What Will People Say? A Novel
In the meanwhile she must make haste to dress for the _Prix des Drags_,
and she took some interest in the choice of a gown sufficiently striking
to insure success in the fierce rivalry of that great costume race.
Everybody said that the world had not seen such undressing in public
since the Grecian revival at the time of the Directoire. Persis was not
the least astounding figure there. She felt that, after a deed of such
sacrifice as she had achieved in forswearing love, she had earned an
extra license in her draperies. Willie raised a tempest about her gown,
but she felt that she had done enough for him. She was suffering that
morning-after sullenness which follows unusual indulgences in virtue as
well as other excesses.
Life once more was a tango. She shifted from costume to costume like a
dressmaker's model. She went the rounds of _thes dansants_, and
musicales, and embassies, town houses, hotels, and chateaux,
watering-places, and mountains, lakes, and seas. But she kept away from
Switzerland till she read that Ambassador Tait was at his desk in Paris;
and then she avoided Paris and went to Trouville.
And so the days totaled into weeks, and the weeks became a month, two,
three, six. She fled from boredom to boredom. She skimmed the cream of
life and whipped it, and it turned sour. Though her abiding-places were
all oases and her tents were of silk, she led only a Bedouin existence.
After all, she and Willie were but tramps--velvet-clad hoboes. Variety
became monotony, luxury an oppression, contentment a will-o'-the-wisp.
She went to America and found that loveless contentment was not among
the Yankee inventions. She went back to Europe, and it was not among the
Parisian devices. There was everything for sale on the Rue de la Paix
except peace. She had not come to Paris purposely to find Harvey Forbes,
but she had sickened of being good, and she had grown nauseated with
denying her heart. If fate willed that their communion should be renewed
she would no longer tamper with destiny.
She wondered if time had cured Forbes' love. She wondered if he cared
for some one else--Mildred Tait, for instance, or some Parisian witch.
At the mere thought her heart beat like the wings of a wounded bird, and
she knew that she loved him and always would love him.
Half a year of Willie's tempers and whinings, his indigestions and
colds, and his diminishing patience with her whims, his growing habit of
complaining of her extravagances, his quarrels with their servants, with
every waiter, every messenger-boy, and hotel-keeper, had worn out even
her courtesy. They quarreled shamelessly in private, and with less and
less caution in public.
And now she was beginning to feel that she earned all she got, and was
paying usury on her money, and being badly treated in the bargain. She
was arriving at that sick frame of mind that makes cashiers and
statesmen and married people unfaithful to their trusts.
This was her humor when she met Forbes again. She had tried in various
ways to gain invitations to affairs of the Embassy. But Tait wasted no
diplomacy on cutting out the Enslees. He was the more brutal about this
since he felt that he was guarding his daughter's welfare.
Mildred had made herself dear to the more earnest elements of Paris. She
had grown somewhat less of a joke to the more frivolous. The
entertainments at the Embassy were not quite so Puritanical now, and her
costumes had amazingly improved since her father had put her under the
direct control of a tyrannical dressmaker of world-wide fame.
Whether she were growing to be merely a habit with Forbes or not, they
were more and more together. They fought bitterly on the question of
war, which she considered an unmitigated horror and he believed to be
the loftiest form of tragedy. But the whetting of mind on mind was
producing sparks, and Tait hoped that some day one of them would set
their two hearts on fire.
He was preparing for that day by making Forbes less poor. His post kept
him from taking advantage of the financial secrets he stumbled on. But
when he put Mildred in the hands of a dressmaker he gave the financial
destinies of Forbes to a retired capitalist, who juggled Forbes' five
hundred dollars into a thousand in a pair of weeks; and that thousand
into three. Then he encouraged Forbes to borrow, indorsed his notes and
speculated with the proceeds pyramidally. He was enjoying it as a form
of chess. At the end of half a year Forbes was talking as much of the
Bourse and Argentines as he was of projectiles and trajectories.
Having assured Forbes of enough money in bank to give him a salubrious
self-confidence, Tait dropped hints of a certain clause in his will and
sat back to watch the result. He was counting on receiving as his
Christmas gift the news that Forbes and Mildred were to be married, and
he was polishing up a joke about giving them inside rates on the
consular fees for that complicated ceremony.
And then the Enslees came to Paris in an unusual snow-storm, and winter
set in about the old man's overworked, undermined heart. He did his best
to keep Persis and Forbes apart; but when were the old ever vigilant
enough to thwart the young?
CHAPTER LVII
One day Mrs. Mather Edgecumbe found the Enslees shivering like a pair of
waifs in a restaurant famous for its cuisine and infamous for its
heating arrangements. She asked them if they were coming to the _the
dansant_ she was giving at her home that afternoon. They had forgotten
all about it, and Persis pleaded an engagement with her doctor. Mrs.
Edgecumbe was "so sorry. There would be hardly any Americans there,
then, except the old faithful Ambassador and Captain Forbes."
Persis' heart warmed instantly, but she said she was afraid that she had
some other engagement booked; in any case, they might drop in for a
minute. She shivered with exultance and blamed it on the chill.
When five o'clock came round Persis carelessly remembered the
half-promise to Mrs. Mather Edgecumbe. Willie was out of humor. Persis
angelically urged him to stay in his room and nurse his cold. Her
unusual thought for his welfare startled him. It delighted him. He
decided to stay by her and get more of the tenderness she was lavishing
to-day. She could not shake him loose.
The _the dansant_ was a failure in Mrs. Mather Edgecumbe's mind, and in
her sister Winifred's heart, for the storm kept most of the Parisians
away, and the Ambassador sent word by Forbes that he would be tardy if
he came at all. He pleaded motives of state. But he sent Forbes with his
apologies.
Forbes, having been on a visit in his official capacity, was again in
uniform. His eyes and cheeks were aglow from the cold, and Persis
watched him with adoration as he came nearer and nearer.
He did not see her, even when he paused to talk to Mrs. Edgecumbe, so
close to Persis that she could have touched him. And when she could not
endure the delay any longer, she thrust her hand beneath his eyes, and
murmured: "Captain Forbes doesn't remember me, but I met him in New York
ages ago."
Her voice, suddenly leaping out of the grave of memory, terrified him.
He whirled so quickly that his sword caught in her gown. He knelt to
disengage it, and there was laughter over the confusion, and then Mrs.
Edgecumbe was called away by a new-comer, and they were left together.
Persis beamed upon the complete disarray of all his faculties, and spoke
with affected raillery, though her own mind was in a seethe.
"At last we meet again! And how magnificent we are in our gorgeous
uniform! It's only the second time I've seen you in it. And I believe we
are no longer plain Mr. Forbes--but Captain! Captain Harvey Forbes, U.
S. A.! And they say we are rich now. What a pity I didn't wait a
little!"
Forbes was hurt at her flippancy. He smiled dismally, and she purred on:
"I assure you your title and your wealth are vastly becoming; almost as
becoming as all these buttons and epaulettes and things." She walked
around him, looking him over like an inspecting officer. "Um-m! How very
nice! Magnificent!"
"Oh, I beg of you--" Forbes protested, tortured with chagrin.
But she went on, "And a sword, too!" She ventured even to pull the blade
a little way from its scabbard. He would have killed a man for doing
that, and he almost wanted to kill Persis as she tantalized him with a
strange mixture of ridicule and idolatry. "I've no doubt the boulevards
are strewn with the broken hearts of Frenchwomen. Who could resist you?
I'm sure my own heart isn't anywhere near healed. It was very cruel of
you, Harvey, to throw me over and run away after you had stolen my poor
young affections."
Forbes was distraught; he groaned, "I see you've not forgotten how to
make fun of me."
But Persis went on in mock petulance: "It wasn't at all nice of you to
cast me off just because I married Willie."
This gave Forbes a chance to return her ridicule and he asked, "By the
way, how is your excellent husband?"
"You can see for yourself. There he is, still unable to learn the tango
and trying to teach it to a fat Marquise."
Forbes attempted that most uncivil of tones to a woman, the ironical: "I
hear that you and Mr. Enslee are the most devoted of couples."
"Oh, it's a silly custom that married people should pretend to be
congenial during their honeymoon," Persis said. "Thank heaven, my
initiation is almost over."
Forbes was genuinely horrified at such dealing with a subject so sacred
as marriage; he forsook irony for his usual forthright utterance:
"Surely your--your husband doesn't neglect you?"
There was a touch of quick anxiety in Forbes' tone that showed how
deeply he still cherished her.
"Neglect me?" Persis quoted. "If he only would! Willie does tag after me
even more than I could wish; but he is growing restless. I can usually
escape him by staying at home. He's doing the music-halls very
thoroughly. If I can only suggest some very shocking _revue_ I am
assured of an evening alone. He is going to one over on Montmartre
to-morrow night. I shall be quite deserted. We are stopping at the Hotel
Meurice."
There was so dire a meaning in her hint and so much danger in playing
again with the fire whose scar he still bore that Forbes ceased fencing
and slashed: "Why do you torment me? You refused my love once."
"Never your love, my dear boy," said Persis, with abrupt seriousness.
"I never refused your love--only your hand. I always encouraged your
love."
"But I was poor," Forbes sneered.
"Yes, you were poor," Persis said, taking his own word and turning it
against him, "and I knew less than I do now." She walked away to a niche
beside a statue where they could talk without being overheard, but,
being visible, were chaperoned by the crowd. She sank upon a settle of
gold and old rose and motioned him to her side. Then, while her face and
her fan proclaimed that their conversation was of the idlest, her voice
was deep with elegy:
"Harvey, try to be just. If you had been rich--oh! if you had been
rich!--then, as you are now, Harvey, then I could have believed that
such a thing as a love-match is feasible."
"But I was poor!" Forbes reiterated, with a knell-like persistence.
"That was Fate's fault, not mine," said Persis, in all solemnity. "But
haven't I been honest with you? You declared that you loved me; I
confessed that I loved you."
"Was it honest, then, not to give me your heart?"
"My whole heart has always been yours for the asking--and still is."
Forbes recoiled with a sudden: "What are you saying? You have a husband
now!"
"What does that prove?" was Persis' grim reply. "I don't owe him
anything in the inside of my heart. He didn't buy that, thank God!
Before the world, I owe him everything, and I should be the first to