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[Illustration: THEY WERE AS OBLIVIOUS OF THEIR PERIL AS TRISTAN AND
ISOLDE
[See page 405]]
WHAT WILL
PEOPLE SAY?
A NOVEL
BY
RUPERT HUGHES
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration]
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
MCMXIV
COPYRIGHT, 1914. BY HARPER & BROTHERS
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PUBLISHED APRIL, 1914
ILLUSTRATIONS
THEY WERE AS OBLIVIOUS OF THEIR PERIL
AS TRISTAN AND ISOLDE _Frontispiece_
AND NOW DESIGN EMERGED, A WOMAN STOOD
REVEALED _Facing p. 18_
"THERE'S THAT OTHER ME DOWN IN THE POOL,
WATCHING THIS ME" _Facing p. 252_
HER OBSTINATE PLUCK BEWILDERED HIM _Facing p. 480_
WHAT WILL PEOPLE SAY?
CHAPTER I
Fifth Avenue at flood-tide was a boiling surf of automobiles. But at
nearly every corner a policeman succeeded where King Canute had failed,
and checked the sea or let it pass with a nod or a jerk of thumb.
The young army officer just home-come from the Philippines felt that he
was in a sense a policeman himself, for he had spent his last few years
keeping savage tribes in outward peace. When he was away or asleep the
Moros rioted at will. And so the traffic-officer of this other extreme
of civilization kept these motor-Moros in orderly array only so long as
he kept them in sight.
One glare from under his vizor brought the millionaire's limousine to a
sharp stop, or sent it shivering back into position. But once the vista
ahead was free of uniforms all the clutches leaped to the high; life and
limb were gaily jeopardized, and the most appalling risks run with
ecstasy.
The law of New York streets and roads forbids a car to commit at any
time a higher speed than thirty miles an hour; and never a man that owns
one but would blush to confess it incapable of breaking that law.
As Lieutenant Forbes watched the surge of automobiles from the superior
height of a motor-bus it amused him to see how little people lose of the
childhood spirit of truancy and adventure. All this grown-up,
sophisticated world seemed to be run like a school, with joyous deviltry
whenever and wherever the teacher's back was turned, but woe to whoso
was caught; every one winking at guilt till authority detected it, then
every one solemnly approving the punishment.
Mr. Forbes had not seen Fifth Avenue since the pathetic old
horse-coaches were changed to the terrific motor-stages. He had not seen
the Avenue since it was widened--by the simple process of slicing off
the sidewalks and repairing their losses at the expense of the houses.
The residences on both sides of the once so stately corridor looked to
him as if a giant had drawn a huge carving-knife along the walls,
lopping away all the porticos, columns, stoops, and normal approaches,
and leaving the inhabitants to improvise such exits as they might.
The splendid facade of the Enslee home had suffered pitifully. He
remembered how the stairway had once come down from the vestibule to the
street with the sweeping gesture of a hand of welcome. Now the door was
knee-deep in the basement, and the scar of the sealed-up portal was not
healed above.
The barbarity of the assault along the line had not apparently relieved
the choke of traffic. Or else the traffic had swollen more fiercely
still, as it usually does in New York at every attempt in palliation.
As far as Forbes could see north and south the roadway was glutted from
curb to curb with automobiles. And their number astonished him even less
than their luxury. The designers had ceased to mimic hansoms, broughams,
and victorias following invisible horses ridiculously. They had begun to
create motors pure and simple, built to contain and follow and glorify
their own engines.
Many of the cars were gorgeously upholstered, Aladdin's divans of
comfort and speed; and some of them were decorated with vases of
flowers. Their surfaces were lustrous and many-colored, sleekly
tremendous. They had not yet entirely outgrown the imitation of the
wooden frame, and their sides looked frail and satiny, unfit for rough
usage, and sure to splinter at a shock. But he knew that they were
actually built of aluminum or steel, burnished and enameled.
What he did not know was that the people in them, lolling relaxed, and
apparently as soft of fiber as of skin, were not the weaklings they
looked. They, too, like their cars, only affected fatigue and
ineptitude, for they also were built of steel, and their splendid
engines were capable of velocities and distances that would leave a
gnarled peasant gasping.
This was one of the many things he was to learn.
From his swaying eery he seemed to be completely lost in a current of
idle wealth. The throng, except for the chauffeurs, the policemen, and a
few men whose trades evidently fetched them to this lane of
pleasure--the throng was almost altogether women. And to Forbes' eye,
unused to city standards, almost all the women were princesses.
At first, as his glance fell on each radiant creature, his heart would
cry: "There is one I could love! I never shall forget her beauty!" And
before the vow of eternal memory was finished it was forgotten for the
next.
By and by the show began to pall because it would not end. As peers
become commonplace at a royal court, since there is nothing else there,
so beauty canceled itself here by its very multitude. For the next mile
only the flamboyantly gorgeous or the flamboyantly simple beauty caught
his overfed eye. And then even these were lost in the blur of a
kaleidoscope twirled too fast.
There was one woman, however, that he could not forget, because he could
not find out what she was like. In the slow and fitful progress up the
Avenue it chanced that his stage kept close in the wake of an open
landaulet. The stage never fell far behind, and never quite won
alongside.
A young woman was alone in the tonneau. At least, he judged that she was
young, though his documents were scant. Her head was completely hidden
from his view by a hat that was just exactly big enough to accomplish
that work of spite.
It was a sort of inverted flower-pot of straw--one of those astonishing
millinery jokes that women make triumphs of. It bore no ornament at all
except a filmy white bird-of-paradise feather stuck in the center of the
top and spraying out in a shape that somehow suggested an
interrogation-mark.
Even a man could see that it was a beautiful plume and probably
expensive. It had a sort of success of impudence, alone there, and it
mocked Forbes by trailing along ahead of him, an unanswerable query.
He grew eager and more eager to see what flower-face was hidden under
that overturned straw flower-pot of a hat.
Now and then, as the stage pushed forward, he would be near enough to
make out the cunning architecture of the mystery's left shoulder and the
curious felicity of her left arm. Seen thus detached, they fascinated
him and kindled his curiosity. By and by he was swept near enough to
glimpse one rounded knee crossed over the other, and one straight shin
creasing a tight skirt, and a high-domed instep, and the peak of one
slim shoe.
And once, when the traffic was suddenly arrested, he was close enough to
be wildly tempted to bend down and snatch off that irritating hat. He
would have learned at least the color of her hair, and probably she
would have lifted her startled face to view like a reverted rose. He was
a fearless soldier, but he was not so daring as all that. Still, he
heard her voice as she gossiped to a momentary neighbor who raised his
hat in a touring-car held up abeam her own.
Her voice did not especially please him; it was almost shrill, and it
had the metallic glitter of the New York voice. Her words, too, were a
trifle hard, and as unpoetic as possible.
"We had a rotten time," she said. "I was bored stiff. You ought to have
been there."
And then she laughed a little at the malice implied. The policeman's
whistle blew and the cars lurched forward. And the stage lumbered after
them like a green hippopotamus. Forbes began to feel a gnawing anxiety
to see what was under that paradise feather. He assumed that beauty was
there, though he had learned from shocking experiences how dangerous it
is to hope a woman beautiful because the back of her head is of good
omen.
It became a matter of desperate necessity to overtake that
will-o'-the-wisp chauffeur and observe his passenger. Great expectations
seemed to be justified by the fact that nearly every policeman saluted
her and smiled so pleasantly and so pleasedly that the smile lingered
after she was far past.
Forbes noted, too, that the people she bowed to in other cars or on the
sidewalk seemed to be important people, and yet to be proud when her hat
gave a little wren-like nod in their directions.
At Fifty-first Street, in front of the affable gray Cathedral, there was
a long and democratic delay while a contemptuous teamster, perched atop
a huge steel girder, drove six haughty stallions across the Avenue;
drove them slowly, and puffed deliberate smoke in the face of the
impatient aristocracy.
Here a dismounted mounted policeman paced up and down, followed by a
demure horse with kindly eyes. This officer paused to pass the time of
day with the mysterious woman, and the horse put his nose into the car
and accepted a caress from her little gloved hand. Again Forbes heard
her voice:
"You poor old dear, I wish I had a lump of sugar."
It was to the horse that she spoke, but the officer answered:
"The sight of you, ma'am, is enough for um."
Evidently he came from where most policemen come from. The lady laughed
again. She was evidently not afraid of a compliment. But the policeman
was. He blushed and stammered:
"I beg your pairdon, Miss--"
He gulped the name and motioned the traffic forward. Forbes was
congratulating himself that at least she was not "Mrs." Somebody, and
his interest redoubled just as the young woman leaned forward to speak
to her chauffeur. She had plainly seen that there was a policeless space
ahead of her, for the driver put on such speed that he soon left Forbes
and his stage far in the rear.
Forbes, seeing his prey escaping, made a mental note of the number of
her car, "48150, N. Y. 1913."
He had read how the police traced fugitive motorists by their numerals,
and he vowed to use the records for his own purposes. He must know who
she was and how she looked. Meanwhile he must not forget that
number--48150, N. Y. 1913--the mystic symbol on her chariot of
translation.