What Will People Say? Part 59

Toward this starting-point fat women with looped-up skirts and top-hats and little knock-kneed girls in breeches were hurrying. He smiled with the superiority of a cavalry officer.

Among the living caricatures were a few expert riders. Suddenly Forbes'

heart s.h.i.+vered and raced with a feeling that a certain one of them might be Persis. Surely there could not be another back so trim, another grip so firm. But it was his longing that created the resemblance, for as the horse whirled and loped away he caught sight of the woman's profile. It was less like Persis' profile than like the horse's!

But the moment's agitation had gone like an earthquake through his calmed soul. It shook down the towers of resolution and independence and sickened him with the instability of his poise.

He would have turned back from his engagement, but he had not even the strength for that much action. He crossed the Avenue to where the Metropolitan Club stood four square in its gray and white dignity. As he pa.s.sed through the carved and colonnaded entrance-court a motor-car deposited two women at the door of the annex.

He feared that one of them might be Mildred; but he was unnecessarily alarmed. Mildred had pleaded official duties. She had shown the same reluctance Forbes had revealed. Perhaps she saw through her father's motives. But the old Senator was willing to wait. He was a born compromiser, a genius at making fusions out of factions.

When Forbes entered the club and asked for Tait, the doorman consulted the roster-board, and, finding a cribbage peg opposite the Senator's name, sent a page for him. He was not far to fetch, and he was in a humor of Falstaffian heartiness. He came upon Forbes' foggy mood like a morning sun. He was just what Forbes needed.

He clapped his arm across Forbes' shoulder, and, as he registered him in the guest-book, wrote the new word "Captain" large, and pointed to it; then dragged Forbes to the cigar-case and commanded "the biggest cigar there is, one with a solid-gold wrapper." He treated the forlorn victim of a woman's jilt as a notable worthy of notable entertainment. It was the lift that the prodigal son got when he slunk home and was met with a bouquet instead of blame.

He led Forbes into the great central hall, with its white-marble cliffs and its red-velveted double stairway mounting like a huge St. Andrew's cross, placed him on a settle where a platoon of men might have sat a-knee, and gave the bell a royal bang. He recommended a special c.o.c.ktail, and joined Forbes in it in joyous disobedience of his physician's warning.

When the c.o.c.ktail arrived Forbes gave him the army toast of "How!" and Tait answered "Happy days!" On the way up to the dining-room he led Forbes through the building, pausing before the crimson opulence of the two reading-rooms; the lounging-room, with its windows commanding Fifth Avenue; the card-rooms, deserted battle-fields now; the board-rooms, where committees gathered to settle huge financial destinies, the solemn library walled solid with books.

Forbes wondered at the almost complete absence of other people in the club; but Tait explained that most of the members were hard-working millionaires who lunched down-town "or took their dinner-pails with them," some of them hardly stopping to eat a sandwich from a desk leaf.

On the top floor their luncheon awaited them at a table by the window.

As Forbes drew his napkin across his knee he gazed down at the corner of the Park and the lake where white swans drifted like the toy sloops of children. From this height the hills and curving walks looked miniature as a j.a.panese garden.

When the clam-sh.e.l.ls were emptied they were replaced with chicken, a second waiter served rice, and a third curry. It was strangely comforting to be well served with choice food in a beautiful room above a beautiful scene. He felt that in places like this wealth justified itself--wealth the upholsterer, the caterer, the artist, the butler.

Forbes looked down at a shuffling vagrant slouching across the Plaza. He felt sorry for that man, and yet was glad that he was here instead of there. He wished that he himself might belong to this delightful place they called the "Millionaire's Club." He longed for riches, especially as they would mean Persis. He remembered what she had said: "The rich can get anything that the poor have, but the poor can't get what the rich have." The rich Enslee could even get Persis.

He sat musing bitterly, forgetting that he had a host, and unaware that the host was looking at him with sad affection, not resenting his listlessness, but hoping to relieve it. Remembering Forbes' father, Tait knew that he must move warily about that sensitive Forbes pride, as swift to strike an awkward hand as a caged tiger that greets an unwelcome caress with a wound.

Tait hesitated to open his real business. He began obliquely.

"Well, I've just fired the first gun in my war with Mrs. Neff."

"Yes?" said Forbes, drearily.

"Yes," said Tait, positively. "Just before you came young Stowe Webb was here--nice young fellow. I sent for him, and said to him: 'Young man, Miss Alice Neff, whom I believe you know'--he blushed like a house afire--'tells me,' I said, 'that her mother objects to you because you have no money.' He flashed me a look of amazement, and I said: 'If you need money, why don't you make it?' And he said: 'How can I?' 'Why, money is growing on bushes everywhere,' I said, 'just waiting to be picked off; poor men are getting rich every day,' I said; and he said: 'Yes, and rich men are getting poor. My family is one of the bushes, and we've been pretty well picked. My father left me nothing but his blessing, and I can't p.a.w.n that,' he said. 'Still, I'm not dead yet,' he said. 'I'll show you all some day.' And I said: 'There must be something in any man that a good girl loves and believes in. And any girl that's worth having is worth working for, and if she really wants you she'll wait for you.' And then I lowered my voice about an octave and growled, 'I wonder if you have the grit to go out in this hard old world and work for that girl and--and earn her?' He said, 'You bet I have!' So I said: 'Well, I know where there's a job you might get; it's small salary and a lot of work at first, and by and by a little more salary and much harder work; and you won't be able to see her often; perhaps not at all for a long while; but eventually, if she'll wait, you'll be able to support her as well as any girl needs to be supported who has love in the bargain. Do you want that job, young man?' I said, glaring at him. And he said: 'Lead me to it!'"

Forbes listened with eagerness and envy. The portrait of Alice, who would wait till her lover worked his way up to a competence, contrasted sharply with Persis, who would not accept the competence Forbes already had. He asked, with an effort at enthusiasm:

"And what is the job?"

"I'm going to make him my secretary, at twelve hundred a year, at first.

He won't be worth it, and I'll have to do all my own work for a while; but I'll give him his chance. I won't pamper him. I'll test him out--and her, too. If they can't stand the test they wouldn't last long in the battle of matrimony."

"Your secretary?" said Forbes. "Does he know any law?"

"I'm not going to be a lawyer. I'm going to be a diplomat--in Paris."

"Splendid!" cried Forbes, reaching across to squeeze his hand. "I congratulate the country--and France. I envy you Paris. I've never been there."

"How would you like to go?"

"How should I like to be a major-general?"

Tait opened his lips to say something important, then stammered, and said instead:

"Waiter, give Captain Forbes some more of that curry. It's good here, isn't it?"

"Splendid," said Forbes, who had hardly touched what was on his plate.

Senator Tait s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably, made to speak, pursed his lips, eyed Forbes, and then said, with abrupt irrelevance:

"I was wrong, I see, about old Cabot."

"Were you?" Forbes mumbled, with a sudden flush at the broaching of that dangerous theme.

"Yes, I said that he was to be closed up, forced into involuntary bankruptcy, and all that."

"Wasn't he?" said Forbes, weakly.

"No, he got money and credit and a new start--from the Enslee estates.

There is a rumor that his daughter is to marry Willie Enslee. I thought that perhaps you--did you--did you hear anything of it--from Enslee?"

Tait made an elaborate pretense of indifference and showed a violent interest in the leg of a chicken. Forbes turned curry-color with shame as he answered: "Yes, Enslee announced the engagement himself--the very day I saw you last."

His head drooped as if his neck could no longer hold it up. Tait noted his harrowed look and broke out angrily:

"Don't be cut up, my boy, just because she's fool enough to marry a bigger fool than herself."

"Oh, please!" Forbes protested. He could have struck a younger man in Persis' defense, but he could only appeal to so old a man as Tait. Tait, however, persisted:

"You ought to be glad to be revenged so neatly."

Forbes was in desperate case; he laughed bitterly. "Revenge is a little late. My life is ruined. I might as well put an end to it."

The old man stared at the tragic face, the brow corded with veins, the eyes fanatic with despair. He could not believe that so brilliant an officer could kill himself. And yet men did kill themselves--several thousand every year. When Forbes' father was a young man courting the fickle young beauty who was later to become the so steadfast wife and the mother of Forbes, they had quarreled, and Forbes' father had been frantic with grief, had threatened self-destruction. Tait himself had taken the revolver away from him and helped to lift him across the dark waters of jealousy. It startled him to see the father's black despair repeated in the son. He felt that he must repeat the rescue.

Yet, as humanity is const.i.tuted, tragedy becomes grotesque when it is repeated. He felt a certain helpless amus.e.m.e.nt at finding the son just as desperate as the father had been. He had laughed the elder Forbes out of his gloom. He attempted to ridicule the son free of the same obsession. He spoke in a low tone surcharged with an anxiety whose exaggeration was too dolorous to catch.

"You say that you can't stand the loss of Miss Cabot, and you might as well commit suicide?"

"I might as well."

"I'll tell you, Harvey, let's commit suicide together!" Forbes' haggard glance showed that he was not yet awake to the old man's parody of his solemnity.

"Do you mean it?" Forbes asked.

"Yes," Tait murmured; "all good Americans go to Paris when they die--let's go to Paris."