What Will People Say? A Novel 27 – Hughes · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
What Will People Say? A Novel 27Chapter 27
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Literature · Romance
What Will People Say? A Novel 27
Chapter 27
HughesEnglish
If Persis and the others were rejoicing in their emancipation from formalities too familiar, Forbes was glad that he had escaped them for the reverse reason. Hospitality had been dispensed on a lavish scale at his own home in the South before his father's death, but the servants there were negroes, slaves, or descendants of slaves, and he knew just the right mixture of affection and tyranny to administer to them. But where servile white foreigners, with their curious humilities and pomposities, bowed heads and elevated eyebrows, he had not learned just how much to demand and how much to concede.
He was glad that there was no valet to unpack his things, for he was afraid that his secret wardrobe might not pass such experienced inspection. He laid out his own pajamas, brushes, and clean things against the morning.
Ten Eyck, who shared the same bathroom with Forbes, came in to borrow a match for his pipe, noted Forbes' industry, and quoted one of the few classics that he still read--Rabelais: "Panurge had it right when he said, 'I am never so well served as when I am my own valet.'"
"Is this your first experience as your own man?" said Forbes.
"I should say not!" Ten Eyck snorted, with a cloud of smoke. "I've roughed it as rough as any rough-neck going, Forbesy."
Forbes, from the experience of a campaigner, a wilderness hiker, lifted an eyebrow of patronizing incredulity. Ten Eyck retorted:
"You needn't grin. I don't mean any of this roughing de luxe. I had the real thing. I quarreled with the governor once. I was hitting it up pretty hard, and he gave me a call. I told him I didn't need his dirty money; I could earn my own, and I swore I'd never ask him for a cent. I lit out for the Wild and Woolly. What I took with me went fast. I couldn't get a job I'd look at; and by the time I was ready to look at any job I could get, nobody would look at me. Finally they took me on as unskilled labor in the construction camp of a railroad. I slept in cattle-cars, or on the ground, or in wooden bunks with Swedes and Finns, and Huns and coons, and other swine in the adjoining styes. I fought 'em, too, when I had to. Later I waited on the table in a cheap hashery.
"God knows where I'd have ended if my dear old dad hadn't got so homesick he put the Pinkertons on my trail. And when he found me he apologized and begged me to come back. And I very graciously accepted. I had had all the poverty I needed for a lifetime. Hereafter, Forbesy, I'm for the nap on the velvet and the plush on the peach. I tell you, Forbesy, we millionaires may have our little troubles, but we escape the worst of 'em, eh John D.?"
"I wish you'd cut out that talk about my being a millionaire," Forbes broke in, impatiently.
"Millionaire is a newspaper term," Ten Eyck explained, "for anybody who is worth more than a few thousand dollars."
"But I'm not worth anything and never shall be," Forbes confessed. "I'm not rich at all. I've nothing but a few hundred dollars and my picayune salary."
Ten Eyck took the great denial without emotion. "Then I congratulate you on being one of the poor but honest, instead of the criminal rich."
"I'm poor, but I'm not honest," Forbes said; "I'm obtaining courtesy under false pretenses."
"Rot!" said Ten Eyck. "Money couldn't buy what you're getting, and the lack of it couldn't lose what you've gained. They like you. You belong. That's all there is to it."
"I wonder."
"Of course that's all. What does anybody here care how much you've got or haven't got, so long as you're congenial and aren't proposing to marry anybody."
Forbes lifted his head with a quick, startled movement that did not escape Ten Eyck, who pretended to misunderstand.
"Of course, if you really are after Mrs. Neff or the little Neffkin, there might be a call for a show-down of bankbooks."
"I'd be just as much obliged if you people would drop that joke about my courting Mrs. Neff," Forbes grumbled. Ten Eyck was patient; his voice fell to a deep and earnest tone:
"What I say goes along the line, Forbesy. You were good to me when I was sick in Manila. Don't you go and get sick here. You told me what I mustn't eat and drink and wear out there, and I want to warn you against the dangers of this place. There's a tropics right here, too, with deadly miasmas and mosquitoes that buzz strange things and sting you full of delirious fevers. Don't fall in love too far, Forbesy. I like you mighty well and--naming no names--I like her mighty well, but don't get false notions in your head, and don't put false notions in hers."
"About my money, you mean?"
"Umm-humm."
"You think that money would make a difference to her?"
"Hah!" Ten Eyck snorted. "Would water make any difference to a fish?"
"But if she loved--"
"My boy, you can keep a mighty sweet canary in a mighty little cage, and it will sing away like mad and be very fond of you; but you can't keep a bird of paradise there--or a sea-gull--can you?"
"I reckon not," said Forbes.
"It isn't the fault of the bird of paradise, either, is it?"
Forbes shook his head and sighed: "It's the fault of the man that puts it in the cage."
"Well, maybe he means well. He may be crazy about the bird, just crazy to keep it near him, but--he can't. That's all, he can't. It'll beat itself to death or break loose."
"Unless he lets it go," said Forbes.
"That's it! You understand me, don't you, old man?"
"I get you, Steve."
"And you won't feel too hard about it, will you? There's a lot of other birds besides the big ones. There's nothing cozier than a little canary--is there?"
"I reckon not," said Forbes, dismally.
"And there's a lot of them to be had. And some of them are very pretty."
They sat and smoked a long while. Then Ten Eyck yawned, and gripped Forbes' shoulder hard and went out, pausing to look at him sadly. For his good night he dropped into a cockney quotation: "'Wot I meanter s'y, Pip, is: allus the best o' friends?'"
He ended with a querying inflection, and Forbes echoed it with a period:
"Allus the best o' friends."
He sat smoking his cigar till it was gone. Then he made ready for bed, blew out the candle, raised the curtain, and paused to stare blankly into the dark mass of a green hill or a great cloud, whichever it was, piled up against a sky sprinkled over with a powder of little stars. Among them was one planet whose name he did not know. As he watched, it moved with imperceptible stealth out of his sight behind the hill.
He gave up Persis as completely as he gave up the planet. A few days ago he did not know her name. A few days more and she would have slipped from his sky.
He was so tired, so full of the need of sleep, that despair was only another kind of night, black but blessed, without ecstasy, but void of torment.
