What Will People Say? A Novel
How could he hate her when he loved her so madly, and was so unhappy out
of her sight? How was he to endure it that she should marry another man,
and how was he to prevent it?
He tossed between sleeping and waking, between condemnation of Persis
and acquittal, between resolutions to cut her out of his heart and his
life, and resolutions to win her yet. Eventually he heard people
stirring about the house, and he rose drearily.
The shower-bath gave forth a lukewarm drizzle that neither stimulated
nor soothed him. Outside, rain was falling lazily in a gray air that hid
the hills and gardens as if the sky, too, were a curtained shower-bath.
He began to pack his suit-cases. As he was folding one of his coats
there dropped from its inside pocket a mesh of beribboned lace. It
surprised him by its inappropriateness. He picked it up, and it was the
nightcap that had fallen from her tousled hair as she looked from the
window into that wonderful dawn of day before yesterday. What a liar
that dawn had been! It was illustrious and spendthrift of promises.
To-day's dawn was the fulfilment. That was romance, this was truth. The
nightcap itself was but a snare, a broken snare.
He flung it angrily back to the floor and went on packing his bachelor
things to take back into his bachelor future. The little cap lay
huddled--as she had crouched when he flung her out of his arms. She had
whispered, "I understand." It seemed also not to reproach him. But it
was very beautiful. He could not leave it there for some servant to
find. Especially not, as she had prophesied just such a result and he
had promised to keep it secret. He picked it up. It was fragrant and
pink and silken and lacy--as she was.
He rebuked himself for venting his spite on an inanimate object, a
nightcap of all things! Thence he was led to reproach himself for
condemning Persis. She, too, was knitted and bow-knotted together with
the sole purpose of being exquisite. As well blame the nightcap for not
being a helmet as blame Persis for not being a heroine.
He found himself caressing the cap and murmuring to it. He folded it
tenderly and slipped it into the suit-case. Then he took it out and put
it in the inside pocket of his waistcoat. It seemed to nestle there, and
he felt a lurch in his heart, as if Persis had just crept back into it
and curled up to sleep. He buttoned them in, Persis and the nightcap,
and, closing his suit-cases, carried them down-stairs as one does in a
hotel where there are no bell-boys.
He found Willie Enslee staring at him, rubbing his eyes. Willie had
wakened only a moment before, had realized the hour with bewilderment,
had tried the front door and found it still locked. He was just
wondering where Forbes and Mrs. Neff had spent the night when Forbes
walked down the stairs and said "Good morning!" but with a queer tone
and an odd something in his eyes.
Willie drowsily answered "G'maw!" and stared harder, for Mrs. Neff came
down the steps after Forbes. She was sneezing so violently that she had
to cling to the banister-rail to keep from sneezing herself into space.
She did not see Willie; but her appearance and her sneeze confirmed his
theory. He backed out through a side door and made his way through the
kitchen and up the stairway there to his own room. His mind was still
fumbling with the riddle of how Forbes and Mrs. Neff got in.
He wondered what he should tell Persis when she asked him what had
happened during his night-watch. He had promised her great things from
his practical joke. But she never asked him, and he was so greatly
relieved that he never broached the subject himself.
Breakfast was served more slipshoddily than before. Even the novelty of
the experience had gone. Henceforward Winifred was converted to the
vital importance of servants.
Persis was the last to appear. Mrs. Neff greeted her with:
"Persis, your eyes are all red. Have you been cry-cr-cry-ing-g-gk!" She
finished with an almost decapitating sneeze. It gave Persis a hint.
"I caught cold, too," she said. "The change in the weather."
The explanation sufficed to satisfy Mrs. Neff and to convince Forbes
that Persis was dangerously apt at concealments.
When the breakfast was eaten the dishes were washed and dried at
Winifred's direction. But when it came to what Forbes called "policing
the camp," it was unanimously voted to leave that to the gardener and
his wife, or to the caretaker on his return.
The three automobiles rolled up through the rain, all shipshape for the
storm, with tops hooded and side-curtains buttoned down snugly.
Forbes remembered that other rain with Persis in the taxicab. How much
better the opportunity here, with the world shut out from view and two
hours' cruise ahead. But he was again consigned to Mrs. Neff's car, and
it was Willie Enslee who had Persis and the opportunity. Forbes could
not follow even the flutter of her veil. All he could see ahead was the
shoulder of Mrs. Neff's chauffeur and the windshield studded and
streaked with rain.
There was no landscape to divert the mind, only his imagination of the
courtship Willie would be paying to his newly announced fiancee. Forbes
pictured the privileges he would exact, and Persis would not deny. And
he gnashed his teeth in wrath. In the cave of Mrs. Neff's car Alice had
nothing to say. She was thinking too eagerly ahead. Mrs. Neff had
nothing to say. She was wondering what Alice was so cheerful about.
And so the car pushed south, with no passing scenery to indicate
progress, only the bumps and teeterings, the swerves and slitherings,
and the nauseating belches of noise made by the horn. Eventually the
wheels ceased to run upon irregular ground and glided on asphalt. This
must be New York.
At Seventy-second Street they turned off Broadway and crossed Central
Park. At the eastern gate Mrs. Neff's chauffeur checked his car
alongside a whale-like mass, from which Willie Enslee's voice was heard
shrilly calling through the rain:
"Good-by, Mrs. Neff! Good-by Alice! Good-by Mr. Wa--er--Forbes. Awfully
glad you could come. See you again. Go on to Miss Cabot's house." This
last to his own driver.
Mrs. Neff and Alice cried in unison: "Good-by! Had lovely time! See you
soon!"
And out of space came the disembodied voice of Persis as from a grave:
"Good-by, Mrs. Neff! By-by, Alice! Good-by, Mr. Forbes!"
"Good-by, P--Miss Cabot!" he called. Her voice trailed away as if it
were her soul going to death, and his voice followed with an ache of
despair in it. Mrs. Neff caught the pathos hovering over the cries like
overtones sounding above and beyond a tone of music. She said:
"Too bad you let Willie take her away from you; it's not too late yet if
you've any ambition."
Forbes smiled dully, and Alice said:
"Mother, you do say the most tactless things!"
"I had set my heart on that love-match," sighed Mrs. Neff.
"Better begin at home," said Alice, with unusual cheer.
Mrs. Neff changed the subject. "We'll get out at our house, if you don't
mind, and the man can take you to your hotel."
"That's mighty kind of you," said Forbes. He helped them to alight,
promised to call, and re-entered the car.
On his way to the hotel he pondered what Mrs. Neff had said. It cheered
him until he realized she was still assuming that he had a respectable
income. If she had known the truth she would have thought him as unfit
for Persis as she thought Stowe Webb unfit for Alice. She would have
approved Persis' theory that such a wedding was impossible.
It is doleful travel that takes one home from an unaccomplished
errand--only Forbes was not returning even to his home. His home was as
shifty as a Methodist minister's. At present it was a hotel, and after
that the army post.
And now those duties which he had dreaded so to resume became in his
mind a refuge. He had spent a few wild days pursuing a will-o'-the-wisp
of a woman's whim through a moonlit marsh, never sure which turn it
would take, sure only that it would not be where he expected it to be.
After such a maddening recreation there was a kind of heaven in the
thought of living according to a rigid program. At such an hour a bugle
would exclaim and drums would ruffle, and the day's work would begin. At
such an hour a roll-call would be due, or a sick-call, or a guard-mount
call, or a headquarters call. Certain books were to be inspected and
corrected; certain men were to be taught to do certain things exactly
so. If there were ever a doubt, the answer was printed in a book, or in
an order numbered and dated.
Everything was gloriously impersonal and objective, accurate and
material.
Forbes understood the spirit of old convicts who, after cursing their
penitentiaries for years, are let out into the world's turmoil, and by
and by return, pleading to be let in again.
Only yesterday he had been trying to concoct schemes for postponing the
date of his return to duty; now he was resolved to anticipate it.
He paid his bill at the hotel--with further erosion of the
bank-account--and took the Subway and the ferry to Governor's Island.
The first sentinel he encountered recognized him for an officer by his
shoulders and his carriage; and, halting on his post at just the right
distance, faced outward and presented arms with decorative rigidity. As
Forbes' hand went to the brim of his derby hat it felt a vizor there,
and his heart went up in thanks. And his eyes went to the colors!--the
little piece of wrinkling sky in the corner and the red stripes swimming
in luxurious curves.
Next Forbes noted a doting smile half hidden by a saluting hand. It was
a sergeant who had served with him in the Philippines; the very man
Forbes had been shouting to when the bullet passed through his cheek;
the very sergeant who had carried him half a mile to a field hospital in
a rain of sun that beat upon the head like a thug's sandbag. That was
man's work. Forbes returned the salute and shook the hand of the
sergeant. As he remembered, he had got the sergeant out of some woman
scrape. Why should good soldiers always be so easily defeated by women?
And next he met two officers he had known in West Point and in Cuba and
at Manila. The small army of the United States seemed hardly more than a
large club.
One of these officers, Major Chatham, dragged Forbes to his home for
dinner--as pretty a home as a man could wish, with as pretty a wife and
two children. And they had a maid to wait on them--and they kept a
little automobile, too, the major being his own chauffeur. They seemed
happy. Perhaps it was only manners, but the wife seemed as happy as a
lark--or, rather, a canary. And yet Forbes could see how she differed
from Persis. And he was glad that he had not brought a sea-gull down
there for a mate.
He left, after his first cigar, on a pretext of unpacking. In the late
twilight the sea-gulls that swung and tilted and dipped about the bay
like little air-yachts did not seem so desirable, after all. He declared
himself emancipated and contented. He thrust his head high and bulged
his chest and walked soldierly.
And so he prospered till he was alone in his quarters, and the dark
closed in and he turned on the light, and set about the establishment of
his effects with all the fanatic neatness and order a West Point
training could give a man.
He put his coats and overcoats on the hangers, and the trousers in their
holders, flat and creased, and set his shoes out in rows, and the boxes
of belts and spurs, and the sword-cases, and the various hat-boxes. He
took off his civilian coat and waistcoat--and found in the inside pocket
that perfumed nightcap.
And then he wanted Persis! He thirsted and hungered for her. He fevered
for her. He called himself names, reasoned, laughed, cursed, tried to