What Will People Say? A Novel
worth having is worth working for, and if she really wants you she'll
wait for you.' And then I lowered my voice about an octave and growled,
'I wonder if you have the grit to go out in this hard old world and work
for that girl and--and earn her?' He said, 'You bet I have!' So I said:
'Well, I know where there's a job you might get; it's small salary and a
lot of work at first, and by and by a little more salary and much harder
work; and you won't be able to see her often; perhaps not at all for a
long while; but eventually, if she'll wait, you'll be able to support
her as well as any girl needs to be supported who has love in the
bargain. Do you want that job, young man?' I said, glaring at him. And
he said: 'Lead me to it!'"
Forbes listened with eagerness and envy. The portrait of Alice, who
would wait till her lover worked his way up to a competence, contrasted
sharply with Persis, who would not accept the competence Forbes already
had. He asked, with an effort at enthusiasm:
"And what is the job?"
"I'm going to make him my secretary, at twelve hundred a year, at first.
He won't be worth it, and I'll have to do all my own work for a while;
but I'll give him his chance. I won't pamper him. I'll test him out--and
her, too. If they can't stand the test they wouldn't last long in the
battle of matrimony."
"Your secretary?" said Forbes. "Does he know any law?"
"I'm not going to be a lawyer. I'm going to be a diplomat--in Paris."
"Splendid!" cried Forbes, reaching across to squeeze his hand. "I
congratulate the country--and France. I envy you Paris. I've never been
there."
"How would you like to go?"
"How should I like to be a major-general?"
Tait opened his lips to say something important, then stammered, and
said instead:
"Waiter, give Captain Forbes some more of that curry. It's good here,
isn't it?"
"Splendid," said Forbes, who had hardly touched what was on his plate.
Senator Tait shifted uncomfortably, made to speak, pursed his lips, eyed
Forbes, and then said, with abrupt irrelevance:
"I was wrong, I see, about old Cabot."
"Were you?" Forbes mumbled, with a sudden flush at the broaching of that
dangerous theme.
"Yes, I said that he was to be closed up, forced into involuntary
bankruptcy, and all that."
"Wasn't he?" said Forbes, weakly.
"No, he got money and credit and a new start--from the Enslee estates.
There is a rumor that his daughter is to marry Willie Enslee. I thought
that perhaps you--did you--did you hear anything of it--from Enslee?"
Tait made an elaborate pretense of indifference and showed a violent
interest in the leg of a chicken. Forbes turned curry-color with shame
as he answered: "Yes, Enslee announced the engagement himself--the very
day I saw you last."
His head drooped as if his neck could no longer hold it up. Tait noted
his harrowed look and broke out angrily:
"Don't be cut up, my boy, just because she's fool enough to marry a
bigger fool than herself."
"Oh, please!" Forbes protested. He could have struck a younger man in
Persis' defense, but he could only appeal to so old a man as Tait. Tait,
however, persisted:
"You ought to be glad to be revenged so neatly."
Forbes was in desperate case; he laughed bitterly. "Revenge is a little
late. My life is ruined. I might as well put an end to it."
The old man stared at the tragic face, the brow corded with veins, the
eyes fanatic with despair. He could not believe that so brilliant an
officer could kill himself. And yet men did kill themselves--several
thousand every year. When Forbes' father was a young man courting the
fickle young beauty who was later to become the so steadfast wife and
the mother of Forbes, they had quarreled, and Forbes' father had been
frantic with grief, had threatened self-destruction. Tait himself had
taken the revolver away from him and helped to lift him across the dark
waters of jealousy. It startled him to see the father's black despair
repeated in the son. He felt that he must repeat the rescue.
Yet, as humanity is constituted, tragedy becomes grotesque when it is
repeated. He felt a certain helpless amusement at finding the son just
as desperate as the father had been. He had laughed the elder Forbes out
of his gloom. He attempted to ridicule the son free of the same
obsession. He spoke in a low tone surcharged with an anxiety whose
exaggeration was too dolorous to catch.
"You say that you can't stand the loss of Miss Cabot, and you might as
well commit suicide?"
"I might as well."
"I'll tell you, Harvey, let's commit suicide together!" Forbes' haggard
glance showed that he was not yet awake to the old man's parody of his
solemnity.
"Do you mean it?" Forbes asked.
"Yes," Tait murmured; "all good Americans go to Paris when they
die--let's go to Paris."
Now Forbes caught the twinkle in his eye. It took him off his guard. It
was as if some one had made a funny face at a funeral. A guffaw of
laughter escaped him. It shocked him and shamed him, but it shattered
his depression.
Tait seized the opportunity of Forbes' disorder and urged his idea:
"I've got to have a military attache, you know. I could get the billet
for you."
"Why select me for the honor? You'll be beset with applications."
"Yes, but I like you, Harvey. You are your father come to life again. I
love you--as if you were your father--or my son. I'm old. I need young
shoulders to lean on. I've nobody else but you. And you need me. You've
had a whack in the solar plexus. You're seeing stars. But you mustn't
let 'em count you out. Once you get your breath you'll be as good a man
as you ever were. But don't lie down and take the count.
"Besides, I can help you while you're helping me. It's a new world for
you, Harvey. Nobody ought to die without seeing France and England--the
Old World that's so much newer than ours and so much wiser in so many
ways. It's your opportunity. It may mean wonderful things for you. You
can't refuse. You won't refuse, will you?"
The very impact of his blows pounded Harvey's cold heart to a glow. The
word "opportunity" glinted like a shower of sparks in the night. He
smiled in spite of himself. He felt such a leap of new blood in his
arteries, such a rush of fresh air into his lungs, that he seemed to
waken from a coma. He could not speak, but he thrust his hand across the
table and wrung the Senator's fat old fingers till they ached.
CHAPTER XLVI
Willie Enslee was as little masculine as a man could be without being in
the least effeminate. Ten Eyck, whose French was more fluent than exact,
called him "_petite_." His head was small and childish, and the more
infantile for a great rearward overhang that would have looked better on
a yacht. His voice was high and trebling in its sound. His costumes were
always of next season or the season after next. Yet, carefully as he
dressed, his clothes never dignified him nor he them. Rich as he was, he
attracted few parasites.
Now, no one realized Willie Enslee's defects half so thoroughly as did
Willie Enslee. But his failings did not amuse him as they did other
people; he could not laugh with the world at himself. He knew the world
laughed at him, and not without cause, and yet he hated the world for
its laughter. He hated everybody he knew almost as much as he hated
himself. To this misanthropy there was one exception--Persis. He hated
her, too, in a way, for she never concealed her scorn of him, and she
ridiculed his foibles before his face; but he found her so beautiful
that he loved her while he loathed her, desired while he abhorred.
He found her cold and flippant to his most earnest moods, but he assumed
that she was cold and flippant to everybody else. She certainly had that
reputation, and he comforted himself with the feeling that, while she
may have failed in response to his ardors, it was not because she was in
love with anybody else.
So little jealousy he had--or, rather, so slow a jealousy--that the
silly theory of Forbes' flirtation with Mrs. Neff sufficed to prevent
him from paying the slightest attention to Forbes' conversation with
Persis. Lack of jealousy is sometimes a form of conceit. Perhaps it was
this feeling that no woman could prefer any other man to an Enslee that
led him to ignore the ordinary caution of a lover. Perhaps it was just
his idolatry of Persis, his inability to believe her capable of the
infamy of duplicity.
But somewhere in his soul there must have been a latent spark of
suspicion which might some day burst into a consuming flame, for into
his dreams came now and then little glints of uneasiness. He dismissed
them as the results of indigestion, but they persisted.
One day, shortly after his return from his Westchester estate, he sat
down in the living-room of his town house to read the evening papers.
All of them published the announcement of his engagement to Persis,
under the general heading of "June brides." There were portraits of
Persis in various poses and costumes. Willie saw no picture of himself,
and the allusions to him were mainly concerned with "William Enslee,
Esq., son of the famous William Enslee."
Willie took so much pride in the fame of his betrothed that he was not
jealous even of her monopoly of the newspaper attention. He felt only a
great pride in being the future owner of all that beauty.
He lolled on the divan and smoked the cigarettes of prosperity. The
divan was so comfortable, and his satisfaction so soothing, that he grew
drowsy. His jaw fell open as his eyes fell shut. The newspapers dropped
to the floor, and he was asleep.
Into the room, which was now almost ready for the closing of the house
and the emigration to Newport or the country, came his mother, a young
matron whose aristocratic face and figure were markedly Spanish. Her
black hair was fogged with gray at the temples, as if with a careless
powder-puff. She pushed back the covering of the mirror over the mantel
that she might catch a glimpse of her hair.
She brightened at the vision she saw within, and not without reason, for
she had broken many hearts in Cuba and in New York before the elder
William Enslee won her and married her. The only result of the union had
been that at his death he left a widow who was more attractive than a
widow has a right to be, and a son who was less attractive even than is
expected of a millionaire's son.
As Mrs. Enslee stared at her image in the looking-glass Willie's heavy
breathing caught her ear, and she heard that he was asleep even before
she saw him. And then she spoke sharply:
"But you mustn't sleep here. Go to your own room--or the club."
"Let me alone," Willie protested, with querulous anger, still befuddled,
and relapsing at once into sleep.
"When I was young parents weren't spoken to like that," said Mrs.
Enslee, forgetting how she used to speak to her parents. She paused to
muse upon her man-child. She felt sorry for him, but sorrier for herself
for having him. As she watched him he began to mumble a gibberish. She
bent closer to hear. Then his hand, hanging limply near the floor, began
to clench and twitch.
Suddenly from his lips broke a half-strangled gurgle, then a wild shriek
of "Persis! Persis!"
His own outcry seemed to waken him. His eyes flew open, and he stared
about him as if searching for some one whose absence bewildered him.
His mother peered into his eyes, and he clutched her by the arms,
staring at her. Then he mumbled:
"Oh, it's you," and smiled foolishly, and laughed as with a great
relief.
"What is it, my boy?" said Mrs. Enslee.
"I must have dropped off to sleep. It was only a dream."
"What was it?" Mrs. Enslee repeated; but he spoke with a sickly cheer:
"That's the one consolation about nightmares, when you wake up--thank
God, they're not true!"