What Will People Say? A Novel
sunken garden--the poor can't have a glimpse of it! They don't know it
exists. Even Mr. Enslee's cook hardly knows it's here; he doesn't permit
any of the servants except the house staff to come out front. Isn't it a
shame? But don't you love it? Isn't it heavenly under your feet? My eyes
fly over it like birds. It's splendid to have tea out here in the
summer, and wear long sweeping gowns and picture-hats, and have
delicious things brought to you on the finest of china. Oh, I never was
meant for a poor man's daughter. Even if I feed the chickens or pat the
cattle, I like to do it as Marie Antoinette did at the Petit Trianon
just for a contrast--an _hors d'oeuvre_."
Forbes thought of the bird of paradise and the sea-gull again, and he
doubted the value of his cage again. They sauntered across the lawn and
up the stairs. He took her arm to help her, but she shook her head.
"Please! Now, tell me all about yourself."
"There's nothing to tell."
"There must be. I've a right to hear it. Think of it, you've kissed me
once, and I didn't fight. I let you. Good Lord, I nearly kissed you!"
His arms rushed toward her; but she frowned. "Don't make me go back. I
was saying, you've kissed me, and we've had a terrible escapade in a
strange kitchen, and I hardly know your first name. So you're a
soldier." He nodded. "West Point?" He nodded. "Did you ever get in a
real fight?" He nodded. "Where?"
"Cuba. Philippines."
"You were in the Spanish War? Really! I didn't know you were so old."
"I wasn't so old then. I'm very ancient now."
She mused aloud: "They say a husband should be ten years older than his
wife."
The implication enraptured him. It showed that she was at least toying
with the thought. "Then there's no hope for me. I'm far too old for
you."
"But I'm very ancient," she said. "I ought to have been married years
ago."
"I'm sorry I kept you waiting so long. There's no need for further
delay."
"Are you proposing again? The man's a regular phonograph with only one
old broken record! So you've been in battles and battles. Were you
afraid?"
"Afterward. I suppose it's because I'm slow and stupid: but I don't
usually get scared till the trouble's over. Then I'm sick as a dog and
as frightened as a girl."
"That's something like me. Only I get terribly scared of little things
that don't count. A mouse or a spider or anything crawly--ugh! is that a
caterpillar?"
She shrank back against him in a palsy of repugnance at about an inch of
moving fuzz on a rhododendron. He held her with one hand, and with the
other broke off the twig and cast the vermin into space. She put his arm
away, and said:
"You are brave!"
"St. George and the dragon," he smiled.
"In those battles of yours," she resumed, "were you ever by any chance
wounded or killed or anything?"
"I was never killed entirely," he answered, "but I stopped a few bits of
lead."
She shuddered and caught his arm with a rush of sympathy none the less
fierce for being belated.
"Wounded! You were wounded?"
He put his hand on hers where it lay on his sleeve. "Yes, you blessed
thing. Does it make any difference to you?"
She drew her hand away gently. "I hate to think of--of anybody getting
hurt. Did it hurt--to be wounded?"
"Afterward. I didn't notice it much at the time--except when I was shot
in the mouth."
"Good Lord, how?"
"I was yelling something to my sergeant, and a bullet went right in and
out here." He put his finger on his cheek.
"Great heavens! I thought it was a dimple. I rather liked it."
"Then I'm glad I got it."
She writhed with pain for his sake.
"Did it hurt--hideously?"
"Not half as much as the two pellets I got in my side. They probed for
them till I made them stop, partly because I wasn't enjoying it and
partly because probing kills more than cartridges."
"How did they get them out, then?"
"They didn't."
She stared at him wild-eyed.
"You don't mean to say that you're standing there with a couple of
bullets in you? Why, you're positively uncanny."
"I'm sorry, if it disturbs you."
"Oh, please! You're wonderful. But aren't you afraid they'll kill
you--turn green or something?"
"They're neatly surrounded by now with aseptic sacs, the surgeon tells
me. I'd forgotten all about them till you reminded me."
"And they never pain you?"
"The only wound I'm suffering now is from the arrow of this
sharp-shooter."
They were standing in the little temple, between them a little marble
rascal with a bow and arrow. Persis put her hand to her heart. He
mistook the gesture and asked, with sudden zest:
"He didn't hit you, too, did he?"
"I was thinking of you," she murmured, staring at him with wet eyes.
"Wounded and bleeding, your flesh all torn, and the surgeons gouging in
the wounds. Oh!"
She toppled backward and sank on a marble bench before he could help
her. He stared at her in bewildered unbelief. He understood that she
was nearly aswoon because he had suffered once.
"Why, God bless your wonderful sweet soul!" he gasped, and would have
knelt and clasped his arms around her. But even in the swimming of her
senses her prudence was on guard, and his indiscretion restored her to
herself like a dash of water.
"I beg you to be careful," she said. "You are perfectly visible from the
house."
"But nobody's awake. The blinds are closed."
"There are always eyes behind blinds."
"Then let them see me tell you how much I--"
"Not here!" she gasped. "Don't tell me that here."
"Why not?"
"Do you really want to know?"
"Yes."
"Mr. Enslee built this little temple to this little Cupid to propose to
me in."
"And did he?" Forbes asked, in a voice that rattled. "Did he propose to
you?"
"Regularly."
CHAPTER XXX
She studied Forbes closely and laughed aloud at the almost nausea he
plainly felt.
"I thought that would shock the nonsense out of you," she triumphed.
"Now let's be sensible while the sun shines, and get better acquainted.
Tell me more about you, and I'll tell you some awful things about me."
She sauntered on in an arch and riant humor. He resented it, and yet he
followed her, hating this mood of hers, yet finding her more precious as
he found her more difficult. If he had known women better he would have
guessed, or "reckoned," that her very effort to make herself difficult
was a proof that she was not really so difficult as she would have him
believe. The one who takes such joy in being pursued is not entirely
unwilling to be caught.
She quizzed him about his life, his home, his earlier loves. She
demanded descriptions of every sweetheart he had cherished, from the
first chub of infancy to the girl he left behind in Manila; and she said
she hated them all impartially.
She told him of her life: endowed with every material comfort, yet with
a vague unhappiness for something or somebody--"perhaps it was for you,"
she added, but spoke teasingly. She had had nurses and governesses and
maids from her first day on earth. She had been to school in France, and
traveled round the world; she had been presented at the courts of
England and Italy, Germany and Russia; had visited at castles and
chateaux. Her sister was in England. She had married a title and was
unhappy; but for the matter of that, so were the wives of most of the
stanch Americans she knew, rich and poor.
Persis had had flirtations of cosmopolitan variety. Her ambition was to
go on skimming the cream off of life. She had given up the hope of ever
loving, at least with abandonment. There was too much else in the world.
She had been so thoroughly and incessantly schooled in self-control that
she doubted if even her heart could forget the rules of conduct. She did
not want love to make the fool of her it had made of so many of her
friends, and of the people she read about in newspapers and books.
She never took much enjoyment in adventures, anyway, she said, because
her imagination was always busy with the appearance of her acts. She
found herself considering: "How will this look? What gossip will that
start?" She hated herself for the cold, calculating instinct; but she
could not rid herself of it.
"This very minute," she admitted, "my fun is half spoiled by thinking of
what those people down there in the house will say if they learn that
I've been up here with you? Nothing could be more harmless than a stroll
before breakfast in a highly illuminated forest, but they'd talk
and--well, I'd rather they wouldn't."
She led the protesting Forbes homeward again, down the long flight of
steps. The most he could exact was the promise of another walk
together--sometime when it could be arranged without attracting
attention or detracting from the duties toward the host and his other
guests.
As they started across the lawn, whose dew the risen sun had pretty well
imbibed, they met the gardener. Prout was yawning, and when he took off
his hat he looked sleepy enough to fall over into it.
"You folks been up all night?" he asked, with a drowsy surliness.
Persis shook her head and smiled. "It's you that have overslept."
He changed the subject abruptly. "I just been buildin' a fire for Miss
Mather."
"Good Lord, is she awake?" Persis gasped.
"Well," said Prout, "as to that, she's not wot you'd exackly call awake,
but she's up an' doin' in the kitchin."
While the gardener shuffled away to play valet to his flowers, Persis
stood irresolute.
"I hope Winifred hasn't seen us," she said. "The kitchen and the nursery
are both to the east. We'll take a chance. You go on into the kitchen
and help her, and I'll telephone down from my room. _Au 'voir!_"
She opened the outer door ever so slightly and oozed through the slit as
narrowly as Bernhardt used to when she had murdered Scarpia. Forbes
dawdled a few moments, then went into the kitchen.
He found Winifred playing the part of cook with a vengeance. Her hair
was disheveled, her sleeves rolled back, and her face smudged from her
smudgy fingers. She had assumed a cook's prerogative of wrath. The
moment she saw Forbes she began with a savage, "Oh, it's you! And who's
been littering up my clean kitchen?"
"I took the liberty of making myself a little coffee," said Forbes.
"There are two cups."
"I made two cups," said Forbes; and she was too busy to notice the
evasion.
"Then, since you've had your breakfast," she snapped, "you can help me
get something for the rest. You'd better put this on."
Like another Omphale, she fastened a womanish apron on Hercules, and set
him at uncongenial tasks, retrieving butter, milk, salt, and eggs.
After a time there was a buzz, and a little hopper fell in a box on the
wall. Winifred went to the house telephone and called out:
"Well! H'lo, Perse, what you doing awake so early? Insomnia? No, I will
not send your breakfast up on a tray! You can come down and get it. My
little snojer man is helping me."
She hung up the ear-piece and turned to Forbes with her broad smile.
"A cook has no chance to entertain her gempman friends. The minute I get
a policeman in here somebody rings."
She kept him wretchedly ill at ease by more of the same banter, which he
hardly knew how to take. And she seized his arm with a gesture of
culinary coquetry just as Persis sauntered in. Forbes was horrified to
note a look of anger in Persis' eyes. He should have been flattered. She
greeted Winifred, and also Forbes, with a discreet "Good morning!"
"Good get-busy!" Winifred growled.
"What can I do?" said Persis, helplessly.
"For one thing, you can rout the other loafers out of bed."
"How?"
"Use the telephone. Tell 'em the house is on fire."
While Forbes fetched and carried at Winifred's beck and call, Persis
rang up the various rooms and conveyed Winifred's orders. But her gentle