What Will People Say? A Novel
The gardener, apologizing for his awkwardness in the office of a butler,
led the little troop into the great living-room, where a big fire
blazed, splashing walls and floors with banners of red and yellow.
Prout explained that he had been unable to start either the hot-water
furnace that heated the house or the dynamo that lighted it. And, being
short-handed like, and took with a stroke of sciatiky from the
onseasonable cold of the backward spring, he had found time to make
fires only in the master's room, his mother's room, and one other. The
caretaker, who had kept a fire going all winter for the sake of the
water-pipes, had let it go out at the first warm weather and gone for a
visit to his wife's mother.
"That's what we get for coming up before the place has been set to
rights," Willie grumbled. "I suppose you girls will have to draw lots
for my room."
"Me for the nursery," said Winifred. "It's the sunniest place in the
house, and--"
"You're not going to try to sleep on one of those children's beds?"
Willie gasped.
"No, nor on two of them," said Winifred; "but there's a glorious
window-seat a mile wide."
Willie's self-sacrifice was of the parsimonious sort that made
acceptance impossible. None of the women would deprive him of his bed.
Mrs. Neff was assigned to Willie's mother's room, and Alice and Persis
to those on either side. Forbes and Ten Eyck were exiled to the
southwest wing.
Prout and Martha could not believe that Mr. Enslee had come without the
retinue of servants that ordinarily preceded his august appearance. In
fact, the adventure was as unlike Enslee as it was uncongenial to him.
He could not and would not see the fun of it.
Martha and Prout offered their service, but Winifred would not let them
mar the perfection of her Swiss Family Robinson. She overawed Willie and
drove the old couple back to their own cottage.
When they had retired with prophecies of disaster and evil the would-be
gipsies felt relieved of all the encumbrances of civilization. Winifred
called it a return to nature. For the time being, however, the chief
emotion was one of blissful weariness. Host and guests had kept
themselves keyed up all season, like instruments in a concert, and now
that the tension was released they seemed to collapse upon themselves.
In front of the great fireplace was a divan almost as big as a
life-boat, and cushioned into such a cloud as the gods rested on.
Winifred and Mrs. Neff and Alice were lolling on it, and Murray Ten Eyck
sat on the edge. Back of it was the usual living-room table with a pile
or two of books and magazines.
Persis paused for a moment, looking over the books to select something
to take up to her room. She pushed them about with indifference.
"Last year's novels!" she smiled. "As thrilling as last year's birds'
nests."
She turned up an illustrated society weekly of a former spring. The
frontispiece held her a moment, and she shook her head.
"And last year's reputations. Here's a big portrait of Mrs. Richard
Lanthorpe and her two children." She read the caption aloud: "'Prominent
young matron who is just opening her Newport villa. Though a devoted
mother to her charming little daughters, Mrs. Lanthorpe is also well
known as a skilful whip.'"
"Good Lord!" said Winifred, reaching out her hand. "Let me see the cat.
A whip, eh? You could drive a coach and four through her reputation
now."
Mrs. Neff took the paper from her hand. "Her husband got the kiddies.
Pretty little tikes, too."
"She sold 'em for the Newport villa," said Alice, looking over her
mother's shoulder. Mrs. Neff turned on her with a glare of amazement.
"Where do you children pick up such things?"
"I'm not children," said Alice, "and the papers were full of it."
"Mrs. Dicky was up here last spring for a week-end with her husband,"
said Willie. "And so was the other man. What's his name? Later I heard
that people had been talking a lot even then, but I never suspected
anything till later."
"You never would, Willie," said Mrs. Neff. She stared at the picture.
"She's really very good-looking, and she wasn't a bad sort altogether. I
wonder which one of us will be gone next winter?"
"You, probably," Willie snickered, and the others laughed lazily. But
Mrs. Neff bristled.
"I don't see why you have to laugh. Am I too old to misbehave?"
"Far from it, darling!" said Willie. "You're just at the dangerous age.
I--er--I don't mean exactly that, either."
Mrs. Neff turned a page hastily. "Here's a picture of Deborah Reeve in
her coming-out gown."
"She came out so far and so fast she went right back," said Ten Eyck,
and explained to Forbes: "Hesitated between her riding-master and her
mother's chauffeur, and finally ran off with the first officer of her
father's yacht. She was a born democrat."
"Here's a snapshot of Mrs. Tom Corliss at the Meadowbrook Steeplechase.
Look, that's 'Pup' Mowat standing with her. Good Lord, he was hanging
round her a year ago, and people are just beginning to notice. Haven't
they been clever? A whole year under the rose and right under the
public's nose."
"Tom Corliss will be finding it out before long," said Winifred.
"Oh no," said Willie, "I've discovered that the husband is always the
last to find out." And he tossed his head in careless pride at the
novelty of his pronouncement.
"Isn't Willie the observing little thing?" said Winifred. The others
exchanged glances of contemptuous amusement while their host looked
wise.
Persis strolled round to the divan, took Murray by the ear, and hoisted
him from his place.
"No, thanks, Murray," she said. "I couldn't think of taking your seat."
And dropped into it.
"What are we going to do for amusement to-night?" said Willie. "Who
wants to play auction?"
"Hush!" said Mrs. Neff.
"Shall we have some music, then?" A general declination. "Some singing?
A dance?"
They refused even that, and he grew desperate.
"Charades?"
"Shut up!" came from the crowd.
"I don't want to be entertained," said Persis. "I'm never so miserable
as when I'm being entertained."
Everybody approved. Just to be let alone was a luxury.
Willie ventured a last retort: "Anybody want a drink?"
Everybody wanted a drink. Willie went to a side-wall and groped for a
button, pushed it and held it, then resumed his place before the fire.
After a time he pushed it again.
"Where is everybody?" he snapped. Then the truth dawned on him again.
"Good Lord, we're marooned!"
Winifred chuckled at the situation. "You'll have to be your own barkeep,
Willie. Go rustle us what you can find."
"But everything would be in the cellar," he answered. "If there's
anything here at all, which I doubt. And the key is in town. Couldn't
trust Prout with it. Fine old gardener--give his life to save a
peony--but he's death on liquor. I couldn't trust him to order in
drinkables--besides, I forgot."
There were groans of horror.
"'Water, water, everywhere,'" said Ten Eyck, "'and not a drop to
drink.'"
"It's bad enough having no servants to wait on us," Mrs. Neff pondered,
"but who's to do our thinking for us? Which'll we die of first? thirst
or starvation?"
"We'll get in a supply from the village to-morrow," said Willie,
handsomely.
"To-morrow never comes," said Winifred.
For lack of artificial stimulus the momentary enthusiasm lapsed again.
Nobody cared even to read. The fireplace was books enough.
Forbes and Ten Eyck stood at either end of the mantel, mere supporting
statuary, their heads in shadow. Willie teetered at the center of the
hearth, toasting his coat-tails.
The four women occupied the divan, sketched out brilliantly against the
dark like a group portrait of Sargent's. The light worked over their
images as a painter works, making and illuminating shadows, touching a
strand of hair or a cheek-bone with a high light, modeling with a streak
of red some lifted muscle, then brushing it off again.
The poses of the women were as various as their bodies and souls. At one
corner Mrs. Neff sat erect among the cushions in a sleepy stateliness.
Winifred filled the other corner like another heap of cushions, hardly
moving except to flick her cigarette ashes on the floor to the acute
distress of Willie's neat soul. Alice drooped with arched spine in a
young girl's slump, and clung to a hand of Persis', doubtless wishing it
were Stowe Webb's. Persis sat cross-legged, a smoking Sultana, her chin
on the back of one hand, one elbow on one knee.
From his coign of shadow Forbes watched them. Vague reverie held them
all. The very shadows seemed to breathe unevenly in restless meditation.
The fire-logs alone conversed aloud in mysterious whispers, with
crackling epigrams.
Forbes wondered at the group, so real and so unreal. He wondered what
they were thinking of, each in her castle of self, each with her
yearnings backward and forward. Winifred was wishing her lover there,
perhaps, and that her slim and gracile soul were not mislodged in so
determinedly fat a body; Mrs. Neff was wishing, perhaps, that her gray
hair and her calendar of years did not so thwart the young, romantic
girl that housed in her body, and must sleep alone, perhaps, forever.
Suddenly Forbes wished that he had not smiled so ruthlessly at the
thought of her expecting to be courted. Her longings were pitiful,
perhaps, but not ridiculous.
It was easy to guess at Alice's thoughts. She was wishing to be not so
young and curbed by authority. She was years older than Juliet had been
when she went to the church with Romeo and threw him the ladder and
preceded him to the tomb; yet Alice's well-matured desires were smiled
away and patronized as childish.
And Persis: what were the thoughts that burned within her soul and
twitched at her fingers, or tugged at her eyebrows, shook her eyelids,
or tightened her lips? Was she thinking of Forbes as he was thinking of
her?
Suddenly her drooping bosom expanded with a great breath, her lips
parted, her eyes widened, her hand rose. She was about to speak. What
would she say?
She yawned. Her hand automatically came up for politeness' sake, but
lingered to pat her straining lips as if in approval. Her eyes blurred
and fairly writhed. All the muscles of her divine beauty were contorted.
She was not so much yawning as yawned. She was enjoying it, too, and as
it ended she sighed over it as over a sweetmeat. The musing goddess had
been suddenly restored to humanity with a thump.
Her comfortable sigh was echoed and her yawn outdone by Winifred, who
moaned:
"I'm so damned sleepy I'll turn in here if the rest of you will get off
the bed."
Then Alice yawned and wriggled, and Mrs. Neff gaped with a slight
restraint and staggered to her feet.
"I'm on my way. I'd be bored to death if I weren't so excited over the
wonderful sleep I'm to have. I hope I don't wake up for a week."
"I hope you don't," said Willie, thrusting out his arms in an
all-embracing oscitation.
There was an epidemic of yawns, and they staggered to the console table
where a long row of candles waited. Ten Eyck lighted them and
distributed them, and the line moved on like a drunken torchlight
procession, helped and hindered one another up, and sang out faint "Good
nights" as they dispersed in the upper hall.
Doors were closed, only to be flung open with wails of distress. Martha
and Prout had lugged all the trunks and suit-cases and handbags to the
wrong rooms.
The three men were compelled to act as porters. Willie was furious and
full of "I told you so's"; but Ten Eyck impersonated the transfer-men he
had met, and had a different dialect for every room.
Forbes went timidly into the exquisite apartment where Persis was
ensconced. It was a shrine to him, and he averted his eyes from the