What Will People Say? A Novel
downpour had abated. They were drawing up at her own curb.
She flung off his hands with a gasp of anger and terror. He stared at
her in a daze. Then he understood.
"Forgive me!" he pleaded.
She was furious with him; but she blamed herself more, and breathed hard
with rage as she straightened her hat and her hair.
An old footman was waiting at the top of the steps with an umbrella. He
ran down and opened the door.
"Your father is waiting for you, miss," he said.
Forbes stepped forth into the light drizzle and helped her out.
"Good-by," he said. And again "Good-by." But she hurried up the steps.
Forbes followed her with his eyes, and saw an elderly gentleman waiting
for her at the door. There was a troubled look on his face. The door
closed upon him as he caught Persis in his arms.
Forbes told the chauffeur to take him to his hotel, and crept back into
the deserted nest of romance. The taxicab turned slowly round. As it
passed the house again, Forbes saw another car stop at the curb. From it
stepped Willie Enslee.
CHAPTER XXVI
All the way back to the hotel, all the while he was selecting what
clothes he should take, all the while he waited for the hour of the
general rendezvous to arrive Forbes was troubled by the remembrance of
Willie Enslee's appearance at Persis' home.
He had apparently come in hot pursuit. On the other hand, he might have
come merely to make the final arrangements for the excursion to the
country. And yet Willie must be accepted as a rival. Or, rather, it was
Forbes that was the rival, since Enslee's infatuation for Persis was
generally known long before Forbes reached New York.
Forbes did not approve of men who went after other men's sweethearts to
take them away. But Persis had told him that she had never loved any
man; ergo, she had not loved Enslee--if Enslee could be called a man.
Even so, Forbes would have preferred to make love to Mr. Enslee's
sweetheart somewhere else than at Mr. Enslee's home. But how was he to
fight his rival except where his rival was? How rescue the imprisoned
princess but by invading the ogre's castle? Physically, Enslee was
hardly more than a pocket ogre, but his wealth made him a giant. It was
with the Enslee Estates that Forbes must grapple. He feared that Persis
might drift into their wizard power, and he wanted to save her from that
life of "luxurious misery" of which he had read so much, for that life
of "blissful poverty with love" of which he had read so much.
Besides, in invading Enslee's own domain he was giving Enslee every
advantage. All of the splendor of Enslee's chateau, the armor of riches
and the sword of gold, would defend him, while Forbes would attack only
with his empty hands and the power of love. If Goliath thought that
David took an unfair advantage of him, why did not Goliath lay aside his
buckler and his bludgeon and use a sling, too? Pebbles were plentiful
enough.
Forbes reasoned at his scruples till they faced the other way. He argued
till what he would have called vicious in other men became sincerely
virtuous in his own special instance. So men and empires, republics and
religions have always argued when they were about to try to take
something away from somebody.
As Forbes folded his togs and wished them better and braver, he paused
to laugh at what Persis had told him: Willie believed that Forbes was
flirting with Mrs. Neff for herself or her daughter! What a blind little
ape Enslee was! Then Forbes straightened up and flushed and called
himself a double-dyed cad. He flung aside the things he was folding and
resolved not to go to Enslee's home at all.
He sank into a chair and pondered. If he did not go he would be left
alone in New York. Only a few days remained of his little vacation. By
the time Persis came back Forbes would be at his army post, a slave of
discipline and the everlasting round of the same dull duties. Persis
would be angry and hurt, and she would marry Enslee; she would live in
that home with Enslee; she would become part of the Enslee Estates, body
and soul.
Forbes' gorge rose at the visions this brought to his mind. He ripped
out an oath, and flung off the withes of such false honor. He would, he
must, save Persis at any cost. If Enslee were foolish enough to think
that Forbes was hunting Mrs. Neff or Alice, let him take the
consequences. If Enslee had not thought so, he would not have asked
Forbes to come along. To take advantage of an enemy's weaknesses was the
first rule of warfare. To shoot from cover was the first business of a
marksman.
This was not a contest in sharp-shooting at targets under strict rules,
with a medal for a prize. This was a battle in rough country for the
rescue of a beautiful girl.
Forbes granted himself a plenary indulgence, and resumed packing,
smiling again at Willie's idea that he was a suitor for the post of
third husband to Mrs. Neff.
He did not smile so well a few hours later, when Willie, with the
kindliest of motives, assigned him to Mrs. Neff's automobile.
"You two sweethearts," Enslee said, with a matchmaker's grin, "will want
to ride together, of course. Persis and I will keep out of your way as
much as we can."
Forbes was sportsman enough to credit Willie with a bull's-eye. He
smothered his chagrin and helped Mrs. Neff into her car, while his two
suit-cases were strapped in the trunk-rack with the family baggage.
The motor-caravan was made up of three machines. Winifred ran her own
roadster, nursing the steering-wheel to her bosom, while her fat elbows
harried Ten Eyck's cramped form. Bob Fielding had been unable to get
away from the troubled waters of Wall Street, and Winifred had adopted
Ten Eyck as his understudy.
Mrs. Neff took her four-passenger touring-car. Forbes decided after
several appalling bumps that it had belonged to her first husband. Alice
sat with the chauffeur, dreaming of Stowe Webb, no doubt. In the rear
Mrs. Neff, in her most garrulous mood, talked nonsense through a veil
whose flying ends kept snapping in Forbes' face. And when they were
beyond Broadway her cigarette ashes kept sifting into his eyes.
He was as polite as possible, but his thoughts were trying to pierce the
dust-wake of the great six-cylinder touring-car in which Willie Enslee
led the way with Persis. All Forbes could see of her was the top of her
motor-hood and the veil that fled back like a signal beseeching him to
make haste and save her.
Broadway in the late afternoon was thick with the home-going armies, and
it seemed to stretch as long and as crowded as the Milky Way. On through
Yonkers to Dobbs Ferry and Tarrytown the journey took them, passing an
occasional monument of our brief history, a tablet to mark where
Rochambeau met Washington and brought France to our rescue, or a
memorial to the cowboys that arrested Major Andre.
In Forbes' then humor no small charms of nature or legend could have
caught his mind from his jealousy. Even the epic levels of the Hudson
River and the Valhalla walls of the Palisades hardly impressed him. What
success they had with him was mainly due to his remembrance of seeing
them first from the train that brought him to New York a few days, or a
few eons, ago. He was full then of ambitions to shine as a soldier in an
enlarged camp. Now his treasons and stratagems were concerned with a
love-campaign whose spoils was Persis Cabot.
There was a pause by agreement for dinner at a road-house--"their last
civilized meal," as Ten Eyck mournfully prophesied, "before they entered
the Purgatory of Winifred's cooking at Willie's boarding-house."
When the task of fretting out a dinner was finished they got under way,
pushing north again.
Eventually the pilot-car, or, rather, its guiding cloud of dust, swept
off to the east, turning its back on the Hudson and plunging into the
heart of Westchester County, an ocean of hills like green billows, and
valleys like their troughs; peaceful castles set on high places, and
pleasant villages dispersed in low; the homely roominess of farms, and
now and then a huddle of crowded rookeries, where Italian peasants had
set up a congenial little slums along some ugly waste.
Everything took on a wistfulness in the evening air, which the sunset
was tincturing like claret poured into water. Forbes was aching to be
with Persis, and he hoped that she was wistful to be with him. The moon
had loitered with torch half aglow in the wings of the sky until the sun
was gone, and then its lamp was raised, and it entered its own scene. In
the houses lights began to pink the dark with the trite but irresistible
appeal of Christmas-card transparencies.
Forbes lost all sense of direction in the winding roads, and even Mrs.
Neff's chatter yielded to the brow-caressing dusk. The swift progress of
the car gave no suggestion of wheels, but rather of a flying keel on a
smooth stream.
Finally the searchlights of Enslee's machine turned sharp at right
angles. A beautiful granite bridge leaped into view as suddenly as if
the great god Wotan had builded it with a word. At the farther side of
the bridge stood a lodge-keeper's home, whose architecture seemed to
shift the scene instantly to the France of the first Francis.
"Here we are!" Mrs. Neff cried. "And I'm half frozen. I hope the
gardener has aired the rooms and put dry sheets on the beds, or I'm in
for lumbago."
"Mother, you're just death to romance!" Alice protested. She had
doubtless been thinking of Stowe Webb.
The car glided across the bridge, and the moon-whipped stream reveling
below it, then preceded through a granite gateway with a portcullis
suspended like a social guillotine. And then the sense of privacy began.
The very moon seemed to become a part of the Enslee Estates.
The motors tilted backward as the hill rose; and Mrs. Neff's rheumatic
car groaned and worried a spiraling road up and up through masses of
anonymous shrubs pouring forth incense, through spaces of moon-swept
hillside and thickets of somber velours. Then there was a glimpse of the
radiant geometry of moon-washed roofs. A turn or two more, and the
wheels were swishing into the graveled court of a stately mansion.
The door under the porte-cochere was open, and in its embrasure stood a
leanish man and his fattish wife, hospitable as innkeepers, the warm
light streaming back of them like peering children.
Enslee's voice came out of the silence:
"That you, Prout? H'are you, Martha?" And then, with characteristic
originality, "Well, we got here."
To which Prout responded with equal importance:
"So you did, sir."
He and his wife had been working like mad since Enslee telephoned,
trying to turn themselves into a troop of servants, whisking shrouds
from table and piano and chairs, and mopping a cloth of dust from every
surface. They were as respectful now as Philemon and Baucis welcoming
Jupiter, and as apologetic as if the palace were their own unworthy cot.
"I've got a pack of Indians with me, Prout," said Enslee. "I didn't want
'em, but they would come, and now we've got to make the best of it.
Don't let 'em trample your flower-beds. And if anybody breaks a
flower-stem we'll have him or her shot at sunrise."
Martha giggled into her fat palm.
"Oh, 'e will 'ave 'is joke; 'e will so. And isn't this Miss Cabot? Of
course it is."
Forbes, seated in the rear car, heard again that assumption of Persis
and Enslee as a couple.
The cars rolled up to the door in turn. The women as they got out piled
their wraps on Martha till she completely disappeared, except for a pair
of clutching hands, and a voice from the depths.
The chauffeurs made off down the road to the distant garage, with
instructions to stay there after one of them should have come back for
Winifred's roadster.