What Will People Say? A Novel
He waited and waited, hoping that a light would be made, but there was
no glimmer along any sill. Even Persis was evidently undressing in the
dark, or in the moonlight that must be pouring into her room.
Forbes visioned her there chilled and tired, her sleepy hands fumbling
at the sepals of her clothing till she stripped them off and stood
glimmering in the blue a moment before she slipped into that creamy
nothing he had seen her wear at the window. And then he visioned her
with chattering teeth and shivering hands immersing her lonely beauty
in the sheets, snow-white, snow-cold, like a nymph returning to her
brook in winter-time. He felt immensely sorry that she should be cold
and alone.
He wondered if she prayed at her bedside, and thought of her as a nun in
one long, white line of beauty, from her brow bent down, to the palms of
her little bare feet upturned on the floor. He hoped that she would not
pray too long lest she catch cold. And this seemed a kind of
sacrilegious thought, like individual communion cups.
All these things he thought as he waited, gripping the door-knob and
listening fiercely for a sign of the eavesdropper. And lest she should
have been too cold to pray, he prayed for her, that calumny might not be
the reward of her innocent love, the sweet surrender she had made of her
discretion and her good repute into his keeping.
Yet he feared for her. He doubted that the secret observer would think
her free of guile. He did not fear for himself. The man would be
regarded at worst as a successful adventurer, but the woman despised for
an easy victim or a willing accomplice.
Forbes reproached himself for bringing this blight on Persis. It was he
that had dragged her protesting from the house, persuaded her to steal
forth, led her into the distance, and kept her while the respectable
hours slipped by.
The only atonement he could make was to proclaim as speedily as possible
that their love was honest and that they carried the franchise of
betrothal. To-morrow he must make sure of her. He closed his door with
the utmost caution, and got out of his clothes and into his bed with all
possible silence. He was exhausted with the long day of love's anxieties
and triumph, and the new anxiety he had stumbled into. He had yet to
tell her how far from rich he was. He had yet to persuade her to leave
this golden world of hers for the parsimony he offered.
Perhaps her courage or her love would flinch from the sacrifice. Then he
could not protect her from the unknown sneerer. Indeed, if the unknown
listener were Enslee, Forbes would not stand as the protector of Persis
at all, but as a ruthless tempter of another man's love. If it were Ten
Eyck, he would have ground for reviling Forbes as one whom he regretted
sponsoring, a wolf admitted into the fold in sheep's clothing. Or if it
were one of the women--everybody knows what mercy females have for one
another.
In the chaos of his perplexities he fell asleep, and did not waken till
the whir of the telephone on his wall called him from his slumber.
Winifred's voice gruffly informed him that his breakfast was waiting for
him.
When, as little later as he could manage, he joined the group already at
the table, he tried to read in the "Good morning" of each some telltale
hint. Mrs. Neff's A.M. languor might mask a reproach. Alice's casual
glance might mean aversion. Ten Eyck's reproving frown might be a
comment on his tardiness or a rebuke for his bad faith. Winifred's curt
manner might be merely her way of play-acting a surly cook, and it might
represent disgust.
Willie Enslee smiled--smiled! Was it a crafty sneer, or was it simply
his stinted hospitality? If Enslee knew that he was clandestine with
Enslee's sweetheart, how could Enslee smile? He must eliminate Enslee,
at least, from his suspicion.
Persis alone greeted him with heartiness; her blessed and blessing eyes
were like kisses on the brow. But Persis did not know that they had been
watched. She had closed her door first. How was he to tell her? how put
her on her guard?
Forbes ate his breakfast in the mixed humor of a detective and a
suspect. He studied the others, and they seemed to study him or to avoid
him. He could not settle upon even a theory.
After the breakfast he sought an opportunity for a secret word with
Persis. She was told off to the bed-making squad. She was even to do
his room! He caught her at the foot of the stairs. She warned him with a
gesture, and he broke the news to her without preparation:
"Last night when we were saying good night some one else was in the
hall."
Her lips parted in a gasp of terror, and her eyes whitened. "How do you
know?" she whispered.
"I heard her--or him."
"Who was it?"
"I don't know. I can't even guess," he mumbled.
"Do you think it could have been--All right, Mr. Forbes, I'll be careful
of your razor-blades."
This last aloud for the benefit of Mrs. Neff, who came by and spoke with
icy severity--was it ironical?
"Chambermaids are not allowed to flirt with customers in this hotel."
She went on up; and Persis followed helplessly, leaving Forbes
distraught.
Later he saw her at his windows beating his pillows. The intimate
implication thrilled him, and he threw her a kiss while pretending to
take his cigar from his lips, and she retreated into the embrasure to
answer it with a secret waft from her own mouth.
Forbes had hoped to be invited to ride with Persis, and had put on a
pair of civilian riding-breeches and his army puttees. But he was
ignored in the program for the day, announced by Enslee, who decreed
that he and Persis would ride over to the Sleepy Hollow Country Club, by
the quietest roads they could find, while the rest were to motor across.
They would all have luncheon together and return in the same way. "If
that horse of mine doesn't break both of our fool necks," he added.
"What about Persis and her horse's neck?" Ten Eyck asked, speaking
Forbes' own uneasy thought.
"Oh, Persis can ride anything," Willie said. "She's a born centaurette,
while a horse and I are like oil and water--only oil always stays on
top, and I don't."
But Forbes did not feel so sure of Persis as Willie did. He ventured to
say as much when she appeared, but she laughed at him:
"Horses are not among my afraids. I've ridden since I graduated from the
back of a Great Dane to a Shetland pony. I've got rubber bones; when I
fall off I bounce back."
He could make no further protest, and hung about in the futile
discomfort of an old woman. There was no reassurance for him in the
behavior of the horses, which two stablemen brought up the hill with a
difficulty that led Ten Eyck to comment:
"Are those men leading horses, Willie, or flying kites?"
There was a slight break in Willie's laugh as he said: "My horse had
better behave or I'll let him find his way home alone. I wish I had a
parachute."
Persis was wearing the bowler hat and the coat and breeches and boots
Forbes had seen her in that morning in Central Park. He knew how well
she rode in the bridle-path, but he feared for her in the motor-swept
roads. He told her so, but she laughed again.
She set her foot in the stirrup, flung her leg across the saddle, and
warned the groom away. While Willie got one foot in the stirrup and went
hopping hither and yon in pursuit of it with the other, Persis was
getting acquainted with her own mount, humoring him in his school-boy
hilarity, and sharply repressing any malicious mischief.
The moment Willie was aboard the two horses whirled and charged down the
winding road in a mad gallopade. And Forbes' heart galloped in his
breast as he wondered if he should ever see her alive again. He had felt
this same fear for her that first day on the Avenue, when her motor shot
forward so wildly. He was always feeling afraid for her.
CHAPTER XXXIII
The motor passengers were in no haste to be gone, and they loitered,
watching the mad riders on their breakneck descent, now hidden, now
revealed again by a swerve of the road, a jut of hillside, or a group of
trees.
Forbes was sure at every vanishing that they would never come into view.
But they always did, and getting their horses in hand at last, finished
the hill with sobriety, trotted across the granite bridge, and turned to
wave good-by.
They were as small as dolls on toys where they jogged along the distant
high-road. A tiny motor-cycle, whose thumping flight was faintly audible
even at such a distance, whizzed round a curve and almost cut the
horses' feet from under them. The animals lifted their hoofs well out of
danger, but they came to earth again out of the cloud of dust, and
Forbes dared to resume the business of breathing.
He saw that Enslee was a well-schooled rider who annoyed his horse a
good deal, yet ruled him somehow. But Persis was perfect to the saddle,
part of the horse, as fearless and as expert in her smart gear as any
cowgirl of the plains.
Forbes watched her till the last curve blotted her from his sight, and
yearned after her like a child left behind from a picnic. He looked at
his own riding-costume ruefully, and said that he would better change.
But the others would not wait for him. Mrs. Neff urged:
"They're very becoming. Keep 'em on. You've got good legs, and you make
Willie look like a wishbone."
Enslee had sent his own driver and his own car to take them to the club,
and with an unusual thoughtfulness had ordered the robe-rack filled with
lilacs. And so they rode behind a screen of purple beauty, and breathed
in a spicy air filtered through flowers.
Forbes continued his search for a clue to last night's eavesdropper in
the manner of his fellow-passengers. They were all in high spirits,
which might be in any one's case either ghoulish glee or innocence. As a
matter of fact, Mrs. Neff's enthusiasm was owing to her knowledge that
Senator Tait was at the Country Club; but she did not tell Forbes lest
her daughter hear. Alice was rapturous in the knowledge that Stowe Webb
had arranged before she left New York to be at the club against just
such an opportunity as this; but she did not explain to Forbes lest her
mother hear. Winifred was buoyant because Ten Eyck had promised her a
few sets of tennis, and she saw herself already whole ounces leaner. And
Ten Eyck was cheerful because the world usually amused Ten Eyck when the
weather was fit. And to-day, as old Gower put it, "The weder was merie
and faire ynough."
Merry and fair enough for any wight, and the scenery wonderful. After a
few swift miles of country whose old walls, well-groomed meadows, and
shapely forests gave a look of England, the land rose higher and higher,
till the car swung out at last on a height commanding a river in the
utmost contrast with England's stream. As Ten Eyck put it, "The Thames
and the Hudson are as much alike as a pearl necklace and an
anchor-chain." The water came down between its hills in tremendous calm,
and the Palisades opposite were no longer sheer cliffs, but a congress
of ponderous masses like reclining gods along a banquet board.
The homes responded, of necessity, to the scene. In place of the
ballroom levels and exquisite parks along the reaches of the Thames,
with its flat punts and its houseboats moored in shady niches, these
lawns sloped and rolled in massive sweeps, fronting a mighty stream.
Forbes' heart could not rise to the bigness of the scene; it was too
much tossed between the hope that the next turn might reveal Persis,
spick and span on a glossy horse, and the fear that some of these
countless whizzing, hooting motors might frighten the beast into panic
and hurl her under the swarming wheels.
Ten Eyck seemed to note the anxiety that kept his eyes shuttling this
way and that, for he remarked, as if quite casually: