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 assistants, 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 glass with his little
raccoon-like fingers, and blinking his little raccoon-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.