What Will People Say? A Novel 22 – Hughes · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
What Will People Say? A Novel 22Chapter 22
18
Literature · Romance
What Will People Say? A Novel 22
Chapter 22
HughesEnglish
There had come to be more and more room on the floor as the crowd dispersed slowly. Many of the young owls were by daylight bank-clerks and office assistants, learning their father's trades of money. They were remembering that they must be up betimes in the morning. They had been campaigning all winter on short rations of sleep. If they made up lost slumber anywhere, it was at their desks, to which nothing but a spanking cold bath could have roused them day after day.
They were glad now when their demoiselles confessed to fatigue, too, or the mothers began to mention the hour.
Even Mrs. Neff was a trifle groggy. The poor old soul was trying hard to keep from confessing how tired and sleepy she was. She kept herself young by pretending to be young, and her motto was, "A woman is just as old as she says she is." Though, for the matter of that, if her statement of her age had been correct, her eldest son must have been born before she was; and Alice would have come along when her mother was about eight years old.
Persis was growing drowsy-eyed, too, and heavy-limbed, with an almost voluptuous longing for sleep. She drooped like a flower at sunset. She ceased to smuggle her yawns as sighs, and once or twice she forgot to lift her hand to hide them.
Forbes was so infatuated that he admired even her yawns. He wanted to whisper over her round shoulder, "How pretty you are when you are a sleepy-head!" But he had been lessoned enough for one evening.
At last, however, she gave up the effort to go on dancing forever. She inquired for Willie. He was not to be seen. Ten Eyck went exploring, and found him in retirement clutching a big highball glass with his little raccoon-like fingers, and blinking his little raccoon-like eyes. He was of a surly trend in his cups, but Ten Eyck was angelically patient as he lugged him to the coat-room. Forbes was horrified at the thought of Persis under such escort; but she seemed to ignore Willie's temper, and Forbes dared not intervene.
However, as they were all waiting on the curb in the fresh auroral air, while the starter whistled up their cars, he ventured a chance to murmur to Persis:
"I beg you to go home and sleep till noon. Please don't try to get up and ride in the morning."
"I must," she answered. "It's the one duty I do."
But the note of protecting solicitude in his voice had touched her. She turned softer eyes upon him and smiled.
"We'll dance some more to-morrow afternoon. Till then, au revoir."
"But I am to revoir you in the park in a few hours?"
"So you say."
"Also at luncheon?"
"Oh yes, of course."
"Persis, are you never c-coming?" Willie Enslee hiccoughed.
"Yes, pet," she laughed, ironically, and nodded again to Forbes. Forbes winced at the endearment she gave Enslee, even though he felt it to be sarcastic. He winced again as Enslee took her white elbow in his white glove and made a fumbling effort to help her in. The white fleece she was vanished into his dark car like a moon slipping into clouds.
Ten Eyck boosted Willie in and clambered after him "as a chaperon."
Bob Fielding and Winifred tested the capacity of a taxicab, and Forbes stood ready to escort Mrs. Neff home in her own car; but she shook her head as she gaped:
"Nonsense! I'll not be so cruel. You've done enough for me. You go on back to your hotel and get to bed. But first wait--oh wait--have you a box of matches you can give me? Thanks! You've saved my life. Good night."
Forbes paused to say: "Does the chauffeur know you want to go home?"
"I should hope so, at this hour!"
Forbes closed the door with an apology and set out to walk to his hotel. It was only a few blocks away, but it seemed a hundred miles. And he yawned so ferociously that he feared for the buildings. He found the scrubwomen agonizing again on their knees across the lobby floor. He was too drowsy to feel sorry for them, or to remember to leave a call for six o'clock at the desk, as he had planned.
He plucked off his clothes in a stupor, and slid straight into the abyss of sleep as he shoved his dance-weary toes down into the sheets. At five the imaginary reveille woke him for a moment. He simply came up to consciousness like a diver gulping a breath, and was underneath again at once. He dreamed that he was riding in the park and, catching sight of a saddle-horse in a tantrum, galloped forward to find that Persis was the rider. She was having a desperate battle with the frothing beast and was about to be thrown off. But Forbes, outstripping two or three mounted policemen, swept alongside and caught her from her saddle to his pommel. Her father, whose own horse was plunging, was so grateful that he presented Forbes with Persis' hand. A mounted clergyman chanced to be cantering by, and he was recruited to perform the ceremony, with the mounted policemen as bridesmaid and best man. By one of those splendid coincidences in which dreams are so fertile, a thicket of trees proved to be a pipe-organ, and began to blare a popular tune of Mr. Mendelssohn's. The noise woke Forbes, and to his unspeakable disappointment he found himself in a bachelor bed at a hotel, with Times Square furnishing a roaring offertory.
Automatically he reached for his watch, wondering if he could not have a little further nap to get back into that dream without delay.
But the dial blandly informed him that it wanted a few minutes to noon. Horror shocked him wide awake.
