What Will People Say? - The Original Classic Edition. Hughes Rupert
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:[Pg 6]
"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.[Pg 7]
CHAPTER II
HELPLESS to pursue her with more than his gaze, Forbes watched from his lofty perch how swiftly she fled northward. He
could follow her car as it thridded the unpoliced traffic by that dwindling bird-of-paradise plume, that sphinxic riddle of a feathery question-mark.
He mused indulgently upon her as she vanished: "She breaks the law like all the rest when no one is there to stop her. She wheedles
the police with a smile, but behind their backs she burns up the road."
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Evidently there were narrow escapes from disaster. One or two pedestrians leaped like kangaroos to escape her wheels. Once or twice collisions with other cars were avoided by sharp swerves or abrupt stops.
The plume went very respectably across the Plaza, for policemen were there on fixed post; but, once beyond, the feather diminished into nothingness with the uncanny speed of a shooting-star.
She was gone. And now he wondered whither she sped, and why. To what tryst was she hastening at such dreadful pace, with such rash desire? He felt almost a jealousy, at least an envy, of the one who waited at the rendezvous.
And then he felt alarm for her. Already she might have met disaster. Her car might have crashed into some other--into a great steel-
girder truck like that that crossed the Avenue. She might even now be lying all crumpled and shattered in a tangle of wreckage.
That taunting white question-feather might be dabbled with red. The face might be upturned to any man's[Pg 8] view and every
man's horror. He was almost afraid to follow farther lest his curiosity be more than sated.
His irresolution was solved for him. The stage was turning out of Fifth Avenue, to cross over to Broadway and Riverside Drive. Forbes was not done with this lane. He rose to leave the bus. It lurched and threw him from bench to bench. He negotiated with difficulty the perilous descent, clutched the hand-rail in time to save himself from pitching head first to the street, clambered down the little stairway with ludicrous awkwardness, stepped on solid asphalt with relief, and walked south.
The press gradually thickened, and before long it was dense and viscid, as if theater audiences were debouching at every corner.
The stream was still almost entirely woman: beautiful woman at the side of beautiful woman, or treading on her high heels; chains of womankind like strings of beaded pearls, hordes of women, dressed in infinite variations of the prevailing mode. They strode or dawdled, laughing, smiling, bowing, whispering, or gazing into the windows of the shops.
The panorama of windows was nearly as beautiful as the army of women. The great show-cases, dressed with all expertness, were
silently proffering wares that would tempt an empress to extravagance.
A few haberdashers displayed articles of strange gorgeousness for men--shirt-patterns and scarves, bathrobes, waistcoats that
rivaled Joseph's; but mainly the bazars appealed to women or to the men who buy things for women.
The windows seemed to say: "How can you carry your beloved past my riches, or go home to her without some of my delights?" "How fine she would look in my folds!" "How well my diamonds would bedeck her hair or her bosom! If you love her, get me for her!" "It is shameful of you to pretend not to see me, or to confess to poverty! Couldn't you borrow money somewhere to buy[Pg 9] me? Couldn't you postpone the rent or some other debt awhile? Perhaps I could be bought on credit."
Show-windows and show-women were the whole cry. The women seemed to be wearing the spoils of yesterday's pillage, and yet to yearn for to-morrow's. Women gowned like manikins from one window gazed like hungry paupers at another window's manikins.
The richness of their apparel, the frankness of their allure were almost frightful. They seemed themselves to be shop-windows offering their graces for purchase or haughtily labeling themselves "sold." Young or antique, they appeared to be setting themselves forth at their best, their one business a traffic in admiration.
"Look at me! Look at me!" they seemed to challenge, one after another. "My face is old, but so is my family." "My body is fat, but so is my husband's purse!" "I am not expensively gowned, but do I not wear my clothes well?" "I am young and beautiful and superbly garbed, and I have a rich husband." "I am only a little school-girl, but I am ready to be admired, and my father buys me everything
I want." "I am leading a life of sin, but is not the result worth while?" "My husband is slaving down-town to pay the bills for these
togs, but are you not glad that I did not wait till he could afford to dress me like this?"
Lieutenant Forbes had been so long away from a metropolis, and had lived in such rough countries, that he perhaps mistook the motives of the women of New York, and their standards, underrated their virtues. Vice may go unkempt and shabby, and a saint may take thought of her appearance. Perhaps what he rated as boldness was only the calm of innocence; what he read as a command to admire may have been only a laudable ambition to make the best of one's gifts.
But to Forbes there was an overpowering fleshliness in the display. It reminded him of the alleged festivals of Babylon, where all the women piously offered themselves[Pg 10] to every passer-by and rated their success with heaven by their prosperity with strangers.
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It seemed to him that the women of other places than New York must have dressed as beautifully, but in an innocenter way. Here the women looked not so much feminine as female. They appeared to be thinking amorous thoughts. They deployed their bosoms with meaning; their very backs conveyed messages. Their clothes were not garments, but banners.
He had dwelt for years among half-clad barbarians, unashamed Igorrotes; but these women looked nakeder than those. The more
studiously they were robed,