What Will People Say? A Novel
Forbes was so infatuated that he admired even her yawns. He wanted to
whisper over her round shoulder, "How pretty you are when you are a
sleepy-head!" But he had been lessoned enough for one evening.
At last, however, she gave up the effort to go on dancing forever. She
inquired for Willie. He was not to be seen. Ten Eyck went exploring, and
found him in retirement clutching a big highball glass with his little
raccoon-like fingers, and blinking his little raccoon-like eyes. He was
of a surly trend in his cups, but Ten Eyck was angelically patient as he
lugged him to the coat-room. Forbes was horrified at the thought of
Persis under such escort; but she seemed to ignore Willie's temper, and
Forbes dared not intervene.
However, as they were all waiting on the curb in the fresh auroral air,
while the starter whistled up their cars, he ventured a chance to murmur
to Persis:
"I beg you to go home and sleep till noon. Please don't try to get up
and ride in the morning."
"I must," she answered. "It's the one duty I do."
But the note of protecting solicitude in his voice had touched her. She
turned softer eyes upon him and smiled.
"We'll dance some more to-morrow afternoon. Till then, _au revoir_."
"But I am to _revoir_ you in the park in a few hours?"
"So you say."
"Also at luncheon?"
"Oh yes, of course."
"Persis, are you never c-coming?" Willie Enslee hiccoughed.
"Yes, pet," she laughed, ironically, and nodded again to Forbes. Forbes
winced at the endearment she gave Enslee, even though he felt it to be
sarcastic. He winced again as Enslee took her white elbow in his white
glove and made a fumbling effort to help her in. The white fleece she
was vanished into his dark car like a moon slipping into clouds.
Ten Eyck boosted Willie in and clambered after him "as a chaperon."
Bob Fielding and Winifred tested the capacity of a taxicab, and Forbes
stood ready to escort Mrs. Neff home in her own car; but she shook her
head as she gaped:
"Nonsense! I'll not be so cruel. You've done enough for me. You go on
back to your hotel and get to bed. But first wait--oh wait--have you a
box of matches you can give me? Thanks! You've saved my life. Good
night."
Forbes paused to say: "Does the chauffeur know you want to go home?"
"I should hope so, at this hour!"
Forbes closed the door with an apology and set out to walk to his hotel.
It was only a few blocks away, but it seemed a hundred miles. And he
yawned so ferociously that he feared for the buildings. He found the
scrubwomen agonizing again on their knees across the lobby floor. He was
too drowsy to feel sorry for them, or to remember to leave a call for
six o'clock at the desk, as he had planned.
He plucked off his clothes in a stupor, and slid straight into the abyss
of sleep as he shoved his dance-weary toes down into the sheets. At five
the imaginary reveille woke him for a moment. He simply came up to
consciousness like a diver gulping a breath, and was underneath again at
once. He dreamed that he was riding in the park and, catching sight of a
saddle-horse in a tantrum, galloped forward to find that Persis was the
rider. She was having a desperate battle with the frothing beast and was
about to be thrown off. But Forbes, outstripping two or three mounted
policemen, swept alongside and caught her from her saddle to his pommel.
Her father, whose own horse was plunging, was so grateful that he
presented Forbes with Persis' hand. A mounted clergyman chanced to be
cantering by, and he was recruited to perform the ceremony, with the
mounted policemen as bridesmaid and best man. By one of those splendid
coincidences in which dreams are so fertile, a thicket of trees proved
to be a pipe-organ, and began to blare a popular tune of Mr.
Mendelssohn's. The noise woke Forbes, and to his unspeakable
disappointment he found himself in a bachelor bed at a hotel, with Times
Square furnishing a roaring offertory.
Automatically he reached for his watch, wondering if he could not have a
little further nap to get back into that dream without delay.
But the dial blandly informed him that it wanted a few minutes to noon.
Horror shocked him wide awake.
CHAPTER XXIII
He leaped from his hateful couch, swearing at himself like an army
teamster. He stumbled to the telephone and curtly demanded the exact
time, hoping to prove his watch a liar. Back from space came the reply:
"K'reck time is 'le'm fifty-eight."
His "Thanks!" had almost the effect of an oath. He slammed the innocent
receiver on the hook and stood staring at the bare feet protruding from
his indolent pajamas, where there should have been puttees and spurs and
smartly flaring riding-breeches. He was doubly indignant with himself
because he had counted upon that morning galopade. He rode like a
centaur, though with the military and not the park seat, and he had
expected his horsemanship to commend him to Persis.
He wondered what he should do. He reversed Sancho Panza and cursed the
man that invented sleep. He formed a wild project to fling into his
things, leap to horse, and hunt the park through. But he had not yet
bespoken the horse, and he knew that Persis must have finished her ride
hours ago, doffed her boyish togs, cold-showered her glowing body, and
put on whatever finery her engagements required. She had probably spent
the irretrievable hours at a committee meeting of some society for
rescuing working-girls from work. And her father had probably earned or
lost a million while Forbes lay annulled in a coma of stupidity.
How should he apologize? He could not wait till he saw her. The offense
must be erased before it set. He must call her up instantly. He
ransacked the dangling telephone-tome. Her father's office was
mentioned, but not his residence. Yet he must have a residence, and it
must have a telephone.
Forbes banged the hook and demanded "Information," and when that
mysterious dame answered from her airy throne he besought her to give
him at once the number.
Information answered with a lilt as if the name of Persis were one of
importance:
"I think it's a private wire; I'll see."
While Forbes waited he was interrupted, incessantly cut off, restored to
the wrong number, helplessly forced into other people's personal chats,
and left dangling in empty space. When at length he retrieved
Information, she told him:
"Jus' z'I thought, 's a priva twire."
"Of course it's a private wire!" Forbes thundered. "I don't want to have
a public conversation. What's the number?"
"'S 'gainst comp'ny rules to give numbers listed as private. Sorry."
"But this is a matter of life and death."
There was an almost audible sigh, as if she had heard that before.
"Sorry, but under no soic'mstances are we p'mitted to give numbers of
parties listed private."
He insisted, pleaded, threatened; but she answered with implacable
politeness. "Sorry, but--"
At length he screwed his courage to the point of calling up the office
of her father. Here he learned only that Mr. Cabot had left the office,
and it was contrary to orders to give his house number.
After beating his head and hands vainly for a long time against those
walls that New-Yorkers have to build about themselves if they are ever
to know seclusion, Forbes remembered Ten Eyck and called up his house.
He was not at home, and his whereabouts were unknown.
A deferential, yet stately voice with the indescribable tone of a butler
or a valet advised "Mr. Forbes, ah, yes," to try various clubs; "The
Racquet or the Brook, possibly," or "I believe I heard him say" (the two
h's were hazy) "that he was to be at the Metropolitan at one. If you
could call him then, sir, I'm quite sure you'd--Not at all! Very good,
sir."
Ten Eyck could give him Persis' occult number; then he could send a note
and some flowers to plead for him and appease her wrath before they met
at the luncheon. When they met no time must be wasted in more apologies.
But Ten Eyck was not to be found anywhere. Forbes gave up. He telephoned
for "coffee and rolls and a morning paper in a powerful hurry," and
stormed into his bathroom. When he came out as sparsely dressed as most
of the gentlemen are in the advertising pages of the magazines, he found
his breakfast on a little half-table mysteriously apported.
While he danced into his trousers his eyes were caught by head-lines on
the paper folded at his plate:
"Mayor puts Lid on _Thes Dansants_."
Forbes seized the paper, flung himself into a chair, and read with
violence the dire news that the same mayor who had ordered people to
quit dancing at one now ordered them not to begin dancing before dinner.
He grew hot with rage, while his coffee cooled and his rolls brittled.
He had found the dancing-tea a delightful institution, a joyous
democracy. But, according to the scathing indictment of the mayor and
the adroit wording of the reporters, the tea-dance was a home-wrecking,
youth-defiling abomination, only the more dreadful because it wrought
its hellish purposes in the broad daylight.
According to the newspaper account of a typical dancing-tea, it was
apparent that Forbes had failed to grasp the depravity of the crowd he
had been dancing with; it seemed that the women were all fat fiends
pursuing immature school-girls, and the men all evil-eyed brokers whose
corpulence alone was proof enough of their wickedness.
Forbes stared aghast at a wholesale condemnation that must include Mrs.
Neff, Persis, Winifred, Alice, and the respectable rest. He had not yet
learned that certain journalists are mere newsboys always beating out of
their dreadnaught typewriters cries of "Extra! Extra! All about the
turrible moider!"
Forbes was dumfounded to learn that the modern Babylon plus Nineveh, New
York, could be sent to bed at one o'clock and forbidden to dance by
daylight. Ordinarily nothing on earth would have mattered less to Forbes
than the fate of tea-dances. But this ukase drove him further than ever
from his Persis.
The curious mania for public dancing had enabled him, though come to
town a stranger, to join immediately in festival relations with people
to whose homes he would normally have been months in penetrating. The
mayor's edict revoked this democracy, and he was once more a stranger in
the city. He must meet his new-found friends formally and at long
intervals, if at all. He thanked his stars that he had arranged to give
the luncheon in time. He must set about ordering it at once, and he must
see to it that there was no flaw in its perfection.
CHAPTER XXIV
On his way to the Ritz-Carlton, Forbes stopped at his bank to draw some
money. He decided that he would better take along a hundred dollars. It
would look impressive when he paid the waiter. He realized that it would
drag his bank-account below the acceptable minimum. But he set his teeth
and determined to do the thing right if he bankrupted the government. He
would probably need most of the rest of the hundred before the week was
out. He could begin to save again when he was in his uniform again.
He drew the money, strolled to the hotel, asked for Fernand, and found
him at a glass screen in a superb room that ran from street to street. A
multitude of red chairs populated the floor, and the medallioned white
ceiling was a huge ellipse that looked as big as the earth's orbit.
Fernand was cautiously gracious till he learned that Miss Cabot had sent
Forbes to him; then he became quite paternal. Forbes slipped him a
ten-dollar bill, and he listened almost tenderly as Forbes explained:
"I want to give a little luncheon--nothing elaborate, but--well,
something rather nice, you know."
"Perfectly, M'sieur. And how many will there be?"
Fernand spoke English glibly, with hardly more accent than a sweetish