What Will People Say? A Novel
blinds, but it was held by a catch in the wall. She must lean far out to
release it.
The very homeliness of her motive and the act made her the more
appealing to Forbes. A creamy nightcap of lace and bow-knots was all
askew on her tousled hair, and a long loop of it slid down into her
bosom as she bent far forward. She had not paused even to throw on a
shawl, and her nightgown was so vaporous a drapery that it hardly
mattered where it clung or lapsed.
Forbes blushed for her, but gazed entranced while she fumbled at the
lock till it yielded. Then she reached out for the other shutter and
stared forth into the sun, stared between her white arms, outstretched
like the wings of an angel at a window in the sky.
Now Forbes knew that he loved her irretrievably. He would storm the
clouds to win her. He could afford a home with a pair of shutters, and
she could close them against the sun and be as snug as a cuckoo in a
clock.
After all, she was no bird of paradise, no sea-gull. She was just a
fascinating sleepy-head pouting at the morning for interfering with her
dreams.
He was so resolved upon winning her that he counted her already his,
and, with a gesture like throwing up his cap, flung the lilacs he held
straight at her. They missed her, but they caught her eye, and she
followed them down to where he darted to catch them for another cast.
When he looked up again the blinds were shut. He was alone in the world,
his lilacs and his heart barred out and rejected. She had retreated to
Enslee's stronghold and shuttered herself in.
Forbes turned away to exile in a world of gloom. He heard a little sound
above, and whirled quickly. The shutters were opening again. He saw her
eyes. She was frowning fiercely; but that was because of the sharp sun,
for her lips were smiling and she was whispering something.
He hurried to the spot beneath her window. He saw that her hair had been
stuffed back into her nightcap. She was muffled to the ears in a heavy
bathrobe, so shapeless and opaque that its big sleeves hid her very
hands. But she smiled through like an Eskimo angel. And she was
whispering in Eskimese.
He could not understand her, and she could not hear his whisper. They
were afraid to waken the house with louder talk. So he beckoned to her
to come down. She shook her head. He insisted with ardent gesticulation
at the beauty of the scene. She shook her head so violently that her cap
fell off. She clutched at it, and her hair fell all about her. He caught
the cap as it drifted down like a tired butterfly. She brushed her hair
back and pleaded for the cap. He shook his head and tossed her the
lilacs. She refused to take them, and put out her hands for the cap. He
beckoned her again to come down, and she frowned ferociously. Then, at
length, she smiled and nodded and turned away.
He waited, afraid to walk because the gravel crunched alarmingly. He
could see the gardener's cottage down the hill, and he was glad that no
one was stirring there; not a thread of smoke spun from the chimney.
After he had waited for a tiny eternity he heard her snap her fingers,
and looked up to find her fully dressed, all kempt and shiny-faced and
precise. She held out beseeching palms for her cap, but he pocketed it
and commanded her to descend. She left the window with a look of angry
amusement, and he knew that she was yielding to his orders.
It was his first command, and she had obeyed it.
CHAPTER XXIX
For convincing the human heart there is no argument like a parable or
analogy, and there is no more worthless proof to the mind. So long as
Persis could be called a bird of paradise, too rich for a canary cage,
or a sea-gull, too wild, or a planet unattainable, Forbes admitted that
his hopes of winning her and keeping her were foolish. He gave her up.
So much for the metaphors. But when he saw her at the window in the
daylight, and saw, not a sea-gull nor a planet, but just a pretty,
drowsy girl with rumpled hair, he tossed aside all the arguments by
parable and analogy, as candle-ends unfit for sunshine. She was only a
woman, and he was all of a man, and this was America, and, by George
Washington, he would have her to wife!
He would begin the day right with a wholesome morning smack. He tiptoed
along the grass around to the door, and met her in the living-room. And
as soon as he met her he set his arms about her. But she was almost
sullen as she pushed him away.
"I won't have it!" she said, with a harshness that shocked him. "It's
too early in the morning. And I don't like it. And I don't want gossip
set going. And you must be doubly circumspect."
He fell back, baffled, and dropped his eyes in discontent. He saw that
her little high boots were sprawling open. He smiled at the homely touch
again.
"If you're so circumspect," he said, "you'd better button your shoes."
"I forgot to bring up a button-hook," she laughed, "and when I bent
over with a hairpin I got so sleepy that I nearly fell back in bed."
"Permit me," he urged.
"No, thank you!"
"You can't walk with 'em falling off like that," he insisted. "A
hairpin, please."
She took one from her hair, and he dropped to one knee. He could not
seem to find the right position to work from. After hunching about from
position to position he said:
"I reckon your feet are put on the wrong way."
"Thanks."
"For being buttoned, I mean."
"My maid buttons them every morning."
"Tell me how on earth she gets at your foot?"
"No, thanks. I'll button them myself."
"Oh no, you won't. How do the shoe clerks manage it?"
She set her foot on the rung of a chair, and he went at his task with
all awkwardness. Her feet were small, yet the shoes were as tight as
could be, and she winced as the buttons ground or bit. But she choked
back the little cries of pain that rose to her lips.
"Get away," she said; "you're killing me."
But he would not surrender the privilege. He took her foot on his knee
and wrought with all care. The hairpin was soon a twisted wreck, and he
must have another, and another.
When the lowest buttons were done she checked him. "That's enough! I'd
rather my shoes fell off than my hair. And that reminds me: where is my
cap?"
"In my pocket next my heart."
"Give it to me, please."
"I'm going to keep it."
"By what right?"
"Conquest and possession."
"What if somebody should see you with it?"
"Nobody shall."
"Somebody always does. Nobody would believe it fell out of a window!"
"It fell straight into my heart."
She gave him up with a shrug. "Good Lord, you men! I don't suppose
there's any coffee? I'm so used to having it in bed before I get up that
I'm faint."
"I could make you some, if I knew where the coffee was, and the
coffee-pot, and if there were any fire."
"Let's look into the kitchen."
She knew the way, and led him into a great food-studio--a place to
delight a chef with its equipment and an artist with its coppers.
But the range was as cold as its white-glazed chimney. They cast about
for fuel, and found that Prout had fetched kindling and coal the
afternoon before.
Forbes soon had a fire snapping under one lid, and Persis hunted through
cupboards and closets till she discovered a coffee-pot, evidently
belonging to the servants' dining-room, and a canister half full of
coffee.
"I haven't the faintest idea how much of that goes in, have you?" she
said, helplessly. He nodded and made the measurements deftly.
"Where did you learn so much?" she asked, with a primeval woman's first
wonder at a cave-man's first blaze and first cookery.
"A soldier ought to be able to build a fire and make a cup of coffee,
oughtn't he?"
"Oh," she shrugged, "I always forget that you're a soldier. I've never
seen you in uniform. You never tell me anything about yourself. I always
think of you as just one of us loafers."
"It's mighty pleasant to be building a fire for you--for just us," he
maundered.
"It is fine, isn't it?" she chuckled, with glistening eyes. "Rather
reversing the usual, though, for idiotic woman to stand by while strong
man boils the coffee--or are you baking it? I might be getting the
dishes."
"I'd be willing to do this every morning--for you--for us," he ventured,
his heart thumping at its own dauntlessness.
She evaded the implied proposal as she ransacked a cabinet. "I fancy it
would rather lose its charm in time. As a regular thing, I like to see
breakfast brought up on a tray by a nice-looking maid."
She brought out a perilous, double arm-load of cups and saucers, and a
sugar-bowl.
"This is the service china, I suppose. You could drive nails with it."
He stared at her with idolatry. She was so variously beautiful; at the
theater, the opera, the luncheon, here in a country kitchen--everywhere
somebody else, and everybody of her beautiful. His hands went out to
seize her again, but she tumbled the crockery crackingly on the table
and waved a cup at him. "Stand back, or I'll brain you with this.
There's no cream. I suppose even the cows aren't up yet. And I can't
find any butter--or any bread--just these tinned biscuits."
They sat at the kitchen table. The coffee was not good, really; but she
found it amusing, and he thought it was ambrosia--Mars and Venus at
breakfast in an Olympian dining-room. He told her something of the sort,
and implied once more that he longed to make the arrangement permanent.
"I wish you'd quit proposing before breakfast," she said. "I feel very
material in the morning, anyway, and I'm having a bully time. I'm
feeling far too sensible to listen to any nonsense about the simple
life. I can enjoy a bit of rough road as well as anybody. I can turn in
and work or do without, or dress in rags--anything for a picnic--for a
while. But as a regular thing--ugh! To get breakfast once in somebody's
else kitchen at an ungodly hour with a captivating stranger--glorious!
But to get up every morning--every every morning, rain or shine, cold
or hot, sleepy or sick or blue--no, thank you!"
"You think the rich are happier than the poor?"
"Of course they are. That's why everybody wants to be rich."
"But the rich aren't contented."
"Oh, contented! Nobody's contented except the blind, and hopeless
invalids. Contentment is a question of being a sport. There's a lot of
good losers that will grin if they have to walk home in the rain from
the races, and there are a lot of what they call 'bum sports' that throw
their winnings on the ground because the odds weren't longer. But don't
tell me that there's any special joy in being poor. If I had to be poor,
I suppose I'd put the best face I could on it. That happens to be my
nature. It's the good sports making the best of poverty that cause so
much talk; but all the poor and middlers that I've met have hated it and
envied the rich.
"You see, the rich can buy everything the poor have, but the poor can
buy hardly anything the rich have. Sometimes my father goes out in the
field on his farm and tosses hay, or beds down the horses, or chops dead
trees. Sometimes he likes to have just a bowl of milk and some crackers
for his supper. But when he wants something else he can have it--at
least, he always has been able to--up to now."
A little shiver agitated her like a flaw of wind running along a calm
lake.
"It's cold and damp in here," she said. "Let's get out in the sunshine
and quit talking poverty. We're neither of us poor--yet."
She rose and moved out to the kitchen porch, and, round the house, up a
sweep of stairs to the main terrace.
"Look," she cried, "isn't it wonderful? Isn't it worth while? It costs
thousands of dollars just to make that lawn smooth, and thousands more
for the marble balustrades, and the fountains are a fortune, and the