In the seclusion of the washroom, usefully close at hand, Sam washed Tub’s face, fed him aspirin, scolded him, and they started home and—
All of Sam’s romantic exultation was gone, the glow was gone, the childish belief that he had suddenly achieved freedom was gone, in a leaden light of reality. He was not angry with Tub. But he had felt warmth and assurance, he had felt—he admitted it—a protection against Fran in Tub’s comradeship, and that was not enhanced in the unromantic service of holding up a man retching and swaying in a barroom toilet.
They got Tub into a taxicab, while he protested that he was all right now and desired to return to his friends. Sam had to roar at him a good deal, and lift him in. During this knockabout scene, an open motor passed, and Sam saw that looking disgustedly out of it was Endicott Everett Atkins, with his high nose, his Roman imperial, and his Henry Jamesian baldness. Atkins turned to say something to the lady beside him.
Sam shivered. He fancied Atkins getting the information to Fran. He heard her saying, “Now was I right about your dear friend Tub!” He felt cold and irritated. He was less gentle with Tub than he had meant to be.
Not till Matey and he had Tub in bed did it come fully to Sam that he might do well to forget himself and think of her.
“Hard luck!” he whispered. “But we all slip now and—”
“Oh, you can talk as loud as you want,” she said placidly. “Gabriel with an augmented trumpet band wouldn’t wake the little monkey now! But I do want to talk to you, and if he did wake up and want to go out again—Oh, well, there’s no place to go but the bathroom. Heigh! Scandal in Zenith society! I guess this is that new American Jazzmania you read about!”
They sat absurdly in the bathroom, she on a white straight chair, he precariously on the cold edge of the tub, while she went on:
“No, I don’t mind. Honestly! Tub doesn’t get really potted more than once a year, and I never did think much of the females who lay for their menfolks and try to get an advantage over ’em when they have a chance like that. Life’s too short!—too short to raise hell about anything except some real vice, like his being humorous and making speeches. Rather be friendly and—Sam! You old dear thing! When are you going to chuck Fran and let yourself be happy again?”
“Why, Matey, honestly, she and I are on the best terms—”
“Don’t lie to me, Sam darling (you know how Tub and I do love you!). Rather, don’t lie to yourself! I know. Fran has written to me, now and then. Awful clever and jolly and uninterested. And you don’t propose to sit there and tell me that if she wouldn’t come home last summer and wouldn’t come down from Berlin to see us, she isn’t about ready to cut out Zenith entirely! And there’s no reason why she shouldn’t! She never was very much Zenith anyway … or she thought she wasn’t! Only, Sam darling, only, if she is going to cut out Zenith, she’s going to cut out you, for even if you are kind of a Lord High Chancellor, still, same time, you are Zenith, and in the long run, after you’ve had your fling, you’d rather see the sunshine on a nice, ragged, old Middlewestern pasture than on the best formal Wop garden in the world!”
“Well—yes—I guess that’s more or less true, Matey, but—”
He wanted to tell her of the Sans Souci Gardens dream; he dismissed the matter and struggled on:
“But that doesn’t mean Fran doesn’t appreciate Zenith and her friends and all that. Course she does! Why, she’s always talking about Tub and you—”
“Yeah, I’ll bet she is! ‘My dear Samuel, is it necessary for women like your dear Mrs. Pearson to use such vulgarisms as “I’ll bet she is” all the time?’ ”
Though Matey’s hearty and slightly brassy voice could never mimic Fran’s cool melodies, there was enough accuracy in the impersonation to make Sam grin helplessly, and with that grin he was lost. Matey took advantage of it to pounce:
“Sam darling, I do know it’s none of my business, and you can tell me so whenever you want to, but I figured that probably you’ve been so alone here, seeing nobody but the kind of folks that Fran wants, and—Sam, I’ve seen you change a lot, more than you know, this last ten years. You never were a chatterbox, but you did used to enjoy an argument or telling a nice clean smutty story, and you’ve been getting more silent, more sort of scared and unsure of yourself, while Fran has been preening herself and feeling more and more that it was only her social graces and her Lady Vere de Vere beauty that kept up your position, because you were so slow and clumsy and so fond of low company and so generally an undependable hick! And you have more brains in your little finger than—And you’re kind! And humble—too damn humble! And you want to know a fact twice before you say it once, and she—well, she wants to say it twice before she’s learned it at all!
“Oh, golly, I guess I’m defying the thunderbolt. Shoot, Jupiter. … Now mind you, I liked Fran. I admire her. But when I think of how she’s treated you, as though she were the silver-shod Diana of the outfit—and especially the way she shows it in public by being so pizen polite to you—well, I just want to wallop her! Now tell me to go to the dickens, darling. … Listen to that man Tub snoring in there! There’s an aristocratic, college-bred consort for you! The poor lamb! How sick and righteous he’ll be tomorrow—up to about noon!”
Sam laboriously lighted a cigar, searched through a
