Willie was lowered ash.o.r.e first. Bob What"s-his-name bulged through next, then Ten Eyck, then Forbes. Ten Eyck dropped into the gutter the three lighted cigarettes that had been hastily pressed into his hand, and turned to help the women out.
Forbes, wondering where they were, looked up and read with difficulty a great sign in vertical electric letters, "Reisenweber"s."
Willie told his chauffeur to wait, and the car drew down the street to make room for a long queue of other cars. Ten Eyck led the flock into a narrow hall, and filled the small elevator with as many as could get in.
He included Forbes with the three women, and remained behind with Willie and Bob.
Crowded into the same s.p.a.ce were two young girls, very pretty till they spoke, and then so plebeian that their own beauty seemed to flee affrighted. The blonde seraph was chanting amid her chewing-gum:
"He says to me, "If you was a lady you wouldn"t "a" drank with a party you never sor before," and I come back at him, "If you was a gempmum you"d "a" came across with the price of a pint when you seen I was dyin"
of thoist.""
And the brunette answered: "You can"t put no trust in them kind of Johns. Besides, he tangoes like he had two left feet."
Forbes was uneasy till Persis whispered, "Don"t you just love them?"
Then a door opened and they debarked into a crowded anteroom. While they waited for the car to descend and rise again with the rest of the party the women gave their wraps to a maid, and Forbes delivered his coat and hat and stick across a counter to a hat-boy.
When Ten Eyck, Willie, and Bob appeared and had checked their things the seven climbed a crowded staircase into an atmosphere riotous with chatter and dance-music of a peculiarly rowdy rhythm.
But they could only hear and feel the throb of it. They could not see the dancers, so thick a crowd was ahead of them.
A head waiter appeared, and, curt as he was with the rest of the mob, he was pitifully regretful at losing Mr. Enslee, who had failed to reserve a table and who would not wait.
It was disgusting to slink back down the stairs, regain the wraps and coats and hats, and make two elevator-loads again. Willie alone was cheerful.
"Now, maybe you"ll go to the Plaza or some place and have a human supper."
"I"m going to have a trot and a tango if I have to hunt the town over,"
said Persis.
Willie gnashed his teeth, but had the car recalled, and asked her where she would go.
"Let"s try the Beaux Arts," she said; and they huddled together once more.
"It"s too bad we were thrown out of Reisenweber"s," Winifred pouted. "I was dying to see Francois dance and have a dance with him."
Forbes felt well enough acquainted by now to ask: "Pardon my ignorance, but who is Francois?"
"Oh, he"s a love of a French lad," said Winifred. "Everybody"s mad over him. I used to see him in Paris dancing between the tables at the Cafe de Paris or the Pre-Catalan with some girl or other. Then somebody brought him over here for a musical comedy, and he"s been on the crest of the wave ever since."
"They say he"s getting rich dancing in theaters and restaurants and giving lessons at twenty-five per."
"Somebody was telling me he actually makes fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars a week," said Mrs. Neff.
"If I had that much, would you marry me, Persis?" said Ten Eyck.
"In a minute," said Persis. "We might earn it ourselves. You dance as well as he does, and you could practise whirling me round your neck."
"Then we"re engaged," said Ten Eyck.
"It"s outrageous!" said Willie. "That fellow with an income equal to five per cent. on a couple of million dollars."
"What you kicking about, Willie?" said Winifred. "You get several times as much, and you never lifted hand or foot in your life."
"But Willie"s father did," said Mrs. Neff. "He killed himself working."
"Willie has it much better arranged," said Bob. "Instead of Willie working for money he has the money working for him."
"It works while he sleeps," said Winifred.
Forbes was thinking gloomily in the gloom of the car. This dancer, this mountebank, Francois, was earning as much in a week as the government paid him in a year, after all his training, his campaigning, his readiness to take up his residence or lay down his life wherever he was told to.
Then he compared his income with Willie Enslee"s. Enslee did not even dance for his supper, yet into his banks gold rained where pennies dribbled into Forbes" meager purse. And it was not a precarious salary such as dancers and soldiers earned by their toil; it was the mere sweat from great slumbering ma.s.ses of treasure.
Forbes felt no longer an exultance at falling in with these people. He felt ashamed of himself. He was no more a part of the company he kept than a gnat on an ox or a flea caught up in the ermine of a king. The air grew oppressive. He felt like a tenement waif patronized for a moment on a whim, and likely to be tossed back to his poverty at any moment. He wanted to get out before he was put out. The very luxuries that enthralled him at first were intolerable now. The perfume of the women and their flowers lost its savor. Their graces had gone. They were all elbows and knees. He suffocated as in a black hole of Calcutta.
When a footman at the Cafe des Beaux Arts wrenched the door open and let the cool air in, it was welcome. Forbes moved to escape. But he was kept prisoner while Bob was sent as an avant courier. He returned with the bad news that he was unable even to reach a head waiter.
The car nosed round, turned with difficulty, and went to Bustan.o.by"s. It was the same story here.
"New York"s gone mad, I tell you!" Willie raved. "And n.o.body is as crazy as we are. To think of us going about like a gang of beggars pleading to be taken in and allowed to dance with a lot of hoodlums and muckers.
Even they won"t have us."
"We"ll try once more," said Persis. "The Cafe de Ninive."
After a brief voyage farther along Broadway the suppliant outcasts entered a great hall imposingly decorated with winged bulls and other a.s.syrian symbols. The huge s.p.a.ce of the restaurant was a desert of tables untenanted save by a few dejected waiters and a few couples evidently in need of solitude.
An elevator took the determined Persis and her cohort up to another thronged vestibule.
Persis had said to Willie in the car, "If you don"t get us a table here I"ll never speak to you again."
With this threat as a spur Little Willie accosted a large captain of waiters, who shrugged his shoulders and indicated the crowd inside and the crowd outside. Willie fumbled in his pockets, and his hand slyly met that of the captain, who glanced into his palm, then up to heaven in grat.i.tude, and laid aside all scruple.
Willie triumphantly beckoned Persis, who approached the captain with the pouting appeal of a lady of the court to a relenting sovereign.
"Fritz," she said, "you"ve got to take care of us."
"How can I refuse Mees Cabot," said Fritz. "Do you weesh to seet and watch the artists, or to seet weeth the dancers?"
"We want to dance," said Persis.
"There is one table resairve for a very great patron. You shall have it.
I shall lose me my poseetion, and he will tear down the beelding; but that is better as to turn away Mees Cabot and Meester Enslee."
He whispered to a horrified captain on the other side of a silk rope.
The barrier was removed, and they were within the sacred inclosure, while the baffled remnant gnashed its teeth outside.