What Will People Say? A Novel

She was soon calling Forbes "the li'l snojer man." Whether the wine or the dance were the chief intoxicant, a tipsiness of mood prevailed everywhere. It affected individuals individually: this one was idiotically amused, that one idiotically tearful, a third wolfishly sullen, a fourth super-royally dignified, a fifth so audacious that her befuddled companions tried to restrain her. The thin ice was breaking through in spots, and a few of the couples were floundering in black waters. Others were merely childish in their wickedness. They tried to be vicious, and their very effort made them only naughty. It all reminded Forbes of certain savage debauches he had witnessed. Only the savages lacked the weapons of costume. It was curious--to a philosopher it was amusingly curious--to see how much excitement it gave some of these people to expose or behold a shoulder or a shin more than one ordinarily did. The peculiar cult that has grown about the human leg, since it has been wrapped up, is surely one of the quaintest phases of human inconsistency. But intention is the main thing, and a circus woman in trapeze costume may suggest less erotic thought than a flirt who merely gathers her opera cloak about her closely. There was no mistaking the intention of some of these dancers. It was vile, provocative, and, since it was public, it was hideous. Mobs left without rule or inspiring rulers always degenerate into excesses. The pendulum that swings too far one way is only gathering heavier and heavier impetus to the other extreme. It happens whenever emotions are overstrained. At religious revivals and camp-meetings and crusades, no less than at revels, the aftermath is apt to be grossness. These people had danced too long. It was time to go home. Forbes finally agreed with Willie that it was no place for decent people. He began to wish very earnestly that Persis were not there. He would rather miss the sight of her than see her watching such spectacles. He felt a deep yearning that she should be ignorant of the facets of life that were glittering here. This longing to keep another heart clean or to restore it to an earlier purity is the first blossom of real love. The floor grew so rowdy that Forbes would no longer take Persis out upon it. He did not ask her to dance again. Even when she raised her eyebrows invitingly he pretended not to understand. Then she spoke frankly: "Sha'n't we have another dance? They're playing the tune that made Robert E. Lee famous." "I'm afraid I'm too tired," he pleaded. As soon as he had spoken he felt that the pretext was insultingly inadequate addressed to a woman and coming from a soldier used to long hikes. But it was the only evasion he could imagine in his hurry. Instead of turning pale with anger, as he expected, she amazed him by her reply: "That's very nice of you." "Nice of me," he echoed, fatuously, "to be tired?" "Umm-humm," she crooned. "Why?" "Oh, just because." Then he understood that she had read his mind, and she became at once a sibyl of occult gifts. This ascription of extraordinary powers to ordinary people is another sign that affection is pushing common sense from his throne. Parents show it for their newborn, and what is loving but a sort of parentage by reincarnation? Forbes thought that he wore a mask of inscrutable calm, because he was accustomed to repressing his naturally impetuous nature. He had not realized that the most eloquent form of expression is repression. It is the secret of all great actors, and enables them to publish a volume of meaning in a glance or a catch in the voice, a quirk of the lips or a twiddling of the fingers. Forbes never dreamed that the gaucherie of his excuse showed the desperation of his mind and the strain on his feelings, and that while his lips were mumbling it his eyes were crying: "Don't stay here any longer. You are tired. You do not belong here. I beg you to be careful of your soul and body. Both are precious. It makes a great difference to me what you see and do and are." All this was writ so large on his whole mien that anybody might have read it. Even Winifred read it and exchanged a glance with Mrs. Neff, who read it, too. Naturally, Persis understood. The feeling surprised her in a stranger of so brief acquaintance. But she did not resent his presumption as she did Willie's equal anxiety. She rather liked Forbes for it. Then she saw his consternation at her miraculous powers, and she liked him better yet for a strong and simple man whose chivalry was deeper than his gallantry. And when a man from another table came across to ask her to dance with him, she answered: "Sorry, Jim, we're just off for home. Come along, Willie. Are you going to keep us here all night?" Willie lost no time in huddling his flock away from the table. He fussed about them like a green collie pup. They paused at the door for a backward look. Seen in review with sated eyes, it was a dismal spectacle. On the floor a few dancers were glued together in crass familiarity, making odious gestures of the whole body. At the disheveled tables disheveled couples were engaged in dalliance more or less maudlin. Many of the women were adding their cigarette-smoke to the haze settling over all like a gray miasma. "Disgusting! Disgusting!" Willie sneered. "Oh, the poor things!" sighed Mrs. Neff. "What other chance have they? At a small town dance they'd behave very carefully in the light, and stroll out into the moonlight between dances. Good Lord, I used to have my head hugged off after every waltz. I'd walk out to get a breath of air, and have my breath squeezed out of me. But these poor city couples--where can they spoon, except in a taxi going home, or on a park bench with a boozy tramp on the same bench and a policeman playing chaperon? Let 'em alone." But she yawned as she defended them, and looked suddenly an old woman tired out. They all looked tired. They slipped weary arms into the wraps they had flung off with such eagerness. In the elevator they leaned heavily against the walls, and they crept into the limousine as if into a bed. Forbes said that he would walk to his hotel. It was just across the street. They bade him good night drearily and slammed the door. He watched the car glide away, and realized that he was again alone. None of them had asked him to call, or mentioned a future meeting. Had he been tried and discarded? CHAPTER XI The sky was black, and the stars dimmed by the street-lights. Stars and street-lights seemed to be weary. The electric acrobats had knocked off work, and hung lifeless upon their frames like burned-out fireworks. A grown-up newsboy, choosing a soft tone as if afraid to waken the sleeping town, murmured confidentially: "Morn' paper? _Joinal_, _Woil_, _Hurl_, _Times_, _Sun_, _Tolegraf_? Paper, boss?" Forbes bought one to enjoy the paradox of reading to-morrow's paper last night. He entered the brightly lighted lobby of the hotel. It was deserted save by two or three scrubwomen dancing a "grizzly bear" on all fours. They looked to be grandmothers. Perhaps their granddaughters were still dancing somewhere. Once in his room, Forbes stared from his window across the slumbrous town. The very street-lamps had the droning glimmer of night lights in a bedroom. The few who were abroad wore the appearance of prowlers or watchmen or hasteners home. New York was not so lively all night as he had been taught to believe. While he peeled off his clothes he glanced at his newspaper. The chief head-lines were given, not to the epochal event of the first parliament in the new republic of China, nor to the newest audacity in the Amazonian insurrection in London, but to an open letter sent by the mayor of New York to the police commissioner of New York, calling upon him "to put an end to all these vulgar orgies" of the "vulgar, roistering, and often openly immodest" people who "indulge in lascivious dancing." The mayor announced that one o'clock in the morning was none too soon for reputable people to stop dancing. He instructed the commissioner to see to it that at that hour thereafter every dance-hall was empty, if he had to take the food and drinks from the very lips of the revelers and put them in the street. Forbes was amazed. The great, the wicked city still had a Puritan conscience, a teacher to punish its naughtiness and send it to bed--and at an hour that many farmers and villagers would consider early for a dance to end. Forbes was startled to realize that he was included in the diatribe, and that those ferocious words were applied to Persis, too. In all the things he had to wonder at this was not the least wonderful. He stepped into his pajamas and spread himself between his sheets, too weary to reach forth a hand and turn out the little lamp by his bed. He had slept no more than half an hour when suddenly he wakened. The last cry of a bugle seemed to be ringing in his ears. He sat up and looked at his watch. It was the hour when for so many years the cock-a-doodle-doo of the hated reveille had dragged him from his blankets. Habit had aroused him, but he thanked the Lord that now he could roll over and go back to sleep. He rolled over, but he could not sleep. Daylight was throbbing across the sky like the long roll of the drums. Street-cars were hammering their rails. The early-morning population was opening the city gates, and the advance-guards of the commercial armies were hurrying to their posts. The city, which he had seen at its dress-parade and at its night revels, was beginning its business day with that snap and precision, that superb zest and energy and efficiency that had made it what it was. It was impossible for Forbes to lie abed where so much was going on. Fagged as he was, the air was electric, and he had everything to see. He pried his heavy legs from the bed, and clenched his muscles in strenuous exercise while his tub filled with cold water. He came out of it renewed and exultant. When he was dressed and in the hall he surprised the chambermaids at their sweeping. They were running vacuum cleaners like little lawn-mowers over the rugs. In the breakfast-room he was quite alone. But the streets were alive, and the street-cars crowded with the humbler thousands. He walked to Fifth Avenue. It was sparsely peopled now, and even its shops were still closed. The homes were sound asleep, save for an occasional tousled servant yawning at an area, or gathering morning papers from the sill. He walked to Central Park. The foliage here was wide awake and all alert with the morning wind. He strolled through the Zoo; the animals were up and about--the bison and deer, the fumbling polar bears. The lions and tigers were already pacing their eternal sentry-posts; the hyenas and wolves were peering about for the loophole that must be found next time; the quizzical little raccoons were bustling to and fro, putting forth grotesque little hands. Forbes crossed bridges and followed winding paths that led him leagues from city life, though the cliffs of the big hotels and apartment-houses were visible wherever he turned. On one arch he paused to watch a cavalcade of pupils from a riding-school. He was surprised to see them out so early. Other single equestrians came along the bridle-path, rising and falling from their park saddles in the park manner. There were few women riding, and few of these rode sidewise. He was used to seeing women astride in the West; but here they did not wear divided skirts and sombreros; they wore smart derby hats, long-tailed coats, riding-trousers, and puttees. Coming toward him he noted what he supposed to be an elderly man and