Young Peoples Pride | Page 5

'bless you, my children, increase
and multiply,' inside a month if your novel goes through."
"If! Oh well. Oh hell. I think I've wept on your shoulder long enough
for tonight, Ted. Tell me your end of it--things breaking all right?"
Ted's face sets into lines that seem curiously foreign and aged for the
smooth surface.
"Well--you know my trouble," he brings out at last with some difficulty.
"You ought to, anyhow--we've talked each other over too much when
we were both rather planko for you not to. I'm getting along, I think.
The work--ca marche assez bien. And the restlessness--can be stood.

That's about all there is to say."
Both are completely serious now.
"Bon. Very glad," says Oliver in a low voice.
"I can stand it. I was awful afraid I couldn't when I first got back. And
law interests me, really, though I've lost three years because of the war.
And I'm working like a pious little devil with a new assortment of
damned and when you haven't any money you can't go on parties in
New York unless you raise gravy riding to a fine art. Only
sometimes--well, you know how it is--"
Oliver nods.
"I'll be sitting there, at night especially, in that little tin Tophet of a
room on Madison Avenue, working. I can work, if I do say it
myself--I'm hoping to get through with school in January, now. But it
gets pretty lonely, sometimes when there's nobody to run into that you
can really talk to--the people I used to play with in College are out of
New York for the summer--even Peter's down at Southampton most of
the time or out at Star Bay--you're in Melgrove--Sam Woodward's
married and working in Chicago--Brick Turner's in New Mexico--I've
dropped out of the Wall Street bunch in the class that hang out at the
Yale Club--I'm posted there anyhow, and besides they've all made
money and I haven't, and all they want to talk about is puts and calls.
And then you remember things.
"The time my pilot and I blew into Paris when we thought we were
hitting somewhere around Nancy till we saw that blessed Eiffel Tower
poking out of the fog. And the Hotel de Turenne on Rue Vavin and
getting up in the morning and going out for a café cognac breakfast,
and everything being amiable and pleasant, and kidding along all the
dear little ladies that sat on the terrasse when they dropped in to talk
over last evening's affairs. I suppose I'm a sensualist--"
"Everybody is." from Oliver.
"Well, that's another thing. Women. And love. Ollie, my son, you don't
know how very damn lucky you are!"
"I think I do, rather," says Oliver, a little stiffly.
"You don't. Because I'd give everything I have for what you've got and
all you can do is worry about whether you'll get married in six months
or eight."
"I'm worrying about whether I'll ever get married at all," from Oliver,

rebelliously.
"True enough, which is where I'm glowingly sympathetic for you,
though you may not notice it. But you're one of the few people I
know--officers at least--who came out of the war without stepping all
through their American home ideas of morality like a clown through a
fake glass window. And I'm--Freuded--if I see how or why you did."
"Don't myself--unless you call it pure accident" says Oliver, frankly.
"Well, that's it--women. Don't think I'm in love but the other thing pulls
pretty strong. And I want to get married all right, but what girls I know
and like best are in Peter's crowd and most of them own their own Rolls
Royces--and I won't be earning even a starvation wage for two, inside
of three or four years, I suppose. And as you can't get away from seeing
and talking to women unless you go and live in a cave--well, about
once every two weeks or oftener I'd like to chuck every lawbook I have
out of the window on the head of the nearest cop--go across again and
get some sort of a worthless job--I speak good enough French to do it if
I wanted--and go to hell like a gentleman without having to worry
about it any longer. And I won't do that because I'm through with it and
the other thing is worth while. So there you are."
"So you don't think you're in love--eh Monsieur Billett?" Oliver puts
irritatingly careful quotation marks around the verb. Ted twists a little.
"It all seems so blamed impossible," he says cryptically.
"Oh, I wouldn't call Elinor Piper that exactly." Oliver grins. "Even if
she is Peter's sister. Old Peter. She's a nice girl."
"_A nice girl?_" Ted begins rather violently. "She's--why she's--" then
pauses, seeing the trap.
"Oh very