The Cup of Fury Part 18

She recalled the stories of the hopelessness of getting a room. Yet she had no choice but to make the try. She had got a seat on the train where there were none. Perhaps she could trust her luck to provide her with a lodging, too.

"We'll go back to the taxi-stand," she told the porter.

He did not conceal his joy at being rid of her.

She tried the Sh.o.r.eham first, and when the taxicab deposited her under the umbrellas of the big trees and she climbed the homelike steps to a lobby with the air of a living-room she felt welcome and secure.

Brilliant cl.u.s.ters were drifting to dinner, and the men were more picturesque than the women, for many of them were in uniform. Officers of the army and navy of the United States and of Great Britain and of France gave the throng the look of a costume-party.

There was a less interesting crowd at the desk, and now n.o.body offered her his place at the head of the line. It would have done no good, for the room-clerk was shaking his head to all the suppliants. Marie Louise saw women turned away, married couples, men alone. But new-comers pressed forward and kept trying to convince the deskman that he had rooms somewhere, rooms that he had forgotten, or was saving for people who would never arrive.

He stood there shaking his head like a toy in a window. People tried to get past him in all the ways people try to get through life, in the ways that Saint Peter must grow very tired of at the gate of heaven--bluff, whine, bribery, intimidation, flirtation.

Some demanded their rights with full confidence and would not take no for answer. Some pleaded with hopelessness in advance; they were used to rebuffs. They appealed to his pity. Some tried corruption; they whispered that they would "make it all right," or they managed a sly display of money--one a one-dollar bill with the "1" folded in, another a fifty-dollar bill with the "50" well to the fore. Some grew ugly and implied favoritism; they were the born strikers and anarchists. Even though they looked rich, they had that habit of finding oppression and conspiracy everywhere. A few women appealed to his philanthropy, and a few others tried to play the siren. But his head oscillated from side to side, and n.o.body could swing it up and down.

Marie Louise watched the procession anxiously. There seemed to be no end to it. The people who had come here first had been turned away into outer darkness long ago and had gone to other hotels. The present wretches were those who had gone to the other hotels first and made this their second, third, or sixth choice.

Marie Louise did not go to the desk. She could take a hint at second hand. She would have been glad of a place to sit down, but all the divans were filled with gossipers very much at home and somewhat contemptuous of the vulgar herd trying to break into their select and long-established circle. She heard a man saying, with amiable anger: "Ah'm mahty sah'y Ah can't put you up at ouah haouse, but we've got 'em hangin' on the hat-rack in the hall. You infunnal patriots have simply ruined this little old taown."

She heard a pleasant laugh. "Don't worry. I'll get along somehow."

She glanced aside and saw That Man again. She had forgotten his name again; yet she felt curiously less lonely, not nearly so hopeless. The other man said:

"Say, Davidge, are you daown heah looking for one of these dollah-a-yeah jobs? Can you earn it?"

"I'm not looking for a job. I'm looking for a bed."

"Not a chance. The government's taken ovah half the hotels for office-buildings."

"I'll go to a Turkish bath, then."

"Good Lawd! man, I hud a man propose that, and the hotel clerk said he had telephoned the Tukkish bath, and a man theah said: 'For G.o.d's sake don't send anybody else heah! We've got five hundred cots full naow.'"

"There's Baltimore."

"Baltimer's full up. So's Alexandra. Go on back home and write a letta."

"I'll try a few more hotels first."

"No use--not an openin'."

"Well, I've usually found that the best place to look for things is where people say they don't grow."

Marie Louise thought that this was most excellent advice. She decided to follow it and keep on trying.

As she was about to move toward the door the elevator, like a great cornucopia, spilled a bevy of men and women into the lobby. Leading them all came a woman of charm, of distinction, of self-possession.

She was smiling over one handsome shoulder at a British officer.

The forlorn Marie Louise saw her, and her eyes rejoiced; her face was kindled with haven-beacons. She pressed forward with her hand out, and though she only murmured the words, a cry of relief thrilled them.

"Lady Clifton-Wyatt! What luck to find you!"

Lady Clifton-Wyatt turned with a smile of welcome in advance. Her hand went forward. Her smile ended suddenly. Blank amazement pa.s.sed into contemptuous wrath. Her hand went back. With the disgust of a sick eagle in a zoo, she drew a film over her eyes.

The smile on Marie Louise's face also hung unsupported for a moment.

It faded, then rallied. She spoke with patience, underlining the words with an affectionate reproof:

"My dear Lady Clifton-Wyatt, I am Miss Webling--Marie Louise. Don't you know me?"

Lady Clifton-Wyatt answered: "I did. But I don't!"

Then she turned and moved toward the dining-room door.

The head waiter bowed with deference and command and beckoned Lady Clifton-Wyatt. She obeyed him with meek hauteur.

CHAPTER II

As she came out of the first hotel of her selection and rejection Marie Louise asked the car-starter the name of another. He mentioned the New Willard.

It was not far, and she was there before she had time to recover from the staggering effect of Lady Clifton-Wyatt's bludgeon-like snub. As timidly as the waif and estray that she was, she ventured into the crowded, gorgeous lobby with its lofty and ornate ceiling on its big columns. At one side a long corridor ran brokenly up a steep hill. It was populous with loungers who had just finished their dinners or were waiting for a chance to get into the dining-rooms. Orchestra music was lilting down the aisle.

When Marie Louise had threaded the crowd and reached the desk a very polite and eager clerk asked her if she had a reservation. He seemed to be as regretful as she when she said no. He sighed, "We've turned away a hundred people in the last two hours."

She accepted her dismissal dumbly, then paused to ask, "I say, do you by any chance know where Grinden Hall is?"

He shook his head and turned to another clerk to ask, "Do you know of a hotel here named Grinden Hall?"

The other shook his head, too. There was a vast amount of head-shaking going on everywhere in Was.h.i.+ngton. He added, "I'm new here." Nearly everybody seemed to be new here. It seemed as if the entire populace had moved into a ready-made town.

Marie Louise had barely the strength to explain, "Grinden Hall is not an hotel; it is a home, in Rosslyn, wherever that is."

"Oh, Rosslyn--that's across the river in Virginia."

"Do you know, by any chance, Major Thomas Widdicombe?"

He shook his head. Major Widdicombe was a big man, but the town was fairly swarming with men bigger than he. There were shoals of magnates, but giants in their own communities were petty nuisances here pleading with room-clerks for cots and with head waiters for bread. The lobby was a thicket of prominent men set about like trees.

Several of them had the Congressional look. Later history would record them as the historic statesmen of t.i.tanic debates, men by whose eloquence and leaders.h.i.+p and committee-room toil the Republic would be revolutionized in nearly every detail, and billions made to flow like water.

As Marie Louise collected her porter and her hand-luggage for her next exit she saw Ross Davidge just coming in. She stepped behind a large politician or something. She forgot that she owed Davidge money, and she felt a rather pleasurable agitation in this game of hide-and-seek, but something made her shy of Davidge. For one thing, it was ludicrous to be caught being turned out of a second hotel.

The politician walked away, and Davidge would have seen Marie Louise if he had not stopped short and turned a cold shoulder on her, just as the distant orchestra, which had been crooning one of Jerome Kern's most insidiously ingratiating melodies, began to blare with all its might the sonorities of "The Star-spangled Banner."

Miss Webling saw the people in the alley getting to their feet slowly, awkwardly. A number of army and navy officers faced the music and stood rigid at attention. The civilians in the lobby who were already standing began to pull their hats off sheepishly like embarra.s.sed peasants. People were still as self-conscious as if the song had just been written. They would soon learn to feel the tremendous importance of that eternal query, the only national anthem, perhaps, that ever began with a question and ended with a prayer. Americans would soon learn to salute it with eagerness and to deal ferociously with men--and women, too--who were slow to rise.

Marie Louise watched Davidge curiously. He was manifestly on fire with patriotism, but he was ashamed to show it, ashamed to stand erect and click his heels. He fumbled his hat and slouched, and looked as if he had been caught in some guilt. He was indeed guilty of a childish fervor. He wanted to shout, he wanted to weep, he wanted to fight somebody; but he did not know how to express himself without striking an att.i.tude, and he was incapable of being a _poseur_--except as an American posily affects poselessness.