What Will People Say? A Novel
Her bodice would have seemed to be shamelessly low, had it not been as
high as almost any other there. This was one of those common yet amazing
sessions where thousands of women of every age and class agree to
display as much of their skins as the police will allow, and far more
than their husbands and fathers approve.
But Forbes had not yet reached the stage where a man resents the
publication of his charmer's charms. He was still hardly more than a
fascinated student of Persis. He found her a most engrossing text.
She was so thoroughly alive--terribly alive all over! Wordsworth's
phrase would have suited Forbes' understanding of her: she "felt her
life in every limb." Her brows now moved sinuously, and now relaxed as
Isolde sang of her longing and quenched the torch for a signal to her
lover. One moment Persis' eyelids throbbed with excitement; the next
they fell and tightened across her eyes. Accesses of emotion swelled her
nostrils and made her lips waver together. Her throat arched and flexed
and was restless; and her lovely disparted bosom filled and waned.
If she sat with clasped hands, the fingers seemed to convene and
commune. She was incessantly thrusting back her hair and stroking her
temples, or her forearms. Her knees were always exchanging places one
above the other; her feet crossed, uncrossed, and seemed unable to
settle upon precedence.
If she had been a child she would have been called fidgety, but all her
motions were discreet and luxurious. She was like a lotos-eater stirring
in sleep and just about to open her eyes.
The second act of the opera proved to be hardly more than a prolonged
duet. The rapture of it outlasted Forbes' endurance; it did not bore
him, it wore him out. He grew weary of eavesdropping on these two. He
was jealous to love and be loved on his own account.
The woman next him was becoming more beautiful every moment. He felt a
craving to touch her--with reverence; to link arms in comradeship, and
to clench hands with her when the music stormed the peaks.
An aura seemed to transpire mistily from his pores to meet the aureole
that shimmered about her.
His mood was far above any thought of flirtation, or evil desire. He was
too knightly at heart to dream of adventure against her sacred
isolation. But he wished and wished that he knew her better; had known
her longer. Unconsciously he plagiarized the sigh of Johanna Ambrosius'
poem: "_Ach, haett' ich frueher dich geseh'n!_"
But Fate can play the clown as well as the tragedian, and accomplish as
much by an absurd accident as by elaborate glooms.
That afternoon, when Forbes was lured into the haberdashery, he had
invested in black silk hosiery, very sheer and very dear. Later he had
acquired a pair of new pumps. The shoes were not too small, but their
rigid edge cut his instep like a dull knife. By the time that Isolde's
husband had found her in Tristan's arms, and begun to deplore his
friend's treachery at great length, the pressure upon Forbes' heart
relaxed enough to let his feet attract his attention. They proclaimed
their discomfort acutely.
After some hesitation he resolved to slip them out of their glistening
jails a moment, under cover of the darkness.
A sense of immense relief rejoiced him when he sat with his
silk-stockinged feet perched on top of instead of inside of his shoes.
Though he was unaware of it, he was not the only one in that box to
seize the opportunity. Heaven alone knew how much empty foot-gear was
scattered along the floors of that opera-house. Persis for one had
vacated her slippers long ago. She always did at every opportunity.
Eventually she tucked her little left foot back of her and bent it round
the leg of her chair. By and by Forbes, in shifting his position,
straightened his right knee. His foot collided with a most smooth
something, and paused in a kind of surprise. Primevally our feet had as
much tactile intelligence as our hands, and Forbes' almost prehensile
big toe pondered that tiny promontory a second; then it hastily explored
the glossy surface of Persis' sole.
Silk is a facile conductor of electricity, and Persis was not divine
enough to be above ticklishness. Shudders of exquisite torment ran
through her before she could snatch her foot away. And before she could
check the impulse she snickered aloud.
And Forbes, suddenly understanding what he had done, snickered too, and
just managed to throttle down a loud guffaw.
Mrs. Neff and Winifred turned in amazement at hearing such a sound at
such a time, and the women in the next box craned their necks to inflict
a punitive glare. Which made it all the worse.
Persis and Forbes were suddenly backslidden almost to infancy. They were
like a pair of children attacked with a fit of giggles in church. The
more they wanted to be sober, the more foolish they felt. The harder
they tried to smother the laughter steaming within them, the more it
threatened to explode.
Persis would have taken to flight, but one of her slippers she could not
find, and she could not get the other on.
She and Forbes were still stuffing their handkerchiefs into their mouths
when the act ended, as the pitifully distraught Tristan permitted the
infuriated Melot to thrust him through with a sword, and fell back in
Kurwenal's arms.
Mrs. Neff and her faction did not join the ovation to the singers. They
were too busily demanding what Persis and Forbes had found to laugh at.
But neither of them would tell. It was their secret.
Willie Enslee was acutely annoyed. He had not curiosity enough to be
quick to jealousy, nor intelligence enough to suspect that Persis' and
Forbes' laughter might be, must be, due to some encounter.
Still, he had ideals of his own, such as they were, and his religion was
to avoid attracting attention. He had liked Persis because she was of
the same faith; but now she had sinned against it, and he rebuked her.
She did not flare up as usual. She laughed.
She was ashamed to have been so frivolous, ashamed to have profaned the
temple of art with her childishness. And so was Forbes. But when they
looked into each other's eyes now they no longer stared with timorous
wonderment; they smiled together in a dear and cozy intimacy. And
already they owned a secret.
CHAPTER XVII
Mrs. Neff and Winifred may have had their suspicions. They were both
amiable cynics, and always put the worst possible interpretation on any
happening. But whatever their theories, they could never have guessed
the actual reason for the contretemps, and Persis speedily changed the
subject. But her feet remembered it and tingled with reminiscent little
electric storms. And when she looked at Forbes she tittered like a
school-girl. So she avoided his eyes.
Willie was furious at Persis' lack of dignity, and forgot his own in
complaining of it.
"Cut out the soubrette spasms, for God's sake, Persis, or let us all in
on the joke. If you have any comic relief for this ghastly opera let me
have it. Why did you drag me here, anyway? We might have gone to
Hammerstein's. It wouldn't be so bad if Caruso were singing; but Caruso
knows better than to bark himself hoarse on this Wagner fella. And that
Dutch tenor has got to die yet. He'll be two hours dying, and then the
lady has to follow suit. Why should we sit here all that time watching
people die? Why didn't we go to Bellevue Hospital and watch an amusing
operation? What would you say to making a sneak just about now and--"
"I'd say, run right along, Willie, if you want to," said Persis. "_Moi,
j'y suis, j'y reste!_"
"Oh, all right, I suppose I'll have to _suis_ and _reste_, too. But
don't mind if I snore."
Ten Eyck appeared now with apologies for his delay. And a number of
callers knocked at the back door of the box and were admitted to an
informal little reception, shared by the next-door neighbors, who
gossiped across the rail with a charming friendliness. These latter were
determined to find out what Persis had been laughing at. But she shook
her head mysteriously.
Forbes heard great names bandied, and he judged that he was meeting
important people, but there were no introductions, except in the case of
a man and a woman who were treated with deference. To these Ten Eyck
presented Forbes with flourish as an eminent military expert called home
from the Philippines to help fortify New York against foreign attack.
Forbes denied this violently, but Ten Eyck winked.
"Diplomatic, eh?"
When they were gone Forbes asked who they were.
"Society reporters!" said Ten Eyck. And the next day Forbes read in two
of the papers a varying description of the costumes of Persis, Winifred,
and Mrs. Neff, and a duplicated mention of his own name with the added
information that he was "the eminent military expert called home from
the Philippines to help fortify New York against foreign attack."
When he read this Forbes breathed a prayer that none of his superior
officers might be addicted to the social columns.
But that was to-morrow's excitement.
The third act brought him back under the Wagnerian yoke. Tristan's
castle walls ran along a cliff overlooking the ocean; in a green space
under a tree the wounded knight lay eternally demanding of his devoted
squire if he could not yet see the ship, the ship that was to bring
Isolde to nurse him back to life.
Forbes forgot all light thoughts before the infinitely pathetic wail of
the shepherd's pipe and the reiterated appeal of Tristan for "_das
Schiff!_ _das Schiff!_"
Like most men of to-day, Forbes never wept except at the theater, or at
some other fiction. He had not wept so well since he had seen "Romeo
and Juliet" played. Now again, as then, it startled him to think what a
genius for love some hearts have, while others have only a talent or a
taste for it. He felt a little ashamed that he had never been able to
love as Romeo or Tristan loved, and yet he thanked his stars that he had
been spared that fatal power.
How often we thank our stars that we have never met the very thing that
waits us round the corner! Perhaps that Pharisee who stands immortally
thanking the Lord that he was not as other men, found out the same
afternoon how very like he was.
The thrall of the theater was so complete upon Forbes that when the
sorrowful drone of the shepherd's pipe suddenly turned to joy at the
sight of Isolde's ship, Forbes' heart leaped up as if he were witnessing
a rescue in actual life.
The hurrying rapture of the music that described Isolde's arrival, and
her haste up the cliff, sent his hopes to heaven; but when the delirious
Tristan rose from his couch to his staggering feet and began to tear at
the bandages about his wound, Forbes felt the stab of fear. He wanted to
cry out, "Oh no! no!" He sat with lips parted in anguish, and his hand
groping for support.
The left hand of Persis was reaching about in the same gesture of
protest against intolerable cruelty. It met the hand of Forbes. Their
fingers clutched each other in an instinct for companionship. The two
souls were so intent upon the action of the scene, and so swept along by
the torrential music, that they hardly knew their hands were joined.
When Tristan fell at Isolde's feet, with one poor wailing "Isolde!" and
died before she could clasp him in her arms, it seemed that Forbes'
heart broke. A groan escaped him; his hand clenched the hand of Persis
with all its might. He heard a little gasp from her, and he thought that
her heart had broken with his.
He had bitten into one of the beautiful apples of Hades, and his mouth
was filled with ashes. The tears poured down his cheeks, and in his
aching throat there was a lump like broken glass.
The noblest song in all music, the "love-death" of Isolde, gave the