What Will People Say?

by Rupert Hughes.

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 pa.s.s 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 bas.e.m.e.nt, and the scar of the sealed-up portal was not healed above.

The barbarity of the a.s.sault 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 l.u.s.trous 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 inept.i.tude, 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 mult.i.tude. 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 doc.u.ments 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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.senger. 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 pa.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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.

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."

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.