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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 b.u.t.terfly, her reticent eyes watching the bright broken patterns of the dancing as impa.s.sively 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 [Ill.u.s.tration: 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 pa.s.s. 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 sc.r.a.ps 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 gla.s.ses "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 d.a.m.ned!" 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 gra.s.s 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 m.u.f.fled 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 d.a.m.n sorry, Ollie.

"Thanks, Ted."

They shake hands, but not theatrically.

"Oh well--oh h.e.l.l--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 unG.o.dly 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 att.i.tudes 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 G.o.d 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 d.i.c.k 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."