What Will People Say? A Novel
his son. They were dressed almost exactly alike. As they approached, he
saw that the son was a daughter. The breeze blew back the skirts of her
coat, and as far as garb was concerned she was as much a man as the
white-mustached cavalier alongside.
He clutched the rail hard. The girl was Persis, different, yet the same.
There was a quaintly attractive boyishness about her now, an unsuspected
athleticism. Her hair was gathered under her hat, her throat was clasped
by a white stock. Her cutaway coat was buttoned tightly over a manly
bosom, and her waist was not waspish. Her legs were strong, and gripped
the horse well.
He could hardly believe that the lusciously beautiful siren he had seen
with bare shoulders and bosom, and clinging skirts, the night before,
was this trimly buttoned-up youth in breeches and boots. Could an orchid
and a hollyhock be one and the same?
He had felt sure that at this hour, and on till noon, she would be
stretched out in a stupor of slumber under a silken coverlet in a dark
room.
The night had been almost ended when he had left her heavy-eyed with
fatigue, yet the morning was hardly begun when he saw her here with face
as bright and heart as brisk as if she had fallen asleep at sunset.
Her eyes were turned full upon him when she looked up before she passed
under the bridge.
A salvo of greeting leaped into Forbes' eyes, and his hand went to his
hat; but before he could lift it she had lowered her eyes. She vanished
from sight beneath him, without recognition.
He hurried to the other side of the bridge, to catch her glance when she
turned her head. But she did not look. She was talking to the elderly
man at her side. She was singing out heartily:
"Wake up, old boy, I'll beat you to the next policeman."
The old boy put spurs to his horse, and they dwindled at a gallop.
Forbes watched her till the trees at the turn in the bridle-path
quenched her from his sight. The light went out of his sky with her.
She had looked at him and not remembered him! He would have known it if
she had meant to snub him. He had not even that distinction. He was
merely one of the starers always gazing at her.
He had held her in his arms. But then so many men had held her in their
arms when she danced. Even his daring had not impressed her memory. So
many men must have pressed her too daringly. It was part of the routine
of her life, to rebuff men who made advances to her.
Forbes left the bridge and left the park, humbled to nausea. His cheeks
were so scarlet that the conductor on the Seventh Avenue car stared at
him. He could not bear to walk back to his hotel. When he reached there
he went to his room, dejected. There was nothing in the town to interest
him. New York was as cold and heartless as report had made it.
He realized that he was very tired. He lay down on his bed. A mercy of
sleep blotted out his woes. It seemed to be only a moment later, but it
was high noon when his telephone woke him. He thought it an alarm-clock,
and sat up bewildered to find himself where he was and with all his
clothes on.
From the telephone, when he reached it, came the voice of Ten Eyck.
"That you, Forbesy? Did I get you out of bed? Sorry! I have an
invitation for you. You made a hell of a hit with Miss Cabot last night.
I know it, because Little Willie is disgusted with you. Winifred says
she is thinking of marrying you herself, and Mrs. Neff says you can be
her third husband, if you will. Meanwhile, they want you to have tea
with us somewhere, and more dancings. Wish I could ask you to take
breakfast with me at the Club, but I was booked up before I met you.
Save to-morrow for me though, eh? I'll call for you this afternoon about
four, eh? Right-o! 'By!"
Forbes wanted to ask a dozen questions about what Persis had said, but a
click showed that Ten Eyck had hung up his receiver. Forbes clung to the
wall to keep the building from falling on him.
She had not forgotten him! She had been impressed by him! It was small
wonder that she had not known him this morning. Had he not thought her a
young man at first? Besides, she had had only a glance of him, and he
was not dressed as she had seen him first.
The main thing was that she wanted to see him again, she wanted to dance
with him again. She had betrayed such a liking for him that the
miserable runt of a Little Willie had been jealous.
What a splendid city New York was! How hospitable, how ready to welcome
the worthy stranger to her splendid privileges!
CHAPTER XII
Forbes had planned to visit the Army and Navy Club, in which he held a
membership, but now he preferred to lunch alone--yet not alone, for he
was entertaining a guest.
The head waiter could not see her when Forbes presented himself at the
door of the Knickerbocker cafe. And when he pulled out the little table
to admit Forbes to a seat on the long wall-divan that encircles the
room, the head waiter thought that only Forbes squeezed through and sat
down. The procession of servitors brought one plate, one napkin, silver
for one, ice and water for one, brown bread and toast for one; and the
waiter heard but one portion ordered from the _hors d'oeuvres varies_,
from the _plat du jour_ in the _roulante_, and from the _patisseries_.
But Forbes had a guest. She sat on the seat beside him and nibbled
fascinatingly at the banquet he ordered for her.
The vivacious throng that crowds this corner room at noon paid Forbes
little attention. Many would have paid him more had they understood that
the ghost of Persis Cabot was nestling at his elbow, and conspiring with
him to devise a still newer thing than the dancing tea or the tango
luncheon--a before-breakfast one-step. In fancy he was now thridding the
maze between the tables with her.
But he paid for only one luncheon. The bill, however, shocked him into a
realization that he could not long afford such fodder as he had been
buying for himself. He decided to get his savings deposited somewhere
before they had slipped through his fingers.
On his way to New York he had asked advice on the important question of
a bank, and had been recommended to an institution of fabulous strength.
It did not pay interest on its deposits, but neither did it quiver when
panics rocked the country and shook down other walls.
When Forbes computed the annual interest on his savings, the sum was
almost negligible. But the thought of losing the principal in a
bank-wreck was appalling. He chose safety for the hundred per cent.
rather than a risky interest of four. Especially as he had heard that
Wall Street was in the depths of the blues, and New York in a doldrums
of uncertainty.
To Forbes, indeed, nearly everybody looked as if he had just got money
from home and expected more, and the talk of hard times was ludicrous in
view of these opulent mobs and these shop-windows like glimpses of
Golconda. But perhaps this was but the last flare of a sunset before
nightfall.
In any case, he was likely to have his funds tempted away from him, and
he must hasten to push them into a stronghold. He found at the bank that
there was a minimum below which an account was not welcome. His painful
self-denials had enabled him just to clear that minimum with no more
interval than a skilful hurdler leaves as he grazes the bar.
He felt poorer than ever for this reminder of his penury, and he almost
slunk from the bank. Just outside he stumbled upon Ten Eyck, who greeted
him with a surprised:
"Do you bank here?"
"I was just opening an account," Forbes answered.
"Pardon my not lifting my hat before," said Ten Eyck. "I didn't know
your middle name was Croesus."
Forbes could only shrug his shoulders with deprecation. He had no desire
to pose as a man of means, and yet he had too much pride to publish his
mediocrity.
"I'll call for you at four, Mr. Rothschild," said Ten Eyck. "Got a date
at Sherry's here. Good-by!"
The afternoon promised to be unconscionably long in reaching four
o'clock, and Forbes set out for another saunter down the Avenue. There
was a mysterious change. It might have been that the sky had turned
gray, or that the best people were not yet abroad; but the women were no
longer so beautiful. He kept comparing them with one that he had learned
to know since yesterday afternoon's pageant had dazzled him. Already
there was a kind of fidelity to her in this unconscious disparagement of
the rest of womankind.
He did not explain it so easily to himself, nor did he understand why
the shop-windows had become immediately so interesting. Yesterday a
spadeful of diamonds dumped upon a velvet cloth was only a spadeful of
diamonds to him, and it was nothing more. It stirred in him no more
desire of possession than the Metropolitan Art Gallery or the Subway. He
would have been glad to own either, but the lack gave him no concern.
This afternoon, however, he kept saying: "What would she think if I gave
her that crown of rubies and emeralds? Does she like sapphires, I
wonder? If only I had the right to take her in there and buy her a dozen
of those hats? If that astounding gown were hung upon her shoulders
instead of on that wax smirker, would it be worthy of her?"
He found himself standing in front of jewelers' windows, and trying to
read the prices on the little tags. He had already selected one ring as
an engagement ring, when he managed by much craning to make out the
price. He fell back as if a fist had reached through the glass to smite
him. If he could have drawn out his bank-account twice he could not have
paid for it.
He gave up looking at diamonds and solaced himself by the thought that
before he bankrupted the United States Army with buying her an
engagement ring, he had better get her in love with him a little.
This train of thought impelled him to pause now before the windows of
haberdashers. Without being at all a fop, he had a soldier's love of
splendor, and he saw nothing effeminate in the bolts of rainbow
clippings which men were invited to use for shirts. He looked amorously
at great squares of silk meant to be knotted into neck-scarves, of which
all but a narrow inch or two would be concealed. And he saw socks that
were as scandalously brilliant as spun turquoises or knitted opals.
These little splashes of color were all that the sober male of the
present time permits himself to display. They were all the more enviable
for that. From one window a hand seemed to reach out, not to smite, but
to seize him by his overworked scarf and hale him within. He departed
five dollars the poorer and one piece of silk the richer, and hurried
back to his room ashamed of his vanity.
On his way thither he remembered that he was still an officer in the
regular establishment, and the first thing he did on his return to his
room was to compose a formal report of his arrival in New York City. He
sent it to the post at Governor's Island, so that in case a war broke
out unexpectedly, an anxious nation might know where to find him.
The only war on the horizon, however, was the civil conflict inside his
own heart. His patriotism was undergoing a severe wrench. He was
expected to maintain the dignity of the government on a salary that a
cabaret performer would count beneath contempt. And for this he was to
give up his liberty, his independence, and his time. For this he was to
teach nincompoops to raise a gun from the ground to their round
shoulders, and to keep from falling over their own feet; for this he was
to plow through wildernesses, give himself to volleys of bullets or
mosquitoes to riddle, or worse yet, to live in the environs of a great
city where beauty and wealth stirred a caldron of joy from which he must
keep aloof.
But that was for next week. For a few days more he was exempt; he was a