CHAPTER XXIII

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 from space came the reply:

"K'reck time is 'le'm fifty-eight."

His "Thanks!" had almost the effect of an oath. He slammed the innocent

receiver on the hook and stood staring at the bare feet protruding from

his indolent pajamas, where there should have been puttees and spurs and

smartly flaring riding-breeches. He was doubly indignant with himself

because he had counted upon that morning galopade. He rode like a

centaur, though with the military and not the park seat, and he had

expected his horsemanship to commend him to Persis.

He wondered what he should do. He reversed Sancho Panza and cursed the

man that invented sleep. He formed a wild project to fling into his

things, leap to horse, and hunt the park through. But he had not yet

bespoken the horse, and he knew that Persis must have finished her ride

hours ago, doffed her boyish togs, cold-showered her glowing body, and

put on whatever finery her engagements required. She had probably spent

the irretrievable hours at a committee meeting of some society for

rescuing working-girls from work. And her father had probably earned or

lost a million while Forbes lay annulled in a coma of stupidity.

How should he apologize? He could not wait till he saw her. The offense

must be erased before it set. He must call her up instantly. He

ransacked the dangling telephone-tome. Her father's office was

mentioned, but not his residence. Yet he must have a residence, and it

must have a telephone.

Forbes banged the hook and demanded "Information," and when that

mysterious dame answered from her airy throne he besought her to give

him at once the number.

Information answered with a lilt as if the name of Persis were one of

importance:

"I think it's a private wire; I'll see."

While Forbes waited he was interrupted, incessantly cut off, restored to

the wrong number, helplessly forced into other people's personal chats,

and left dangling in empty space. When at length he retrieved

Information, she told him:

"Jus' z'I thought, 's a priva twire."

"Of course it's a private wire!" Forbes thundered. "I don't want to have

a public conversation. What's the number?"

"'S 'gainst comp'ny rules to give numbers listed as private. Sorry."

"But this is a matter of life and death."

There was an almost audible sigh, as if she had heard that before.

"Sorry, but under no soic'mstances are we p'mitted to give numbers of

parties listed private."

He insisted, pleaded, threatened; but she answered with implacable

politeness. "Sorry, but--"

At length he screwed his courage to the point of calling up the office

of her father. Here he learned only that Mr. Cabot had left the office,

and it was contrary to orders to give his house number.

After beating his head and hands vainly for a long time against those

walls that New-Yorkers have to build about themselves if they are ever

to know seclusion, Forbes remembered Ten Eyck and called up his house.

He was not at home, and his whereabouts were unknown.

A deferential, yet stately voice with the indescribable tone of a butler

or a valet advised "Mr. Forbes, ah, yes," to try various clubs; "The

Racquet or the Brook, possibly," or "I believe I heard him say" (the two

h's were hazy) "that he was to be at the Metropolitan at one. If you

could call him then, sir, I'm quite sure you'd--Not at all! Very good,

sir."

Ten Eyck could give him Persis' occult number; then he could send a note

and some flowers to plead for him and appease her wrath before they met

at the luncheon. When they met no time must be wasted in more apologies.

But Ten Eyck was not to be found anywhere. Forbes gave up. He telephoned

for "coffee and rolls and a morning paper in a powerful hurry," and

stormed into his bathroom. When he came out as sparsely dressed as most

of the gentlemen are in the advertising pages of the magazines, he found

his breakfast on a little half-table mysteriously apported.

While he danced into his trousers his eyes were caught by head-lines on

the paper folded at his plate:

"Mayor puts Lid on _Thes Dansants_."

Forbes seized the paper, flung himself into a chair, and read with

violence the dire news that the same mayor who had ordered people to

quit dancing at one now ordered them not to begin dancing before dinner.

He grew hot with rage, while his coffee cooled and his rolls brittled.

He had found the dancing-tea a delightful institution, a joyous

democracy. But, according to the scathing indictment of the mayor and

the adroit wording of the reporters, the tea-dance was a home-wrecking,

youth-defiling abomination, only the more dreadful because it wrought

its hellish purposes in the broad daylight.

According to the newspaper account of a typical dancing-tea, it was

apparent that Forbes had failed to grasp the depravity of the crowd he

had been dancing with; it seemed that the women were all fat fiends

pursuing immature school-girls, and the men all evil-eyed brokers whose

corpulence alone was proof enough of their wickedness.

Forbes stared aghast at a wholesale condemnation that must include Mrs.

Neff, Persis, Winifred, Alice, and the respectable rest. He had not yet

learned that certain journalists are mere newsboys always beating out of

their dreadnaught typewriters cries of "Extra! Extra! All about the

turrible moider!"

Forbes was dumfounded to learn that the modern Babylon plus Nineveh, New

York, could be sent to bed at one o'clock and forbidden to dance by

daylight. Ordinarily nothing on earth would have mattered less to Forbes

than the fate of tea-dances. But this ukase drove him further than ever

from his Persis.

The curious mania for public dancing had enabled him, though come to

town a stranger, to join immediately in festival relations with people

to whose homes he would normally have been months in penetrating. The

mayor's edict revoked this democracy, and he was once more a stranger in

the city. He must meet his new-found friends formally and at long

intervals, if at all. He thanked his stars that he had arranged to give

the luncheon in time. He must set about ordering it at once, and he must

see to it that there was no flaw in its perfection.