What Will People Say? A Novel

Fifth Avenue at flood-tide was a boiling surf of automobiles. But at nearly every corner a policeman succeeded where King Canute had failed, and checked the sea or let it pass with...

Helpless to pursue her with more than his gaze, Forbes watched from his lofty perch how swiftly she fled northward. He could follow her car as it thridded the unpoliced traffic by ...

He brooded like a sneering Satan for a time upon the meaning of the dress-parade, and then the glory of it overpowered him again. He felt that it would be a hideous world without i...

Nothing can be lonelier than a room in even a best hotel when one is lonesome and when one's window looks out upon crowds. Forbes had pitched his tent at the Knickerbocker, and his...

The women he passed glared hatpins at Forbes and groaned as they rose and hunched back to let him by. They clutched at the wraps he disarranged. He rumpled one elaborate hat stuck ...

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--...

The room they were in was a mass of tables compacted around a central space, where professional entertainers were displaying the latest fashions in song and dance. A pair of "Texas...

Harvey Forbes came of a Southern stock that inherited its manners with its silver. Both were a trifle formal, yet very gracious and graceful. The family had lost its silver in the...

Willie Enslee brought the dancers off their pinions and back to earth by a fretful reminder that the bouillon was chilling in the cups, and the crab-meat was scorching in the chafi...

The turbulence of the dance increased as the respectable people were sifted out. Hysteria is a kind of fretful fatigue, and the wearier these children of joy were, the more reckles...

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 f...

Forbes had planned to visit the Army and Navy Club, in which he held a membership, but now he preferred to lunch alone--yet not alone, for he was entertaining a guest. The head wa...

She was talking the most indifferent nothings as they went up the stairs to the dancing-room, a largish space with an encircling gallery. As usual the dancing-floor was a clearing ...

Persis was not of the period or the set that thinks much of family. In fact, the whole world and its aristocracies have been shaken by too many earthquakes of late to leave walls s...

The safety match that resists all other friction needs only the touch of its peculiar mate to break into flame. And many chemical compounds, including souls, change their behavior ...

Forbes was prompt at the Opera. Though it was barely half past seven, he found the foyer already swarming with a bustling mob of women swaddled in opera-cloaks, and prosperous-look...

Mrs. Neff and Winifred may have had their suspicions. They were both amiable cynics, and always put the worst possible interpretation on any happening. But whatever their theories,...

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. Fo...

After the supper no time was lost in returning to the main business of the meeting. Again Willie claimed the first dance, and Forbes was deputed to Ten Eyck's debutante. The next d...

Forgiveness and garters lose their snap when they are stretched too often. Once before Forbes had apologized to Persis for an excess of enthusiasm, and her forgiveness had brought ...

Persis had not misjudged Forbes. If she had told him then that she was another man's betrothed, he would have changed his whole attitude toward her. He would have flirted with her ...

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 assistants, learning their father...

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...

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 t...

When Forbes hastened after the hastening Persis and saw how distraught she was he felt the sharp cutting-edge of sympathy. It was his first sight of her in a mood of heartache, and...

All the way back to the hotel, all the while he was selecting what clothes he should take, all the while he waited for the hour of the general rendezvous to arrive Forbes was troub...

If Persis and the others were rejoicing in their emancipation from formalities too familiar, Forbes was glad that he had escaped them for the reverse reason. Hospitality had been d...

The only dream that Forbes knew that night--or remembered, at least--was a dream of his latest garrison, and the same bugle humming like the single nagging morning fly that frets a...

For convincing the human heart there is no argument like a parable or analogy, and there is no more worthless proof to the mind. So long as Persis could be called a bird of paradis...

She studied Forbes closely and laughed aloud at the almost nausea he plainly felt. "I thought that would shock the nonsense out of you," she triumphed. "Now let's be sensible whil...

Luncheon was breakfast again with a few additions. Winifred had lost the hang of the range, and what successes she had were ruined by her inability to corral the herd on time. The ...

Lieutenant Forbes had known what it was to bivouac in the black of night in Mindanao, surrounded by wild men native to the trees and as stealthy as the dark, and armed with blow-gu...

The motor passengers were in no haste to be gone, and they loitered, watching the mad riders on their breakneck descent, now hidden, now revealed again by a swerve of the road, a j...

Forbes' caddy was standing by the ball, and came in with it, cannily claimed his pay and tip for the full course, and hurried back with the Senator's caddy to pick up other fares. ...

Persis met equine wrath with female rage. The fiercer the horse plunged the harder she beat him with the crop, the more bloodthirstily she stabbed his sides with her keen-spurred h...

"Is it possible that we're actually alone?" Forbes gloated, turning in his saddle to take her in in her brisk, youthful beauty. "I shouldn't exactly call it alone up here on the m...

Forbes had been recruiting strength to tell her that he released her; but she anticipated him by jilting him first--and in sporting terms. He stared at her, but he could not see th...

The reporter's fleering smile and his acidulous "Thank you, Miss Cabot," convinced Persis that the man had, with the sophistication reporters learn too well, put the worst possible...

As she mounted the steps with Willie, Persis felt something of Forbes' regret. She was a slave on the block, and the man she wanted for owner was crowded from the mart. "What did ...

That was an extraordinary dinner. The famished aristocracy hovered about the kitchen porch like waifs, pleading for the privilege of assisting. Ten Eyck wanted to scour the cake-di...

Forbes tried to smile, but his muscles seemed unable to support his lips. He heard much noise, yet distinguished nothing till he seemed to wake suddenly at finding Willie Enslee sm...

There were not many more dances before Willie, in his new capacity of Benedick-to-be, declared for early closing hours, and ordered his guests off to bed, warning them that the nex...

In the panic of her soul there was just honor enough awake to raise that prayer, and in the fury of his there was just honor enough left to answer it. It was the one irresistible a...

When Forbes shut the door upon Persis (and unwittingly shut out her little gesture of appeal to come back, be stronger than she was, and rescue her from herself in spite of herself...

The next forenoon, having obtained the privilege of absence, Forbes crossed from Governor's Island to Manhattan Island, took the Subway from South Ferry to Fifty-ninth Street, and,...

Willie Enslee was as little masculine as a man could be without being in the least effeminate. Ten Eyck, whose French was more fluent than exact, called him "_petite_." His head wa...

When Willie's mother left him in the aftermath of his nightmare she went to pay her duty call on Persis, to welcome her formally into the family and proffer her the use of the fami...

Stowe obeyed reluctantly, and the taxicab groaned on its way. Persis set Stowe on the small flap-seat and turned so that she could skewer him and Alice with one look. "Now, Alice,...

Persis was not the only busy person in New York. Willie was kept on the jump preparing his share of the performance. The ushers were to be chosen, and their gifts, and a dinner giv...

Forbes had not been invited to Persis' wedding. She had debated the matter feverishly and resolved that it was the lesser slight to leave him out of the twenty-five hundred who rec...

As Forbes had once surveyed the tide of Fifth Avenue from the upper deck of a motor-bus, so now, from a sky-scraping ship he watched the thronged traffic along the spacious avenue ...

Persis was sorry for her husband, but just a trifle sorrier for Persis. She solaced herself with the thought that it was partly for Willie's own sake that she consented to go back,...

Willie had arranged for supper at home. As they left the theater and sped through the streets crowded with uncharacteristic mobs Persis thought longingly of the tango-hunts she had...

Paris and London were like two rival circuses bidding for the public, beating tom-toms, blowing horns, and sending out band-wagons and parades. While Persis was wearying of the Eng...

"I say, Persis, I lost track of you in that ghastly mob. I'm sorry. By the way, wasn't that tall fella in the uniform the same Lieutenant What's-his-name that was honeying around M...

Persis sat in grim communion with her image for hours. She faintly heard her husband's tapping on her door, and calling through it at intervals in thicker and thicker speech. But i...

One day Mrs. Mather Edgecumbe found the Enslees shivering like a pair of waifs in a restaurant famous for its cuisine and infamous for its heating arrangements. She asked them if t...

Persis, forgetting that he was her enemy, leaped to his aid with instinctive womanliness. "You are ill; let me get you something." Tait straightened himself with an effort, saying...

In the exceeding industry of the days following the death of Ambassador Tait, Captain Forbes found no chance to see Mrs. Enslee. Their meeting would have been perilous. The Ambassa...

When he had gone a few hundred paces he whirled about and hurried back to the hotel; asked for Monsieur _et_ Madame Enslee; sent up his card; wished he had it back; received a summ...

Forbes took the steamer he had planned to take, though he had such battles with his recalcitrant heart that he did not feel safe till the tender at Cherbourg put away from the ship...

Never, it seems, has human ingenuity been able to devise a scheme of guardianship that human ingenuity could not thwart. Seeing that seraglio walls, and yashmaks, and eunuchs, and ...

The following afternoon Persis came home from a tango-tea, where she had expected to meet Forbes. Through some misunderstanding he had failed to appear. This left her plans in a de...

Persis awaited his departure impatiently, tapping her foot with restlessness. She fell into reverie of indefinite duration. The bell rang. She gave a start of joy. Crofts went by o...

Forbes stared after the two women in complete perplexity. He turned to Persis to ask stupidly: "What did they mean, Persis?" Persis had lost almost every whit of self-control. Sh...

A little groan of dismay broke from Persis' lips as she rushed between Forbes and the danger, interposing her body to protect his. Forbes seized her and thrust her away and leaped ...

In the famous Enslee dining-room, where brilliant companies had gathered for a generation, giving and taking distinctions, and where Persis in her brief reign had mustered cohorts ...

Persis watched him come, and did not move. It was unbelievable that disaster should fall to such as her from such as him in such a way. He was evidently only playing a part to frig...