What Will People Say? A Novel
tragedy nobility; but it was the mad beauty of a grief too great for
grieving over. Passion shivered in the air and seemed to come from
Forbes' own soul. The harmonies kept climaxing, eternally reaching the
last possible thrill, only to find that it led on to one yet higher. The
melodies were crowded like the angels climbing Jacob's ladder into the
clouds, where every rung seemed heaven, till it disclosed one more.
The music was a love-philter to Forbes and Persis; they could not escape
it, had no thought of escape. Their hands swung in a little arc,
clenched and unclenched in an utter sympathy of mind and body, in a kind
of epic dance.
And then the opera was over, and Forbes began to dread the raising of
the lights. He was grateful for the long ovation to the singers, since
it kept the house dark till he could shake off the tears he was ashamed
to dab with a handkerchief. Time was when greater soldiers than he were
proud rather than ashamed of their tears, but Forbes was thankful for
the gloom. He applauded and joined the cries of "Bravo!" to prolong the
respite.
Mrs. Neff was sniffling as she beat her gloves together.
"Even Isolde's husband couldn't hate her--or him--for a love like that."
And Winifred, with her cheeks all blubbered, swallowed hard as she
applauded.
"Why don't we have such lovers nowadays? Even I could play Isolde if I
could find a Tristan."
"Permit me," said Bob Fielding. But he was referring to the opera-cloak
he was holding out for her.
Willie Enslee, however, shook his head contemptuously and made no
pretense of applause.
"Can you beat 'em, Mr. Lord? They're never so happy as when they're
crying their make-up off. They pretend they're blue, but they've been
having the time of their lives."
And Forbes hated him for saying it. Then he noted that Persis was not
applauding. She was pulling off a long glove slowly and wincingly. When
it was off, she looked ruefully at her left hand and nursed it in her
right. She glanced to see that the others were busy with their wraps,
then she held her hand out where Forbes could see it; and gave him a
look of pouting reproach.
His first stare showed him only that her soft, slim fingers were almost
hidden with rings. And then he saw that the flesh was all creased and
bruised and marred with marks like tiny teeth. He realized that it was
his fierce clench that had ground the rings and their settings into her
flesh, and his heart was wrung with shame and pity.
He saw, too, that on one of the little fingers there was a thread of
blood. The alert old eyes of Mrs. Neff caught the by-play of the two,
and her curiosity brought her forward with a question.
"How in heaven did you hurt your finger?"
Persis answered quietly and at once:
"I caught it on the thorn of a rose. It's nothing."
Willie insisted on seeing the wound, and was frantic with excitement. He
was genuinely distressed. He poured out sympathy for the pain, anxiety
for the future of the wound, the necessity for sterilizing it. But it
was Willie's doom to be always tactless or unwelcome, and his sympathy
was an annoyance.
Forbes was compelled to silence by Persis' explanation of the accident.
He must not say how sorry he was, though he had wounded her--he had
wounded Persis till she bled!
CHAPTER XVIII
There was an atmosphere of mourning everywhere as the enormous audience
issued from the exits. It had assisted at the obsequies of a tremendous
love, and all the eyes were sad.
Forbes had seen it stated until he had come to believe it, that the
Metropolitan Opera was supported by snobs who attended merely to show
off their jewels, and that the true music-lovers were to be found in the
gallery. It came upon him now that this is one of the many cheap
missiles poor people of poor wit hurl at luckier folk, with no more
discrimination than street Arabs show when they throw whatever they can
find in the street at whoever passes by in better clothes.
Forbes was sure that most of these sad-eyed aristocrats, so lavish in
their praise of the singers and the music and the conductor, had come
with a musical purpose, and he wondered if some few, at least, of those
in the gallery might not have climbed thither less for art's sake than
to see in the flesh those people of whose goings and comings and
dressings, weddings and partings, they read so greedily in the
newspapers.
During the long wait for the carriage, a wealthy rabble stood in a
draughty doorway waiting turns at the slowly disintegrating army of
limousines and landaulets and touring-cars and taxicabs--even of
obsolete broughams and coaches drawn by four-legged anachronisms.
Mrs. Neff claimed Forbes as her personal escort, and carried him off in
her own chariot, which rolled up long before Enslee's.
Forbes regretted to leave Persis standing there, with throat open as
usual to the night gale; but his consolation was that he could gossip
about her.
Mrs. Neff's first word, of course, was of tobacco. The door was hardly
slammed upon them before she had her cigarettes out.
"Give me a light, there's a dear boy. I've just time for a puff. And you
light your cigar; I know you're dying for it. You can finish it in the
cloak-room. You men have still a few advantages left. The one I envy you
most is your right to smoke in public."
It was strange to Forbes to be proffering a light to a white-haired
lady. His own mother had thought it almost an escapade to sit on a
piazza with a man who was armed with a cigar. Years ago, when Forbes had
come home from West Point, she had said to him after dinner:
"I reckon my boy is simply pe'ishing for a cigar. Of course a gentleman
can't smoke in the drawing-room, and the odor never comes out of the
curtains. But I don't mind it in the open air--much. We'll stroll in the
garden. They say tobacco is good for the plants--bad for the insects."
And she took his arm and sauntered with him while he ruined the scent of
the honeysuckle vines.
And Forbes had heard an anecdote, probably untrue, of the great Mrs.
Astor; according to this legend, a man, hankering for a cigar, yet
hesitating to suggest it, asked her casually: "What would you say if a
man asked you for permission to smoke?" To which she answered, in her
stately way: "I don't know. No man ever asked me." And neither did he.
But nowadays a man rarely ever murmurs the formula: "Do you object to
smoke?" He is apter to say: "Do you carry your own, or will you try
mine?"
The petite grande dame, Mrs. Neff, carried her own. The glow of it in
the dark seemed to add one more ruby to her burdened fingers. And when
she lost her light, she reached out for Forbes' cigar and rekindled her
cigarette, smiling:
"Aren't we nice and clubby?"
Once her weed was prospering, she began to puff gossip:
"Isn't she a darling--Miss Cabot, I mean? Everybody is crazy over her,
but Willie scares 'em all off. What a pity she's mixed up with the
little bounder! Of course, she needs a lot of money, and her It of a
father is nearly ready for the Old Ladies' Home; but what a shame that
love and money go together so rarely! For the matter of that, though, I
don't think Persis knows what love is--yet. Maybe she never will. Maybe
she won't learn till it's too late. Murray Ten Eyck says you are rich.
Why don't you marry Persis? What a pair you'd make! What children you'd
have! They'd win a blue ribbon at any stock-breeder's show."
Forbes was much obliged to the dark for hiding his blushes. Besides, he
felt it a little premature to be discussing the quality of his
offspring. He made bold to ask a leading question.
"You say that Miss Cabot is mixed up hopelessly with Mr. Enslee. Do you
mean that they are engaged?"
"They haven't announced it, of course, but it's generally agreed that
they are. Still, I suppose that if some handsome devil came along with a
million or two, he might coax her away."
"But they are not actually engaged?"
"I don't know. But it looks inevitable to me. If you've got a lot of
money, ask her--and save her from Willie. She'd make a nice wife to a
nice man, with a nice income. Go on and get her. Oh, Lord, here we are
at Sherry's and I've got to throw my cigarette away. I'll have to sneak
another in the women's room somehow."
They went through the revolving doors and into the corridor, where women
in opera-cloaks were moving forward with something of the look of a
spice caravan, some to the supper-rooms, and some toward the elevators
to the various assembly-rooms, where various coteries were giving
dances.
The ways of Mrs. Neff and Forbes parted at the elevator's upper door.
His led to the large room where he passed his hat and coat across a
table to be stowed in a compartment in one of the wicker wardrobes.
While he waited for Mrs. Neff, he sauntered to and fro, smoking and
feeling a stranger among the men, who were just beginning to collect.
Forbes noted the callowness of most of them, and felt himself a veteran
among the shiny-haired blonds and glistening brunettes pulling on their
white gloves, straightening their ties and trying, some of them, to find
mustache enough to pull.
He could see the women they brought--girls and their mothers, or aunts
or something.
After his experience at the restaurant dances, Forbes had begun to
wonder if New York's aristocracy had been entirely converted to
socialism, and had given over all attempt at exclusiveness. Here at last
he found selection. People were here on invitation, and they were at
home--_chez eux_.
If they went among the common herd, it was only as a kind of slumming
excursion, a sortie of the great folk from the citadel into the town. It
did not mean that the town was invited to repay the visit at the castle.
This was a dance at the castle. Everybody here seemed to belong. There
were no shop-girls, no pavement-nymphs, or others of the self-supporting
classes. These women had been provided for by wealthy parents. They had
been provided with educations, and aseptic surroundings, and sterilized
amusements, and pure food of choicest quality. Hence they all looked
hale and thoroughbred. And they were not discontent. They came with the
spirit of the dance.
Yet there was variety enough in the unity. Girls of intellectual type,
girls of plain and old-maidish prospects, girls of prudish manner,
wantons, athletes, flirts, and uncontrollables. There were good taste
and bad in costume, simple little pink frocks and Sheban splendors, loud
voices and soft, meek eyes and insolent. But they were all protected
plants, not hothouse flowers, yet flowers from high-walled, well-tended
gardens.
Inside the wall there was the pleasantest informality. Everybody seemed
to call everybody else by the first name or by some nickname, and there
were surprisingly many old-fashioned "Jims" and "Bills," "Kates" and
"Sues." There was much hilarity, much slang, and the women seemed to use
the music-hall phrases even more freely than the men.
In the dances there was a deal of boisterous romping. The turkey-trot,
here called the one-step, was as vigorously performed as in the
restaurants, and some of the highest born showed the most professional
skill and recklessness.
While Forbes was waiting for Mrs. Neff, he saw Persis arrive with her
entourage. She was like the rest, yet ever so different. In her there
was the little more that meant so much. She had, of course, the
advantage of his affection. Yet he could see that everybody else gave
her a certain prestige, too. It was "Oh, there she is!" "Look, there's
Persis!" "Hello, Persis, how darling of you to come!"
The fly in the ointment was Willie Enslee, preening himself at her side,
taking all her compliments for his own, as if he were the proprietor of