_ BOOK III. IN WASHINGTON
CHAPTER I
She went through her hand-bag again, while the porter computed how many tips he was missing and the cab-starter looked insufferable things about womankind.
She asked if any of them knew where Grinden Hall might be, but they shook their heads. She had a sudden happy idea. She would ask the telephone Information for the number. She hurried to a booth, followed by the despondent porter. She asked for Information and got her, but that was all.
"Please give me the numba of Mrs. Widdicombe's, in Rosslyn."
A Washington dialect eventually told her that the number was a private wire and could not be given.
Marie Louise implored a special dispensation, but it was against the rules.
She asked for the supervisor--who was equally sorry and adamant. Marie Louise left the booth in utter defeat. There was nothing to do but go to a hotel till the morrow.
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 Shoreham 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 clusters 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 nobody 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 nobody 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 God'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 passed 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. _