"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!"

XLII

It took a good deal of explaining, however, to make Ted understand. He was still tightly bound, though very angrily conscious when they found him and his language when Oliver removed the improvised gag was at first of such an army variety that Oliver wondered doubtfully if he hadn't better replace it until he got Ted alone. Also Oliver was forced to curse himself rather admiringly for the large number of unnecessary knots he had used, when he started to unravel his captive.

When they finally got him completely untangled Ted's first remarks were hardly those of grat.i.tude. He declared sulkily that his head felt as if it were going to split open, that he must have a b.u.mp on the back of it as big as a squash and that it wasn't Oliver's fault if he hadn't caught pneumonia out on that fire-escape--the air, believe him, was _cold_!

Mrs. Severance, however, and as usual, rose to the occasion and produced a bottle of witch-hazel from the bathroom with which she insisted on bathing the b.u.mp till Ted remarked disgruntledly that he smelt like a hospital. Oliver watched the domestic scene with frantic laughter tearing at his vitals--this was so entirely different and unromantic an end to the evening from that from which Oliver had set out to rescue Ted like a spectacled Mr. Grundy and which Ted in his gust of madness had so bitterly and grandiosely planned.

Then they moved back into the living-room and the story was related consecutively, by Oliver with fanciful adornments, by Mrs. Severance with a chill self-satisfaction that Oliver noticed with pleasure was like touching icicles to Ted. Ted gave his version--which only amounted to waking up on the fire-escape, trying to shout and succeeding merely in getting mouthfuls of towels--Oliver preened himself a little there--and lying there stoically and getting more and more furious until he was rescued. And while he told it he kept looking everywhere in the room but at Rose. And then Oliver remembered Mr. Piper and looked at his watch--11.04. He rose and gazed at Mrs. Severance.

"Well," he said, and then caught her eye. It was chilly, doubtless, and even by Oliver's unconventional standards he could not think of her as anything but a highly dangerous and disreputable woman--but that eye was alive with an irony and humor that seemed to him for a moment more perfect than those in any person he had ever seen. "_Must_ you go?" she said sweetly. "It's been _such_ an interesting party--so _original_,"

she hesitated. "Isn't that the word? Of course," she shrugged, "I can see that you're simply dying to get away and yet you can hardly complain that I haven't been an entertaining hostess, can you?"

"Hardly," said Oliver meekly, and Ted said nothing--he merely looked down as if his eyes were augers and his only concern in life was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g them into the floor.

"_Must_ you go?" she repeated with merciless mocking. "When it _has_ been fun--and I don't suppose we'll ever see each other again in all our lives? For I can hardly come out to Melgrove now, can I, Oliver? And after you've had a quiet brotherly talk with her, I suppose I'll even have to give up lunching with Louise. And as for Ted--poor Ted--poor Mr.

Billett with all his decorations of the Roller Towel, First Cla.s.s--Mr.

Billett must be a child that has been far too well burnt this evening, not, in any imaginable future to dread the fire?"

Both flushed, Ted deeper perhaps than Oliver, but neither answered.

There really did not seem to be anything for them to say. She moved gently toward the door--the ideal hostess. And as she moved she talked and every word she said was a light little feathered barb that fell on them softly as snowflakes and stuck like tar.

"I hope you won't mind if I send you wedding presents--both of you--oh, of course I'll be quite anonymous but it will be such a pleasure--if you'll both of you only marry nice homey girls!" Ted started at this as if he had been walking barefoot and had stepped on a wasp and she caught him instantly.

"Dear, dear, so Mr. Billett has serious intentions also--and I thought a little while ago that I was really in Mr. Billett's confidence--it only shows how little one can tell. As for Oliver, he of course is blighted--at present--but I'm sure that that will not last very long--one always finds most adequate consolation sooner or later though possibly not in the way in which one originally supposed." She sighed elfinly as Oliver muttered under his breath.

"What was that, Oliver? Oh, no, I am not at all the sort of person that writes anonymous letters to one's wife--or family--or sister," a s.p.a.ced little pause between each noun. "And besides it wouldn't be much use in me, would it? for of course you young gentlemen will tell the young ladies you marry _everything_ about yourselves--all honorable young people do. And then too," she spread out her hands, "to be frank. We've all been so beautifully frank about ourselves tonight--that's one thing I _have_ liked so much about the evening--well, it would hardly be worth my while to take lessons in blackmailing from Elizabeth if the only subjects on which I could apply them were two impecunious young men.

And, oh, I realize most perfectly--and please don't misunderstand me!--that we're all of us thieves together so to speak and only getting along on each other's sufferance. But then, if one of us ever starts telling, even a little, he or she can hardly do so in any way that will redound to anything but his or her discredit and social obliteration--how nicely I've put that!--so I don't think any of us will be very anxious to tell.

"_Good_-by, Mr. Billett--and when you do marry, please send me an invitation--oh I shan't come, I've been far too well brought-up--but I must send--appreciations--and so must have the address. We have had a pleasant acquaintanceship together, haven't we?--perhaps a little more pleasant on my side than on yours--but even so it's _so_ nice to think that nothing has ever happened that either of us could really regret.

"Just remember that the only person I could incriminate you to would be Mr. Piper, and not even there very much, due to Sargent's melodramatic appearance in the middle of dinner. But I shan't even there--it would mean incriminating myself a little too much too, don't you know? and even if the apartment here does get a trifle lonely one evening and another, I have got to be extraordinarily fond of it and I couldn't have nearly as nice a one--or as competent an Elizabeth--on what they pay me on 'Mode.' So I'll keep it, I think, if you don't mind.

"But that may make you a little more comfortable when you think things over--and I'm sure we all deserve to be very comfortable indeed for quite a long while after the very trying time we've just been through.

"_Good_-by, and I a.s.sure you that even if I shall never be able to think of you in the future except as all wrapped up in the middle of those absurd towels, I shall think of you quite kindly though rather ridiculously nevertheless. And now if you will just run away a minute and wait down in that car of Sargent's that Oliver--borrowed--so effectively--because I must have one motherly word with Oliver alone before we part forever! Thank you so _much_! _Good_-by!"

XLIII

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 d.a.m.nable 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.