CHAPTER XIV

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 standing high enough to keep youth

from overlooking and overstepping them. Few speak of caste nowadays

except novelists, editors, and the very old. What aristocracies we have

are clubs or cliques gathered by a community of tastes, and recruited

individually.

In any case, the Persis that was willing to go out into the byways and

highways and public dancing-places would have made no bones of granting

her smiles and her hospitality to anybody that entertained her,

mountebank or mummer, tradesman or riding-master.

And yet it did Forbes no harm in her eyes to be established as of high

lineage and important acquaintance. If only now he were rich, he would

be graduated quite into the inner circle of those who were eligible to

serious consideration.

Unconsciously Ten Eyck gave him this diploma also, though his motive was

rather one of rebuke to Persis for her little tang of surprise.

"You needn't raise your brows, Persis, because Forbesy knows senators

and things," he said. "He's a plutocrat, too. I caught him depositing a

million dollars in one of our best little banks to-day."

"A million dollars!" Forbes gasped. "Is there that much money in the

world?"

Forbes had no desire to obtain the reputation of money under false

pretenses. Yet he could not delicately discuss his exact poverty. He

could not decently announce: "I have only my small army pay and a few

hundred dollars in the bank." It would imply that these people were

interested in his financial status. Yet even the pretense by silence

troubled him, till his problem was dismissed by an interruption:

"Is anybody at home?"

Mrs. Neff spoke into the stillness as if she had materialized from

nothing. Nobody had noticed her approach, and every one was startled. To

Forbes her sharp voice came as a rescue from incantation. And Mrs. Neff

was in the mood of the most unromantic reality. She did not pause to be

greeted or questioned, but went at her discourse with a flying start:

"I'm mad and I'm hungry as the devil--oh, pardon me! I didn't see my

angel child. Alice, darling, how on earth did you get here? Murray, if

you have a human heart in your buzzum get the waiter man to run for a

sandwich and a--a--no, I'll be darned if I'll take tea, in spite of

example to youngers, who never follow our good examples, anyway; make it

a highball, Murray; Scotch, and quick!"

The waiter nodded in response to Ten Eyck's nod, and vanished with an

excellent imitation of great speed.

"Give over, Win!" Mrs. Neff continued, prodding Miss Mather aside and

wedging forward with the chair Ten Eyck surrendered to her. "What's in

those sandwiches? Lettuce? Thanks! Don't all ask me at once where I've

been! I'm the little lady what seen her dooty and done it. If my angel

child had done hers she would be even now listening to a lecture on

Current Topics, so that she could inform her awful mother, as she calls

me, what the tariff talk is all about, and who Salonica is, and why the

Vulgarians are fighting the Balkans. But, of course, being a modern

child, she plays hookey and goes to _thes dansants_ while her poor old

mother works."

"But mother dear, I was just--"

"Don't tell it, my child! I know what you're going to say: that Persis

picked you up and dragged you here by the hair, and Persis will back you

up, of course, like the dear little liar she is. But I'll save you the

trouble, darlings. Where is he? Is he still here or did he learn of my

approach and flit?"

"He--who?" said every one, zealously, with a stare of innocence sadly

overdone.

"He--who?" Mrs. Neff mocked. "He-haw! Oh, but you're a putrid lot of

actors. So he has been here. Well, I mention no names, but if a certain

young person whose initials are Stowe Webb wants to meet a little old

lady named Trouble, let him come out from under the table."

"Mother dear, how you do run on," Alice protested. "I don't think you

really need another highball."

"Another! Listen to that. Dutiful child trying to save erring mother

from a drunkard's grave! And me choking with thirst since luncheon! Do

you know where I've been? Yes? Then I will tell you. I've been at a

committee meeting of the Vacation Savings Fund."

The waiter brought a tiny flask, a tall glass, and a siphon, and offered

to mix her a potion; but she motioned him aside and arranged it to her

own taste. The band struck up, and she sipped hastily as she talked:

"That's the most insulting music I ever heard, and I'm just mad enough

to dance well. If nobody has any prior claim on this young soldier man,

he's mine. Mr. Forbes, would you mind supporting your grandmother around

the room once or twice?"

Forbes had counted on having this dance with Persis. He had wasted one

important tango while Alice poured out her woes. To squander this dance

on her mother was a grievous loss. There was nothing for him to do,

however, but yield.

He bowed low and smiled. "Nothing would give me more pleasure."

Mrs. Neff returned his bow with an old-fashioned courtesy, as she

beamed:

"Very prettily said! Old fashioned and nice. My first husband would have

answered like that. Did Murray tell you that I had offered you the job

of being my third husband?"

"Mother!" Alice gasped.

Forbes was exquisitely ill at ease. It is hard to parry banter of that

sort from a woman. He bowed again and answered with an ambiguous smile:

"Nothing would give me more pleasure."

"Fine! Then we may as well announce our engagement. Kind friends, permit

me to introduce my next husband, Mr.--Mr.--what is your first name,

darling?"

"Mother!" Alice implored.

"Oh, I'm sure his first name can't be Mother. But we're missing the

dance. Come along, hero mine!"

Forbes cast a farewell look of longing at Persis, who was regarding him

with an amused bewilderment.

The blare of the band was as effectual as a Gabriel's trumpet opening

graves. From the tables the dead came to life and took on stilts if not

wings.

Big Bob Fielding and Winifred Mather set out at once in close embrace.

"Look at 'em! Look at 'em!" Ten Eyck chortled. "They're grappled like

two old-time battleships on a heavy sea." Ten Eyck was the

great-great-grandson of one of the first commissioned officers in the

American navy, a rival even of Paul Jones. So now his comment was

nautical. "Bob and Winifred remind me of the _Bonhomme Richard_ and the

_Serapis_. And Winifred is like old John Paul Jones: when everybody else

is dead her motto is: 'I've just begun to fight.'"

But Alice could not smile. She folded her hands and sighed. "It's awful

to be a widow when they play that tango."

Persis provided for her at once. "Murray, you take Alice out and dance

with her."

Ten Eyck saluted. "Come on, Alice, we'll go in for the consolation

stakes."

Alice protested: "But we can't leave you alone."

Persis beckoned to a lonesome-looking acquaintance at another table, and

he came to her with wings outstretched. She locked pinions with him, and

they were away.

Ten Eyck put his arms up like racks; Alice hung herself across them, and

they romped away. As they performed it, the dance was as harmless as a

game of tag.

As Persis was twirled past Forbes now and again, her eyes would meet his

with a gaze of deep inquiry.

And he was thinking so earnestly of her that at some indefinitely later

period he was almost surprised to find that Mrs. Neff was in his arms,

and that they were footing it intricately through a restless maze. He

realized, also, that he had not spoken to her yet. He cast about in his

mind for a topic of conversation, as one whips a dark trout-pool, and

brought up a question:

"That Vacation Savings Fund--may I ask what it is?"

"You may, indeed, young man," she answered, and talked glibly as she

danced, occasionally imitating a strain of music with mocking sounds.

"It's an attempt a lot of us old women have been making to teach the

poor woiking goil what we can't learn ourselves; namely, to save up

money--_la-de-de-da-de-da!_ The poor things slave like mules and

they're paid like slaves--_te-dum-te-dum!_--yet most of them never

think of putting a penny by for a rainy day, or what's more

important--_ta-ra-rum!_--a sunny day.

"So Willie Enslee's mother, and Mrs. Clifton Ranger, and the Atterby

girls, and a gang of other busybodies got ourselves together and cooked

up a scheme--_la-de-de-da-de-da!_--to encourage the girls to stay

home--_ta-ra-rum!_--from a few moving-picture fetes and cut down their

ice-cream-soda orgies a little, and put the pennies into a fund to be

used in giving each of them--_te-dum-te-dum_--a little holiday when her

chance came--_te-di-do-dee!_"

"Splendid!" said Forbes. "Did it work out?"

"Rather. We started with forty girls, and now we've got--how many do you

suppose?"

"A hundred and fifty."

"Eight thousand! And they've saved fifty thousand dollars!"

"That's wonderful!" Forbes exclaimed, stopping short with amazement.

Instantly they were as battered and trodden by the other dancers as a

planet would be that paused in its orbit.

"Come on, or we'll be murdered!" cried Mrs. Neff, and dragged him into

the current again.

Forbes looked down at her with a different feeling. This typical

gadabout, light-minded, cynical little old woman with the girlish ways,

was after all a big-hearted toiler in the vineyard. She did not dress as

a Sister of Charity, and she did not pull a long and philanthropic face,

but she was industrious in good works.

He was to learn much more of this phase of New York wealth, its enormous

organizations for the relief of wretchedness, and its instant response

to the human cry once it makes itself heard above the noise of the cars

or the music of the band.

City people have always made a pretense of concealing their sympathetic

expressions under a cynical mask. It is this mask that offends so many

of the praters against cruelty, irritates them to denunciations more

merciless than the lack of mercy they berate, and blinds their

nearsighted eyes to the village heart that beats in every city--a huge

heart made up of countless village hearts.

So Mrs. Neff, having betrayed an artless Samaritanism, made haste to

resume the red domino of burlesque to hide her blushes, as children

caught in a pretty action fall to capering. Her motive was not lost on

Forbes when she said:

"We've got to do something to get into heaven, you know. That line about

the camel and the needle's eye is always with us poor rich, though the

Lord knows I'm not rich. I hope you have a lot of money, or we'll

starve--unless we loot the Savings Fund."

He hardly knew what to say to this, so he danced a little harder and

swept her off her feet, till she was gasping for breath and pleading:

"Stop, stop! I'm afraid I'm only an old woman after all. And I didn't

want you to know."

He led her to a chair, where she sank exhausted and panting hard. By the

time the dance was over and the rest had returned, she was herself

again.

"My new husband is the love of a tangoist," she babbled across her

highball. "If that infernal committee meeting hadn't kept me so late, I

could have had more. Are you all going to the Tuesday to-night?"

They all were.

"I was to have taken Alice, but I'm going to put her to bed without any

supper. I'll take Mr. Forbes instead. Will you come? Nothing would give

you more pleasure. That's right. Sorry I can't accept your invitation to

dinner, but I'm booked. What about the opera to-night? It's 'Tristan and

Isolde' with Fremstad. Senator Tait was to have taken us, but he can't

go; so Alice won't care to go. He sent me his box, and I have all those

empty chairs to fill. Mr. Forbes can fill one. You can, can't you?" He

nodded helplessly, and she hunted him a ticket out of a handbag as

ridiculously crowded as a boy's first pocket. "It begins at a quarter to

eight. I can't possibly be there before nine. You go when you want to.

Who else can come?"

Persis said that she was dining at Winifred's with Willie, and added:

"He hates the opera, but if I can drag him along I'll come. And if I

can't I'll come anyway."

Winifred accepted for Bob. "I always think I ought to have been a

grand-opera singer," she sighed, "I've got the build for it."

Ten Eyck "had a dinner-job on," but promised to drop in when he could.

Having completed her quorum, and distributed her tickets, Mrs. Neff made

ready to depart by attacking her highball again. The music began before

she had finished it, and Forbes rose before Persis with an old-time

formula.

"May I have the honor?"

As Persis stepped into his arms, Winifred cried:

"Traitress! It's my turn with the li'l snojer man."

And Mrs. Neff caught Persis' elbow to say: "Be very circumspect or I'll

sue you for alienation of the alimony."

Forbes and Persis sent back mocking smiles as they side-stepped into the

carousel.

She was his again in the brief mock-marriage of the dance. His very

muscles welcomed her with such exultance that he must forcibly restrain

them from too ardent a clasp. The whole mood of the music was triumph,

overweening boastfulness, and irresistible arrogance. It was difficult

to be afraid of anything in that baronial walk-around.

But Forbes was afraid of silence. It gave imagination too loose a rein.

To keep himself from loving her too well, and offending her again after

she had forgiven him once, he had recourse to language, the old

concealer of thought.

At first he had been too new to the steps to talk freely. Words had

blurted out of him as from a beginner in a riding-school. But now there

was a spirit in his feet that led him who knows how?

Forbes astonished Persis and himself by his first words:

"Don't you ever sleep, Miss Cabot?"

She threw him a startled glance. "Do I look so jaded as all that?"

He was so upset that he lost step and regained it with awkwardness of

foot and word. "No, no, it's be--because you look--you look as if you

slept for--forever. I don't mean that exact--exactly, either."

"Then what do you mean, Mr. Forbes?"

"I mean: I left you this morning at about four o'clock in one costume,

and I saw you at eight in another."

"At eight this morning? Oh yes, I was riding with my father. Were you

riding, too? I didn't see you."

"Oh yes, you did. I stood on the bridge at daybreak. And you looked at

me and cut me dead."

"Did I really? I must have been asleep."

"Far from it. Your eyes were as bright as--as--"

"This music is very reassuring, isn't it?"

"Yes; please blame the music if I grow too rash. But you really were

wonderful. I thought you were a boy at first. And you ride so well! You

were racing your father. How could you be so wide awake after so

strenuous a night?"

"Oh, I had to get up. It is poor Dad's only chance nowadays. He's

awfully busy in the Street, and he's so worried. And he needs the

exercise. He won't take it unless I go along."

There was an interlude of tenderness in the music. He responded to it.

"That's very beautiful and self-sacrificing of you. But how can you keep

up the pace?"

"I can't, much longer. I'm almost all in. The season is nearly over,

though. If everything goes right, Dad and I will get out of town--to the

other side, perhaps. Then I can sleep all the way across. If he can't go

abroad, we'll be alone anyway, since everybody else will leave town.

Then I can catch up on sleep."

"You must be made of iron," he said.

"Am I so heavy as all that?"

"Oh, no, no, you are--you are--" But he could not say anything without

saying too much. She saved the day by a change of subject.

"And I stared right at you, and didn't know you?"

"Why should you? It was stupid of me to expect you to remember me. But I

did, and--when you didn't, I was crushed."

"Of course you were," she crooned. "I always want to murder anybody who

forgets me."

"Surely that can't happen often? How could any one forget You?"

It was perfectly sincere, yet it sounded like the bumptious praise of a

yokel. She raised her eyelids and reproved him.

"That's pretty rough work for a West-Pointer. Rub it out and do it over

again."

Again he lost the rhythm, and suffered agonies of confusion in

recovering it. But the tango music put him on his feet again. How could

he be humble to that uppish, vainglorious tune, that toreador pomposity?

Persis herself was like a pouter pigeon strutting and preening her high

breast. All the dancers on the floor were proclaiming their grandeur,

playing the peacock.

Forbes grew consequential, too, as he and Persis marched haughtily

forward shoulder to shoulder, and outer hands clasped, then paused for a

kick, whirled on their heels, and retraced their steps with the high

knee-action of thoroughbreds winning a blue ribbon.

Then each hopped awhile on one foot, the other foot kicking between the

partner's knees. Then they dipped to the floor. As he swept her back to

her full height, the music turned sly and sarcastic. It gave an unreal

color to his words.

"Will you pardon me one question?"

"Probably not. What is it?"

"Didn't you wear this same hat yesterday?"

Her head came up with a glare. "Isn't that a rather catty remark for a

man to make?"

"Oh, I didn't mean it that way," he faltered. "It's a beautiful hat."

"No hat is beautiful two days in succession. It's unkind of you, though,

to notice it, and rub it in."

"For heaven's sake, don't take it that way. I--I followed this hat of

yours for miles and miles yesterday."

"You followed this hat?"

"Yes."

They danced, marched, countermarched, pirouetted, in a pink mist. And he

told her in his courtly way, with his Southern fervor, how he had been

captivated by the white plume, and the shoulder and arm, and the foot;

how vainly he had tried to overtake her for at least a fleeting survey.

He told her how keen his dismay was when she escaped him and fled north.

He told her how he made a note of the number of her car. He did not tell

her that he forgot it, and he did not dare to tell her that he was

jealous of the unknown to whom she had hastened.

Persis could not but be pleased, though she tried to disguise her

delight by saying:

"It must have been a shock to you when you saw what was really under

this hat."

She had not meant to fish so outrageously for a compliment. She

understood, too late, that her words gave him not only an excuse, but a

compulsion to praise. Praise was not withheld.

"If you could only know how I--how you--how beautiful you--how--I wish

you'd let me say it!"

"You've said it," she murmured. His confusion revealed an ardor too

profound to be rebuked or resisted. She luxuriated in it, and rather

sighed than smiled:

"I'm glad you like me."

It was a more girlish speech than she usually made. Unwittingly she

crept a trifle closer to him, and breathed so deeply that he felt her

bosom swell against him with a strangely gentle power. By immeasurably

subtle degrees the barrier between them dissolved, or rather shifted

until it surrounded them. They were no longer strangers. They were

together within a magic inclosure.

He understood the new communion, and an impulse swept him to crush her

against him. He fought it so hard that his arm quivered. She felt the

battle in his muscles, and rejoiced in the duel of his two selves, both

hers. She knew that she had a lover as well as a guardian in his heart.

She looked up to see what manner of man this was who had won so close to

her soul in so brief a time. He looked down to see who she really was.

Their eyes met and held, longer than ever before, met studiously and

hospitably, as the eyes of two lonesome children that have become

neighbors meet across a fence.

What she saw in his gaze gave a little added crimson to her cheeks. And

then the music flared up with a fierce ecstasy that penetrated even

their aloofness. He caught her close and spun with her in a frenzied

rapture round and round. He shunted other dancers aside and did not know

it. He was glared at, rebuked, and did not know it. The impetus of the

whirl compelled a tighter, tighter clutch. Their hands gripped faster.

He forgot everything in the mystic pursuit and surrender of the dance,

the union and disunion of their bodies--her little feet companioning

his, the satin and steel of her tense sinews, the tender duality of her

breast against the rock of his, the flutter of her quick, warm breath on

his throat, the sorcery of her half-averted eyes tempting his lips

almost unbearably.

The light burned about them like a flaming rose. The other couples had

paused and retreated, staring at them; but they did not heed their

isolation. They swooped and careened and twirled till they were blurred

like a spinning top, till they were exhausted and wavering in their

flight.

At length he found that she was breathless, pale, squandered. She hung

all her weight on his arm, and grew so heavy that it ached.

And now, when he looked down at her, he saw that the operator had

inadvertently put upon them the green light. In Forbes' eyes it had a

sickly, cadaverous glimmer as of death and dissolution. He did not know

that she was about to swoon; but she was so gray and lifeless that he

was frightened. In the green, clammy radiance she looked as if she had

been buried and brought back to the daylight. She was horribly

beautiful.

Just in time the music came to an abrupt end, and the _danse macabre_

was done. But the floor still wheeled beneath his feet, and he staggered

as he held her limp and swaying body.

She shook the dizziness from her eyes, and put away his arm, but seized

it again. He supported her to the table and guided her to a seat. Then

he caught up a glass and put it to her wan mouth.

Ten Eyck, who had been watching them from his place, shoved a chair

against Forbes relaxing knees, and set a tall glass in his hand, saying:

"Gad, old man, you need a drink!"

Forbes took a gulp of a highball and sat staring at Persis. Ten Eyck was

quietly dipping his fingers into his own glass and flicking water on

Persis' face. She regained her self-control wonderingly. Her lips tried

pluckily to smile, though her eyes studied Forbes with a kind of

terrified anger--more at herself than at him. He met them with a gaze of

adoration and dread.

As his hot brow cooled, it seemed that an icy hand passed across it.