What Will People Say? Part 54

"Hear! Hear!"

"Some time ago Miss Persis--er--Cabot, whom you all know, did me the--er--unspeakable honor of consenting to become Mrs.

William--er--Enslee. Circ.u.mstances rendered it--er--advisable to defer--er--the publication of the glorious--er--news, so to speak. But Miss Cabot has to-night given me--er--permission to announce--"

"I have not!" Persis broke in; but Willie put up his hand.

"Order in the court--er! Anyway, now you know the worst. You behold in me the happiest man on--er--earth."

There was a round of applause, and Ten Eyck proposed "three l.u.s.ty chahs and a tigress for the--er--bride and--er--groom--er."

Forbes felt as if a sh.e.l.l full of shrapnel had burst at his feet.

Military instinct brought his heels together, and he stood as erect as Dreyfus did when they tore the b.u.t.tons from his tunic and snapped his sword in two before him. He stared at the revel that broke out around Persis and Enslee. In his eyes it had something of the hideousness of savages dancing. It was a torture dance, and he was the man at the stake.

CHAPTER XLI

Forbes tried to smile, but his muscles seemed unable to support his lips. He heard much noise, yet distinguished nothing till he seemed to wake suddenly at finding Willie Enslee smirking up at him.

"You haven't congratulated me, Mr. Ward--er--Forbes."

Forbes seized Enslee's small hand and wrung it, and said in a tone more fitted to condolence:

"I do congratulate you, indeed, and Miss Cabot, I--I congratulate her."

He tried to look at her, but Willie was clinging to his hand and driveling on: "I want to thank you for--er--at least trying to save her when her horse bolted this morning. They told me you were--er--quite splendid, and I take it as a--er--personal favor."

"Don't mention it, please."

"And now let's--er--dance," said Willie. "I will dance with the blus.h.i.+ng bride, if you don't mind. Let 'er go, Winifred."

Winifred set off the Victrola, and a blare of nasal cacophony broke from the machine imitating a steamboat whistle; then ensued a negroid music of infinite inappropriateness to Forbes' tragic mood. He saw the woman who loved him, and whom he loved, tagged and claimed by a contemptible pygmy, the accidental inheritor of wealth. He saw his beautiful Persis in the fellow's incompetent arms and her body drooping over him as if he had carried her off in a kind of burlesque rape of the Sabines. The music was not Wagnerian epopee, nor were the words something from Sophokles; it was a romping ditty about

'Way down on the lev-ee In old Alabam-y, There's daddy and mam-my, There's Ephraim and Sam-my On a moon-light night.

Forbes felt Mrs. Neff's presence in front of him. Her wiry arms clutched him and danced him away. She was chattering reproaches because he had not taken her advice and captured Persis for himself. And her unwitting irony ran on against the words that Alice and Ten Eyck were singing as they danced:

Watch them shuf-flin' along, See them shuf-flin' along.

Go take your best--gal--real--pal, Go down to the lev-ee, I said to the lev-ee, And join that shuf-flin' throng.

Hear that mu-sic and song.

It's simply great--O mate.

Waitin' on the levee, waitin' for the _Robert E. Lee_.

Forbes felt a ribaldry in the whole situation, an intolerable contumely.

He watched Persis darting here and there as Willie urged her. The little whelp could not keep time to the music, and his possession of Persis was as grotesque as the presence of a gargoyle on a cathedral. But cathedrals are thick with gargoyles, and life is full of such pairings.

For the second dance Forbes demanded Persis, and she granted him the privilege with some terror; the look on his face had alarmed her.

The music now celebrated "dancing with the Devil; oh, the little Devil!

dancing at the Devil's ball." There was a fiend raging in Forbes' heart, and something infernal in the frenzy with which he whipped Persis this way and that.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he groaned. "Why didn't you warn me? The last I knew was that you and I were to be married. And suddenly that man speaks up and claims you. And you don't deny it. What in G.o.d's name does it mean?"

"Not so loud, my love!"

"'My love?'" he quoted. "You can call me that?"

"You're not going to make a scene, are you?" she whispered, trembling in his arms.

"A scene!" he laughed. "Is that your greatest terror in life?"

"One of them."

"You intended to marry him, and you let me kiss you! Were you simply making a fool of me?"

("_At the Devil's ball, at the Devil's ball._")

"No, Harvey, no! I love you. It is you that were making a fool of me. I can explain, but I don't think you would understand."

("_I saw the cute Mrs. Devil, so pretty and fat._")

"When will you explain?"

"The first chance I get."

("_Dressed in a beautiful fireman's hat._")

"To-night?"

"I don't dare. Willie is going to stand guard, as he said he would.

Seeing you dancing with Mrs. Neff, he was just telling me what a joke it would be to lock you out. He's going to pretend to go to bed. Then he's going to slip down-stairs, lock the front door, and wait till you and Mrs. Neff come back. Isn't it ridiculous?"

("_Dancing with the Devil; oh, the little Devil!_")

"Everything on earth is ridiculous, but nothing is so ridiculous as I am."

"Don't say that, dear."

"'Dear!'" he echoed, bitterly. "When do I see you, I say?"

("_Dancing at the Devil's Ball._")

"There's no chance."

"Then I'll make one. I'll--I'll come to your room."

"Oh, in Heaven's name, are you mad? Or do you think I am? Mrs. Neff's room adjoins mine. She could hear the softest whisper."