What Will People Say? A Novel 41 – Hughes · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
What Will People Say? A Novel 41Chapter 41
18
Literature · Romance
What Will People Say? A Novel 41
Chapter 41
HughesEnglish
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 blushing 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 God'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."
"Then let Willie Enslee lock us out."
She saw that he was in a frenzy. He had the bit in his teeth. He would bolt in a moment. She thought hard and swiftly. Then she said:
"There's just one way. When I was playing chambermaid to-day I wandered about and found the servant's stairway in the service wing. It leads down into the kitchen. We could get from there into the dining-room and the drawing-room. There's a great window there--well cut off from view. I don't think Willie or anybody would see us there. Listen for Willie's door, and when he has gone down into the front hall, slip out and tiptoe down the service stairs to the kitchen and wait for me there. Will you?"
It was a nauseating role to play; but he was bent upon making a last appeal to her before they returned to town on the morrow. He whispered his assent to the elaborate deceit, and made a whirlwind of the last measures of the tune, "Dancing with the devil; oh, the little Devil! dancing at the Devil's ball!"
And then he and Persis, dizzy on the swirling floor, reeled to chairs and sat gasping for breath. Mrs. Neff, passing on Willie's arm, urged Forbes to give Alice the next dance, and he obeyed, surrendering Persis to Enslee, who was so elate with triumph that only the braggart pomp of the tango could express him.
Alice was lonely and forlorn, and so much in Forbes' mood that they were unintentional parodies on each other. Forbes remembered his talk with Senator Tait, and, feeling that Alice was desperately in need of comfort, told her the whole conversation. If she resented the discussion of her affairs and her mother's plans, she kept silent; but when he told her that Senator Tait had vowed to help her defeat Mrs. Neff's match-making plot by giving Stowe Webb a position she became a maenad of joy. She italicized every other word, and declared herself insanely grateful. She declared now that she simply idolized the Senator, and had always thought him the most adorable of men in every respect except the quality of husband.
"I'm afraid he won't give Mr. Webb much of a salary to begin with," Forbes said, to moderate her fantastic hopes.
"Oh, I don't care how little it is," Alice panted, "so long as it's enough for us two to live on, if we have to live in a Harlem flat eleven stories high and no elevator!"
She made so startling a contrast with Persis that Forbes regretted thinking her shallow and hysterical. Under her volatile explosiveness was evidently a deep store of loyalty, as under Persis' reposeful manner was a shifty uncertainty, a terror of consequences. "Still waters run deep" was plainly as fallible as any other proverb, for very shallow ponds may lie very calm, and very spluttering geysers may come from far underground.
But it is one thing to approve and quite another to love. Forbes admired Alice, but he loved Persis. He approved Alice as much as he distrusted Persis. But he loved Persis.
