“Does Joyce annoy you, Bobby?” demanded Nancy Ashford one afternoon, with her disconcerting directness.
“Oh—not at all!” he had replied, feeling a bit silly.
“As I thought! … She has just been offered an interesting position as a home visitor with the Juvenile Protective League. I shall press her to take it.”
Duly pressed, Joyce accepted the new job. On her last day at Brightwood, she cornered him as he was leaving the hospital at five.
“I won’t be seeing you any more, will I?” she said. “I’m leaving, you know.”
“Why—that is true,” he replied, as if it had not occurred to him before. “You’ll be busy, and you know how this ties me up here. I do hope you like your new work. You must let us know how you get on with it, Joyce.”
“You couldn’t come and see me sometimes? I’m going to be horribly lonely.” It was evident that the speech cost her something. She forced it with an effort.
“Oh—I don’t go anywhere … Unsocial as an oyster … This business is cruelly confining. Some day I hope to have a little more time for—”
She laughed, nervously, mirthlessly.
“Don’t say any more, Bobby. It’s plain you don’t want to … Goodbye! I may not see you for a long time.”
He took her cool hand and repeated his good wishes. The episode left him uncomfortable. It had been a decidedly awkward situation. Maybe, if old Tommy could be bucked up, somehow, Joyce might be willing to give him another try. It was worth looking into.
Arriving in New York that Friday morning, the twenty-second of May—he was sailing on the Majestic the next day at four—Bobby had hunted his old friend down and was startled at the change in him. Tommy was seedy, shiny, spiritless, and had skipped patches under his jowls in shaving … Not much wonder Joyce wanted some other employment besides looking after Tommy.
They had lunch together and tried heroically to recover their long lost collegiate mood, but it was rough going. Too much water had gone under the bridge … Too little water had gone into Tommy.
“Sometimes—” Masterson furtively pushed a soiled cuff back into his coat-sleeve, and attempted to steady his leaky spoon—“sometimes, I’ve had a notion to end it. If I wasn’t such a damned coward, I’d have done it long ago.”
So—there being at last a definite motion before the house, Bobby discussed it. Masterson was of the artist type that required a deal of encouragement and adulation. It couldn’t be laid on too heavily. Tommy had always possessed an almost infinite capacity for absorbing glory, laud, and praise. Unquestionably Joyce could have kept her man on the rails had she been a little less frugal with his necessary rations of ambrosia. Well, it was high time he had some. Bobby fed him on the rich confectionery of appreciation all day and left him hilariously drunk with it at midnight—drunk as ever he had been on whisky. He was going to perk up and show ’em, by the Eternal, that he had the stuff! He’d been temporarily depressed, but—as Bobby had said—that was naturally to be expected of any man gifted with so sensitive a creative imagination! And he’d been drinking too much; but he could stop it. He would stop it! And there was his hand on it! The worm had turned! … And a good deal more like that.
Before he turned in, Bobby wired to Nancy.
Joyce urgently needed in New York stop Tommy has finished with J Barleycorn stop Is full of revived ambition stop Demands regular meals encouragement companionship stop Strongly counsel her to help him make good stop Put it up to her as important social service stop She will still be working in interest of juvenile protection stop You need not tell her that stop Affectionately Mister Fixit P S And here is hoping for better luck than usual in managing somebody elses business R M
Sunday afternoon he was roused from a nap in his steamer-chair to receipt for a radiogram. He smiled with pleasure.
Joyce left for New York at noon.
“Patricia paints beautifully!” continued Maxine, passing Bobby his cup.
“Does she, indeed?”
“Batiks.”
Bobby’s eyes wandered disinterestedly over the headlines on the front page of Le Matin at his elbow.
“Any news?”
“No … But—what’s this? … Seven Americans hurt in a railroad accident near … Oh, my God!”
Maxine rushed after him as he dashed from the room and found him telephoning for a taxi. For the next five minutes, while he frantically tossed a few necessities into a bag, she hovered at his elbow, extracting broken phrases from him … “Terrible accident … my best friend … have to go … awfully sorry … No! … No! … Have to go—at once!”
“But—Bobby! … My party! … Surely, you wouldn’t do such a thing to me! … Be reasonable! … You can start tonight, just as well! … Oh! I think this is just too cruel—too cruel!”
He wasn’t hearing her … Luncheon? … Ridiculous! … He kissed her wet face and rushed out … There was no time for the sluggish automatic lift. He ran down the stairs. Ordinarily, the deafening roar of the propellers exasperated him; gnawed the insulation off his nerves, bit by bit. Today he was barely conscious of the racket. He had seen nothing on his way to Le Bourget field, and was equally indifferent to the receding landscape as Pierre Laudée tilted up his ship’s nose and climbed a steep grade into the clouds for what he boasted, that afternoon, was the record flight from Paris to Rome.
Bobby still clutched the newspaper in his hand; unnecessarily, for he could recite every word … Late last night … Naples-Rome express … wreck near Ciampino … open switch … seven Americans among the injured … Mrs. Helen Hudson, conductor of a touring party … fatally hurt … removed to the English Hospital on Via Nomentana, in Rome.
He remembered the place … little hospital … Ardmore—good man—chief of staff … throat specialist. He knew of him.
The day dragged on. Sometimes he relaxed
