What Will People Say? Part 14

Forbes spoke very solemnly: "Pardon my asking, but do you really mean that Senator Tait is--is proposing for your hand?"

"So my awful mother says."

"It doesn't sound like the Senator Tait I used to know."

"You knew him well?" Persis asked, with a quick eagerness that did not quite conceal a note of surprise.

Forbes caught it, and answered somewhat icily: "I had that privilege. He and my father used to ride to the hounds together. In fact, they were together when my father's horse threw him and fell on him, and crushed him to death. Senator Tait brought the body home to my poor mother. He was very dear to us all."

Persis looked what sympathy she could for such remote suffering. And Forbes was something less of a stranger. Also he had moved one step closer to her degree.

He had appeared first under the auspices of Murray Ten Eyck, who guaranteed him as an officer in the army. He had demonstrated his own dignity and magnetism. And now his family was sponsored by an old-time friends.h.i.+p with Senator Tait, a very Warwick of American royalty.

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. n.o.body 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 gla.s.s, 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 n.o.body 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-fas.h.i.+oned courtesy, as she beamed:

"Very prettily said! Old fas.h.i.+oned 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 battles.h.i.+ps 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.