What Will People Say? A Novel
alkaline Death Valley without oasis. She grew frantic to be rid of him,
or, at least, to mitigate him with other companionships. And he who had
been restlessly unhappy without her found that he could not be happy
with her, because of the one mad regret that he could not make her love
him as he loved her.
Mismated and incompatible in every degree, they glared at each other
like sick wretches in the same hospital ward. The next evening as they
sat at table in the dining-saloon it came over her that for the rest of
her days she must see that unbeautiful face opposite her. She felt an
impulse to scream, to run to the railing and leap overboard, to thwart
that life-sentence in any possible way. But she kept her frenzy hidden
in her breast and said, with all the inconsequence she could assume:
"To-morrow they'll be playing the first international polo game."
Even Willie heard the shiver of longing in the tone. It meant that the
honeymoon was already boring her. His heart broke, but all he said was:
"Er--yes--I believe it is to-morrow. Like to go?"
"Oh no," she murmured. "I was just thinking what a splendid sight it
will be. Everybody will be there, I suppose."
"Er--yes--I suppose so."
She lighted her third cigarette since the soup, and, rising from the
table, drifted to the piano clamped to the walls of the drawing-room.
Her mind was far off, and her fingers, left to themselves, stumbled
through a disjointed chaos of melodies from nocturnes to tangos and
back.
Willie stood it as long as he could, then his torment broke out in a cry
more tragic than its words:
"For God's sake play something or quit."
She quit.
She walked to a porthole and stared out at the dark waves shuffling past
like stampeding cattle.
He apologized at once. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I apologize."
"Oh, that's all right," she sighed, with doleful graciousness. But when
he knelt by her and put his arm around her she slipped from his clasp
and went out on the deck. He followed her. But neither of them spoke.
The moon on the sea spread a pathway of dancing white tiles. She wanted
to run away, to step forth on that fantastic pavement and follow it out
of the world.
To Forbes, on a distant ship in midocean the same moon was spreading the
same path straight to him. He stared into its shifting glamour till his
eyes were bewitched. He could see Persis walking on the water in the
boudoir cap and the shimmering thing she wore that morning.
They were thinking of each other, longing for each other, and the space
between them was widening every moment.
It came over Persis with maddening vividness that she had made a ruin of
her happiness. All the wealth was nothing but mockery. Even the hats and
the multitudes of dresses were wasted splendor, weapons of conquest to
be left in an armory.
The night grew more and more wonderful. The moon was like a white face
flung back with unappeased desire. The wind across the waves tugged
amorously at her hair and whimpered and caressed her. And she was with
Willie Enslee, the unlovable, the hideously uninteresting, the
intolerable. She was handcuffed to Willie Enslee for life.
The ache of longing that thrilled the night world thrilled Enslee's
heart, too; and he crept close to her, his adoration, his wife, the only
soul on earth he deeply loved. He set his cheek against hers and
clenched her in his arms fiercely. And immediately he encountered that
hopeless antipathy, though all she said was a faintly petulant "Don't,
please!"
It struck him in the face like a little fist. He moved aloof from her in
abject humiliation and thought hard, took out a cigarette, tapped it on
the back of his hand, puffed restlessly, threw the cigarette over the
rail, and a moment later took out another. There was no need for words.
The air throbbed with Persis' detestation of the voyage. The
sailing-master passed. Willie called to him:
"Svendsen!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Put about and make for home."
"I beg pardon, sir."
"You heard!"
"Aye, aye, sir."
The commands were given in the distance, a bell rang remotely in the
engine-room, and the stars wheeled across the sky as the yacht came
round.
The phosphorescent sea revealed the wake they had plowed in a long
straight furrow of white fire, and now there was a sharp curve in the
line. And shortly they were paralleling its dimming radiance.
They were bound for home. The mere thought of the word brought a tragic
chuckle from Enslee's heart. Home was a word he could not hope to use.
Home was a thing he must do without.
CHAPTER LII
Persis was sorry for her husband, but just a trifle sorrier for Persis.
She solaced herself with the thought that it was partly for Willie's own
sake that she consented to go back, since if she stayed out in that
solitude with him any longer she would go mad and jump overboard. And he
would not like that in the least. A bride in town would be worth two in
the ocean. Besides, a suicide on a honeymoon would be sure to cause a
fearful scandal. She could imagine the head-lines.
Willie was a darling to yield so easily. It showed her how much he loved
her--also how meekly he obeyed her. That is always an important question
to settle. Perhaps it is what honeymoons are for--training-stations in
which husbands are broken to harness and taught to answer a mere
chirrup; it saves the whip.
But the comfort Persis took in finding that her husband was her
messenger-boy ended as they came up the bay again. She suddenly realized
that for Willie and her to be seen at the polo games, when they had so
ostentatiously set out on their honeymoon only two days before, would
provoke a landslide of gossip. Everybody on earth would be at the polo
games, and she and Willie could not hope to escape attention. They would
be ridiculed to death behind their backs and to their faces. Therefore
they must not go.
She explained this to Willie, and he shook his head and broke out,
peevishly:
"Why the bally hell didn't you think of all this in the first place?"
"In the first place, Willie," said Persis, "you are the man of the
family, and supposed to do the thinking. In the second place, I won't be
sworn at."
"I wasn't swearing at you, my love. I was just swearing. Well, if you
don't want to go to the polo games, where in--where do you want to
go--up to the country place?"
Here was a problem. She was sure that she did not want to be alone in a
country house with Willie. That would be worse than the yacht. Since she
could not endure either to be alone with him or to go among crowds with
him, the dilemma was perfect. Already there was another incompatibility
established.
She was mad for diversion, and, being herself a polo player of no small
prowess, she was frantic to see the effort of the British team to wrest
back the trophy. But a stronger passion still was the determination to
evade gossip.
She and Willie, therefore, sneaked from their yacht to their house in
town. They astounded the servants, and there was much scurrying and
whisking.
They dined together alone, though Persis was eager to be in a restaurant
where there was music. She was like a child kept in after school. She
flattened her nose against a window-pane and stared out at life. After
dinner the prospect of an evening with Willie rendered her desperate.
They could at least go to the theater somewhere. Nobody was in town;
they would be quite unnoticed. But when nobody is in town the theaters
close up. There was nothing they had not seen or had not been warned
against. Willie proposed a roof-garden--Hammerstein's.
They went, and beheld a chimpanzee that rode various bicycles, smoked a
cigar expertly, and spat with amazing fidelity to the technique of the
super-ape; also a British peeress who danced in less clothes than the
chimpanzee wore.
Ten Eyck was there. He tried to hide from Persis and Willie, not
because he was ashamed to be seen by them, but because he was afraid
that Persis and Willie would not want to be seen by him. He had
cherished no illusions for the success of the match on its sentimental
side, but he had expected them to see the honeymoon through. He kept out
of their sight, but they stumbled on him during the intermission, when
the audience crowded into a space at the back of the roof where a
patient cow was milked by electricity at an uncowly hour, and where
couples rowed boats up and down an almost microscopic lake.
Ten Eyck had not expected Persis and Willie to join this hot and foolish
mob. But he felt a hand seize his arm. He turned and looked into Persis'
eyes. She welcomed him as a rescuer, but it was Willie that urged him to
sit with them. Ten Eyck's hesitation was misconstrued by Persis. She
said:
"Perhaps he is--er--not alone."
"Oh yes, I am," Ten Eyck hastened to say. "I'll join you." And he went
with them to an upper box. Even Ten Eyck felt a little shy.
Persis and Willie knew what he was thinking, and they were like a pair
of youngsters caught spooning. Only their misdemeanor was that they had
been caught not spooning. Ten Eyck ventured to speak.
"So the penance is over already? I thought you two doves were still on
the ark."
"We are, officially," said Persis.
Ten Eyck wanted to help them out, so he said:
"What's the matter? Did the yacht puncture a tire or lose a shoe or--"
Willie attempted to carry along the idea by saying:
"It was trouble with the sparker." And he did not understand why Persis
blushed and Ten Eyck blurted.
They were rescued from this personal confusion by what would have thrown
any audience into a panic ten years before and now was greeted almost
with apathy: the appearance of the British peeress in a costume that
was hardly more than Eve wore after the eviction. A gauzy shift was all
she had on, with a few wisps of chiffon as opaque as cigarette-smoke.
Shoulders, arms, and all of both legs were as bare as her face.
No policeman interfered, and not a sermon had been preached against her.
Nudity had lost its novelty, and her posturings and curvetings were
regarded with as academic a calm as if she were a trick pony or an
acrobat. There was much laughter later when a male comedian burlesqued
her, with a bosom composed of two toy balloons, one of which escaped,
and one of which exploded when he fell on it.
"I think this age will go down in history as the return to nature," Ten
Eyck said, struggling for some impersonal topic. "Women in and out of
vaudeville have left off more and more of their concealments, till the
only way a woman can arouse suspicion now is by keeping something on.
And I can't see that we are any worse--or any better. An onion is an
onion, no matter how many skins it has on or off. We'll see
bathing-suits on Fifth Avenue next season."
He did not know that the next season was to bring a sudden revolution
and divert women from disclosure to the covering of their bodies with
chaotic fabrics till they resembled dry-goods counters in disarray.
Philosophizing did not interest Willie. He came always back to the
individual. By and by he wrestled with silence, and asked:
"Er--whatever became of that--er--soldier you brought up to the farm?
Stupid solemn fella--Ward--or Lord--or something?"
"Forbes, you mean?" said Ten Eyck, taking pains not to look at Persis.
But he could feel her eager attention in the sudden check of her fan.
"That's it--Forbes. Still at Ellis Island--or is it Ward's?"
"Governor's," said Ten Eyck. "He's been made military attache at the
French Embassy. Sailed for Paris the other day with Senator
Tait--and--and Mildred."
Persis' whole body seemed to clench itself like a hand. But Willie,
everlastingly oblivious to significant things, driveled on:
"Paris, eh? Racing season's on over there now. How'd you like to run