What Will People Say? Part 24

He smiled at her burlesque, but persisted:

"How would you like to--to give the party and order the fodder? I'm just back from the Philippines, you know. I could get up a mess for my company, but I'm afraid I couldn't feed you people to your liking."

"Oh, n.o.body eats anything any more, or drinks much of anything."

"All the more reason for having what you do have right. Won't you order it for me, and tell me where to have it?"

She was tempted to seize the chance. It was a delight to her to compose a meal. It was a kind of millinery or dressmaking in its art of arrangement. She checked herself on the brink of acceptance, realizing that it would set people to talking if she conducted Forbes'

entertainments for him. Even Willie, who was neither very observing nor very jealous, would raise a row at that.

"I'll tell you," she said. "Ask Mrs. Neff to be the hostess. You're under some obligations to her, and none to me."

"May I ask her to order the luncheon, too?" said Forbes, with dwindled enthusiasm.

"Oh no; you must do that!"

"I'm afraid I don't know what to have."

"It's the simplest thing in the world. Just go to the Ritz-Carlton and ask for Fernand. Tell him I'm coming, and I said for him to take good care of you--of us. And now let's see who can come."

She strolled about with him while he made his invitations. Everybody had engagements of various sorts, but they were brittle. Mrs. Neff was flattered immeasurably, and asked if she could bring Alice along. She was afraid to leave her lest she connive with Stowe Webb at some escapade. Bob Fielding could not come so far up-town from his office, and Winifred could be present only if she were permitted to be late.

"I'm not allowed to eat anything, anyway," she moaned, "except a little dried toast and some lemon-juice; and the waiters treat me like a dog.

But I'll be there if you'll protect me."

Ten Eyck had planned to run down to Piping Rock, but he would not desert Forbes in his hour of peril. Willie had an important engagement with one of the executors of his father's estate, but he quickly shifted it when he found that Persis was to be present. This made seven all told, four women and three men.

"I could get more if you want," said Persis; "but seven is lucky, and more is no fun."

"Seven is just right," said Forbes, with a little premonitory chill at the thought of the probable cost.

It was finally agreed that they were to lunch late, take a little spin round town, and then turkey-trot again in the afternoon.

Forbes was amazed at himself. Now he was to play the host, and Persis was to be at his elbow! Or should he put her opposite him, as if she were his wife? What a decoration she would be at a man's home table!

The word "home" took a new timbre in his soul. Hitherto home had meant the tall, white columns and broad lawns where his mother lived. Now it began to mean almost any place--soldiers' quarters, hotel--any place where Persis would rest awhile. Even the humming-bird has a nest to go to when its wings are tired. Some day Persis must nest, too. Her wings could not beat on forever.

CHAPTER XXII

There had come to be more and more room on the floor as the crowd dispersed slowly. Many of the young owls were by daylight bank-clerks and office a.s.sistants, learning their father's trades of money. They were remembering that they must be up betimes in the morning. They had been campaigning all winter on short rations of sleep. If they made up lost slumber anywhere, it was at their desks, to which nothing but a spanking cold bath could have roused them day after day.

They were glad now when their demoiselles confessed to fatigue, too, or the mothers began to mention the hour.

Even Mrs. Neff was a trifle groggy. The poor old soul was trying hard to keep from confessing how tired and sleepy she was. She kept herself young by pretending to be young, and her motto was, "A woman is just as old as she says she is." Though, for the matter of that, if her statement of her age had been correct, her eldest son must have been born before she was; and Alice would have come along when her mother was about eight years old.

Persis was growing drowsy-eyed, too, and heavy-limbed, with an almost voluptuous longing for sleep. She drooped like a flower at sunset. She ceased to smuggle her yawns as sighs, and once or twice she forgot to lift her hand to hide them.

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 gla.s.s with his little racc.o.o.n-like fingers, and blinking his little racc.o.o.n-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.