CHAPTER VII

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 Tommy" dancers were

finishing a wild gallopade with a climax, in which the man hurled the

woman aloft as if he were playing diabolo with her, caught her on his

long sticks of arms, and spun her round his neck, then let her drop head

first, rescuing her from a crash by the breadth of her hair, swinging

her back between his legs and across his hip. When her heels touched the

floor he bent her almost double and gazed Apache murder into her eyes.

Her hair fell loose on cue, and then he righted her, and they were

bowing to the rapturous applause. When they retired they were panting

like hunted rabbits and sweating like stevedores.

And now a somewhat haggard girl, who looked as if she had forgotten how

to sleep, dashed forward in a snowbird costume and sang a sleigh-bell

song. Little bells jingled about her, and the crowd kept time by tapping

wine-glasses with forks or spoons. Some kept time also with their

rhythmic jaws.

The girl sang in a mock childish voice in the nasal dialect of the

vaudevilles, with "yee-oo" for "you," and "tree-oo" for "true," and

"lahv" for "love." The words of the song were too innocent, and not

important enough to detain Persis, who felt herself drawn by the distant

music of a turkey-trot in the farthest room. The warring counterpoint of

the two orchestras only added to the lawless excitement of the throng.

The dance was just over, and the dancers were settling down to their

chairs, their deserted plates and glasses. The guide led them to the

only empty table, whisked off the card "Reserved," and turned them over

to a waiter.

While Willie scanned the supper card Mrs. Neff lapsed into reminiscence.

It was the only sign she had given thus far that she had earned her

white hair by age, and not by a bleach.

"Funny how this building tells the story of the last few years," she

said. "A few winters ago we thought it was amusing to go to supper at a

good restaurant after the theater, have something nice to eat and drink,

talk a while, and go home to bed. We thought we were very devilish, and

preachers railed at the wickedness of late-supper orgies. And now the

place down-stairs is deserted. Just taking late supper is like going to

prayer-meeting.

"Then somebody started the cabaret. And we flocked to that. We ate the

filthiest stuff and drank the rottenest wine, and didn't care so long as

they had some sensational dancer or singer cavorting in the aisle. They

were so close you could hear them grunt, and they looked like frights in

their make-up. But we thought it was exciting, and the preachers said it

was awful. But it has become so tame and stupid that it is quite

respectable.

"At present we are dancing in the aisles ourselves, crowding the

professional entertainers off their own floors. And now the preachers

and editors are attacking this. Whatever we do is wrong, so, as my

youngest boy says, 'What's the use and what's the diff?'"

"Only one thing worries me," said Winifred, as she peeled her gloves

from her great arms and her tiny hands. "What will come next? Even this

can't keep us interested much longer."

"The next thing," Willie snapped, "will be that we'll all go into

vaudeville and do flip-flaps and the split and such things before a

hired audience of reformed ballet-girls."

"I hope they play a tango next," was all Persis said. "Willie, call a

waiter and ask him to ask the orchestra to play a tango."

"Wait, can't you?" he protested. "Let's get something to eat ordered

first. We've got to buy champagne to hold our table; but we don't have

to drink the stuff. What do you want, Persis? Winifred? Mrs. Neff, what

do you want?--a little caviar to give us an appetite, what? What sort of

a cocktail, eh? What sort of a cocktail, uh?"

Before an answer could be made the orchestra struck up a tune of

extraordinary flippance. People began to jig in their chairs, others

rose and were in the stride before they had finished the mouthfuls they

were surprised with; several caught a hasty gulp of wine with the right

hand while the left groped for the partner. The frenzy to dance was the

strangest thing about it.

"Come on, Murray!" cried Persis. "Willie, order anything. It doesn't

matter." Her voice trailed after her, for she was already backing off

into the maelstrom with her arms cradled in Ten Eyck's arms.

Bob Fielding, with his usual omission of speech, swept Winifred from her

chair, and she went into the stream like a ship gliding from her

launching-chute. Mrs. Neff looked invitingly at Willie, but he answered

the implication:

"I'll not stir till I've had food."

Forbes leaned over to explain to the marooned matron:

"I wish I could ask you to honor me; but I don't know how."

She smiled almost intolerantly and sank back with a sigh just as a huge

and elderly man of capitalistic appearance skipped across the floor and

bowed to her knees. She fairly bounded into his arms. The two white

polls mingled their venerable locks, but their curvettings were

remarkably coltish. Mrs. Neff, who had sons in college and daughters of

marriageable age, was giving an amazing exhibition. She backed and

filled like a yacht in stays; she bucked and ducked like a yacht in a

squawl; she whirled like a dervish, slanting and swooping; her lithe

little body draped itself closely about the capitalist's great curves;

her little feet followed his big feet or retreated from them like two

white mice pursued by two black cats.

At first Forbes was disgusted; the one epithet he could think of was

"obscene." As he watched the melee he felt that he was witnessing a

tribe of savages in a mating-season orgy. He had seen the Moros, the

Igorrotes, the Samoans, and the Nautch girls of Chicago, and the meaning

of this turmoil was the same. He knew that the dance was the invention

of negroes. Its wanton barbarity was only emphasized by the fact that it

was celebrated on Broadway, in the greatest city of what we are pleased

to admit is the most civilized nation in the world.

He could not adjust it to his mind. In the eddies he saw women of

manifest respectability, mothers and wives in the arms of their

husbands, young women who were plainly what are called "nice girls," and

wholesome-looking young men of deferential bearing; yet mingled with

them almost inextricably, brushing against them, tripping over their

feet, tangling elbows with them, were youth of precocious salacity,

shop-girls of their own bodies, and repulsive veterans from the barracks

of evil. And the music seemed to unite them all into one congress met

with one motive: to exploit their sensual impulses over the very borders

of lawlessness.

Thus Forbes, left alone with Willie Enslee, regarded the spectacle with

amazement verging on horror, and thought in the terms of Jeremiah and

Ezekiel denouncing Jerusalem, Moab, and Baal.

Meanwhile Willie Enslee studied the menu and gave his orders to the

waiter. When the supper was commanded Enslee lifted his eyes to the

dancers, shook his head hopelessly, and, reaching across the table,

tapped Forbes on the arm and demanded:

"Look at 'em! Just look at 'em! Can you believe your own eyes, uh? Now I

ask you, I ask you, if you can see how a white woman could hold herself

so cheap as to mix with those muckers, and forget her self-respect so

far?"

It was a weak voicing of Forbes' own repugnance, yet as soon as Willie

spoke Forbes began to disagree with him. Willie was fatally established

among those people with whom one hates to agree. As soon as one found

Willie holding similar views, one's own views became suspect and

distasteful--like food that is turned from in disgust because another's

fork has touched it.

And there might have been a trace of jealousy in Forbes' immediate anger

at Enslee's opinions. In any case, here he was, in the notorious haunts

of society, seated in its very unholy of unholies, and gazing on its

pernicious rites, and saying to his host:

"I must say I don't see anything wrong."