What Will People Say? A Novel
Persis shook her head and turned to Forbes: "Doesn't it sound
old-fashioned, a young girl afraid of her parents?"
"Quite medieval," Forbes agreed.
"Oh, but you are quaint, Alice," Persis laughed. "I thought it only
happened in books and plays, but here's Alice actually obeying a cruel
order like that. I'd like to see my father try to boss me. I'd really
enjoy it as a change."
Alice broke in: "Oh, fathers--they're different! My poor Daddelums was
the sweetest thing on earth. I wrapped him round my little finger. But
mother--umm, she gets her own way, I can tell you--at least she _thinks_
she does. I wouldn't let _any_ earthly power tear me away from my
darling Stowe, but I don't dare face her down."
"I thought she always liked Mr. Webb?" Persis said.
"Oh, she did till his father's will was probated. His insurance was
immense, but his debts were immenser. So poor Stowe is dumped upon the
world with hardly a cent. Of course, I love him all the more; but mother
has turned against him. I wouldn't mind starving with Stowe, but mother
is _so_ materialistic! She wants to marry me off to that dreadful old
Senator Tait."
"Dreadful?" snorted Winifred, who had listened in silence. "Old? Senator
Tait is neither dreadful nor old. He is a cavalier, and in the prime of
his powers."
"You can have him!" snapped Alice, with a flare of temper that she
regretted instantly, and the more sincerely since she knew that Winifred
had long been angling vainly and desperately for the Senator. There was
a bitterer sarcasm in her retort than she meant, but Winifred knew what
Alice was thinking, and canceled it by meeting it frankly:
"I wish I could have him. God knows I'd prefer him to any of these
half-baked whippersnappers that--"
"Winifred!" Persis murmured, subduingly; and Miss Mather subsided like a
retreating thunder-storm. "The Senator is one of the--"
"I know he is, my dear," Alice broke in, in her most soothing tone.
"He's far, _far_ too splendid a man for a fool like me. But can't I
admit how splendid he would be in the Senate Chamber without wanting him
in my boudoir?"
"Alice!" gasped Persis. "Remember that there are young men present."
Forbes spoke very solemnly: "Pardon my asking, but do you really mean
that Senator Tait is--is proposing for your hand?"
"So my awful mother says."
"It doesn't sound like the Senator Tait I used to know."
"You knew him well?" Persis asked, with a quick eagerness that did not
quite conceal a note of surprise.
Forbes caught it, and answered somewhat icily: "I had that privilege. He
and my father used to ride to the hounds together. In fact, they were
together when my father's horse threw him and fell on him, and crushed
him to death. Senator Tait brought the body home to my poor mother. He
was very dear to us all."
Persis looked what sympathy she could for such remote suffering. And
Forbes was something less of a stranger. Also he had moved one step
closer to her degree.
He had appeared first under the auspices of Murray Ten Eyck, who
guaranteed him as an officer in the army. He had demonstrated his own
dignity and magnetism. And now his family was sponsored by an old-time
friendship with Senator Tait, a very Warwick of American royalty.
CHAPTER XIV
Persis was not of the period or the set that thinks much of family. In
fact, the whole world and its aristocracies have been shaken by too many
earthquakes of late to leave walls standing high enough to keep youth
from overlooking and overstepping them. Few speak of caste nowadays
except novelists, editors, and the very old. What aristocracies we have
are clubs or cliques gathered by a community of tastes, and recruited
individually.
In any case, the Persis that was willing to go out into the byways and
highways and public dancing-places would have made no bones of granting
her smiles and her hospitality to anybody that entertained her,
mountebank or mummer, tradesman or riding-master.
And yet it did Forbes no harm in her eyes to be established as of high
lineage and important acquaintance. If only now he were rich, he would
be graduated quite into the inner circle of those who were eligible to
serious consideration.
Unconsciously Ten Eyck gave him this diploma also, though his motive was
rather one of rebuke to Persis for her little tang of surprise.
"You needn't raise your brows, Persis, because Forbesy knows senators
and things," he said. "He's a plutocrat, too. I caught him depositing a
million dollars in one of our best little banks to-day."
"A million dollars!" Forbes gasped. "Is there that much money in the
world?"
Forbes had no desire to obtain the reputation of money under false
pretenses. Yet he could not delicately discuss his exact poverty. He
could not decently announce: "I have only my small army pay and a few
hundred dollars in the bank." It would imply that these people were
interested in his financial status. Yet even the pretense by silence
troubled him, till his problem was dismissed by an interruption:
"Is anybody at home?"
Mrs. Neff spoke into the stillness as if she had materialized from
nothing. Nobody had noticed her approach, and every one was startled. To
Forbes her sharp voice came as a rescue from incantation. And Mrs. Neff
was in the mood of the most unromantic reality. She did not pause to be
greeted or questioned, but went at her discourse with a flying start:
"I'm mad and I'm hungry as the devil--oh, pardon me! I didn't see my
angel child. Alice, darling, how on earth did you get here? Murray, if
you have a human heart in your buzzum get the waiter man to run for a
sandwich and a--a--no, I'll be darned if I'll take tea, in spite of
example to youngers, who never follow our good examples, anyway; make it
a highball, Murray; Scotch, and quick!"
The waiter nodded in response to Ten Eyck's nod, and vanished with an
excellent imitation of great speed.
"Give over, Win!" Mrs. Neff continued, prodding Miss Mather aside and
wedging forward with the chair Ten Eyck surrendered to her. "What's in
those sandwiches? Lettuce? Thanks! Don't all ask me at once where I've
been! I'm the little lady what seen her dooty and done it. If my angel
child had done hers she would be even now listening to a lecture on
Current Topics, so that she could inform her awful mother, as she calls
me, what the tariff talk is all about, and who Salonica is, and why the
Vulgarians are fighting the Balkans. But, of course, being a modern
child, she plays hookey and goes to _thes dansants_ while her poor old
mother works."
"But mother dear, I was just--"
"Don't tell it, my child! I know what you're going to say: that Persis
picked you up and dragged you here by the hair, and Persis will back you
up, of course, like the dear little liar she is. But I'll save you the
trouble, darlings. Where is he? Is he still here or did he learn of my
approach and flit?"
"He--who?" said every one, zealously, with a stare of innocence sadly
overdone.
"He--who?" Mrs. Neff mocked. "He-haw! Oh, but you're a putrid lot of
actors. So he has been here. Well, I mention no names, but if a certain
young person whose initials are Stowe Webb wants to meet a little old
lady named Trouble, let him come out from under the table."
"Mother dear, how you do run on," Alice protested. "I don't think you
really need another highball."
"Another! Listen to that. Dutiful child trying to save erring mother
from a drunkard's grave! And me choking with thirst since luncheon! Do
you know where I've been? Yes? Then I will tell you. I've been at a
committee meeting of the Vacation Savings Fund."
The waiter brought a tiny flask, a tall glass, and a siphon, and offered
to mix her a potion; but she motioned him aside and arranged it to her
own taste. The band struck up, and she sipped hastily as she talked:
"That's the most insulting music I ever heard, and I'm just mad enough
to dance well. If nobody has any prior claim on this young soldier man,
he's mine. Mr. Forbes, would you mind supporting your grandmother around
the room once or twice?"
Forbes had counted on having this dance with Persis. He had wasted one
important tango while Alice poured out her woes. To squander this dance
on her mother was a grievous loss. There was nothing for him to do,
however, but yield.
He bowed low and smiled. "Nothing would give me more pleasure."
Mrs. Neff returned his bow with an old-fashioned courtesy, as she
beamed:
"Very prettily said! Old fashioned and nice. My first husband would have
answered like that. Did Murray tell you that I had offered you the job
of being my third husband?"
"Mother!" Alice gasped.
Forbes was exquisitely ill at ease. It is hard to parry banter of that
sort from a woman. He bowed again and answered with an ambiguous smile:
"Nothing would give me more pleasure."
"Fine! Then we may as well announce our engagement. Kind friends, permit
me to introduce my next husband, Mr.--Mr.--what is your first name,
darling?"
"Mother!" Alice implored.
"Oh, I'm sure his first name can't be Mother. But we're missing the
dance. Come along, hero mine!"
Forbes cast a farewell look of longing at Persis, who was regarding him
with an amused bewilderment.
The blare of the band was as effectual as a Gabriel's trumpet opening
graves. From the tables the dead came to life and took on stilts if not
wings.
Big Bob Fielding and Winifred Mather set out at once in close embrace.
"Look at 'em! Look at 'em!" Ten Eyck chortled. "They're grappled like
two old-time battleships on a heavy sea." Ten Eyck was the
great-great-grandson of one of the first commissioned officers in the
American navy, a rival even of Paul Jones. So now his comment was
nautical. "Bob and Winifred remind me of the _Bonhomme Richard_ and the
_Serapis_. And Winifred is like old John Paul Jones: when everybody else
is dead her motto is: 'I've just begun to fight.'"
But Alice could not smile. She folded her hands and sighed. "It's awful
to be a widow when they play that tango."
Persis provided for her at once. "Murray, you take Alice out and dance
with her."
Ten Eyck saluted. "Come on, Alice, we'll go in for the consolation
stakes."
Alice protested: "But we can't leave you alone."
Persis beckoned to a lonesome-looking acquaintance at another table, and
he came to her with wings outstretched. She locked pinions with him, and
they were away.
Ten Eyck put his arms up like racks; Alice hung herself across them, and
they romped away. As they performed it, the dance was as harmless as a
game of tag.
As Persis was twirled past Forbes now and again, her eyes would meet his
with a gaze of deep inquiry.
And he was thinking so earnestly of her that at some indefinitely later
period he was almost surprised to find that Mrs. Neff was in his arms,
and that they were footing it intricately through a restless maze. He
realized, also, that he had not spoken to her yet. He cast about in his
mind for a topic of conversation, as one whips a dark trout-pool, and
brought up a question:
"That Vacation Savings Fund--may I ask what it is?"
"You may, indeed, young man," she answered, and talked glibly as she
danced, occasionally imitating a strain of music with mocking sounds.
"It's an attempt a lot of us old women have been making to teach the
poor woiking goil what we can't learn ourselves; namely, to save up
money--_la-de-de-da-de-da!_ The poor things slave like mules and
they're paid like slaves--_te-dum-te-dum!_--yet most of them never
think of putting a penny by for a rainy day, or what's more
important--_ta-ra-rum!_--a sunny day.
"So Willie Enslee's mother, and Mrs. Clifton Ranger, and the Atterby
girls, and a gang of other busybodies got ourselves together and cooked