Toward this starting-point fat women with looped-up skirts and top-hats and little knock-kneed girls in breeches were hurrying. He smiled with the superiority of a cavalry officer.
Among the living caricatures were a few expert riders. Suddenly Forbes' heart shivered and raced with a feeling that a certain one of them might be Persis. Surely there could not be another back so trim, another grip so firm. But it was his longing that created the resemblance, for as the horse whirled and loped away he caught sight of the woman's profile. It was less like Persis' profile than like the horse's!
But the moment's agitation had gone like an earthquake through his calmed soul. It shook down the towers of resolution and independence and sickened him with the instability of his poise.
He would have turned back from his engagement, but he had not even the strength for that much action. He crossed the Avenue to where the Metropolitan Club stood four square in its gray and white dignity. As he passed through the carved and colonnaded entrance-court a motor-car deposited two women at the door of the annex.
He feared that one of them might be Mildred; but he was unnecessarily alarmed. Mildred had pleaded official duties. She had shown the same reluctance Forbes had revealed. Perhaps she saw through her father's motives. But the old Senator was willing to wait. He was a born compromiser, a genius at making fusions out of factions.
When Forbes entered the club and asked for Tait, the doorman consulted the roster-board, and, finding a cribbage peg opposite the Senator's name, sent a page for him. He was not far to fetch, and he was in a humor of Falstaffian heartiness. He came upon Forbes' foggy mood like a morning sun. He was just what Forbes needed.
He clapped his arm across Forbes' shoulder, and, as he registered him in the guest-book, wrote the new word "Captain" large, and pointed to it; then dragged Forbes to the cigar-case and commanded "the biggest cigar there is, one with a solid-gold wrapper." He treated the forlorn victim of a woman's jilt as a notable worthy of notable entertainment. It was the lift that the prodigal son got when he slunk home and was met with a bouquet instead of blame.
He led Forbes into the great central hall, with its white-marble cliffs and its red-velveted double stairway mounting like a huge St. Andrew's cross, placed him on a settle where a platoon of men might have sat a-knee, and gave the bell a royal bang. He recommended a special cocktail, and joined Forbes in it in joyous disobedience of his physician's warning.
When the cocktail arrived Forbes gave him the army toast of "How!" and Tait answered "Happy days!" On the way up to the dining-room he led Forbes through the building, pausing before the crimson opulence of the two reading-rooms; the lounging-room, with its windows commanding Fifth Avenue; the card-rooms, deserted battle-fields now; the board-rooms, where committees gathered to settle huge financial destinies, the solemn library walled solid with books.
Forbes wondered at the almost complete absence of other people in the club; but Tait explained that most of the members were hard-working millionaires who lunched down-town "or took their dinner-pails with them," some of them hardly stopping to eat a sandwich from a desk leaf.