he was not
betraying himself--the dear ostrich. And that letter--really that was
clumsy of both of you, Oliver--when I could see the handwriting--all
modern and well-bred girls seem to write the same curly kind of hand
somehow--and then Sargent's address in embossed blue letters on the
back. And I _couldn't_ have suspected him of carrying on an intrigue
with Mrs. Piper!” and Oliver was forced to smile at her tinkle of
laughter. Then she grew a little earnest.
“I don't suppose it was--Mr. Billett--I wanted so--exactly,” she mused.
“It was more--Mr. Billett's age--Mr. Billett's undeniable freshness--if
you see. I'm not quite a Kipling vampire--no--a vampire that wants to
crunch the bones--or do vampires crunch bones? I believe they only act
like babies with bottles--nasty of them, isn't it?--But one gets to
a definite age--and Sargent's a dear but he has all the defects of a
husband--and things begin slipping away, slipping away--”
She made a motion of sifting between her hands, letting fall light
grains of a precious substance that the hands were no longer young
enough to keep.
“And life goes so queerly and keeps moving on like a tramp in front of
a policeman till you've started being gray and taking off your corset
every time you're alone because you like being comfortable better than
having a waist-line--and you've never had anything to settle you,” her
face twitched, “not children--nor even the security of marriage--nothing
but work that only interests part of you--and this--”
She spread her hands at the apartment.
“Well--what a lot of nonsense I'm talking--and keeping Mr. Billett out
in the car when he's sure he has pneumonia already--how unkind of me.
You must think me a very immoral old woman, don't you, Oliver?”
“I think you're very sporting,” said Oliver, truthfully.
“Not very. If I really _wanted_ Mr. Billett, you see.” Her eyes
sparkled. “I'm afraid you wouldn't think me sporting at all--in that
case. But then I don't think you'd have been able to--save--anybody I
really wanted as you did Mr. Billett.” She spoke slowly. “Even with that
very capable looking right hand. But in case you're still worried--”
“I'm not, really.”
She paid no attention.
“In case you're still worried--what I told Mr. Billett was true. In the
first place, Sargent would never believe me, anyway. In the second place
it would mean breaking with Sargent--and do you know I'm rather fond of
Sargent in my own way?--and a thing like that--well, you saw how he
was tonight--it would mean more things like revolvers and I _hate_
revolvers. And hurting Sargent--and ruining Mr. Billett who is a
genuinely nice boy and can't help being a Puritan, though I never shall
forget the way he looked in those towels. Still, I'm rather fond of him
too--oh, I'm perfectly unashamed about it, it's quite in an aunty way
now and he'll never see me again if he can help it.
“And making Sargent's daughter--who must be charming from what I hear of
her--but charming or not, she happens to be a woman and I have a feeling
that, being a woman, life will hurt her quite sufficiently without
my adding my wholly vicarious share. Oh, I'm perfectly harmless now,
Oliver,” she made a pretty gesture with her hands. “You and Sargent and
the fire-escape between you have drawn my fangs.”
“I can't exactly--thank you,” said Oliver, “but I do repeat--you're
sporting.”
“Never repeat a compliment to a woman over twenty and seldom then.” She
looked at him reflectively. “The same woman, that is. There is such a
great deal I could teach you though, really,” she said. “You're much
more teachable than Mr. Billett, for instance,” and Oliver felt a little
shudder of terror go through him for a moment at the way she said it.
But she laughed again.
“I shouldn't worry. And besides, you're blighted, aren't you?--and
they're unteachable till they recover. Well.
“Oh, yes, there was something else I meant to be serious about. Sargent
said something about our--disappearing, and all that. Well, Sargent has
always been enamored of puttering around a garden somewhere in an
alias and old trousers with me to make him lemonade when he gets
overheated--and so far I've humored him--but I've really never thought
very much of the idea. That would be--for me--a particularly stupid way
of going to seed.” She was wholly in earnest now. “And I haven't the
slightest intention of going to seed with Sargent or anybody else for
a very long time yet. If it ever comes definitely to that I shall break
with Sargent; you can depend on my selfishness--arrogance--anything you
like for that. Quite depend.
“Tonight,” she hesitated. “Tonight has really made a good many
things--clear to me. Things that were moving around in my mind, though
I didn't know quite what to call them. For one thing, it has made
me--realize,” her eyes darkened, “that my time for really being--a
woman--not in the copybook sense--is diminishing. Getting short. Oh, you
and Mr. Billett will have to reconcile your knowledge of Sargent's
and my situation with whatever moral ideas you may happen to have on
fathers-in-law and friends' fathers for some time yet--I'm sure I don't
know how you're going to do it, especially Mr. Billett, and I can't
honestly say that I particularly care. But that will not be--permanent,
I imagine. You understand?” She put her hand on the door-knob to imply
that the audience was over.
“I shall miss Louise, though,” she said, frankly.
“Louise will miss you.” Oliver saw no need for being politic now. He
added hesitatingly, “After all--”
“Oh, no. No,” she said lightly but very firmly. “I couldn't very well,
now, could I?” and Oliver, in spite of all the broadmindedness upon
which he prided himself, was left rather dumb.
“Oh, it won't be--difficult,” she added. “We can keep up--in the
office--yes?”
“Yes,” said Oliver hastily. He might be signing a compact with all the
powers of darkness, but even so.
“For the rest, I am--used to things like that,” she added, and once
again her face grew suddenly bright with pain. Then she recovered
herself.
“Well--our next merry meeting and so forth,” she said airily. “Because
when it happens, if it does, I may be so stodgily respectable you'll
be very glad to ask me to dinner, you know. Or I may be--completely
disreputable--one never knows. But in any case,” and she gave her hand.
“Mr. Billett must be freezing to death in that car,” she murmured.
“Good-by, Oliver, and my best if wholly unrespectable good wishes.”
“Thanks and--good luck to you.”
She turned on him swiftly.
“Oh, no. All the happiness in the world and _no_ luck---that's better,
isn't it? _Good_-by.”
“Good-by.”
And then Oliver was out in the hall, pressing the button that would
summon a sleepy, disgruntled elevator-boy to take him down to Ted and
the car. He decided as he waited that few conversations he had ever had
made him feel quite so inescapably, irritatingly young; that he saw to
the last inch of exactitude just why Mr. Piper completely and Ted very
nearly had fallen in love with Mrs. Severance; that she was one of the
most remarkable individuals he had ever met; and that he hoped from the
bottom of his heart he never, never saw her again.