What Will People Say? A Novel. Hughes Rupert
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his clothes. And then he realized that he knew nobody among those roaring millions. He cursed his luck and flung into his bathrobe. As he knotted the rope he felt that he might as well be a cowled and cloistered monk in a desert as his friendless self in this wilderness of luxury.
Happiness was bound to elude him as easily as that woman of the white query-plume eluded him when he in his ten-cent bus pursued her in her five-thousand-dollar landaulet. All he had of her was the back of her hat and the number of her car—N. Y. 41508. Or was it N. Y. 85140, or—what the devil was the number?
He had not brought away even that!
CHAPTER IV
NOTHING can be lonelier than a room in even a best hotel when one is lonesome and when one's window looks out upon crowds. Forbes had pitched his tent at the Knickerbocker, and his view was of Longacre Square.
The Times Building stood aloft, a huddled giraffe of a building. A fierce wind spiraled round it and played havoc with dignity. It was an ill-mannered bumpkin wind from out of town with a rural sense of humor. Women pressed forward into the gale, bending double and struggling with their tormented hats and writhing skirts. Some of the men seemed to find them an attractive spectacle till they felt their own hats caught up and kited to the level of the fourth and fifth windows.
A flock of newsboys, as brisk as sparrows, drove a hustling trade in recovering hats for men who were ashamed of bare heads as of a nakedness. The gamins darted among the street-cars and automobiles, risking their lives for dimes as sparrows for corn, and escaping death as miraculously.
At the western end of Forty-second Street stood a space of sunset like a scarlet canvas on exhibition. Then swift clouds erased it, and gusts of rain went across the town in volleys of shrapnel, clearing the streets of a mob. Everybody made for the nearest shelter.
The onset ended as quickly as it began. The stars were in the sky as suddenly as if some one had turned on an electric switch. On the pavements, black with wet and night, the reflected electric lights trickled. All the pavements had a look of patent leather.
Forbes sat in the dark room in an arm-chair and muffled his bathrobe about him, watching the electric signs working like solemn acrobats—the girl that skipped the rope, the baby that laughed and cried, the woman that danced on the wire, the skidless tire in the rain, the great sibyl face that winked and advised chewing-gum as a panacea, the kitten that tangled itself in thread, the siphons that filled the glasses—all the automatic electric voices shouting words of light.
Forbes wanted to be among the crowds again. He could not tolerate solitude. He resolved to go forth. It inspired him with pride to put on his evening clothes. While he dressed he sent his silk hat to be ironed by the hotel valet. It came back an ebon crown.
He set it on his head, tapped the top of it smartly, swaggered to the elevator, bowed to the matronly floor clerk as to a queen, went down to the main dining-room, and tried to look at least a duke. He was glad to be in full dress, for the other people were. The head waiter greeted him with respect and handed him the bill of fare with expectation.
He ordered more than he had appetite for, and tried not to blanch at the prices.
The flowers, the shaded candles, the tapestries, the china and the glass and silver, the impassioned violinist leading the sonorous orchestra, all gave him that sense of royalty from which money is most easily wooed. But the cordiality of the thing was fascinating. The whole city seemed to be attending a great reception. New York was giving a party.
And now, indeed, he was in New York again—in it, yet not of it; a poor relation at the wedding feast. He lingered at his solitary banquet like a boy sent away from the table and forced to eat by himself. His extrusion seemed to be a punishment for not being rich. But while his funds held out to burn he would pretend.
The room emptied rapidly as the hour for opera and theater arrived. But he lingered, not knowing where to go. He pretended to be in no hurry. He had, indeed, more leisure than he enjoyed. Still he sat smoking and protracting his coffee, and haughtily playing that he was not starving for companionship.
When almost the last couple was gone he realized that he faced an evening of dismal solitude. He realized also that a number of kind-thoughted gentlemen had erected large structures for the entertainment of lonely people and had engaged numbers of gifted persons to enact stories for their diversion.
He called for his account, paid it with a large bill, and ignored the residue with a ruinous lifting of the brows as he accepted a light for his exotic cigar.
He helped to put false ideas in the hat-boy's head with the price he paid for the brief storage of his hat and coat and stick. He sauntered to the news-stand with the gracious stateliness of a czarevitch incognito, and asked the Tyson agent:
"What's a good play to see?"
The man named over the reigning successes, and some of their titles fell strangely pat with Forbes' humor:
"Romance," "The Poor Little Rich Girl," "Oh, Oh, Delphine!" "Peg o' My Heart," "The Lady of the Slipper," "The Sunshine Girl."
"They're mostly about girls," Forbes smiled.
"They mostly always are," the agent grinned. "But there's others: 'Within the Law,' 'The Argyle Case,' 'The Five Frankfurters,' 'Years of Discretion.'"
"I reckon I'd better see 'Within the Law.' I've heard a good deal about that."
"I guess you have. It's been a sell-out for months."
"Can't I get in?"
"I'm afraid not. How many are you?"
"One."
"One? Let me see. Here's a pair ordered by a party that hasn't called for them. Could you use them both?"
"I could put my overcoat in one seat," Forbes groaned, at this added irony in his loneliness and penuriousness.
"I'd split the pair, but it's too late to sell the other one."
"I'll take both." Forbes sighed and waved a handsome five-dollar bill farewell.
The boy who twirled the squirrel-cage door told him that the theater was just down the street, and received a lavish fee for the information. Forbes was soon in the lobby, but the first act was almost finished. Rather than disturb the people already seated, he stood at the back, leaning over the rail. He thrilled instantly to the speech of the shop-girl sentenced to the penitentiary for a theft she was not guilty of, and warning the proprietor that she would amply revenge herself when she came back down the river. At the height of the outcry of militant innocence Forbes heard the susurrus of robes and turned to see a small group of later comers than himself.
At the head went something that he judged to be a woman, though all he saw was a towering head-dress, a heap of elaborately coiffed hair, a wreath of mist, an indescribably exquisite opera-cloak shimmering down to an under-cascade of satin.
This tower of fabrics went along as if it were carried on a pole, and Forbes could see no semblance of human shape or stride inside it. But he judged that it contained a personality, for it paused to listen to something another pile of fabrics said to it, and from both came a snicker—or was it only a frou-frou of garments? In any case, it angered the part of the audience adjacent. The group went down the side-aisle, up a few steps to the little space behind the box.
From where he stood Forbes could see the usher helping them lay off their wraps. They showed no anxiety to catch the remainder of the act, but stood gossiping while the frantic usher waited, not daring to reprimand them, yet dreading the noise of their incursion.
AND NOW DESIGN EMERGED, A WOMAN STOOD REVEALED
Forbes watched one of the clothes-horses stripped