“He drinks,” said Mr. Hope thirstily.
“There was a most discouraging scene in Alcatraz Prison last visitors’ day. He and I went together to try and say a few encouraging words to Bisley, the C. O. Edward wouldn’t speak to Bisley when he got there—he said there were too many Christians banked up around him; and surely there was a considerable crowd of rather discouraging dames telling Bisley that Christ was coming—he’s a religious objector, classed as Lunatic, so he has to suffer for his reputation. But I stayed in the group by way of comic relief, and Edward went glooming and snooping around. Next I saw of him he was sitting interlocked with Smith, the man who got twelve years for writing If Abraham Lincoln Returned. Poor Smith had a nerve-storm, you know, after he got beaten up in prison for the third time; he spends most of his time in solitary now—so discouraging. Anyway I looked around and saw Smith and Edward fairly clamped together. I forgot about them for a while until I heard a hell of an uproar, and I told Bisley, Fur Goodness sake—where’s that darned Britisher?—my dear, it surely was a presentiment. For there was Edward crying—believe me, Banner, crying—that kid’s got no more poise than a snake’s got hips—all het up and trying to pull the hair off the prison officer in charge of the gate—one of the warders was holding both his arms.”
“Why, why, why, what d’you know about that. He was stoo-ed, I guess,” said Mr. Banner Hope, profoundly; but his heart was not in the matter. He began moving his empty glass about so as to catch the light, hoping, with this bait, to catch in addition his hostess’s eye.
“Stoo-ed, you said it. He was crazy drunk. My dear, believe me, it took me down thirty dollars to get them to O.K. that lad’s exit from the prison. I told them how he was only a Britisher and had gotten himself shell shocked in the service of the Allies.”
“Did he so?” asked Mr. Hope with a certain sympathy, for, before he had met Miss Romero, grown a beard, and thrown in his lot with the ‘advance-guard of a freer America,’ he too had risked his life for his country in the course of a month in a training camp in Texas. “Shellshock? What d’you know about that?”
“Air-raids, my dear,” said Miss Romero intensely. “Edward R. Williams survived three air-raids in his home-city—London. I’ll say he’s no stranger to War....”
Mr. Hope occasionally felt that he could make a more genuinely wicked impression if he could think of something to say. “What d’you know about that?” he said, a little doubtfully.
“Well, say, listen, Banner,” continued Miss Romero, becoming now aware of the empty cocktail glass as her rival for his attention. “Although, of course, personally I’m just crazy about Edward Williams, what with one thing and another it looks like it’s up to me to get busy moving him some place else. I’ll say the Bay Cities’ll get discouraged with him soon. Avery and me are through with him. I talked to him about him drinking so much and it seemed he’d gotten around to thinking himself an interesting rebellious kinda guy, but I’ll say all his stunts look just maudlin to me; he most always cries, and he always quits before he can put over the interesting rebellious thing he wants to say. Say listen Banner——”
Mr. Hope started to attention.
“I’m planning to send Edward Williams to China.”