What Will People Say? A Novel
"Everything on earth is ridiculous, but nothing is so ridiculous as I
am."
"Don't say that, dear."
"'Dear!'" he echoed, bitterly. "When do I see you, I say?"
("_Dancing at the Devil's Ball._")
"There's no chance."
"Then I'll make one. I'll--I'll come to your room."
"Oh, in Heaven's name, are you mad? Or do you think I am? Mrs. Neff's
room adjoins mine. She could hear the softest whisper."
"Then let Willie Enslee lock us out."
She saw that he was in a frenzy. He had the bit in his teeth. He would
bolt in a moment. She thought hard and swiftly. Then she said:
"There's just one way. When I was playing chambermaid to-day I wandered
about and found the servant's stairway in the service wing. It leads
down into the kitchen. We could get from there into the dining-room and
the drawing-room. There's a great window there--well cut off from view.
I don't think Willie or anybody would see us there. Listen for Willie's
door, and when he has gone down into the front hall, slip out and tiptoe
down the service stairs to the kitchen and wait for me there. Will you?"
It was a nauseating role to play; but he was bent upon making a last
appeal to her before they returned to town on the morrow. He whispered
his assent to the elaborate deceit, and made a whirlwind of the last
measures of the tune, "Dancing with the devil; oh, the little Devil!
dancing at the Devil's ball!"
And then he and Persis, dizzy on the swirling floor, reeled to chairs
and sat gasping for breath. Mrs. Neff, passing on Willie's arm, urged
Forbes to give Alice the next dance, and he obeyed, surrendering Persis
to Enslee, who was so elate with triumph that only the braggart pomp of
the tango could express him.
Alice was lonely and forlorn, and so much in Forbes' mood that they were
unintentional parodies on each other. Forbes remembered his talk with
Senator Tait, and, feeling that Alice was desperately in need of
comfort, told her the whole conversation. If she resented the discussion
of her affairs and her mother's plans, she kept silent; but when he told
her that Senator Tait had vowed to help her defeat Mrs. Neff's
match-making plot by giving Stowe Webb a position she became a maenad of
joy. She italicized every other word, and declared herself insanely
grateful. She declared now that she simply idolized the Senator, and had
always thought him the most adorable of men in every respect except the
quality of husband.
"I'm afraid he won't give Mr. Webb much of a salary to begin with,"
Forbes said, to moderate her fantastic hopes.
"Oh, I don't care how little it is," Alice panted, "so long as it's
enough for us two to live on, if we have to live in a Harlem flat eleven
stories high and no elevator!"
She made so startling a contrast with Persis that Forbes regretted
thinking her shallow and hysterical. Under her volatile explosiveness
was evidently a deep store of loyalty, as under Persis' reposeful manner
was a shifty uncertainty, a terror of consequences. "Still waters run
deep" was plainly as fallible as any other proverb, for very shallow
ponds may lie very calm, and very spluttering geysers may come from far
underground.
But it is one thing to approve and quite another to love. Forbes admired
Alice, but he loved Persis. He approved Alice as much as he distrusted
Persis. But he loved Persis.
CHAPTER XLII
There were not many more dances before Willie, in his new capacity of
Benedick-to-be, declared for early closing hours, and ordered his guests
off to bed, warning them that the next morning the caravan would set out
on its return betimes in order that Persis might "break the news to her
father as soon as he got back." So Willie phrased it, and flattered
himself that it was rather considerate and tactful to put it so.
When good-nights were said, and Forbes had gone to his room, Ten Eyck
came in to smoke a night-cap cigar. His words were congratulatory, but
his intent was sympathetic.
"You looked a bit cut up, old boy," he said, "when Willie, with his
usual tact, exploded the news of his marriage. I hope you weren't hit
too hard. I warned you, you know."
"I know," said Forbes; "I promised you I wouldn't take Miss Cabot
seriously. I--I admit I was surprised. That's all. And it rather shocks
me to think of so--so--of her tying up with a man like Enslee. That's
all."
"It's her own choice," said Ten Eyck. "And it's a good choice. She can't
bankrupt the Enslee estates, and she'll earn all she squanders. Being
the wife of Willie Enslee is not going to be any sinecure, believe me.
"And the sooner she's married to Enslee and beyond your reach, the
better for your peace of mind and the efficiency of the U. S. A. Get
back on the job, Forbesy. You're too important a man to be wasting
yourself even on a siren like Persis. I believe in sirens, and I like to
hear 'em sing; but they don't convince me one little minute, and I drop
anchor at a safe distance from the reef. Promise me you won't let Persis
haunt you. Get yourself a pretty canary and forget the siren, eh what?"
"That's the best of advice," Forbes assented.
He thought that he sounded convinced; but Ten Eyck shook his head and
masked a sigh as a yawn.
"Am I as deadly as all that? And papa always told me that the man who
gives the best of advice might better have saved his breath for blowing
out his candle. Instead of more advice I will now do so. Good night!"
And he closed his door.
Forbes knew that Ten Eyck was right, and told himself so. He told
himself that common decency, self-respect, Persis-respect, and respect
for the rights of a host and a fiance forbade him to keep tryst with
Persis. And having resolved that the one thing he ought not to do was to
sneak down the servants' stairs, he sneaked down the servants'
stairs--after he had put out his light, opened his door delicately, and
waited till he heard Enslee open his door and tiptoe down to the
entrance hall.
As Forbes waited in that least poetic of bowers, the kitchen, he felt
like a thief. He had abundant time for pondering what a destroyer of
dignity love is. But Persis came at last, and so silently and so vaguely
through the moonlight that he could hardly believe her to be more than a
phantom.
She gave him a hand, however, that was warm and human, and when he
caught her in his arms and she yielded rather than struggle, her body
was as real as rose-leaves and lilies, a delight to his embrace; and her
cheek such a sweetmeat to his lips that he dismissed all scruples as
follies beneath contempt.
When she had extricated herself from his clasp she took his hand and led
him through the butler's pantry and its swinging door, across the
moonlit dining-room, through a majestic somber portal into a cave of
black gloom, which was the salon.
"Have you a match?" she whispered. "If you haven't I have."
"I have a cigar-lighter," he whispered.
He snapped the little engine, and a small, blue flame threw a sickly
light that helped them to find a channel through the islands of chairs
and divans and tables, to the lofty hangings masking the windows.
The wee taper gave Forbes a glimpse as well of the place he was in.
This superb chamber had not been opened to the present guests. It was
still in its winter garb, the portraits in shrouds, and chairs and
tables disguised in winding sheets. There was the hint of a mortuary
vault about the place. The walls were of Istrian stone hung with gray
tapestries of unhappy lovers. The floor was of marble devoid of
rugs--they were rolled up against the walls like mummies. The mantel was
a huge carved structure. In this dull light it might have been a funeral
monument. Noises seemed to be repeated here with spooky comment, and to
Forbes the spirit in the air was ominous.
Persis knew the room well, and remembered it as she had first seen it
glowing with color, flooded with sunlight, and crowded with gorgeous
people; she did not feel the oppression that weighed on Forbes.
To her it was a clandestine romance--the sort of poetic encounter she
had read about in ever so many books. Her heart was beating with terror
of discovery and ecstasy of adventure. When she gained the window she
reached up and persuaded the hangings back on gently tinkling rings. A
well of moonlight was revealed--a broad, padded seat in front of a tall
mullioned window. Within the window was a smaller window, and she swung
this back.
Into the dreary air of the unvisited room flowed a little brook of
perfumed breeze scented with the lilacs it streamed across. It shook
with all gentleness the hair about Persis' face and the soft lace around
her throat. For now she was not in boyish riding-duds with collar and
cravat, but in the exquisite trifle of a silken house gown she had put
on for dinner.
She was so beautiful in Forbes' eyes that the very faults he had found
in her seemed to enhance her. The absence of utility and reliability and
other homely virtues seemed to leave her the unmarred unity of futile,
fragile loveliness. But this was the fantasy of the moment only. She had
no sooner spoken than she was committed to something more than a vision
for the eyes.
She smiled at him, and he gathered her up into his arms once more and
gave and took a blindly sweet kiss from her smiling lips.
When he released her from this constraint she sighed luxuriously:
"Well, Harvey, it seems as if all the happiness in the world had to be
sneaked, doesn't it?"
Instantly he realized again the dishonesty of their communion.
"Is that your creed?" he groaned.
"It's my experience. Stolen fruit, you know--"
"I hate stolen fruit. I want to have the right to own--you."
"You do--pretty nearly."
"I want everybody to know it. I want you to be my wife. It's not too
late, if you love me."
"Oh, there's no question of that, for I do love you. You are--it's funny
how hard it is to find new expressions for anything you really mean,
isn't it? All I can think of is the same old comic-paper line: you are
the only man I ever loved. But--oh, Lord, if you only had a little more
money! For I sha'n't have any, Harvey. My father can't give me any. I've
just found that out. He can't get enough to save himself. I can get
enough for us both if I take Willie.
"It's horrible talk, Harvey, but it's business. It's for your sake as
much as mine. If I married you I'd drive you mad. I'd rather have you
hate me lovingly, as you do now, than have you hate me loathingly, as
you would if I became a millstone round your neck. You'd be faithful and
work hard and try to love me, but I'd be simply unendurable.
"My brother--you haven't met him; he's loafing through college--he knows
more about sport than he does about books. He's always talking about
prize-fighters and class. He's always telling about some poor fellow
getting knocked senseless because he strayed out of his class. I
remember one brilliant welterweight champion who lasted only one round
with a broken-down heavyweight. My brother said the welterweight got
what was coming to him because he hadn't intelligence enough to stay
where he belonged. I'm trying to do that. I'm horribly tempted just to
fling everything to the winds and run away with you. I'm starving for
your love. My heart says, 'Put love before everything else--'"
"Obey your heart!" Forbes broke in, at last. She shook her head.
"But my brain says, 'Think of the long, long future!' A woman spends so
little of her married life with her husband. It's the long days that
count, the days she spends with other women, with rivalries, jealousies,
with economy, economy, economy. That's what I'm afraid of. Economy would
play the devil with me, Harvey. Two thousand a year and forage! I'm
afraid of it."
"So you will marry this rich man. And then?"