What Will People Say? A Novel 6 – Hughes · Library Across
Literature · Romance
What Will People Say? A Novel 6Chapter 6
18
Literature · Romance
What Will People Say? A Novel 6
Chapter 6
HughesEnglish
When the final curtain came down like a guillotine on the play there was a general uprising, a sort of slow panic to escape from this finished place and move on to the next event--by street-car to a welsh rabbit in a kitchenette, or by motor to a restaurant of pretense.
Everybody being in haste, everybody went slowly. Forbes retrieved his hat and overcoat after a ferocious struggle. In the lazy ooze-out of the crowd he was gradually shunted to the side of Persis, and willing enough to be there, proud to be there. He walked a little more militarily than he usually did in civilian's.
He heard people whispering with a shrillness that Persis had evidently grown accustomed to, for she could not have helped hearing, yet showed no sign. And now Forbes recaptured her last name, and it was familiar to him, little as he knew of social chronicles.
"Look! That's Persis Cabot," said one. "There's the Cabot girl you read so much about," said another. "She's got a sister who's a Countess or Marquise, or something." Then Forbes learned by roundabout the last name of Willie, and learned it with alarm from two of the sharpest whisperers:
"That's Willie Enslee with her, I suppose."
"I guess so."
"Don't see why they call that big fellow Little Willie."
"Just a joke, I guess."
"They say he's worth twenty million dollars."
"He looks it."
At any other time it would have amused Forbes immensely to be called so far out of his name and to receive twenty million dollars by acclamation.
But now he could only busy himself with deductions: why did they assume that any man who was with Persis Cabot was sure to be Willie Enslee? Could it mean--what else could it mean?
He glanced around to take another look at Willie Enslee. Now that he knew him for what he was, the situation was intolerable. Marry this dream of beauty to that cartoon, that grotesque who came hardly to her shoulder!
His glance had showed him that the men and women they had passed were looking up and down Persis' back like appraising dry-goods merchants or plagiarizing dressmakers. When he turned his head forward he saw that the women in front were inspecting her with even more brazen curiosity. It astounded Forbes to see such well-dressed people behaving so peasantly. But Persis seemed as oblivious of their study as if they were painted heads on a fresco. Forbes, however, flushed when their eyes turned to him, because he felt that they were saying, "That must be Willie Enslee," and "Why do they call that big thing Little Willie?"
Meanwhile Little Willie himself was handing the attendant at the switchboard a punctured carriage check, with which to flash the number on the sign outside.
There was a long wait for their own car, while motor after motor slid up and slid away as soon as its number had been bawled and its cargo had detached itself from the waiting huddle.
After the close, warm theater Forbes flinched at the edged night wind coming from the river. With the caution of an athlete he turned up his collar and buttoned his overcoat over his chest. But Persis stood with throat and bosom naked to the wind, and to all those staring eyes, and never thought to gather about her even the flimsy aureole of chiffon that took the place of a scarf. And equally unafraid and unashamed stood Winifred and Mrs. Neff. (He had collected her name, too, during the conversation that flourished throughout the last act.)
At length the footman, who had howled out other people's numbers, held up a timid finger and murmured, awesomely, "Mr. Enslee?"
The limousine, whose door he opened, was by no means the handsomest of the line. Enslee was evidently rich enough to afford a shabby car. The three women bent their heads and entered with difficulty, their tight skirts sliding to their knees as they clambered in.
There was a great ado over the problem of room. Every man offered to walk or take a taxi. Ten Eyck made sure that Forbes should not be omitted. Ignoring his protests, he bundled him into one of the little extra seats and crawled in after him. The huge third man (still anonymous and taciturn) next inserted his bulk--a large cork in a small bottle.
Willie put his head in to ask:
"Where d'you want to go, Persis?"
"Trotting, of course," came from the crowded depths.
"But I don't think--"
"Then take me home and go to the devil."
"We'll trot," sighed Willie. He spoke to the chauffeur dolefully, then appeared at the door to wail helplessly:
"There seems to be no room for me."
"You're only the host," said Winifred. "Hop on behind."
"You can sit on my lap," said Ten Eyck.
And as that was the only vacant space, the big man lifted him up and set him there. The footman, reassured by the tip in his hand, grinned at the spectacle and laughed, as he closed the door: "Is you all in?"
Seven persons were packed where there was hardly space for five; but Forbes noted that they were as informal and good-natured as yokels on a hay-ride. All except Willie, and his distress was not because of the crowd.
The car had no more than left the theater when Mrs. Neff was groaning:
"A cigarette, somebody, quick--before I faint!"
Winifred by a mighty twisting produced a concaved golden case and snapped it open, only to gasp:
"Empty! My God, it's empty!"
Persis saved the day. "I have some. Give us a light, Willie. There's a dear."
As usual, Willie had a counter-idea.
"But, Persis, don't you think you could wait till--"
Her only answer was, "Murray, give me a light."
Ten Eyck called out, "Right-o, milydy, if Bob will hold our little hostlet half a mo." And he deposited Willie in the arms of the big man while he fumbled in his waistcoat for a book of matches and passed it back into the dark. "'Ere you are, your lydyship." He was forever talking in some dialect or other.
But Persis gave him her cigarette and pleaded: "It's so conspicuous holding a match to your face on Broadway. Light mine for me, Murray."
"It's highly unsanitary," said Ten Eyck; "but if you don't mind I don't. I fancy these cigarettes of yours would choke any self-respecting microbe to death."
Ten Eyck kindled her cigarette as delicately as he could and handed it to her. The same service he performed for the other eager women, and the three were soon puffing the close compartment so full of smoke that the men felt no need of burning tobacco of their own.
When a particularly bright glare swept into the car from the street the women made a pretense of hiding their cigarettes; but it was an ostrich-like concealment, and Forbes could see other women in other cabs similarly engaged. During his absence smoking had evidently become almost as commonplace among the women as among the men.
Forbes, cramped of leg and choked of lung, was wondering at his presence here. It was a far cry from Manila. He had never dreamed when he showed an ordinary human interest in the melancholy Ten Eyck, fallen ill there on a jaunt around the world, that his courtesy in the wilderness would be repaid with usury in the metropolis. Nor had he learned from Ten Eyck's unobtrusive manner that he was a familiar figure in the halls of the mighty. Forbes had cast an idle crust on the waters, and lo, it returned as a frosted birthday cake!
He had come to town at noon a lonely stranger, and before midnight he was literally in the lap of beauty and chumming with wealth and aristocracy in their most intimate mood.
The sidewalks outside were packed with theater crowds till they spilled over at the curbs, and the streets were filled with all sorts of vehicles till they threatened the sidewalks. Guiding a car there was like shooting a rapids full of logs in a lumber-drive, but Enslee's man was an expert charioteer.
Suddenly they whirled off Broadway, and, describing a short curve, came to a stop. A footman opened the door, but nobody moved.
Ten Eyck said: "The problem now is how do we get out. I'm so mixed up with somebody, I don't know my own legs." Like a wise man of Gotham, he jabbed his thumb into the mixture, and asked, "Are those mine?"
"No, they are not!" said Winifred.
Willie was lowered ashore first. Bob What's-his-name bulged through next, then Ten Eyck, then Forbes. Ten Eyck dropped into the gutter the three lighted cigarettes that had been hastily pressed into his hand, and turned to help the women out.
Forbes, wondering where they were, looked up and read with difficulty a great sign in vertical electric letters, "Reisenweber's."
Willie told his chauffeur to wait, and the car drew down the street to make room for a long queue of other cars. Ten Eyck led the flock into a narrow hall, and filled the small elevator with as many as could get in. He included Forbes with the three women, and remained behind with Willie and Bob.
Crowded into the same space were two young girls, very pretty till they spoke, and then so plebeian that their own beauty seemed to flee affrighted. The blonde seraph was chanting amid her chewing-gum:
"He says to me, 'If you was a lady you wouldn't 'a' drank with a party you never sor before,' and I come back at him, 'If you was a gempmum you'd 'a' came across with the price of a pint when you seen I was dyin' of thoist.'"
And the brunette answered: "You can't put no trust in them kind of Johns. Besides, he tangoes like he had two left feet."
Forbes was uneasy till Persis whispered, "Don't you just love them?" Then a door opened and they debarked into a crowded anteroom. While they waited for the car to descend and rise again with the rest of the party the women gave their wraps to a maid, and Forbes delivered his coat and hat and stick across a counter to a hat-boy.
When Ten Eyck, Willie, and Bob appeared and had checked their things the seven climbed a crowded staircase into an atmosphere riotous with chatter and dance-music of a peculiarly rowdy rhythm.
But they could only hear and feel the throb of it. They could not see the dancers, so thick a crowd was ahead of them.
A head waiter appeared, and, curt as he was with the rest of the mob, he was pitifully regretful at losing Mr. Enslee, who had failed to reserve a table and who would not wait.
It was disgusting to slink back down the stairs, regain the wraps and coats and hats, and make two elevator-loads again. Willie alone was cheerful.
"Now, maybe you'll go to the Plaza or some place and have a human supper."
"I'm going to have a trot and a tango if I have to hunt the town over," said Persis.
Willie gnashed his teeth, but had the car recalled, and asked her where she would go.
"Let's try the Beaux Arts," she said; and they huddled together once more.
"It's too bad we were thrown out of Reisenweber's," Winifred pouted. "I was dying to see Francois dance and have a dance with him."
Forbes felt well enough acquainted by now to ask: "Pardon my ignorance, but who is Francois?"
"Oh, he's a love of a French lad," said Winifred. "Everybody's mad over him. I used to see him in Paris dancing between the tables at the Cafe de Paris or the Pre-Catalan with some girl or other. Then somebody brought him over here for a musical comedy, and he's been on the crest of the wave ever since."
"They say he's getting rich dancing in theaters and restaurants and giving lessons at twenty-five per."
"Somebody was telling me he actually makes fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars a week," said Mrs. Neff.
"If I had that much, would you marry me, Persis?" said Ten Eyck.
"In a minute," said Persis. "We might earn it ourselves. You dance as well as he does, and you could practise whirling me round your neck."
"Then we're engaged," said Ten Eyck.
"It's outrageous!" said Willie. "That fellow with an income equal to five per cent. on a couple of million dollars."
"What you kicking about, Willie?" said Winifred. "You get several times as much, and you never lifted hand or foot in your life."
"But Willie's father did," said Mrs. Neff. "He killed himself working."
"Willie has it much better arranged," said Bob. "Instead of Willie working for money he has the money working for him."
"It works while he sleeps," said Winifred.
Forbes was thinking gloomily in the gloom of the car. This dancer, this mountebank, Francois, was earning as much in a week as the government paid him in a year, after all his training, his campaigning, his readiness to take up his residence or lay down his life wherever he was told to.
Then he compared his income with Willie Enslee's. Enslee did not even dance for his supper, yet into his banks gold rained where pennies dribbled into Forbes' meager purse. And it was not a precarious salary such as dancers and soldiers earned by their toil; it was the mere sweat from great slumbering masses of treasure.
Forbes felt no longer an exultance at falling in with these people. He felt ashamed of himself. He was no more a part of the company he kept than a gnat on an ox or a flea caught up in the ermine of a king. The air grew oppressive. He felt like a tenement waif patronized for a moment on a whim, and likely to be tossed back to his poverty at any moment. He wanted to get out before he was put out. The very luxuries that enthralled him at first were intolerable now. The perfume of the women and their flowers lost its savor. Their graces had gone. They were all elbows and knees. He suffocated as in a black hole of Calcutta.
When a footman at the Cafe des Beaux Arts wrenched the door open and let the cool air in, it was welcome. Forbes moved to escape. But he was kept prisoner while Bob was sent as an avant courier. He returned with the bad news that he was unable even to reach a head waiter.
The car nosed round, turned with difficulty, and went to Bustanoby's. It was the same story here.
"New York's gone mad, I tell you!" Willie raved. "And nobody is as crazy as we are. To think of us going about like a gang of beggars pleading to be taken in and allowed to dance with a lot of hoodlums and muckers. Even they won't have us."
"We'll try once more," said Persis. "The Cafe de Ninive."
After a brief voyage farther along Broadway the suppliant outcasts entered a great hall imposingly decorated with winged bulls and other Assyrian symbols. The huge space of the restaurant was a desert of tables untenanted save by a few dejected waiters and a few couples evidently in need of solitude.
An elevator took the determined Persis and her cohort up to another thronged vestibule.
Persis had said to Willie in the car, "If you don't get us a table here I'll never speak to you again."
With this threat as a spur Little Willie accosted a large captain of waiters, who shrugged his shoulders and indicated the crowd inside and the crowd outside. Willie fumbled in his pockets, and his hand slyly met that of the captain, who glanced into his palm, then up to heaven in gratitude, and laid aside all scruple.
Willie triumphantly beckoned Persis, who approached the captain with the pouting appeal of a lady of the court to a relenting sovereign.
"Fritz," she said, "you've got to take care of us."
"How can I refuse Mees Cabot," said Fritz. "Do you weesh to seet and watch the artists, or to seet weeth the dancers?"
"We want to dance," said Persis.
"There is one table resairve for a very great patron. You shall have it. I shall lose me my poseetion, and he will tear down the beelding; but that is better as to turn away Mees Cabot and Meester Enslee."
He whispered to a horrified captain on the other side of a silk rope. The barrier was removed, and they were within the sacred inclosure, while the baffled remnant gnashed its teeth outside.
